From Richard Witty to Clark University President John Bassett this morning :
Dear Mr Bassett,
I'm writing to you to request that you review the decision to cancel the
Norman Finkelstein lecture at Clark scheduled for April 21.
While I disagree strongly with many of Mr. Finkelstein's published and
oral statements, his positions do animate a large portion of the dissent
on issues relating to Israel/Palestine.
I recently attended a lecture that he presented at Mt Holyoke College in
South Hadley, in which there was no violence or prospect of violence. I
can't say that he was respectful to the other party to the debate (a
liberal pro-peace faculty member at Smith College). In debate, his
arguments and conclusions can be rebutted.
In some ways the appearance of censorship would enhance his reputation
and fuel angers more than allowing him to speak.
Thanks for your attention.
Sincerely,
Richard Witty
From Bassett to Witty:
Richard, thank you for your thoughtful comments.
There is no question
that Clark University stands for full freedom of inquiry in the pursuit
of truth and of the good. My decision in this case was based solely on
the unfortunate timing of the proposed talk. I have not banned Norman
Finkelstein from ever speaking on campus. I have asked for some campus
reflection on the issues raised by the controversy, that is what if any
boundaries govern invitations to speakers on campus and what if any
scheduling concerns are legitimate.
There is no question that this campus, like all others, needs to hear
voices on the Israeli-Palestinian tensions that reflect Palestinian
perspectives. What especially exaggerates emotions on this topic are the
combined facts that Palestinians have suffered and are suffering many
abuses and that anti-Semitism is increasing in America. Therefore
reactions to speakers being invited and apparent censorship are stronger
than they otherwise would be.
Clark's Difficult Dialogues series next year is focusing on Israel and
Palestine. We need to be good listeners to many perspectives. Perhaps
one of those will be Norman Finkelstein's.
John Bassett
I give the Clark president the benefit of the doubt.
Bassett: "What especially exaggerates emotions on this topic are the combined facts that Palestinians have suffered and are suffering many abuses and that anti-Semitism is increasing in America."
What does one have to do with the other? Turns out, a lot, because most Jews have deliberately conflated Jewish ethnicity with Zionism, so they could play the anti-Semite card on the Zionist issue, which Basset quickly employs or falls into.
Also, kudos to Witty, even if his letter was lukewarm and half-hearted. It had the ring of "Well, we both know Finkelstein is a rat, but he's got some fans who are inflamed when he's censored, which may do more harm than good to the Zionist project." If Witty was really an anti-Zionist, it would have been a brilliant ploy. Unfortunately…
I think they need to add another topic to the lecture series:
Is anti-Semitism increasing in America?
Yeah, nothing like lumping together as excuses "the combined facts" that Palestinians have suffered and are suffering many abuses and that anti-Semitism is increasing in America.
The important issue is missing.
Finkelstein has attacked the Holocaust Industry effectively for extortion and embezzlement. Some of the attendees at the Strassler Event are implicated by Finkelstein's research.
It is hardly surprising that they would object to Finkelstein's presence the day of the Holocaust conference.
The Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University is an organ of Zionist Hasbarah and cannot be taken seriously as an academic institute:
Clark is receiving a lot of contributions from wealthy Jews because of the Strassler Center. Obviously the Clark's president is obeying their wishes and possibly violating certain corporate anti-discrimination regulations. If the tax code were enforced on Jews as it is enforced on non-Jews, Clark's status of 501(c)(3) rules would be in jeopardy.
There is an inability to differentiate between being offended and anti-semitism in the Jewish community. Many Jews feel offended when negative and critical remarks are made against Israel. Rather than seeing it for what it is, a criticism that they take a personal offense to, they jump immediately to calling the critic an anti-semite. Example: Walt and Wersheimer. This failure to distinguish between the two dilutes real anti-semitism by making the anti-semitic charge so prevalent.
And so would tax-exempt donations to NGOs funding the settlements.
"and that anti-Semitism is increasing in America."
I wouldn't worry. NIMBYism will make it just about impossible to locate the ghettoes. And besides, there's no areas zoned "Jewish".
"and that anti-Semitism is increasing in America."
No, Bassett, that was the outrage over executive bonuses. Try not to get mixed up.
