The disease of Jewish anti-Semitism not only illustrates the absence of normality among 21st century Jewry, it threatens the very survival of Israel and of Jewish communities around the world.” SP Jew vs. Jew It sounds like a contradiction in terms. An oxymoron. If only it were. Such Jews are leaders in the campaigns to boycott and divest from Israel. A number of them make pilgrimages to the terrorist camps of Hamas and Hizbullah, with some even rationalizing or justifying terrorist atrocities against Jews. Such Jews pioneered the smear campaign painting Israel as an apartheid regime. Denouncing Israel as equivalent to Nazi Germany is their favorite pastime. Western campuses are crawling with them. A Jewish judge chaired the UN commission that demonized Israel over Operation Cast Lead. A Jewish member of Britain’s Parliament compared Hamas terrorists to Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto and denounced Israel as a Nazi entity. Israelis and ex-Israelis comprise a shockingly large number of this group. Most Jews dismiss such people as “self-hating,” but that term is misleading. These rogues do not hate themselves. Indeed, they are masters of narcissism. They hate other Jews and wish them harm. These are not assimilationists of Jewish descent who have simply lost interest in their Jewish heritage or are indifferent to Jewish history and Israel. No, these Jews often make a point out of waving their own Jewish “roots” as artillery support for their extremist positions. In some extreme cases they collaborate with neo-Nazis, Islamist terrorists, and even Holocaust deniers. No, that is not a misprint; there are today in the world Jews who are Holocaust deniers or who ally themselves with Holocaust deniers. Jewish anti-Semitism was once considered a bizarre irrelevance. Touched upon gingerly in the 1947 film “Gentleman’s Agreement,” the subject was long ignored by the organized Jewish community. Modern Zionists expected that the very creation of Israel would put an end to any neurotic self-hatred afflicting Diaspora communities. The new sovereign Jewish state was expected to end not only Jewish physical insecurity but also spiritual pathology. Alas, history had a surprise up its sleeves: many of the worst examples of Jews with an anti-Jewish and/or anti-Israel agenda have emerged from the more radical fringes of the Israeli left, its academic institutions and its intelligentsia. Take Professor Shlomo Sand, a hard-core leftist on the history faculty of Tel Aviv University. Sand last year published a book claiming to prove Jews are not and never have been a “people.” Recycling myths popularized by neo-Nazi websites, Sand’s book is a pseudo-analysis that claims most Jews today are frauds, converts from the Khazar Turkic tribe, impersonators of Jews. All real Jews, according to the learned professor, became Palestinian Arabs centuries ago. Hence Israeli “Jews” are not Jews at all, and certainly have no right to their own state. Sand is actually surpassed in his extremism by another Israeli professor, the now retired Ariel Toaff, who claimed to have evidence Jews use gentile blood in religious ritual. (Other Israeli academics with anti-Jewish agendas are cataloged on the website Isracampus.org.il.) Just what it is that makes such Jews tick is hard to explain. One of the few people to take a serious stab at doing so is Kenneth Levin, a psychiatrist at Harvard and an occasional op-ed contributor to The Jewish Press. He attributes Jewish anti-Semitism in part to attempts by some Jews to gain social acceptance in an environment that is hostile toward Jews. He also says some of it can be compared with infantile attempts at self-blame resembling those common among abused small children. And he considers it a cousin to the notorious Stockholm Syndrome, whereby victims adopt the outlook and agenda of their victimizers. * * * Anti-Semitism is today the main common denominator that unites the far left with the neo-Nazi ultra-right in the United States and Europe. There are Jews to be found in both those wings on the political spectrum. Many serve as columnists for the extremist Counterpunch web magazine. It would be difficult to find Jewish writers for Counterpunch who do not make the de rigueur comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany. For example, the University of Wisconsin’s Jennifer Loewenstein published there a screed titled “Gaza Holocaust” in which she wrote: “Israel and its U.S. Master have long since resided in the lowest circle of Hell for betraying the name of humanity.” She added that Israel treats Palestinians as subhuman “Untermenschen,” a term bringing to mind German treatment of Jews during the Holocaust. In a quote that could easily have been published by the Nazi newspaper Der Sturmer in the 1930s, she added: “The Neo-Jewish Masters and their allies in the United States … have no intention of making a just peace with the lower forms of life in their midst.” In Loewenstein’s take on reality, Israel engages in state terror while operating a cabal that enslaves the American government and dictates its policies. Even Yom Kippur for her is nothing more than a day to be exploited to help the terrorists and demonize the Jews. Another Counterpunch regular is Richard Falk, a retired Princeton professor best known for serving on the UN commission that condemned Israel for genocidal war crimes even before it began its investigation of Israel’s Gaza operations. Falk is not only one of the worst collaborators in the academic wars against Israel, he is also America’s leading practitioner of the Orwellian inversion. For Falk, Israel is a terrorist aggressor while the Arab terrorist aggressors are innocent victims and peace-loving progressives. For him, Israel is a country essentially seeking to perpetrate genocide while the Islamofascists of Hamas and their backers are merely