Last night, watching sports, I was shocked to see a Gatorade ad in which Harvey Keitel as a first-base coach counsels Derek Jeter to steal second and calls pitcher John Lackey "a schmendrick." (Here’s Lackey’s comment). Shocked because schmendrick is one of my all-time favorite words to describe a loser. According to Leo Rosten’s classic, Joys of Yiddish, it means a grandiose shlemiel, a child, or a penis. Yesssss!
The mainstreaming of schmendrick brings up my favorite subject: assimilation. Yiddish evolved (I believe that Slezkine says this in the classic The Jewish Century) as a language that protected and preserved Jewish difference in Europe. Jews had an extra-societal role, as merchants, financiers, priests, per Slezkine, and this mixture of Hebrew and German was part of their separateness.
When I was growing up, my grandparents and parents all used Yiddish, a little or a lot. At times it functioned as shibboleth: it set our tribe apart. Though as time went on, words like oy and shlemiel and chutzpah and schmatte and shlep got mainstreamed. Rosten wrote his bestseller about Yiddish in 1968. Of course, Saturday Night Live used f’klempt to great effect.
I don’t think the mainstreaming of Yiddish is a casual event. It got mainstreamed because it carried different ideas, many of them psychological, that the culture willingly accepted. Where would we be without chutzpah and shlep and yenta? We wouldn’t be America.
My theory of assimilation is that America accepted Jewish gifts because it needed and liked them (like last night’s Seinfeld rerun, all about a "butchered" nosejob). America changed in untold ways with the cultural influence of Jews, and almost all for the better (this isn’t about neocons!). Just consider the hours that big lawyers work in New York now compared to the white-shoe days–a Jewish cultural change. Jews changed and betterized journalism, too; I watched that happen.
I love American pluralism. As a Jewish assimilationist, it is my contention that you can’t give a country gifts and hold on to them at the same time. To think that you can change the culture as much as we have and not be changed yourself is absurd.
wa
"Just consider the hours that big lawyers work in New York now compared to the white-shoe days–a Jewish cultural change."
Why is this better?
Yiddish – Rotwelsch
______________________
From the end of the middle ages to around 1800, the main language of the robbers and gangsters in Europe was the so called 'Rotwelsch' which was mainly Yiddish since the majority (maybe not the majority but a substantial, influential part) of these robbers were Jews. My Jewish friend Hersch pointed this out to me to prove that the Jews of Europe had also assimilated downward into the robbers of Europe. Robbers that became famous – to give these bad Jews credit.
In one of Jimmy Cagney's movies in the 1930s he starts a conversation with a cab driver in Yiddish. This wasn't in the script. When the Director asked Cagney why, he replied that he had picked a fair amount of Yiddish up on the street growing up, and since his character had the same bio, he figured using the language would identify the guy as a true American Cosmopolitan. Long story short, it was just a bit of schtick he spontaneously threw in at no extra charge. The Director agreed and left it in. And contemporary audiences didn't find it strange at all, because it wasn't considered to be a foreign language.
In 1979, if memory serves, the FREI ARBEITER STIMME–the NYC Jewish Anarchist newspaper (Voice of the Free Worker)–became defunct, simply because their subscribers had died off.
So Klaus, what your essentially saying is that the language of the criminal class in Europe was a derivative of Yiddish and was basically made of Jews. Hence, Hitler really did have the right idea. Have I understood you correctly.
Phil, first I am sorry for my private conversations on your older tread. Feel free to delete them.
Bill: Our FBI (BKA) is built up by a dubious crew of characters with deep roots in the Berlin Nazi main police academy. This part of our history I know about not so long. It takes time for these matters to surface.
But a friend of mine went to the Hamburg police instead to the military. And he made notes in the academy for police man. It strictly was forbidden. But he published it later for friends. Continuity. That was around 1976/7.
That's always on my mind when something somewhere surfaces, e.g. complaints to not be able to persecute the Jewish emigrants from Russia. And there is a huge rumor mill.
But something slightly more on topic about give and take in cultures.
Not long ago I translated a mid 19 century article on the history of Reform Judaism for an American scholar. It was still written in German, and he needed it for his research. Both these guys the writer and the editor, who commented on the article in short schoolmasterly notes, felt very German to me.
I thought, they might have been a bit heavy for the American Jews they thought needed reform.
LeaNder,
If you're having private conversations on my threads, I'm flattered!
But tell me what you mean by the translation issue. I thought Reform Judaism was a German movement of Jews that then came here. The "writer" you're refering to is not the scholar you're also referring to?
Phil
Yiddish robbers
________________
No Bill – what I and my friend Hersch are saying is that there was not only upward but also downward Jewish assimilation in Europe. These robber gangs were mixed gentile/Jewish. A famous head of these robbers was Abraham Picar from Holland, convicted with his gang of about 50 Jews/gentiles in Germany around 1800 (I could look up the details). Anyway – Hitler never refered to him.