Q: has anyone here encountered anti-Semitism? I lived in the deep south for many years and never came across it ONCE. Although I'm sure it exists, all evidence suggests it is EXTREMELY rare.
@ rycart,
Rare, except of course, for Jewish Zionist hasbara painting swastikas around town to drum up support for Jewish Zionism.
Actually..Phillip Weiss needs to do a piece immediately on the swastika.
Or maybe, I'll write it.
The point is, this symbol seems to be changing its meaning. It used to be scrawled by hoodlums on Jewish businesses, places of worship, etc to say "We are Nazis. We will kill you Jews."
But today, i suspect the symbol is used quite differently, when applied to these same Jewish institutions. The meaning now is "You JEWS are Nazis. We are sickened by your Nazi behavior!"
Once, the swastika was used to intimidate Jews. Today, I think it is largely used to shame Jews, which to me, is very different.
I get it. That means the Zionist hasbara Jews painting the swastikas on the synagogues in the dead of night are the REAL self-haters. It must be a sub-conscious or split personality disorder, striking out in resentment at their Zionist selves.
Next time you see a Zionist walking down the sidewalk with red spray paint on his hand, you'll know what he's been up to, even if he doesn't. "Hmm, how'd that get there?" he asks himself every morning after.
When I think of hasbara Jews, I always think of Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove, and how he couldn't control his homicidal hand, even against himself.
Well, it can't be seriously doubted that the Star OF David has taken on new meaning too.
The Menorah is left off the hook. I'd say, like the Cross, but that really has not been left off the hook…same with the scimitar moon.
About the only filmmaker who still venerates the Cross is Mel Gibson, although even Clint Eastwood seems to be warming lately. (He had sacrificial Christian imagery going at the end of Gran Torino.)
Pretty much the rest of Hollywood has been ridiculing the Cross or portraying it menacingly for decades.
What comes around, goes around.
"There is no question that this campus, like all others, needs to hear voices on the Israeli-Palestinian tensions that reflect Palestinian perspectives." This guys drunk the Kool-Aid. What about American, liberal, Jewish perspectives, like Finkelstein's, that are offended by Gaza and the Neocons, but from American, liberal or Jewish [as opposed to Palestinian] perspectives. He's drunk the Kool-Aid of "you're either with us or you're against us." And we know who the us is. He's drunk the Kool-Aid of smearing those who don't toe the Neocon party line as Anti-Semitic, Un-American, etc. It's like in the Old South when one said a word in disagreement with the racist cant, you'd hear, "Oh, so you're a N***** lover." Now it's, "let's hear from the Palestinian perspective." A college president knows he's using, or passing on, smears, so it's all the worse.
Interesting that a Clark U president has replaced a small town MIssissippi sheriff of the early 60s
as the defender of racism. One of these days a movie will come out where the evil car is not sporting a stars and bars, but a different license plate–There's lots of alternatives to Hollywood now…
"About the only filmmaker who still venerates the Cross is Mel Gibson,"
Of coss! And I thought it was just a torture-porn movie with religio-erotic overtones and traditional anti-Semitic imagery? How could I be so stupid? It was "veneration for the Cross"
I guess you gotta be Gentile to see it.
"What comes around, goes around."
Posted by: Ed
When Ed's Army, "the rest of us", rise up and wreak vengeance on those who reject Christ! Hey, wait a fuckin second here, Eddila, that sounds like ME you're talking about! And a lotta people I know. They're called Jews, and they categorically reject Christ, and have no respect for the cross. I see a potential for conflict here.
When "the rest of us", Ed's Army, rises up. I won't bate my breath.
rykart, it's pretty hard to answer the anti-semitism question until you define an "incident of anti-Semitism".
People are free to dislike me, and they are free to talk about it, and they are free to use whatever avenue they think might be effective in hurting me, verbally (except threats and that).
