I had a really shitty night of sleep last night, spurred on both by Daylight Saving Time crapping on my sleep schedule and because I had attempted to write a post I was woefully emotionally unprepared for regarding a Daily Caller article titled "Wiccan Community Expresses Outrage At Ilhan Omar's Comments: Anti-Semitic And Unacceptable." I stumbled upon it because I had read a number of comments on my own feeds about Ilhan Omar, most of them arguing on a range between "she said nothing wrong at all" to "she should have thought about her wording to avoid antisemitic tropes but was otherwise not wrong," and I decided to delve into it a bit.
This is when I learned that apparently Witches had a vote sometime and consistently agreed: We, a group of people who can't agree on fucking anything, were outraged--outraged--at Omar's comments about Israel, a subject that even Jewish people do not have a consistent, unified opinion on.
Firstly, it's important to mention that the Covenant of the Goddess doesn't really represent Witches in general, or even just Wiccans, and quite frankly their advocacy isn't always a pinnacle of accuracy. Reading their information about Witchcraft, as a non-Wiccan Witch, is a headache-inducing chore, so to see the opinions of one of their members applied to all of us as a collective whole is frustrating at best. I basically know nobody who is even a member of the CoG, despite Witches and Wiccans making up a good half of my social circle, and although it's hearsay, when I brought it up the consensus seemed to be that this organization is dwindling.
From the article:
"The statements of Rep. Ilhan Omar were anti-Semitic and unacceptable. Through our members, a collective voice shared their shock at such hurtful anti-Semitic rhetoric and that this discriminatory, prejudiced language is unacceptable from anyone, especially any public figure."What did Omar actually say? She said that United States support of Israel was about money and that it's ridiculous that we're expected to pledge undying loyalty to a foreign country.
One of the reasons I was up so late last night over this is because carefully wording anything about Israel is, quite frankly, a necessary chore. Because antisemitism is so deeply rooted in our cultural mythos, basically every negative quality a human can have has at some point been promoted as a uniquely Jewish stereotype. I think it's important that Omar listen to the criticism from Jewish people, but I nonetheless think that it's a stretch that her statements were uniquely antisemitic. Instead, I believe they're targeting Ilhan Omar not because they care about stopping antisemitism, but because they hate that she is a black Muslim immigrant woman criticizing a country that is well documented to be committing extreme human rights abuses against Muslims, a population the United States not only tolerates, but actively supports oppressing.
"We should crush criticism of the marginalization of a minority religion" is not something I support as a human being let alone as a Witch, so I am more than a little pissed off to see Janine Nelson attempting to speak for me in such a way. To be fair, this is The Daily Caller we're talking about, so there's a good chance Nelson may have not fully understood what her words were going to be used to say, but it was woefully irresponsible regardless.
Later there is another statement by Nelson that might--I can't be sure because of the limited information provided--suggest Nelson's opinions are more about the resulting resolution than Ilhan Omar's original statements. To quote the article:
"[We are] pleased at the outcome of the passing of H.Res. 183. While it does not specifically include Wiccans, Witches, or Pagans, it expands the rejection of intolerance to all religions.This is an ironic statement, because it's clear this whole thing is about punishing Omar's reasonable opinions as a Muslim, but I think it's important to look through this anyway, because it's unfortunately common for Pagans to assume any old "religious tolerance" win is going to affect us in a meaningful way.
[...]
"The Covenant condemns intolerance and discrimination of any kind. We are also acutely aware that words matter, and every individual should have the liberty to pursue their spiritual calling without fear of persecution based on religion, race, or place of birth."
This has rarely been the case, though, because it's almost always written with a particular event or goal in mind that has nothing to do with us. Because we weren't in the spirit of why they were written, we wind up becoming "exceptions" because people do not view our beliefs as genuine religious expression. The goal of H.Res. 183, of course, is to punish a Muslim woman, not to protect religious minorities, and as such it has no hope of ever being usefully applied to hate speech against Witches, Wiccans, or Pagans, at least not without an insufferable fight. Hell, it probably won't even be used against hate speech toward Muslims, which was added as an afterthought to the original resolution because it was just so brazenly obvious why it was written.
Finally, I want to talk about the bizarre implication that Witches, Wiccans, and Pagans collectively support Israel and everything it does, because this is quite frankly nonsensical bullshit. I'm baffled that Nelson seems to believe this is a widespread enough opinion among Witches to even make a comment about it, because it's certainly not how any of my Wiccan or Pagan contacts see it. Almost all of them are on that same "said nothing wrong" to "said a correct thing but badly" spectrum I was talking about before, with most who say anything immediately pointing out that Israel is a religiously-motivated ethnostate, a concept that is wildly harmful to any minority religion within that state, let alone an unpopular one like Wicca. Perhaps the most pro-Israel thing I've seen among Witches were the Jewish Witches and Pagans of Jewish descent whose opinion was merely "we need to clean our own house first," a reasonable reminder that even though Israel commits human rights abuses, the United States is basically the cartoon villain of the world. All of these statements have come from Witches who have a long-documented hatred of Israel's treatment of Palestinians and are merely critical of antisemitism disguised as pro-Palestine activism.
That's not to say there aren't extremely pro-Israel Pagans, Wiccans, and Witches. I don't know any, but Witches exist in all political corners and don't have homogeneous political beliefs or opinions about our relationships to other belief systems, so they certainly exist. But are we collectively of this opinion? No. And there are plenty of Witches out there actively standing with Ilhan Omar, too.
To summarize, regardless of your personal opinions regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict or Ilhan Omar's comments, there is no unified belief among Pagans, Witches, or Wiccans. The Covenant of the Goddess does not speak for all Wiccans let alone all Witches, or even most Witches, and although I'm not convinced she understood what it would be turned into, Janine Nelson's statements were irresponsible. I would argue that Pagans in particular should be critical of any religious ethnostate or attempt at creating one, and that vague religious tolerance statements rarely in practice apply to us.
That said, happy trails,
-- Setkheni-itw