The Anti Defamation League calls for calm and for government action in wake of attacks on African refugees. The statement includes some racism of its own:
While we recognize the complexity involved in properly addressing this issue, and sympathize with Israeli citizens whose personal security has been compromised by the lawlessness and violence of some migrants, we are disturbed by inflammatory public statements made by certain Israeli officials, some of which has veered into racism. These statements are counterproductive and only serve to further inflame tensions.
But in "Police distort crime date, inciting violence against refugees," Sigal Rozen at +972 quotes police statistics showing a low crime rate among the migrants:
Real police data, presented in a meeting held by the Knesset Committee on Foreign Workers on March 19, indicate that the crime rate among foreigners in Israel stood at 2.24 percent in 2011 (1,223 criminal cases out of a total of 54,497 foreigners).
The 2011 data on Israeli crime has not yet been published, but according to police data reported to the Knesset, the crime rate among the general population in Israel stood at 4.99 percent in 2010....
the general crime rate in Israel is more than double that of Africans in Israel.
Scant mention by Jeffrey Goldberg of the attacks; he diminishes the episode and leaves out the official encouragement of the riots:
Then came the disturbing news that in a poor neighborhood of Tel Aviv, Sudanese immigrants were set upon by Israeli hooligans. 'Fascism' might be a strong word, and of course Israel is judged by a double-standard (triple-standard, actually), but this is not what should be happening in a country that calls itself a Jewish state.
Great post by liberal Zionist Peter Beinart concludes with some implicit sympathy for the delegitimizers of Israel. Excerpt:
A reviled, powerless minority discussed in the language of war and disease? Where have my Jewish ears heard that before?
Last night, looking for a little moral outrage, I went to the Anti-Defamation League’s website, since they’ve done good work on anti-immigrant racism in Europe and the United States. Nothing doing. The top stories were on Holocaust denial in Greece, the Rutgers spying case and school bullying. I tried the American Jewish Committee, whose mission is to “advance human rights and democratic values in the United States and around the world.” Nada. Their featured stories were about Memorial Day, Iran and black-Jewish cooperation for civil rights (ah, the irony). How about AIPAC, which declares that America and Israel are natural allies because “both nations were founded by refugees seeking political and religious freedom… Both have absorbed waves of immigrants seeking political freedom and economic well-being.” Nope. Or the Presidents’ Conference, which aims to “enhance the security and dignity of Jews.” Sure seems like Jewish dignity could use a little enhancing right now in south Tel Aviv. Zilch.
Oh and this just in (thanks Susie Kneedler), from Jeremy Ben-Ami of J Street. I'm removing his disclaimers to emphasize the positive aspects of his statement:
So, seeing pictures and reading first-hand reports of Wednesday night’s riot in which Jews targeted African refugees in Tel Aviv left me shocked and saddened. ... what happened Wednesday is simply inexcusable.... What’s most distressing about Wednesday’s events is the role played by Members of Israel's Knesset in inciting the crowd to violence. One is a disciple of Meir Kahane. Others are identified with extreme-right views on issues related to Palestinians and Arabs. It's no surprise to see those who peddle hate against one group inciting a crowd to violence against another. This incident is part of a pattern of broader and disturbing actions by these MKs that put Israel’s democracy and the rule of law at risk. ....
the test for [all] nations is how they deal with their most extreme fringe. And there is a growing fringe in Israel whose values are out of sync with those of the Jewish community broadly and whose actions are undermining their country's interests.
“the crime rate among the general population in Israel stood at 4.99 percent in 2010….”
Settlers are obviously not included in those numbers since settler crimes are never recorded.
Interesting stats:
“… police data, presented in a meeting held by the Knesset Committee on Foreign Workers on March 19, indicate that the crime rate among foreigners in Israel stood at 2.24 percent in 2011 (1,223 criminal cases out of a total of 54,497 foreigners). This figure is slightly higher than the figure that the police reported to the Knesset in 2010 (2.04 percent), but lower that the crime rate reported in 2009 (2.4 percent)…
The 2011 data on Israeli crime has not yet been published, but according to police data reported to the Knesset, the crime rate among the general population in Israel stood at 4.99 percent in 2010.
… However, the Knesset Research Center notes that based on 2010 crime rate data, a criminal case was opened for one of every 16 residents of Tel Aviv, but only for one of every 96 “infiltrators” – the term government officials use to refer to asylum seekers who enter Israel from the border with Egypt.”
-Sigal Rozen. Public Policy Coordinator of the Hotline for Migrant Workers
How about this little gem:
“In a report released Wednesday, US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) says a disturbing new Egyptian policy has arisen seemingly in response to Israeli pressure on Cairo to control the flow of migrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers across the border. They call it a policy of “shoot-to-stop.”
“Egyptian border police are using lethal force to stop refugees, migrants, and asylum seekers from crossing into Israel,” says Bill Van Esveld, author of the HRW report. ”
- CSM November 13, 2008
“Israel is judged by a double-standard (triple-standard, actually), but this is not what should be happening in a country that calls itself a Jewish state.”
link to salon.com
“But who tells the truth to the man who is driving straight into the setting sun and thinks he’s heading due east? His wife murmurs that, uh, maybe we should look at a map, and he accuses her of being a defeatist who tries to tear him down any way she can in order to conceal her own lack of ideas. The man is heading the wrong way and speeding and the idiot light is flashing —low oil pressure —and the idiot is trying to be manly and authoritative but everyone can see he’s faking it, hoping for G-d to rearrange the landscape for his convenience.
link to richardsilverstein.com
“What adds to my sense of depression is the awareness that demographic processes are turning our society more and more religious, more and more racist and venomous, more and more withdrawn and violent.