protesters against social inequality inside Israel; terrorist aggression against Jews is really the pursuit of peace, while self-defense by Israel is criminal, terrorist aggression and worse. In 2007 Falk published “Slouching Toward a Palestinian Holocaust,” in which he wrote it was not an “irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians [by Israel]” with the “criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity.” In it, he accuses Israel of mistreating Palestinians on a scale comparable to the Nazi extermination of Jews: Is it an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not. The recent developments in Gaza are especially disturbing because they express so vividly a deliberate intention on the part of Israel and its allies to subject an entire human community to life-endangering conditions of utmost cruelty. The suggestion that this pattern of conduct is a holocaust-in-the-making represents a rather desperate appeal to the governments of the world and to international public opinion to act urgently to prevent these current genocidal tendencies from culminating in a collective tragedy. One of the regular contributors to Counterpunch is an ex-Israeli named Gilad Atzmon. A saxophone player living in the UK, Atzmon is so openly extreme that even some staunchly anti-Israel groups refuse to have anything to do with him. The British writer Oliver Kamm has denounced Atzmon as a Holocaust denier. Atzmon has not only called for Israel to be annihilated but has stated, “I’m not going to say whether it is right or not to burn down a synagogue, I can see that it is a rational act.” He heads a small clique of followers, mainly in Italy, for whom he serves as something of a cult leader. Atzmon has asserted that the Protocols of the Elders of Zionis an accurate reflection of the state of modern-day America. * * * Paul Eisen, another Jewish extremist in the UK, has distributed an essay titled “Holocaust Wars” which claims, among other things, that the claim of gas chambers in Auschwitz is fraudulent and that they could not possibly have worked. Among the essay’s “sources” are the disgraced historian David Irving and the neo-Nazi crank Ernst Zundel, deported by Canada and now in prison in Germany. Perhaps the most venomous Jewish-born Jew-baiter of all is one “Israel Shamir.” An émigré from the Soviet Union, “Shamir” moved to Israel and later left for Sweden, where he changed his name to Adam Ermash and reportedly converted to Christianity. As just one example of his poison, in an interview with the Islamist Mohamed Omar in August 2009, Shamir said: “I think it is the duty of every Muslim and Christian to deny the Holocaust, to reject this belief, just like Abraham and Moses rejected idolatry. “Every person who profess [sic] their [sic] faith to God should deny the Holocaust. I think it’s much more serious that people deny God, isn’t it?” In other cases prominent Jews endorse Holocaust deniers while carefully tiptoeing around explicitly endorsing Holocaust denial itself. The best known of these is Noam Chomsky, an extremist anti-U.S. and anti-Israel professor of linguistics at MIT. A long-term apologist for the Khmer Rouge, Chomsky seems to despise Israel almost as deeply as he hates America. He speaks of “points of similarity” between Nazi Germany and Israel and has campaigned on behalf of the French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson and other European neo-Nazis. He not only demands that this hate be protected under freedom of speech but as Professor Werner Cohn has noted, Chomsky also endorses the contents of their speech: “But in fact we saw that Chomsky justified Faurisson’s Holocaust-denial, we found Chomsky publishing his own books with neo-Nazi publishers, we saw him writing for a neo-Nazi journal, we saw that the neo-Nazis promote Chomsky’s books and tapes together with the works of Joseph Goebbels. It is this complex of anti-Semitic activities and neo-Nazi associations, not his professed ideas alone, that constitutes the Chomsky phenomenon.” Within Israel, one of the most openly anti-Semitic Jews was the late Professor Israel Shahak, who taught chemistry for decades at Hebrew University. He specialized in endorsing medieval anti-Jewish blood libels. He insisted that Judaism teaches Jews to worship Satan, to connive against non-Jews and to murder them. He stopped just millimeters short of saying Jews use gentile blood for ritual purposes. Shahak claimed the Talmud is filled with calls to murder gentiles, and that Jews regard gentiles as subhuman. He collaborated with neo-Nazis all over the planet. In an analysis of Shahak, the British writer Paul Bognador wrote: “According to Shahak, the Jews think of nothing but “According to Shahak, the And then there’s Norman Finkelstein, who had been on the faculty of DePaul University until he was fired three years back (and has been unemployed ever since). Finkelstein has built an entire career out of smearing Holocaust survivors as frauds and liars, and cheering on Islamofascist terrorism against Jews. His personal website is a vulgar gutter of juvenile anti-Semitic catcalls. He claims Zionists exaggerate the dimensions of the Shoah to steal money and invent Holocaust survivors to exploit Germany. He has visited with Hizbullah terrorists and was denied entry into Israel on grounds that he associates with terrorists. Finkelstein wrote a book titled The Holocaust Industry that fast became a favorite with neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers. He considers David Irving a reliable historian. While Finkelstein is dismissed by serious historians, he is nevertheless celebrated by Jews with an anti-Jewish and/or an anti-Israel agenda. * * * Steven Plaut is a professor at the University of Haifa. His book “The Scout” is available at amazon.com. He can be contacted at steveneplaut@yahoo.com. The key