Yes, I noticed, that is probably hard to understand.
The article was in German but published in the US. And both the author of the Short History of Reform Judaism in the US and the editor of the magazine were German Jews. Part of the German reform "crowd".
I had to check in another PC for the exact details. But it was partly really funny. But that would take to long here to explain.
As a sort of counterpoint to Klaus Bloemker's information on the Jewish community in Germany I would like to quote a few statements by the distinguished Israeli writer Amos Elon who published a book on this community.
They can be found in in an interview he had with Ari Shavit that was published in Haaretz.
Elon:“There was nothing fundamental in the relationship between German culture and German Jewry that absolutely dictated this appalling end."
Shavit:If that's so, then basically you believe that this thing could have continued to survive. The option of the Jewish diaspora in Germany was the most promising cultural option for Europe, in your opinion.
Elon: "Certainly. German Jewry was the secular elite of Europe. They were the essence of modernism – leaders who made their livelihood from brainpower and not from brawn, mediators and not workers of the land. Journalists, writers, scientists. If it all hadn't ended so horribly, today we'd be singing the praises of Weimar culture. We'd be comparing it to the Italian Renaissance. What happened there in the fields of literature, psychology, painting and architecture didn't happen anywhere else. There hadn't been anything like it since the Renaissance."
Shavit: You refuse to see the fact that there was a basic failure in this enterprise of secular European Jewry. You refuse to see that it couldn't last.
Elon: "I sincerely dispute that. I don't think there was something deep or fundamental or unavoidable here. It was chance. If the First World War hadn't destroyed Germany's liberal middle class, a very progressive nation would have developed there. Even after the war, Hitler wasn't the only alternative."
Shavit: You're really insistent on that. It's important to you to cling to the lost option of the yekkes. The book you wrote is essentially a nostalgic ode to the refined lost paradise of that Jewish Germany. In a certain sense, it is your true homeland.
Elon: "No. I grew up here, not there. I grew up in Tel Aviv in a middle-class family that lost its assets as a result of its emigration to Israel. My parents arrived from Vienna in 1933. My father wanted to go to France but my mother said it had to be Eretz Israel. And so we ended up in Eretz Israel. That's why I am not an ideological Israeli. I did not grow up here out of choice. But I did grow up here. Here is where I kissed a girl for the first time. And what is a homeland if not the place where you kiss a girl for the first time?”
It has been pointed out by others that Jewish cultural productivity only seems to flourish outside Israel.
To LeAnder: No I have no blog, only a life long interest in migration, (starting from a lot of demographic study): from, to and what happened once *at.* (Maybe it’s the Irish background: we tend to wander.)
Anyway, this is about American identity politics, more specifically Am Jewish identity politics and how Am. Jews took—what I sense—was a sharp turn in the standard path of immigrant assimilation in America.
I was interested in this quote (Eric Alterman):
" My own dual loyalties–there, I admitted it–were drilled into me by my parents, my grandparents, my Hebrew school teachers and my rabbis, not to mention Israeli teen-tour leaders and AIPAC college representatives. It was just about the only thing they all agreed upon. Yet this milk- (and honey-) fed loyalty to Israel as the primary component of American Jewish identity–always taught in ‘*the context of the Holocaust’*–“[emphasis mine].
Now if you go back to Glazer and Moynihan’s “Beyond the Melting Pot”, published in 1967, which really opened up the whole field of ethnic identity studies, this Holocaust context is completely missing. The chapter on American Jews was written by Nathan Glazer and merely treats them as one of several migrant groups, albeit with much higher social mobility. And that’s it. Yet, maybe less than a decade later we have Alterman writing about Israeli loyalty as the primary component of AmJewish identity. (Maybe Glazer was wrong and it was always there, only hidden.)
What Judt was wondering about—before intimidation and threats caused him suddenly to become very interested in 19th c. British railroads—were the events which caused the sharp divergence between Jewish identity politics and those of the other main ethnic groups. Remember the main migration of Jews to the US was composed of Russian Jews from about 1880 through 1910, almost totally in response to the outbreak of pogroms in Russia. Unlike the Italians and Poles—their contemporaries during the period—(ex)Russian Jews never returned to their 'homeland'. (In contrast maybe 2/3 of the Italians migrated back to Italy.) So the migration is old by, say, 1980—about four generations. Dual loyalty should be highest amongst the migrants and their children, not their great great grandchildren!
That is why this blog interests me, although I won’t be contributing much.
(Maybe it’s the Irish background: we tend to wander.)
Is there anything mixed in. Or is it all pure Irish?
