I’m still caught up in Ambassador Gillerman’s statement that Israel is a "far better" country than most others because it produces scientific and artistic talent. My friend Richard Witty acknowledges that this attitude is unfortunate when he hears it from guys in his shul, and he prefers people simply expressing pride in their accomplishments. True enough, but Witty is someone who actually possesses humility. This guy’s an ambassador who is paid to be diplomatic and he makes these offensive comments. It causes me to reflect that I grew up with feelings of Jewish superiority, that we are better because we are smarter, and that it is an attitude whose time has passed.
The other night I was at a dinner party typical of the new establishment, half Jews, half non-Jews, and heard a gentile down the table talking excitedly about Slezkine’s The Jewish Century, explaining how Jewish gifts for learning and the law had specially outfitted them for modernity. "But what is the Jewish century?" his Jewish dinner partner asked. He and I said in unison, "The last one."
I truly think it’s over. Jewish superiority is being undermined on many fronts, perhaps chiefly by the fact that intermarriage is blunting the notion of Jewish difference in the next generation and meanwhile everyone else is on to the importance of education. Yes we have cherished books and the law for millennia (and may have genetic advantages mentally in this age). But China and India are making the hedge funds less important, and the internet is making reading and analysis a great democratic value, in every hamlet of this great country, let alone the world.
And what about that image we so prided ourselves on? Iraq has shown that our thinkers are as debased as any other imperialist thinkers, while Israel/Palestine is showing daily that we are morally the same as any other colonizer.
The presidential race is also hurting, as it proves that a conservative Jewish old-guard is as involved with Hillary as Rockefeller Republicans were in a previous ancien regime. On election night (my wife tells me) Chris Matthews said that Hillary is in trouble financially because she paid those many millions to Mark Penn for bad advice. Penn is the ceo of Burson, Marsteller and should have worked for nothing, Matthews said, as Ted Sorensen and Arthur Schlesinger did for Kennedy. Then Matthews added re Penn, "He’s one of those Iraq guys isn’t he?" or words to that effect.
It struck me as close to antisemitic, but revealing of the new if somewhat subterranean Jewish image in American life: piggy and belligerent. Sheldon Adelson, U.S.’s third richest man, promoter of the Iraq war and free trips to Israel for Jewish kids only (in stout contrast to #1, Bill Gates, philanthropist and #2, Warren Buffett, genial genius).
Mark Penn is actually a nice guy (I knew him in college). He wrote a smart book last year called Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes, that openly described Jews as principals in American society, something few other Jewish writers like to acknowledge. "Jews are in demand everywhere" in the U.S., he wrote. Non-Jews want to marry Jews, on a scale that they never did before. Jews have been at the "forefront of the professional revolution of the last several decades." And Jewish "money" plays a big part in our new image (more important than "values"). And he notes that philo-Semitism "represents the tumbling of thousands of years of barriers."
Whatever in the past seemed to trigger envy or rejection of Jews now seems to be triggering admiration and attraction. In the 1940s, several national surveys found that Jews were considered a greater threat to the welfare of the United States than any other national, religious, or racial group. Compare that to a Gallup poll taken in August 2006. When Americans were asked how they feel about people of different religious or spiritual groups inthe United States, Jews rated the highest of any group in America, with a net positive of 54 percent.
(Well that was two years ago, before Jimmy Carter and the flameout of the neocons.)
As Penn said, this transformation of the Jewish place in society is utterly new in Jewish history. It is time to stop looking at the ghetto and the Holocaust and Tel Aviv in order to frame our response to events, it is time for humility.
Related posts:
- Meritocratic Jewish Dems Echo Rockefeller Republicans of 70s
- Chris Matthews’s Coyness About Jewish Money in Politics Is Downright Irresponsible and Irritating
- Press can’t say it, but a blogger can (Jane Harman’s Jewish)
- Press can’t say it, but a blogger can (Jane Harman’s Jewish)
- Will Hillary’s Exit Signal the End of the Jewish Establishment?
{ 31 comments }
.
' "But what is the Jewish century?" his Jewish dinner partner asked. He and I said in unison, "The last one." I truly think it's over. '
Touché! And the corollary: "But what is the American century?" — "The last one."
I truly think it's over.
