MUSEUM OF MANUFACTURED MORALS

WHEN A MUSEUM OBSESSES OVER GAZA, IT RAISES QUESTIONS ABOUT WHAT IS REALLY ON DISPLAY.

Come for the global culture. Stay for the self-righteous hypocrisy.

I’ll be in the Netherlands in a few weeks and so I am researching museums and sites to see.

And here is another example of how I can be going about my business, ostensibly taking a break from my usual slavish fixation with the world’s slavish fixation with Jews only to get figuratively slapped in the face with the world’s slavish fixation with Jews.

I’m perusing the offerings of a cool-looking museum in Leiden when there on the landing page is a statement on Gaza — a massively biased, morally distorted, one-sided, divisive, intolerant statement on Gaza dressed up in a costume of peace and coexistence.

In my previous post, I wrote about how Jewish people these days are confronted everywhere they turn with messages from people who either want to kill them all or — fine, let’s be a little less inflammatory, shall we? — people who are completely nonchalant that a chunk of the world wants to kill them all.

As far as I can tell from my Jewish friends, life for Jews today is pretty much just an endless a litany of these faceslaps.

Oh, I know. Do you know what life is like for Palestinians these days? If that’s what you were thinking, think again. Because you would not dare say — or probably even think — something like that about any group except Jews. When we are talking about the lived experiences of a minority community, progressive, antiracist people do not respond with “Sure, but what about …” Except when it comes to Jews or the Jewish state.

A couple of examples of this phenomenon off the top of my head.

A friend posted a commemorative meme on social media for International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which elicited an attack from a “friend” accusing her of ignoring the “genocide” in Gaza — an act of self-righteous umbrage that is despicable in so many ways, not least because it is based on the obscene, conspiratorial idea that anything remotely close to what happened to the Jews of Europe is happening to the Palestinians of Gaza.

A bunch of my friends went to the Canada Cup Women’s International Softball Championship (exactly a year ago today, the internet tells me) only to have their reverie disrupted and their Jewish kids accosted by shrieking extremists telling them that their parents are lying to them and that the country they have been taught to love is actually perpetrating atrocities.

Friends — Jewish and non-Jewish — have posted innocuous things about Jewish holidays over the last months, inviting tsunamis of attacks, people using harmless messages for a happy Passover or Rosh Hashanah as an excuse to launch broadsides against Jewish people for daring to be, well, Jewish, apparently. But, as we are repeatedly assured, “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism.”

Anyways, there I was checking out the exhibits at the Wereldmuseum, in Leiden, Netherlands, when I see a prominent “Statement Gaza.”

A little context first. The museum describes itself thusly:

With its scientific orientation and collecting history, Wereldmuseum Leiden focuses on global cultural histories. The themes you see here include religion or indigenous worlds and their struggle for independence and restoration of historical injustice. The exhibitions encourage us to reflect on what it means to be human, what our connection is with the world around us, and how we relate to each other.

And so, in a perverted interpretation of righting “historical injustice” (and a pretty upside-down understanding of the word “indigenous,” for that matter), they forge ahead with their “Statement Gaza.” (Worth noting: I don’t read Dutch so I’m not sure whether this grammatical inversion is in the original, but there is a sort of Freudian slip in the English statement. They claim to seek the “restoration of historical injustice.” They have no idea how accurate their apparent error actually is.) Anyways, here is their bloviating statement on Gaza:

At Wereldmuseum, we look with horror and grief at the ongoing human suffering and the killing of innocent civilians in Gaza. Once again, we call for an immediate ceasefire and the release of all hostages. We see it as our mission to contribute to a more just and equitable society for everyone. We speak out against the genocidal violence committed by the Israeli state against Palestinians in Gaza, as affirmed by numerous analyses of the International Court of Justice, human rights organisations, and UN rapporteurs.