"Now if you go back to Glazer and Moynihan’s “Beyond the Melting Pot”, published in 1967, which really opened up the whole field of ethnic identity studies, this Holocaust context is completely missing."
I have memory traces concerning Nathan Glazer, put I can't quite place Moynihan. Oh, they co-wrote it. Thanks, that might be a start.
I have been watching a Canadian/Us fight concerning multiculturalism and melting pot on H-Antisemitism over the last few years. It has died down by now; it feels. It is a really complex matter, even more since the US voice is highly complex and has a long look back right into Pacifica radio. Another subject I would like to take a closer look at.
That the Holocaust was missing seems to be a US/German parallel. I think it started here via a US TV series. (Klaus?) It hit Germany like Big Bang, pulled away the cloaks of silence. Must be interesting to take a closer look at the polices higher up accompanying these matters, here and over there. …
But comments like the one below are really hard for me to take, I have to admit. For me the Holocaust has a deeply aesthetic philosophical quality, maybe it connects with my juvenile obsession with existentialism Camus especially, but Sartre too. Dark, dark, dark is human existance …
I had no problem with Phil's article, there it was well dosed and counterbalanced with: "You aren't an antisemite, are you?" ;-) but in the way it is used below, hmmm? I do not like it much. …
link to gorillaintheroom.blogspot.com
*That's funny* ;-)
What Judt was wondering about — before intimidation and threats caused him suddenly to become very interested in 19th c. British railroads.
But you are probably correct, strange turn.
Why don't you try to do the interview with Judt yourself? I like him too, he and Finkelstein got heavily slandered on H-Antisemitism. The main attackers are always the same. With the liberals less and less interfering it feels. Left liberal bashing has of cause gained momentum to, one could watch it. It did not surprise me at all, when it finally hit the liberal Jews. Before it was liberal per se, deeply antisemitic.
Undercover Black Man traces racial (black) issues, highly interesting. He drew my attention when David Horowitz got caught up in his net. If you don't know UBM take a look at his Horowitz tread.
link to undercoverblackman.blogspot.com
I noticed myself that the Horowitz circles merge rather easily with what feels pretty racist to me, although usually it wears "white" Christian clothes. But the way UBM did this is simply brilliant.
Take care.
Congratulations to Phil on Newhouse School award for best magazine profile of the year
"Best Profile: Philip Weiss, also for New York, "A Guy Named Craig" (that would be, Newmark)."
link to editorandpublisher.com
article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003599115
I assume that's you, Phil.
That link didn't work for me, Ben. Try this
link to editorandpublisher.com
Here's the New York Magazine article that won
link to nymag.com
Let's hope Phil uses some of his prize money to implement proper formatting in his comments section. :)
The Very Venerable Blogospherical Etiquette Manual says a party for the loyal commentators is de rigueur.
"I love American pluralism. As a Jewish assimilationist, it is my contention that you can't give a country gifts and hold on to them at the same time."
You can't be a "Jewish assimilationist." It's an oxymoronic term.
If you assimilate you are no longer Jewish.
By the same token, you can't value pluralism and still want to be an assimilationist.
Your ideas are confused and your language shows it.
All this is very interesting. I disagree w. Phil's odd hankering for assimilation. For one, it will mean the loss of our beloved Yiddish and so much else that is unique & treasured regarding our Jewish identity.
And speaking of Jewish criminals in 19th century Germany, what do we have to be ashamed of. If you were not Rothschild, how could you earn a decent living? So many avenues of achievement, education & profession were closed to us. Why should we feel these ancestors did anything wrong in the path they chose even if it involved crime. Most people choose crime not because they are evil or immoral, but because they see no other path.
The 19th century criminal groups that incorporated Yiddish into their speech remind me too of what I know of the Greek musical form called rebetika. It too derives fr. the criminal class of Greek society which had its own language, music, etc.
All of these forms enrich society similary to how hip hop or gangsta rap enriches our own culture. Of course there are elements that make us uncomfortable. But we cannot deny that they bring things to our culture that nothing else brings.
Richard: Rembetico is the music of the refugees from Asia Minor, it is a result of war. that accounts for it's special greek/turkish mix. Yes most of them were poor. But I do not like the "polite" view that the lower classes are very prone to crime, while polite society is fine. I know white collar crime is much less prosecuted.
Shmendrik, Rotweltsch, Masada, Assimilation, etc.
There are really two Yiddish languages, Westjiddisch, which is extinct and which is close to Franconian or Alsatian with Jewish religious vocabulary, and Ostjiddisch, which has essentially a Slavic grammar and Germanic lexicon. I believe Ostjiddish took root in the 16th century when Westjiddisch speaking German Jews came to dominate Jewish education among Judeoslavonic speakers. Judeoslavonic survived until the 19th century in Slovakia and until the 20th century in Transcarpathian Ruthenia.
