Three examples from the last 24 hours…
1. The Washington Post runs a piece by Anat Berko, an Israeli scholar, called “If Israel bombed Iran, what would life in Tel Aviv be like?” You’d think that they might ask what life in Tehran would be like. And as it turns out, Berko is not really that interested in imagining life in Tel Aviv, so much as offering homiletics about the Holocaust:
The soldiers hurry out of their homes, buttoning their uniforms and scattering to bases and missions across the country. The massacres of Jews and the piles of ash left by the Nazis are part of our collective memory. So we take responsibility for our own defense — of a land that is both a haven and a self-imposed ghetto for the Jewish people.
My husband, a volunteer beyond the age of his mandatory reserve duty, is called up to defend the home front. In the past, the Israel Defense Forces’ preference for male over female reservists bothered me, but this time I am happy to stay home.
After the Holocaust, we said “Never again,” and we meant it. The world must understand that when the Jewish people are threatened, it is the first sign of a threat to international order and world peace…
In all of Israel’s many wars, the people have put aside the arguments that divided them politically and united to fight those who wished to destroy the Jewish state. Etc.
2. On All Things Considered, host Robert Siegel and political commentator David Brooks do what we used to call a little Jewish geography together, based on a recent article in Moment Magazine about the DNA of “notable” American Jews. The fact that they’re both Jewish and Moment is a Jewish magazine is merely implicit in this banter. The NPR transcriber did not know how to spell shtetl or pogrom; I’ve corrected the misspellings. A pogrom is an anti-Semitic riot or uprising in Eastern Europe.
SIEGEL: And E.J., in the interest in full disclosure, since the three of us spoke last, Moment magazine determined, based on saliva samples, that David and I share 10 centimorgans of DNA, apparently making us fourth cousins. And despite this newly discovered, extremely remote kinship, I shall still strive for fairness.
E.J. DIONNE: I have no doubt. I know I like David better now.
SIEGEL: So Cousin David, you – you weighed in very, very early – very, very critically on the by-now-notorious Romney fundraising video. Is there anything more to say about Governor Romney and the 47 percent or now the 14 percent tax rate?
BROOKS: Can I just say, first of all, I was most surprised that our ancestors worked together on National Shtetl Radio, a program called “All Pogroms Considered.”
3. I got a letter from Aaron Mann, the new campus outreach co-manager for Americans for Peace Now. Excerpt. Emphasis mine:
I’m a Jew, and a Zionist. I’m pro-Israel and pro-peace. I want security for Israel. I want rights for Palestinians. I want two states for two peoples.
As far as I’m concerned, none of that is controversial. Yet, you wouldn’t know it from hearing the majority of the discourse about Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that pervades our universities. This polarized dialogue is what many American students who care about Israel have had to deal with.
Like me, many have been looking for an alternative, moderate voice on campus.
I’ve been a strong supporter of Israel for much of my life, due in large part to what many in my family experienced during World War II. Israel’s preservation is, for us, an existential issue. As such, it’s always been difficult for me to be critical of a Jewish state- with its existence seemingly a miracle- that has been under constant threat for decades. A state founded by a people who have lived with such threats for centuries.
What was never difficult was maintaining a sense of solidarity and sympathy toward Israel.
Aaron, please tell me how you’re threatened, and why it’s an existential issue for you.
I used to think that APN was a group of nice people with their hearts in the right place. Now, when I listen to them clinging to a version of Zionism that depends on the illusion — no, the lie — of two states, I find myself being quite impatient with them. They are either being willfully dumb or woefully idealistic — or (and I hope this is not true) they are, above all, Zionists first, looking for a way to keep one foot in the progressive world while ultimately being boosters of a criminal enterprise. How can Mann, or any person who reads the news and has half a brain, still think the Palestinians are going to get a state? Mr. Mann?
Who other than an absolute racist and bigot would want to be part of the progressive world you inhabit?
I agree with Skandall. Anyone who opposes Apartheid, bulldozing homes of innocent villagers, massbombing civilian infrastructure(and massacring over 600 children) is a bigot and a racist to boot.
All who support the above is a true progressive.
Skandall; spoken like a true Zionist.
Well done. I’m with you all the way on the Apartheid thing!
After all, we’re ‘liberal’ Zionists! Onwards!
How old is Aaron?
Physically? Who knows.
Mentally? He never left grade school.
I think he still plays cowboys and indians when nobody is watching, only the cowboys are the IDF and the indians are the Palestinians.
Oh, and just to rig the game, the indians only get to use stones and the cowboys get to use jets and tanks.
“The world must understand that when the Jewish people are threatened, it is the first sign of a threat to international order and world peace…”
That is hysterical.
““The world must understand “..
He’s giving me visions of Jews painted yellow in canary cages…..this guy is seriously unhinged.
I guess to some people, some victimization isn’t just average victimization, it’s extra-special victimization if it’s that person’s ethnicity that’s being victimized….
Some people have to be the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral.
I saw this “threat to international order and world peace” as part of the Sampson option threat.
the Jewish Holocaust™ industry is gearing up again … gee, I don’t recall Rwandans, or Darfurians, or Balkan people, or the Congolese (the Congo alone have lost between 10-15 million in the past 15 years) basing so much of their politics and discourse on their suffering – especially decades later … oh wait, these more recent holocausts aren’t even 20 years old yet … yes it was terrible, yes less than half of the 12+ million who were killed in Hitler’s camps were jews but boy it gets old – move on … do the Rwandans go around starting every conversation with how they’ve suffered and what they lost? No, the Rwandans have picked up and moved on and these two tribes live side-by-side again with the very people who murdered their loved ones
… collectively and in most places in the world jews today live in greater security, with more peace, with greater wealth and political power than they have have ever known and with the least anti-Jewish hostility or attacks ever in their history … and they have amassed great political and financial power … the victimhood things sure sounds tinny
I remember how shocked I was when I learned about the Japanese concentration camps in Northern China and Unit 731, and how most of the Japanese responsible were given immunity in exchange for their research in order to prevent the Soviets form obtaining it. I wrote to the Holocaust Museum and asked why they didn’t have a section of the museum devoted to the victims of the Japanese atrocities as well (since it was occurring at the same time) I got back a pretty standard Zionist response, “but they weren’t trying to wipe out allllll the Chinese, Filipinos, Indonesians, Koreans, and those people had homelands… Blah blah blah.”
In other words, “the yellow johnnies don’t matter”.
The fear is that they might actually make known that during WWII, most of the deaths in genocide were non-Jewish. Not good for propaganda purposes.
After all, some deaths are a bit more equal than others.
The shoah was special because it was not about land or nationality. That is the Yad Va Shem view.
That is why ***s are so special.
I wish I was special. I could kill my neighbours and get away with it.
The seemingly militant paranoia of the Israeli government was not born out of Jungian nightmares nor Freudian fantasy, but out of genocide and a centuries long list of paranoia inducing occurrences like Pogroms and Genocide. Be that as it may, the above is only a reflection of myself trying to understand. The following seems to include an implied and implicit threat, but to whom may I ask: “when the Jewish people are threatened, it is the first sign of a threat to international order and world peace.” That does reek of a disturbed and haunted mind, but it also sounds quite like “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and coming from an Israeli scholar? I’m speechless and cannot fathom a reasonable explanation.