For a man of my age who wasted serious parts of his life writing in newspapers about these issues, to see that I did all this out of great hope that has come to naught and was based on illusions and naiveté; what happens now is a particular type of bitterness and disillusion. To see Israeli society change its nature so quickly, becoming something you never thought you’d see outside of nightmares, it breaks your heart. To begin to feel ashamed at being Israeli, and to know with not a small amount of confidence that such a feeling will grow, it depresses you utterly.”
link to thirdworldtraveler.com
“And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘1943- Jewish swine/2012- The infiltrators are a national plague ,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. “Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing).
You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.”
“Israel is judged by a double-standard (triple-standard, actually), but this is not what should be happening in a country that calls itself a Jewish state.”
This is where the pathetic Israeli corporal gets it wrong. Israel is being judged by a statndard. That’s what he doesn’t like. If half of the population of Cambodia (to pick a random state) were Jewish, and held in exactly the same conditions the Israelis hold the Palestinians, is there anyone in the world who doesn’t believe that Goldberg wouldn’t be saying the exact same things against the Cambodians that we’re saying about the Israelis today??? His problem is that he wants his country exempt from judgment based on progressive/liberal/hell, any principles. As far as I’m concerned, he can go scratch.
From Arthur Hertzberg’s The Jews in America
“Very early in the story of Jews in America, those who wanted to exclude them had kept saying that admitting Jews meant opening the doors to such outlandish people as Turks and Muslims. The objectors were correct. Jews succeeded only when America became an untidy jumble of ethnic identities, ideological factions, and economic interests. The fight of Jews for total equality could not be won in confrontation with a solid majority; the victory could occur only when power was widely dispersed among many, very different ‘factions.’”
An interesting quote, no? Perhaps Jewish leaders and activists were into immigration more for themselves than for the immigrants per se.
That statement from the ADL reads EXACTLY like the statements from the Kohl government in Germany after re-unification in the 90′s, in which he blames the immigrants for the pogroms that attacked them. “Auslander Raus” eh, Abe?
The ADL is repugnant.
The ADL is truly repugnant. They should change the name to the Anti Decency Louts.
“we are disturbed by inflammatory public statements made by certain Israeli officials, some of which has veered into racism”
the use of “veered’ implies that Israel is a car that made a wrong turn into a bad neighbourhood instead of the reality which is that the car is permanently stationed in the neighbourhood and goes around it in circles
Why does Mr Goldberg think that Israel is judged by a double-standard or even a triple-standard? Which (imaginary) triple-standard is he referring to? Please help a newbie understand.
“Please help a newbie understand.”
Goldberg is a Jewish chauvinist/chosenist/supremacist. He thinks that holding Israel to zero standard is the same as holding any other country to the normal behavioral standards.
He also thinks that systemic prison abuse in Israeli jails is impossible, because of the super-human morality of the Jewish people.
Holding Israel to any standard feels like a double standard to Goldberg, because Israel and Goldberg’s “conscience” have been so well protected from accountability by the US veto, Israel’s exemption from the NPT, Israel’s immunity from the ICC, and Goldstone’s retraction, etc.
The triple standard Goldberg refers to is when the “double” standard, aka, the standard, is actually effective and not easily silenced with bullying.
These supremacists like Goldberg only become more dangerous as Israel’s moral inferiority is exposed.
Netanyahu claims authorship of the term:
>> I mean, we’ve had – can you imagine another democracy with 12,000 rockets pounded on their cities and they’re asked to take special care, special caution, not to take action against the offending enemy’s rocketeers? I mean, that’s what Israel does.
Like all hateful and immoral Zio-supremacists, Bibi glosses over such unpleasant facts as:
- Israel was established by means of Jewish terrorism.
- Israel is an oppressive, colonialist, expansionist and supremacist state.
- Israel remains engaged in an 60+ years, ON-GOING and OFFENSIVE (i.e., not defensive) campaign of aggression, oppression, theft, colonization, destruction and murder.
- Israel refuses to enter into sincere negotiations for a just and mutually-beneficial peace.
Can you imagine another 21st Century democracy just like it? I mean, that’s what Israel is, Bibi!
….and rockets claim less than one percent of the death toll on Israel’s roads.
“triple standard”
That Netanyahu says that the world has a special, “triple” standard for Israel and only for Israel – that’s the flipside of Israel’s (and the general Jewish) view and claim that they are unique, exceptional, one of its kind. – They rarely want to be part of any general category – there always has to be a special category for them and only for them.
“Israel’s (and the general Jewish) view and claim that they are unique, exceptional, one of its kind. They rarely want to be part of any general category – there always has to be a special category for them and only for them.”
Klaus, please don’t throw all Jews into the same pot. Their views are as diverse as those of non-Jews. The existence of this website proves it.
As peeps like Netanyahu consider themselves exceptional and want to be in a special category, they should actually be glad about a triple standard* instead of complaing about it. Netanyahu has a strange logic.
* if it really existed
@ German Lefty
- “please don’t throw all Jews into the same pot” [wanting to be unique]
I tell you what Lefty: When I studied sociology at the Frankfurt Uni around 1970 another sociology student I knew (and still know) from a Polish Jewish family who was a Marxist, established with another Jewish leftist student (whom I know also) a group they called “Jewish University Group” (Jüdische Hochschulgruppe). – Just the two of them founded their own Jewish student group. I thought, what the hell – does that make sense? Later they joined with the main socialist, marxist group SDS.