If they want to put down the things they don't like about me to my Jewishness, or my Jewiness, I can't stop them. Oy, It breaks my heart they would do such a thing, but is that, for instance, anti-semitism? It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
Which begs the question (Actually, it begs for the question, but I might as well use it like everyone else does)is "anti-Semitism" even a relevant context to whatever reaction towards or against Jews is taking place in the US now? I'm not sure it is.
i grew up in the south and i never saw an instance nor a hint of a phrase of anti-semitism. there were jewish families woven into the elite structure of society and i didn't realize which were jews until i was adult.
the only thing that comes close is in recent years my contemporaries who previously never noticed who was jewish now complain under their breath about encounters with jewish agressiveness. i think this is a form of manners that come from the east coast and did not exist in my home town. i see this agressiveness as stemming from a feeling that they do not belong to the general society and don't feel called on to fit in and get along. this is annoying but hardly gives rise to hatred and desire for violence. i think we need to get a perspective on what anti-semitism is , i think it should be moved out of the category of being annoyed by people
mooser asks
is "anti-Semitism" even a relevant context to whatever reaction towards or against Jews is taking place in the US now?
It seems to me the burden of proof for the claim of anti-semitism lies with the one making the claim.
Anti-Semitism is the ivory-billed woodpecker of ethnic hatred. There have been a few, highly questionable sightings but until conclusive evidence emerges, we should assume real anti-semitism has gone extict–a victim of habitat loss.
extinct. sorry.
(This post is powered by Sun Microsystems)
Anti-semitism, to the marginal extent that it can even be said to exist, is irrelevant. Those tedious compulsive liars who insist otherwise at every opportunity are simply racists and should be denounced as such.
I salute Richard Witty for sending this letter to the Clark president, and for having the courage to continue being an important part of Mondoweiss.
I would also like to know on what evidence the Clark president says anti-Semitism is increasing in America. James North
Thanks James.
The letter from the Clark president was written to me. I showed it to Phil. Phil asked if he could post it. I said ok (but without asking the president of Clark. I think I may have violated his confidence in that.)
There is increased verbal anti-semitism expressed in the range of topics that are now considered somehow not anti-semitic. Like the statements that Ashkenazi Jews are really entirely Khazars, with no blood or cultural linkage beyond that single conversion. Or, that "Jews control the media".
The significance of each is that they are exagerations. Exagerations from suspicions to some "knowledge", and exagerations of cases to "all".
The same creeping generalization applies to the use of the term "the Israel Lobby".
The dangers are inherent in the terms, the leaning beyond a theoretical danger is in the usage. And, the firming to the point of anti-semitism is in the raging condemnation (demonization) of those that even point out that there are multiple simultaneous truths.
Some Jews express on that spectrum, some far on that spectrum. Some "universalists" express on that spectrum. Some "anti"-Jews express on that spectrum.
"About the only filmmaker who still venerates the Cross is Mel Gibson,"
Of coss! And I thought it was just a torture-porn movie with religio-erotic overtones and traditional anti-Semitic imagery? How could I be so stupid? It was "veneration for the Cross"
I guess you gotta be Gentile to see it.
***
It seems that way. I thought the organized Jewish community had gone collectively insane over that movie. When I finally saw it I was stunned–I thought it was one of the best movies I had seen in years (and I'm not a Christian). I couldn't figure out how it was supposed to be anti-semitic.
@Peters
I also live in the South, and you are right. Paul Gottfried has also commented that the "anti-semitic South" is a fiction made up by the descendents of 2nd wave Eastern European Jewish immigrants, whose culture and worldview was very different from the largely integrated Jews already in the country.
Something in the neighborhood of 8,000 Jews fought in the Confederacy. Jews were very integrated in the South, did not see themselves as outsiders, and were generally socially conservative and hostile to Zionism or any kind of radicalism. After the founding of Israel, the mostly Eastern-European Zionist Jews eventually took over all the major Jewish organizations.
What actual evidence is there that anti-Semitism has increased?
And come on! The Ashkenazi Khazar thing is not anti-Semitism. The only reason that story has any purchase at all is that in some people's minds it negates Zionist claims to ancestral connections to Palestine.
" I couldn't figure out how it was supposed to be anti-semitic."
I didn't see it – no desire to – but I understand there was a strong underlying "Jews killed Christ" thread there. It would not be surprising to find signs of anti-Semitism in that film since Mel Gibson is a raging anti-Semite religious fanatic.