Ostjiddisch starts out as a pidgin and then becomes a creole language. It is fairly easy to understand its development in the cheder as Westjiddisch speaking melamdim tried to teach Judeoslavonic speaking children Rashi. Such a linguistic birth would also explain the unusually large loshen koydesh component of Ostjiddisch, but there were other ways for that component of the vocabulary to increase.
Thanks to the interminable wars of the reformation, we see increasing religious disaffection with religion through 17th century Germany as well as economic dislocation. In such circumstances mixed Protestant, Catholic, Jewish criminal gangs are not surprising, but the Jewish criminal percentage was probably not exceptionally large. German Jews probably did dominate as buyers and resellers of stolen goods. Westjiddisch vocabulary probably enters Rotweltsch through this activity. We see a similar situation in the cattle trade/meat industry which was Jewish dominated at the wholesale market. At the retail market there was often cutthroat competition (the reason why Christian butchers especially in Saxony were heavily involved in anti-Jewish agitation).
The Jewish cattle-buyers/resellers developed their own specialized vocabulary called loshen, which still survives to some extent in the German cattle business even though practically no Jews are involved.
Shmendrik is a neologism from a Goldfaden play of that name in 1877. I am not a native speaker of Ostjiddisch, but I have lived in places where it is still spoken and can read, write and speak the language. The word shmendrik always makes me think of fatso, i.e, shemen-drik, but I can also picture someone deriding the Polish name Hendryk as Hendryk-shmendrik when the name Hendryk became a popular name for boys in maskil circles.
Assimilation was the major social cultural development among German Jews through the 18th and middle 19th century. It is important to realize that for the most part German Protestants, German Catholics, and German Jews were all becoming closer as religious differences began to matter less. Hence German Reform Judaism looks very German.
But German Jews were subjected to a different process as Eastern European ethnic Ashkenazim migrated Westward. In line with Prussian policy only the most economically useful and competitive where allowed to settle in German cities.
There were competing German Jewish and Eastern European Ashkenazi elites in Germany. In some cases we find EE Ashkenazim pulled toward assimilation, but in many cases we find German Jews pulled toward disassimilation and Ashkenazization. The latter led to ethnic friction. In Saxony, EE Ashkenazim brought Polish business practices that we would call middle market restraint of trade. It is illegal in the USA, but it was not in Saxony. Christian butchers in Saxony were enraged as their livelihoods were threatened. The local German Jews were not particularly happy either but were eventually absorbed into the dominant EE Ashkenazi population.
German non-Jews perceived EE Ashkenazim getting to move into the middle and upper classes without paying their dues even if the German government was happy with the business and entrepreneurial expertise that EE Ashkenazim brought with them.
This created the conditions that caused Marx to call Judentum in German Schacher. The confusion of Jewish assimilation/disassimilation in Germany through the 19th and early 20th century makes it easier to view German Jews as more of a distinct economic class than as an ethnic group. In contrast in EE ethnic Ashkenazim were a distinct ethnic group, but not all EE Jews were ethnic Ashkenazim. Also Deutsch's term non-Jewish Jews is misleading when he describes the sort of Jews that took part in radical communist activities. He should simply have used the term secular Ashkenazim.
The Masada death cult refers to the misinterpretation of the events at Masada as described by Iosephos. The Hebrew University scholar Nachman Ben-Yehuda discusses the issue in detail in Masada Myth: Collective Memory and Mythmaking In Israel.
In short Talmudic/Rabbinic Judaism is highly deterritorialized. The Zionists had to create a sense of territory among modern German Jews and EE Ethnic Ashkenazim. Using the Blut und Boden (la terre et les morts) model Zionists tried to create a feeling that European Jews had the right to steal Palestine from the native population because alleged ancestors of German Jews and EE Ashkenazim had died and shed their blood in Palestine.
The Masada Death cult was successful. By the 40s Zionist thieves and interlopers in Palestine are undertaking suicide attacks agains the British, and Masada shall not fall again was practically a national Zionist model for decades.
I have to admit that I often find discussing the 1930s history of Germany, Poland, the Soviet Union and Palestine with Germans practically impossible. Since Holocaust (Meryl Streep Television Series) was broadcast in Germany, Germans have been on a completely psycho guilt trip.
Hitler won in 1932 because the German rights disintegrated in internecine political struggles. Hitler was popular during the 30s because of diplomatic brilliance and because Hjalmar Schacht seems to have been one of the great practical economists of all times.
Even though Judeophobia had been in decline through Central and Eastern Europe right up to the Russian Revolution, after the Russian Revolution and after the right-wing especially began *correctly* to perceive the role of EE ethnic Ashkenazim in Soviet mass murder, genocide and ethnic cleansing, fear and hatred of Jews throughout Central and E. Europe began to grow.
