Thursday, March 12, 2009
Talking to Jews (or Not)
The very sweet Prof. Kevin MacDonald thoroughly analyzes my last blog entry:
==
==
- Apr 25, 2007The Zionist philosophizes that the Palestinian is not a human
(Israel was a land without a people). The Anti-Zionist argues that
the Palestinian is a human being. So what is the moderate viewpoint?
The Palestinian is a quasi-human? That seems to be the American
Progressive Jewish position. Amazing isn't it?
Polite Discussion on Zionism: Is it Possible?
Karin Friedemann - ummyakoub @ yahoo.com
April 25, 2007
World View News Service
I found http://www.realisticdove.org/ very interesting because it is
the first time I have come across a progressive Jew so honest about
his racism. Usually when confronted, these confused souls just get
indignant and refuse to speak to you for a few months. I always
wondered how a person could think that Israel has a "right"
to "security" and shrug off this amazing assumption with the
accusation that anyone who has questions about your definitions is
accusing you of being an evil murderer. Why would any sane person
think that he has the right to live unharrassed on someone else's
stolen property? Even the cute kids waving Israeli flags are
participating in a criminally insane political ideology.
Progressive Jews want to make the bottom line "Jews are nice
people." But that is not the bottom line. As Hillel mentioned, the
bottom line is that you don't do to others what you don't want
others to do to you. What would we expect if our neighbor, with or
without warning, bulldozed our house?
First, we would call the police. If the man with the bulldozer
failed to stop bulldozing the house, the police officer would have
the duty to disable the vehicle and he might even shoot him. I'm
talking about American law. The bulldozer man would be stopped. He
would be considered a criminal. He would be put on trial. He would
go to prison. If he had killed people in the process of bulldozing
the house, he might even be executed. The owner of the house that
was bulldozed would be entitled to damages plus extra for pain and
suffering. The law requires that his property be restored to the
original state that it was in. That includes replanting the trees
and fixing the pavement around the house.
The emotional defensiveness of Jews is actually quite amusing, where
they want to argue that the bulldozer man was not evil, he was not a
murderer. The family that moved into the stolen property are just
innocent idealists. They may be misguided, or mistaken, but for some
reason Jews want to argue that they are not evil. What they are
really saying is that they don't want Jews to be held legally
accountable for their actions. They want to enjoy the privilege of
being "protected" from the laws that apply to other people.
A law does not cover the "evilness" of a criminal. It covers actions
and consequences.
If international law were followed, the Israeli "government' would
never have kicked out any Palestinians. The entire existence of
Israel is based on the condition made by the UN that Palestinians
would remain in their homes and receive equal citizenship in the new
nation state. That condition was not followed. Therefore, there is
no legal basis for any assumption that Israel has a right to exist,
according to the UN. In fact, Israel does not really exist. It is a
figment of imagination, the defensive mechanism of the neurotic
Jewish collective consciousness. I agree that we need to stop
arguing about isms but the next step is to follow the laws that
already exist to solve the problems. Don't wait for the world
community to force Israel to do it. Why don't we, as Jews, just do
it? Why are progressive Jews wasting their time feeling emotionally
threatened by a one state solution? The real problem is that we are
feeling emotionally threatened by any solution. Because a solution
means that a lot of Jews need to be prosecuted.
The refugees need to be given back their property with extra for
damages. Even if they fled their homes because Arab leaders told
them to get out of the fighting zone in 1948, they have the legal
right to return to their homes as soon as the fighting stops. Small
wonder why Israel continues to attack people day after day.
The refugees need to be given full civil rights. Full water rights,
full road rights, and the full right to criminally prosecute. Every
Jewish family in America that has any property in the Holy Land
needs to be prosecuted as part of an organized criminal network.
Especially if both the Palestinian and the Jewish persons are
American citizens. For example one friend of mine, after her family
was forced off their land by gunpoint, New York Jews bought the
land, bulldozed everything, and planted orange trees. She knows
where they live. She knows their names. Anyone who buys or sells
stolen property is a criminal. They need to be prosecuted. Any Jew
who owns stolen property in the Holy Land should have his property
seized including their US assets and Progressive Jews should insist
on it instead of doing these mental "I'm not evil" gymnastics.