[Responding to Richard Witty]
Modern Identity Creates Ancient Origins
In Initial Comments: Saviors and Survivors I point out:
The process by which a mixed group of Turko-Slav, Slavo-Turkic, Armenoid, Balkan, Germanic, and Celtic populations of Eastern Europe and Southern Russia came to view themselves as originating in historic Palestine without a shred of evidence and with all available data indicating local autochthonous origins is not unique to ethnic Ashkenazim and is in fact one of the building blocks of the modern world.
Just as Sudanese history and politics is obscured by modern myths of Arab invasion, tejecting the facts of Yiddish origins makes it impossible to understand either the development of modern Jewry or the transition from the ancient to the Medieval Christian and Islamic worlds.
The effort of Jewish racists to enforce a false view of Jewish ancestry is also comparable to the German Nazi attempt to create a hegemonic discourse on German or Aryan origins. We can better understand the German Nazi mentality by studying the modern Jewish politics of Jewish origins.
It is almost incidental that the facts support the contention that Zionist colonizers in Palestine are a criminal conglomeration of racist murderous genocidal invaders, interlopers, and thieves that the human race has a categorical imperative to hate and despise unequivocally.
[Responding to Richard Witty]
Modern Identity Creates Ancient Origins
In Initial Comments: Saviors and Survivors I point out:
The process by which a mixed group of Turko-Slav, Slavo-Turkic, Armenoid, Balkan, Germanic, and Celtic populations of Eastern Europe and Southern Russia came to view themselves as originating in historic Palestine without a shred of evidence and with all available data indicating local autochthonous origins is not unique to ethnic Ashkenazim and is in fact one of the building blocks of the modern world.
Just as Sudanese history and politics is obscured by modern myths of Arab invasion, tejecting the facts of Yiddish origins makes it impossible to understand either the development of modern Jewry or the transition from the ancient to the Medieval Christian and Islamic worlds.
The effort of Jewish racists to enforce a false view of Jewish ancestry is also comparable to the German Nazi attempt to create a hegemonic discourse on German or Aryan origins. We can better understand the German Nazi mentality by studying the modern Jewish politics of Jewish origins.
While the facts of the formation of Yiddish ethnicity are helpful in the struggle against the Israel Lobby because they facilitate the correct characterization of Zionist colonizers in Palestine as a despicable criminal conglomeration of racist murderous genocidal invaders, interlopers, and thieves, an accurate description of origins and myths of origins are most important as a key element of good and honest historiography.
Modern Identity Creates Ancient Origins
In Initial Comments: Saviors and Survivors I point out:
The process by which a mixed group of Turko-Slav, Slavo-Turkic, Armenoid, Balkan, Germanic, and Celtic populations of Eastern Europe and Southern Russia came to view themselves as originating in historic Palestine without a shred of evidence and with all available data indicating local autochthonous origins is not unique to ethnic Ashkenazim and is in fact one of the building blocks of the modern world.
Just as Sudanese history and politics is obscured by modern myths of Arab invasion, tejecting the facts of Yiddish origins makes it impossible to understand either the development of modern Jewry or the transition from the ancient to the Medieval Christian and Islamic worlds.
The effort of Jewish racists to enforce a false view of Jewish ancestry is also comparable to the German Nazi attempt to create a hegemonic discourse on German or Aryan origins. We can better understand the German Nazi mentality by studying the modern Jewish politics of Jewish origins.
While the facts of the formation of Yiddish ethnicity are helpful in the struggle against the Israel Lobby because they facilitate the correct characterization of Zionist colonizers in Palestine as a despicable criminal conglomeration of racist murderous genocidal invaders, interlopers, and thieves, an accurate description of origins and myths of origins are most important as a key element of good and honest historiography.
Is anti-Semitism increasing in America?
For whatever reason the pre-WWII interdisciplinary research in antisemitism wasn't continued post WWII. Polls measuring antisemitism are mostly disconnected from the different relevant sciences, and they usually are conducted to accompany specific events, anniversaries, special waves of antisemitic discourse (German: Schmierwelle, seems to be only used for antisemitic campaigns) and mostly aren't compatible. …
Measured are socio-psychological attitudes. There are three basic components:
cognitive = stereotypes
affective = negative feelings towards Jewish people
connotative = readiness to discriminate
For whatever reason usually only the cognitive component are studied. Which makes no sense at all.