The Bavarian Communist coup drove this point home for Germans because 9 of the 12 leaders were either German Jews or EE ethnic Ashkenazim. As a movie das Schreckliche Maedchen is quite good, but Verhoeven is quite dishonest in his depiction of Bavarian Judeophobia. Bavarians had good reasons to have negative feelings toward to the local Jewish population.
During the 30s the Soviet Union was much more evil than Nazi Germany. Churchill and British propagandists portrayed Hitler's Germany as much more heinous, but English policy for 500 years included supporting any power that could prevent continental Europe from being united either under French or German rule.
German Nazi mass murders of Jews do not start until after Operation Barbarossa, and after reading a tremendous amount a primary German and Soviet documentation, I believe the Nazis killed Jews because they equated them (for the most part correctly) with the Soviet elite class with whom Germany was in a death struggle.
While German Nazis killed a lot of Jews, Eastern European and liberated Soviet national groups did most of the killing of Eastern European and Russian Jews mostly as collective revenge or out of fear of what the Soviets could do if they were not utterly wiped out.
I do not consider German Nazi crimes exceptionally heinous, and I really wish Germans would get over this psychotic need to atone for a crime they really did not commit by giving Zionists a license to behave toward Palestinians like the German Nazis or worse.
I was in Jerusalem to evaluate the destruction the IDF had committed on EU development projects over the previous months when Joschke Fischer visited in December 2002. The IDF was killing 3-5 Palestinians (almost invariably noncombatants) a day, and Fischer was kissing Zionist butt and swearing that Germany would always stand by Israel. I found myself wishing someone would detonate a car bomb to blow him and his whole mindlessly stupid entourage to smithereens.
The Holocaust is simply not the most horrible crime in history. The Nakba is. Racist Eastern Europeans planned genocide in the late 19th century, put it into effect in the middle 20th century and are still trying to complete the job in the 21st.
It is the crime that spans 3 centuries, and it is the purest most evil genocide conceivable. Before racist ethnic Ashkenazim plotted to steal Palestine, ethnic Ashkenazim and Palestinians had had practically no contacts whatsoever. From the Zionist standpoint the Palestinians were simply vermin to remove or wipe out.
BTW, I meant Rotwelsch not Rotweltsch in the above.
Hitler won in 1932 because the German rights disintegrated in internecine political struggles. Hitler was popular during the 30s because of diplomatic brilliance and because Hjalmar Schacht seems to have been one of the great practical economists of all times.
should have been
Hitler won in 1932 because the German right-wing parties disintegrated in internecine political struggles. Hitler was popular during the 30s because of diplomatic brilliance and because Hjalmar Schacht seems to have been one of the great practical economists of all times.
Joachim: I do not consider German Nazi crimes exceptionally heinous, and I really wish Germans would get over this psychotic need to atone for a crime they really did not commit by giving Zionists a license to behave toward Palestinians like the German Nazis or worse.
———————————-
Joachim – I've seen you referred to as a Jew, Askenazi, Arab, Muslim, Latino. As it is relevant to the discussion, please clarify for us what exactly is your ethnic heritage.
Thank you.
Jewish robbers around 1800
___________________________
Richard Silverstein – you don't have to be ashamed of Jewish robbers like Abraham Picard, that wasn't my piont as Arie Brand noticed in his/her(?) above post.
Phil's point was: the rather recent mainstreaming of Yiddish shows the upward assimilation of Jews. I just said this: 200 years ago there was downward Jewish integration and assimilation, as the robber's Rotwelsch/Yiddish showed. In both cases the stress on integration.
Here is some robber statistics:
In 1804 a law enforcement official from Collogne compiled a report on 5 different gangs that had been and still were operating on both sides of the Rhein river (Holland, Belgium, France and Germany). The report is a person by person account of the gang members. It finishes with this simple numbers:
"Total number of individuals: 205
- among them Jews 112
- still at large 124"
200 years later this vast over-represation of Jews among the gangster class had turned into an over-representation among the professional class.
Robbers:
I should have said: already a 100 years later the Jews were over-represented in the German intellectual and professional class.
______________
Here is one more point to the Jewish robbers. They were overlooked in the formation of the Jew-stereotype, Jews being witty etc. but basically peaceful.
The bone breaking robber-Jew was somehow left out. But he has a revival now in the bone-breaking Israelis.
"Hitler won in 1932 because the German right-wing parties disintegrated in internecine political struggles. Hitler was popular during the 30s because of diplomatic brilliance and because Hjalmar Schacht seems to have been one of the great practical economists of all times.
Posted by: Joachim Martillo"
"Robbers:
I should have said: already a 100 years later the Jews were over-represented in the German intellectual and professional class.
______________
Here is one more point to the Jewish robbers. They were overlooked in the formation of the Jew-stereotype, Jews being witty etc. but basically peaceful.