“when the Jewish people are threatened, it is the first sign of a threat to international order and world peace.”
This argument is both effective and interesting. It basically suggests that the Jewish people have functioned over the ages as some kind of detector, whenever there is discrimination and violence against the Jews it shows that there is trouble ahead for the world at large. I have often pondered about it, since it admittedly irritated me, in other words it partly worked against my will.
Obviously three central historical events come to mind.
Obviously the Nazis figure prominently (“it’s 1938 again”) in this scenario. They selected the Jews as their most prominent scapegoat, ironically both as controlling the finances of the world and as the Judeo-Bolshevic threat. But the”Judeo”-Bolshevic threat also points to the declared enemy of these counter-revolutionaries. (Russia has by far the most victims during WWII in Europe, if we leave out the horrors of systematic extinction for a while). It feels there is an earlier variation of the “Judeo”-Bolshevic threat in the coinage of “the Jews and their friends” on the extreme German right already in the 19th century. But under the Nazis these “friends” were not really safe either, Jewish or non-Jewish. Communists and socialist, not simply “the Jews”, were targeted first post Reichstagsfire . Thus in a way they too could be competitors for the detector function of more trouble ahead for the world at large. I choose the German Wikipedia since it shows the effect of these activities, based on the Reichstagsfire quite well. The Nazi activities against the left in fact led to the earliest boycotts against Germany from GB’s labor forces joined by ad-hoc Jewish groups. The “friends and their Jews” from the counter-revolutionary perspective?
The pogroms leading up to the Revolution in Russia. Complex issue considering that the Polish Jews ended up in Russia during the partitions of Poland. The Russians wanted the land but weren’t too fond of all these Jews they had to take in. Sounds familiar? What surfaces in the larger context is a similar clash between revolutionary and counter-revolutionary forces, with the Jews as the scapegoat served on the plate to distract the masses.
And then there are of course the pogroms by the crusaders on the way to the “Holy Land” with the Jews conceived as both murders of Christ but at the time perceived as not much different from the enemy one was going to ultimately confront, the Arabs or Islam, another variation this ultimate Other.
Now of course we are meant to perceive a pan-Islamic/pan-Arabic threat with its diverse new Hitlers, no matter if religious or secular (Saddam), and with the Israelis/”the Jews” targeted first as complying with exactly the same pattern, which isn’t so easy to accept. I at least have difficulties to see the same pattern in what we are witnessing now.
From the top of my head:
One: Its hard to fit the Israelis versus the Palestinians into a simplistic scapegoat argument. Who exactly is the scapegoat or “terrorist” in this case, Israelis and Palestinians are the two sides of the same Janusface.
Two: How real is the scenario, first we (Arab/Muslim forces) take Israel and then we take the West? Could it be they do not want to be kept down for whatever powers?
Three: Quite obviously the latest round of events was triggered by the US being attacked, not Israel. Of course one can argue Israel was attacked first but see above. It is not a simple victim aggressor scenario, although yes to a certain degree Israel, maybe the West at large, oil, share basic interests. Energy is pretty important to keep up our living standards. But is the best way “to pacify” empire style the Arab/Muslim world by war, what exactly would make this comparable to the Nazi scenario?
What about Arab/Muslim grievances against the West based on their late 19th, 20th century activities in the region, e.g. Egypt, Iran, Jordan … How do we explain that the change of roles, that now the axis-of-the-good warriors, as they call themselves here in Germany since Bush jun, in fact apparently is the aggressor to a much larger extend the Arab jihads can ever be? What about the legality of the Iraq war? …
From APN website. Press releases.
APN Mourns the Passing of Yitzhak Shamir
By Ori Nir on July 2, 2012 11:35 AM | 1 Comment
Yitzhak-Shamir186x140.jpg
Washington, DC – Americans for Peace Now (APN) joins the people of Israel in mourning the death of Yitzhak Shamir, Israel’s seventh prime minister, who died Saturday at the age of 96.
APN’s president and CEO Debra DeLee said: “Prime Minister Shamir was a patriot who cared deeply about his country’s security and wellbeing. We did not agree with his hardline policies on peace with the Palestinians and with Israel’s neighboring Arab states, but we recognized Mr. Shamir’s dedication to his country and his people and his deep sense of responsibility for Israel’s security. We send our deepest condolences to the Shamir family and to the people of Israel.”
And this is the comment:
Joe Douglas | July 5, 2012 8:46 PM
Shamir stated his desire to deliberately subvert any efforts to establish a Palestinian state by carrying out peace talks under false pretenses. “I would have conducted the autonomy negotiations for 10 years, and in the meantime we would have reached half a million [Jewish] souls in Judea and Samaria.” It appears he succeeded. Shamir ordered the assassination of Swedish peace negotiator Count Folke Bernadotte in 1948, in the quest to establish Israel ‘by any means necessary.’
My comments: extending condolences to the family is OK, but it is hard to see that the people of Israel should mourn.
Am am agnostic about 1SS or 2SS. I am for aS (a Solution). Recently we have seen Mitt Romney ably formulated the policy of nS (no Solution), “kicking the can down the road”. This is what the sensible consensus is. This consensus if based on the full digestion of the paradigm of eternal war. APN has to choose: to oppose the eternal war, which being for peace requires, or to stay within the limits acceptable to the “mainstream” in Israel and USA. At the end of the day, opportunists striving for change are deficient as opportunist and in their striving.
thanks piotr, helpful
“The massacres of Jews and piles of ashes left by the Nazis are part of our collective memory”
assuming “our” refers to all living human beings, doesn’t “our” also include the upwards of two million Africans who died in the Middle Passage,
the who knows how many millions of indigenous people killed by the conquistadores in their conquest of the so-called New World,
the 300,000 Chinese slaughtered in the Rape of Nanking,
the two million Vietnamese killed by the French and the Americans in their respective Vietnam wars,
the millions of Iraqis killed, injured &/or displaced in the Iraq/Afghanistan war,
let alone, the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians killed, injured or ethnically cleansed from their homeland by Jewish settlers,
and then there’s the multitudes who have been sacrificed throughout the ages to the wealth and power seekers of history,
with each and every one of those sacrificed being as much a part of “our” collective memory as are the Jews slaughtered by the Nazi killing machine,
since it’ll take more than a partial collective memory
for our species to survive
Of course, to remember millions of Jews murdered by the Nazis means nobody else has ever died or been murdered. Utter and complete idiocy.
The chip on your shoulder is so big it’s makes it difficult to you understand what you’re reading, doesn’t it?
You guys have no empathy with Aaron Mann and no understanding of the Jews.
As ADL’s Abe Foxman said: “The Holocaust is not just an example of a genocide but the near successful attack on the lives of God’s chosen children and therefore on God himself.” – You see the difference to the “piles of ashes” of other people.
Klaus wrote:
Whoa — that can’t possibly be an authentic quote from Abraham Foxman. Foxman is a liberal and a Democrat, and this is an example of ethnic messianic speech at its most extreme. Do you have a cite?
The statement seems to be claiming that the Jews — a mystical collective entity — are “God himself.” No modern liberal would ever make such a racist claim about any ethnic group. This is the kind of ethnic supremacist sentiment that is typically expressed by Chabad-Lubavitch cultists.