I am really wondering how easily tricked people are by feeling numbers always allude to something real. … There is a huge disconnect in this field between research and more or less flattened social sciences for polls. ADL definitively stand out in seemingly conducting polls for purely political ends, to get the info into the press: perception management. I would advice anyone to always take a close look at the poll's design. Start with ADL they are really interesting, and not very transparent.
More importantly it makes no sense to disconnect polls from the sciences and yes obviously it needs a interdisciplinary approach.
The peculiar statement shows their is a huge information gap in this respect. What seems connected here are two main points hammered into American heads.
a) Europe is antisemitic while the States aren't.
b) Europe is critical of Israel's policies towards the Palestinians.
Out comes the sentence that puzzles some above.
What complicates the problem is that e.g. France had a really strong antisemitic sentiment during the time of the Dreyfuss affair, but French Jews were relatively save nevertheless. Minorities can turn tides. It's really a complex matter.
Shirin,
Your community's exageration of the significance of the Khazar incident, is to conclude that there is NO historical connection of the community to the land, and that is entirely false.
So rather than 99% of the Jewish people having some blood relation to a former Jewish nation in Israel, only 98.4% do (the numbers are not authoritative).
How significant is that scale? NILL.
So rather than 99% of the Jewish people having some blood relation to a former Jewish nation in Israel, only 98.4% do
If I were you, I wouldn't feel comfortable with that argument.
If you allow me to be slightly antisemitic for a moment. Would you suggest that these blood relations over generations to an earlier inhabited area are only a right to the specific soil, if the community remains racially pure, let's say up to a 98,4% degree?
Do you suggest this could be a basic general law. How? Is this a right that isn't time-barred?
And what specific studies are you relying on concerning the 98,4%? How do you explain the multitude of different complexions in the Jewish community based on this racial purity? Would Jewish ancestors give you a partial right to the land? Or is the racial/religious purity important?
Give it up Witty.
The Classical authorities indicated that practically all the people practicing some form of Judaism in Antioch in Syria were of convert descent.
I have looked for evidence of Arabic or Aramaic speakers migrating into E. Europe. It simply does not exist. In fact, the migrations associated with Semitic-speaking Judaism almost never go into European territories. (There is a small migration into Provence in the the 12th and 13th century probably because of close sea trade ties between France and Egypt.)
If I get a chance, I will add more detail to Modern Identity Creates Ancient Origins.
You can find pointers to various online discussions at Khazaria.
Whenever I read the papers and analyze the statistics, it still seems consistent with original undergraduate findings.
There is no Jewish founder population. There is a founder Jewish trade network which exchanges population among communities of diverse ethnic origins, but the largest contributing population in this network probably had its origins in various ethnic and subethnic groups living around the Black Sea. (See The Origins of Modern Jewry and the comments.
Matrilineality does not fully take hold until some time after the 13th century. Before that time period non-Jewish women are accepted into the community. (Sefer Hasidim indicates such a practice.) The children of non-Jewish slave women are incorporated into the community. A Slavo-Turko population of former slaves is accepted is incorporated into the community to fill necessary jobs in the Jewish trade network in Eastern Europe and Southern Russia.
My impression from going through the texts of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages indicates this development, which is quite similar to Mamdani's description of the Funj Sultanate which existed in the Sudan only 400-700 years later. The social processes seem quite similar.
As for Palestinian Judean origins, Palestinian colloquial Arabic contains calques of Mishnaic Hebrew and Talmudic Aramaic.
Palestinians unlike ethnic Ashkenazim preserved Judean festivals that did not make it into the Talmud.
To summarize:
There was no Jewish kingdom in Palestine. There was a Judean kingdom, and the Judeans of Palestine definitely became the ancestors of modern Palestinians not of modern ethnic Ashkenazim, who — I must reiterate — are racist murderous genocidal invaders interlopers and thieves in Stolen and Occupied Palestine.
Richard Witty is a Jewish Nazi with exactly the same mentality as German Nazis, for he believes as an ethnic Ashkenazi that Jews have the right to plunder and to kill non-Jews with impunity just as true believing German Nazis believed that Aryans had the right to plunder and to kill non-Aryans with impunity.
