Today we had a family lunch for my mom’s 80th in Cape Cod, with 26 people and lobsters and corn, and I finally got into Israel/Palestine with my little brother. It felt good, and about time.
My brother was reclining on a couch next to the table, due to an ankle sprain in the hard fields of his tennis ladder, and I was a few seats away next to my California nephew. My nephew’s hip on the issue. He was telling me about a college friend of his who went over to Israel to learn Arabic and try to talk reconciliation to the Israelis. The friend wasn’t Jewish, and the Israelis weren’t interested in what he had to say. He felt discrimination on that score. Also, in the Arabic class whenever there was a problem, the teacher would go into Hebrew to explain it to the students. My nephew’s friend was upset about that, too. He left Israel early.
As my nephew talked, I tore apart my lobster and sucked the green guts, and reflected that my mother’s love of un-Kosher food is one reason I’ve ended up doing this website. As chauvinistic as my family was about Jewishness, they didn’t go as far as a lot of their friends. They thought some Jewish law was hooey. From the time I was little, in Baltimore, my mother bought vast quantities of oysters and crabs into the house. All un-Kosher. I don’t think Jewish law makes all that much of a distinction between eating oysters and marrying outside the faith. We flouted the law with gusto, and I think that gave me life lessons.
I said something to my nephew about the "occupied territories," and my brother piped up from the couch, "Jews don’t say the words, ‘occupied territories.’"
I didn’t take the bait. I smiled and said, "That’s right."
Then a little while later, he said, "Bro, as my number one Arab-loving family member, I need to ask you a question."
"Fire away," says I.
Stern
"OK, I’m listening to Howard Stern the other day [my brother's Maharishi] and he reads the list of Nobel Prizes won by Israelis and Jews, and it’s incredibly long, and then he reads the list of Nobels won by Arabs. In all the Arab countries, in their whole civilization. Well there were none. And that seems to me the argument that you just can’t answer. The Jews are responsible for so many incredible modern scientific advances. I mean, what do you say to that?"
I shrugged and smiled. "I bet it’s true."
My brother started laughing and said, "You’re like Gandhi. Look at you, you’ve gone all Gandhi."
I had to laugh, too, and then my nephew took up the gauntlet and told my brother about Edward Said’s book "Orientalism."
Said
I let the conversation drift away after that. But I hope I left my brother, who’s incredibly confident, with a shifting-sand-like feeling under his feet. Of course I could have countered what he said by talking about Jewish exceptionalism, and scientific superiority, and its pitfalls, but I let it go. It’s hard to win an argument with him.
The conversation–our first on the issue– was the topper of a really good weekend. I watch Jewish identity like a hawk, and my sense from the weekend is that the Palestinian counter-narrative is beginning to be normalized inside Jewish life. We have our camp, mostly among young Jews, and everyone else knows we’re here to stay. They abide us. I mean are they going to tell my nephew not to read Edward Said? No.
Also, my mother said rather generously that Sara Roy had talked the week before at the Church of the Messiah, and a close friend of hers had gone and been completely swayed by Roy, and then reported to my mother about Sara Roy’s Holocaust background, and about the ruckus created by some hasbara types in the Q-and-A. My mom conveyed to me that she knows that the whole conversation here is changing.
And while it’s true I tend to project my own experience, I feel more comfortable than ever talking about non-Zionism with family and friends. I’m out of the closet! And now that I’ve been to Hebron and Gaza, no one’s going to tell me I didn’t see human bondage.
My brother’s attitude does speak to something important in the Jewish community. A typical scene in Jewish life is when a Jew walks away from Palestine reeling with shock and turns to Jews in his delegation who’ve been there before, and says, What do the Israelis think? Or, Have American Jews seen this!!??
And one of the other Jews says, "They don’t know about it." And another says, "They don’t want to know about it."
I think the second answer is the wiser one. Most Jews just don’t want to know. All the information has been in their laps, they know it’s true at some level, but they’re turning away, turning away, turning away. My nephew and I are bringing the whoopie cushions.
This is my favorite thing about the Mondoweiss site. Phil’s experience is golden (and it takes me back to some of his journalism for New York magazine). As he says, ” And now that I’ve been to Hebron and Gaza, no one’s going to tell me I didn’t see human bondage.” He has the privilege of the Jewish experience, watching the rise of the culture power in supplanting the WASPs, yet, he has the wisdom of an exceptional individual who rises above the tribalism when called for in the context of I/P. The personal narrative is essential, Phil. Thanks for providing it.
I couldn’t agree more.
I agree. Now we need an American Gentile blog that is allowed to be as personal and for equally good reasons, showing the complexity of the blog owners opinion and how group loyalty and larger impact is equally discussed. Fat chance. It would be marginalized as soon as it starts, much more than Phil’s blog. And kicked to the curb as some new form of anti-semitism. Now, what about that? Keep your response in context since 98% of Americans are not Jews.
agreed. i see many similarities between phil and his nephew’s experiences and the experiences of many Muslims. Some are too happy to ignore the the attrocities of the various Muslim groups such as the Taliban.
