The core condition of Zionism is the understanding that Jews are unsafe in western societies. Theodor Herzl invented Zionism two centuries ago for this good reason, and that belief underlies Prisoners, by Jeffrey Goldberg, about his decision to move from the U.S. to Israel. "[T]he fear of anti-Semitism is the forge on which many American Jews build their identities. This is how I built mine. I learned about the inevitability of anti-Semitism early on..." Having grown up on Long Island in an ethnocentric household like mine, he studied the Russian pogroms, he studied the Holocaust. He became a Jewish nationalist.The diaspora was the disease, he says, and Israel was the cure. He moved to Israel as a young man and served in the Israeli army.
Goldberg came back to the States before too long, and as I have said before, today he is the most important Jewish journalist in America. He is the touchstone for Establishment opinion. People say, What does Goldberg think? Goldberg knows this situation. He has been the expert on the Middle East at the New Yorker in the runup to the Iraq war, which didn't work out that well, if memory serves, and now at the Atlantic. David Gregory waved the book Prisoners in the air on Meet the Press a couple weeks ago when introducing Goldberg. The New York Times Op-Ed page has three times turned to him in recent months to explain the situation.
Notwithstanding great success, Goldberg's baseline "fear of anti-Semitism" has never gone away. There's a pattern:
--When Jimmy Carter came out with his bestselling book saying that Israel had installed apartheid in the West Bank, Goldberg wrote in 2006 in the Washington Post that Carter was a classic antisemite: he believed Israel was "a lineal descendant of the [anti-Christian] Pharisees" in the 1st century and that "the [Israeli] security fence itself is a crime against Christianity."
--When Walt and Mearsheimer published their book on the Israel lobby in 2007, he said on the stage at Yivo, "I’m going to tell you that this book is anti-semitic, and he [Daniel Goldhagen] is going to tell you that it’s really, really anti-semitic." Laughter.
--Two days ago, the Times again gave Goldberg a ton of space on the op-ed page to publish this piece, an amalgam of old reporting about Hamas, that basically argues they're jihadists who are gripped by antisemitism. They believe that Jews are pigs and apes. So: Israel can never deal with Hamas. No wonder they're torching Gaza.
The essence of Zionism was a justifiable Jewish paranoia. But how rational is that feeling today, when we are so powerful in American society, and mighty Jewish nationalism has turned another Arab society into a slaughterhouse?
Interesting debate, picked up by Glenn Greenwald.
Compare Queen Noor. Compare Richard Haas, who wrote a peculiar article on W/M in the NYT, if I remember correctly. Nothing will change with experts like him.
What's really ironic is that Goldberg's type of posturing, and his support for Israel's actions, and Israel's actions themselves, will only serve to inflame genuine anti-Semitism.
There never was any justifiable Jewish paranoia except in the sense that that a segment of the ethnic Ashkenazi population have made choices then as now that evoked tremendous enmity toward Jews, to with, they prepared the pot and other Jews stewed in it.
Stanislawski and others have shown that Herzl never believed his marketing pitch about Dreyfus.
In Backgrounder on Pale of Settlement I try to give a fair assessment of the Jewish situation in the Pale. Followup (II): Origins of Modern Jewry goes into more detail.
Palestinian Foreign Policy Realism makes the important point that by the 1880s the other Jewish ethnoreligious group in historic Poland was at least as annoyed with ethnic Ashkenazim as any other.
My wife asks as she views the slaughter in Gaza whether Jewish sensitivities even matter anymore.
We should all keep in mind how much Zionists are lying and manipulating us as I discuss in Second Great Zionist Fraud and Conflating Jews and Zionists.
test
where on earth will you find "genuine anti-Semitism" with its unique blend of racial and religious assumptions, nowadays? I note, joachim, you are very punctilious about spelling this infernal cant term.
Its a rational fear.
