Great reporting by Josh Nathan-Kazis at the Forward, on the life of Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, tough Jew. Excerpts:
Wiesenfeld declined to speak to the Forward for this story, referring all questions to [Hank] Sheinkopf.
“There are people who don’t like the fact that there are tough Jews,” Sheinkopf said. “I’ve been a tough Jew all my life. They don’t like it. They think we should be accountants and lawyers and get smacked around.”
Wiesenfeld was of a generation of working-class sons of Holocaust survivors growing up in New York’s outer boroughs who struggled to reconcile their parents’ persecution with their own experiences on the city’s rough-and-tumble streets. His mother was from Romania and survived a Transnistria concentration camp; his father, from Poland, spent the war in a Soviet slave labor camp.
Wiesenfeld’s first language was Yiddish.... Wiesenfeld has served for nearly a decade as the chair of the board of New York’s Folksbiene Yiddish Theatre — an ironic association in light of his current clash with one of the country’s most prominent Jewish playwrights. ..
Koch, known for holding generally conservative positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has clashed publicly with Wiesenfeld twice over related issues in recent years. Wiesenfeld was a major opponent of the plan to open a dual-language Arabic public school in New York City — a plan that Koch supported. Wiesenfeld served as New York chair of the Stop the Madrassa: A Community Coalition, the group that spearheaded the drive against the school.
Debbie Almontaser, who was slated to be principal of the school before being removed at the last minute by the Department of Education, alleged that Wiesenfeld was motivated by anti-Muslim sentiment. “Jeffrey Wiesenfeld opposed the idea of having an Arabic dual-language school in New York City based on his own personal hatred for anything Arab or Muslim,” Almontaser said. “His argument was that [the school] would radicalize students and therefore shouldn’t be permitted to open.”
“He’s obsessed. He’s obsessed with the issue of Israel,” said [Ed] Koch, who publicly criticized Wiesenfeld’s stand against Kushner. “I’m a very big supporter of the State of Israel, but I understand that there is dissent on a whole host of issues. It isn’t evil to be supportive of the Palestinian cause…. He’s a nice guy, but he’s obsessed.”
He was bullied as a child and became a powerful player in government as an adult, so we should excuse his (unmentioned) dehumanizing racism against Palestinians. This is great reporting from The Forward?
this disturbing tidbit in ‘the forward’ piece.
In 1981, at the age of 23, Wiesenfeld joined the FBI. According to Sheinkopf, he worked in surveillance and counterintelligence, leaving the agency in 1985. But Wiesenfeld’s success in this most American of milieus signaled no turn away from Jewish life.
so the man ‘obsessed with israel’ was a surveillance and counterintelligence agent for the fbi? jeez, wasn’t there a scandal dating to the 80′s regarding the release of bureau information to the ADL and local law enforcement on african muslim groups and activists protesting against SA, and ehem, others? well, i’m sure that the stand up guy who confronted a former black panther and then-current city councilor calling him a ‘hoodlum’ would never be involved in giving up bureau information on black muslims. no. never.
ot, intelligence news on the shared interests of the US and israel:
A security company led by the former head of operations for the Israeli military made such inroads into Latin America a few years ago that U.S. diplomats saw it as a security risk and moved to thwart the company’s expansion, U.S. diplomatic cables show.
The diplomats’ efforts were made easier when an interpreter for the Israeli firm, Global CST, was caught peddling classified Colombian Defense Ministry documents to Marxist guerrillas seeking to topple the state, one cable said.
link to mcclatchydc.com
in his CUNY bio, wiesenfeld is described as having worked for four years in the foreign counterintelligence division of the FBI . . ..
>> “There are people who don’t like the fact that there are tough Jews … ”
There’s nothing wrong with Jews – or anyone else – being tough…as long as tough means resilient and hardy, and not racist, supremacist asshole.
Being “tough” is fine; being a “bully” or “criminal” not so much.
Much of politics and business, I imagine, involves use of “power” — which means making choices (sometimes on behalf of or even in the name of “the people” or “the stockholders” or “the customers”) based on personal interests. Twisting arms. Limiting choices. Denying information. (Lying, cheating, stealing.) Use of “power” is inherently cruel and may often be illegal. When it is democratic at all, it is so only because in principle (and often only in principle) the mis-use of power can be corrected by voters. (For example, the American people have not been able to stop our wars, to stop torture, to stop all the civil and human rights atrocities brought about by Bush and continued by Obama.) Democracy is an imperfect tool. Power works better.
Wiesenfeld has grown old in the use of power and evidently (or until now) thinks it so legitimate that he had no second thoughts about semi-publicly trying to crash Kushner’s honorary degree. He doesn’t see himself as a “fiduciary” for “academic freedom”, that’s for sure, and to that extent is a very bad fiduciary for CUNY. He does, perhaps, see himself as trying to protect CUNY’s sources of non-governmental (and perhaps also of governmental!) money, the funding of even public universities being quite subject to “power” these days. To that extent, he might actually have served as a fiduciary for CUNY. Sad thought.
Yes, Schweinkopf is right, Wiesenfeld is real, real tough!!
Too bad there is no more SS or Gestapo, they could use his talents, hating anything that is different from him. Did he get his ideas from the Mein Kampf or similar liberal books?
So, Theo, did you ever read ‘Mein Kampf’? Or does the notion that it is the first book in history that promotes ‘hating anything that is different’ stem from the same source that claims that ethnic Germans settled in Eastern Europe some 150 yrs prior to their expulsion, in order to dominate the locals, and that they had it coming for refusing to learn Polish etc?
Antidote
I do not claim to know the story of all german immigrants, however I know the hungarian history. You read a few books, I lived there.
German immigrants to Russia in large numbers were called by the russian empress, Katharina the Great, who was a german princess, because she could trust them.
From 1526 until 1918 Austria occupied Hungary, and did the same what Israel is doing today, sent settlers to turn it into a german land. Those settlers had much more rights than the hungarians, as you can see today the same in the WB. The procedure is identical.
The first settlers came around 1700 and continued until the second part of the 19th century, when Hungary got back part of it´s freedom, but not all, so you can pick who was there how long.
If you are an american, what would you do if Mexico invaded the US, killed and tortured millions, destroyed cities and towns, members the local spanish population, who lived in the USA for a hundred years, did join the mexican army or police, then the mexican army was finally driven out?
There was a lot of hate against the germans and the orders to expell them came from the soviet occupiers.
I never said it was right, Hungary lost a lot of good people, but if you are ready to understand the palestinians, then you should also understand the poles, the russians, the yugoslavs, etc.
Mostly the wrong people end up paying for the crimes of their leaders, if you know history.
Do you remember what happened to the japanese-americans after Pearl Harbour? And they did not join the japanese army!
“German immigrants to Russia in large numbers were called by the russian empress, Katharina the Great, who was a german princess, because she could trust them.”
Nonsense. Catherine the Great was born in Stettin, then Prussia, now Poland, and did not ‘trust’ peasants because they were German. In fact, the only kind of blood that mattered to aristocrats like her was blue blood, and peasants did not qualify. Like other European monarchs, including Frederick the Great of Prussia, she issued invitations to ‘foreigners’ to settle in and secure her realm, to develop agricultural land and to build cities at, in her case, the vast expanse of the Russian frontier. You can read her generous manifestos here, which was in obvious competition to the lure of similar offers from the British and French in their North American colonies, and will see that she did not specifically invite Germans (click on manifesto-links):
link to cvgs.cu-portland.edu
You find more information in this book (try search term: Germans) about the ethnic groups following Catherine’s invitation, which include Armenians, Jews, Poles etc etc. Both Catherine and her successors reneged on various benefits (freedom from military service, taxes and others) later. During the 19th century, Russian nationalism viewed these migrants, especially Germans and Jews, as having obtained undue advantages under Catherine, thus putting the Russian population at a disadvantage. Religious freedom and freedom from military service was revoked, and many Volga Germans, esp. the pacifist Mennonites who came for that reason in the first place, moved on to North America.
link to books.google.com
As for Hungary, the first German settlers came long before 1700, and long before the Habsburgs had established an Empire. Read this:
link to en.wikipedia.org
The situation is by no means comparable to the I/P conflict. Neither the Habsburg Empire nor the Hungarian kingdom, including the Dual Monarchy established in the mid-19th century (after the rise of Prussia diminished the power of the Habsburg Empire) claimed to be DEMOCRACiES. IT’s not even remotely comparable. The official language of the Habsburg Empire was Latin (which most people neither spoke nor understood, and most people couldn’t read or write anyway), then German, then German and Hungarian (Dual Monarchy), which at this point reflected about 50 % of the population, split equally between German and Hungarian speakers. Choosing German as the official language in the Habsburg Empire was no more discriminatory against the majority of the people than the choice of English as the official language was for Americans.