The Jews need to give back what they stole. I am not sure why that
is so confusing to people. There needs to be a world tribunal like
the Nuremburg trials to determine what was done and who was
responsible, and to put an end to this nonsense. But failing that,
the US legal system could solve the problem within a year if they
just prosecuted this obnoxious real estate mafia. Why are
Progressive Jews not lobbying for criminal penalties on Jews who
invest in property that was cleared of its original owners by force
in the Holy Land? There is enough room in all of Bush's new prisons
for all these shady real estate agents. This is a simple matter of
holding people legally accountable for the harm they cause others.
It is exactly the same issue with dispute over the Roxbury Mosque.
Some shady white Jewish real estate dealers were furious that the
black community benefited from this piece of land next to the subway
station that they wanted to develop, so now they are engaging in
extra-legal trickery and character assassination to try to get that
piece of real estate away from the people who own it.
Once the Palestinians get their land back and all the Zionist
organizations' assets are confiscated to repair all the damage they
have done, then we can talk about whether or not "the Jewish People"
have the right to "self-determination" in the form of an
ethnocentric nation state.
I learned when I was a kid that the way to get self-determination -
ie, the ability to do what you want when you want how you want - is
to behave yourself. The Jews are not behaving themselves, and there
is nothing okay about it. When a progressive Jew starts
whining, "You think I'm evil!!" he or she breaks the heart of the
human being who is trying to have peace with this person. It ends
all rational discussion. It ends all hope for peace.
Sometimes Palestinians find it easier to deal with right wing
Zionists than left wing because at least they are honest. A
Palestinian can say to a right wing Jew, "You stole my property."
The right wing Jew will say, "Yeah, and what are you going to do
about it? My religion says I can steal your property." Then the
Muslim can with dignity say, "Well my religion says that God curses
the man who puts another man out of his home, and that I have the
right to fight you." So that actually can be done in the context of
a polite dialogue. A peace plan is even potentially possible.
Because then the Jew can say, "Well, I don't want you to kill me and
I can see why you would think that I deserved it, because if you did
the same thing to me I would certainly kill you. So let's make a
deal. I'll let you live in the garage." This is still insulting
behavior, but it's in the process of being made less sadistic.
On the other hand, if a Palestinian says to a progressive Jew, "You
stole my property!" The progressive Jew will usually shut down
entirely. I have seen a fifty year old man start crying and
insisting he's not evil. This is the behavior of someone who is
guilty as sin. Like when you accuse your husband of adultery and he
starts guilt-tripping you about how you don't believe in him
(hypothetical but common scenario).
The other reaction is to get maliciously angry and start doing
character assassination via gossip so that none of the other
progressive Jews will greet that person who brought up the "touchy"
subject. But they will be told that this person is an "enemy of
peace" - so that it will be politically correct to shun them the
same way that we avoid eye contact with skinheads and Bible
thumpers. Progressive Jews are the most amazingly idealistic people
on the planet. They want to be able to continue to sit on someone
else's stolen property (or at least vacation on it) and not only
they think they have a "right" to travel around unharmed, ride the
buses, shop and eat pizza while the people they made homeless have
no water or food - but they want their victims to LIKE them. The
Jews are the only conquerors in the history of the planet that
expected the conquered people to LIKE them! If they don't like us,
we feel offended and outraged. And what Jews consider as "liking
behavior" is never mentioning the property they stole.
It's amazing. I've discussed some of this with Avigail Abarbanel, an
ex-Israeli psychiatrist in Australia. She views Zionism as a mental
illness that can be treated. But Zionism is just a symptom of a
deeper problem, the delusional belief that you have "rights" which
do not exist. Like a kid thinking he has the right to hit his
sister. It's a failure to apply the Golden Rule to one's personal
sense of responsibility in certain situations. The inner conflict
that arises from these "situational ethics" certainly does create a
clinically diagnosable mental inability to process certain types of
information that trigger the neurotic or sometimes even psychotic
defensive reaction.
