Leonard C. Epafras

"Damn! Beckham is a Jew": the "Jew" in the Indonesian Public Discourse Leonard C. Epafras

There is a general sentiment among Indonesians that the word ?Jew' incites a negative feeling and it assumes that ?Jew' is somehow holding immediate effect to our value and to Islam particularly. Some Indonesians expressed such feeling in various ways via media, speeches, public demonstrations, so forth, and there has recently articulated it even stronger for the sake of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Though it is not exclusively Islamic, apparently the feeling is stronger among Indonesian Muslims than in any other social groups. Yet, in respect of the trivial Jewish community in Indonesia and its limited appearance in the larger public sphere, the above articulations is seemingly incongruent. This incongruence leads to the overemphasis on negative term of Jewish identity. This attitude often appears as a prejudicial sentiment toward Jews. Moreover, the stress upon negative term of Jewish identity tends to dislocate Jew's body to discursive frame that implies to either Jews or non-Jews. For that reason, my thesis will investigate this mode of constructing the Jews, particularly in the Indonesian public discourse.