The bone breaking robber-Jew was somehow left out. But he has a revival now in the bone-breaking Israelis. Posted by: Klaus Bloemker | June 15, 2007"
These are the kind of posters Weiss attracts.
He certainly deserves them.
"Here is one more point to the Jewish robbers. They were overlooked in the formation of the Jew-stereotype, Jews being witty etc. but basically peaceful.
The bone breaking robber-Jew was somehow left out. But he has a revival now in the bone-breaking Israelis."
Relax Joachim Martillo we both descend from bone breaking Ashkenazim. I became a Buchanan voter and you became a self hating Jew.
Bernard,
I take your point but I would say again that no blackmail on either side is going to keep me from saying what I want to say… Phil
Portnoy:
How can you say that the Nazi crimes were not heinous? Are you crazy? If you're denying the Holocaust, you're not welcome here
Phil
From robbers to writers
__________________________
Maybe bernhard understands my point when I put it this way:
- The doward integration of the Jews into the robber class had been reversed within 100 years into a successful upward integration.
"Bernard, I take your point but I would say again that no blackmail on either side is going to keep me from saying what I want to say… Phil"
No one is blackmailing you, Phil.
However, if you lay down with dogs you will rise with fleas. Keep that in mind.
The subject of Jews and double loyalty, btw, is hundreds of years old and precedes the creation of Israel. Remember Dreyfus?
Keep that in mind too.
Be well.
The Jew-stereotype and bone-breaking Jews
____________________________________
Here is what Jean-Paul Sarte, the French philosopher, author and leftist activist had to say in his 'Anti-Semite and Jew':
"The Jews are the mildest of men, passionately hostile to violence."
- That's a nice stereotype, isn't it? But it's wrong, both historically and currently.
Besides what I have said about the Jewish robbers of 1800, see: 'Reckless Rites – Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence' by Elliot Horowitz, Princton 2006 (The above Sartre-quote is from that book.)
______________
bernhard is an idiot – as if Phil Weiss had to be reminded of Dreyfus.
Bernard, good points and I take them in a generous spirit. But:
What is the point of quoting Dreyfus, which I believe to be an antisemitic prosecution, when I am talking specifically about the following: That George Bush's adviser on the Middle East, Elliott Abrams, has written that outside of Israel, Jews must stand apart from the countries in which they live.
That is a simple fact. Pls rationalize it.
More. Dreyfus was awful. It was the Dreyfus case that mobilized a very worldly journalist, Herzl, to make recommendations for what he called a "colonial" scheme that would ethnically cleanse Europe. His descriptions of Palestine included detailed ideas about how to deal with the wild animals there, but not a word about the Arabs (in the key text, the Jewish State).
It seems to me that we have to deal with the real events in our time (the treatment of the Palestinians by a neocolonialist state)…
Phil
"That George Bush's adviser on the Middle East, Elliott Abrams, has written that outside of Israel, Jews must stand apart from the countries in which they live."
Yes, Philip, But Elliott doesn't speak for all Jews and not even for all Zionist.
I am pro-Israel and an American. I don't stand apart. I am a proud veteran who served during the VietNam era. Are you a veteran?
Moreover, when you said that "Bernard, I would say again that no blackmail on either side is going to keep me from saying what I want to say…" I wonder if you know Emerson's saying that "society is a conspiracy against the individual?"
One is always being "blackmailed" in society. I believe that it was Turgenev who said that from a certain point of view the flower blackmails the bee to pollinate it.
"It seems to me that we have to deal with the real events in our time (the treatment of the Palestinians by a neocolonialist state)…Phil"
You seem to love the prefix "neo."
Your view of the conflict between Israel and the Arabs is very simplistic Phil.
You can accuse Israel and (the Arab Palestinians) of many thinks but but accusing Israel of colonialism is not one of them.
btw: how comes it that someone who uses Marxist terms like "neo colonialism" also posts on the right wing American Conservative web site?
That's is a bit confused, don't you think.
"VietNam veteran, neocolonialism" etc. – a confusing discussion.
_________________
bernard quoted me to prove that Phil attracts weired (anti-Semitic) comments – but he didn't understand my point. Maybe, because he is a dumb VietNam veteran.
Or maybe, because he is a dumb Jew who works on the premise that since I am a German I must be a mean-spirited anti-Semite to begin with.
"Or maybe, because he is a dumb Jew who works on the premise that since I am a German I must be a mean-spirited anti-Semite to begin with."
Yea, I am dumb Yid.
And I got no premise, Klaus.
I don't much trust Germans with premises. Give a dumb Deutch any time.
"I don't much trust Germans with premises. Give a dumb Deutch any time. "
Does this have any meaning? I didn't understand it at all.
(Perhaps it was just meant to sound like a generic come-back — a "Wittycism" so to speak?)
