Anymore, it is getting harder to identify as a Pagan or Wiccan. This is truer of my relations with people I know in the real world than it is of my musings on this blog or in regards to my communications in other areas of the internet. At the same time, it is growing exponentially more troublesome even here on-line, in regards to people with whom I converse, even though more than likely I will never meet in real life the vast majority of them, if indeed any at all.
I look back on the days of my self-proclaimed conversion with equal parts amusement and amazement. I too went through the religious fanaticism stage that marks any true believer. I approached days of hardship with varying degrees of faith in the “gods of my ancestors” and in the hidden science of magic. The good days I found easy and appropriate to render thanks for divine guidance. I longed for more spiritual as well as occult knowledge, and hungered to find meaning beyond the oftentimes quite whimsical mythologies of the past, in some cases inventing or devising hidden meanings where perhaps there were none to be found, nor were any intended.
When confronted with the skeptics and the ignorant, those who identified Pagans and Wiccans as evil black hearted magicians or sorcerers in the employ, knowing or unknowingly, of “the Devil”, I admit to a perverse satisfaction in their reaction. I felt oh so superior to them and what I saw, correctly in many cases, as their superstition and hypocrisy.
All things change and evolve over time. I am no different in this regard. I like to think of it as the wisdom that comes with growth, experience, and maturity.
Some things, unfortunately, seem almost to never change for the better.
Disclaimer-
American taxpayers have a perfect right to criticize the policies, both internal and external, of those foreign nations said taxpayers subsidize in any way-this is especially true of those nations whose defense we subsidize-such as Europe, Japan, and, yes, Israel.
Of course, American taxpayers are often divided, finding themselves in stark disagreement when it comes to the policies of many of these countries. This is especially true of Israel, it would seem.
Therefore, when such Wiccan luminaries as Starhawk offer criticism of the nation of Israel, she is merely doing what many other American citizens have done and have a perfect right to do. However, there is legitimate criticism, and there is crossing the line. Many Israeli critics cross that line often-figuratively and literally.
Starhawk has joined their ranks. The fact that she might feel, as a person of Jewish ancestry, that she has a compelling reason and right, and even a responsibility to do so, changes nothing.
Starhawk is a member, or at least a supporter, of the International Solidarity Movement. These people have in the past acted as human shields against Israeli operations in Palestinian territories. They claim to be acting in the defense of innocent Palestinians (I refrain from putting quotation marks around the phrase in the hopes there are at least a few).
It is hard to take that claim with more than a grain of salt when I remember how people such as this once acted in such a manner in defense of Yasser Arafat, who, whatever you might think of him, can hardly be called innocent. In fact, both Hamas and the rival Palestinian group Fatah typically use them as pawns. They are in fact little more than propaganda props to these thugs, and when women like Rachel Corrie end up dead-and that is always a real possibility in situations like this-in all likelihood there is little that could possibly please them more. One of the few things they might find more satisfying is when a few hundred of their own people end up dying because of an Israeli counter-attack on them within their positions in Palestinian residential neighborhoods.
It would be much easier to take Starhawk and her peers seriously were they to make a point of standing around Israeli pizzerias and bus stops with signs saying things like “I Too Might Be a Victim of a Palestinian Suicide Bomber”.
Of course, that now is unnecessary. Such bombings seem now a thing of the past. Perhaps that is why the ISM is so devoted to forcing the Israelis to dismantle the fence now separating them from the Palestinians of the West Bank Perhaps that is why they insist on the Palestinian right of return. Maybe if all those things happened, the ISM would be at the vanguard of protesting such atrocities when they inevitably resumed.
On the other hand, probably not. The ISM, and others like them, cannot be taken seriously as honest critics of Israeli-US policies. That is because their movement is entirely political. True, it is based on legitimate criticisms of those policies, but the agenda obviously moves much deeper than that. It, like most alleged “peace” organizations, seem to be concerned with considerably more than changing US foreign policy. I am very much afraid it is also about more-much more-than merely standing up for the beleaguered Palestinian people. All of that is a facade, mere window dressing for the ultimate goal of removing capitalist influence and ushering in a socialist internationalist system with little if any regard for currently recognized national borders. International policy is not the problem to the way of thinking of most of these groups. The established international facets of the US government is in fact to them an opportunity-the world as an oyster is a more than appropriate cliché.
They do not want to dismantle the current system so much as take it over and remake it in their own image, a socialist one. Of course, they are a small faction of lunatics with little real influence on the hearts and minds of average people, at least in the US. However, they are a real and growing influence on policy. Thanks to incompetence in regards to conduct of the Iraq War, and to the current financial crises, especially in the Housing Market and energy prices, their influence is not as minimal as one might suppose. They are in fact the ugly face of liberal politics. They are the crazy aunts and uncles the Democrats just cannot seem to keep locked in the attic. When election year rolls around, unfortunately, they grow strong enough to break their bonds, and many times roam out of control. It must be the effect of all that red meat tossed around.
I long ago wearied of warning the Democratic Party members, what ones that would listen, of their pernicious influence. I should have known better. After all, as crazy as these people are, they are still their uncles and aunts, and blood is thicker than water, to use yet another tried and true cliché.
Until they purge themselves of this influence, if they ever do, I will vote Republican-or, even more likely, not at all-and let the chips fall where they may.
Paganism and Wicca, however, are different matters. While many of Starhawk’s concerns and objections are, I repeat, well founded, she has crossed the line. Now she complains that Israel denied her entry to their country, and held her briefly in detention. Well, let’s see now-she is a member and supporter of International Solidarity Movement and Code Pink. She has openly accused the Israeli government of apartheid. Her criticisms of Palestinian atrocities are tepid at best when compared to Israeli responses to these very same Palestinian atrocities. (By the way, most such Israeli critics, when you point out the Palestinian contribution to the problem, like to react in such a way that their opposition to these tactics should be taken for granted and so they need not dwell on them).
Starhawk likes to complain that her reason for wanting to go to Israel is humanitarian. She wants to teach a two-week course of permaculture and organic design to the people of Israel, a country that has successfully turned what for centuries was basically a desert into an agricultural exporter. They accomplished this despite the constant attacks from or on behalf of the people she deems in need of her defense. Can anyone blame the Israelis for viewing this former Jew, now a Neo-Pagan Witch, with some degree of suspicion, given especially her past association with radical left-wing organizations?
I support Starhawk’s rights to her views, just as I have in the past supported the legitimate rights of other Wiccan luminaries, such as Gavin and Yvonne Frost, who like Starhawk seem to lean greatly to the left in a great many of their beliefs. However, there is a vast difference in supporting freedom of association and freedom of speech, and allowing something of which I am a part-even if admittedly on the outer periphery-to be seen as an entirely left-wing phenomenon.
Though there are of course many liberals and leftists within the Wiccan/Pagan world-in fact, the liberals probably do make up the majority of our overall numbers-there are nevertheless many libertarians, conservatives, and moderates as well-in addition to complete and unabashed independents such as myself.
Unfortunately, I am very much afraid that when I identify myself as a Wiccan or Pagan, the first image that comes to people’s minds is no longer the evil, wart-ridden, spell casting Satanic “devil worshiper” that such phrases tend to conjure up. More and more often, they might instead come to identify me with an even more pernicious influence. A radical leftist airhead who in a good many cases never grew up or out of the sixties is not much an improvement, if at all, and when you stop to think about it, to me at least is no less terrifying.
