The Chinese and the Jew

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