Although most of my Jewish friends see nothing wrong with Jewish-American ballplayers representing Israel in the upcoming World Baseball Classic (WBC), to me, an All-Jewish team still seems as cockamamie, bogus, and ill-conceived as it did when I first wrote about it here, a couple of weeks ago.
Firstly, the idea that Jews comprise a nation such as the French do is true only in the eyes of seven million or so Zionists and their supporters. The rest of us do not recognize Jewish nationhood, just as we do not recognize Jerusalem as the eternal, indivisible capital of Israel. Secondly, the rules of the WBC in no way permit Jews to legitimately compete on the Israeli national team. Although some will claim that if the Italians could ignore the rules to pack their team with Italian-Americans in 2009, so can the Jews this time around. Justifying bad behavior by claiming that others have acted equally as badly is a hallmark of Israeli public relations. This does not make the act any less objectionable, quite the opposite. And finally, is it smart for the seven Jewish owners of Major League franchises and the Jewish commissioner of baseball to use their powerful positions to gain special privilege for the Jews and the Israelis, in what is so plainly a subversion of the spirit of international competition? And by the way, if religion were the basis for forming baseball teams, my standings would be the Jews after Catholics, Buddhists, and Protestants in that order; although I admit I am no expert on religion or baseball.
Despite its many problems, the concept of an All-Jewish team has great appeal for my cohort of co-religionists who were raised to idealize the rare Jewish sports heroes like Hank Greenberg, Sandy Koufax and Mark Spitz. The Olympic swimmer Spitz, who was the Michael Phelps of my generation, became a national hero in Israel during the few days before the terrible tragedy at the Munich Olympics in 1972. I was living near Tel Aviv then, and remember the Israeli TV announcer excitedly referring to Spitz as “half ours” during one of his seven gold medal-winning races.
In baseball, with the appearance of Mike Epstein and Ron Bloomberg in the 60s and 70s, many Jews took great pride that we were making inroads into the position of first baseman. Both players also had easily identifiable Jewish names, unlike the Jewish players today. Maybe the idea was to start with first base and then to slowly gain hegemony over other positions until we Jews occupied the vast majority of the field. It never happened. There are surely more quality Jewish professional baseball players than ever, although Jews are, for instance, not as overrepresented in professional baseball as we are in Congress or among Nobel laureates. Still, the increase in Jewish success in professional baseball is significant. But does this growth of Jewish baseball talent mean that Jews should be a baseball team apart? I do not believe so.
The “Israelis” will have to defeat France, South Africa and Spain to qualify for the championship round without using Major League players, since the first round will be contested in September when the Major League Baseball (MLB) season is still in progress. Don’t worry; the qualifier is scheduled not to conflict with the Yom Kippur holiday. Haim Katz, president of the Israeli Association of Baseball, told the Los Angeles Times, “This could be the most celebrated Israeli team since David met Goliath.” Katz’s syntax is faulty, David was not a team, but his linguistic mistake may be excused because Katz is among the few actual native Hebrew speakers that are involved in this charade. The real error Katz makes, however, is the assumption that “Israel” will be the underdog in the preliminary round.
With the assortment of talent that Coach Brad Ausmus has available from the pool of Jewish minor leaguers, retired Major Leaguers and college players, it seems that calling “Israel” the underdog is as accurate as the favorite Zionist myth of claiming they were the underdog in the 1948 War. It sounds correct, but it contradicts the facts in regard to the actual military strength of the sides. In addition the “Israelis” have the home field advantage. The venue, Jupiter, Florida, has a very large Jewish population, which will insure that the “Israelis” have the crowd solidly behind them. “If we had gotten Tel Aviv, it maybe could have been a little bit better,” the Director-General of the Israeli Baseball Association, Peter Kurz, said. “But I think Jupiter, Fla. is the next best place.”
The championship of the WBC will be played in San Francisco in March 2013. That date enables the big guns from the Major Leagues like Ryan Braun, Ian Kinsler, Ike Davis and Kevin Youkilis to take the places of some of the minor leaguers. (What this team really needs is the Arizona Diamondbacks’ pitcher, J.J. Putz. Unfortunately, Putz is not Jewish. But even a Putzless Jewish-American “Israeli” team could be competitive, even in the March finals.) Whether it is proper for a team to field a different roster for the championship round than the one that played in the preliminaries is anyone’s guess. However, the way the MLB and the Israelis are able to play fast and loose with the rules, I do not think there will be a problem.