Shafiq, about the Taliban— I saw that many religious minded Muslims supported them at some level or another and didn’t believe all the horror stories about them until after 9/11.
And many Pakistanis inside Pakistan still refused to believe the stuff until they spilled over the border and started wrecking havoc there.
It’s true what they say, seeing is believing.
The integration of the personal and the political narratives is powerful. It’s Phil’s strong suit. We all dread the potential negative consequences of speaking out. Phil is “modelling” for us how we can come out of the I/P closet and survive.
Think Globally, Act Locally–starting with your own family and friends, I guess!
Using the number of Nobel Prize Award winners as some kind of arbiter of overall ethnic intelligence is totally without merit. There are over 300 US Nobel Prize winners in history. There are no China-based Nobel Prize winners, and of the 4 Nobel Prize winners of Chinese birth, 3 were educated in the US. This certainly proves nothing about overall intelligence but it does point the way to the overwhelming European/Western nature of the awards process, which is not really surprising for a European based award.
And a correction to Stern/your brother. The list of Israeli prize winners is not that long. Eight people, and if you eliminate the 3 Peace Prize winners -Begin, Peres and Rabin, none of whom really deserved the prize (and yes, Arafat didn’t deserve it either) , you’ve got one recipient in Literature, 2 in Economics and 2 in Chemistry.
I’m going on memory here, so someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that in that list of five winners, all were brought up and educated in the West.
Great points, Tree. So the Israelis, in fact, have eight Nobels. The Irish have more than that. Is this a national contest, or a religious contest? How many Christians out of that 300? How many Muslims? Anyone know?
Mixing up nationalities with religions is stretching it.
Then there is the nominating process: another charged platform.
I’m glad you guys have already covered this, because it’s one of those Zionist arguments that drives me up the wall. The recipients of the Nobel prize have become more and more politically-decided as the years have gone on.
Off the top of my head I can come up with at least five folks of Muslim descent who have won a Nobel: Naguib Mahfouz (Egyptian), Muhammad Yunus (Pakistani), Shirin Ebadi (Iranian), Yasser Arafat (Palestinian) & Ahmed Zewail (Egyptian living in US). I’m sure there are a few more. I understand the whole idea is to show how inferior my people must be… but it’s so factually incorrect that it’s just silly.
The Arabs must be making great scientific leaps in secrecy! Why didn’t they tell us how they discovered the cure for Polio, the secrets of space flight, or the structure of DNA? Dang!
The observation on China is great. So the Chinese, who make up 1.3 billion people–more than 3x as many Chinese as Arabs–haven’t won a Nobel Prize. It shows how stupid the comparison is.
Maybe Stern should use some real “objective” measures of culture like : (1) number of meth dealers; (2) number of baseball players produced (will no one recognize the Dominican Republic’s superiority?); or (3) number of “Idol” contestants.
Angry Arab used to laugh how Thomas Friedman used to judge Arab culture by the number of Arabic language books translated into English. Essentially, another culture’s vitality depends on whether we recognize it. Because we’re objective right.
Memo to all: The Nobel Prizes are political. People campaign for them. How long was Elie Wiesel’s cause championed by his friends before he won the Peace Prize? Years.
And, although he’s been exposed as a giant liar, his reputation is undiminished, judging by how American education incorporates him in its training text books.
Chinese are SMART! Smarter than even Indians and Pakistanis.
Thank you for sharing this moment. You painted such a fine picture I felt as if I was there with you all. It is always lovely when a person shares part of themselves as you have here. As a result, silly as it sounds, your other work will take on a slightly different and, I daresay, a more accurate flavour.
The comment about human bondage jumped out at me as well. And, alas, your closing comments are all too true. It is as if the whole world, however, is under that same spell of voluntary blindness. It is not just the Jews, as you well know.
Once again, thank you.
It’s a very shallow statement. It’s like saying Henry Kissenger is a man of peace because he won the Nobel.
Typical imperialist/colonialist rhetoric. Anything to justify their criminality. And you’re right, obviously chauvinistic.
This is why Jean-Paul Sartre was so horrified when they tried to give him the award –
“There is nothing more consistent than a racist humanism, since the European has only been able to become a man through creating slaves and monsters.”
And also, there were two Egyptian winners, not including the Peace Prize winners El Baradei and Sadat. Naquib Mahfouz in Literature, and Ahmed Zewail in Chemistry. Zewail is an Egyptian-American.
I predict that in the future, Jews will win a smaller share of Nobel prizes. Call it the Gaza Effect. Also call it the transition from the world’s perception of Jewry as excelling despite being victims of the Holocaust to its perception of Jewish arrogance and expectation of privilege, and disregard for universal sensibilities.
LOL. Funny and I suspect probably a true prediction.
Just shows how political the Nobel is.
All this soul-searching, Phil. It never ends with you. Ironic that a man so concerned with the myth of jewish exceptionalism should spend so much time trying to prove to himself and to anyone out there reading his cries for help that he is exceptional.