Until Witty renounces his ethnic Ashkenazi Nazism and demands the abolition of the Zionist (ethnic Ashkenazi Nazi) State as well as the eradication of Zionism (ethnic Ashkenazi Nazism), he must be treated as we would treat a German Nazi apologist regularly posting in this forum.
In re: The Passion of the Christ
The controversy did not arise from anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish content but from the desire of Foxman et al. to control discourse over Greco-Roman Palestine: Earlier ADL/Foxman Debacle.
BTW, the Talmud does indeed ascribe credit for the execution of Jesus to the highest authorities of Judaism in Jesus' time period.
"Your community's exageration of the significance of the Khazar incident…"
"My community", Richard Witty? And what, pray tell, is my community? I am most interested to know this from someone who knows exactly nothing about me, including to what, if any, "community" I belong.
And for the record, I have not said what my view is of the significance or lack of significance might be to the Khazar thing, though if one were interested and read with even minimal care, one could get a hint from my use of the phrase "in some people's minds".
Richard Witty, kindly stop making convenient, self-serving assumptions about me, my associations, and what I think or believe.
It has always seemed to me that Christians should be thankful to whomever it was who killed Christ, since if they had not done so, Christ would not have died for their sins, and their sins would still be on their own heads.
And by the way, Richard Witty, I noticed that you managed not to address my question, which was what actual evidence is there that anti-Semitism has increased in the United States. So, what actual evidence is there that anti-Semitism has increased?
We shouldn't ever forget that Pontius Pilate was the mediator (albeit not for justice, but for Roman best interest, just as Clinton was supposed to have been, for example, though he failed, likely because individual Roman power did not depend so much on any particular non-Roman lobby's money and PR control). And we shouldn't forget that Christ's dispute with the Jewish Establishment
was otherwise an internal Jewish affair–as it remained until Saul (St Paul) the salesman's enterprise (In the sense of Risky Business) light seen on the road to Damascus. Eichmann's chief concern was "getting ahead" in the time and place he found himself in, as I pointed out today on
another thread on this blog. And so, Saul? And the Jewish Establishment there and then? And Pontius Pilate there and then? And so, Arendt, the banality of evil. Evil is as evil does, boring usually, unless you like horror movies–or are on the bad end of it, usually delivered to you
personally by a bland member of the lower, implementing class, who's actually thinking about
how great he'll look in his wife's eyes when she gets a gander at what he just bought her, or their kids, something to cheer about at the local tea party.
I can't comment on the Passion Of Christ as I've never seen it. Can it be more malignant than
Leon Uris's Exodus? Or Jude Suess?
How about Lisa, She-Wolf Of The SS?
Whether or not the Askeknazi Jews were part of the DNA or whatever tribal, ethnic group
that lived in ancient Judea is of course a major leg in the stool that philosophically-morally
justifies the dispossession by the Big Powers of the Palestinians post WW1 & WW2 is. The DNA
of tested Jews and Palestinians are really close, even closer than the close DNA of all human
species.
Joachim Martillo shoots the most accurate arrow: "Until Witty renounces his ethnic Ashkenazi Nazism and demands the abolition of the Zionist (ethnic Ashkenazi Nazi) State as well as the eradication of Zionism (ethnic Ashkenazi Nazism), he must be treated as we would treat a German Nazi apologist regularly posting in this forum."
This is because, as he say, "The effort of Jewish racists to enforce a false view of Jewish ancestry is also comparable to the German Nazi attempt to create a hegemonic discourse on German or Aryan origins. We can better understand the German Nazi mentality by studying the modern Jewish politics of Jewish origins."
Any study of Hitler's Mein Kampf, and of the defense offered not only by Julius Streicher, but smarter defendants, like Frank, or low cogs like Eichmann tried later by three Zionist judges, reveals that we can better understand the Nazi mentality by looking at how it studied Jewish politics of Jewish origins, dating from the bibles, and Talmud, right up to then, and now current times.
Warm and folksy, Das Folk, whether German or Yiddish. It makes a difference, beer or Manishevitz (sic) wine?
And, yes, Witty, where's your proof that anti-semitism (trademark) has increased in the USA?