Sean,
You probably remember that we talked about this Foxman quote – from Peter Novick’s book – on the thread “On the passing of Novick”. So you are somewhat joking (but I agree). Annie researched the authenticity of the quote and so did Les who said:
———————————————————
I have a Kindle copy of Novick’s book, in English. The quote is there:
“Abraham Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League, said that the Holocaust was “not simply one example of genocide but a near successful attempt on the life of God’s chosen children and, thus, on God himself.”
listed as location 3720 of 7279
Novick sources the Foxman quote to Foxman’s article, “Schindler’s List-The meaning of Spielberg’s Film,” Front-line (ADL newsletter) 4 (January 1994):2 [ at note 122]
—————————————————————————–
My point at the time was, and still is:
- Foxman judges a genocide by who the victims are.
- Killing Jews is different from killing Armenians (for his above reason).
Klaus,
The interesting thing about the quote, to me, is that it demonstrates that Foxman, like many “liberal Zionists,” seems to be in the grip of Abrahamic and messianic cult programming (that “mind virus” that Woody Tanaka just mentioned) — and this cult has distinctively ethnic supremacist tones. It is impossible to conduct a rational discussion with people who have succumbed to this style of “thinking.”
Liberal Zionism is going to be undone by its own internal self-contradictions.
(Keep in mind that, to the annoyance of many people here, I have expressed the belief that Jews overall are in fact an exceptional people in the sense of often being vanguard leaders of important movements that have pushed human progress forward. But I would never make the claim that “God” has had anything to do with it — it’s more the luck of the genetic draw, perhaps.)
Sean,
I want to give some more context to Foxman’s statement.
Here is the text that Annie researched (my emphasis):
———————————————–
“The Holocaust is something different. It is a singular event. It is not simply one example of genocide but a near successful attempt on the life of God’s chosen children and, thus, on God Himself. It is an event that is the ANTITHESIS OF CREATION as recorded in the Bible; and like its direct opposite, which is relived weekly with the Sabbath and yearly with the Torah, it must be remembered from generation to generation.” Abraham H. Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith (New York), writing in ADL On the Frontline (January 1994, page 2)
———————————————–
What does that mean:
The “attempt on the life” of the Jews is the “antithesis of creation”?
- Were the Israelites created first and the rest of us later on?
(That’s not “recorded in the Bible”/Genesis.)
- And killing Armenians is NOT the “antithesis of creation”?
I think this Foxman quote should be widely circulated.
Klaus, if you simply look at it through a Christian perspective, you may find it easier to grasp the symbolism without literally turning all Jews into gods.
Remember Holy Trinity, Christ is considered both god’s son and man, all other human beings (or Christians only?) are considered a Christian’s brothers and sisters, ultimately going back to Adam and Eve.
Maybe human religious symbolism is limited?
Theology post Auschwitz is an interesting question. I cannot pretend I was satisfied with the close to absolute silence on the topic during my own religious upbringing, mainly in school.
Thank you for this quote. It is so racist and so pre-medievalian that one with this kind of belief should be retired to the dark cave of the pre modern man ( or a zoo will do)so that none gets infected with this crap.
If you dont not buy and sell this idea in this shape and size, you are failing and you are failing for you are antisemite.
Theology post Auschwitz is an interesting question.
Indeed it is. I used to dismiss it (based on the Orthodox theodicy and unfathomability of the divine I was taught from an early age), but have since come to appreciate its significance.
Almog Behar, one of the Baghdadi Jews mentioned in a recent post, evokes a moving and theologically-challenging image in his poem “Lines to Primo Levi”:
link to almogbehar.wordpress.com
Lea, Shmuel -
You are both trying to obfuscate the crucial point: Foxman’s religious racism.
Israel’s racism is a secular version of it.
Also: The religious notion of “God’s chosen people” is turned into the secular but no less chauvinistic term “Jewish uniqueness/exceptionalism”.
Klaus,
One wonders how many “liberal Zionists” are sympatico with Foxman’s mystical ethnic supremacism — probably many more than one might suspect. Dennis Ross? Thomas Friedman? Rahm Emanuel? Ann Lewis? Apparently they have been indoctrinated in these cult beliefs from a very young age — and these beliefs take deep root.
For the United States to organize its politics and destiny around the mystical ethnic supremacism of a single small minority group would be the height of folly. And that is why the American government is now distancing itself from the Israeli government.
You are both trying to obfuscate the crucial point: Foxman’s religious racism.
Is that what I was trying to do? It must come from somewhere very very deep in my subconscious (or yours?), because I hadn’t even read the Foxman quote upthread when I wrote my comment.
You caught me with that poem, Shmuel, and notice, only masters in poetry seem to reach me. I usually put it differently, I understand it is the absolute mastery of language, but I may have been born without an ear for it.
Celan was the master that haunted my youth, from the moment I found his book on the shelf.
I see Shmuel, you hadn’t read the Foxman quote but you commented on Lea who’s comment was on the Foxman quote.
Anyway,
- Foxman’s statement is official (not off the cuff) and it is great.
- And it is quoted by Peter Novick (‘The Holocaust in American life’).
Leander wrote,
You have misunderstood the meaning and structure of the the ideology and mythology that Jewish religionists like Foxman are promoting.
This branch of Judaism is arguing that Jews *collectively* — as an ethnic group — constitute a single, organic mystical entity that is God’s supreme representative (priesthood) in the world. Sometimes this belief seems to edge over into the notion that this mystical collective is the literal (not merely symbolic) body of God.
It’s the extreme *ethnocentrism* of the ideology that captures one’s attention — it seems fair to characterize it as ethnic supremacism (or even ethnic megalomania). When these beliefs bleed into Zionism and Jewish nationalism (as they have), you are looking at something quite bizarre and volatile indeed. To the extent that Nazism was a messianic ethnic supremacist ideology, it is a reasonable analog for religious Zionism.
Christianity rejected ethnocentrism as an organizing principle for religion outright — that is the core belief which has fueled conflict between Christians and Jews for many centuries.
With regard to religious Zionism: if one believes that one is an organic member of the body of God, then of course one might believe that one, as an individual, is a little God. These beliefs probably explain the extreme racism towards non-Jews one finds in the statements of Israeli religious leaders like Ovadia Yosef. (Non-Jews for Yosef are mere disposable beasts of burden, without a soul.)
There is no rational way to justify or excuse these beliefs. They are appalling. But one should make every effort to *understand* them. From where do these beliefs arise? What makes these believers tick?
Well explained Sean -
Peter Novick also pointed to the fact that Spielberg’s Talmud-motto of ‘Schindler’s List’: “Who saves one life, saves the world entire” is a
misquote. The true quote reads:
- “Who saves one life of ISRAEL saves the world entire.”
Israel (the Jewish people) is what the world is all about.
Klaus,
That messianic ethnic supremacism (megalomania) might explain the extreme verbal abuse that many pro-Israel activists hurl at anyone who disagrees with them — they actually believe that they are mouthpieces of God or God themselves. They consider cult outsiders to be subhuman savages.
Of all forms of racism, religious racism is probably the most virulent and dangerous.
come off it, Klaus. Good you remind me of Peter Novick! Apart from that, Sean is among the best you can find, if you want to firmly bite onto something and not let loose. I don’t find it very interesting apart from the fact that the vast majority says silly things at one point or another myself included.
This was a little private chat between me and Shmuel, Klaus. Do we need to excuse for having entered your urgent discussion? If you want to firmly bite into your grandiose discovery, Shmuel isn’t the man for you, again Sean is the best you can get in this context.