Well, Phil you are not. Your struggles with your religion, your people, your family are banal and boring. You are actually an Everyman. An Everyman as self-absorbed and self-indulgent as those you demonize.
Read this post again, Phil. All of you Fans of Phil read this again. Not too much mention of the Palestinians, Gazans, Arabs, eh….It’s Phil, Phil, Phil. It’s as if Phil is merely using the Palestinians. Victimizing them.
This is what being a self-hating Jew means.
What’s it like being a self-hating human like yourself?
It is very rude of you to refuse to overlook his racism.
So Norm, if one has a problem with the Israeli treatment of Palestinians and they wish to do something about it – without being seen as a self hating Jew – what advice would you give them?
I don’t think Phil is trying to prove “he” is exceptional….but he is trying to prove some superiority trait of jews, as we notice, by using “himself” as an example of “a jew ahead of the curve “on the moral implications on Jews regarding Israel and I-P, and expanding on ‘if only ALL jews knew the truth ” the morally superior and now powerful jews would rise up and end it.
Here’s a test…goggle “Jewish accomplishments in medicine”…. all the hits are mainly articles “by Jews on Jew’s accomplishments”.
Then goggle “Irish accomplishments in medicine”…by contrast you will get half a million some
hits linked to hospitals or research centers or papers published in or what have you, in
Ireland,..None claiming Irish racial or national superority in medicine.
Then goggle “gentile accomplishment in medicine”….you will get nothing but some latin, some Dr’s named Gentile and the inevitable articles by Jews claiming gentiles held jews back in the field of medicine because ofanti semitism.
Jews are obsessed with promoting the trope of their superiority. When you cut thru all the babble and myth you find maybe a reason why they do this.
One, it’s a defense to criticism of Jews and also a very deep sense of inferiority and insecurity in Jews, turned on it’s head , and that existed long before the holocuast but has become even more pronounnced since then.
If you are a Jew and identify strongly with your “tribe” which has been hated for centuries, as Jews say they have been and no doubt have been many times , you have to come up with some reason for being hated that isn’t your own fault and prevents the tribe from having to” change” it’s ways.
So maybe it’s because “we (money changers in the temple) are blamed for killing Christ” or “people are/were jealous of us because we’re smarter” or “had all the money” or “power” or etc.
In other words Jews promote they are hated not for any faults, defects,or actions in any given society they have lived in, but are/were hated for their inherent superiority in all societies….and that is why they were shunned and presecuted since time immemorial.
This myth they set up makes Jews totally innocent victims of the jealous and inferior others thru out history.
The Jews say they were evicted from Egypt because of “anti semitism” among Egyptians. The Egyptians say Jews were evicted because with a war looming, they didn’t trust the Jews not to collaborate with the enemy and sell them out for money.
I don’ buy the Jewish superiority arguement, there is too much universal evidence that ‘genetic and even cultural genius” is a random thing among all groups. Did Plato come from a Greek genetic or nationality code? How about Alexander Gramham Bell? Is Hawkings equal to Eisenstein? Is Freud equal to B.F. Skinner? Why did it take a black man to invent the cotton gin and set the textile industry on it’s way? I do think there are “cultures” that prompt individuals to excell, but even in those cultures there as many individuals that are average or below as there are exceptional.
Like the “Bell Curve”, the claim of racial or genetic supeiority or deficit is racist at heart. Phil needs to come to terms with that within himself…most recongize it as a kind of self protection of his jewish identity which he can’t break from…but still it’s racist when you break it all the way down to it’s essence.
Excelllent post. Have you read the book, “Bad Samaritans,” about free trade and capitalism? In it, the author, Ha-Joon Chang points out some hilarious old stereotypes. One chapter is called “Lazy Japanese and thieving Germans. ” More than a century ago, these two cultures were considered “incompatible with economic development.” See “Bad Samaritans: the Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism” (Bloombury Press, 2008), pages 182-202.
I don’t think being hard on Phil is warranted. That said, he writes about this stuff because Jews are supposed to be the crux of solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Because having a Jewish chief of staff is a sign of newfound Jewish power. Ask yourself, is American policy so Zionist because Jews are successful, or are Jews successful because they are in line with American policy? Did Britain give a damn about Jews, ever? Did France? Before or after Israel was created? They gave a damn about empire and Israel was an asset (to an extent it still is). What makes America so Jew-loving it has to give Israel extra goodies? Maybe it’s not at all.
American Jews, the ones who take part in the empire, aren’t running the show. They’re the eunuchs. Whatever causes a turnaround, it’s not going to be the eunuchs doing an about face. The activism against apartheid Israel will go on with Jewish participation or not. So will the resistance.
Anyone who thinks American Jews are going to solve the I/P conflict is deluded.
This isn’t going to be pretty – it’s not going to be with a heavy sigh after a lot of soul-searching and then celebrating a rainbow. You either completely cut Israel off from the civilized world or you accept their unending greed for land and power. There isn’t a middle ground – because we know quite well what that means based on 30 years of a so-called ‘peace process’ that was always a dog and pony show. I personally didn’t need the current in-your-face fascism exhibited by Netanyahu, Foxman and Dershowitz to convince me of what Zionism means to the world.