Bernard wrote: "You can accuse Israel and (the Arab Palestinians) of many thinks but but accusing Israel of colonialism is not one of them."
Clearly you either don't know what you are talking about or you are simply another crypto-propagandist with supposedly great credentials (real leftist, Vietnam Vet, blah blah blah).
Israel is a classic colonial project as anyone who has read Jabotinsky or Ben-Gurion's diaries simply cannot deny. But I guess Zionist mythology doesn't encourage people to actually READ the whole (not the sanitized) versions of the Zionist forefathers' writings. Surprise, surprise!
Here is Jabotinsky writing in 1923(Iron Wall):
“We can talk as much as
we want about our good intentions but they understand as well as we what is not good for them. They look upon Palestine with
the same instinctive love and true fervor that any Aztec looked upon his Mexico or any Sioux looked upon his prairie…Thus we
conclude that we cannot promise anything to the Arabs of the land of Israel or the Arab countries. Their voluntary agreement
is out of the question. Zionist colonization even the most restricted, must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of
the will of the native population. Thus colonization, can therefore continue and develop only under the protection of a force
independent of the local population-an iron wall which the native population cannot break through. This is in toto our policy
towards the Arabs. To formulate it any other way would only be hypocrisy.”
Bernard's credibility destroyed. My sympathies.
I hate to give you the news Alan but the evidence you presented is no evidence it is merely quotes removed from their context.
Here is some evidence that will contradict it. From the Israeli declaration of independence:
"THE STATE OF ISRAEL is prepared to cooperate with the agencies and representatives of the United Nations in implementing the resolution of the General Assembly of the 29th November, 1947, and will take steps to bring about the economic union of the whole of Eretz-Israel.
WE APPEAL to the United Nations to assist the Jewish people in the building-up of its State and to receive the State of Israel into the comity of nations.
WE APPEAL – in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months – to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.
WE EXTEND our hand to all neighbouring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighbourliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The State of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East."
This at a time when the country was being threatened by its neighbors.
It doesn't matter what some people wrote in their diaries. What matters what is the law of the land.
Israel has a large Arab population who are citizens of the State. There are Arab members of the Parliament, of the Supreme court, etc.
Are there problems? Of course, just as there are in the US and Great Britain, France, Australia, etc.
To call Israel a colonial state contradicts the evidence.
Speaking of credibility Alan, where is yours?
Incidentally, the drafting and adoption processes of said constitution would be the only aspects relevant to this analysis. The written law is immaterial, sorry.
To quote from the Israeli Declaration of Independence to indicate the character of that state has about as much credibility as asserting that the nature of the defunct Soviet Union was adequately shown in its constitution.
What matters is the law of the land , eh? Well that law allowed Israel to steal large chunks of Palestinian land in the occupied territories – among other things.
Joachim Martillo, I found your post outrageous – and what is more, I believe that this type of writing is counterproductive as far as the Palestinian cause is concerned – a cause you claim to serve.
Israel: 'We return to the land of our forefathers' – an indigenous people returns
________________
I think that's the ideology, the colonialism analogy is wrong. When you have a colony you got to have a motherland. But the Zionists didn't colonise Palestine on behalf of any European power. In the Zionist understanding Palestine is their motherland.
Klaus, the main question here is whether Jabotinsky's comment, as quoted above, or the Israeli Declaration of Independence is more reliable as an indication of the nature of the Israeli state. My vote goes to Jabotinsky. So did that of a more knowledgeable commentator: Avi Shlaim. He even took, as you know, Jabotinsky's expression 'Iron Wall' as the title of one of his books.
The question whether or not Israel can be called a 'colony' leads quickly to merely semantic controversies.
However, if you do want to discuss that question you shouldmn't rely too much on that criterion of 'having a motherland'.
The nineteenth century Boer Republics, Transvaal and Orange Free State, for instance were arguably settlement colonies. Did they have a motherland?
Don't say Holland because Holland had at that stage nothing to do with the whole affair.The colonists did indeed speak a language (Afrikaans) derived from Dutch but those of Dutch ancestry probably didn't even constitute the majority of the population.
Political ties between Holland and that population had been severed around 1800. The colonists came, in fact, from Cape Colony, then under the English government. But they certainly wouldn't have recognised England as their motherland either and vice versa.
Incidentally, under Philip's entry dated 10th June 2007, I asked you and LeaNder in the last letter but one a pertinent question. Perhaps you would care to answer it here. I am genuinely interested
I knew Bernard and other posters here (apter) have no idea what they are talking about so I deliberately mentioned only Jabotinsky and left some "details" out, like the vast number of organisations in Europe and the US which used the word "colonization" when it hadn't yet become a bad, bad word.