The true quote reads:
- “Who saves one life of ISRAEL saves the world entire.”
Ah, a little knowledge… The maxim appears a number of times in the Talmud (at least four) – twice with the additional qualification “of Israel” (once as a secondary citation in a specific case, involving a Jewish life) and the remainder without. Maimonides, in Mishneh Torah cites the universal version. Furthermore, the rationale behind the statement (cited both in the Talmud and in Maimonides’ reprise) is that all human beings (yes, human beings not Jews) derive from a single ancestor (Adam), and therefore a single human life is the equivalent of an entire world.
The context so obviously refers to human beings in general, that the qualification “of Israel” is probably the corrupt version, rather than the contrary.
And finally, modern ethical Jewish thought has overwhelmingly embraced this concept in its universal sense.
As in the case of gentiles and the world to come you cited a while back, Novick’s understanding of traditional Jewish sources is sorely lacking. You would do well to find another teacher.
Klaus,
More on the Jewish/Zionist messianism front:
1. article; TITLE Countdown to Moshiach DATE September 23, 2012 PUBLICATION Israel National News URL link to israelnationalnews.com QUOTE Jews around the world will simultaneous[ly] be part of a unique worldwide Jewish Prayer for Peace and Moshiach, the Jewish term for the Savior, at 5 p.m. Sunday, 11 a.m. EDT, three days before Yom Kippur.
2. article; TITLE BBC airs exposé on Hilltop Youth PUBLICATION Ynet News DATE September 23, 2012 URL link to ynetnews.com QUOTE The report said that the settler youths “carry out these crimes as an act of revenge” and further labeled them as “Jewish terrorists” that endanger the region’s stability. PAR One of the teens interviewed in the report said the Israeli public’s opinion of her actions is meaningless: “Faithless Jews who don’t fear God can call me a terrorist if they want. I don’t care what they say about me. I only care what God thinks. I act for him and him alone.”
Money quote:
Mind virus. “I’m God.” Messianism run amok.
Yes, there is a basic difference between Judaism and Christianity, from my perspective. In Christianity “religious” would allude to a member of a monastic order, in Judaism it alludes to every single member of the faith. Never mind the rabbis.
Nationalism is a much later idea than the Jewish faith, and in the Israeli-facts-on-the-ground-case simply influenced by the both “Christian” and “nationalist” 19th century. Helped along by Hitler, against his better will. Between the Nazis and Israel lies the difference between cause and effect.
Did I ever tell you, Sean, that beneath my outer shells, I have a deeply mystical soul, not even lessons in Catholic religion could hinder that; especially not those connected with the Other. And they were still present.
Leander wrote:
Many — probably most — scholars of ancient Israel would argue that Judaism was a messianic nationalist ideology from the very start — the mystical ethnocentrism and nationalism we have been discussing is the very heart of ancient Judaism.
Modern religious Zionism is the natural organic expression of ancient messianic Judaism.
Dennis Prager, if I recall correctly, in his book on antisemitism — “Why the Jews?” — argues that Nazism was influenced by ancient Judaism — master race=chosen people (in the minds of the Nazis).
You are talking to a theosophist and former Roman Catholic, so I fully understand this statement of yours.
Shmuel.
What is the best online resource for performing full-text searches on the Talmud?
And from which sources in Judaism did Ovadia Yosef (and other Jewish religious authorities like him, like Meir Kahane and Menachem Schneerson) acquire their views on non-Jews?
I didn’t want to wander that far back in history. I indeed meant modernist nationalism, peaking in the 19th century. Thus I am pretty sure that specific version didn’t exist than. And I still doubt that religious scholars mean that type of nationalism when they talk about ancient Israel and Judea. I didn’t have the evolutionary approach in mind either. by the way.
Would you say the Roman empire was a messianic nationalist enterprise with Christ on it’s flag, or more an empire, were religion followed politics; or at least mainly?
What about the war between Protestants and Catholics here in Europe, can they be considered clashes between different messianic nationalist movements, only with different messiahs?
Leander,
I would classify all those nationalist movements you mentioned as being messianic in character — and don’t forget the British Empire. (I’ve read a great deal about the occult origins of British imperialism in the Renaissance — see authors like Frances Yates.)
American imperialism is strongly messianic, with notable Old Testament influences. Also the Confederacy, which was a precursor in many ways of contemporary Christian Zionism.
Virgil’s “The Aeneid” — which praised the Roman Empire — is arguably a messianic work in some respects — but from a classical not Christian perspective.
Messianism at the root is an archetype of the collective will to power and domination as manifested by any group. But we most frequently associate messianism with the Bible and the Abrahamic tradition(s).
The Messiah is specifically the Jewish Messiah — Moshiach or Mashiach.
What is the best online resource for performing full-text searches on the Talmud?
I’m afraid I’m not familiar with English-language resources. I use Snunit’s Hebrew/Aramaic database and search function: link to kodesh.snunit.k12.il
And from which sources in Judaism did Ovadia Yosef (and other Jewish religious authorities like him, like Meir Kahane and Menachem Schneerson) acquire their views on non-Jews?
If you want that sort of thing, Shahak’s your man.
Shmuel, you say:
“MODERN ethical Jewish thought has overwhelmingly embraced this concept in its UNIVERSAL sense.” [The concept that all lives are equal before God.]
Modern? – Abe Foxman is modern. He is the head of the modern, most influential Jewish oganization in the US (and maybe the world) and he says:
—————————————————————————-
‘The attempt on the life of the Jews (and ONLY the Jews) is an attempt on God and the antithesis of creation.’
—————————————————————————-
- Was there an outcry of “modern universal ethical Jewish thought”?
- Novick quoted him. Neither Foxman nor Novick are on the fringe.
Very interesting. Clearly, different Torah scholars have diametrically different opinions concerning the relative value of human lives.
Once I encountered a theological discussion in ynetnews.com comments. Someone argued that Israel should be generous in diplomacy with Palestinians citing Jacob the patriarch as an example. There was a quick retort that Jacob’s conduct was reasonably only because he lacked military superiority, and from there the discussion turned to Simeon and Levi: was their massacre of the defenseless despicable or correct? Or merely “rash”?
Klaus,
I did not argue that Jews are free of bigotry, hypocrisy or cognitive dissonance; merely that this particular idea – that one who saves a single individual it is as if he has saved the entire world – is understood by modern Jews (including Foxman) as a statement of the universal value of human life. Your view of Judaism not only as essentially unchanging over the course of millennia, but as a completely coherent and consistent system is rather odd, to say the least.
As I have explained, the assertion that the “original” Talmudic statement distinguishes between Jewish and non-Jewish life, and that the Spielberg version is a “misquote” is simply false.
piotr,
The case of Simeon and Levi is a very good one. In traditional Jewish sources, their actions at Shechem are almost universally condemned (beginning with the Bible itself). Yet, they have been significantly rehabilitated by contemporary religious nationalists.
Shmuel,
Foxman’s statement on the Holocaust is morally equivialent to the Talmud statement that says “who saves one life of Israel saves the world entire”.
To me, all three statements:
- the righteous among the nations …
- who saves one life of Israel …
- the Holocaust is not simply one example of a genocide …
are morally equivialent.
