I don't like
this one bit. I don't like the other side and their tactics AT ALL, but I also don't like what the General and others are saying about them.
Let me be perfectly clear - right is ALL on the side of the Dobriches and Does, and that is the side that the liberal blogosphere is taking up. So, kudos to us. We can successfully distinguish between thugs and people seeking protection.
That said, pastordan'sprobably the only person in this whole situation to actually get what's going on, in my not-so-humble opinion.
See, here's the thing. The General, Bartholomew, Talk2Action, and even Hunter have all decided that the best word for this is a "Pogrom." But I don't like that word for this. I think the better word is "Sitnah."
So Isaac departed from there and encamped in the wadi of Gerar, where he settled. Isaac dug anew the wells which had been dug in the days of his father Abraham and which the Philistines had stopped up after Abraham's death; and he gave them the same names that his father had given them. But when Isaac's servants, digging in the wadi, found there a well of spring water, the herdsmen of Gerar quarrelled with Isaac's herdsmen, saying, "The water is ours." He named that well Esek, "contention," because they contended with him. And when they dug another well, they contended with them over that one also; so he named it Sitnah, "harassment."
- Genesis 26:17-21
Once you understand Hebrew, that passage suddenly reveals Isaac as a man with a great sense of humor, if nothing else. But that's beside the point. In the ancient Middle East, and even today, water was life. Access to water meant the difference between prosperity and destitution or even death. Nomadic herders, without wells of their own, frequently had to carefully negotiate permission to use wells wherever they passed. So what the men of Gerar are doing is telling Isaac that he is not welcome in their wadi. They're telling him that they would rather see him dead in the desert than sharing his wealth with them. This, my friends, was a violation of the unwritten rule of the desert, that you never turn away one at your tent flap. You always offer hospitality, even if you have to go without yourself.
The Russian pogroms that the preferred name for this invokes are entirely different. The pogroms were conducted entirely legally. Immorally, certainly, but within the law of Russia, and so the Jews had no real recourse other than to leave - the moral dimension didn't make sense to the Cossacks. This, on the other hand, is sitnah - harassment. It's illegal, whether the law is written or unwritten, and this time it's written. The people being harassed have recourse, and they not only have right on their side, they have the Law.
Part of the reason G-d wrote down the Law at Sinai, I believe, was to get it in writing. The act of writing has significant power. By putting it in writing, we can all agree on what it means, and why it's important (at least until the lawyers get their hands on it). Unwritten law can mean anything at all, and it can be broken with impunity by those with power. Written law has power all its own.
Isaac dared not stand up for his rights, because the law was not sovereign. It was unwritten, it was without force. But during the Exodus, we see what can happen when the Law becomes the most important thing.
The daughters of Zelophehad...came forward....and they said, "Our father died in the wilderness. He was not one of the faction, Korah's faction, that banded together against the Lord, but died for his own sin; and he has left no sons. Let not our father's name be lost to his clan just because he had no son! Give us a holding among our father's kinsmen."
...
And the Lord said to Moses..."Speak to the Israelite people as follows: 'If a man dies without leaving a son, you shall transfer his property to his daughter....'
- Numbers 27:1-8
Prior to the Law, the daughters would have been destitute, left to subsist on the charity of uncles and cousins who had no obligation to them. They likely would have wound up trapped in sexual slavery. Behold, the power of Law.
So this is not a pogrom - because a pogrom is, above all, legal. This, my friends, is sitnah.
But now, the Law stands with the harassed.