Sadly, it does exist, especially among Jews who are beset by a disturbed or deeply conflicted Jewish identity.... Let me just say this much for now: No one who knows the Jews well would mistake them for being a normal people. They are not. The Jews date back a long time - we are now in the year 5769 - and in different ways see themselves as part of a long, accomplished, but often difficult history. Threatened with total annihilation by Nazi Germany and its allies just the day before yesterday, as Jews count time, some Jews do not want to see themselves or want to be seen by others within this line of descent.
Add to these anxieties and rejections the revival of Jewish national sovereignty in the State of Israel after millennia of national political disenfranchisement, and you can begin to see how complex Jewish identity can be. It is impacted by numerous factors - family, community, country, culture, history - some of which make Jews feel uneasy or inadequate or embarrassed or vulnerable.
One way - not a healthy way - to deal with the tangle of pressures that accompany such a multifaceted identity is to deny it altogether or turn aggressively against it. When that happens, and especially when Jews internalize the external charges against them and adopt the negative stereotypes in which these charges crystallize, you get something like Jewish self-hatred. Most Jews are not afflicted by it, but some are.
Emphasis mine. Rosenfeld's explanation strikes me as simplistic and condescending horse feathers, which somehow leaves out the fact that 4 million Palestinians are stateless and denied basic human rights, while Rosenfeld has a fancy center in the Midwest.
But here's the answer from my friend Yakov (who took on antisemitism the other day):
We could expand that. Start calling anyone who accuses anyone else of moral failing a "self-hating human".
I think you should go directly to the question of qualifications, since it is almost always the case, thanks to the uncritical media backup anticipated, that any Jewish professional regards himself as qualified to speak in the language of any profession he wishes, whether or not he knows anything about it. In this case we find that "Alvin H. Rosenfeld is professor of English and Jewish Studies and director of the Institute for Jewish Culture and the Arts, Indiana University," which most certainly does not qualify him to throw psychological jargon around in public.
*****************************************
FROM HAARETZ:
"A Special Place in Hell" – by Bradley Burston
You know them. These people who blatantly, instinctively, inveterately trash Israel. These people who miss no opportunity to brand IDF soldiers as Nazis. Who accuse the Shin Bet of human rights violations and defense officials of collective punishment. People who will tell everyone, anyone who will listen – Western journalists in particular – that the government of Israel is committing war crimes…….
…..Ladies and Gentlemen, meet the new self-hating Jew, the New Right, for whom the Torah will come forth from Judea, and the word of God, from Hebron……
…..This is how it ends, not with the demonstrations of the Israeli left or the boycotts of the Western far-left. What began in Hebron in 1968 is beginning to end in Hebron in 2008. It will be the kids, in the end, who will take the enterprise down – that and the global financial crisis, which will affect crucial supporters like Irwin Moskowitz and others who have long believed that if Israel is unwilling to finance expulsion of Arabs, it is the duty of good Jews in Boca Raton and Brooklyn to do so…….
ENTIRE COLUMN –
Is modern organized Jewry really "more moral"? Is the Left? I just posted an article about this very subject titled 'The coming showdown: Zionism/Corporatism vs. Socialism/Communism; Whereâs Western civilization?' Here's a taste:
'The Christianity of Western civilization has for decades been on the defensive against the Left, and against modern organized Jewry, which have joined together to undermine its moral authority and wage a war of attrition.
'Why should an explicitly Christian West have to be on the defensive, in its own expansive territory that it civilized and transformed into what we now know as âthe free worldâ via a Christian manifestation called Western civilization, against modern organized Jewry and the Left? What have they ever done thatâs comparably liberating or contributory to the plight of humanity? All theyâve brought us is the terror of the French Revolution, Communism, Socialism, Zionism and Neoconservatism. Any âlibertyâ they have attained on behalf of Western humanity has proven infinitely inferior to that asserted by the Christian American Founders, has proven transitory, ephemeral, and quickly regressive into statist authoritarianism and tyranny. Yet, as modern organized Jewry and Leftists would portray it, they are the Western guardians of justice and equality against âintolerantâ Christianity…'
AND
'I note with pleasure, however, that the Communist-Zionist alliance is finally coming to an end, now that both are confident that Western civilization is safely on the wane, and Zionism has grown more comfortable showing its true face and challenging its estranged former partner. They remain alike, and like-minded, in many ways (intellectually disingenuous, morally ruthless, materialistic, atheistic) but in terms of professed ideology, their differences can no longer be papered over, and each realizes that it's nearing time for a showdown with the other.'
http://members.boardhost.com/libtoday/msg/1229322361.html
Nice set-up, guys. First J L-D posts a bunch of pseudo-left bullshit from Burston, then Ed posts a bunch of anti-left bullshit attacking it. Babble on if you must, fellas, but please take it somewhere else. We are trying to get to grips with reality here.