Yes, I think the philosemitism was more rampant two or more years ago. My experience now is the opposite. More people are aware of the feelings of superiority that Weiss is admitting to. Jews have been more outspoken about their superiority and cultural dominance. And there is a general tone of Jewish humor, Jewish issues, Jewish angst, that permeates the media and general culture. Gentiles are resenting it. NYTimes has no pretense of being other than a Jewish newspaper. The New Yorker profiles are mostly Jews and frequently billionaire Jews.
I am afraid that when Jews get wind of this they will cry 'anti-semitism'. They shouldn't. It's a wake-up call to join humanity in general, to moderate their ethic of victimhood and specialness and apartness.
Blacks I feel are joining in with multicultural America, there is much less awkardness and normalness. The thing is, I think people always thought Jews were joining in, so the invitation was extended, but alas we find out it isn't true. They were only pretending, they're really holding back from our society, their loyalty only for themselves, their generosity reserved for their own group ,
Yes, I think the philosemitism was more rampant two or more years ago. My experience now is the opposite. More people are aware of the feelings of superiority that Weiss is admitting to. Jews have been more outspoken about their superiority and cultural dominance. And there is a general tone of Jewish humor, Jewish issues, Jewish angst, that permeates the media and general culture. Gentiles are resenting it. NYTimes has no pretense of being other than a Jewish newspaper. The New Yorker profiles are mostly Jews and frequently billionaire Jews.
I am afraid that when Jews get wind of this they will cry 'anti-semitism'. They shouldn't. It's a wake-up call to join humanity in general, to moderate their ethic of victimhood and specialness and apartness.
Blacks I feel are joining in with multicultural America, there is much less awkardness and normalness. The thing is, I think people always thought Jews were joining in, so the invitation was extended, but alas we find out it isn't true. They were only pretending, they're really holding back from our society, their loyalty only for themselves, their generosity reserved for their own group ,
For an avowed assimilationist, married out, Christmas celebrating, avowed opponent of the existence of Israel kind of guy, Phil Weiss always seems to know exactly what the Jewish-gentile ratio is of any situation he is in. Who is Jewish, who isn't.
Interesting you should mention the Slezkine book in conjunction with notions of Jewish supremacy. That book is helpful in documenting the decisive Jewish role in Bolshevik Communism and its murder of millions of Russian Christians and Soviet dissidents. From a Kevin Macdonald review:
‘During the 1930s, Slezkine reports, the secret police, now known as the NKVD, “was one of the most Jewish of all Soviet institutions”, with 42 of the 111 top officials being Jewish. At this time 12 of the 20 NKVD directorates were headed by ethnic Jews, including those in charge of State Security, Police, Labor Camps, and Resettlement (deportation). The Gulag was headed by ethnic Jews from its beginning in 1930 until the end of 1938, a period that encompasses the worst excesses of the Great Terror. They were, in Slezkine’s remarkable phrase, “Stalin’s willing executioners”. Slezkine appears to take a certain pride in the drama of the role of the Jews in Russia during these years.’
http://www.vdare.com/misc/051105_macdonald_stalin.htm
In fact, although they won’t admit it, many Jewish ideologues are proud of the role they played in Communism’s murder of millions of Christians to this day, just as many were proud of the role they played in Neoconservatism’s murder of a million or so Muslims — until the Iraq war went bad and gave Judaism a PR black eye. Now they are running for the exits, saying the claim that Neoconservatism is a Jewish movement is an anti-Semitic trope. They said the same thing about claims of Jewish Marxism.
I’m not really sure why Jewish ideologues are so self-satisfied and consider themselves superior when, in the end, their murderous schemes are always uncovered and disclosed, and the Jewish collective is punished as a result. They apparently view the mass of average Jews with the same disdain they view the goy.
I played golf with some Koreans yesterday, assimilated immigrants. One was active in the Democratic Party. At lunch, after the golf talk was done, we talked politics. Within fifteen minutes, they steered the conversation to Iraq, neocons, the role or Jews in guiding American foreign policy. You would never have this conversation with a white American you didn't know very well. But it comes up after one round of golf with educated professional Asian immigrants, who were strangers to me until yesterday.
SOG, why do you say Phil is an avowed opponent of Israel? Because he chooses to live with a Gentile? Is this your automatic reduction? I'd like to think you know there is more than just talking to yourself and your amen blood corner.