My point is, most Jews (not the MW Jews) tend to establish their own Jewish groups and don’t want to be part of a larger, general social category. – Same thing with Israel wanting to be in a unique category.
Klaus, as you know, I’m idiotic, so let me be sure I have this straight: Two Jewish guys you know formed their own club. So therefore, forming exclusive clubs and secret societies is endemic among Jews, if not an inborn tendency? Do I have that right?
One thing about you Klausie, you can’t ever be accused of reaching a conclusion from insufficient data. In fact, to the contrary, whatever amount you’ve got is enough, since it always seems to support your contentions.
@ Charles Barwin & lysias
Thanks a lot for your explanations.
Haaretz
Report quotes statistics provided by the UNHCR, showing that during the year out of 4,603 new asylum applications in Israel 3,692 were rejected. Only one was approved.
Off topic, but another interesting statistic published by Haaretz today is that of the 322 completed appeals by administrative detainees to the High Court of Justice over the past decade, the number of cases in which the Court ruled in the appellant’s favour was 0 (zero, nought).
One of the most frequent defences of administrative detention is that detainees have the right to appeal. No wonder 55% of appeals are withdrawn before the court reaches a decision.
link to haaretz.co.il (Hebrew – couldn’t find it in the English edition)
Israel is beyond saving. June 4 1967 was the day that doomed it.
“June 4 1967 was the day that doomed it”
Oh, so all the illegal occupation, armed provocation, mass murder, aggression and colonial ass-licking before that would not have had any consequences? Occupation does not pay if you are not an ascending, Empire. Gaul, Asia Minor, Scotland and Philippines are not comparable to the shitty little occupier’s nest-fouling act.
Israeli citizens whose personal security has been compromised by the lawlessness and violence of some migrants
South Tel Aviv was indeed a paradise before these excessively-melanined individuals showed up: no theft, no rape, no murder, no drugs; heaven on earth. That must be the reason why these migrants and asylum seekers chose Hatikva and Shapira of all the neighbourhoods on the face of the earth. Where else could they enjoy both personal safety and a complete lack of criminal competition?
One would expect “the nation’s premier civil rights/human relations agency”, which claims that it “fights … all forms of bigotry, defends democratic ideals and protects civil rights for all” to know that individuals are responsible only for their own actions, and not for the actions of those who happen to share a similar skin-colour, nationality, or religion. They did say “some”, but in the same breath also recognised the “complexity” of such racist, xenophobic outbursts, and expressed “sympathy” with the demagoguery used to justify them.
STA is the dumping ground for the immigrants. They could have been sent to Beit El or Rehavia . But it’s far easier to load the poor.
Adl (عدل ) is an Arabic word meaning ‘justice. But ADL means something different in Judaism.
The ADL should just give up. It could be called multiple ADL failure.
>> PW: Great post by liberal Zionist Peter Beinart concludes with some implicit sympathy for the delegitimizers of Israel.
. . .
>> PB: I went to the Anti-Defamation League’s website … Nothing doing.
>> I tried the American Jewish Committee … Nada.
>> How about AIPAC … Nope.
>> Or the Presidents’ Conference … Zilch.
Why is he surprised? Like him, these organizations care about Israel as a supremacist Jewish state. Unlike him, however, they don’t mind it being a bit “rough around the edges”.
Sure, it’s embarrassing, but, really, what’s better:
- A polite supremacist Jewish state of Israel?
* or *
- No supremacist Jewish state of Israel (but, rather, a secular democratic and egalitarian state of Israel)?
I think he knows the answer… ;-)
These things never change the Irish coming to Liverpool because of the potato famine had these headlines to face, ” Ireland is pouring into the cities, and even into the villages of this island, a fetid mass of famine, dirt and fever. Liverpool, whose proximity to Ireland has already procured for it the unhappy distinction of being the most unhealthy town in this island, seems destined to become one mass of disease” [The Times in a leader article 2nd April 1847] and the Liverpool Mail had this on 6th November 1847 ” That the scum of Ireland come to Liverpool and die in thousands is true. But whose fault is that? Misgovernment in Ireland–idleness on the part of the peasantry and ignorance and extravagance on the part of the gentry….
“The people that come here are not labourers… they are beggers and paupers. They never were labourers. They never did an honest days work in their lives. They lived by begging, as the Roman Catholic prelate regrets to say they cannot do now, for the potato crop failed and when they arrive here, begging is their profession, the workhouse their retreat, the fourpenny loaf per day a certainty and medical aid, port wine soup, a coffin and a Christian burial”. And far worse from the local Orange and other Protestant church leaders, we even had serious rioting with whole neighbourhoods ethnically cleansed, we all came to love each other eventually but it took a long time.
Have you got more stuff like that Harry? It’s fascinating.
There used to be an orchard at the bottom of my parents garden, but after the owners house went up in flames, her son sold it and a new street was built. The first owners of the house at the bottom of our garden assumed, because of the names my parents had given us, that our family were ‘papist’. The new owner was an Orangeman from Tyneside, we were a family of southern transplants to Yorkshire (and dad’s idea of ‘Sunday school’ was the Working Men’s Club – no RC except for his convert aunt). This was barely 30yrs ago. One of my brothers married one of their daughters, but it lasted less than 13months before she went off with a man older than her dad. Until that time I hadn’t known this existed in mainland UK.
Edit
‘This’ of course, being religious prejudice, not runaway wives.
Around the same time Darwin participated in an expedition to South America, and he noted that the natives of Terra del Fuego are least evolved part of human race, although he considered making an exception for the Irish.