It’s going to be war against Zi0-fascism. And then the end of civilization – and the nutbars win. Lovely I know – but it’s so obvious as to be redundant.
PHIL(L): How incredibly brave of you to admit that your brother listens to Howard Stern. I could never reveal that kind of ‘dirty laundry’ about my family. Well, at least he doesn’t listen to Michael Savage. Phil? Phil? He doesn’t, does he? Phil?
Stern is a funny guy though I’ll give him that, but for always going on about only being a half-Jew, Howard Stern is all Zionist. If you listen to his show long enough you’ll hear it come out in all different topics, he holds the Zionist mindset. In older shows he would go so far as to stoking anti-Semitism through comedy bits a la Sasha Baron Cohen, another rabid Zionist.
Hey Phil,
Here’s a question for your brother. How many Arab Madoffs have there been? How many Arab kidney salesmen? How many Arab slavers trafficking women into prostitution from Eastern Europe?
My point isn’t that Jews are bad. My point is that Jews are just people, and they have good and bad varieties. Just like everyone else.
Maybe we can build a nation for all of the bad varieties Gellian, that way, at least we would know where all the bad ones are…lol If you get my point.
Of course, if we give them states we cannot support them with billions of dollars, and give them impunity as they genocide the indigenous populations
The slave trade from Africa to North and South America was run by Arabs for centuries.
Right, and 2,000 years ago the Romans fought a war against the Jews. But I don’t think anyone holds that against the Italians of today, do we? Meanwhile Israel is one of the most notorious countries on the planet for its practice of enslaving women to work as prostitutes. Hell, even the US government (!!) recognizes that.
Complete bullshit. There were no “Arabic” countries. It was the Ottoman Empire. The Dutch ran the Middle Ages slave trade in Africa with the African chieftains. Jews ran slave trades in the 5th to 9th centuries with Slavs, etc. After Queen Isabella kicked the Muslims and Jews out of Spain in the late 1400s, one group of Jews went to Amsterdam and and they were the ones responsible for bringing slavery to the New World. The entire slave business involving African slaves in the New World was a Jewish operation. There are history books galore that recount this….and yes, by Jewish historians. Crack a book.
MondoLies notwithstanding, it was MUSLIM ARABS in North Africa who made raids into black villages to round up slaves to sell by the boatload to the Americas. These MUSLIM ARABS did so for centuries.
If you knew anything about the spread (“growth”) of Islam and the skin-color-based racism inherent in Islam, as well as the spread of Arabic language, you would already know this. But MondoBigots are also MondoIgnorantsia. And so hilariously proud of their ignorance, too.
Blaming slavery on Jews is simply historical dishonesty.
I’d be the first to admit I have no knowledge of whether Jews, Arabs, or whoever was responsible for black slavery up through the middle of the 19th century. I would indeed have to read about it.
I was instead talking about modern day, i.e. totally contemporary, co-citizens of Jake-in-Jerusalem’s who are enslaving white women from Eastern Europe to serve in Israel’s brothels. Jake, you may even know some of these people.
link to foxnews.com
Jake, I know it’s difficult for you, but real history is kind of complicated, and usually one finds out that the group one identifies with as “the good guys” turn out to have been right down there in the muck with everyone else when given the chance.
Yes, Muslims were deeply involved in the slave trade. So were Christians.
Unfortunately for your delicate sensibilities, so were Jews. Not all Muslims, not all Christians, and not all Jews, but if you insist on making blanket statements about one group, try not to have your little feelings hurt if it is pointed out that your favored group can be treated the same way.
Not to mention, Jake, that slavery did not have the taint of horror it does now. YOU make the assumption that all Arabs were Islamic, which is inaccurate. Some were Christian, some Jewish, others Druze, and others Muslim. The North African Blacks became the Moors of Spain and were part of the great Age of Enlightenment in Spain with scholarly Islamists and Jews. The Dutch, seat of financial power in the 1600s, ran the slave trade until the 19th C. The Sephardic families that help found the New World and seed Brazil, the US Colonies, and Upper Canada, brought slavery from Amsterdam first to the Caribbean plantations, then northward to Louisiana and the American colonies. This is well documented, and a major book using birth, death, and marriage records of these first Sephardic families and their trades and records of slave ships is due out in the next two years by a Jewish historian.
It was the Dutch who had the lock on the business. Sort of like their lock on diamonds and gold for ages. Whomever they used to corral the black slaves from villages and Timbuktu (verdant and an oasis of nearly a quarter million people) were any bounty hunters who could make deals with the village chieftains.
Donald, sure you might find a Jew somewhere who was involved in slavery. But the repeated notion that Jews drove the slave business when the suppliers were PRIMARILY Muslim Arabs and the consumers were primarily Christians in the New World – THAT is propaganda. Antisemitic propaganda.