If the “Israelis” make it to the championship round and the event gets the type of media coverage that the MLB hopes for, I can see a majority of Americans coming to believe that U.S. Jews and Israelis are one and the same. This is not a particularly felicitous situation for this Jew, who played baseball in the Bronx in the 50s, and now does not want to be identified with an apartheid regime which oppresses the Palestinian people and is considered by most of the world to be a major threat to world peace.
If successful Jewish-American ballplayers want to express pride in their Jewishness, they should not play on Jewish holy days, or they should wear ostentatious gold and diamond Star of David jewelry. They should not, however, circumvent the rules and form a team apart. The next thing will be, like the Israelis, to want their own stadium. If they get the stadium they could start expanding by taking over land in the surrounding neighborhood. Where will this all lead? In Israel it did not go well.
They have their own separate rules for everything, including baseball, patents, intermarriage, routine circumcision, and preemptive wars and nuclear arms. So what’s new? What would be new is if the USA decided not to enable this gross intentional discrimination against the entire world.
Although some will claim that if the Italians could ignore the rules to pack their team with Italian-Americans in 2009, so can the Jews this time around. Justifying bad behavior by claiming that others have acted equally as badly is a hallmark of Israeli public relations.
There may be other problems with Italian Americans playing for Italy, but I presume the players in question were, at the very least, descendants of Italian citizens. Jews – simply by virtue of being Jewish – are not descendants of Israeli citizens. There is no comparison.
Furthermore, rule-bending and bad sportsmanship aside, who cares if Italian Americans play for Italy? Allowing Jews who are neither Israeli citizens nor descendants of Israeli citizens to play for Israel, on the other hand, serves to reinforce the highly contentious ethnocratic principle that Israel is “the state of all Jews” or “the state of the Jewish people” (as opposed to the state of all its citizens, or its ethnically-cleansed native population, or those living under its effective control for nearly half a century). It is thus not simply an attempt to “promote baseball in Israel” or to have a little fun, but an exercise in propaganda.
The Religion League…
I would bet on the Catholics. While I would give up most the American south (baseball hotbed) and the Midwest, I would pick up most of Latin America, the Caribbean islands, the Italians and the Irish. Catholics would win, Protestants take a close second. Everyone else would be left in the dust. The Jews would play well but they will not hit for power, they are less likely to go first to third on a single and I think the bullpen would be a mess.
“I can see a majority of Americans coming to believe that U.S. Jews and Israelis are one and the same”>>>>>>>
No, not as Israelis but I can see Americans possibly adopting the Jews as a nation within a nation canard at some point depending on how far the Zios and Jewish recognition seekers take all this ……regarding them as citizens of the Jewish Nation, not the American one.
Maybe they could they be regarded as something like the American Navajo Nation, except the Zios are already too meddling in America’s national business to leave it at baseball.
The Zios want the Jews to regard themselves as a separate nation regardless of whatever nation they happen to live in ..and then they want Americans or whoever to accept the Jews being a different nation of their own in America or wherever and act uppermost with Jewish national interest in other countries.
Evidently the Zios didn’t get the memo about not promoting or imitating the old canards. That’s one of the most bizarre things about them.
I think I came across a Zio once and didn’t realize it. He was a member of our hunting camp and use to take his girl friend to his cabin for hank panky. His wife was suspicious and came to the camp one time and caught them, looking thru the window and seeing what was going on. She burst in the cabin to confront them and the girl friend ran out the back and he tried to convince his wife she was seeing things. Really…told her was ‘seeing things’, there was no woman there.
The happy ending for her at least, was evidently she wasn’t on any mind altering drugs like ziocaine so she pretended to believe him and agreed to back home and rest and calm down. But by the time he went home a day later she had cleaned out all the joint money accounts and changed the locks on the house. They did get a divorce. True story.
Hmmm…thinking of another true story about some friends, I may know the perfect opponents for the endless shenanigans of the Zionist.
One of my wife’s best friends was married to guy who was very charming and well liked by the social crowd. He lived a good life on her inherited money and family businesses. But he was a real ladies man and everyone knew it including his wife and even the children.
I guess after 20 years or so she finally got fed up with his cheating and acting like he was a single playboy and being the embarrassed wife all the time.
So late one night he came home from a country club card game and she shot him three times with a 35 coming up the staircase and said she thought he was a burglar. Dead as doornail. It was a horrible accident even the children agreed. Not even questioned by police. All the ladies felt sorry for Kitty and didn’t want her to get depressed or dwell on it so they took Kitty off on a big shopping trip to Fanny’s in Virginia. All was well.
Pissed off women would scare even a zio.
P.S. don’t make anything sexist out of this.