But the prejudice was not always racial or religious. I have a book on American history written about 80 years ago, and in one chapter describing the society of southern states it mentions that they also had an indolent hookworm ridden population variously called as crackers, hillybillies or rednecks, subsisting on produce from indifferent attempts at farming, hunting vermin and most of all, hogs that were running everywhere.
“I have a book on American history written about 80 years ago, and in one chapter describing the society of southern states it mentions that they also had an indolent hookworm ridden population variously called as crackers, hillybillies or rednecks, subsisting on produce from indifferent attempts at farming, hunting vermin and most of all, hogs that were running everywhere.”
Are you joking? What’s the title?
piotr,
The terms ‘cracker’ and ‘redneck’ originate in England. They were terms the Brits used for lowland Scots, who were susistance farmers and insatiable warriors living in the border lands between England and Scotland. They were the same people Roman Empiror Hadrian gave up on when he built his wall. When the Scots were offered land in Northern Ireland it was this warrior class of lowland Scots who took advantage of the offer, which started the wave of colonization in Northern Ireland. These colonizers became known as the Scots-Irish and their reputation for beligerance was well known throughout England. In the 1720′s and again in the 1750′s there were big waves of Scots-Irish imigration from Northern Ireland to the American colonies during times of famine. Their reputation for beligerance, and their pejorative nicknames, preceded them and they were refused admission to NY. In Boston the clonial authorities received the Scots-Irish immigrants and promptly sent them packing to territory that’s now the state of New Hampshire. The Quakers in Philadelphia agreed to take them in on condition that they be sent to central Pensylvania to lend their fighting skills to the Indian wars. From the mountains of western and central Pennsylvania, the Scots-Irish ‘rednecks’ or ‘crackers’, and their descendents migrated south through the Appalachian spine and increasingly westward through America’s southern, sunbelt states. To this day, Americans of Scots-Irish descent, better known here as ‘rednecks’, have a bad reputation for being tribal, ignorant, and beligerant. They’ve maintained their warrior status as an ethnic group that has served in the US military in greater numbers per capita than any other ethnic group in America. The most decorated American combat veteran of WWII (Audie Murphy) and WWI (Alvin York) were of Scots-Irish descent.
Other famous or infamous Scots-Irish include President Andrew Jackson, Frank and Jesse James, the Younger brothers, Hank Williams,Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash. American counrty/blue grass/folk music largely originates with the American Scots-Irish. Unlike American Irish catholics, who are second only to American Jews on the socio-economic ladder, American Scots-Irish round out the bottom of the scales in being the poorest white ethnics in all 50 states.
But they are not known as such in Britain. The British just think of everyone across the sea as Irish.
Some are known as tribal, ignorant, belligerent, bigoted, trouble-making Northern Irish Protestants.
Some are known as tribal, ignorant, belligerent, bigoted, trouble-making IRA Catholic terrorists.
And the rest are just Irish, coming in varying degrees of tribalism, ignorance, and belligerence.
Unfortunately, I do not have the book at hand, and the quote is from memory. “Indolent, hookworm ridden” is verbatim. I think dbroncos time line is a bit off. Lowland Scotts probably descent both from Brythonic people who were conquered and Northumbrian Angles (while the ethnonym Scott comes from Celtic clans that invaded Caledonia from Hibernia around the same time, initially Scott was a synonym for Irish). In USA, the settlement of West Virginia was perhaps a bit earlier, after the war of 1755, while Central/Western Pennsylvania, Eastern Kentucky and Eastern Tennessee were settled about, 1790-1810, roughly at the same time.
dbroncos….. Here is a more complete description included in the information from the NC Museum of History on Ulster Scots background and their migration with the colonies. NC was about 36% Scots,( erronously called called Scot-Irish) in the early colony days and were among the first immigrants into the colonies (prior to the Revolution). The Scot-Irish weren’t “Irish” they were mainly from the Ulster plantation of Ireland…hence the term Scot Irish The actual Irish-Irish immigration didn’t really come in any numbers until after the great potatoe famine in Ireland, settled more in cities and were more poverty struck in general than were the Scots who had moved on down the southern trail and established farms. Actually the Scots prospered more the the latter influx of Irish for that reason and also for the reason they were Prostants…which was somewhat more acceptable in the anglican English societies of the time than Irish (catholics) were. But the Scots were a ‘warrior group”..the southern militias during the revolution were almost entirely Scots who had settled in the farming regions of the piedmont and western parts of the states as opposed to the army regulars from the coastal regions who were mostly English.
However,..where did you get the stats on eco ranking?…I looked at the Census reports and couldn’t find any rankings under ethnics for Irish or Scot or English or etc…..got a link? Scottish surnames are very common in my state and a lot of them associated with old money and industry…Irish names less so in this region.
THE ULSTER SCOTS – SCOTCH-IRISH
The following is a very brief accounting of where the Scotch-Irish started from, traveled to, and settled in. According to “The Scotch-Irish: A Social History” by James G. Leyburn…
Ulster, one of the four traditional “kingdoms” of Ireland, was only 20 miles across the channel from Scotland. In 1603, a laird of northern Ayrshire (Scotland), Hugh Montgomery, learned that Con O’Niell was in prison. O’Niell was a chieftain of large properties in County Down, and County Antrium. Montgomery proposed to O’Niell a bargain. He could effect the escape and pardon of O’Niell, if in return, O’Niell would grant him half of his lands. The escape and pardon was achieved, but the granting of lands to Montgomery, was denied by King James. Montgomery sought the aid of another Ayrshire laird, James Hamilton, who had great influence with the King. With a new agreement drawn, giving each of the two lairds a third of O’Niell’s property, but had conditions, “that the lands should be planted with British Protestants, and that no grant of fee farm should be made to any person of mere Irish extraction.”