There are bigots who try the same trick with Jewish Communists or Jewish capitalists and blame everything on the Jews even though Jews were a minority in these circles. Such propagadists are rightly called antisemitic bigots.
If you understand that history is complicated, as you put it, then you should understand this already.
MRW makes the same mistakes (deliberately, it sounds like) as other anti-Jewish propagandists.
Your “major book” sounds like another Sand-like silliness which will try to prove that the earth is really flat.
Bottom line: Arab Muslims were the PRIMARY slave traders for centuries, Christians in North and South America were the primary consumers, and Jews had little, if any, part in this business.
That Christians and Muslims were the main players in the slave trade and that both of those groups are now trying to pin it on the Jews doesn’t surprise me. What else is new?
Poor Jake is so ignrant and clueless that Shlomo Sand’s thesis is somehow new, when it was known to people like Ben Gurion more than 60 years ago.
Of course, in Jake’s word, a peer reviewed schlarly thesis is no match for wingnut conspiracy theories and the Zionist myths he prefers to hang his hat on. His latest conspiracy is that the Muslims and Christians (ie. the Goy) are trying to frame the Jews for slave trading.
He checks under his bed at night too, in case there are any islamo-facists hiding there.
Great story, Phil. Thanks. I’m glad you have such a close relationship with your family.
As far as measurable intelligence is concerned, Ashkenazic Jews as a group are perhaps the best endowed of all identifiable ethnic groups on the planet. No argument from me there.
Of course, the downside of high intelligence is that it makes it possible to profoundly stupid in ways unimaginable to the less endowed! The bizzare financial voodoo that led to our financial crisis, the Iraq war, and the various mutations of Marxism are just a few examples of highly intricate intellectual reasoning eventually turning into a total lack of contact with reality.
Is it profoundly stupid to rake in tons of money for yourself and your family for years through “bizzare financial voodo?” Scams always involve using intelligence for personal profit at the expense of the rubes; often by the time anyone with any real
influence awakes and blows the whistle all those years of good profit are safely tucked away and very well laundered. How many governmental representatives and appointees have been sent to jail since the bailouts started? Most remain in power, having been given responsibility for the havoc they created. How many big past financial fish
now live in other countries? How many neocons still maintain influence and power? Now, if you say such con artists have displayed a total lack of contact
with Kantesque morality and ethics, I’d probably agree.
Well that’s another inherently racist view.
And calling the jewish part in the financial crisis a extreme of jewish intelligence is one for the books. LOL
There’s nothing intricate about con men, criminals and unethical ordinary theives.
To expand on tree’s point about the Nobel Prize being overwhelmingly western in nature, I’d add that mass Arab emigration to Europe and the States is fairly new even in the contemporary context. Jews, on the other hand, have had a long time to socially integrate, and develop in academic and productive disciplines in Europe and the U.S., owing to the diaspora. Even in the event that the Nobel Prize process was more globally inclusive, there are valid points to be made about the educational systems in Arab countries being grossly substandard in comparison to the west, the fault for that fact resting first at the feet of Europe and the U.S. for imposing parasitic colonial relationships and malicious interference on those Arab states.
Europe will become Eurabia before Arabs there become European.
People have been saying that for the past 8 years, I still don’t see it happening. And how many Arabs do you think there are in Europe?
Same as the USA will become USISRAEL before (most) Jews here become Americans First. The link is the white goy population of the respective areas. They are the least
tribal. Equality under the law was invented by them. Individualism was invented by them.
Woo-Hoo!!! Can’t wait. You can eat your heart out. :)
You have to travel in Europe to see for yourself.
Check out demographic trends, see birth-rate figures for France, Holland, Sweden, Britain, and more and it will all become clear.
Oh, Arabs are just one part of these demographic trends. The Muslim population (e.g. Pakistani, Turkish, Iranian, etc.) are also part of the trend.
My guess is that France might become the first majority-Muslim country in W Europe. And it will happen much sooner than most would believe. We’ll see…
Jakey,
I am European. As an economics student, I’ve studied the demographic trends, the Eurabia thesis is based on flawed assumptions:
a) the immigration rate will continue (which it won’t)
b) The Arab birth rate will continue to remain high (which has already been disproved as the birth rate for Arabs is dropping fast)
Jakey comes out with some more racist trash.
The immigration rate will drop because Europe is already densely populated. It physically can’t take many more immigrants.
As for birth rates, as people become richer they have less children. This is the case with Jews, Asians, Europeans, Arabs … everyone. Arab standards of living in Israel are awful in comparison to their standards of living in Europe.
What happens if you’re Asian AND Muslim like so many European immigrants are?
Jake is on the same medication and Melanie “the sky is falling” Phillips, who has been predicting that Shariah law would overwhelm Europe any day now for the past 8 years.
Your brother’s moral error is common but has implications that many people might find troubling.
He implies that intelligence conveys greater moral status. The less intelligent must follow rules that do not apply to those of greater gifts. It is moral and proper for the intelligent to crush the less intelligent.
I wonder if many of our increasingly parasitic elite classes see the world in this way.