So, for your information:
The Jewish Agency had a COLONIZATION Department (led by no other than Joseph Weitz and others)! I bet you didn't know that because you won't find any reference to it in Zionist sites or mythology, but you can google it and see for yourselves!
There was the Jewish Colonisation Association led by none other than Baron Maurice De Hirsch!
There was the Jewish Colonization and Arab Department in Palestine led by David Horowitz!
There was the Zionist Department of Colonization in Palestine led by Dr Arthur Ruppin!
There was the Vienna Jewish Colonization Association!
And so on. You see, all Zionist Organizations of the time were calling this project what it actually was BEFORE the word "colonization" became a bad, bad word.
I could also mention many other unpleasant facts regarding another bad, bad word (Apartheid) like Israel's resort to apartheid policies and support for Apartheid South Africa from relevant declassified state documents and Israeli Leaders' writings, but I'll leave this embarrassment for another occasion when ignorant present-day Zionists show the chutzpah of talking about things they know nothing about authoritatively.
Apter, my sympathies extended to you as well.
Actually, for my own amusement I researched this a little further and I just found one (1!) obscure reference from a Zionist site, from Jafi.org:
1924: The Palestine Jewish Colonization Association (PICA) is founded as the successor to the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA). It is led by James de Rothschild, son of Edmond de Rothschild.
link to jafi.org.il
To Arie – German (re)education
________________________________
Sorry for not responding to your question on Phil's June 10th entry. That was not intentional, I had stopped going online.
I have checked my old history senior high school textbook from the early 1960s. There is quite some material on the Third Reich and the Jews' persecution. So it would be wrong if I had left the impression that it was officially left out. But I can't remember that our teachers (and myself) gave it much attention. The attention came later. I think that's not only a German thing but it's true for America also. The Holocaust wasn't on the front page in the first decades after WWII in America either (the term wasn't used yet). The Cold War was on the front page. See: Chicago historian Peter Novick, 'The Holocaust in American Life'.
Why wasn't I interested? When I grew up, groups called 'Nazis' and 'Jews' didn't exist, the swastika or the star of david had no meaning to me. Until very late I learned that certain names were Jewish. I had no idea that my pair of Lewi's or an American author called 'Cohen' were Jewish. Bob Dylan is Jewish but I didn't know and wouldn't have cared if someone had told me. On the dust jacked of a book, the bio of the author would state for instance that 'he emigrated to America in 1937' but not why.
As you noted, Goldhagen got quite an enthusiastic readership in Germany and his tour of readings was sold out. I was also eager to read his book.
What else can I add? My father didn't talk about the war nor did he make any comments on Jews. My mother talked sometimes about her ordeal fleeing from east Germany in early 1945 via the Baltic Sea (my parents live near Danzig at the time). When I was a bad boy she would tell me: "I should have dropped you baby into the sea!"
Okay, that's it for now.
My family
_____________
Maybe I gave the wrong impression that my mother was callous and my father mute. That's not the case. My mother used to knit and read stories to me while knitting hours on end, she could knit blindfolded. I still have socks she knitted for me.
My father, who had a PhD in law, talked about all kinds of stuff – but not about Nazis and Jews. As I have said in another post, my mother told me after his death that he had been "in the party" as she put it, but she added: "he wasn't a Nazi".
I should add that my mother looked down on the Nazis – what I can infer from the few comments she made – as a proletarian movement. She didn't want her husband/my father to be a Nazi.
"Klaus, the main question here is whether Jabotinsky’s comment, as quoted above, or the Israeli Declaration of Independence is more reliable as an indication of the nature of the Israeli state. My vote goes to Jabotinsky."
In spite of what Shlaim says my vote goes to the Declaration of independence since its tenets have been enshrined in law.
As was said above lots of people said lots of things and if Jabotinsky's ideas vis a vis the Arabs had become law that there wouldn't have been over a million Arabs living in Israel today.
In many ways Israeli Arabs are freeing that Arabs in many Arab countries.
btw: bringing up South Africa completely ruins your argument, Ari, since the points of comparison are nil.
SA was a racial state. Israel is a multiracial State (Jews are not a race). SA was a segregated State were different races were not allowed to marry. The intermarriage in Israel between different groups is over fifty percent. (Granted these is among Jewish groups of different provenance but intermarriage between Jews and Arabs is not unknown.
And so it goes.
"I knew Bernard and other posters here (apter) have no idea what they are talking about so I deliberately mentioned only Jabotinsky and left some "details" out, like the vast number of organisations in Europe and the US which used the word "colonization" when it hadn't yet become a bad, bad word."
This is a silly argument since the word "colonialization" was used by almost everyone in the 1920's.
The word didn't take on evil connotations till way after WW2.
Alan seems to be a nominalist who thinks that "saying so, makes it so."
Your argument is flat, Alan. Try another one.