In 1609, the two Scots, Montgomery and Hamilton, began to induce tenants and other Scots, to come over as farmer-settlers. Within 10 years, the population of the Plantation of Ulster, had reached around eight thousand. The assignment of lands to Scottish undertakers, was to have a permanent effect on the character of Ulster. Despite every vicissitude, including massacres and war, the Plantation gradually grew strong and proved to be a success. If one cause more than any other can be singled out for its success, it would be the presence, the persistence, and the industry of the Scots in the region.
Back in Scotland, there was an increasing hardship occasioned by the spread of a form of land tenure, called the feu , which had the effect of dispossessing many farmers of their traditional lands. They were attracted to the generous lands visible across the channel from the shores of southwestern Scotland. Any Scot who had the inclination might now take the short journey across to Ulster and there, on easy terms, acquire a holding of land reputed to be far more fertile and productive than any he was likely to know in his own country. Economic distress in the Lowlands and economic opportunities in Ulster were the predominant causes for migration during the first fifty years after the plantation scheme had begun in 1610. In the Lowlands a positive fever for emigration swept. Ships were traveling back and forth with the frequency of a ferry.
From 1634 onward to 1690, life for the colonists of Ulster was to consist of a series of crises, some of them so prolonged and severe that the very existence of the Scottish settlements were threatened. The trouble had two causes: religious exactions from England and native uprisings. Under the Jesuits the Irish people had become fervently Catholic; to them the Protestants of Ulster were heretics as well as interlopers. The native Irish resented the intrusion of Scottish (and English) interlopers on their ancestral lands, and their resentment exploded in 1641 in bitter insurrection.
Between 1717 and the Revolutionary War some quarter of a million Ulstermen came to America. By the time the Great Migration began in 1717, a few Ulstermen were present in at least half of the American colonies, often alongside immigrants who had recently come directly from Scotland. It was when Ulster developed, in rapid succession, two new industries that the pinch came. Both woolen and linen manufacture grew apace in the closing years of the seventeenth century, bringing remarkable prosperity to Northern Ireland and arousing uneasiness among English competitors. Belfast, had arisen from the swamps of the Laggan Valley, giving Ulster a sheltered seaport for her growing trade. The competition of Irish cloth seemed unendurable to English cloth interests. At the Kings command, Irish Parliament in Dublin passed the Woolens Act in 1699, giving a crippling blow to the industry in Ulster. The substantial leaders of Ulster had put their primary economic faith in manufacture and trade, and their success in life now depended upon two unknown and uncontrollable factors: the arbitrary acts of the English Parliament and the ups and downs of the foreign market. A third and more immediate economic cause stimulated the first great migration of 1717. This was the suffering caused by rack-renting. The land question assuredly played a large part in driving Presbyterian Ulsterman to take the drastic step of removing to America. From rack-renting, whole villages lost their Protestant element by migration to America. The final blow was a succession of calamitous years for farmers. During the ‘teens, there were six years in succession that were notable for insufficient rainfall (1714-1719).
The first migration, then was touched off by a combination of drought, rack-renting, diminished trade in woolen goods, depression, and also religious discrimination and “persecution.” When the fourth successive year of drought ruined the crops in 1717, serious preparations began to be made for a migration. Ships were chartered, consultations were held, groups were organized, and property was sold. More than five thousand Ulstermen that year made the journey to the American colonies. There were but two real drawbacks–the perils of an ocean crossing and the expense of that passage. The practice of indenture has long been a familiar device.
There were five great waves of emigration, with a lesser flow in intervening years: 1717-1718, 1725-1729, 1740-1741, 1754-1755, and 1771-1775.
In 1717, at least 5000 Ulstermen left Northern Ireland. Jonathan Dickinson reported from Philadelphia in 1717, that there had arrived “from ye north of Ireland many hundreds in about four months,” and that during the summer “we have had 12 or 13 sayle of ships from the North of Ireland with a swarm of people.”
The second wave was so large, that not only the friends of Ireland, but even the English Parliament became concerned. In the Pennsylvania Gazette it was reported “that Poverty, Wretchedness, Misery and want are become almost universal among them; that…there is not Corn enough rais’d for their Subsistence one year with another; and at the same Time the Trade and Manufactures of the Nation being cramp’d and discourag’d, the laboring People have little to do, and consequently are not able to purchase Bread at its present dear Rate; That the Taxed are nevertheless exceeding heavy, and Money very scarce; and add to all this, that their griping, avaricious Landlords exercise over them the most merciless Racking Tyranny and Oppression. Hence it is that such Swarms of them are driven over into America.”
The third wave marked, on the American side, the first movement of Scotch-Irish in any numbers beyond the confines of generous Pennsylvania to the southwest. Following the path through the Great Valley, many Ulstermen now went into the rich Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, whose southern extremity opened out toward North and South Carolina. The second wave had so well established the Scotch-Irish in the southeastern tier of counties in Pennsylvania, that their influence, even in political affairs in the Quaker commonwealth was becoming impressive. Famine struck Ireland in 1740, and was certainly the principal occasion for the third large wave, which included numbers of substantial Ulstermen. An estimated 400,000 persons died in Ireland during 1740-1741; for the next decade there was a tremendous exodus to America.