Interesting point.
Good call, MRW, and great post, Phil.
Maybe Jake in Jerusalem has finally started reading Nietszche and belives he’s the Superman.
“”parasitic elite classes see the world in this way”
Of course they do…listen to Forbes or Norquist or any of the “self styled’ intellectuals on this, even the blowheart Kudlow.
They believe that the common man, “the average person” should not have wealth or “control” over too much money because they are not capable of knowing how to “best use money”. “Only they” by their superior traits,a select group, are smart enough to know how money is best used in the economy or the world.
I might add this thinking is also dominant among politicans and both parties…they, the leaders, know better than the masses.That goes for both parties. Who can forget Obey, a dem telling a group outside his office that they were “stupid liberals who didn’t know how things worked”.
Or Peliso saying that citizens were “JUST”advocates and that they, the politicans were the LEADERS.
LOL, well look where they led…Iraq, I-P, WS meltdown,international montary crisis, enviormenta lcrisis, .highest unemployment since the great depression, a disappeared US manufacturing industry,ad infin…
So, Phil! You celebrate on decidedly non-kosher foods (what does it feel like to eat something that looks like a giant insect and sits on your plate? Do you boil them alive, too?). You grew up flaunting the law with pride (pride in what, specifically?). You crow on and on about your ignorance of Jewish law and tradition. You decide to marry the non-Jewish wife of an acquaintance of yours (much like your fellow Jew-hating Jews here). You hate Israel and post hyper-actively on anything that will put Jews in a negative light. You really do seem to have a few problems. That you are now a classic self-hating Jew shouldn’t be surprising at all.
I wouldn’t totally disagree with your analysis, having read Phil’s blog for a long time now. But I wonder about the label ‘self hating Jew’. It seems ludicrous, even granting that it’s really just a propaganda label like most ethnic slurs. Wouldn’t it be more accurate to call someone fitting the description you’ve named a ‘Jew-hating self’? I mean, Phil doesn’t hate himself, or even the Jewish (i.e. ethnic Ashkenazi) part of himself. It’s the behavior of organized Jewry that he dislikes.
What say you?
Gellian, I am in partial agreement with you.
Perhaps we can agree on “Jew-hating Jew”. There, that describes Phil reasonably well. (There may be some question on Phil’s actual Jewishness, but nevermind that for the moment. Phil identifies as a Jew, despite his obsessively hostile attitude towards Jews and Judaism and the Jewish State.)
Maybe he hates Judaism? Or the tribal aspect of Jewishness?
That doesn’t really make him a self-hating Jew does it? Nor a Jew-hating self.
How much are you getting paid to spew here?
Spew? Me? I generally see things Phil’s way. But you’ve missed the point. Phil has indeed crossed a line where it’s fair to say that he is interested in spotlighting Jewish misbehavior to the virtual exclusion of all other groups’ misbehavior. To me that would seem to fit the definition of antisemitism, even though I don’t think Phil is necessarily wrong to do what he’s doing.
The problem is that antisemitism is a dirty word, and it sounds like it means ‘bigot,’ i.e. someone who dislikes Jews. I don’t think Phil is that sort of antisemite at all. I think he merely dislikes, as I said, the behavior of organized Jewry and is trying to change it by embarrassing them.
MRW, you ask the wrong question.
The real question is how much money is PHIL making out of this?
Phil et al ask for your donations. (See home page).
They pay for web-designers (See new site).
They seem to spend all day finding nasty things to write on MondoLies (See here any day of the week).
They finance film crews in foreign lands and private blockade-breaking naval attempts.
Where is all this money coming from?
Where is all this money going to?
Is it even legal?
All the same, I can answer your question simply: I get paid zero. I only seek truth and honesty. This is reason enough for me. I don’t think that Phil can honestly say the same.
No, Gellian, not you: Jake. The Israeli Foreign Ministry is paying Israelis to spend time on all US blogs. Google for that. I dont have the link at hand.
MRW,
If you can find me a paycheck, I’d be happy to collect. Otherwise, it’s more blah blah from MondoLiars.
Too bad Phil, you don’t know what your missing…lol Years ago even Moshe used to sneak out of prepared dinners in Washington for the “good food.” You should try some, it might change your attitude :)
Hey Jake, one small point of religious instruction–
As far as the Kosher thing goes, the majority of Jews I know here in the US–whether they are Zionists or anti-Zionists–do not follow Jewish dietary laws, at least in the South. They love their BBQ pork ribs and fried shrimp and boiled crawfish as much as the next Bubba, lol.
True.
My now deceased jewish friend , who I have mentioned before, loved barbcue spareribs…I use to pick some up for him every week when he was in the rest home. Most jews I know observe jewish religous holidays and go to temple, but that’s about it. Don’t know any around here who avoid eating pork.
Piney,
There is no need to instruct me on Jewish Law – I can teach it to you, fer sure.
As for Jews ignoring Jewish law, you are correct, many, many Jews ignore many, many Jewish laws. People like Bernie Madoff and Phil MondoLies. They are both embarassments to all other Jews.