Working towards justice means daring to be critical — without resorting to division or exclusion. We value the many voices addressing our role and responsibility. We stand with all those working to end the violence, and our thoughts are with the families and loved ones of the victims. …

Our mission is to foster historical understanding and connection, especially in times of polarisation and pain. As a museum, we remain committed to building an equitable future — one that, in light of our own history, must be anti-colonial. A future where there is no room for violence, racism, or discrimination. A future we aim to help shape, for everyone.

Isn’t it precious?

Given their “horror and grief at the ongoing human suffering and the killing of innocent civilians in Gaza,” I poked around the website for any evidence that they had any remotely commensurate horror and grief around the ongoing human suffering in Sudan, Congo, Tigre, Nigeria, Myanmar or facing Uyghurs in Western China.

Not a word. Absolute silence. Even Ukraine’s fight for survival, which democratic, peace-enjoying Europeans might want to keep a close eye on, doesn’t merit a “Statement Ukraine.” The only reference to Ukraine on the entire site is a relief of Medusa in their collection.

A museum dedicated to “global cultural histories” centers the experiences of the people of Gaza, but ignores crises facing every other “global culture” on the planet. The only one worth lamenting is the one where we can blame the Jews.

At this point, I’ll be accused of whataboutery, of deflecting from the crisis in Gaza by talking about atrocities and disasters taking place almost anywhere else one looks in the world. Like the original crime, this too is a projection. The fixation on Gaza, however great the tragedy there, eclipses every other disaster on the planet. It’s as if the only lives that matter are Palestinians. And why could that obsessive fixation on this one people, this one conflict, possibly happen when it has so much competition in a world filled with tragedy?

Because Jews.

Let’s cut the shit. Let’s — finally — cut the shit.

Recap: “As a museum, we remain committed to building an equitable future — one that, in light of our own history, must be anti-colonial,” they pronounce. “A future where there is no room for violence, racism, or discrimination. A future we aim to help shape, for everyone.”

For everyone — except Jews, it seems, who have a right not to be hostages, but no right to defend themselves from genocidal murderers.

And did you catch the reference to “in light of our own history”? Here we have the Western phenomenon of Dutch people superimposing their own guilt and baggage on Israel. Redemption for the Dutch history of imperialism is granted through the transubstantiation of the Jewish state into the scapegoat representing all colonial powers for all time — and then it is crucified on a cross of substitutionary atonement.

For the European sins of the centuries, the Jews get the blame yet again.

For millennia, Jews have been the prototypical bad guys in the human imagination. Now that there is a Jewish state, the Jewish state is the empty vessel upon which every human sin is projected. A museum dedicated to “global cultural histories,” of all institutions, should be among the first to recognize this centuries-old trans-cultural truth. Instead, they embody and perpetuate it. They might as well turn Israel into wine and wafer and gobble it down.

And, despite this obvious mental distortion, they go on to congratulate themselves on their derring-do.

“Working towards justice means daring to be critical — without resorting to division or exclusion,” they haughtily declare — while partaking in division and exclusion. Courageous little curators that they are.

I know it seems I am picking on Wereldmuseum — it is sadly just the example that crossed my path while I was making travel plans. There are probably millions of similar moral transgressions, self-righteously hypocritical expressions and subtly antisemitic acts and omissions taking place worldwide. I stumbled on this one. (And — wait for it — after I send this to them, I expect, if anything, a defensive, reflexive, self-congratulatory new post lauding themselves for courageously standing up for what’s right in the face of this unjust onslaught and blah blah blah. Oh, and “Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism.” Plus, don’t miss the gift shop on your way out for Delft plates and knock-offs of ancient artifacts.)

The most hypocritical, infuriating part of all this is that, in the process of all this performative outrage and self-righteous posturing, the actual cause of the conflict is never addressed. In the statement from the museum, there is not a single word — not even an unspoken implication — about how this conflict began or why it continues. No October 7. No rapes. No beheadings. No immolations. No mass murder. No decades of incitement to genocide by Palestinian and Arab political leaders, clergy, educators and popular culture.

What a wereld. What a wereld.