The fourth exodus had two major causes: effective propaganda from America, and calamitous drought in Ulster. A succession of governors of North Carolina had made a special effort to attract to that province colonists from Ulster and from Scotland. Governor Dobbs of North Carolina, declared that as many as ten thousand immigrants had landed in Philadelphia in a single season, so that many were “obliged to remove to the southward for want of lands to take up” in Pennsylvania.
In 1717, when the leases on the large estate of the Marquis of Donegal in county Antrim expired, the rents were so greatly advanced that scores of tenants could not comply with the demands, and so were evicted from the farms their families had long occupied. During the next three years nearly a hundred vessels sailed from the ports in the North of Ireland, “carrying as many as 25,000 passengers, all Presbyterian.” Thousands of the Scoth-Irish began their New World careers as servants. In 1728, it was estimated that “above 3,200” persons had come from Ulster to America in the previous three years, and “that only one in ten could pay his own passage.” Going to America came to mean, by the middle of the century, not launching out into a vast unknown, but moving to a country where one’s friends and relatives had a home. It offered the very exciting chance to own one’s own land, instead of holding it on a lease that might end in rack-renting; it meant a heady freedom from religious and political restrictions; it even promised affluence and social prominence to those who were truly ambitious. Every group who went made it easier for others to follow. and so by 1775, probably 200,000 Ulstermen had migrated to America.
The southern provinces, Virginia and the Carolinas, were hardly considered, for the impoverished Ulstermen would seen nothing attractive in a region of plantations and slave-owning, where the Church of England was established. Maryland had been founded for Roman Catholics, was principally a plantation colony, and now had an Established Church; it was therefore no place for Presbyterians who wanted small farms. New York’s governors were reportedly hard on dissenters, and her lands up the Hudson were owned in great estates. Eliminating these, there remained the Middle colonies and New England. Reports from Penn’s settlements were enthusiastic as to the quality of land and the treatment of colonists; moreover, an invitation to settle there had come from the Secretary.
The people who entered America by the Delaware River, found a land of the heart’s desire. Their enthusiastic praise of Pennsylvania persuaded others to follow them, and then still others, until by 1720 “to go to America” meant, for most emigrants from Ulster, to take ship for the Delaware River ports, and then head west. For the entire fifty-eight years of the Great Migration, the large majority of Scotch-Irish made their entry to America through Philadelphia or Chester or New Castle.
With these towns as their starting point, and the western frontier their destination, the immigrants, as they poured in found their path of progress almost laid out for them by geography. The Great Valley lead westward for a hundred miles or more; then when high mountains blocked further easy movement in that direction, the Valley turned southwestward across the Potomac to become the Shenandoah Valley. From the southern terminus of the Valley of Virginia, it was a short trip, by the time the pioneers had reached it, into the Piedmont regions of the Carolinas, where colonists were now warmly welcomed. Within this seven hundred mile arc of back-country, therefore, from Philadelphia as far as the upper Savannah River, most of the Scotch-Irish made their homes.
It would have been difficult to imagine anywhere, in the world of 1717, conditions more attractive to discontented inhabitants of the Old World, than those which prevailed in the province of Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania, among the last of the original colonies to be founded, had by 1717 been proving for thirty years its stability and prosperity, its practical liberality and hospitality. Nothing like the generosity of its appeal was known in other colonies. Penn himself and his friends, set forth to Europeans the advantages of his province. Pennsylvania became the scene of an alternating and parallel movement of two peoples. The Scotch-Irish went to one part of a river valley, Germans on the other; the next year’s arrivals advanced beyond the settlements to repeat the process.
To the three original counties of Pennsylvania, along the Delaware (Philadelphia, Chester, and Bucks) the proprietors thought it wise in 1729 to add a fourth, Lancaster. The Scotch-Irish followed the river valleys, keeping north of the disputed border line of Maryland. The provincial government organized still further counties as the frontier was filled up: York in 1749, Cumberland in 1750, and Bedford 1771, not to mention other counties to the north of Philadelphia.
Chroniclers speak of the Scotch-Irish, who arrived in Cumberland during the decade after 1725 as folk “of the better sort…a Christian people.” It has been called the most important single Scotch-Irish center in America–”the seed-plot and nursery of their race…” Franklin County received its first Scotch Irishmen between 1728 and 1740, and York, whose initial settlers consisted of “families of the better class of peasantry,” between 1731 and 1735. It is said that no Scotch-Irish family felt comfortable until it had moved at least twice.
By “not known as such”, I meant “not known as Scots-Irish”. The term is not used in modern Britain.
“However,..where did you get the stats on eco ranking?”
American,
Thanks for the info. All I know about the Scots Irish is what I learned from James Webb’s book, Born Fighting, including the eco ranking of Irish vs. Scots Irish Americans. I’d have to look up the quote to get you his source. The most fascinating part of his book is the connection he makes between ‘redneck’ American culture and a specific ethnic group, the Scots-Irish. This was all news to me. He emphasizes the longstanding influence of ‘redneck’ culture, following their migration patterns, in places like New Hampshire, Central Pennsylvania, Appalachia, and accross the sunbelt to west Texas and Southern California. Webb makes a point of saying that the Scots-Irish are a people, while Scotch is a beverage:-D
billmon wrote an excellent essay on the history of the scots-irish in america. not sure if it’s still online. somewhere in archives i imagine.
There is an “Ulster American Folk Park” in Tyrone in Ulster that goes into a lot of the history.
I was in a pub in Ballycastle co Mayo in the west of Ireland a while ago called Polk’s and it’s owned by the same family that sent someone to the States in the 1700s, one of whose descendants became President Polk.
Anyway there was a picture of the prez behind the bar and he had the same nose as the man running the place who was serving the pints.