Unfortunately, when it comes to Israel, Jews are defensive in the
sense that they cannot process the type of information that is
necessary to create peaceful behaviors. For example, if a Jew and
Palestinian live next door to each other in New Jersey, the Jew
being the "owner" of a condo built on the Palestinian person's
property, don't you think the Jew should offer to give it back, if
he expects the other's friendship? If the Palestinian, as is normal,
invites the Jew over for tea and politely doesn't bring up the
subject, does the Jew feel that this means it's OK what he did? That
he can forgive himself? That is what Jews want after all. We want to
be forgiven without apology for everything we have done AND
everything we are about to do. Is this a rational approach to peace?
Is it working?
==
Talking with Jews (or not)
Kevin MacDonald
A topic that is not discussed enough is the screaming, in-your-face, hostile aggression that people must withstand when they dare to trample on Jewish sensibilities. We are not talking about the sophisticated rationalization one sees in the op-ed pages of the mainstream media, or even the smear techniques of organizations like the ADL or the SPLC. We are talking about interpersonal aggression. There is something absolutely primal about it.
Now comes a refreshingly frank blog post by Karin Friedemann, an ethnically Jewish anti-Zionist. She notes the “violent intolerance” that defenders of Israel show towards people with different opinions.
American Jews are actually being trained since childhood to interact with non-Jews in a deceitful and arrogant manner, in coordination with each other, to emotionally destroy Gentiles and Israel critics in addition to wrecking their careers and interfering with their social relationships. This is actually deliberate, wicked, planned behavior motivated by a narcissistic self-righteous fury….
The problem is that Gentiles are taught through emotional pressure and violence via the media and the school system to be very sensitive to Jewish suffering so when a Zionist becomes outraged at them for challenging their world view, the Gentile really has to fight against his own inner self in a huge battle against his "inner Jew" making him feel inadequate and intimidated. But the Jew doesn’t care how much he or she hurts others. Jews only care about what's good for the Jews. …
I once reduced a 50 year old man to hysterical sobbing tears because I told him gently and lovingly that Jews were not that unique. I just told him the Jews, like everyone else, have had good times and bad times. Times when they were slaughtered and other times when they slaughtered others. Just like everyone else. Guess what he did next. He emotionally abused me in an insulting way and then cut off all further communication. Jewish behavior is so predictable that it's truly scary. …
If you mention cutting off the money or if you mention the possible compromise of living with Palestinians as equals in one state they become very angry and start using bullying tactics, unless they have some reason to fear you, in which case they shun you and complain about you to the authorities, try to get you arrested or try and destroy your career or social status through character assassination. …
Zionists all believe in the myth of "1000 years of Jewish suffering" and feel that the world owes them compensation for their ancestors' "unique" suffering. It's a criminally insane viewpoint. They cope with the contradictions between their belief that they are the good guys and what Jews are actually doing to their neighbors, both in the Middle East and in the US, by developing mental health issues. Most Zionists are functional schizophrenics.
My take:
· These tactics are not restricted to critics of Zionism. As one who has experienced a barrage of hostile email from my faculty colleagues, I can certainly attest to this. One quickly notices that assertions of the legitimacy of white identity and interests will also result in a barrage of hostility. This despite the fact that support for racial Zionism is strong throughout the entire Jewish political spectrum (see below). A correspondent sent me the following recently:
I have encountered many liberal, politically correct Jews who react vociferously (almost violently) to the most innocuous comments about any topic related to Israel or Jews. One Jew upon my mentioning that my wife and I had been to Russia spent several minutes virtually frothing at the mouth about Russians. Another upon hearing me say I was sympathetic to the problems of the Palestinians demanded to know who I was and how dare I say such a thing. Often zero tolerance for any difference in opinion.