Klaus Bloemker says: “I think this Foxman quote should be widely circulated.”
I think it may be unfair to set up the words of Abe Foxman as an indictment of Jewish theology in general. Ol’ Abe has a couple of special axes to grind.
For one, if you read his biography, it becomes obvious that the Holocaust is essentially his connection to Jewry. Absent it, he would still be a Jew, but he wouldn’t be Abe Foxman. He has to have the Holocaust, or there goes Abe. It almost literally created him.
Secondly — and not very surprisingly, in view of the above — he’s tended to exalt the total moral supremacy and absolute uniqueness of the Holocaust.
So I’m all for giving ol’ Abe a hard time. However, I’m somewhat hesitant to take Judaism as interpreted by him as the authoritative text.
Foxman’s statement on the Holocaust is morally equivialent to the Talmud statement that says “who saves one life of Israel saves the world entire”.
That may be so, but that does not mean that he does not also espouse the Talmudic statement without the additional qualification – which is the way in which it is commonly understood by most Jews today (and almost certainly the intention of its original authors). As cognitive dissonance goes, it’s barely a blip – especially for an old hand like Foxman.
Colin -
“total moral supremacy and absolute uniqueness of the Holocaust”
- The mind-boggling thing about it is that this is so – in Foxman’s view – because of the *victims’* total moral superiority and absolute uniqueness.
I don’t know anything about Foxman’s biography. Now that you mention it,
I will look into it.
Shmuel ,
I still wonder about the Maimonides saying.
The English version, wording:
- “The righteous among the nations will have a place in the world to come”
reads like:
- ‘The righteous among the nations will ALSO have a place …’
This implies a rank-order:
1. Israel will have a place (collectively as a ‘righteous people’)
2. Also the righteous gentiles (but on an individual basis)
You explained to me that the saying does not mean a rank-order.
How is the wording in the original Hebrew. Is there also an ‘ALSO’?
How is the wording in the original Hebrew. Is there also an ‘ALSO’?
The wording of the Hebrew is as I translated it at the time:
link to mondoweiss.net
Klaus,
Doesn’t Yehoshafat Harkabi argue that Maimonides holds racist views towards non-Jews? That is the cultural and ideological context in which to interpret Maimonides’ statements and remarks. Perhaps Shmuel would like to comment — I am sure that he must have read Harkabi.
For others: Google [yehoshafat harkabi maimonides]
In any case, contemporary religious Zionism is heavily suffused with mystical ethnic supremacist concepts, and those beliefs have seeped into and influence the attitudes of many secular Zionists as well.
Arguably, secular Zionism was itself a racist ideology from the start — that argument is easy to make, based on analyzing the writings of the founders of Zionism.
Shmuel,
I had this paragraph from Maimonides that you quoted in mind (the balance of everbody’s merits and sins determines whether he is righteous or wicked). – But what you then go on to write is contradictory:
————–
“Maimonides writes that even wicked Jews have a share in the World to Come, “and so the righteous of the nations of the world have a share in the World to Come”. The phrase itself is widely understood (also based on another passage in Maimonides) to mean non-Jews who observe the 7 Noahide Laws. Maimonides then goes on to list (in 24 categories running over two pages) which Jews will be denied reward in the afterlife – including, inter alia, those who embarrass others in public or engage in malicious gossip.”
————————
On the one hand you say (according to Maimonides):
- “even wicked Jews have a share in the World to Come”
on the other hand you say:
- ‘Maimonides lists which (bad) Jews will be denied reward in the afterlife’
It is puzzeling. But it’s also a sort of scholastic debate.
Sean,
No, I haven’t read Harkabi, but I have read a good deal of Maimonides (albeit without Harkabi’s background).
Yes, there are passages in Maimonides’ writings that would be called racist today. There is also misogyny and extreme intolerance toward Jewish heretics and apostates (probably the worst of the entire lot in Maimonides’ view). He lived in the 12th century for God’s sake.
Your assessment of contemporary religious Zionism is correct, and the exchange of ideas with secular Zionism has indeed become far more reciprocal in recent years. And yes, the less savoury parts of Maimonides (and Nahmanides and Judah Halevi) are central to religious Zionist thought – beginning with A.I. Kook – and to the religious racism of such figures as Ovadiah Yosef.
I also agree that secular Zionism – like other European colonialist and ethnic-nationalist ideologies of its time – was a racist ideology from the very beginning.
But it’s also a sort of scholastic debate.
Yes, it is.
In a nutshell, however, the principle is that even wicked Jews have a share in the World to Come, with the exception of those who have committed sins that are considered particularly grave, going beyond “ordinary” wickedness.
Klaus, I am a bit puzzled what physic forces attract you so much to this simplistic reading. Are you aware of Christian allegorical readings (or the Jewish version: Pardes) and their systems at the time? It feels you can’t be. But it absolutely feels you should be aware of historical context, even as a sociologist.
Not only was Maimonides an outstanding mind at his time, he also lived in a part of the world which was scientifically leading. Take a closer look at the influences on the scholastics in our own realms slightly later, or generally at early leading centers of more advanced theological scholarship and its influences.
Do you honestly think in spite of this basic historical context, you will find something deeply sinister or, as it feels you want, an early version of the definition of Other in Jewish writing that ultimately explains antisemitism? It’s not necessary to know historical context, tradition and as in Maimonides case the influence of ancient Greek philosophy? He must be more sinister than our own scholars at the time? Or more sinister e.g. than the crusaders even?
Shmuel,
As usual, you are totally on the beam and relentlessly honest and truthful in analyzing your own tradition. I only hope that I can live up to your example in wrestling with and analyzing my own tradition, which may have a good deal more to account for than yours.
I think the mutual project which some us are engaged in is coming to terms with the darker and more destructive urges and impulses in our respective traditions and working to transform that energy into something more positive and life-affirming.
Quite a few cultures feel exceptionalist impulses (certainly not just Judaism, or Christianity, or “the West”) — fine: turn that energy into forging exceptional creations that benefit us all. Even take some pride in producing exceptional creations of universal value. Be competitive, if one must be competitive, in producing great and good works — and pay respect to your competitors when they merit respect.
Lea,
- Your comments weren’t nice and they weren’t to the point.
Most Germans – when the subject turns to Jews – don’t know any longer whether two plus two equals four. Let’s leave it at that.
Klaus, I love numbers, I always did. But I do not think that the true meaning, or the meaning and interpretation over the centuries, context and outside influences, can be solved by a simple arithmetic operation, to use your image.
Yes, there is a nexus between religion and politics, obviously. Both images of superiority, or simply righteousness compared to others, just as negative images concerning the creed of others around, may well be related to preventing apostates or converts, historically. I find historical theological scholarship and their diverse hypotheses highly interesting.
But this is not about me being German. I am pretty sure you can find a lot of non-Germans that feel the “scientific vision” of someone like Johann Andreas Eisenmenger needs a 21st Century update, or should be read again. I do not belong to them. Don’t ever expect me to react kindly in this context.
What does being German in this context mean? Are you suggesting, I have a somehow deficient grasp of German history? That I am anti-German and thus ardently pro-Israel? Or that I am some type of German sheeple that inconsiderately repeats what she is told?
No, I simply object to singling out a statement and mirror them back onto a much larger complex and tradition to prove a simplistic point. I don’t like the idea that an arbitrary statement by anyone belonging to a group can be used to describe something essential about that group. Just as there may always be the problem that an outsider, who doesn’t know the larger context to well, may misinterpret matters.
