The Chinese and the Jew

I was shocked with disbelief to read The Jakarta Post's report on April 29 titled Ethnic Chinese urged to enter political arena and that a noted lawyer and member of the national law commission such as Frans H. Winarta could have suggested that Chinese Indonesians should learn from the Jewish minority in the United States. Although they are only three percent, they are backed by powerful lobbying and in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, the States can never go against Israel because of the Jewish lobby.

This was really an "indecent proposal" that could lead to "fatal attraction". All our Muslim brothers and sisters in Indonesia should believe that the silent majority of Chinese Indonesians do not support this view. Chinese activism and Jewish Zionism are fundamentally different with a dissimilar aim. Chinese activism is merely for the basic recognition of both human rights and citizen rights. There are reportedly 62 discriminative rules and regulations against ethnic Chinese here. The Chinese do not claim a homeland and they never will, whereas the Jewish claim is territorial for a homeland, which the noted International Herald Tribune columnist, Thomas Friedmann, referred to as an unreasonable "biblical map".

The Chinese are also culturally inclusive and they adopt various religions, whereas the Jewish are religiously exclusive, claiming the so-called Messianic particularism. The so-called "powerful big Chinese business" is also just an illusion as big businesses are farmed out and are very dependent on political elite patrons rather than being earned. Remember also what Yoshihara Kunio claims as Ersatz capitalism here, whereas businesses are more earned than farmed out in the States.

Frans H. Winarta should learn to know that the Jewish model is wrong to adopt and the States is also "the wrong patron", considering that U.S. interests shift from time to time and that past Cold War rhetorics also caused anticommunism to blur into anticynicism.

SIA KA-MOU

Jakarta