· The media constantly present images of Jewish suffering—most recently the endless glut of Holocaust movies. But the media ignore instances, such as the early decades of the USSR and now in Greater Israel, where Jews have inflicted horrible suffering. Right now I am reading E. Michael Jones’ The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit and Its Effect on History. It is striking to read his account of Jewish violence against non-Jews in the ancient world, particularly the persecution of Christians whenever Jews had the power to do so. Long before Christians had any influence on Roman policy, Christians’ complaints about Jews were not stereotypes based on historical memory but resulted from direct experience with Jews: “Origen understood that Jewish calumny helped to cause Christian persecution, and that Jewish hatred was a fact of life for the Christians, continuing unabated after the repeated defeats of Messianic politics” (i.e., the defeats of Jewish rebels at the hands of the Romans in 70 and 135 ad) (p. 69). This is the basis of my concern on what will happen to whites when Jews become part of a hostile elite in white-minority America.
· Non-Jews absorb these media images and as a result feel inadequate, emotionally intimidated. Eventually they identify with the aggressor, much like a browbeaten hostage or, as Friedemann suggests, an abused spouse. Or they maintain their friendships but studiously avoid talking about anything related to Israel. Non-Jews do the bidding of their “inner Jew” because they have internalized images of Jewish suffering. They therefore aid and abet Jewish brutality and aggression.
· Non-Jews who persist in criticizing the organized Jewish community are threatened with loss of livelihood and social ostracism. As I noted in a previous article the organized Jewish community does not believe in free speech. It is important to keep in mind that when Jews were dominant in the first decades of the Soviet Union, the government controlled the media, anti-Semitism was outlawed, and there was mass murder of Christians and the destruction of Christian churches and religious institutions.
As Friedemann notes, the situation is nothing less than a sign of serious mental health issues for the mainstream Jewish community: “Most Zionists are functional schizophrenics.”
I think this is what happens when people who deal with Jewish issues finally realize that there is no hope for dialogue and begin to think of what to do next. Honest people finally realize that when it comes to critical issues like Israel and multicultural America, the divisions among Jews are an illusion. (Friedemann herself has renounced her Jewish identity.) As Friedemann’s husband, Joachim Martillo, notes, “Jews, who want to be decent human beings, have no choice but to renounce being Jewish and serve the anti-Zionist struggle (right now).”
Exhibit A for this right now is the murderous Israeli invasion of Gaza. We know (see, for example, John Mearsheimer’s article in The American Conservative) that this invasion occurred after a prolonged period when Israel restricted supplies into Gaza and then attacked tunnels between Gaza and Egypt. We know that the invasion was designed to “to inflict massive pain on the Palestinians so that they come to accept the fact that they are a defeated people and that Israel will be largely responsible for controlling their future.”
The tone of Mearsheimer’s article suggests a dramatic shift in attitude where the usual inhibitions on public discourse are finally beginning to fall, even for a respected academic:
There is … little chance that people around the world who follow the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will soon forget the appalling punishment that Israel is meting out in Gaza. … [D]iscourse about this longstanding conflict has undergone a sea change in the West in recent years, and many of us who were once wholly sympathetic to Israel now see that the Israelis are the victimizers and the Palestinians are the victims.
The gloves are coming off. This is what happens when smart and honest people who work hard to get the scholarship right are nevertheless smeared as anti-Semites guilty of the vilest misdeeds. Not surprisingly, Abe Foxman — a premier defender of the racial Zionist status quo in Israel — devoted an entire book to smearing Mearsheimer and Walt. Quite simply, there is no point to talking to such people or taking seriously what they say about us.
We know that the government of Israel is firmly in the hands of the racial Zionists — followers of Vladimir Jabotinsky and his view of the racial distinctiveness and superiority of the Jewish people. Indeed, the only question in the Israeli election is which brand of racial Zionism will form the next government. One knows that racial Zionism has completely won the day in Israel when Kadima — the party of Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni and the Gaza invasion — is now described by Benjamin Netanyahu as the party of the left. (The LA Times dutifully calls it “centrist” but, as Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery writes, Livni “cries to high heaven against any dialogue with Hamas. She objects to a mutually agreed cease-fire. She tries to compete with Netanyahu and [Avignor] Liberman with unbridled nationalist messages.”) Indeed, Netanyahu’s only worry is that the openly racist Liberman — a disciple of the notorious Meir Kehane — will take away too many votes from Likud.