I may in fact respond so fiercely to this kind of stuff, not because I am German, but because I was brought up as a Catholic. I may respond fiercely, if that is what I did, to everything surrounding a very specific childhood trauma. My own church demanded in its prayer book that I confess if I had had relations with people of other creeds. I was nine at the time and my best girlfriend was a Protestant. What does this little story suggest to you, other than what it felt like then, that the Catholic authorities had decided whom I could relate to. Doesn’t this suggest some kind of superiority for you too, the division of people into good–the ones I was allowed relate to–and evil–the ones I could not, that in fact in any way relating to them had to be confessed as a sin.
Maybe I do not react as a German, but as a traumatized Catholic? Look into the story of Paul or Saulus, and you may end up discovering early origins of a changing “image of the enemy”. Look also into the history of the Catholic church and its fight against “liberal-jewish” negative forces in the 19th century when it was itself under Prussia’s/Bismarck’s/Protestant attacks.
I’ll shut up again.
Lea -
You don’t have to “shut up”. (But Foxman’s statement wasn’t “arbitrary”.)
I am probably as critical of some of ADL or Foxman’s activities as you are, but that is a completely different topic.
We may also agree, it could be representative of a larger cultural trend in the American Jewish community. Were we differ is, I am loath to judge religious statement purely rationally, much less without knowing what specific interpretations he may have in mind.
Also: what about the larger context? Do you have a link to the complete article? Does Novick tell us something about it? The reason why I have not read Novick so far may well have to do with the fact that it feels I should be prepared to take a closer look into the ways both the Holocaust and the “miracle of survival” (Israel) have been influencing the Jewish religion theologically in the US. Since history and/or mythical history are more deeply entangled the Jewish religion than in the Christian, how could the Holocaust have been ignored?
If I read this superficially via the Christian, or in my case Catholic lens, with it’s specific limited catechism variant and its likewise limited list of questions at each chapters end, the image on the surface may feel similar to the fallen angel’s. Didn’t they want to be like God? – the child in me would probably ask. Isn’t comparing God and man ultimately something satanic, or at least close to it?
Let me give you an image used by a deeply Catholic man, that feels comparable. It somehow surpasses the distance between God and man too.
At one point of his life Leisner met a women, whom he fell deeply in love with (human love versus the love of God or Agape). He went through a crisis quite possibly representative of many Catholic men on their road to priesthood (if they do not surrender secretly, that is). In the end he decided to become a priest. Once he made up his mind, he wrote a letter to the girl. She was the most beautiful image of Christ he had ever met, he told her. Obviously as a Christian he has a slight advantage, after all Christ was both human and the son of god, and as son of god part of the Holy Trinity. But quite obviously the distance between god and man slightly melts away in his imagery too. Don’t you think?
Dear Lea,
Foxman *doesn’t* “compare God an man” – he compares God and Jews.
For more context read the longer quote that starts: “The Holocaust is something different. It is a singular event. …” Why is it SINGULAR?
Leander,
You are making something complicated that is extremely simple for anyone who has studied the history of Judaism and who is familiar with thousands of other quotes like it over millennia to the present day: Foxman is synonymizing “the Jewish people” as a nation (“Israel”) and ethnic group with God or Godhood. There is a cultural and ideological context in which to correctly interpret these words. “The Jewish people” as an organic unified entity is a mystical concept pervading all of Judaism (but with varying degrees of literalism and intensity as one moves across the ideological spectrum from ultra-Orthodox to Reconstructionist Judaism).
But the interesting thing is that many secular Jews (and secular Zionists like David Ben-Gurion) also share these mystical emotions about Jewish peoplehood.
Germans should be well aware of this aspect of human nature — they themselves have succumbed now and then to messianic and mystical ethnic nationalism — most recently, just last century.
All ethnic nationalist movements, when they reach a certain degree of fervor, start expressing themselves with religious myths, symbols and ideologies.
The Jewish establishment itself over the last half century has completely collapsed the distinction between Judaism and Zionism — and that is why Zionism now expresses itself in terms of Judaism and Judaism expresses itself in terms of Zionism.
It should be easy for any thoughtful person to figure out why this development is probably going to turn out as a disaster for both Judaism and Zionism. Mixing religion with politics (and, if that were not bad enough, with ethnic nationalism) is usually a losing idea.
Why do you think it is that personality types like Anders Breivik are so attracted to Zionism?
Leander,
To get a handle on the ideological framework for the concept of messianic and mystical “peoplehood” in contemporary Zionism, you really need to dig deeply into all of these Zionist ideologues and connect the dots:
1. Abraham Isaac Kook
2. Avraham Stern
3. Benjamin Netanyahu
4. Benzion Netanyahu
5. David Ben-Gurion
6. Meir Kahane
7. Menachem Schneerson
8. Moses Hess
9. Ovadia Yosef
10. Theodor Herzl
11. Yitzhak Shapira
12. Ze’ev Jabotinsky
Abraham Foxman’s remark is located on this semantic grid — it should be easy to interpret.
C’mon — you’re a cultural historian — this will be a piece of cake for you.
All of these thinkers are fully grounded in the myths, symbols and archetypes of ancient Judaism and Torah-based messianic Jewish ethnic nationalism.
Hmm, explain. I am no expert on the Nazis endeavors and “research” in the field of mysticism and religious cult all the way down to India, but how would their search for proto-Germanic religious roots bring about the same Messianic tradition the monotheist religion created? Didn’t they try to get back to purely Germanic and Aryan roots? And wasn’t that a much more diverse universe of Gods and Goddesses?
But please help me out about earlier messianic seizures of us Germans, and who exactly would these Germans be pre-1871? The Alamanni, the Chatti, the Franks, the Saxons, or later developments and mergers to name just a few. ;)
But I have absolutely no doubt you will somehow manage to squeeze it into your system.
I am not denying that Israel has a strong messianic element, and that the Zionist founders of Israel can be studied along the lines of their messianic ideas or political theology generally, by the way. But that is not exactly my field of expertise or interest.
Breivik, yes, you may remember that I always feared the Pipes, Horowitz et al networks could raise the evil spirits of old, after all the shift from the earlier Semites the European 19th thought it had to fight only stood pars pro toto for the larger “Semites”.
wasn’t Brevik drawn to to Zionism because of its anti-Islam beliefs?
yourstruly,
Read his manifesto: Breivik was drawn to Zionism and Jewish nationalism because of his white Christian nationalism — the same cultural/political archetype which produced an alliance between the Nazis and some Revisionist Zionists. Messianic ethnic nationalists from various backgrounds tend to form temporary alliances of convenience.
That is why Zionists like Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer have groomed the support of European white nationalists.
You noticed, I wasn’t serious. But I can’t see anything messianic in Prussia or Austria, and that are the two empires you may have in mind, when you speak about the Germans before 1871.
By the way, I mentioned the Allmanni–French: les allemands–first since that is the region I am born. My father’s family is spread in Switzerland, Alsace and Southern Germany. This is the history of Baden, the German remnants of the Alemanni. And this is Wikipedia in “Allemannisch”, or Southern German, look closely at the map. Dangerously sectarian, we still feel closer to Switzerland and Alsace that to e.g. “Prussia”,, language wise”, in spite of Luther, who created a German standard. We were “pacified” by the Prussians into union. But I don’t think the impulse behind that was messianic. It was the first step to more land and more people = more power. The Nazis considered themselves as the inheritors of Prussia and as a close second as inheritors of the Romans, or at least they would have liked to be.