I think the term “Scotch Irish” arose in the U.S. in the mid-19th century, when people of Ulster Protestant descent wanted to distinguish themselves from the despised Irish Catholics who began arriving in the U.S. in great numbers.
There’s also a Ballycastle in County Antrim. Would a family of Scottish Presbyterians have settled in County Mayo?
“Albion’s Seed” (by David Hackett Fischer) is a great book for understanding the various subcultures from Great Britain that settled the future US in the 17th/18th century. He says there were four main groups that came over then–if my memory is correct, the Puritans in New England, the Quakers and others in the Mid-Atlantic states, the cavaliers who settled Virginia and surrounding areas, and the Scots Irish who went into the mountains (though I don’t remember what term he used for them). According to him the influence of those groups is something you can still see influencing American culture and politics today–he made a very good case for this in my inexpert opinion. (I think my own family tree is a mixture of three of the four groups–no cavaliers in my background.)
dbroncos..
I wouldn’t take Webb as exactly any kind of historian or his use of ‘redneck’ as accurate. The Ulsters, or Scot Irish, because they settled in piedmont farming and mountain land have always been referred to as “up landers’ as opposed to colonist in the coastal region who were called ‘low landers’. ‘Redneck’ is more associated with the cotton picking and tobacco crops labor of the coastal regions…that’s actually where the term redneck came from…..laborers had red necks from toiling in the sun. In today’s south redneck refers to the ‘country guys’ with trucks and shotgun racks who are basically their own authority and don’t wait around or ask permission for ‘nuthing’…….LOL. I have a lot of redneck friends, gotta love those guys…in our last hurricane they didn’t wait on state authorities and trucked right on thru mud and floods with tractors and logging equipment and chain saws and cleared more roads than the country did…nothing rednecks love more than a challenge.
BTW..one of the most interesting groups on the coast of NC is the ‘high tiders”..pronounced high “toiders” who live about mid way the Outerbanks region. They still speak a form of Ole English and call up-landers “ditdotters”. ..which in modern lingo means something like “people who don’t know anything” LOL
Lysias
They did. There were Presbyterians in Ballina
Farthest north I ever got in Mayo was Westport. I suppose North Mayo may be different.
Someone mention those Orange Bastards!??!!
Uh Ah! Up the ‘RA!
(Sorry, my Fenian blood’s acting up again…)
Ben Ami says: there is a growing fringe in Israel whose values are out of sync with those of the Jewish community broadly.
I think he is in denial. This is not a fringe of the Israeli Jewish community, based on some opinion polls I have seen these views are likely supported by about half the population.
I don’t think anyone in a leadership role in the Diaspora wants to acknowledge how badly things have deteriorated in Israel in recent years. The trend is all in the wrong direction. 50% is not far off, I’d say.
The pogrom was preceded by firebombing as well.
“Ben Ami says: there is a growing fringe in Israel whose values are out of sync with those of the Jewish community broadly.”…
Yea, the Nazis were fringe too at first…and then they weren’t.
The revolutionaires in France were very fringe at first…..and then they weren’t and Louie and Marie lost their heads.
Castro was fringe …..and then he wasn’t.
The US Zionist were always fringe…..and now they have our WH and congress.
Never underestimate fringes.
“Ben Ami says: there is a growing fringe in Israel whose values are out of sync with those of the Jewish community broadly.”…
Yeah, just a fringe! It’s not like they’re actually in charge of Israel or anything. Nope, the actions of Israel show plainly that peace-loving moderates are in charge.
seafoid,I do actually, I did a pamphlet in the late eighties on sectarianism in Liverpool in relation to Belfast and how similar the two cities were, with the influx of poor Irish, Liverpool had 100,000 mostly catholic Irish settled in the city centre and along the docks, Liverpool must have seemed like another part of Ireland in fact the Irish born population exceeded that of any Irish town except Dublin, Cork and Belfast, anti-Irish feeling soon surfaced with newspapers linking immigrants with rising crime and disease. No popery was raised to the status of a successful vote catching slogan in Liverpool politics for nearly a century, indeed we had Protestant political parties and Catholic ones, In one constituency[Scotland] the Liverpool Catholic Irish had formed the Nationalist party and Parnell addressed 20,000 of them at a meeting in Liverpool, Parnell’s election agent T.P O’Connor was elected MP in 1885, the only election of an Irish Nationalist outside Ireland, this constituency was held by the Catholic community until Archbishop Downey would not allow the title Catholic to a political party and so the Catholic Representative association was forced to change its name to the centre party it also had 19 Liverpool councillors, the same sectarian politics were practiced on the other side when the”Protestant Party” was formed in 1922. The city was convulsed by riots and sectarian violence, in one incident , Priests at St Anthony’s [ the church was on Scotland Road but the parish extended into protestant Netherfield Rd] knew of 157 families [833 individuals] who fled from Protestant streets. There were Protestant victims too. The parish of St. Martin-in-the -Fields, which included Scotland and Vauxhall roads, was four fifths Catholic, but here the school church was stormed and 110 Protestant families left the neighbourhood, houses were marked to denote the creeds of their inhabitants’ beatings and looting were common as partisans aimed to enforce a monopoly of faith in their area. The growth of the Labour Party very slowly transformed Liverpool Politics, People like Sidney Silverman and Bessie Braddock eventually won out. Sidney Silverman contested Catholic Exchange Constituency as the Labour Party candidate in 1933, he faced the Conservative JJ Shute A prominent Catholic and friend of the former MP and Privy Chamberlain to the Pope Sir JP Reynolds, local Labour leaders, however were conccious that Silverman was not the best possible candidate for Catholic Exchange, but they were ill prepared for the sectarian nature of the campaign which followed because of his Jewish origin, Thomas White the Conservative Leader, regarded the candidature of Silverman as “a blunder of the first magnitude” for Labour, as it ignored the susceptibilities of the large Catholic vote in the constituency JJ Shute had obviously been chosen because of his religion and because there was no large Protestant vote in the constituency they could exploit his religion for all they were worth. Public declarations by many well known Catholic Politicians like this— Catholics must vote for JJ Shute because 1, As Catholics you cannot accept the extreme socialist policies of Mr Silverman,it is not good for the working class and 2, You cannot expect Mr Silverman to further the just claims of our Catholic schools. During the door to door canvassing, attacks on Silverman as an enemy to the Catholic religion and as a Jew went on relentlessly. Silverman said after his defeat that– “This was a triumph of religious prejudice over political conditions. My opponent throughout fought the campaign purely on a religious basis and managed to persuade enough hungry, ill clad, badly housed people to vote for him on the basis of the similarity of their religions [" Sydney Siilverman" by Emrys Hughes] Bessie Braddock who had no religion had similar problems in her Constituency but after winning in1945 kept her seat up till 1970, a strong Labour Party took over in Liverpool at this time enabelling the Catholic and Protestant working class to vote on ordinary class issues. I do not have the computer knowledge to down load my pamphlet, my son could do it but he is not here at the moment I will try and post it shortly if you are interested.