The situation is analogous to a US election where Pat Buchanan is the candidate of the far left. (I can dream.)
Avnery analogizes the election to a joke where a sergeant tells his men: “I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that you are going to change your dirty socks. The bad news is that you are going to exchange them among yourselves.”
Once again we see at work the general principle that within the Jewish community, the most extreme elements carry the day and pull the rest of the Jewish community with them. As I noted in "Zionism and the Internal Dynamics of Judaism," "over time, the more militant, expansionist Zionists (the Jabotinskyists, the Likud Party, fundamentalists, and West Bank settlers) have won the day and have continued to push for territorial expansion within Israel. This has led to conflicts with Palestinians and a widespread belief among Jews that Israel itself is threatened. The result has been a heightened group consciousness among Jews and ultimately support for Zionist extremism among the entire organized American Jewish community."
The fanatics keep pushing the envelop, forcing other Jews to either go along with their agenda or cease being part of the Jewish community. Ominously, if elected, Netanyahu promises that a top priority will be "harnessing the U.S. administration to stop the threat" of Iran's nuclear program.
Incidentally, E. Michael Jones (The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit and Its Effect on History, p. 42ff) has expanded this argument to the ancient world. He shows how the Jewish community was pulled in the direction of fanaticism by the Zealots who expelled the followers of Jesus from the synagogue and adopted a disastrous path of revolution against Rome, leading ultimately to the defeats of 70 and 135 a.d.
A good example of the schizophrenia described by Friedemann comes from the fact that around 80% of American Jews voted for Obama but around the same percentage blames Hamas for the escalation of violence and believes that the Israeli response was “appropriate.” These results of the poll on the Gaza invasion were proudly announced by Abraham Foxman of the ADL, an organization that is one of the principal forces in promoting a post-European America. The Jewish left is a pillar of multi-cultural America but strongly supports racial Zionism in Israel.
This same schizophrenia was on display at a recent presentation at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles by Chris Hedges and Mark Potok — he of the Southern Poverty Law Center. The program dealt with the usual bogey-men of the organized Jewish community: Christian fundamentalists, skinheads, David Duke, and (I am gratified to report) The Occidental Quarterly. In a comment on the alliance between Christian conservatives and Zionists, an audience member mentioned (to stifled applause) that “There are Jewish fascists.” But the moderator, Ian Masters, saved the day when he stated that “the vast majority of American Jews are secular and liberal” — a comment that brought much applause, presumably because it reassured the many Jews in the audience that they weren’t like THOSE Jews. For his part, Potok, that stalwart warrior against white America, expressed his support for what he sees as a beleaguered Israel on the verge of apocalypse at the hands of the Arabs. Schizophrenia indeed.
The politicians who are running Israel are, if anything, more racialist and nationalist than anything even remotely on the horizon in American or European politics. As Avnery notes:
In every other country, Liberman’s program would be called fascist, without quotation marks. Nowhere in the Western world is there a large party that would dare to advance such a demand [to annul the citizenship of Arabs]. The neo-fascists in Switzerland and Holland want to expel foreigners, not to annul the citizenship of the native-born. …
When Joerg Haider was taken into the Austrian cabinet, Israel recalled its ambassador from Vienna in protest. But compared to Liberman, Haider was a raving liberal, and so is Jean-Marie le Pen. Now Netanyahu has announced that Liberman will be “an important minister” in his government, Livni has hinted that he will be in her government, too, and Barak has not excluded that possibility.
The optimistic version says that Liberman will prove to be a passing curiosity. … There is also a pessimistic version: Fascism has become a serious player in the Israeli public domain. The three main parties have now legitimized it. This phenomenon must be stopped before it is too late.