We see what happened in Gaza. Where's the pogroms happening in the USA? I see the Congress
is just seething with anti-Jew bile. I worry for the poor Jewish kid on the suburban street–are you somehow alluding to Madoff getting a bad deal for making a good "American" deal not only with goys but with his MOTS?
"It has always seemed to me that Christians should be thankful to whomever it was who killed Christ, since if they had not done so, Christ would not have died for their sins, and their sins would still be on their own heads."
Of course, and this is why most Christians have no idea what Jews are talking about when they accuse Christians of blaming Jews for killing Jesus. Jesus' death was the result of God's will, was foretold by the Christian interpretation of the Prophets, and all the major actors were simply fulfilling their preordained roles.
I was raised Christian, and fairly well-educated in Espicopal and Catholic doctrine, and the idea of an *individual* or *group* being responsible for Jesus' death is meaningless. In Christian doctrine, Jesus' death was a perfect sacrifice for the sins of all humanity, past, present, and future. In that sense, all human beings are *responsible* (and forgiven) for Jesus death. This is why Gibson filmed his own hands driving the nails in *The Passion*.
Still, David F., there have historically been, and still are today, plenty of Christians who revile "The Jews" for having killed Jesus.
Shirin, the only ones I know of are the Christian Identity White Supremacist types who think Jesus was Aryan and that Aryans are the true Israelites.
It's a pretty serious disservice to Christians to lump them in with the most demented fringe heretics. That's the same game David Duke or the "Islam is a religion of hate" crowd play.
But I did not lump all Christians within that group.
On the other hand, it is my understanding that for centuries European anti-Semitism had its basis in, or at least was fed bye the "Jews killed Jesus" nonsense. Is that not correct, and if so, what WAS the basis for centuries of European anti-Semitism?
Centuries ago – I forget now exactly when – there was an incident in Damascus in which European missionaries tried to spread the famous blood libel and other forms of anti-Semitism. It failed to catch on among the Damascenes, both Christian and Muslim.
Shirin, I wasn't attributing that blood-libel projection to you. I find it exasperating that Jewish leaders attack mainstream Christians–who are probably among the most philo-semitic groups anywhere–by projecting such nonsense onto them.
Understanding episodes of anti-semitism requires knowing the historical context. Speaking generally, though, economics or the perception of Jews as an exploitive minority was a far more common cause of anti-semitism than religious differences.
David F is correct. The Jews were the middle man, the privileged minions of the goy royalty at the expense of the common goys, who were basically treated by both as cash cows no different than
other natural resources to exploit–the goy royalty's selfishness, financed by the Jews, eventually always caused bellowing from the increasingly milked cash cows, at which point, the goy royalty
would blame the problem on the "demonic" Jews. Since the cash cows were purposefully kept ignorant and hardly any had ever met a goy royal person, but all had met that person's Jewish tax collectors (of the full range of milking, that is, both clear and disguised taxes), who were taking their piece of the rip-off, then forwarding the rest to the goy royalty, many intentionally kept ignorant common goys, rose up against the Jews; not dissimilar to ghetto USA blacks knowing only that their affliction came in the form of the slum landlord…
Marx parsed all this trajectory of goy-jew history long ago–the major fallacy in his vision
was a romantic notion of the world's workers–although actually he was not even that romantic
as compared to his dittoheads–he mainly wanted to get across how the real world operated
in terms of defining capital as a predator or vampire on sweaty actual labor value. A great contribution never countered to this day. The current USA bailout continues his truth, both as
to cause and who pays in the end.
The collective cognitive dissociation jews and other zionists apply each anniversary is the perfect example of how horrific mistreatment of fellow human beings can be allowed to happen. Most Germans in the World War II era were not rabid Nazis, but were regular folks who found it easier to survive by conforming to the dictator's will and pressure mechanisms rather than be the nail that stuck up only to be pounded down. Many thoughtful and more compassionate jews (i.e., less ideological or religiously fanatical) since israel's founding have no doubt squirmed each and every year as they celebrate – knowing full well the suffering of others their celebration embodies. If there is ever to be a genuine peace, it must start with the truth, and the truth of israel's founding is the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.