The relevance, Rowan, is that the modern organized Jewish premise/narrative that it is an exceptionally righteous and moral people, and an exceptionally persecuted people, is based upon a false consciousness painstakingly constructed by organized Jewry itself, but also by the Left for its own political purposes. And today, by some on the Right, too.
If organized Jewry is to be disabused of its extreme delusions of exceptional morality and supreme righteousness earned by suffering, the deep psychotherapy must include the entire truth about why this group or that felt motivated to humor and encourage its delusions. Anything less than the whole truth will be simply unconvincing.
Are the Jews in general an exceptional people? Indeed. But so are the English, so are the Germans, so are the Japanese, so are the Frenchâ¦
And then there are guys named Ed, who are exceptional in their lunatic idiocy. Your parents really shouldn't have spawned you Ed, your like a mutant strain of organism.
Coming from you SoG, that means zilch.
"the modern organized Jewish premise/narrative that it is an exceptionally righteous and moral people, and an exceptionally persecuted people, is based upon a false consciousness painstakingly constructed by organized Jewry itself, but also by the Left for its own political purposes" is true, except insofar as it just casually says 'the Left', thus encouraging the idea I am complaining about, the idea that jews=communists and communists=jews.
One shame that many "self-hating" Jews experience, is the failure to advocate for what they adopt in their own community.
For example, among dissenters, critical free-thinking is a virtue. When those that address "identity" issues do so, they often focus the criticism of the failure of Israel and Israel supporters, to undertake that self and institutional criticism.
But, the hypocrisy occurs when that failure to criticize touches any inquiry into Palestinian or Arab society.
There are wonderful and humane Jews, Israelis, Palestinians, Arabs. And, there are brutal and conforming Jews, Israelis, Palestinians, Arabs.
Conforming!!
It is the pyramid, a few at the top guiding a nation to disaster.
With the glory of heirarchy everyone is fooled into thinking they are privelaged.
Everyone has a 'secret'.
Which actually stops any real communication or understnading of the grand strategy.
But the entire system is hemmoraging
And the system is based on theology and its interpretation.
All most could say is: 'not in my name'.
Morris, how did you get that in there??
:-)
img src="link to morris108.wordpress.com
then a pointed bracket at each end
Put the image there as if I were going to post it in my blog
At Xymph thought you were a shill
Here you make sense
so far -) imho
And I would turn off justified text on your blog ………………
And I would turn off 'justified text' on your blog …………
And I would turn off 'justified text' on your blog …………
And I would turn off 'justified text' on your blog …………
The repeat post I AM SORRY, it's the new typepad software, i see the twirling circular thing, and it does nothing, so then I reload – sorry
Sorry about the repeat posts, it's typepads new software with IE -
'justified text'?
anyway, with regard to Xymphora, the difference is, there I have to try to compensate for the large number of racial or religious irrationalists who post comments.
The branding of "self-hating Jews" by fellow self-identifying Jews is the natural outcome of tribal morality. No? Then, why not?
Another way to look at it is as simply an internal tribal difference of opinion on the
best strategy to assure eternal Jewish continuity. The cover of universal (non-tribal) morality for this purpose versus the present prevailing policy and propaganda of blanket slurs and omission of
conflicting facts, coupled with the giant use of force and dollars.
Here is an example of another Jew's (not Phil) reasoning on why
Palestinian rights are deemed by some Jews as THE Jewish cause:
http://www.cactus48.com/cause.html
. . . . . . . . . .Justified text means when the right hand side is all straight, just my opinion, not everyones. .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . I would find it difficult to consistently comment on a blog I could not symphathise with. . . . . . . . . . I can see the potential of the Internet to allow people to collaborate, but all too often there are commenters who break a developing thread.
indeed there are, and the more authoritarian bloggers will castigate anyone who posts comments they consider off-topic.
however, from a meta point of view, there is no such thing as off-topic. all the red herrings and irrelevancies are psychologically relevant, in that the mind of the off-topic poster chooses them deliberately for their power to wreck or undermine the original topic.