So I have a suggestion for the Foxmans, the Potoks, the neoconservatives, and the secular Jewish liberals of the world: If you want to fight racism and ethnic nationalism, start in your own backyard. And my suggestion for the rest of us is to get rid of what Friedemann calls the “inner Jew.” I know it’s hard to do. But once you tune out the screaming hostility (and assuming you don’t fear losing your job), it’s easy. Just don’t expect a pleasant or rational conversation.
Kevin MacDonald is a professor of psychology at California State University–Long Beach.
Permanent URL:
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/articles/MacDonald-talk.html
Talking with Jews (or not)
Kevin MacDonald
A topic that is not discussed enough is the screaming, in-your-face, hostile aggression that people must withstand when they dare to trample on Jewish sensibilities. We are not talking about the sophisticated rationalization one sees in the op-ed pages of the mainstream media, or even the smear techniques of organizations like the ADL or the SPLC. We are talking about interpersonal aggression. There is something absolutely primal about it.
Now comes a refreshingly frank blog post by Karin Friedemann, an ethnically Jewish anti-Zionist. She notes the “violent intolerance” that defenders of Israel show towards people with different opinions.
American Jews are actually being trained since childhood to interact with non-Jews in a deceitful and arrogant manner, in coordination with each other, to emotionally destroy Gentiles and Israel critics in addition to wrecking their careers and interfering with their social relationships. This is actually deliberate, wicked, planned behavior motivated by a narcissistic self-righteous fury….
The problem is that Gentiles are taught through emotional pressure and violence via the media and the school system to be very sensitive to Jewish suffering so when a Zionist becomes outraged at them for challenging their world view, the Gentile really has to fight against his own inner self in a huge battle against his "inner Jew" making him feel inadequate and intimidated. But the Jew doesn’t care how much he or she hurts others. Jews only care about what's good for the Jews. …
I once reduced a 50 year old man to hysterical sobbing tears because I told him gently and lovingly that Jews were not that unique. I just told him the Jews, like everyone else, have had good times and bad times. Times when they were slaughtered and other times when they slaughtered others. Just like everyone else. Guess what he did next. He emotionally abused me in an insulting way and then cut off all further communication. Jewish behavior is so predictable that it's truly scary. …
If you mention cutting off the money or if you mention the possible compromise of living with Palestinians as equals in one state they become very angry and start using bullying tactics, unless they have some reason to fear you, in which case they shun you and complain about you to the authorities, try to get you arrested or try and destroy your career or social status through character assassination. …
Zionists all believe in the myth of "1000 years of Jewish suffering" and feel that the world owes them compensation for their ancestors' "unique" suffering. It's a criminally insane viewpoint. They cope with the contradictions between their belief that they are the good guys and what Jews are actually doing to their neighbors, both in the Middle East and in the US, by developing mental health issues. Most Zionists are functional schizophrenics.
My take:
· These tactics are not restricted to critics of Zionism. As one who has experienced a barrage of hostile email from my faculty colleagues, I can certainly attest to this. One quickly notices that assertions of the legitimacy of white identity and interests will also result in a barrage of hostility. This despite the fact that support for racial Zionism is strong throughout the entire Jewish political spectrum (see below). A correspondent sent me the following recently:
I have encountered many liberal, politically correct Jews who react vociferously (almost violently) to the most innocuous comments about any topic related to Israel or Jews. One Jew upon my mentioning that my wife and I had been to Russia spent several minutes virtually frothing at the mouth about Russians. Another upon hearing me say I was sympathetic to the problems of the Palestinians demanded to know who I was and how dare I say such a thing. Often zero tolerance for any difference in opinion.
· The media constantly present images of Jewish suffering—most recently the endless glut of Holocaust movies. But the media ignore instances, such as the early decades of the USSR and now in Greater Israel, where Jews have inflicted horrible suffering. Right now I am reading E. Michael Jones’ The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit and Its Effect on History. It is striking to read his account of Jewish violence against non-Jews in the ancient world, particularly the persecution of Christians whenever Jews had the power to do so. Long before Christians had any influence on Roman policy, Christians’ complaints about Jews were not stereotypes based on historical memory but resulted from direct experience with Jews: “Origen understood that Jewish calumny helped to cause Christian persecution, and that Jewish hatred was a fact of life for the Christians, continuing unabated after the repeated defeats of Messianic politics” (i.e., the defeats of Jewish rebels at the hands of the Romans in 70 and 135 ad) (p. 69). This is the basis of my concern on what will happen to whites when Jews become part of a hostile elite in white-minority America.