‘” a threat to international order and world peace”
Dont know what to make of the historical knowledge of WaPo?
First WW1 ? Was it preceded by mass thereat to Jewish life?
Wars in between 1800 and 1900 in Europe ? Did it?
Ownership of the landscape changed hands in Latin America,Phillipines,Hawai between 1800 and 1900 with mass famine,death,and social upheaval and in the same period of time Bengal of India saw 2 famines . Obviously WaPo does not count them as pivotal moment in the history of human destruction of other human beings . To make world safe for Jewish people from European pogrom , Europe ended up with mass murders in Iraq,Palestine,and Syria not that long ago. Has it ensured the world order?. I dont blame a Zionist for sculpting a picture made of religion,emotion,and entitlement and plenty of stupid assertions that have no meanings beyond those words in which they are written. But WaPO is this what you tout as enlightened understanding of political problems.?
Essential ideas of article could have been written by somebody in 500 AD asking for special treatment of the world Jewry on the basis of otherwise inexplicable claim of being “chosen people of God” and a “light unto the world”. As the words and sentences in this article rely on uniqueness of Jewish experiences to justify suspension of all rules ,morality,and common sense , it is very much possible those ideas of choseness was manufactured exclusively to gain advantages over the surrounding natives .Today people will laugh over this claim but nuances help the Zionist conceal the concept under the guise of a different zeitgeist and carry on the business of creating a monster out of every obstacle it faces to its entitlement.There is no need to reflect for that will expose the inner demons we all carry in our mind.
The idea of special treatment was actually good. First, Christians ruled in quite a few countries and they decided to single out Jews with the exemption from forcible conversions. It was not as benevolent and harmonious as one could wish, but Jewish religion in Europe survived and one can even argue that it thrived. Much better than Cathars, not to mention pagan religions.
How a “Zionist alternative” would work over the ages? Clearly, Palestine was overrun by outside forces of much larger state a lot of times during the last 2 millenia, Persians a few times, Byzantines a few times, Arabs, then alternating Muslim states based in Egypt and Syria, Crusaders, and eventually Turks. The only periods of stability were as a province of a much larger state. Minute independent Jewish state would not survive long, it never did.
Much better than Cathars, not to mention pagan religions.
Good point, Piotr, that’s often on my mind in this context: the Cathars, the Albigensian Crusade; the Waldenses, the Huguenots from the top of my head.
Just a thought experiment here:
Can anyone imagine, say, American palestinians or American Ukrainians who just happen to be host and guests on any national TV or radio program talking about some completely divorced subject such as Mitt Romney, and yet joking between themselves about being on “National Nakba Radio”? Or “The Holomodor Show” or etc.?
Such a good joke though: A supposedly non-ethnically based national show, talking about contemporary politics that involves at the very least the possibility of war demanded of us by Israel, with the host being jewish, and then … all the guests Left and Right being jewish too! With this sort of imbalance not being anything out of the ordinary.
Ha ha ha though! Such a good joke one can openly laugh about it.
As if to say … “Fuck you.”
Not, of course, that there’d be anything to laugh about if one saw the similar thing all the time with a huge preponderance of palestinian Americans. Or Ukranian Americans. Or indeed any other variety of Americans. Instead of course it would be screaming about the lack of “diversity”! Of obvious discrimination!
But ha ha ha for some.
>> The Washington Post runs a piece by Anat Berko, an Israeli scholar, called “If Israel bombed Iran, what would life in Tel Aviv be like?” …
>> The massacres of Jews and the piles of ash left by the Nazis are part of our collective memory. So we take responsibility for our own defense …
And by “defense” Mr. Berko means pre-emptive, offensive strikes against a non-aggressor, sovereign state, and the continuation of a 60+ years, ON-GOING and offensive (i.e., not defensive) campaign of aggression, oppression, theft, colonization, destruction and murder.
Zio-supremacists have strange definitions for everyday words – witness guys like giladgeee who speak of “common sense” without employing any of it. It’s no wonder they cannot comprehend morality and justice. All they seem to know how to do is to:
- be aggressor-victims; and
- “Remember the Holocaust!”™
>> As such, it’s always been difficult for me to be critical of a Jewish state- with its existence seemingly a miracle- that has been under constant threat for decades.
There’s no miracle to the existence of Israel, and Mr. Mann fails to consider that the constant threat to Israel might just have something to do with the terrorism and ethnic cleansing employed to create it; with the fact that it is an oppressive, colonialist, expansionist and supremacist state; and with its 60+ years, ON-GOING and offensive (i.e., not defensive) campaign of aggression, oppression, theft, colonization, destruction and murder.
Oh, right, he’s a Zio-supremacist. “Remember the Holocaust!”™
RE: “The world must understand that when the Jewish people are threatened, it is the first sign of a threat to international order and world peace…” ~ Anat Berko
MY COMMENT: Anat Berko makes a bit of a Freudian slip, methinks.
Whatever the case, I certainly do understand that “when the Jewish [Israeli] people feel threatened”, Israel’s PTSD-fueled (and nuclear-armed) paranoia is a “threat to international order and world peace”. I have absolutely no doubt(s) about it!
SEE: “Israel’s Defense Chief OK’s Hundreds of Israeli Deaths”, By Ira Chernus, CommonDreams.org, 11/11/11
ENTIRE COMMENTARY – link to commondreams.org
• ALSO SEE – “Iranophobia: The Panic of the Hegemons”, by Ira Chernus, Tikkun Magazine, November/December 2010
LINK – link to tikkun.org
P.S. SPEAKING OF “PTSD-FUELED (AND NUCLEAR-ARMED) PARANOIA”, ALSO SEE: “How the Power of Myth Keeps Us Mired in War”, by Ira Chernus, TomDispatch.com, 01/20/11
SOURCE – link to commondreams.org
P.P.S. RE: “Aaron, please tell me how you’re threatened, and why it’s an existential issue for you.” ~ Weiss
MY COMMENT: Aaron is threatened partially because Zionism tells him that he is existentially threatened. See the above articles by Ira Chernus, especially “Israel’s Defense Chief OK’s Hundreds of Israeli Deaths”.
Of course the long list of people who are “out to get the Jews” continues to expand and expand (in the Zionist’s looniverse) that list of course already includes all anti-Zionist Jews (Norman Finkelstein, Tim Wise, Ilan Pappe, and I could go on quoting a long list of names if I wanted), Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter, Walt and Mearsheimer, and tons more people who clearly have an open and vivid “hatred” of Jews!! I mean it could only be that, or that Zionist propagandists are absolutely insane, lying, douchey retards!