Well you said it. You could ruin a revolution or the emancipation of mankind.
Witty: "When those that address "identity" issues do so, they often focus the criticism of the failure of Israel and Israel supporters, to undertake that self and institutional criticism. But, the hypocrisy occurs when that failure to criticize touches any inquiry into Palestinian or Arab society. There are wonderful and humane Jews, Israelis, Palestinians, Arabs. And, there are brutal and conforming Jews, Israelis, Palestinians, Arabs."
—–
This goes to the structure of international organized Jewry, which operates as its own nation. Think of any war. What do those citizens of any given country at war call those who identify with the enemy or argue his point of view? "Traitor, treasonous, subversive, Benedict Arnold" etc. Modern organized Jewry labels them "Self-hating Jews." Now, by putting this traitor-type label on internal dissenters, it is in some ways acknowledging it is its own nation operating with its own national interests, with its own set of internal opponents.
Phil Weiss, for example, is loyal to what he perceives as American national interests. But this makes him a "traitor" to organized Jewry. This dynamic is why organized Jewry works so hard to conflate American national interests with the organized Jewish agenda — to obscure the fact that the organized Jewish nation is pursuing its own interests for its own benefits, but using America to do it.
Once American interest and policy officially changes to "no more wars for Zionism," the Jewish nation within the nation agitating for them becomes obvious traitors to America, which is why it is currently fighting so hard maintain the "wars for Zionism" status-quo.
So Weiss and other âself-hatingâ Jews can take solace: they may be âtraitorsâ to organized Jewry, but if they are labeled as such for merely advocating what they believe to be Americaâs national interests, at least they are loyal Americans — unlike their critics.
That's quite true, Ed, except that one should ask exactly what is meant by calling the Jews a nation. Would you call the Mormons a nation?
Jews certainly are a people, a nation.
Its undeniable frankly.
Phil does NOT sufficiently criticize the US for example. He does not sufficiently criticize realists. He does not sufficiently criticize dissenters.
He does not sufficiently criticize the power structure that emerges from his own thesis.
And, he does not sufficiently describe the importance of his family to him, and family of families, that are a "WE".
The most universal approach is that "we are all WE". But, if ANY are excluded from that, then the self-description as a humanist is false.
And, if those that are family of family of family are the one's excluded, then that describes some hatred of one's neighbor, if not of oneself.
Anybody want to take a bet on who would win the universal humanist of the year award as between good chums Phil and Witty?
Universal morality is a tad higher up the scale then tribal morality.
American policy as implemented no longer reflects universal morality; hence Phil trudges along on his blog.
Being Jewish for me is a primary reminder to be thankful for life and respectful of others.
While many regard being Jewish as some isolating or condemning influence, they don't know what Judaism is.
For one, its a choice. There is no one way to be Jewish. There are options that require study, reminder, discussion in order to realize the most good.
I would contest that it is impossible to realize universal humanism or any other definition of good without study, self-reflection and criticism, and study of the world.
I find politics to be largely an exercise in conformity, and the choosing of sides in most political discussion to be an abdication of witness and support for kindness.
Even the long-term discussion on Israel and Palestine devolves to habit. Even the most open and truthful of dissenters endeavoring to oppose injustice and realize some greater good, devolve by habit.
Dr. Chaim Weizmann now here was a special man…he loved europes jews…except the old…they must bear their fate, the only thing that mattered was zionism.
face it boys and girls ..youve been sold a bill of goods…
In the Zionist Congress which took place in London in 1937, Dr. Weizmann established the line of policy with his words:
"The hopes of Europe's six million Jews are centered on emigration. I was asked, 'Can you bring six million Jews to Palestine?'I replied, 'No'….From the depths of the tragedy I want to save two million young people…The old ones will pass. They will bear their fate or they will not. They were dust, economic and moral dust in a cruel world…Only the branch of the young shall survive…They have to accept it."
…Holocaust Victims Accuse, pp 25.
Chaim Weizmann reporting to the Zionist Congress in 1937 on his testimony before the Peel Commission in London, July 1937. Cited in Yahya, p. 55.
Witty, you don't seem to have any actual IDEAS. You are like a cocktail barman who doesn't actually know how to make cocktails,but instead grabs any existing cocktail glasses with any drink still left in them, tops them up with water, and claims to have created a new cocktail.
The Significance of the AJC Attack on Progressive Jews.
Witty is in essence according to his philosophy very simple. He's just a natural-born Jew who views his birth right uber alles & for lebensraum.