· Non-Jews absorb these media images and as a result feel inadequate, emotionally intimidated. Eventually they identify with the aggressor, much like a browbeaten hostage or, as Friedemann suggests, an abused spouse. Or they maintain their friendships but studiously avoid talking about anything related to Israel. Non-Jews do the bidding of their “inner Jew” because they have internalized images of Jewish suffering. They therefore aid and abet Jewish brutality and aggression.
· Non-Jews who persist in criticizing the organized Jewish community are threatened with loss of livelihood and social ostracism. As I noted in a previous article the organized Jewish community does not believe in free speech. It is important to keep in mind that when Jews were dominant in the first decades of the Soviet Union, the government controlled the media, anti-Semitism was outlawed, and there was mass murder of Christians and the destruction of Christian churches and religious institutions.
As Friedemann notes, the situation is nothing less than a sign of serious mental health issues for the mainstream Jewish community: “Most Zionists are functional schizophrenics.”
I think this is what happens when people who deal with Jewish issues finally realize that there is no hope for dialogue and begin to think of what to do next. Honest people finally realize that when it comes to critical issues like Israel and multicultural America, the divisions among Jews are an illusion. (Friedemann herself has renounced her Jewish identity.) As Friedemann’s husband, Joachim Martillo, notes, “Jews, who want to be decent human beings, have no choice but to renounce being Jewish and serve the anti-Zionist struggle (right now).”
Exhibit A for this right now is the murderous Israeli invasion of Gaza. We know (see, for example, John Mearsheimer’s article in The American Conservative) that this invasion occurred after a prolonged period when Israel restricted supplies into Gaza and then attacked tunnels between Gaza and Egypt. We know that the invasion was designed to “to inflict massive pain on the Palestinians so that they come to accept the fact that they are a defeated people and that Israel will be largely responsible for controlling their future.”
The tone of Mearsheimer’s article suggests a dramatic shift in attitude where the usual inhibitions on public discourse are finally beginning to fall, even for a respected academic:
There is … little chance that people around the world who follow the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will soon forget the appalling punishment that Israel is meting out in Gaza. … [D]iscourse about this longstanding conflict has undergone a sea change in the West in recent years, and many of us who were once wholly sympathetic to Israel now see that the Israelis are the victimizers and the Palestinians are the victims.
The gloves are coming off. This is what happens when smart and honest people who work hard to get the scholarship right are nevertheless smeared as anti-Semites guilty of the vilest misdeeds. Not surprisingly, Abe Foxman — a premier defender of the racial Zionist status quo in Israel — devoted an entire book to smearing Mearsheimer and Walt. Quite simply, there is no point to talking to such people or taking seriously what they say about us.
We know that the government of Israel is firmly in the hands of the racial Zionists — followers of Vladimir Jabotinsky and his view of the racial distinctiveness and superiority of the Jewish people. Indeed, the only question in the Israeli election is which brand of racial Zionism will form the next government. One knows that racial Zionism has completely won the day in Israel when Kadima — the party of Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni and the Gaza invasion — is now described by Benjamin Netanyahu as the party of the left. (The LA Times dutifully calls it “centrist” but, as Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery writes, Livni “cries to high heaven against any dialogue with Hamas. She objects to a mutually agreed cease-fire. She tries to compete with Netanyahu and [Avignor] Liberman with unbridled nationalist messages.”) Indeed, Netanyahu’s only worry is that the openly racist Liberman — a disciple of the notorious Meir Kehane — will take away too many votes from Likud.
The situation is analogous to a US election where Pat Buchanan is the candidate of the far left. (I can dream.)