Fears are information, not authority though. The appropriate thing to do with fears is to note them, investigate to what extent (not IF) they effect the current reality, and act rationally.
Denial of fear is equally irrational to exageration of fear.
And, it is useful for those among the various dissenting communities to examine the effect of their fears as well.
There is a fear of Zionism that is equally irrational to the exageration of Zionism.
Re: Haass, that was my comment, too, LeaNder, after seeing his performance, structured around the eternal Zionist lie that "there's no partner for peace". (He naturally omits that Israel has killed one Palestinian leader after another.)
Re: Jeffrey Goldberg, his horn's only got one note, but he plays it with bravado and style, I must admit. Aside from his Zionist paranoia and consequently his opinions in the Middle East, I actually enjoy his writing.
Witty: "There is a fear of Zionism that is equally irrational to the exageration of Zionism."
What are you trying to say? Whatever it's initial intent, Zionism is a colonial movement. To Palestinians, dispossession has been its effect. Are you saying that they are exaggerating this impact? Or are you suggesting that they should somehow appreciate and respect that fear that led to their land being stolen and their families locked up in open-air prisons?
Phil does not live in Israel, or in Europe, or in Arab countries, in which Jews (as Jews) are assaulted for being Jews.
Its much less in Europe than it was a generation ago.
Among Hamas, there is strong anti-semitism, even if its phrased as "Jews DID", rather than "Jews ARE".
Hitler phrased things "Jews did" and extended that to "Jews are".
Both are innaccurate generalizations.
Walt and Mearsheimer do similarly. In describing the Israel Lobby as what Jews did, in the name of Jews, for the power of Jews, they invested in an anti-semitic logic, whether they personally were anti-semitic or not.
In their article they were NOT careful to distinguish that logic from the hateful, to clearly LIMIT the scope of their assertions.
Polemic is what caused that imprecision, among scholars that are periodically extremely concise, and earned their credentials on the basis of their precision.
an exchange between bill moyers and abe foxman…adl ss division commander.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/blog/2009/01/exchange_between_bill_moyers_a.html
Mr. Moyers,
In less than a thousand words, you managed to fit into your January 9 commentary: (1) moral equivalency between Hamas, a radical Islamic terrorist group whose anti-Semitic charter cites the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East and perhaps America’s greatest ally in the world; (2) historical revisionism, asserting that Canaanites were Arabs; (3) anti-Semitism, declaring that Jews are “genetically coded” for violence; (4) ignorance of the terrorist threat against Israel, claiming that checkpoints, the security fence, and the Gaza operation are tactics of humiliation rather than counter-terrorism; and (5) promotion of an individual, the Norwegian doctor in Gaza, who has publicly expressed support for the September 11 attacks.
I have seen and read serious critiques of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, and I have disagreed with many of them. Your commentary, however, is different, consisting mostly of intellectually and morally faulty claims that do a great disservice to the PBS audience. It invites not disagreement, but rebuke.
On one point you are correct – “America has officially chosen sides.” And rightly so. Fortunately for our nation, very few of our citizens engage in the same moral equivalency, racism, historical revisionism, and indifference to terrorism as you. If the reverse held, it would not be a country that any decent person would want to live in.
Sincerely,
Abraham H. Foxman
National Director
Anti-Defamation League
In response, Bill Moyers sent Mr. Foxman the following message:
Dear Mr. Foxman:
You made several errors in your letter to me of January 13 and I am writing to correct them.
First, to call someone a racist for lamenting the slaughter of civilians by the Israeli military offensive in Gaza is a slur unworthy of the tragedy unfolding there. Your resort to such a tactic is reprehensible.
Earlier this week it was widely reported that the International Red Cross “was so outraged it broke its usual silence over an attack in which the Israeli army herded a Palestinian family into a building and then shelled it, killing 30 people and leaving the surviving children clinging to the bodies of their dead mothers. The army prevented rescuers from reaching the survivors for four days.”
