From time to time commenters on this blog say that American Jews are risking anti-semitic retaliation because of their unwavering and selfish support for Israel. I don’t like this line of argument. It seems vicious, or a veiled threat. Yes, the Jewish leadership has been selfish in its unending contempt for Palestinian human rights; but I see hope that the next generation of Jews will lead my tribe out of the parched desert of parochialism.
That said, it appears that Henry Kissinger and Hannah Arendt, both German-born Jewish Holocaust survivors, expressed the attitude I find lamentable. Let’s go to the videotape.
A historic volume of Arendt’s Jewish writings was published last year. She was an unbelievable writer. In 1952, mourning her dear friend Judah Magnes, the founder of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who often opposed political Zionism, she wrote that his stature had only grown in the four years since he died:
Magnes was the conscience of the Jewish people and much of that conscience has died with him–at least for our time. Magnes’s protest rose from the Zionist ranks and its validity lay in this origin. He raised his voice primarily on moral grounds, and his authority was that he was a citizen of Jerusalem, that their fate was his fate, and that therefore nothing he said could ever be blamed on ulterior motives. He was a very practical and a very realistic man; it may be that he, like the rest of us, was also inspired by fear for coming generations of Jews, who may have to suffer for the wrongs committed in our time. But this was not his primary motive. He passionately wanted to do the right thing and had a healthy distrust of the wisdom of our Realpolitiker; and if fear did not really touch him, he was very sensitive to shame. Being a Jew and being a Zionist, he was simply ashamed of what Jews and Zionists were doing….
It has happened that the last years of his life coincided with a great change in the Jewish national character [foundation of state of Israel and "flight," Arendt believed, of the Arabs]. A people that for two thousand years had made justice the cornerstone of its spiritual and communal existence has become emphatically hostile to all arguments of such a nature, as though these were necessarily the arguments of failure. We all know that this change has come about since Auschwitz, but that is little consolation. [italic emphasis is Arendt's; bold is mine]
Beautiful. Safe travels, Hannah.
Now the Realpolitiker himself: Kissinger. First, a little explanation. In his history of the peace process, The Much Too Promised Land, Aaron David Miller writes of Kissinger’s exasperation with the Israelis in 1975, when the U.S. was trying to get Israel to disengage from the Sinai. This was a tortuous process, in good measure because of the Israel lobby in the U.S. Kissinger, who was then sec’y of state, felt doublecrossed by Israeli Prime Minister Rabin and attributed "Rabin’s refusal to make concessions… to domestic politics, which, he observed scornfully, was really all there was to Israel’s foreign policy." Kissinger meant that Rabin was able to call on Jewish allies here in order to nullify Ford Administration policy. Indeed, at that time, when President Ford, fed up with Israeli intransigence, said that the U.S. was reassessing its Middle East policy (Miller reports), the "reassessment provoked a furious response": a letter signed by 76 senators, which Miller says he believes AIPAC had drafted–warning Ford that he must be responsive to Israeli needs. A letter delivered, a Maryland senator wrote, "although no hearings had been held, no debate conducted, nor had the administration been invited to present its views"!
Kissinger worried that Israel’s hardline hijinks would cause the U.S. to lose power to the Soviet Union at an upcoming Geneva conference and endanger Anwar Sadat in Egypt. These were not trivial risks. He warned the Israeli negotiating team:
"’That’s my nightmare–what I now see marching toward you. Compared to that, 10 kilometers in the Sinai is trivial.’ Harold Saunders [then deputy assistant secretary of state] recalls that after Kissinger unloaded on the Israelis, the secretary of state confided that Israeli shortsightedness concerned him seriously: ‘Well, you know when they act like this I worry about the future of my son as a Jew in America.’"
Arendt fled a German internment camp in 1940. Kissinger lost 13 members of his family in the Holocaust.
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{ 17 comments }
'From time to time commenters on this blog say that American Jews are risking anti-semitic retaliation because of their unwavering and selfish support for Israel. I don't like this line of argument'
Phil, you are omitting the essence of the argument. We don't give a shit about 'unwavering' or even 'selfish' support for Israel, in itself. It is the aggressively anti-democratic forms this 'support' takes and the effects it has on our freedoms (not to mention our blood and treasure), and even more importantly, the potential dangers it poses for our children.
Also, if you were talking about Cubans or Kurds rather than Jews, I don't think anyone would object to Americans' concerns about people of those ethnicities putting the home country first. What is wrong with citizens being concerned with the foreign loyalties that seem to drive some of their fellow citizens, particularly when this loyalty is without doubt putting America at increased risk of terrorism, and of bankruptcy, let alone the contempt of the rest of the world?