to understanding contemporary Jewish political behavior in Europe and North America is the history of Jewish assimilation strategy. I tell the story more fully in my book, Assimilation and Its Discontents, but here is a short version, adapted for what’s happening right now. This strategy was developed in Western Europe in the mid-1800s. There was no single theorist, influential book, or coherent doctrine. Rather, it was a pragmatic approach to the issue of how Jews could adapt to the pressures and opportunities of democratic societies. The assimilationist strategy continues to this day though people aren’t aware of it. The mainstream assimilationist approach has been as follows: –Since the Jews were so weak and the surrounding majority so hostile, they would have to beg for equality and prove themselves worthy rather than to agitate or demand. Moreover, since Jews were attacked for allegedly having too much power, even when they had little or none, the emphasis was on being eager to make concessions, not to gain victories through threat or pressure. This was a strategy developed long before the days of majority guilt, multiculturalism, and Political Correctness. The Jewish approach thus contrasts with contemporary movements of minority groups which are more confident, aggressive, united, and demanding. –How would this strategy try to succeed? By proving Jews were good citizens, by showing they were unselfish and sought nothing for themselves, by demonstrating their willingness to dissolve the bonds and customs of their own community, by becoming exemplars in spreading the values and culture of the country where they lived, and by showing that being nice to them would benefit everyone or almost everyone. In other words, altruism was a central element in the strategy. This, too, contrasts with contemporary practice in which rights are taken for granted and society is expected to adapt to the demands of minorities. –A key element of the assimilationist doctrine has been to prove that Jews were assimilating as individuals, to deny there was a collective communal interest, and to avoid making collective demands. This, too, is in contrast to the situation of other minorities today, which hold onto their intellectuals and elite members while keeping them in line largely through shame or even forms of intimidation. This approach is totally absent in the Jewish community. On the contrary, large parts of the Jewish elite are proud to stand aloof from their own people and deem it virtuous to abandon it and reject any notion of communal interests (including Israel and religion). Indeed, they think they can best prove their credentials by championing the causes of other groups even–sometimes especially–those in conflict with Jewish interests. –The elite Jew’s emphasis is often to escape identification with the community, proving he is a cosmopolitan with a universalist identity, being the first to demand the dissolution of any community loyalty and viewing the embodiment of Jewish peoplehood—Israel—as an impediment to those goals. While antisemites charge that all or almost all Jews in positions of power pursue a distinctively Jewish interest, the exact opposite is the truth. This explains how left-wing Jews extol multi-culturalism and self-determination for other peoples even as they hold the exact opposite attitude toward their own people, whom they are determined to show are not their own people. The concept of “self-hating Jew” is totally useless in today’s environment, when the radicals simply have an alternative definition of self, albeit one as destructive as that held by their Bolshevik predecessors who mostly ended up being shot or imprisoned by Stalin. At best, the Jew is assigned the role–in the phrase of the pro-Stalinist Isaac Deutscher, the “non-Jewish Jew”–of being part of a revolutionary vanguard one of whose tasks is to dissolve the Jews as a people and a religion. –For a variety of the reasons listed above, many Jews, particularly in elite positions, are eager to prove their credentials by criticizing their own people or Israel. (Can you imagine any other group constantly being pressed to do this?) They will fete their enemies and jump at showing sympathy with their grievances. The very concept of “bending over backwards” is a typically Jewish one that simply cannot be applied to any other community. –Zionism is a threat to the dissolving of Jews as a people as well as a problem for those who oppose the idea of nations. It undermines the interest of the leftist Jew or elite Jew in a dozen different ways. This explains why the opposition to Jewish nationalism is so strong among them and has been for well over a century. –A number of the above-mentioned weaknesses are balanced out by a high degree of activism and energy, education and articulateness, shown by many Jews, particularly among those not in the intellectual elite or of leftist ideology. History has taught Jews that engaging in politics and intellectual dispute is a matter of survival. Issues involving Jews or Israel are so controversial precisely because many Jews do fight back. It isn’t that only Jews (or Israel) are being criticized, it is that other groups and causes let themselves be run over with far less complaint. Having said this, though, one must quickly add that this applies largely to more recent historical times and even then mainly to North America and Australia, far less to Europe where Jewish communities are far more passive and often paralyzed with fear and deference. –From the mid-nineteenth century through 1945 the main enemy of Jews was on the political right, not only fascists but also traditionalists, nativists, Christian reactionaries, and conservatives generally. As a whole, Jews are unable to make the intellectual or political transition to understanding that the main enemy in the West is from the left. Nor do they understand that Christians, even traditionalists, are not a serious threat while Islamic extremists are. Those on the right are seen as Cossacks, missionaries, and potential Nazis, a theme that the extreme left knows very well how to exploit. –In addition, Jews succeeded largely by being the bearers of modernism in every respect from science and technology, to marketing techniques, to cultural innovation. Conservatism or traditionalism is thus seen as a threat to this pattern. Of course, the association of Jews with modernism (or leftism) has been a prime cause of antisemitism in modern times. For example, the passionate embrace of German culture, liberal or left politics, and economic life–giving it their own interpretations–was a prime factor in building a mass base for Nazi antisemitism. –As noted above, Jews want to prove they are good citizens but that has come to be interpreted—once cultural assimilation has been achieved—as those who make society better, who help the poor and downtrodden, who are also seen as potential allies against the suspect elites. This concept remains unchanged even when Jews become key parts of the elite. Imagination continuing to supply a fantasy, which had a basis in reality during past times, that there is a wealthy reactionary antisemitic blend of aristocrats and capitalists ready to pounce. Or, simultaneously, that the ignorant masses, manipulated by demagogues, will stage a pogrom, presumably nowadays starting with a Tea Party rally. It is easy to make fun of such ideas but they are very deeply embedded in the psyche of many Jews in the West. –Given these premises, what do most Jews implicitly believe will work for them in the present? To show they are tolerant in order to gain the tolerance of others. It is simply not imaginable for such people that rabbis can demonstrate in favor of the establishment of a (radical) mosque near the World Trade Center attack site yet the resulting institution will then teach systematic hatred for Israel and anti-Jewish doctrines. Having succeeded in persuading Western societies that they are nice people worthy of fair treatment, they assume equal success can be achieved with Arabs, Muslims, or various other groups. – Not surprisingly, then, a weak spot for Jews has been dealing with situations where hatred for them and an effort to destroy them as a community has been coupled with seemingly humanitarian, progressive rhetoric. Communism, of course, has been the ultimate example up until recently, a cause which attracted many Jews though it killed them or betrayed them. Since the history of this experience is simply not taught anywhere, most have not been learned from it. This story must be told in large part because it bears such relevance to contemporary parallels. –There is thus an overwhelming, if irrational or outdated, hysterical fear on the part of most Jews (most obviously in the United States) at seeming to behave or as being perceived as reactionary. There is no group against which cries of “racist!” or “right-wing!” or “fascist!” is more effective. Yet there is no equivalent fear of being seen as too “progressive,” an implicit admission (which does not penetrate the conscious mind) that the bogey-man of right-wing antisemitism is no longer taken seriously. Yet to be placed in the position of seeming to be reactionary is not only seen as joining the hated enemy (and thus treasonous) but also as inviting the vengeance of the “masses.” To put it bluntly, when a Jew is called a “racist”–and such can be the penalty in the community even for the sin of not voting for Barack Obama–that not only signifies uniting with the historic enemies of Jews but also to tremble (secretly and subconsciously, of course) at a supposed attack of African-Americans against Jews. The explanation for much of this psychological complex is a community that is objectively powerful and well-off is also subjectively fearful and insecure. Believe it or not, this is true. By overcoming these diaspora complexes (and creating “tough Jews”) Israel for these people is somehow betraying what they understand as Jewishness. On some psychological level, a Western Jewish left-leaning intellectual wants other Jews to be victims so that no matter how wealthy or privileged he is it is possible to claim credentials for being a noble sufferer among the non-Western or non-white or non-wealthy people. What is possible, however, is to show persuasively and honestly how the contemporary far left and reactionary, radical Islamism are anti-liberal and anti-democratic in nature. They destroy the tolerance of society through which Jews have benefitted and embody dictatorial tendencies. They seek to destroy religion and demonize the embodiment of Jewish peoplehood, Israel. They have made large parts of those institutions responsible for protecting real liberal values–the university and media–into ideological machines for indoctrination into anti-democratic values and slanderers against Jewish interests. They are bad for the countries to which Jews have given their allegiance and to the Enlightenment values which Jews, more than almost any other group in the world, have embraced. In other words, Jews will not cease to be largely liberal but survival now requires understanding two things. First, the threat to real liberal institutions and values come from both extremes of the political spectrum. Second, radicals and anti-democratic revolutionaries can pretend to be liberals, just as Communists once did when it suited them, but nobody should be fooled by this impersonation. What might be the most adaptable people in world history must continue to adapt to new threats and changing conditions. Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is at http://www.gloria-center.org and of his blog, Rubin Reports, at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com.
August 14, 2010
Jew vs. Jew
Posted by yamit82 @ 9:31 am | 8 Comments »“The creation of Israel was supposed to turn Jews into a “normal” people. But the psychosis of Jewish anti-Semitism has no comparable analogue among the nations, making the Jews a therapist’s sui generis.
By Steven Plaut, Jewish Press
Jewish anti-Semitism is a modern disease. The world is experiencing an explosion of it. Among the most malicious and venomous of all bigots, Jewish anti-Semites are at the forefront of just about every smear campaign against Israel and other Jews.
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making money for the benefit of the Jewish state (‘The force of Jewish devotion in assembling money is thought to be infinite’).
Jews plan to dominate much of the world through an Israeli empire…. According to Shahak, the Jews facilitate the spread of vice in order to enslave the masses . Shahak also found excuses for the near-genocidal Chmielnicki pogroms, which he classified as a ‘revolt of the oppressed.’ ”8 Responses to Jew vs. Jew
Explaining Jewish Political Behavior
There were many—religious traditionalists, Zionists, and leftist revolutionaries—who pursued alternative routes but I’m not going to talk about them here. I am also fully aware of exceptions, such as the Jewish Bund and the post-World War One political situation in Poland, but cannot deal with them in this limited space. Please understand that the following points need to be generalizations but they are accurate ones.
As a result of these factors, Jews in the West generally are not going to be won over to conservative views no matter what arguments are used or logic is invoked. The counter-forces of history and self-image are simply too strong. You can argue on this point but those Jews who do so know in their hearts that it is true.
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Yes. Living in Canada I have definitely encountered some of these Jews and it is a real shock. I had a workplace situation where it started with 1 then 2 then 3 then 4 co workers. It started out with them calling down another co worker for being a Jew. And they attacked ALL Jews. It escalated to the point where they were even saying Death to Israel and Israel will be the first country to be destroyed. These were all black men with the exception of 1 being white. They wouldnt stop. They wouldnt shut up. So I went ballistic on them. One apologized and said he was sorry for attacking Israel. The others just kept their mouth shut when I was around. The unfortunate reality is that the Jewish co worker showed his true colours. An elitist. A shame to the Jewish people. He ended up giving me a harder time than these men. I always report these incidents to someone as there is rarely a day that goes by that I dont encounter one.
Canada sounds like a tough neighborhood.
These people the article deals with are seriously mentally disturbed.
I don’t care why they are what they are. I just wish someone would put them out of their misery and ours.
Testing testing one two three. Having some tech probs. I am not receiving notification of comments anymore. Ted knows about it. I do get his digest tho.
I also must be a Jewish anti-Semite because there are Jews I despise–such as these anti-Israel Jews.
Bill, I almost feel the same way, although I am not Jewish I find it repulsive for Jews to act against Israel. Where were these dodo’s when Hamas and Hezbollah was sending rockets and suicide bombers into Israel to kill Jews. That doesn’t bother them but, when Israel takes action to defend her people and territory the dodo’s come out of the woodwork. Are they trying to prove to others they are not Jewish?
Bill, won’t be long now, in a couple of weeks the Nittany Lion will roar.
When something becomes ingrained in a culture, it is extremely difficult to change the trend if not impossible. With Arabs it’s Islam, with western Jews it’s liberalism. The creation of the State of Israel has been good for the Jewish culture in that regard, more Jews in Israel get it, even if many are still tainted by western liberalism; it is still more likely they will start to come around.