There's been a lot of harm done the Jewish people through the ages; and, perhaps, as often as not, simply becaue they were born Jews. Your apparent version of all history is that it has never worked the other way.
The test of historical virtue is power. Do you really think it's such a one-way street? It never has been.
Look at the ethnic, religious, and socio-economic makeup of those dying and maimed in the Middle East, from all current pertinent national government players.
How can you ignore what you see?
"As Penn said, this transformation of the Jewish place in society is utterly new in Jewish history. "
Penn is wrong. The overuse of the invocation "unprecedented" is unprecedented.
Even the Passover story is the story of rising within a meritocracy, changing to suspicion on the part of the powers that be, and ultimately persecution.
Its happened in many European courts, middle eastern courts, etc.
Did you read the reports of US administration and state department's censure of Gillerman's comments?
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/978126.html
.
While the U.S. mass media shun Mearsheimer and Walt, a columnist in Haaretz accuses AIPAC not merely of "dual loyalty," but of "institutionalizing near treason." Toast 'em, Avraham Burg!
————
[Jonathan Pollard] and his handlers lived and plotted in the twilight zone of the complex loyalty of the Jews of the United States. Their basic premise was and still is that all Jews everywhere have dual loyalty – the loyalty of an American citizen to his homeland, and a much deeper, national-spiritual loyalty to the Jewish people and the State of Israel.
For years, Israel officially fostered this snarled loyalty. It entangled and became entangled, plotted and spied. AIPAC — the Jewish lobby in Washington — is the bluntest conceptualization of institutionalizing near treason."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/978118.html
————
Man … all I got to say is "WOOHOO."
http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~kyl210/graphics/woohoo.gif
Sorry about the repitition of the Haaretz reference.
I see that Phil also referred to it, and I had earlier as well.
Ed,
Just to add to what you wrote. Sever Plocker wrote a column in YnetNews in late 2006 called "Stalin's Jews – We mustn't forget that some of greatest murderers of modern times were Jewish"
>>Here's a particularly forlorn historical date: Almost 90 years ago, between the 19th and 20th of December 1917, in the midst of the Bolshevik revolution and civil war, Lenin signed a decree calling for the establishment of The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage, also known as Cheka.
Within a short period of time, Cheka became the largest and cruelest state security organization. Its organizational structure was changed every few years, as were its names: From Cheka to GPU, later to NKVD, and later to KGB.
We cannot know with certainty the number of deaths Cheka was responsible for in its various manifestations, but the number is surely at least 20 million, including victims of the forced collectivization, the hunger, large purges, expulsions, banishments, executions, and mass death at Gulags. [...]
And us, the Jews? An Israeli student finishes high school without ever hearing the name "Genrikh Yagoda," the greatest Jewish murderer of the 20th Century, the GPU's deputy commander and the founder and commander of the NKVD. Yagoda diligently implemented Stalin's collectivization orders and is responsible for the deaths of at least 10 million people. His Jewish deputies established and managed the Gulag system. After Stalin no longer viewed him favorably, Yagoda was demoted and executed, and was replaced as chief hangman in 1936 by Yezhov, the "bloodthirsty dwarf."
Yezhov was not Jewish but was blessed with an active Jewish wife. In his Book "Stalin: Court of the Red Star", Jewish historian Sebag Montefiore writes that during the darkest period of terror, when the Communist killing machine worked in full force, Stalin was surrounded by beautiful, young Jewish women.[...]<<
Read the rest:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3342999,00.html
Scott, good to know that people from a country that personally cost 58,000 dead American soldiers. Where 37,000 have been stationed indefinitely are so full of advice. And that lives under our umbrella are so full of themselves I can't wait to tell this to my father who got drafted in 1950 and spent a couple of years dodging a million or so screaming chinks
Also good to know that the Soviet Union was such a paradise for Jews. Stalin was really a Zionist. And that the Russians weren't the chief backers of the Arabs. Actually they still are considering their rush to give the Iranians the bomb.
.
A JPost article today, citing World Bank sources, offers some rather startling statistics about the Palestinian economy:
————
The Gross Domestic Product in the Palestinian areas – currently at about $4 billion – is only expected to grow by 3 percent in 2008. The bank said 2007 ended with zero economic growth, which translated into a drop in income because of population growth. Since its 1999 peak, the per capita GDP declined by nearly 40 percent.
In December, donor countries pledged $7.7 billion (€4.9 billion) over three years to help fund a three-year Palestinian reform and development plan for the West Bank and Gaza.
http://tinyurl.com/5g69cx
————
Several observations:
1. Israel's $200 billion economy is fifty (50) times larger than Palestine's $4 billion economy.
2. Palestine's 40% decline in per capita GDP is deeper than the U.S. experienced during the 1930s. Palestine is in an economic Depression.
3. The $2.5 billion in annual international aid to Palestine represents an additional subsidy to Israel, above the $3 billion in direct foreign aid which Israel receives from the U.S.
4. Palestine's $2.5 billion in annual aid represents 60% of its GDP.
5. Palestine's per capita GDP of just over $1,000 is about 1/20th of Israel's.
Two-state solution, anyone? A viable state, which derives 60% of its GDP from international aid? Preposterous. The two-state solution is an elaborate, long-running joke. Perhaps we should call it a triumph of ideology aided by innumeracy.
SoG,
Allegiance in Russia has nothing to do with religion. It doesn't matter a whit that you're Jewish to another Jew. Or Russian Orthodox to another Russian Orthodox.
Allegiance is coming from the same village.
Friedman (Freidman? Freedman?), who wrote that fascinating book on the Russian Mafiyeh in the US, discovered this while he was interviewing mobsters in Brighton Beach. One Russian guy whose name I forget is considered the cream of the crop, the most terrifying of the bunch. Friedman thought he could appeal to him for an interview on the basis of being a fellow Jew. Nothing doing. But when he mentioned that his family came from the same small Russian town that the mobster did, that provided the 'open sesame' and trust.
If you go back and read early 20th C accounts of what the Zionists needed to do to succeed, you will discover that they had to break the assimilation of Jews in Russia and Germany, otherwise emigrating to Palestine held no particular appeal. There was no threat, so why bother? Why disrupt your life to live on some faraway patch of sand? Zionism only succeeds if every Jew views himself as outside of the culture he's in, and even better, persecuted or threatened with persecution.
more on Phil's college chum, Mark Penn:
"Penn gained his foreign policy expertise working on numerous campaigns overseas, especially in Israel. In 1981, he and business partner Doug Schoen helped reelect Menachem Begin, one of the most right-wing prime ministers in the country's history, and emerged with a new outlook on the Middle East. "We got a chance to experience firsthand the perils and possibilities that the state of Israel presents," Schoen said in an interview."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/29/AR2007042901661.html?hpid=artslot
And this is the manager of the "liberal" candidate's campaign. Image what's going on on the Republican side.
not only were the jews from the czar's time through stalin murderous, so are the jews of the state of the jews and the jews of america.
and the blood flow in iraq isnt enough. syria, lebanon and iran are on the list for bleeding.
what is the great art coming from israel?
art of theft
art of collateral damage
art of targeted assassination
art of group assassination
art of torture
art of building walls from short to long
art of lying
art of terrorism
art of home destruction
art of killing olive trees
art of aggression
art of blaming others
art of excuses
art of fabrication
art of self righteous ness
art of fanaticism
art of psychopathy
art of demanding welfare that becomes 'we are owed'
art of always being under an 'existential threat'
art of crap
Gideon: Well, gratitude isn't a very significant or long-lasting emotion in politics. But the large point is that these were Koreans who had thrown in their lot with America, as immigrants. They were looking at the country, their country, through fresh immigrant eyes. And this is what they saw. BTW, I think we should slow down immigration for a lot of reasons, and those who take that position get called "bigots" and "xenophobes" by the Abe Foxmans of the world.
Gillerman also said there and then, "The real danger, the real problem is not the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; the real threat is Iran."
Oh yeah. Get Iran because their powerless President said the current Zionist regime will eventually vanish from the pages of time) like the USSR.
Meanwhile, Hillary calls on the American masses to obliterate the Iranian people.
Everyone seeking power or in power realizes the American masses are trailer trash.
Pearly Gates, send Private Hicks out there.
"Everyone seeking power or in power realizes the American masses are trailer trash."
Actually, just about everyone in power in America right now is the trash. It's why the country has fallen so far. When the "elite" in media, government, business and academia are nothing but, as Phil headlined the other day, a lying "nest of vipers," of course average Americans are going to come across as looking like suckers for putting up with it and believing their lies. But is it the average Americans' fault that today's "elite" are treacherous lowlifes, particularly given the stranglehold that the duopoly has over the political system?
Are Americans degenerate, morons for not risking life or liberty to oppose the powers that be? I don't believe that very many Americans are happy with what has been done to the nation over the last forty or so years, so the issue isn't that most people are blind or stupid. I think that most people are just too comfortable.
How much longer will the masses remain comfortable? I don't know. But flooding the nation with immigrants (legal,illegal, assimilationist or not), changing demographics on a whim, and constantly berating the majority as rednecks, white-trash, working-class, or any number of slurs, by an ethnic media and elite, doesn't help much.
As far as Jewish superiority talk goes, I know that no non-ethnic white could talk about European accomplishments and high IQs in regards to people who test lower without, at the very least, being assumed to be a bigot.
I don't know if Phil is a Jewish supremacist, but I do believe that there are quite a few out there who have absolutely no problem with slurring others as racists and bigots if it suits their needs.
SOG wrote:
"Also good to know that the Soviet Union was such a paradise for Jews. Stalin was really a Zionist. And that the Russians weren't the chief backers of the Arabs. Actually they still are considering their rush to give the Iranians the bomb."
From the book cover of Arnold Krammer "The Forgotten Friendship-Israel and the Soviet Bloc 1947 – 1953":
"Krammer provides new insight into the role of international power politics in the Arab-Israeli conflict. He furnishes the first detailed examination of the Haganah's activities in Czechoslovakia, especially the purchase of weapons and their transport to Israel. Russia not only supplied munitions and fighter planes to repel the impending Arab attack, but also secret training areas for Israeli troops in Czechoslovakia and even a brigade of Czech "volunteers," "
SOG wrote:
"Also good to know that the Soviet Union was such a paradise for Jews. Stalin was really a Zionist. And that the Russians weren't the chief backers of the Arabs. Actually they still are considering their rush to give the Iranians the bomb."
From the book cover of Arnold Krammer "The Forgotten Friendship-Israel and the Soviet Bloc 1947 – 1953":
"Krammer provides new insight into the role of international power politics in the Arab-Israeli conflict. He furnishes the first detailed examination of the Haganah's activities in Czechoslovakia, especially the purchase of weapons and their transport to Israel. Russia not only supplied munitions and fighter planes to repel the impending Arab attack, but also secret training areas for Israeli troops in Czechoslovakia and even a brigade of Czech "volunteers," "
I know it's hard to make ends meet, Phil, but must you suck up to bigots like Witty?
phil, if you delete those of my comments you find offensive, you misrepresent me. You are like Haaretz, very like them, getting more like them every day. And you know what I think of Haaretz, because I have told you, in the comments you deleted.
Rowan, I apologize for any difficulty you have had posting; I have not deleted any comment. I have one friend with the key into the site, I will ask him if he deleted any comment. Last year when I asked you to say one nice thing about Jews, you didn't answer but said you weren't going to comment any more and so wouldn't give me a chance to ban you. This was unfair to me, as I have never banned you either.
Phil
Oh, it must be this page payout, where long trails of comments disappear onto the next page and there is no clue of it except a little double arrow beneath the first page of them.
The problem last year was that a fake comment in my name by a troll that conveniently appeared here was immediately used by a pillar of the anglo-jewish establishment to smear me.
It was a rather obvious fake too, it began "hello, my name is rowan berkeley and I go around posting comments like this : jews run both communism and capitalism," etc etc. I have had to tell the british police about this, as it happens.
as for "saying one nice thing about jews," that is such a stupid request that as often I can only conclude you are playing stupid deliberately. when you have acquired enough intellectual formation to be able to distinguish without hours of head-scratching betwen "jews", "judaism", "jewish leaderships", and so on, you may be able to pose a question that is worth asking, but by that time you will realise that I have already with great labor made the relevant distinctions and dealt with them.
by the way, why don't you put a hit counter on here? It would be interesting to compare our hit rates. I am starting to realise how easy it is to grab up to a thousand readers a day by being first online with a snappy headline which gets linked to by a larger aggregator.
Rowan,
Why don't you compare the number of comments, and number of posters?
You don't invite discussion on your blog by calling people bigots. Maybe you invite real bigots.
Comments on this entry are closed.