When Jews ignore Jewish law and tradition, when they then become PROUD of their ignorance and flaunting the law, and after THAT appoint themselves spokesmen for Judaism and critics of all that they know so little of – THOSE are the fools who are best ignored.
Phil MondoLies fits that description perfectly. He grew up knowing nothing about Judaism, proudly flaunting all Jewish laws and traditions, married a non-Jew to demonstrate his lack of affiliation – and THEN comes here to declare himself a JEW who is EMBARRASED by the Judaism that he knows nothing about and to combat the Judaism that he never understood in the first place.
People who KNOW about Judaism find idiots like Phil embarassments to themselves. Phil doesn’t realize how silly he looks. This is why MondoLies primarily appeals to the gullible, ignorant and bigoted.
There is an explanation for everything.
You woudln’t know the firstthing about Jewish law Jake. You are a rabbid Zionist and have forsaken any claims to being a Jew. You give Jews a bad name.
Ha ha ha!!! ShingoLiar tells ME that *I* don’t know about Jewish law…
That’s like saying that ShingoLiar doesn’t know about antisemitic lies.
What a fool! LOLOL
Like I said Jake,
You know a lot about wingnut concpiracy theories, but sciene and law ain’t your key strength.
Jewish Nobel prize recipients benefit from corrupt Jewish social networking: A comment about Nobel prizes
I am surprised at the venom and aggression that this rather endearing story about a conversation between an older and a younger brother elicits in some. There appear to be some really disturbed fellow- Jew hating Jews out there…
Re: the slave trade, read:
link to blacksandjews.com
Howard Stern is a pervert obsessed with bodily functions. Is this a respected member of the Jewish community?
yes. until his transgression is against the group
I always felt the kosher/non-kosher thing was a bit funny. We lived the D.C area and my dad was a survivor, sent me to orthodox school three days a week, and during the season would bring home a bushel of steamed crabs for us to chow down on. Some of the finest memories I have of my father. And you should have seen the size of the giant shrimp he brought home one time.
You can analyze it all you want, I think it comes down to one thing – they taste so damned good, at least to us Merlinders, er, Marylanders.
I did draw the line with the pickled pigs feet he used to eat.
RNR–
That’s a funny story.
Perhaps the most popular pork BBQ restaurant in Memphis was founded and is owned and operated by a prominent Jewish family and, yes, they eat there as well. He also caters kosher BBQ to the Orthodox annual BBQ fest.
“… they know it’s true at some level, but they’re turning away, turning away, turning away”. Remember those words from Mahmoud Darwich’s poem “As He Walks Away” :
(…)
His coat-buttons flash as he walks away.
Good evening to you! Say hello to our well!
Say hello to our fig trees! Step gingerly
on our shadows in the barley fields
Greet our pines on high. But please
don’t leave the gate open at night.
And don’t forget the horse’s terror of airplanes.
And greet us there, if you have time.
That’s what we want to say at the doorstep.
He hears it well enough,
but muffles it with a cough,
and waves it aside.
I somehow thought Howard was better than to be a Zionist Zombie, but I was wrong:
(NOT WORK SAFE)
link to jpmannion.com
(NOT WORK SAFE)
The video linked to above is Howard railing against porn star Sasha Grey, telling her she should go live in Palestine, have some kids and teach them to blow themselves up in Israel.
Amazing, that Howard is such a free spirit … until it comes to Israel. Then he’s just another rank-and-file member of the Hive Mind.
OK, I’m listening to Howard Stern the other day [my brother's Maharishi].
Hmm? Shallow humor. But to everyone his hero.
Yes, let’s keep up the whoopee cushions… So far I’m the only one in my mom’s family to really make a stink. It’s lonely out here, at least you got your nephew!
I’ve heard the nobel prize argument hundreds of times and it still makes no sense to me. fine, jews are smarter and better and more learned than arabs for cultural or possibly racial or somethign reasons. so what? we don’t hand out land to people based on their merit! if that were the case israel would have been given most of the middle east by 1949. israel palestine is a land dispute, it has nothing to do with the “quality” of the inhabitants of that land. I am smarter than my jewish neighbor. can I have his house? (I’m not actually, he teaches at MIT)
Good thing that we don’t claim the vast majority of the Arab Islamic fascist world. You can keep them. We’ll just keep around 6400 square miles.
Phil hates Jews, but he is not self-hating. He hates Jews so much he rejected Jewishness. He hates Jews so much he’s devoted his so called life to it.
you mean he’s undead? cool!
Howard Stern is a perfect metaphor for the cultural, moral and ethical decline of Judaized America. It doesn’t surprise me in the least that he has an army of Jewish Zionist fans. Media JZ’s are also probably the ones who originally saw to it that his repulsive opinions were spewed all over America. Three birds with one stone: 1) degrade the goy and his culture; 2) dumb down Americans to make them easier to manipulate on behalf of Jewish nationalism; 3) make an easy buck by broadcasting cultural pornography.