The thing is, the actions of no other ethnicity pose anywhere near the dangers to us that the Zionists do – not even the Muslims. And the Muslim threat is in any case greatly exacerbated by the activities of the Zionists.
I guess what I'm trying to say is – leave the word 'antisemitism' out of it. My anger with powerful Zionists is not a different shade of anger to what I would feel if they were fifth column Japanese or Arabs, dominating media and Congress to the imagined benefit of their race, and at the expense of the US and it's allies. It is the same anger, but because we are talking about Jews, the word anti-semitism can be used and that colours everyone's responses.
The nub of our anger is not racial in origin. We don't hate these people because for their ethnicity; we hate them for their behaviour and the danger that behaviour puts us all in.
There is, it is true, an element of disgust in that anger. The sheer, breathtaking hypocrisy of so many of them – the wingnut warriors without a family member in danger in the war they insist we must fight, the war they busily stoke without providing any fuel themselves. The cynicism with which democratic institutions have been perverted into amen corners. The intimidation, the racism, the Janus-faced hand-on-heart Mom and apple-pie-ism as Rome is burned for Jerusalem. After all that America has done for the Jews, to be treated like that…
Arendt and Henry K's thoughts weren't 'lamentable' – they were clear-eyed and honest. You surely could not say that either were guilty of being 'vicious' or making 'veiled threats', because they themselves are Jews. Must we be antisemitic because, though we arrive at the same unpleasant conclusions they do, we are gentiles?
To entertain such a notion is to fall into the trap Richard Witty is ensnared in. We are scared and we are angry but we are not racists. Unless being concerned and upset by nationalistic groups usurping your polity can be deemed racist.
If the shit hits the fan and scapegoats are sought, then some Jews would be sensible to feel a degree of concern; just as lots of whitebread Christians should be. But if people like Wolfowitz or Perle or Adelson or Leviev are singled out, it won't be because of their Jewishness. It will be because their actions were significant components of the fall.
Let's hope it never comes anywhere near that. I do feel if we are to avoid upheavals, efforts like yours here at this blog will be crucial. I don't always agree with you, but you are right there in the van at the moment, whether you realise it or not, and I for one respect what you do, and thank you for it.
'From time to time commenters on this blog say that American Jews are risking anti-semitic retaliation because of their unwavering and selfish support for Israel. I don't like this line of argument'
Phil, you are omitting the essence of the argument. We don't give a shit about 'unwavering' or even 'selfish' support for Israel, in itself. It is the aggressively anti-democratic forms this 'support' takes and the effects it has on our freedoms (not to mention our blood and treasure), and even more importantly, the potential dangers it poses for our children.
Also, if you were talking about Cubans or Kurds rather than Jews, I don't think anyone would object to Americans' concerns about people of those ethnicities putting the home country first. What is wrong with citizens being concerned with the foreign loyalties that seem to drive some of their fellow citizens, particularly when this loyalty is without doubt putting America at increased risk of terrorism, and of bankruptcy, let alone the contempt of the rest of the world?
The thing is, the actions of no other ethnicity pose anywhere near the dangers to us that the Zionists do – not even the Muslims. And the Muslim threat is in any case greatly exacerbated by the activities of the Zionists.
I guess what I'm trying to say is – leave the word 'antisemitism' out of it. My anger with powerful Zionists is not a different shade of anger to what I would feel if they were fifth column Japanese or Arabs, dominating media and Congress to the imagined benefit of their race, and at the expense of the US and it's allies. It is the same anger, but because we are talking about Jews, the word anti-semitism can be used and that colours everyone's responses.
The nub of our anger is not racial in origin. We don't hate these people because for their ethnicity; we hate them for their behaviour and the danger that behaviour puts us all in.
There is, it is true, an element of disgust in that anger. The sheer, breathtaking hypocrisy of so many of them – the wingnut warriors without a family member in danger in the war they insist we must fight, the war they busily stoke without providing any fuel themselves. The cynicism with which democratic institutions have been perverted into amen corners. The intimidation, the racism, the Janus-faced hand-on-heart Mom and apple-pie-ism as Rome is burned for Jerusalem. After all that America has done for the Jews, to be treated like that…
Arendt and Henry K's thoughts weren't 'lamentable' – they were clear-eyed and honest. You surely could not say that either were guilty of being 'vicious' or making 'veiled threats', because they themselves are Jews. Must we be antisemitic because, though we arrive at the same unpleasant conclusions they do, we are gentiles?
To entertain such a notion is to fall into the trap Richard Witty is ensnared in. We are scared and we are angry but we are not racists. Unless being concerned and upset by nationalistic groups usurping your polity can be deemed racist.
If the shit hits the fan and scapegoats are sought, then some Jews would be sensible to feel a degree of concern; just as lots of whitebread Christians should be. But if people like Wolfowitz or Perle or Adelson or Leviev are singled out, it won't be because of their Jewishness. It will be because their actions were significant components of the fall.
Let's hope it never comes anywhere near that. I do feel if we are to avoid upheavals, efforts like yours here at this blog will be crucial. I don't always agree with you, but you are right there in the van at the moment, whether you realise it or not, and I for one respect what you do, and thank you for it.
Glenn, your comment is nice, I liked it, however, let me ask you and others a question: why are you so sure that Jewish supporters of the war in Iraq were all acting in the perceived interest of the State of Israel only? Do you not consider the possibility that many of them thought it was actually in the American interest (possibly coinciding with the Israeli)? Then the part of your argument about dual loyalty becomes tenuous. I am far from trying to whitewash all the bad things the Israeli lobby stands for, but if there were (and, amazingly enough, are) enough gentiles who thought the war was beneficial to the American interest why couldn't the Jews think so too?
Good points both as the nature of Zionist positioning is very chameleon-like in that it provides a multitude of covers depending on what proves the most effective. Add to that the hive-like pressures where the meme reinforced is from the claim that one can't really be a Jew without fealty to Zionism. It becomes a numbers game with the extent that the official narrative is accepted and the continued power of the connglomeration, loose and otherwise, that can ensure that the official narrative is the "preferred brand."
It's changing to be sure but the obstacles thrown out can still be formidable.
Zionists have used Jews as a cover for their crimes. Zionists funded both sides during WWI and WWII. Rothschild and other international bankers funded Hitler's rise to power.
And who was the scapegoat for their greed? The Jews.
And they succeeded in "convincing" Jews that Palestine would become a safe haven for them. Why didn't these immigrants look at Arabs as fellow humans, who would react the same way as anyone of them would have, if they would have been forced to expelled from their homes (which many of them had to…)
Maybe they forgot that Palestinians as just as much humans as they are…
Zionism Promotes Anti-Semitism
Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), the founder of modern Zionism, recognized that anti-Semitism would further his cause, the creation of a separate state for Jews. To solve the Jewish Question, he maintained “we must, above all, make it an international political issue.”
http://www.jewsagainstzionism.com/antisemitism/zionismpromotes.cfm
Herzl wrote that Zionism offered the world a welcome “final solution of the Jewish question.” In his “Diaries”, page 19, Herzl stated “Anti-Semites will become our surest friends, anti-Semitic countries our allies.”
Zionist reliance on Anti-Semitism to further their goals continues to this day. Studies of immigration records reflect increased immigration to the Zionist state during times of increased anti-Semitism. Without a continued inflow of Jewish immigrants to the state of "Israel", it is estimated that within a decade the Jewish population of the Zionist state will become the minority.
In order to maintain a Jewish majority in the state of "Israel", its leaders promote anti-Semitism throughout the world to "encourage" Jews to leave their homelands and seek "refuge".
On July 18, 2004, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon urged all French Jews to move to Israel immediately to escape anti-Semitism. He told a meeting of the American Jewish Association in Jerusalem that Jews around the world should relocate to Israel as early as possible. But for those living in France, he added, moving was a "must" because of rising violence against Jews there. "
but dont worry about it guys it cant happen here in the good ole u.s.a, cause were democratic and christian and free.
elections only get stolen in banana republicas and the dollar is afterall the dollar and the press cant be trusted in russia cause its controlled by the old communist but here in america its differente dont you know, were a democracy and the press wouldnt be manipulated cause its a free press.
Hateful views of Jews as being subhuman did not have to be invented by Nazi theorists such as Hitler, Goebbels, Rosenberg and Streicher. This ideology was simply adapted from statements of political Zionists such as those found in the writings of the Zionist Yehezkel Kaufman in 1933.
http://www.jewsagainstzionism.com/zionism/zanda.cfm
In 1920 there were statements hostile to Jews expressed at Heidelberg University. These statements, arguing that Jews of Germany had caused the turmoil that followed the war; that the Jews of Germany had nothing in common with Germans, and that Germans had the right to prevent the Jews of Germany from intruding into the affairs of their volk were not made by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf, but by Nahum Goldmann, who went in to become the President of the World Zionist Organization and head of the World Jewish Congress, and, indisputably, the most influential political Zionist in the world, second only to the Prime Minister of the State of Israel.
In 1921, Germans in Germany were told that:
“We Jews are aliens… a foreign people in your midst and we… wish to stay that way. A Jew can never be a loyal German; whoever calls the foreign land his Fatherland is a traitor to the Jewish people“.
Who spoke these vile words? It was Jacob Klatzkin, the second of two political Zionist ideologists in Germany at the time, where the Jews of Germany were enjoying full political and civil rights. It was he who had advocated undermining Jewish communities as the one certain way of acquiring a state. “They had no qualms concerning tearing down the existing Jewish communities.”
Who spoke in a public address at a political Zionist meeting in Berlin and declared that “Germany… has too many Jews”? Was it Hitler or Goebbels? No, it was Chaim Weizman, later to become the first President of the State of Israel. This address was published in 1920, and, thus, four years before Hitler had even written Mein Kampf.
How many Zionist Jews know of this vicious treachery uttered by these senior political Zionist leaders, these apostates from the Jewish People? At the Nuremberg Trials of Major War Criminals, Nazi propagandist, Julius Streicher testified: “I did no more than echo what the leading Zionists had been saying”, it is clear that he had told the truth.
In addition to Hitler, Rosenberg, Goebbels and Streicher, many other Nazi leaders used statements from Zionists to validate their charges against the Jews of Germany. Such are the efforts of Zionist leaders to this very day to maintain a high degree of anti-semitism in order to enable them, in feigned horror, to then point to anti-semitism to support their idolatrous and anti-Jewish cause. In 1963, Moshe Sharett, then Chairman of the Jewish Agency, told the 38th Annual Congress of the Scandinavian Youth Federation that the freedom enjoyed by the majority of Jews imperiled Zionism, and at the 26th World Zionist Congress, the delegates were told that the Jew is endangered by the easing of anti-Semitism in the United States “We are endangered by freedom” he declared.
Ben Gurion's Scandals
Available in our bookstore
As we stated earlier, Zionism thrives on anti-Semitism. Ben Gurion declared, “…not always and not everywhere do I opposed anti-Semitism”. Zionists regularly pull out their handy “anti-Semite” race card against anyone, Jew or non-Jew, who dares to speak out against the wickedness of Zionism.
During World War II, the Lehi organization, an offshoot of Begin’s Irgun that was headed by Yitzchak Shamir sought an alliance with Nazis! The following is a quote from the writings of the Lehi in their contact with the Nazis:
"The establishment of the historical Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis and bound by a treaty with the German Reich would be in the interests of strengthening the future German position of power in the Near East … The NMO in Palestine offers to take an active part in the war on Germany's side … The cooperation of the Israeli freedom movement would also be in line with one of the recent speeches of the German Reich Chancellor, in which Herr Hitler stressed that any combination and any alliance would be entered into in order to isolate England and defeat it."
To those who assume that Zionists have been on the side of freedom and equality, these words seem strange. However, to those who understand the root of Zionism, which is the transformation and eradication of the concept of the traditional Jew and Judaism, these statements are not strange at all. They are to be expected.
The Zionists agreed with Nazism in general, even prior to the advent of Nazism. They believed that Jews could not, and should not, live in harmony in any other society in the world, and that should be removed from those societies for the benefit of those societies. They believed that the new Jewish existence in its own State would remake the image of Jews as “useless” and “parasites.” These ideas existed long before Adolf Hitler!
There is a huge amount of literature describing how the Zionists made it very difficult to save Jews during and after World War II. As various individuals and organizations were trying to arrange departures of Jews to western countries, the Zionists worked overtime to prevent this from happening. They expressed the opinion that building up the Jewish population of Palestine was more important than enabling Jews to go to third countries, and they insisted to western powers that Jews should not be accepted anywhere other than Palestine. Indeed, Yitzchak Greenbaum, a famous Zionist, proclaimed that “one cow in Palestine was worth more than all the Jews in Poland.” The infamous David Ben-Gurion said in 1938:
"If I knew it was possible to save all the children in Germany by taking them to England, and only half of the children by taking them to Eretz Israel, I would choose the second solution. For we must take into account not only the lives of these children but also the history of the people of Israel."
Read about the brutal Zionist role in the Holocaust.
After the war, a Zionist “religious” leader, Rabbi Klaussner, who was in charge of displaced persons presented a report before the Jewish American Conference on May 2nd, 1948 :
"I am convinced people must be forced to go to Palestine…For them, an American dollar appears as the highest of goals. By the word "force", I am suggesting a programme. It served for the evacuation of the Jews in Poland, and in the history of the 'Exodus'… To apply this programme we must, instead of providing 'displaced persons' with comfort, create the greatest possible discomfort for them…At a second stage, a procedure calling upon the Haganah to harass the Jews."
a tightly controlled group like the social jewish circles naturally lends itself to pressures of all types for everyone who wants to belong to the group and not to be ostricized, this is part of the jewish dna.
viel gluck to you all and i hope that some of you wake the heck up from the stupor imposed upon you by your social groups.
From an early age Jews are warned of the perils of being a heretic Jew. You will be crucified by your own people.
Bravo, Glen Condell!
Brilliantly put!
I also hand it to Glenn Condell. Live n learn
"From time to time commenters on this blog say that American Jews are risking anti-semitic retaliation because of their unwavering and selfish support for Israel. I don't like this line of argument. It seems vicious, or a veiled threat. Yes, the Jewish leadership has been selfish in its unending contempt for Palestinian human rights; but I see hope that the next generation of Jews will lead my tribe out of the parched desert .."
It is a threat..nothing veiled about it. Jews can do as they pleae up to the point where they undermine and harm this country by their loyalty to the foreign country of Israel.
If they want to be a "tribe" they should stay in the desert, they don't belong in civilization.
I am going to let them pevert my country so they can make Kissingers children safe in America and Israel and destroy my children own American heritage?…Not hardly.
American, can you elaborate a little bit on the nature of your unveiled threat? Whatever power the Jews have in this country is achieved by democratic means available to anybody, and you have to have a very low esteem of yourself to think that the gentiles, who outnumber Jews 50 to 1, have to resort to anti-Semitism and, God forbid, to violence to make sure they control their own destiny.
I wonder what did you do to stop the war in Iraq? Did you talk to your republican neighbors that supported it? Wrote letters to your congressmen? Or maybe you went to demonstrations? I doubt it, because if you did, you'd have seen how many liberal Jews were there protesting the war before it started when most of this country was for it.
Or maybe it was all Jews and not half of this country that voted Bush twice into power? (Majority of Jews were actually against Bush.)
Civilization that you're talking about was contributed in large part by the same Jews who are over-represented not only in politics but also in sciences, law and arts.
In short stop whining and looking for scapegoats. Vicious powers, Jewish or otherwise, have to be opposed and Jews, with their almost innate activism, are and are going to be on the forefront of such struggles.
The problem lies in who owns the Fouth Estate, the one-way sewish pipes.
And in the American way of financing campagn elections.
With those two levers of power and control over information,
how does the Average American stand a chance?
Anybody got any ideas?
Obviously Ron Paul (or even Dennis Kucinich) couldn't get through.
The Cuban Americans and AIPAC, for example, rely on average Åmericans' ignorance of world history. They do all they can to maintain such ignorance, via the Fourth Estate and single focus campaign financing.
Anybody have a clue how to change this?
"The nub of our anger is not racial in origin. We don't hate these people because for their ethnicity; we hate them for their behaviour and the danger that behaviour puts us all in."
I agree that the hatred isn't because of race or ethnicity, but when should race and ethnicity be taken into account? Race and ethnicity do count for most people, and a nation that is quickly being flooded with people of different races, ethnicities and cultures should learn from its past experiences.
Can we afford to have another ethnic, racial or special interest group hijack our system for their own benefit the way that the Zionists have supposedly done?
Nathan Schwalb
Nathan Schwalb served as the representative of the Jewish Agency, exercising authority upon matters of rescue of the European Jews during the holocaust.
When he was approached by the rescue committee of Czech Jewry for a sum of money to halt the transports to Auschwitz, he answered:
"Since we have the opportunity of this courier, we are writing to the group that they must always remember that matter which is most important, which is the main issue that must always be before our eyes. After all, the allies will be victorius. After the victory they will once again divide up the world between the nations as they did at the end of the first war. Then they opened the way for us for the first step and now, as the war ends, we must do everything so that Eretz Yisroel should become a Jewish state. ….we must be aware that all the nations of the Allies are spilling much blood and if we do not bring sacrifices, with what will we achieve the right to sit at the table when they make the distribution of nations and territories after the way? "
…the shedding of Jewish blood in the Diaspora is necessary in order for us to demand the establishment of a "Jewish" state before the peace commission…Czech Jewry must resign itself to annihilation in the Auschwitz crematoria"
…Holocaust Victims Accuse, pp 26-28.
The comments here are part of why I value this site so highly. Heckuva job! (in the way that used to be meant)
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