When American troops committed a similar atrocity in Vietnam, it was called My Lai and Lt. Calley went to prison for it. As the publisher of a large newspaper at the time, I instructed our editorial staff to cover the atrocity fully because Americans should know what our military was doing in our name and with our funding. To say “my country right or wrong” is like saying “my mother drunk or sober.” Patriots owe their country more than that, whether their government and their taxes are supporting atrocities in Vietnam, Iraq, or, in this case, Gaza.
Contrary to your claim, I made no reference whatsoever to “moral equivalency” between Hamas and Israel. That is an old canard often resorted to by propagandists trying to divert attention from facts on the ground, and, it, too, is unworthy of the slaughter in Gaza. Contrary to imputing “moral equivalency” between Hamas and Israel, I said that “Hamas would like to see every Jew in Israel dead.” I said that “a radical stream of Islam now seeks to eliminate Israel from the face of the earth.” And I described the new spate of anti-Semitism across the continent of Europe. I am curious as to why you ignored remarks which clearly counter the notion of “moral equivalency.”
And although I specifically referred to “the rockets from Hamas” falling on Israel and said that “every nation has the right to defend itself, and Israel is no exception,” you nonetheless accuse me of “ignorance of the terrorist threat against Israel.” Once again, you are quite selective in your reading of my essay.
Your claim that “the checkpoints, the security fence and the Gaza operation” [I used the more accurate “onslaught”] are not humiliating of the Palestinians is lamentable. I did not claim that these were, as you write, “tactics of humiliation rather [emphasis mine] than counter-terrorism,” but perhaps it is overly simplistic to think they are one and not the other, when they are both. Also lamentable is your description of my “promotion” of the Norwegian doctor in Gaza when in fact I was simply quoting what he told CBS News: “It’s like Dante’s Inferno. They are bombing one and a half million people in a cage.” The whole world has been able to see for itself what he was talking about, and as one major news organization after another has been reporting, is reeling from the sight.
And, to your claim that I was “declaring Jews are ‘genetically coded’ for violence,” you are mistaken. My comment – obviously not sufficiently precise – was not directed at a specific people but to the fact that the human race has violence in its DNA, as the biblical stories so strongly affirm. I also had in mind the relationship between all the descendents of Abraham who love the same biblical land and come to such grief over it.
From my days in President Johnson’s White House forward, I have defended Israel’s right to defend itself, and still do. But sometimes an honest critic is a government’s best friend, and I am appalled by Israel’s devastation of innocent civilians in this battle, all the more so because, as I said in my column, it is exactly what Hamas wanted to happen. To be so indifferent to that suffering is, sadly, to be as blind in Gaza as Samson.
Sincerely,
Bill Moyers
rick is right.
Re: "The essence of Zionism was a justifiable Jewish paranoia."
True, but missing this: If one looks closely at the history of Jewish-
Gentile relations throughout history, beginning with ancient Egypt, passing through Bolshevik times and Weimar cum Hitler times, not excluding the official Court Jew period in the Middle Ages, etc. part of the essence of Zionism is never looking really close at the role
of the Jews played by their own choice as a nation within nations and apart from the latter. Peasants, serfs, the masses as it were,
are never motivated only by rabid anti-semitism, listed as a deus ex machina disease in the Jewish DSM-1 & each edition thereafter. Nothing in the universe is caused by a sole factor, but by factor interaction or not. The apple, the tree, need gravity. This is what's missing from the official Jewish Zionist narrative, bleated loudly by agended, corrupt and/or naive individuals and agencies. Who started it? Well, my point is that neither rabid Zionism nor rabid Anti-Semitism dance alone. However, you may
recall the old testament has been the guiding word. Who was it written by? Actually it was pretty honest. A careful reading will show that what is going on in Gaza is bible pure, with much precedent.
Hitler had an antidote for the bible; you could even say he decided
to take up arms against G-D's word, as given to us by Hebrew writers–irony in that Hitler responded, "consider the source."