There are literally no depths to which diaspora JZ’s will not stoop.
Imagine a chauvinistic white goy operating with the freedom of Howard Stern? True, you can’t.
Stern is an American. Just like you.
No, he’s a Jewish nationalist pseudo-American whose primary loaylty is to himself and the filth he spews, secondary loyaly is to Israel. He has nothing but Judeofascist taught hatred and contempt for America, which is why he heaps cultural pollution upon the American people day after day, year in and year out.
“Pastor” Hagee spews Christian garbage, degrades Catholics as whores and I guess is what, a Christian Zionist Nationalist? At least Stern’s primary is to self. Hagee’s is to Israel. Since Catholics are goys, is Hagee degrading goys? Maybe goy-on -goy denegration is something I don’t understand.
Look, people pay to hear these guys. My wife and I don’t watch or listen to his cultural pollution so we’re not polluted.
I’ll bet you don’t even appreciate Gangsta Rap as an art form either.
This food thing with religions is nothing more than commerce and lack of refrigeration.
The Catholics have to eat fish on Friday because the Pope’s business buddies in the Middle Ages were getting stuck with rotting fish over the weekend. So they dreamed up some cockamamie story about a saint and a fish bone and made it a rule that everyone had to eat fish on Friday. Voila. Business problem solved.
Ditto with the Muslims and Jews about pork. No refrigeration. Trichinosis. Whether they called it that or not, I dont know. But raw pork in a hot climate without refrigeration produced poisonous meat, so they banned it.
the thing about jews winning nobel prizes is an article that has been floating around the net for years. Stern is rarely political, that’s one of the reason I used to listen to him every day till he moved to satelite.
he has popular support from his fans, it’s not some insidious thing to cripple christian america or something geez you sound like a bunch of nazis
Oh, so it’s non-Zionsim, is it? Like they need you to keep Israel going, and your going to fuck them all up by not contributing? Yeah, that’ll work.
You just go on being a “non-Zionist”. That’ll leave the anti-Zionism field clear for the anti-Semites the Zionists are hoping to fill it with.
Yup, it’s “non-Zionism” which’ll cure what ails the Occupied territories and all the rest, sure as shit.
I got into a big argument with someone over Phil’s non-existant anti-zionism. I wanted to be wrong. I want to eat crow over this. Nope. Watch out, usurping entity. Phil the non-Zionist is on the attack.
The Jews are responsible for so many incredible modern scientific advances. I mean, what do you say to that?
I would say that since only two of the Jewish Nobel laureates in sciences were Sephardi, that means that the Ashkenazi culture is vastly superior to that of the Mizrachim, and the latter should be dumped in 28 uncontiguous cantons, cris-crossed by Ashkenazi-only roads, with no permission to build new houses or move around without being stopped at checkpoints.
*clap* *clap* *clap*
Mythbuster July 27, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Haven’t read it but sounds like Iwould agree with it…I will find it…thanks for tip.
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
Imagine George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door defending segregation by reading a list of “white” Noble prize winners and challenging Federal Marshals to name black Noble prize winners. (Or P.W. Botha defending Apartheid South Africa with the same tactic.) How is it that this argument seems convincing to so many?
Thanks for all who busted the Nobel prize “argument.” But really, we frequently are distracted by the premises while paying no attention to the conclusion! What is the conclusion of the “Jews” vs. “Arabs” Nobel prize argument? It is that one race has inherent superiority over another!
I thought I heard someone say “Never again.” Hypocrite!
I am also annoyed by the characterization of Arabs as a race. For God’s sake look it up and have some idea what you are talking about.
mona
bravo…. you got to the essence of this which is of course (surprise surprise) the same Judeo-Nazism we keep hearing from these riff raff.
egyptian dynasties mentioned above weren’t arab.
And after 1100 CE, the arab mind went to shit. Oh well.
@ LI
Your pretense to being Jewish is less and less credible.
“Arab science towers above”? Wow. Seriously, what is the source of all this racism and hatred you display?
lol. Whether or not the Nobel prize argument is relevant, the fact that you have to go back 1000 years to find Arab achievements in science doesn’t exactly prove your case. What a true moron you are.
oh yes it DOES prove my point, because according to scum like you, the Arab mind is inferior. That’s a pretty hard case to make given that various arab peoples created high cultures the jews can’t fucking dream of.
More time elapsed from the first Egyptian dynasties to Cleopatra than from Cleopatra to the present.
You think shithole Israel will be around that long?
You think they will produce ANYTHING to be considered alongside the wonders of dynastic Egypt? Do you think THRONGS of people every DAY, every YEAR will swarm through the ISRAELI collection and the Metropolitan Museum to see……WHAT??? A Manischevitz distillery???
What an idiotic JOKE.
Arab culture has been in decline for centuries—that’s true.
Israeli culture is NOT in decline because it isn’t and never was on the MAP of important world cultures. It’s a garbage scow and everyone knows it. Once its gone, no one will talk about it any more because they haven’t DONE anything apart from murder people and act like baboons.