And then as for this Aaron Mann individual he definitely appears to be a poster child of whining hasbara spreading veterans that are appalled by what they encounter on campuses: i.e. like the facts, reality itself, and of course a legitimate professional historical account of the modern conflict in Palestine and its modern reality as well, etc. etc. The main body of his statement is a typical repeat of very old Zionist propaganda talking points. They include:
That the maintenance (by US taxpayer dollars, AIPAC lobbying, US vetoes, and US military aid) of the current Israeli apartheid state somehow forms an “existential issue” for him as an AMERICAN!! All I have to say to that BS of Mr. Mann is not only that it is a humorous pathetic propaganda claim on his part, but also that he pretty much just openly declared he carries a possible disloyalty to the United States of America within him! Because in order for him to allegedly feel “secure” apparently the US taxpayers need to keep propping up a foreign apartheid regime thousands of miles away from America (can anyway say “Israel-firster”!). Basically this claim of Mann and his ilk will usually get into claiming that the modern Zionist entity is supposedly “needed” by even AMERICAN Jews because of a mythical supposed “ominous threat” that Jews in America allegedly face!! This is roughly the equivalent of that turd Glenn Beck’s ravings on Fox News during the Egyptian Revolution that the events in Egypt made him realize that Americans supposedly had to start asking themselves an alleged “important question” (regarding American Jews apparently) that “I’m I ready to hide a Jew in my attic?”. So basically Jews in America (who face practically NO issues of any kind as far as any form discrimination or mistreatment of any type whatsoever), a group that is disproportionately well-represented in almost all facets of American society, could of course at any moment supposedly be thrown into a concentration camp (by Mann and his associates “logic”). And the only way for them to ever really feel “secure” fully is to know that they can always run off to Israel if they need to apparently…. If some mythical attack on Jews were to supposedly occur (as Mann and company try to imply), I have a little newsflash for them: if America itself had become “unsafe” for Jews; Israel itself would not be “safe” either as due to its very limited size it could be militarily destroyed by any professional military (in this hypothetical US “Fourth Reich” scenario of Mann and the hasbarists) quite quickly. In fact, isn’t this what the Zionists claim people like Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah have allegedly claimed (in fake “quotes”) that supposedly (and I paraphrase that Zionist meme on this fake quote) “it is good that the Jews are congregating in Palestine, it will save us the trouble of chasing them around the world”. But yet being congregated in one small chunk of land doesn’t even come into the mind of Mann and his propaganda colleagues who give clear hints that they believe even America is not supposedly not “safe” for Jews, because again America according to them of course as a “frightening level” of supposed “Jew-hatred” in it that is doing nothing but “rising”!!
And then Mann quickly throws in the apparently required reference to the “Jewish state”. Which is always a unique thing to hear, as anyone who has any scientific or informed academic thinking capabilities then simply asks one simple question: “how is Israel a ‘Jewish state’?”. I think an anti-Zionist Israeli Jew himself gives some good points on this issue: link to palestineremembered.com
Quote- Israel is not a “Jewish state” in the sense that its laws are based on Halacha. They are not. It is not a “Jewish state” in the sense that most Jewish people live there or plan to live there. They do not. It is a “Jewish state” only in the sense that the Jewish ethnic group enjoys privileges that are denied other ethnic groups, and that within the Jewish ethnic group much misery is caused by there being a state monopoly to define “who is a Jew”.
Promotion of the Hebrew language (and Yiddish, and Ladino) does not require an ethnically-defined state. Preservation of the lives of Jewish people facing the risk of persecution does not require an ethnically-defined state. Study of the Torah and the Talmud do not require an ethnically-defined state. Permitting the ages-old Jewish genius to flourish in the fields of science, medicine, art, and any other field does not require an ethnically-defined state.
The State of Israel is ethnic nationalism institutionalized and gone wild. With all the limitations of historical analogies, Israel is a “Jewish state” in the sense that racist South Africa was a Boer state and in the sense that Nazi Germany was an Aryan state. In short, there is nothing “Jewish” worth preserving in the “Jewish state”.
end quote.
And then to conclude Mann throws in a claim that the current 64 years of the Zionist regime’s apartheid system being in place in Palestine is supposedly to be viewed as “seemingly a miracle” (I guess the Crusader’s “Kingdom of Jerusalem” rule of Jerusalem that lasted for 88 years was even more of a “miracle” in Mann’s eyes!). I am not sure if Mann is a religious or secular individual, but this silly claim that the modern Israeli state is somehow a supposed “miracle” is most often heard by demented right wing Evangelical Christians (putting aside that they believe Jews will all go to hell in the end of course so how supporting Zionist Jews, including Zionist Jews who oppress Palestinian Christian themselves, is supposedly a “religious act” for them in their rapture-filled “theology” is quite “interesting”). Reality check on a historical topic like the wars between Arab forces and the Zionists: link to palestineremembered.com
Basically this “miracle” claim comes from not viewing any actual academic/historical information on the historical topic at hand (like how the Zionist’s military forces’ always had superior troop levels, superior military equipment, foreign Western backers, were going up against ineffective often divided/corrupt/working against one another from start Arab regimes, etc etc etc) and engaging in a ridiculous claim like Mann and companies’ here of stating that a self-fulfilled “prophecy” is supposedly a “miracle” is a clear-cut old instance of the waiter bringing me the food that I ordered being described as the waiter allegedly “fulfilling prophecy” and engaging in “miracles”!
I have no time to read all the comments, but has anybody noticed this little bit in Anat Berko’s larger tal, and can it be verified? Propaganda, fact?
Wasn’t there something about Barak moving sightly to the US side not too long ago?
I was in Jerusalem in June and spoke to a British NGO official informally about the current situation. He commented on the uninformed, ill-informed sensibility of young, well-intentioned Americans, Christian and otherwise, who come to help in East Jerusalem, Gaza and the Jordan Valley. I think it goes to the parallel that all Americans make between Palestinians and Native Americans but also African Americans. It’s the “white man’s burden” missionary sensibility. We generally see photos of Bedouin living in tents and we are never reminded that there is 7000 years of civilization along this coast. This is the Riviera at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, with layer on layer of art and architecture. I see the word “savages” as a deliberate attempt to elide that this place is home to the Egyptian and Greek cultures that are the fundament of Western civilization. My British friend (he said Australian but I know Australian when I hear it) also said that the Russians operate in the ME by “telling the truth.” That’s all they have to do, the myth-making and mis-information is so convoluted that all the rest-of-world has to do is say fact-based things out loud.
“As such, it’s always been difficult for me to be critical of a Jewish state- with its existence seemingly a miracle- that has been under constant threat for decades”
One of the key institutions of Zionism over the years was the Jewish Agency.
But of course there is no such thing as Jewish Agency in real life. Eternal victimhood doesn’t allow it.
I think another point about all this is that being the target of mass slaughter — on whatever basis — doesn’t improve the victim.
Russians spent a couple of demographically disastrous centuries under ‘the Tartar Yoke’ and aren’t the better for it. I don’t know how Armenians used to be, but they can be pretty suspicious and clannish now. Iran underwent something similar — and also seems to bear the scars. Indeed, the effects of the Mongol holocaust on Islam in general is something that could do with exploration.
Jews were indeed victims of very special attention. That doesn’t mean they became more virtuous thereby.
As a rule, abused children do not grow into nice adults. That may be unfair, but it’s the truth.
So why we should think that the experience of the Holocaust implies that Jewish collective behavior since must be virtuous escapes me. If anything, I would expect it to be worse — and in my view, Israel confirms that.
The Israeli Ashkenazi collective is traumatised. School/IDF/media indoctrination has traumatised the Sephardim.
I would love to see the stats on how many Israeli Jews take tranquilisers compared to Palestinian citizens of Israel.