No, I don't want to gas Jews again. But average people need a direct insult or injury to take up arms; not so intellectuals or politicians, or MSM mavens.
In the beginning was the Word. Who's? We need a PETA for
the masses of all stripes around the world. Actually, not due to
difference in brain power, but look to who has the money/influence–they can buy brain power, anything at all, and they do. The influence is the network, exactly what the masses never have–until they revolt as one, pour over the dykes of
the "civilized" world.
I am a Gazan. No, I am a Gazan, etc
Is this not what any Jew would want for them?
So what do they do?
Niemoller–names replaced as needed to reflect current era.
Among Hamas, there is strong anti-semitism, even if its phrased as "Jews DID", rather than "Jews ARE".
The question Richard is, is it very wise to put Hamas antagonism simply into the box of antisemitism?
Have you ever tried to understand what lines of thought that produces? Must necessarily trigger?
MM, I left you a note in the "boy cries …" thread. AND I MUST shut down this laptop now!
Yes, yes, we know that Jews are the only victims worthy of that title, and we know that antisemitism is "the oldest hatred" (providing you ignore misogyny, which is 3000 years older), and we know that Israel is perfectly entitled to destroy Palestinians until the death toll reaches 6 million, etc., etc.
But instead of studying merely "the Russian pogroms, [and] the Holocaust," he might have been better off had he also studied the remarkable achievements of European Jews, from the early Middle Ages to the late 19th century.
You know, as an American who believes in Israel's fundamental right to exist and is fairly philo-semitic I still don't know that anything bothers me more than this kind of blatant insulting of us that Goldberg just revels in. After all what is he saying but that despite America's history of welcoming jews like no other country ever all of us non-jewish Americans are still nothing but nascent, slavering mass-murderers, just one step away from voting for the ovens.
So okay, my thinking at least goes, flee for Israel if you want to indulge your self-obsessed and self-regarding fantasy that you're some cosmically important and brave little boy being hunted by pirates. And yet … here he comes back, openly cawing his insult, right from our shores, in as many forums as he can find. Presumably without bodyguards and armor-plated convoys and etc. Standing up there, bold as brass on stage after stage, or shouting out this insult on page after page, not from the safety of across the sea but smack dab in the middle of the belly of this supposed beast. (Whose citizenship and benefits therefrom, as I understand it, he still carefully keeps.)
Of course there's always going to be individual nut cases and extremists, but what I'm stuck on is what the larger mechanics are at work here: I.e., how is it that that portion of the jewish community that doesn't loudly repudiate this doesn't understand the insult? And indeed it sadly seems to me that Goldberg and people like him are not at all rejected by even the most mainstream jewish organizations.
Or is it that the insult is understood and we are just meant to take it as gentiles due to some collective guilt on our part over the Holocaust and the past anti-semitism of other gentiles? (All the while of course never imputing any collective guilt onto the jews for what, say, any other jewish group or Israel has done historically.)
I don't know, and maybe it's neither of the above and is utterly non-insulting and I'm missing something. I sure hope so. And I'm sure not calling for the typical reflexive anti-jewish polemics you hear. I'd really just like to hear from somebody with some experience in or with the jewish community as to how the jewish community processes this, hopefully indeed from some American or even foreign jewish folks who might have some insight into the issue.
citizen: "If one looks closely at the history of Jewish-Gentile relations throughout history, beginning with ancient Egypt, passing through Bolshevik times and Weimar cum Hitler times, not excluding the official Court Jew period in the Middle Ages, etc. part of the essence of Zionism is never looking really close at the role of the Jews played by their own choice as a nation within nations and apart from the latter. Peasants, serfs, the masses as it were, are never motivated only by rabid anti-semitism"
–
Exactly. Zionists cherry pick historical acts or periods of anti-semitism, totally ignore the context as outlined by citizen above, and point to those episodes as incontrovertible proof that gentiles have always been out to get the Jews.
