← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Walter Yannis
Thread ID: 6740 | Posts: 5 | Started: 2003-05-17
2003-05-17 15:21 | User Profile
This appeared in the 17 May 2003 [url=http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/17/arts/17CONN.html?pagewanted=1&th]New York Times.[/url]
Walter
At a conference on anti-Semitism at the Center for Jewish History earlier this week one panelist told a classic Jewish joke:
After a Jewish man is rejected for a job as a radio announcer, the story goes, an acquaintance asks him why he was passed over. "Simple," the man replies with an agonized stutter, "Anti-S-S-S-S-Semitism."
That joke, of course, mocks the very idea of anti-Semitism, just as it mocks excessive Jewish sensitivity toward its slights. But the joke is also a declaration of assimilationist confidence. There are bigger problems than one's identity, and there are plentiful opportunities despite it.
Yet far from mocking the idea of anti-Semitism, the conference, organized by Leon Wieseltier and Martin Peretz of the New Republic and Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College, found the old virus freshly seeping through Western culture, taking new pathways, seeking new hosts and posing new threats.
The four-day conference, which was sponsored by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, included an impressive international roster of historians and social scientists, scholars of anti-Semitism, journalists and leaders of Jewish organizations. The theme of resurgent anti-Semitism also inspired another conference this week, in Paris, organized by the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Unesco. And last month a one-day symposium on the same subject was held at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. This confluence of rising concerns is also evident in such recent histories as "The Anti-Semitic Moment: A Tour of France in 1898" by Pierre Birnbaum (Hill & Wang) and in the forthcoming "The New Anti-Semitism: The Current Crisis and What We Must Do About It" (Jossey-Bass) by Phyllis Chesler.
The anxieties are not groundless. In France during the last two years, hundreds of anti-Semitic incidents have included synagogue burnings and physical assaults. At the YIVO conference, the Polish writer Konstanty Gebert, who wears a skullcap, said he had just endured more insults during a few months in Paris than he had during years of living in Poland. The historian Simon Schama told of his family's graves being desecrated along with hundreds of others in a Jewish cemetery in England two weeks ago. The most egregious examples still come from the Arab world, where Der Stürmer-style cartoons are commonplace and the medieval blood libel flourishes.
Many of the incidents in Western Europe can be traced to young men in growing Muslim communities who have made targets of Jews. But these attacks and the responses to them have influenced the broader evolution of anti-Semitism. For some time the French government, at least, resisted treating them as anti-Semitic acts. In some cases they have also been justified or explained as reactions against Ariel Sharon's policies in Israel or President Bush's war on terror. Since such condemnations are also made on the European left, a sympathy developed.
This helped aggravate a form of intellectual anti-Semitism associated with harsh criticism of Israel. Of course, criticism of Israel need not be anti-Semitic, and accusations of anti-Semitism become devalued when they are used to describe all criticisms of Israel. But criticism is anti-Semitic when it demonizes Zionism, equates it with Nazism or justifies organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah that have pledged themselves to the destruction of Israel. And the Nazi analogy is so avidly applied to Israel that it seems to offer a form of relief and absolution to the accuser while condemning the state to the lowest rung of hell. Soon enough, the indictment expands to encompass other Jews.
In this transformation of anti-Semitism old myths and notions of the pariah people often reappear in new guises. Thus the idea that Jews devour the blood of Gentiles for ritual purposes was reincarnated in a political cartoon in The Independent of London this January, which spurred a protest from the Israeli government. It showed a Goya-esque ethnic monstrosity of an Ariel Sharon, gobbling the head of a Palestinian child as Israeli helicopters dropped bombs in the background. "What's wrong?" Sharon growls. "You never seen a politician kissing babies before?"
But why have newer forms of intellectual anti-Semitism become so familiar in Europe? Why have they thrived even when traditional anti-Semitism is forthrightly condemned?
At the YIVO conference, Mark Lilla, who teaches European intellectual history at the University of Chicago, argued that in the past outbursts of anti-Semitism had often been associated with political crises: with the conflict between church and state in the Middle Ages, with the Enlightenment in the 18th century, with the rise of totalitarianism in the 20th. Now, he continued, another transformation is taking place. Throughout Europe a rebellion is under way against the very idea of the nation-state and its sovereignty.
In European consciousness the nation-state is associated with the evil forces of nationalism, xenophobia and fascism. After the Second World War, Mr. Lilla argued, Europe was able to avoid thinking about sovereignty altogether; the United States and NATO picked up the burden. As a consequence, Mr. Lilla said, the "idea of Europe" has received an "uncritical embrace," while nongovernmental organizations are regularly appealed to as political ideals. In the midst of this, Israel is an anomaly, a nation-state of recent vintage, insisting on its status, strength and sovereignty, violating the spoken pieties of contemporary international life. This may be one reason that at the United Nations Israel has been treated as a pariah, unable even to serve on the Human Rights Commission (whose chair is Libya) or subject to resolutions that affirm the legitimacy of armed struggle against it.
Mr. Lilla is extending recent arguments made by Robert Kagan about the differences between America and Europe. Indeed, both anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism oppose modern nation-states that insist on older ideas of power. Even when Europe addresses issues of sovereignty ââ¬â in affirmations of inviolable borders or in arguments for a Palestinian state ââ¬â they are rarely examined seriously, Mr. Lilla said: "Even sympathy for Palestinians has an oddly apolitical quality in Europe." Proposed solutions are little more sophisticated than imagining, as Mr. Lilla put it, "Hans Blix zipping around Palestine in his little truck."
But this is not just a matter of political ideology. Alain Finkielkraut, the French intellectual, suggested that in the wake of the Second World War Europe was haunted by a "never again": "Never again, power politics. Never again, nationalism. Never again, Auschwitz." While America could forthrightly celebrate itself, for Europe remembrance opened "an abyss." So Europe imagined a new world, "a world so humane, so unprejudiced, so open-minded" that the very idea of an enemy is not taken seriously.
But then, in the midst of this idealistic dream, the Jews intrude. Only this time they "are not accused of clinging stubbornly to their Jewishness but of betraying it." Israel's nationalism, its military and its particularism offend Europe's left-wing universalism and anti-globalization sympathies and recall the catastrophic past. Any whiff of right-wing anti-Semitism is still treated as inexcusable. But these new condemnations are considered virtuous, even though, Mr. Finkielkraut speculates, they invoke the oldest traditions of anti-Semitism: "Seeing the Jews as a people so intoxicated with its own chosenness that it refuses the idea of universal humanity." In that refusal the Jew, in this caricature, really is the archetypal racist, the enemy ââ¬â the Nazi.
While once the Jew was attacked for an association with modernity and internationalism, now the Jew is attacked for a dissent from post-modernity and internationalism. Paradoxically, these attacks overlap the more traditional anti-Semitism of Islamic radicals and Palestinian nationalists who distrust liberal modernity, chanting "Death to the Jews" and spinning out their own imaginings of Nazism.
But despite all this, there are also signs of positive change in the wake of recent events. It was only during the last year, under American pressure for reform, that the concrete characteristics of Palestinian governance were examined more seriously. And last month Yigal Carmon, whose Middle East Media Research Institute has regularly been translating material from the Arab world related to conflicts with the United States and Israel, argued that there were now significant "harbingers of change in the anti-Semitic discourse in the Arab world" (www.memri.org), with increasing dissent from expressions of extreme anti-Semitism.
Someday, perhaps, the old Jewish joke about the stuttering broadcaster might even take on a different form, signaling that anti-Semitism has again become eligible for jest.
2003-05-17 16:29 | User Profile
Zionism and Nazism An excerpt from our book "The Kingdom of Zion". Presented by: Annwn Publications P O Box 28 Malanda, QLD, Australia, 4885 Fax: 0740 965 620 Email Address: jstac@internetnorth.com.au jstac@internetnorth.com.au
Copyright 1999 © by J.S. Chiappalone
Zionism and Nazism
Zionism and Nazism actually have a great deal in common. They are a desire for national identity, national socialism, "self-determination", and "freedom" from those who might be called "troublemakers". In fact, they are both philosophies of imagined racial superiority and purity, which have rationalized all of their actions in the name of some greater "good". And, they each conceal a deeper evil at their core.
Tracing the start of Nazism in Germany, historian David Irving observed, "As Goebbels orchestrated the rise of the Nazi party, part of the problem ... was that much of what he said was true. The Jewish community not only dominated the legal and medical professions in Berlin, they also dominated ... crime, ... drug dealing and narcotics. Moreover, three-quarters of the pickpockets in Berlin were Jewish". Irving adds, "In every new scandal in Berlin, it seemed, Jews were at the base of it - ripping off the banks, ripping off the taxpayers, and ripping off the government. And again and again, they seemed to be getting off scot-free". "Goebbels repeatedly explained to foreign diplomats that the problem there was the usual one, in which the Jewish population disproportionately controlled all the lucrative professions." Goebbels, who respected Jews as he grew up, eventually came to hate them; he became the author of "the final solution". As Irving points out, it was "not Adolf Hitler nor any of the other Nazis".
The Nazis were quite aware of the real problems that existed in Germany, but they kept acting and over-reacting in the wrong ways. Irving says, "We must not overlook the fact that the world's Jewish community lost no time in striking at Nazi Germany. We all too readily talk about the book-burning and about the Nazi boycott against the Jews as if those things happened in a vacuum. They didn't. The Nazi boycott against the Jews on April 1, 1933, was a foolish reprisal by the Nazis in retaliation for the Jewish boycott against Germany". The fact is, the Jews had a strangle-hold on the Germany economy. "As soon as the Nazis came to power, the world Jewish community announced an international boycott campaign against Germany. Jews would not buy any German products. ... Today, all we hear about is the Nazi boycott against the Jews, which lasted for a single day."
The Jews controlled banking and business in Germany; they controlled the economy, much as they continue to do throughout the world, to this day. And, anti-Semitism was a force that had stirred often in Europe. The Jews had historically been evicted out of most of Europe, and there was a reason for this. If they were "divine benefactors" aiding and uplifting those they came into contact with (like Jesus), there would have been absolutely no basis for this act of rounding up the Jews and banishing them from country after country. Rather, people were quite aware of the evil ontological Jews, the Zionists, in their midst. The people were well aware that the Jews were getting unbelievably wealthy by controlling their money and their business, and they resented it. This set the stage for what happened in Germany. The Germans did not originally plan to slaughter the Jews; they were trying to do what had been done many times before, round up the Jews and then deport them - anywhere else they could go.
Ironically, the political Zionists created much of the need for this plan, and even supported it financially. The political Zionists exerted all the political force they could to make sure that the US and other nations did not allow Jews to emigrate from Germany before World War II. They fervently believed that if they allowed their Jewish brethren to leave Germany (which was all the Germans really wanted), and go to other nations, then they would not be able to claim Palestine as "their land". They made sure the Jews stayed in Germany and suffered the fate many of them did, just so that Jews would be made to go to Palestine and create Israel, after the war. This is how perverted and evil the Zionist thinking was.
We must understand the mind-set of the Jews. With their "chosen people of god" attitude, they never had any desire to assimilate in any country in which they were. The Talmud declared that a Jewish man should say a three-part prayer that:
(a)he is not a "goy" because they are nothing,
(b)he is not a "boor" (or peasant) because they have nothing, and
©that he is not a woman who needs to believe nothing, and who is not rewarded in the afterlife.Such dogma drives many non-Zionist Jews nuts, or to escapism. But, the Zionist Jews consider it their spiritual obligation to fleece the sheep, to hold themselves above all others, and to take what they want in this world as their "reward". And, they have done this, religiously and secularly. Taking over Palestine by acts of terrorism against innocent men, women, and children, was the self-righteous act of fanatics and terrorists. And Israel has practised active genocide against Palestinians ever since. The Jews, in their refusal to assimilate or mix with other peoples, forcibly expelled the Palestinians from Palestine, who fled in fear of their lives. I visited Israel early in the 1990s and was distressed at the unashamed, cruel treatment of Palestinians by Jews who were cocky beyond belief, declaring America would always back them up in anything they did. With this mind-set they practised their open genocide and were starving the non-Jewish indigenes to death. I was saddened by what I saw and my inability to assist the down-trodden. But I also saw the evilness of men, for here was a perfect example of them having learned nothing from history. If ever there was to be a group who would understand suffering, and lessen it, it would be the Jews. But obviously, that was not the case.
Contrary to what most Westerners, especially Americans, might imagine (due to Jewish control of the media), Israel was established as a racist, apartheid state, not a true democracy. It never was and never will be a bastion of democracy, freedom, equality, morality, or goodness. It was created with, and has continued to evolve into, a Nazi-mentality. The Jews in Palestine even allied with the Nazis against Britain in World War II, to instigate the creation of Israel. In other words, they used anti-Semitism and Nazism to achieve their ends. Haim Bresheeth, in an article in the British RETURN, observed: "The first point to note regarding the appropriation of the history of the Holocaust by Zionist propaganda is that Zionism without anti-Semitism is impossible. Zionism agrees with the basic tenet of anti-Semitism, namely that Jews cannot live with non-Jews". He concludes, "the role played by Zionists in this period was connected to another role they could, and should have played, that of alarming the whole world to what was happening in Europe. They had the information, but politically it was contrary to their priorities. The priorities were, and still are, quite simple: All that furthers the Zionist enterprise in Palestine is followed, whatever the price. The lives of individuals, Jews and non-Jews, are secondary".
As we have seen, the lives of non-Jews "do not matter" according to the Talmud. The Other Israel, edited by Arie Bober, observed, "A Fascist-chauvinist mood is growing in Israel, following the classic patterns which are not necessarily characteristic of any particular nation. Expressions like the supremacy of the nation,'the sanctity of our historic values,' the cradle or our ancient culture,'the eternity of war and the sanctity of blood,' have gained wide currency. They are emphasized in print and in speeches, on radio and television, in the press and in schools, in the Army and in youth movements. There is also a growing clamour for strong leadership'; and astrong leader' as well as for preserving national unity.' At the same time there is an increase in administrative and police repression against Israel's Arab citizens. Hundreds and thousands of Israeli Arabs are subject to restriction of freedom of movement, house arrest, detention without trial, searches and harassment and are denied the legal right to organize themselves". In fact, non-Jews are not even considered true citizens of Israel; their presence is tolerated but not welcomed.
Such Nazi mentality - and behaviour - are familiar to Jews, yet surprisingly few people realize how the Jews have used this mind-set to oppress the "less fortunate". Even back in Nazi Germany, the Zionists used Nazism as a means of achieving their own objectives, regardless of the cost in lives of their "less fortunate" Jewish brethren. In many cases, they continued to do business with the Nazis, and even made deals with them which cost many thousands of Jewish lives, to enrich the Jewish elite. And, contrary to all of the propaganda, the model for Israel is closer to Nazism than it is to democracy.
What follows is an accurate account of how Israel was established, in an article in the Israeli Ha'ir by Guy Erlich: "Since its establishment, the State of Israel keeps a conspiracy of silence concerning massacres committed in the War of Independence.The time has come' [Yitzhaki] says, for a generation has passed, and it is now possible to face the ocean of lies in which we were brought up. In almost every conquered village in the War of Independence, acts were committed which are defined as war crimes, such as indiscriminate killings, massacres and rapes. The only question is how to face such evidence.' According to him, these massacres had an enormous impact on the Arab population, by inducing them from the country.For many Israelis it was easier to find consolation in the lie, that the Arabs left the country under orders from their leaders. This is an absolute fabrication. The fundamental cause of their flight was their fear from Israeli retribution and this fear was not at all imaginary. ... Sometimes the report tells about blatant massacres which were committed after the battle, sometimes the massacres are committed in the heat of battle and while the villages are cleansed.' Some of my colleagues, such as Me'ir Pa'il, don't consider such acts as massacres. In my opinion there is no other term for such acts than massacres. This was at the time the rule of the game. It was a dirty war on both sides. This phenomenon spread out in the field; there were no explicit orders to exterminate'". The article continues, "The historian Uri Milstein, a myth-shatterer, corroborates Yitzhaki's assessment regarding the massacres' extent and goes even further.If Yitzhaki claims that almost in every village there were murders, then I maintain that even before the establishment of the State, each battle ended with a massacre'".
Let's recapitulate: the Jews did not have explicit orders to exterminate the Palestinians, yet they massacred, tortured, raped, and killed them. Sounds a lot like what the Nazis did, doesn't it? The Jews felt that they were just engaging in a little "ethnic cleansing". Historically (as we read in his Bible), Yahweh has asked the Jews to exterminate many innocent men, women, and children of other ethnic backgrounds, so this was just another "justified" and "righteous" action. So, the question arises, just what is Jewish morality? Do unto others first before they do unto you? Or, hope that what you do unto others doesn't come back to you? Once again, we see that what happened to the Jews is merely what they have always done to others. It's called Nazism when it is done against them, it is called righteous Zionism when it is done by them.
Evil by any other name, is evil.
In another RETURN article, Tony Greenstein wrote: "As a self-styled national' movement, Zionism claims to represent all Jews, irrespective of their wishes and wherever they live. Support for the Palestinian national struggle and opposition to Zionism, and its concept of aJewish people,' is interpreted as hatred of Jews as Jews, i.e. anti-Semitism. Jewish anti-Zionists are dismissed as self-haters'". Greenstein observes, "It is a conjuring trick which has mesmerized many an audience, but as with all such illusions has gradually lost its effectiveness. The problem for the Zionist movement is whether the equation of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism can still be useful in intimidating its opponents". As we shall see, the Holocaust itself is used to intimidate opponents to the evil Zionist global agenda, and to silence any opposition to the injustices, oppression, and abuses perpetrated by Israel and the Jews. In the typical modus operandi of evil, the truth is reversed or selectively applied to support further evil.
Israel is the pre-eminent racist, religionist, separatist, apartheid state in the world. By acts of terrorism, massacre, and forcible relocation, it removed hundreds of thousands of Palestinian people from their towns and their land, and denied them any right of return. Whatever villages, towns, homes, farms, and other properties were considered useful were taken over by Jews; everything else was bulldozed and destroyed, all with the US's support and sanction. We see these things even today in 1997 in the daily News on our television screens.
We must ask the question: What did the Jews learn from the Holocaust? Nothing, except how to better cover up evil with lies, how to portray the Palestinians as sub-human "wanderers" who did not really have any towns or property rights, and how to scapegoat others for what the Jews did to them.
Les Levidow, in RETURN, wrote: "Zionism often portrays the Palestinians as agents of an international Arab conspiracy dedicated to destroying Israel. This mentality can be understood by analogy to other colonial episodes in which the colonisers experienced the colonised as persecutors. In the case of Zionism, Haim Bresheeth describes how the social identity of theNew Jew' was created in the image of the European neo-colonialist model, except that Palestine's original inhabitants (if acknowledged to exist at all) were to be expelled rather than merely exploited". The reversal of truth is a hallmark of evil. In reality, the international Zionist conspiracy of world domination is the fact. The article concludes, "Moreover, Zionist paranoia bears parallels to European anti-Semitism, in two senses. Palestinians are almost racially defined as anti-Jewish, as persecuted German Jews were labelled `anti-German.' And their anticipated attacks on Jews help displace subconscious guilt about Israeli pogroms committed against Palestinians". Again, the Jews mainly fear what they have done to others. And, anti-Semitism - the common, worldwide reaction of people to the Zionist conspiracy of exploitation and oppression - supposedly "proves" their morality, goodness, and righteousness. How perverse. But, as we have seen, lies and bluff are all Yahweh and his evil elect know; they are incapable of REAL goodness, truth, and rightness. The truth is anathema to them.
2003-05-17 16:37 | User Profile
Does anyone here, besides me, think that Jews are their own worse enemies?
2003-05-17 18:44 | User Profile
I saw this story today in the print edition of the NY Times. The author was an Edward Rothstein (ah, can't trust those dastardly goyim to write up an article about the Eternally Persecuted, now can we, Mr. Sulzberger?) One of the accompanying pictures showed three Turkish youth, obscured by shadows, with a spray-painted swastika in the background....verrrrry scaryyyy!
Yet far from mocking the idea of anti-Semitism, the conference, organized by Leon Wieseltier and Martin Peretz of the New Republic and Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College, found the old virus freshly seeping through Western culture, taking new pathways, seeking new hosts and posing new threats.
No, no, no, boys, you've got it all wrong. Anti-Semitism is when the gentile immune system responds to the REAL virus: Jewish subterfuge.
** But criticism is anti-Semitic when it demonizes Zionism, equates it with Nazism or justifies organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah that have pledged themselves to the destruction of Israel.**
Thanks for telling us just when we cross over the line and become anti-Semites! Can Americans in fly-over country dictate to you guys when criticism of their culture becomes 'anti-white'?
But this is not just a matter of political ideology. Alain Finkielkraut, the French intellectual, suggested that in the wake of the Second World War Europe was haunted by a "never again": "Never again, power politics. Never again, nationalism. Never again, Auschwitz."
Well, never again nationalism (in both Europe AND America), except for Jews. This is what happens when you endlessly stress that ethnic nationalism is the ultimate evil and your own people happen to the most extreme ethnic nationalists in the world. But hey, I guess you can't have your gefilte fish and eat it too....
Finkielkraut :punk: Ya gotta love those names
2003-05-17 19:58 | User Profile
Jews lamenting the fact that the host doesn't always like the parasite. In a typical psychotic self-deluded Jew fashion, they accuse others of something they are guilty of -- the reaction to their parasitism being characterized as an illness rather than a healthy reaction to the desease. But then if Jews don't engage in massive self-medicating self-delusion, they'd hate themselves.