Avnery analogizes the election to a joke where a sergeant tells his men: “I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that you are going to change your dirty socks. The bad news is that you are going to exchange them among yourselves.”
Once again we see at work the general principle that within the Jewish community, the most extreme elements carry the day and pull the rest of the Jewish community with them. As I noted in "Zionism and the Internal Dynamics of Judaism," "over time, the more militant, expansionist Zionists (the Jabotinskyists, the Likud Party, fundamentalists, and West Bank settlers) have won the day and have continued to push for territorial expansion within Israel. This has led to conflicts with Palestinians and a widespread belief among Jews that Israel itself is threatened. The result has been a heightened group consciousness among Jews and ultimately support for Zionist extremism among the entire organized American Jewish community."
The fanatics keep pushing the envelop, forcing other Jews to either go along with their agenda or cease being part of the Jewish community. Ominously, if elected, Netanyahu promises that a top priority will be "harnessing the U.S. administration to stop the threat" of Iran's nuclear program.
Incidentally, E. Michael Jones (The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit and Its Effect on History, p. 42ff) has expanded this argument to the ancient world. He shows how the Jewish community was pulled in the direction of fanaticism by the Zealots who expelled the followers of Jesus from the synagogue and adopted a disastrous path of revolution against Rome, leading ultimately to the defeats of 70 and 135 a.d.
A good example of the schizophrenia described by Friedemann comes from the fact that around 80% of American Jews voted for Obama but around the same percentage blames Hamas for the escalation of violence and believes that the Israeli response was “appropriate.” These results of the poll on the Gaza invasion were proudly announced by Abraham Foxman of the ADL, an organization that is one of the principal forces in promoting a post-European America. The Jewish left is a pillar of multi-cultural America but strongly supports racial Zionism in Israel.
This same schizophrenia was on display at a recent presentation at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles by Chris Hedges and Mark Potok — he of the Southern Poverty Law Center. The program dealt with the usual bogey-men of the organized Jewish community: Christian fundamentalists, skinheads, David Duke, and (I am gratified to report) The Occidental Quarterly. In a comment on the alliance between Christian conservatives and Zionists, an audience member mentioned (to stifled applause) that “There are Jewish fascists.” But the moderator, Ian Masters, saved the day when he stated that “the vast majority of American Jews are secular and liberal” — a comment that brought much applause, presumably because it reassured the many Jews in the audience that they weren’t like THOSE Jews. For his part, Potok, that stalwart warrior against white America, expressed his support for what he sees as a beleaguered Israel on the verge of apocalypse at the hands of the Arabs. Schizophrenia indeed.
The politicians who are running Israel are, if anything, more racialist and nationalist than anything even remotely on the horizon in American or European politics. As Avnery notes:
In every other country, Liberman’s program would be called fascist, without quotation marks. Nowhere in the Western world is there a large party that would dare to advance such a demand [to annul the citizenship of Arabs]. The neo-fascists in Switzerland and Holland want to expel foreigners, not to annul the citizenship of the native-born. …
When Joerg Haider was taken into the Austrian cabinet, Israel recalled its ambassador from Vienna in protest. But compared to Liberman, Haider was a raving liberal, and so is Jean-Marie le Pen. Now Netanyahu has announced that Liberman will be “an important minister” in his government, Livni has hinted that he will be in her government, too, and Barak has not excluded that possibility.
The optimistic version says that Liberman will prove to be a passing curiosity. … There is also a pessimistic version: Fascism has become a serious player in the Israeli public domain. The three main parties have now legitimized it. This phenomenon must be stopped before it is too late.
So I have a suggestion for the Foxmans, the Potoks, the neoconservatives, and the secular Jewish liberals of the world: If you want to fight racism and ethnic nationalism, start in your own backyard. And my suggestion for the rest of us is to get rid of what Friedemann calls the “inner Jew.” I know it’s hard to do. But once you tune out the screaming hostility (and assuming you don’t fear losing your job), it’s easy. Just don’t expect a pleasant or rational conversation.
Kevin MacDonald is a professor of psychology at California State University–Long Beach.
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