Historical and contemporary organized Jewish murder and malfeasance can just as easily be cherry picked as incontrovertible proof that Jews have always been out to get the gentiles.
The results, at best, should be a wash. But contemporary Western conventional wisdom (with Zionist prompting) has overwhelming internalized and propagated the Zionist narrative, while it completely ignores, ridicules, dismisses, or marginalizes the counter-narrative. In Germany, it has even made the counter-narrative illegal.
Until a balance has been attained between the two narratives, the West will continue to support Zionist murder and aggression. It will have no other choice.
Those who oppose the counter narrative as racist anti-semitism are actually getting in the way of the solution to the problem. Perhaps deep down, some on the left don't really want the problem solved at all in order to maintain the credibility of their own "victim" narrative and preserve its potential for material gain. The Zionists have certainly leveraged their own victim narrative to the financial hilt and maximized its profit.
"Peasants, serfs, the masses as it were, are never motivated only by rabid anti-semitism."
Someone just posted an interesting historical artifact on the Boy Cries Wolf thread.
It describes Russian perceptions of Jewish behavior during the period when society was collapsing prior to the revolution.
"The question Richard is, is it very wise to put Hamas antagonism simply into the box of antisemitism? "
Its not.
Is that what Goldberg did? A single line out of context, nearly certainly an important element of a truth.
"Zionism" with its MANY strains is defined here as "racism", but Hamas with its few authoritative official documents cannot be described so?
I think there are some in Hamas that accept Jews as Jewish assimilated individuals, some that accept Jews in distinct communities, and some that accept "Israel as fact" conditionally.
I don't think there are many that regard the Jewish people as a "permanent" nation deserving self-governance and in Israel.
Alison Weir on Jeffrey Goldberg:
Is TV "Pundit" Jeffrey Goldberg actually Israeli Military Officer?
D.: "Someone just posted an interesting historical artifact on the Boy Cries Wolf thread. It describes Russian perceptions of Jewish behavior during the period when society was collapsing prior to the revolution."
D., were you perhaps referring to this, apparently culled from the pages of a 1907 edition of National Geographic and posted on the internet to explain the atmosphere in the lead up to the Russian revolution?
"Every [terrorist] deed of that kind is done by Jews, and the massacres that have shocked the universe, and occurred so frequently that the name “pogrom” was invented to describe them, were organized and managed by the exasperated police authorities in retaliation for crimes committed by Jewish revolutionists."
http://www.marcusalexanderbischoff.us/wiki/index.php/Russian%20Revolution%2C%20National%20Geographic%20May%201907
—
Now how many people are aware of that origin of the word "pogroms"? In fact, how many contemporary Jews, for that matter? Very few Western gentiles, and very few Western Jews — because they've all been indoctrinated by Zionists and anti-Christian "secular" left-liberals and materialists (Judeophiles all) who want the world to believe that Orthodox Russia was irrationally anti-semitic as a result of its Christian identity and that Christianity is inherently bigoted and a lousy basis for any society. (Better to have a society based on Zionism and "secular" materialism.)
So it turns out the truth about "pogroms" is that they were something very different from the line in the Official Narrative.
What else is the Western Establishment lying about? I can assure you, a lot.
Since Citizen's post was so good, here's a repeat of a link that John-L-D posted elsewhere which illustrates his point probably more literally than he intended–
Gaza Campaign is War Against Amalek, Says Chief Rabbi of Safed
Citizen: "A careful reading will show that what is going on in Gaza is bible pure, with much precedent."
(I'm sorry, it was MRW who posted the Amalek link.)
Zionism was largely a defensive mechanism–or offensive if you will–against Jewish assimilation in Germany, meaning intermarriage with the Christian majority and abandonment of synagogue membership
as far as progeny produced were concerned.
We see America as a threat because it is not an independent jewish state. It has a christian majority and promotes christian culture.