“If you are an american, what would you do if Mexico invaded the US, killed and tortured millions, destroyed cities and towns, members the local spanish population, who lived in the USA for a hundred years, did join the mexican army or police, then the mexican army was finally driven out?”
If you were German, or Austrian, after WW I, what would you do, if you suddenly became a citizen of Poland and Czechoslovakia, two countries that did not exist for over a hundred or several hundred years, and whose majorities/governments start to polonize or czechify you, changing the names of your cities, telling you that you can no longer give your children German names, that Peter must now be Piotr etc., that you can’t work in certain professions, that your property will be confiscated in a ‘redistribution of wealth’ program etc etc etc, because you, as a wicked German, have been oppressing the Poles, Czechs for centuries under Habsburg rule and ethnic privilege? The harassment and cleansing of ethnic Germans started long before WW II in Poland and Czechoslovakia, and Polish nationalism was as fierce as German nationalism. Two peoples living together under various rulers for centuries, with a regional rather than national identity. Hatred of Germans and Germanophobia is a standard and continued feature of Polish nationalism, a hate campaign that started long before the Nazi occupation and atrocities. IT’s like there’s no difference between the Teutonic knights, the Prussian kings and Bismarck and Hitler. Which is a bloody nonsense.
“There was a lot of hate against the germans and the orders to expell them came from the soviet occupiers.”
Another myth. Expulsions started before the Potsdam Agreement, and Polish nationalists had coveted Danzig and East Prussia long before WW II. Stalin fulfilled an old Polish national dream acting in his own interest.
“I never said it was right, Hungary lost a lot of good people, but if you are ready to understand the palestinians, then you should also understand the poles, the russians, the yugoslavs, etc.”
Well, then you should also understand the Nazis.
“Mostly the wrong people end up paying for the crimes of their leaders, if you know history.”
It wasn’t just the leaders, if you know history.
“Do you remember what happened to the japanese-americans after Pearl Harbour? And they did not join the japanese army!”
At least they got an apology. Do you remember what happened to German Americans during WW I and II? When and where did the Germans ever attack the US? And frankly, Pearl Harbor was not part of the US at the time, and the US had no business being there in the first place, overthrowing a sovereign government. Clinton apologized for it 100 yrs later.
That’s how long it will be until Poles will apologize to Germans. Maybe more. ‘Christ among the nations’. Eternal victims, just like the Jews.
A lot of thugs like Wiesenfeld think they are tough…..until.
“They think we should be accountants and lawyers and get smacked around”
LOL. Who doesn’t immediately think of accountants and lawyers as traditional bottom feeders who’ve been smacked around forever and everywhere? Got to be tougher than that to survive.
Talking about lawyers.
In 1938 in Vienna 66% of the lawyers were jewish, before Hitler decided to annex his homeland to the 1,000 years German Reich!!
Vienna has today a large jewish population, coming mostly from the soviet lands. It seems not all jews are dying to “return” to Jerusalem!
“before Hitler decided to annex his homeland to the 1,000 years German Reich”
The Third Reich as the 1000 year Reich echoes Christian millennialism, but also European history, i.e. the Holy Roman Empire, which existed for about a thousand years, from the papal coronation of the founding father of the French and German nation, Charlemagne (Christmas Day, 800) to the HRE’s official dissolution by Napoleon in the early 19th century. Hitler’s homeland, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was an integral part of the HRE, which was called the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation since the 10th century (Otto I). From Hitler’s point of view he was not in the business of colonization or expansion by annexation, but restoration of a territory that was dismantled by the Treaty of Versailles. It’s not unlike Israel claiming ‘ancestral land’. Of course, the HRE was not only ‘neither holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.” It wasn’t particularly ‘German’ either, but multi-ethnic and religiously diverse, esp. since the Reformation. Much like Palestine.