Harry’s comment underscores the point that race is not necessarily about color. In Ireland (and Liverpool) “Protestant” and “Catholic” functioned as racial categories, just as do “Jew” and “Arab” in Zioland. Color is often the marker of racial standing, but it is not essential; there can be others.
Thanks, Harry. I would be interested to see more on that.
“the test for [all] nations is how they deal with their most extreme fringe. And there is a growing fringe in Israel whose values are out of sync with those of the Jewish community broadly and whose actions are undermining their country’s interests.”
Actually the extreme fringe is not a good enough analysis, though it is better than the argument that moderates are sheathing the extremists. Hannah Arendt showed that the possibility of fascism is pretty ordinary. Any population facing socio-economic and political constraints, unfortunately, can be harnessed to express such abominable hatred and violence, if not through action than through complacence. In his extensive study of suicide terrorism, Riaz Hassan writes: “Suicide bombings are carried out by motivated individuals associated with community based organizations. Strategies aimed a finding ways to induce communities to abandon such support would curtail support for terrorist organizations. Strategies for eliminating or at least addressing collective grievances in concrete and effective ways would have a significant, and, in many cases, immediate impact on alleviating the conditions that nurture the subcultures of suicide bombings.”
Why the surprise or the attempt to treat this outbreak as an exception? Zionism has been an ideology of race from the start.
The Georgetown University Israeli Alliance made a sarcastic, ignorant and vicious tweet: Israel! Be nicer to those Africans we are murdering, maiming, and raping in Somalia and Sudan. Yours always, the freedom loving Arab world.
After some blow back the Israeli Alliance felt no need to retract the tweet, and as the criticism grew, and with foundation, they dug themselves even further with an apology that was not an apology of the ugly tweet, but a statement of narcissistic self pity.
The tweet was merely an expression of our view that Israel is, as often happens, held to an unfair standard on the issue of African refugees. It was also comment on the fact that the refugees themselves have received considerably more attention than the conflicts that spawned them. Nativism in Israel is ugly and should be condemned, but is not unique to Israel in nature or degree.
link to blog.georgetownvoice.com
The persecution, rape and murder of sub-Saharan Africans in Libya, the abysmal treatment of South Asians and Africans in Arab countries must be fiercely talked about and acted upon. What I don’t get is when anyone, whoever, chooses to do comparisons. This is clear violation of Judaic and Islamic ethics or basically any form of decency. Georgetown University Israeli Alliance is committing a second, non-physical violence against the victims by not acknowledging them, and ideologically perpetuating the physical violence as well.
Philip Weiss: “The statement includes some racism of its own:”
I don’t agree. The ADL only spoke about “some” migrants and not about migrants as such. It’s like saying that someone sympathizes with Palestinians whose personal security has been compromised by the lawlessness and violence of some settlers. Which doesn’t mean that settlers or Jews as such are lawless and violent.
What strikes me more is that the ADL only explicitly sympathizes with Israel’s citizens but not with migrants whose personal security has been compromised by lawlessness and violence. In other countries you would expect this statement from nationalist-racist groups. But like Foxman said before, he must PLEASE his donors.
(I’m sure he didn’t write whoremasters.)
“Likud MK Miri Regev, who came under fire last week after calling African migrants “a cancer” in Israeli society, apologized for the first time for her comments on Sunday, opting, however, to leave the migrants out of her apology. … I apologize and I surely did not intend to hurt either Holocaust survivors or cancer patients,” she said.”
link to haaretz.com
Isn’t she a disgusting racist? Not only that she names them as cancer which implies a certain treatment, she also thinks that she has to apologize to Holocaust survivers and cancer patients, but not to the migrants she actually insulted. That’s like calling Jews vermins and apologizing to Romas, Sintis and everyone who is suffering from a vermin infestation.
that is appalling but frankly I wouldn’t expect much else from inside the shtetl.
Israel is like Detroit just before the drug gangs took over.
Well, my suspicion that a lot of the attacks in the Tel Aviv pogrom were on Falasha Jews from Ethiopia seems to be confirmed, by this comment on Tikun Olam: