On Jonathan Cook’s ‘Naomi Wolf and Anti-semitism’s Mystification’

Jonathan Cook, award-winning author and journalist, writes from Nazareth, the capital of the Palestinian minority in Israel, having moved there in 2001 to cover Palestinian  issues more closely.  He’s easily one of the most dedicated, courageous, clear-eyed, and well-grounded critics of apartheid Israel and their propaganda I know.  I’d add that his moral compass is at true north, and that his prose is easy to read and without guile.  Yes, this post may be longish, but I reckon it’s a key subject that’s worth digging deep into, given: (Likud) Israel, so I hope you’ll agree.

From Jonathan Cook / May 24th, 2018:
He opens by noting that this essay was the product of his previous essay ‘‘Anti-semitism: Israel’s get-out-of-jail-free card’, 21 May 2018 concerning the silencing of critics of Israel that devolved so far by now that apologists for Israel to conflate anti-semitism and opposition to Israel’s current uber-nationalist government (I’d add ‘policies’ but he hadn’t).  Lamenting that in the past, it was nigh on to impossible to fight the notion that anti-Zionism = anti-semitism, as we know only too well, as we also know that companies, cities, states joining the BDS movement are censured, and some states even have laws pending that will make it illegal.

“Here is an illustration of our defeat, reported in the Israeli daily Haaretz. It concerns what would in other circumstances be a fairly standard satirical cartoon: this one published by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung about Israel winning the Eurovision song contest last week. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is shown on stage dressed as Israel’s winning singer, Netta, and proclaiming “Next year in Jerusalem!”.

“After the usual outcry, the cartoonist, Dieter Hanitzsch, was sacked. No Charlie Hebdo-style concerns about free speech on this occasion, it seems.” He chronicles some of the cartoon’s critics, explains that cartoons use symbols as satirical shorthand, and wonders what the hell is so anti-Semitic about it.  Beats hell outta me, but as writes, this sort of weaponized ‘anti-semitic crisis’ is meant to silence any activists, artists, politicians, and others who might find that any mention of Israel is so loaded and toxic that they…desist, lest their reputations and livelihoods collapse.  Thus, he writes: ‘giving Israel a get-out-of-jail-free card’, and has terrifying consequences for Palestinians and clears the path for further barbarity to be unleashed upon them. Back to his newer ‘anti-semitism’s mystification’ essay:

“In fact, the cartoonist is far from alone in highlighting such concerns. The New York Times has reported delight among Israelis at the prospect of what they regard as a “diplomatic victory” as much as musical one. And, according to the Haaretz newspaper, the Eurovision contest organisers have already expressed concern to Israeli broadcasters about likely attempts by Israel to “politicise” the competition.

Among those responding on Twitter to my post was Naomi Wolf, a US Jewish intellectual and feminist scholar whose body of work I admire. She disagreed with my blog post, arguing that the cartoon was, in her words, “kind of anti-semitic” (embedded tweet below).

In our subsequent exchange she also noted that she was uncomfortable with the fact that the cartoonist was German. (For those interested, the complete exchange can be found here.)” [scroll to the top to see the beginning of the conversation.]

“In the end, and admittedly under some pressure from me for clarification, she offered an illustration of why she thought the cartoon was “kind of anti-semitic”. She sent a link to the image below, stating that she thought Hanitzsch’s cartoon of Netanyahu had echoes of this Nazi image of “the Jew” alongside an Aryan German woman.”


“Frankly, I was astounded by the comparison.

Nazi propaganda

Cartoons in Nazi propaganda sheets like Der Sturmer were anti-semitic because they emphasised specific themes to “otherise” Jews, presenting them as a collective menace to Germany or the world. Those themes included the threat of plague and disease, with Jews often represented as rats; or secret Jewish control over key institutions, illustrated, for example, by the tentacles of an octopus spanning the globe; or the disloyalty of Jews, selling out their country, as they hungered for money.

As Wolf notes, anti-semitic cartoonists would give the portrayed “Jew” grotesque or sinister facial features to alienate readers from him and convey the threat he posed. These features famously included a large or hooked nose, voracious lips, and a bulbous or disfigured head.”

Well, no, as he writes, there’s no indication of those physical traits, symbols that identify him as Jews or even Israelis, just his well-known hawkishness in a highly militarized state.  We might have added ‘nuclear state’, not a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.  But whoa, Nellie, that caricature isn’t any more offensive as the following (I’m leaving out the other two, especially the one with Trump as King Kong on to of the Empire State Building as too grotesque to look at for more than two seconds…click through here if you care to).

 Limiting political debate

He writes that this essay isn’t an attack on Naomi Wolf, and that he admires her willingness to engage in the discussion on Twitter, and gets that yes, judgments about ‘anti-semitism’ are indeed subjective, but that in the current zeitgeist, the metamorphosing of the ‘kind of anti-semitic’ verbiage actually acts as to ‘mystify’ and ‘weaponize’ the term, thus limiting crucial debates, as opposed to actual anti-semitism.

“It is precisely the promotion of a “kind of anti-semitism”, as opposed to real anti-semitism, that has just forced Ken Livingstone to resign from the Labour party; that empowered Labour’s Blairite bureaucracy to publicly lynch a well-known black anti-racism activist, Marc Wadsworth; that persuaded a dissident comedian and supporter of the Palestinian cause, Frankie Boyle, to use his TV show to prioritise an attack on a supposedly “anti-semitic” Labour party over support for Gaza; that is being used to vilify grassroots movements campaigning against “global elites” and the “1 per cent”; and that may yet finish off Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, currently the only credible political force for progressive change in the UK.

None of this is, of course, to suggest that Wolf would herself want any of these outcomes or that she is trying to misuse anti-semitism. I fully acccept that she has been a strong Jewish critic of Israel and doubtless paid a price for it with friends and colleagues.”

In his Israel and Jews and A dangerous confusion sections, Cook lays out the history of Israel having been based on anti-semitism, having been created as a sanctuary for all Jews, without which, he writes, Israel would be superfluous.  Hence, he writes, anti-semitism and Israel are almost inextricably tangled together.  There’s  lot more there, including alternative non-Western cheerleaders for Israel media gathering a wider readership over time.  But I’d like to jump ahead, as I hadn’t known what the many charges of Jeremy Corbin being anti-semitic were even based on.

After mentioning ‘the Livingston problem’ again, he jumps to:

A mural becomes anti-semitic

“The next stage in the evolution of the “kind of anti-semitic” argument is already discernible, as I have warned before. It is so powerful that it has forced Corbyn to concede, against all evidence, that Labour has an anti-semitism problem and to castigate himself, again against all evidence, for indulging in anti-semitic thinking.

Corbyn has been on the defensive since a “controversy” erupted in March over his expression back in 2012 of support for street art and opposition to censorship amid a row over a London mural that was about to be painted over.

After he was elected Labour leader in 2015, the first efforts were made to weaponise the mural issue to damage him. The deeply anti-Corbyn Jewish Chronicle newspaper was – like Hanitzsch’s boss at the Süddeutsche Zeitung – initially unsure whether the mural was actually anti-semitic. Then the newspaper simply highlighted concerns that it might have “anti-semitic undertones”. By spring 2018, when the row resurfaced, the status of the mural had been transformed. Every mainstream British commentator was convinced it was “clearly” and “obviously” anti-semitic – and by implication, Corbyn had been unmasked as an anti-semite for supporting it.

[From his Jewish Chronicle link: The graphic, Freedom for Humanity, was painted on a property near Brick Lane in London’s East End by renowned international graffiti artist Kalen Ockerman, known as Mear One, in 2012.

It depicted a group of businessmen and bankers sitting around a Monopoly-style board and counting money. The mural was painted on the end wall of a private property, but was removed by local authorities after complaints from residents.

When the artist wrote on Facebook that the mural was to be removed, Mr Corbyn responded with a message from his personal Facebook account.

Mr Corbyn wrote: “Why? You are in good company. Rockerfeller (sic) destroyed Diego Viera’s mural because it includes a picture of Lenin.”]

“Again, no one wanted to debate how it was anti-semitic. The artist has said it was an image of historical bankers, most of whom were not Jewish, closely associated with the capitalist class’s war on the rest of us. There is nothing in the mural to suggest he is lying about his intention or the mural’s meaning. And yet everyone in the “mainstream” is now confident that the mural is anti-semitic, even though none of them wants to specify what exactly is anti-semitic about it.”

In his The 1 per cent off-limits he notes other ways that ‘anti-semitism’ is gaining ground, and links to a piece at the New Statesman that claims that the Occupy movement’s (OWS) slogan that we’re ruled by a capitalist global elite 1%…was evidence of ‘anti-semitism’, as was:

“…[on] Frankie Boyle’s popular TV show last week, comedian David Baddiel was allowed to misrepresent – unchallenged – an opinion poll that found 28 per cent of Corbyn supporters agreed with the statement “the world is controlled by a secretive elite”. Baddiel asserted, without any evidence, that when they spoke of a global elite the respondents were referring to Jews. What was this assumption based on? A hunch? A sense that such a statement must be “kind of anti-semitic”?

He closes:

“The mystification of anti-semitism is so dangerous because it can be exploited for any end those who dominate the public square care to put it to – whether it be sacking a cartoonist, justifying Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians, destroying a progressive party leader, or preventing any criticism of a turbo-charged neoliberal capitalism destroying our planet.”

No reason to get excited, the thief, he kindly spoke,
There are many here among us now,
Who feel that life is but a joke,
But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late

 

(cross-posted from Café Babylon)

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wendy davis's picture

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Steven D's picture

Appreciated.

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

wendy davis's picture

@Steven D

and i appreciate your reading it. as i'd said, i think a deeper dig is warranted, given...all that's afoot. there are so many evil Imperial doings in the shadows that they make our heads swivel, but of the four i've collected notes for, this seemed most important.

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http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2018/05/charlie-hebdo.html

You can get away with grossly oversizing lips and dehumanizing someone these days...as long as it is a Muslim. In fact it is praised.

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wendy davis's picture

@Mickt

'but let us not speak falsely...the hour is getting late'. and let us not 'all be charlie hebdo ever again'. those rallies back in the day turned my stomach into knots. jeebus, 2015. 'not funny cartoons'.

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Outsourcing Is Treason's picture

I know a thing or two about anti-Semitism. I never got to meet any of my great-grandparents when I was little because in the decade before I was born all of my great-grandparents who were still alive were each put on cattle car trains to Auschwitz where they were gassed to death for being Jews. As a child my Christian neighbors demanded to know why I killed Jesus.

The thing is, those incidents are not the worst things to befall my family. The worst thing is that the majority of the Hebrew Semitic nation — including my family — was forced to live in forced exile from our homeland for 1,900 years. It’s all about the long 1,900 year forced exile. All the horrible things that happened to my family. Everything: the expulsions, the ghettoization, the forced conversions, the dispossession, the beatings, the humiliation, the torture, the rapes, the massacres, the genocides. All due to the exile. And all those 1,900 dark years, all we wanted was to return to our homeland. To govern ourselves in our ancient capital. To worship in our ancient holy places. We wanted what is our rightful heritage.

That’s what Israel is about. It’s not about anti-Semitism as Cook claims. It’s all about ending the 1,900 long years of forced exile.

A word about Jeremy Corbin. In 2014 he flew to Tunis to lay a wreath at the tomb of a terrorist who mass-murdered Jews. To me that is an anti-Semitic act. I don’t know what’s in his heart, I just know what he did with own two hands, and it’s disgusting.

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wendy davis's picture

@Outsourcing Is Treason

the only parallel in my life was the tales my jewish godparents told, and a few of their friends who'd fled to the US. i guess the subject of whose homeland, whose lands were stolen...is in the eye of the beholder. and i say that as a former zionist in my teenage years, and it was hard to come to grips about history not of the 'exodus' sort.

can't speak to what corbin did, as i said, this was the first i'd heard about the big 'anti-semitic corbin' kerfuffle. but truly, i am sorry for the magnitude of your pain.

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@Outsourcing Is Treason

First, my understanding is that there has always been--going back centuries--a Jewish presence in Palestine, and that it only really began to increase with the advent of the ideology of Zionism, when more and more Jews started to move there around the turn of the last century. My understanding is also that before the formation of the modern state of Israel in 1948, Jews, Christians, and Moslems all lived in relative peace and harmony in Palestine and got along fairly well (I have two sources for this belief), and that it wasn't until the last century that problems between them started to arise when the Zionists decided they wanted to take away already occupied land for themselves. If my understanding is correct, then what would have kept your ancestors from moving to Palestine and living there centuries ago, even though there was no official Jewish state? Are you saying that the Ottoman Turks that had control over that area for centuries would have prevented them from living there?

Second, isn't there some kind of statute of limitations upon dispossessed populations? I mean, really: Should the modern Greeks be allowed to recapture parts of Southern Italy and Sicily because their ancestors built holy places there 2,600 years ago and established cities like Naples, Agrigento, and Syracuse? Or should the modern Greeks and Italians be allowed to reclaim Constantinople from the Turks because the ancient Greeks and Romans built up and developed that city and built places like Hagia Sophia during the Byzantine period, and held that city until 1453? Should the modern-day descendants of the ancient Celts be allowed to reclaim parts of northern and central Europe because two thousand years ago their ancestors possessed those lands? How about the American (north and south) Indians and their dispossession from their native lands and holy places? That is a much more recent reality, and yet you want to go back 1,900 years?

Third: My understanding is that the ideology of Zionism (of which you seem to be a proponent) has only recently been the predominant ideology among the Jewish people in the Jewish diaspora. In fact, my understanding is that in the early decades of the 20th Century, many if not most prominent Jewish leaders in the United States and in other places OPPOSED the ideology of Zionism, (based in part (no doubt) upon the considerations touched on in the next set of questions, below). If that's correct, then how could your ancestors have had a waiting expectation of return to Palestine when that sort of ideology--without the necessary and related arrival of the Messiah--wasn't even a thing until Theodor Herzl came up with it in the late nineteenth century?

Fourth: How can it be that your ancestors waited all those years to go back to live in Palestine under a Jewish state when Orthodox Jewish teaching is that the Jewish people have been dispersed by God to all the different nations for their protection, and that they are not supposed to return to Palestine to reestablish a Hebrew state until God himself restores them there with the coming of the Jewish Messiah at the end of the age? Is my understanding of orthodox Judaism's teaching incorrect? If not, and I assume your ancestors were orthodox (or maybe they really weren't), how could they be awaiting for anything other than the arrival of the Jewish Messiah to restore the Jewish people, en mass, to Palestine? And since political Zionism only started as an ideology around the year 1890 (which, being a secular political movement, does not require the arrival of a Messiah for the reestablishment of a Jewish state), how could it be that your ancestors have been waiting all these other centuries before 1890 to return to Palestine without the necessary arrival of the Jewish Messiah, which is part of Rabbinic teaching?

For reference to my last set of questions, watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuAy2xkeniY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQ-tRrKeAfQ

Please correct any of the misunderstandings I have. Otherwise, I will be forced to conclude that your claims about how all that your ancestors wanted for 1,900 years was to return to Palestine, though coming from a certain emotional place and sounding nice, are basically LIES.
In fact, I might even begin to wonder if you are nothing more than a disingenuous "hasbara" troll who's mission is nothing other than to spread pro-Israel propaganda and disinformation.

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Outsourcing Is Treason's picture

@SoylentGreenisPeople
because the Land of Israel was under foreign military occupation continuously.

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@Outsourcing Is Treason

. . . relatives had wanted to relocate to Palestine, say, two hundred years ago, that the Ottoman Turks would have prevented them from doing so? Is that what you are saying? If so, what evidence do you have for this position, especially in view of the fact that when the Spanish kicked the Sephardic Jews out of Spain, thousands of them ended up relocating to places that were then under the domination of the Ottoman Empire such as Salonika in Greece and cities in Asia Minor (e.g., Bob Dylan, on one side of his family, is a Sephardic Jew whose family roots were in Turkey. I also have an Sephardic Israeli friend who's ancestors settled in Salonika, Greece. hundreds of years ago, after they were kicked out of Spain.)

What evidence do you have that the Ottoman Turks would have prevented your ancestors from moving to Palestine, especially in view of the fact that mass Jewish migration to Palestine started around the turn of the last century, while the Ottoman Empire was still in existence?

Moreover, you haven't dealt with all the other questions I put to you and points that I've made, which put the lie to this idea that the Jewish people have been waiting FOR NINETEEN HUNDRED YEARS to realize some kind of secular "Zionist" dream in Palestine that could exist or could be realized APART FROM the arrival of the Jewish Messiah.

In view of the things that I've posted, any secular Zionist vision of "return" to Israel (i.e., apart from the arrival of the Jewish Messiah) has only been around since the end of the nineteenth century with the doctrines of Theodor Herzl. That's LESS THAN ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS!!!!

Thus, your people could not have had a Zionist expectation to return to Israel for the past 1,900 years and you LIE when you assert that they have.

As you've not seen fit to engage any of these points--even to correct any misunderstandings I might have--I have to conclude that you really don't know what the hell you are talking about in your posts, but you're just spewing Hasbara propaganda.

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Outsourcing Is Treason's picture

@SoylentGreenisPeople
Oh yes the Ottoman Empire was a bastion of tolerance, ask any Armenian.

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@Outsourcing Is Treason
. . . . your ancestors could have returned to Palestine under the Ottomans (as they transferred to Greece and Turkey under the Ottomans after the expulsion from Spain) but that doing so would not have represented the ideal conditions because the Ottomans would have treated them like they treated the Armenians?

(By the way, Israel has refused to officially recognize the reality of the Armenian genocide. Did you know that? . . . . talk about ironies . . . .)

So, now you seem to admit that the Jews were NOT in forced exile from Palestine. Your argument is now, rather, that many of them just wouldn't have liked the conditions to which they'd be subjected if they had relocated there because they would have been less than ideal.

Thanks for clearing that up.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Outsourcing Is Treason You have not addressed the central argument of the piece, which is that the fight against anti-semitism, like the fight against sexism and the fight against anti-black racism, has been repurposed for use by the elite, weaponized as a tool to suppress dissent and maintain the status quo. I'd think anybody who had a history of being victimized by authoritarian regimes would be deeply concerned by such a charge, and interested in addressing it and finding out whether it was true or false. You seem rather to assume that the charge must be false and then to catalog the horrific sufferings of Jews during the past two millenia, not noticing that the latter doesn't prove or disprove the former. You also don't mention the conflation of the economic elites with Jews that's going on here, the assumption that if people have a problem with bankers they must really be having a problem with Jews. That is an extremely disturbing assumption to make, since it is, arguably, the assumption that allowed Hitler to rise to power. Of course, Hitler followed up on conflating Jews with the international financial elite by attacking both, whereas nowadays people conflate Jews with the international financial community in order to make the latter exempt from criticism. Nonetheless, it is extremely disturbing to revisit those particular ideas and see them tolerated and even occasionally embraced by people fighting against anti-Jewish bigotry. The phrase "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house" seems particularly apt here.

Justice movements don't rely on the a priori assumption that members of oppressed groups are automatically right and virtuous, because justice movements are based on truth, and the truth is that nobody is automatically right and virtuous. Nor do justice movements generally rely on the notion of an essential racial or ethnic identity, concepts that have been used to wreak destruction on oppressed peoples throughout history. Rather, they rely on the concept of shared historical experience. You speak of that historical experience, true, but only as a way of asserting an automatic moral and intellectual rightness for everyone who springs from it. You cannot wring correct thought from anguish in that way. There's no shortcut to either moral or intellectual rightness. Believing that there is is the hallmark of authoritarians and bad-faith actors, not reformers bent on justice.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@SoylentGreenisPeople @SoylentGreenisPeople

My understanding is also that before the formation of the modern state of Israel in 1948, Jews, Christians, and Moslems all lived in relative peace and harmony in Palestine and got along fairly well (I have two sources for this belief), and that it wasn't until the last century that problems between them started to arise when the Zionists decided they wanted to take away already occupied land for themselves.

Fuck racism, fuck anti-semitism, fuck Jewish anti-Arab racism, fuck oppression. Somehow that region needs to be transformed from an epicenter of violence between religions to an example and epicenter of peace between religions. The Israeli constitution maybe needs to be rewritten so that it represents everybody there and protects the rights and security of everybody there.

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Beware the bullshit factories.

Pluto's Republic's picture

@Outsourcing Is Treason

...but I can't find my deed.

And all those 1,900 dark years, all we wanted was to return to our homeland. To govern ourselves in our ancient capital. To worship in our ancient holy places. We wanted what is our rightful heritage.

We've looked everywhere for it. Who's going to take our word for it over the word of people who have been living there for two freakin' millennia?

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

@Pluto's Republic in a flood....

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dfarrah

Outsourcing Is Treason's picture

@Pluto's Republic

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@Outsourcing Is Treason

See my posting above if you need further elucidation.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Outsourcing Is Treason History includes more people than yours.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Anja Geitz's picture

@Outsourcing Is Treason

It’s all about ending the 1,900 long years of forced exile.

In that for Israel to achieve that long held goal, Israel herself had to exile others by force. Or is that something I'm not allowed to say because of my German parentage?

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

Outsourcing Is Treason's picture

@Anja Geitz
there are two million Arab Israelis today. Worst. Ethnic. Cleansing. Ever.

BTW, what ever happened to all those Germans who lived in the Sudetenland?

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@Outsourcing Is Treason

or are your services being offered gratis?

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Anja Geitz's picture

@SoylentGreenisPeople

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

Outsourcing Is Treason's picture

@SoylentGreenisPeople
Putin Hamas puppet?

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@Outsourcing Is Treason
SGiP tossed the first insult but you've been around long enough to know when lines are being crossed. See my comment to him directly below thus one.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Outsourcing Is Treason Personally, I'm a Macedonian hacker working for Putin to keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House, but our membership varies.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@SoylentGreenisPeople
but directing insults at other members will get you tossed. I think this is the second or third time I've warned you of that.

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Alligator Ed's picture

@SoylentGreenisPeople Smile

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Anja Geitz's picture

@Outsourcing Is Treason

Killing and violence is not an argument or justification. How can an entire region that has to continually kill people to exist be morally justified. It cannot.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

@Outsourcing Is Treason described have never happened to anyone else throughout history, as if the Jews are the sole group that ever experienced evil.

Well, you weren't and you aren't.

Israel decided to kick out 600,000+ people from their lands, which they also believe are their ancestral lands. What are these people to do? The least Israel (or all the countries involved in creating Israel) could have done was to make these people whole again at the time by providing them with land and homes.

I find it astounding that Israel, or Jews, can be such a tiny proportion of the population, yet they manage to hold so much wealth and power. It simply does not make sense. Further, I find it highly offensive that the US, with a tiny population of Jews, is forced to support Israel so disproportionately. The population of Israel even gets better medical care than US citizens.

I've been trying to figure out why Jews have been repeatedly expelled from wherever. Why is that? People typically just don't wake up in the morning and decide to drive out a peacefully co-existing group of people, yet this has happened repeatedly to the Jews.

How did Jews come to be hated in Germany and elsewhere where there were pogroms? Usually, the Jews' problems have been chalked up to racism; however, I don't see how racism would explain it all.

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dfarrah

Anja Geitz's picture

@dfarrah

How did Jews come to be hated in Germany and elsewhere where there were pogroms? Usually, the Jews' problems have been chalked up to racism; however, I don't see how racism would explain it all.

But your argument is as obtusely fallacious as it is cringe-worthy to read here at c99.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

Pluto's Republic's picture

@Anja Geitz

...these are natural questions. Had we ever, at any point, been allowed to investigate and discuss in America, how all of this fits together and why it is fair — there would be no questions.

Racism would be racism.
Genocide would be genocide.
Everybody's gods would cancel each other out.
Inequality and injustice would be explained.
The things that are masked and forbidden as topics would be seen for what they are.
The secret histories would be discussed.
We would hear the many sides of stories that took place in histories written and suppressed.

Nothing would be decided, but everyone would know that there is a bigger picture.

I deal with big data. I don't believe in coincidences, either. In fact, I believe that it is the examination of unexplained coincidences that is going to save this planet.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Anja Geitz's picture

@Pluto's Republic

Because from my read, it sounds a little like victim blaming when history shows that the economic desperation the German people felt during the Weimar Republic along with men building political coalitions who needed a convenient scapegoat was the real reason the Jewish population was targetted, rather then some esoteric big picture reason why "they" may have engendered this kind of historic wrath.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

Pluto's Republic's picture

@Anja Geitz

We worked very hard to create that monster in Germany, especially the CFR in the US, which was established in 1921 for that very purpose.

...history shows that the economic desperation the German people felt during the Weimar Republic along with men building political coalitions who needed a convenient scapegoat was the real reason the Jewish population was targetted....

Indeed, that's how it works. And, we now learn that the Jews were never Europeans at all. They were always immigrants running around Europe for 1,900 years, remaining aloof and clannish because they had a side deal with god. Immigrants always have it tough, especially when they insist on speaking a strange language and they refuse to acculturate or intermarry. For 1900 years! Now, natives turning on immigrants during bad times is an age-old story — and it has a long tradition in the United States that continues to this very day. That's likely what happened to the Germans, with the help of the war profiteers.

Could "anti-semitism" actually be a new word; a control word used by mind-control experts who are so bold and cynical that they are not even Semitic?

We have a century's worth of suppressed questions, all of us. For me, from the Left, they come down to this:

Why does it seem like the Nazis are still running their ethnic cleansing operation, but this time in Israel? Is this where they fled to? I thought the best of the Nazis were smuggled into the US after WWII.

My questions are:

Why are we harming our own people by diminishing their economic security, trashing their cities, denying them a modern infrastructure, and strangling their future prospects — in order to pay for this murderous beast in the Middle East? Why are we asset-stripping ordinary Americans and diverting the taxes they pay to pick up the bill for Israel's foreign policy and Saudi Arabia's Sunni murder-frenzy? Why do we act on their behalf to systematically overthrow Shia populated nations in the region, while dislocating tens of millions of civilians yearly, pushing them toward depopulation? Why are we so willing to degrade the lives of the next generation of Americans in order to religiously cleanse that entire region, with an eye toward Iran's eventual ethnic extermination?

Whose god is to blame for turning us into monsters? Did the Nazis really win their Empire, after all?

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Anja Geitz's picture

@Pluto's Republic

Or rational debate with you if you are seriously going to expect me to address petty prejudices such as this:

They were always immigrants running around Europe for 1,900 years, remaining aloof and clannish because they had a side deal with god. Immigrants always have it tough, especially when they insist on speaking a strange language and they refuse to acculturate or intermarry.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

Pluto's Republic's picture

@Anja Geitz

...when you say: "...history shows that the economic desperation the German people felt during the Weimar Republic along with men building political coalitions who needed a convenient scapegoat was the real reason the Jewish population was targetted..."

I know why they were so easy to scapegoat, not just in Germany but everywhere in Europe, because I've read so many versions of this "separateness," which has allowed suspicion and blame to grow in a more primitive world. And, even that was forced on them because they were not allowed to take the ordinary jobs of the natives in the community. They developed skills that were more mobile and portable.

Describing that apartness and the inevitable suspicions and scapegoating that followed then everywhere is not blaming the victim. Had they hidden their faith and mingled more, they would have still been scapegoated in that world. Just as we scapegoat Mexican immigrants today and tear their families apart on the land that was originally theirs for tens of thousands of years — because we blame them for the economic suffering we are experiencing today. I am not blaming the Jews or the Mexicans for the fate they suffer. Immigrants and nonconformists are always at risk.

However, I am reluctant to condemn the German people or the American people, either, because I can see how profoundly they have been manipulated by the aristocrats in their own cultures. The support or stand silent while unspeakable injustices are performed with their money.

They are cowered and isolated in their inverted-totalitarian systems; so easy to — just as we saw Trump whip their "petty prejudices" into blind hate during his campaign rallies; just as we saw Hitler do the same, not that long ago. Hate for the outsider, the racially different, the foreigner, the non-citizens.

Anyway, this long forbidden conversation now goes deep, and things have just started to show themselves with the passage of time. I'll pass on sitting in the "blame-the-victim" box that you so need to fill. We've all been twisted and hurt along across the centuries. Lots of brain damage under the bridge. Try harder to stay objective. Question authority.

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The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Anja Geitz's picture

@Pluto's Republic

Because I felt your explanation was honest and fair. And, yes I agree with you about how people can be manipulated by authority. But I do not believe there is some preternatural character trait in the Jewish people that provoked the persecution they have historically suffered, which is how I originally understood dfarrah's question when she stated that racial antipathy cannot explain the "entire story". Why, I ask, can racial antipathy NOT explain the entire story? Is there some other credible "reason" the Jewish people engender violence against them that dfarrah is hinting at?

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

@Anja Geitz I am in no way "hinting" about anything.

I just don't buy the arguments that what happened is due to racism or scapegoating. These arguments simply don't make sense.

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dfarrah

Anja Geitz's picture

@dfarrah

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@dfarrah Since Constantine, they certainly do make sense, if you're talking about anywhere in Europe or in many parts of the Middle East. The Roman Empire was large. Turning it into the Holy Roman Empire was a big mistake.

I believed that back when I was a Christian, too, by the way. It's a mistake to conflate Christianity with empire. It goes badly. Since it happened, it is hardly surprising that the Jews were chosen as the handiest cultural scapegoat for many centuries.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Anja Geitz Well, there's the fact that scapegoating is a wonderful thing for anyone wanting to commit an unfair act, including, but not limited to, political or religious tyranny.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@Anja Geitz by setting up a straw man, "petty racism."

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dfarrah

@Anja Geitz that Jews have a very strong custom against marrying non-Jews? This custom is very strong, but I think it has loosened quite a bit in the US.

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dfarrah

@Pluto's Republic Thank you for posting this.

It is way past time to find out the answers to your questions. The active suppression and censorship of these types of questions must be stopped.

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dfarrah

wendy davis's picture

@dfarrah

ethnicity, not a race. but as you and pluto's republic have over-lapping questions, i'd submit that 'facts' will be hard to come by. in amerikan politics, social security was long known as 'the third rail a politician did not tread on'; globally, at least in part of the globe that 'matters'/s, israel is the third rail. someone (sorry i can't remember who) said he/she is an historian, and no one on the thread has any of it right.

but as to facts, well, dunno who would have kept track of individual jewish/yehudim wealth, for instance. da wiki says of the 14-17 million world wide, 'Israel: 6,336,400[1]. United States: 5,700,000[1]

but maybe you'd put up a thread asking both your questions, eh?

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@wendy davis Jews are not considered a race, then why the charges of racism when one questions the Israeli 3rd rail?

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dfarrah

wendy davis's picture

@dfarrah

'the mystification of anti-semitism' as in: mission denouncement creep, not racism nor racialism (do you know the difference?). 'kinda anti-semitic' to 'holy hell: full blown anti-semitic'. why are you talking about racism?

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@wendy davis and according to wiki, anti-Semitism is considered a form of racism.

Sorry if I'm not as precise as I should be - I'm aware that there have been disagreements over the language - just like there are disagreements over definitions of 'liberal' and 'progressive.'

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dfarrah

@wendy davis read an account of Jewish families being expelled from England in the years around the 1000s. The lineage of those families was traced to modern times.

I would bet that the information exists for such a tight population. We probably don't have access to it. After all, the Rothschilds are reported to have immense wealth, but no one knows the extent of it.

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dfarrah

Centaurea's picture

@Anja Geitz

If I read Outsourcing's original comment correctly, he/she wasn't just referring to the persecution of Jews by Nazi Germany. The comment referred to ongoing, repeated, universal mistreatment of Hebrew Semitic peoples over the course of two millennia.

Looking at this from the standpoint of collective psychology, I think that the questions raised by dfarrah and Pluto's Republic are valid questions.

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~Rumi

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Anja Geitz's picture

@Centaurea

Related to some "legitimate trait" you think the Jewish culture had that provoked violence against them? I ask because I have always viewed their persecution as a product of racial antipathy and have yet to hear someone on this thread pose an alternative "reason" the Jewish people have been persecuted.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

edg's picture

@Anja Geitz

Most Jewish people easily blend in with other races. What sets them apart is not their race (there is no 'Jewish race'), but the outward manifestation of their religion -- language, dress, hairstyle... I think you're using race as a cudgel to try to shut down the discussion.

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Centaurea's picture

@Anja Geitz

Reading your comments, it seems to me that you want to know the answers before you are willing to ask the questions.

Let go of what you (we!) were taught to believe. Let go of trying to force things into a preconceived and labelled box. "If it's not A, then it has to be B!"
No, it doesn't.

As the saying goes, think outside of the box. Come at it from many directions. At this point in time, I think the discussion is likely to be much more valuable than arriving at particular "answers".

Pluto's Republic reminded me of my favorite motto: Question Everything.

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~Rumi

"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Centaurea Dfarrah's questions were reasonable, but the way he put them was not. It sounded like he was saying "there must be something wrong with the Jews because they got thrown out of so many places." He may not have intended that, but it sure sounded like it.

Having said that, of course the questions are reasonable, but unfortunately they are fairly easily answered if one considers the nature of scapegoating.

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--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal of 'victim blaming,' because the notion is also used to shut down discussion.

One of your comments says that scapegoating was the reason for all (or most) of the displacements. What were the Jews scapegoated for? How is it that no other group was repeatedly scapegoated like the Jews were?

Is it really anti-Semitism to consider that the Jews could have been doing something that was very offensive to the larger groups?

Consider the US. The US killed the Indians, imprisoned the Japanese, and enslaved the Africans. Even the Irish were despised for some time. As much racism as there has been against the Japanese and Africans, there was never a serious effort to rid the US of these people, or they wouldn't be here now. I don't think there was even an effort to rid the US of the Hispanics who lived across Texas, Colorado, etc., at the time the US grabbed up the west.

Yet, location after location drove out the Jews over hundreds of years.

So, I have a hard time chalking up these experiences entirely to scapegoating or anti-Semitism to the exclusion of any other explanations.

Obviously, I should study more history.

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dfarrah

@Anja Geitz means nothing to me.

I want facts and I want answers.

What arguments did I make? My comment was mostly questions, not 'arguments,' as you assert, but I do question the assertion of racism to be the reason for all of the ill that befell the Jews.

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dfarrah

Anja Geitz's picture

@dfarrah

but I do question the assertion of racism to be the reason for all of the ill that befell the Jews

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

@Anja Geitz have been trying to find out: the facts.

What facts do you have to support your assertion that it was all due to racism or scapegoating - essentially saying that the Jews had no part at all in whatever disputes arose.

Well, disputes just don't arise out of thin air. If you want to call my questions victim blaming, go right ahead. I call it trying to find out facts.

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dfarrah

Anja Geitz's picture

@dfarrah

That goes through the questions you are asking. Comments that follow are also illuminating.

https://www.quora.com/Why-have-Jews-been-persecuted-throughout-history
.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Anja Geitz @Anja Geitz Obviously, there are many of us here who don't agree with dfarrah's statement. That's the nature of this site.

In answer to dfarrah, people expel people because it's easy, for whatever reasons, to scapegoat those they expel. The reasons it's easier to expel some people than others are usually historical, and involve some easily identifiable difference in language, religion, or physical appearance. In the case of the Jews, well, it's easy to become a scapegoat when there's a large empire stretching throughout Europe and the Mediterranean based on a religion that holds Jews to be murderers of God. The Christian power elite likely would have scapegoated pagans too, but we were too easily erased to be satisfactory targets for long.

As for why human beings rely on scapegoating so much--well, it's just so damned useful to the maintenance of any unfair structure. Imagine, for instance, where our own overlords would be without the concept of racism. It's unfortunate that they have now decided it's in their best interests to play both sides, because that means that the powerful are attempting to use the language of revolutionary justice and ethical reform, and it's a little like listening to a pig trying to sing "O Mio Babbino Caro."

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Anja Geitz's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

And I do understand that we, as a forum, are going to disagree with each other about many controversial issues. That is the nature of dialogue.

What I do not find reasonable is staying silent when specious conflations are made and the tenor of that discussion becomes accusatory about a subject that merits reasonable discourse.

Therefore, my issue with Dfarrah's comment wasn't the discussion about why the Jewish people have been persecuted through history, it is the implication, which you've already mentioned up thread, that the fault must lie with the Jewish people themselves as evidence by their historic persecution across Europe and beyond.

If, however, that was not Dfarrah's intention, it might be helpful if he/she would say so.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

@Anja Geitz both sides, and information about the Jewish side is being censored and suppressed.

Further, I question the knee-jerk reactions to my questions and the attempt to attribute 'bad' intent on my part. To me, this is just the ongoing suppression of full transparency.

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dfarrah

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal It is very easy to scapegoat, as you say, but to the extent that and entire group was repeatedly driven from larger populations? You cite Christianity, but Christians were not the only people driving the Jews out.

So let me start at the beginning. Here are Jewish groups that have decided to move to multiple non-Jewish populated areas. If there was so much opposition to Jews, how did they get to settle in any non-Jewish area to begin with? Now, here they are, living their lives normally amongst larger groups. They manage to live in areas for a few generations. Again, if there was so much hatred for Jews bases solely on their Jewishness, then why were they allowed to stay for a few generations? Then poof! They are driven out.

And this cycle happens over and over again. Assuming anti-Semitism grew and spread over the centuries, how is it that the Jews could settle within populations anywhere? Why would the various locations even allow them to move in to begin with?

Sorry, I just don't get it.

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dfarrah

Outsourcing Is Treason's picture

@dfarrah
anti-Semitism to anti-Semitic religions.

As for providing land, the Arab-Islamic monoculture controls an enormous swath of it from Marrakech to Baghdad.

And don’t forget the 800,000+ Jews that were displaced from Arab countries after 1948.

Israel provided them a home and Arab countries could very easily provide displaced Arabs with a home as well.

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@Outsourcing Is Treason

Therefore, the Zionists--who mostly come from Europe--by STEALING the land (at the point of a gun) from the native Palestinians (both Christian and Muslim) and oppressing them in occupied territories (also, at the point of a gun), are the real "anti-Semites."

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dance you monster's picture

@Outsourcing Is Treason

As an historian, I disagree with most of what you have written here. I'll refrain from the logical fallacies of using my heritage (partly Jewish, partly concentration-camp victims) to try to lend weight to my views; I'll just rely on the history. That history leads me to disagree and in some cases cringe at many things that are being said in reply to you -- statements that are just as ignorant and historically edited as yours, Outsourcing. There is a whole helluva lot of myth-making going on in this thread.

But when you say this,...

the Arab-Islamic monoculture

...you are undeniably spouting a perspective of racists, positing an undifferentiated otherness to many who are hard to lump together in any category but race and religion, no less than those who over 1900 years of history have thought all Jews should be painted with the same brush. Looks like we'll need someone with more knowledge and tolerance to come along before we can have a real discussion of this topic.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@dance you monster I'll refrain from the logical fallacies of using my heritage (partly Jewish, partly concentration-camp victims) to try to lend weight to my views; I'll just rely on the history.

Oh, bless you.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@dfarrah @dfarrah

I've been trying to figure out why Jews have been repeatedly expelled from wherever.

The Roman occupiers had trouble with the fact that their Jewish subjects were intolerant of all their their Roman gods and kept insisting that "there will be no other God" before Yaweh and no false idols either. Shit didn't sit right when Caligula put a statue of himself as a God inside the Temple in Jerusalem. The Romans had enough of the insubordination and started the Diaspora. Maybe if everybody became a pagan we could all be tolerant of each other.

I find it astounding that Israel, or Jews, can be such a tiny proportion of the population, yet they manage to hold so much wealth and power.

It probably is disproportionate. 22.5% of all Nobel prizes have also been won by Jewish people. Probably, something to do with a culture that highly values education and learning.

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Beware the bullshit factories.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Timmethy2.0 Well, it depends on when you're talking about, doesn't it?

Post-Constantine, there was a whole other reason for expelling and in other ways scapegoating the Jews.

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--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

Post-Constantine, there was a whole other reason for expelling and in other ways scapegoating the Jews.

That's a part of history about which I'd like to learn more. So much has happened over the last 4000 years and yet that's barely a fraction of a second in the bigger picture.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Timmethy2.0 Constantine was the asshole who first wedded Christianity to imperialism by making some late-life conversion to Christianity, and, well, since he was the emperor, as he went, so went the empire.

Depending on the kind of Christian you're talking to, they either think that was when Christianity really started gathering steam, or they think that was when Christianity started to go seriously wrong.

But when you create a Christian empire, of course it will be very easy from then on to demonize anybody who isn't Christian--but especially those that your holy book says are guilty of getting the incarnate God himself killed.

Now don't get me wrong; assuming that I'm being told the story at all correctly, I think that both the Roman and the Jewish power structures at the time were being total cowardly shits about this new rabbi and his teachings, and were acting like the crappy authoritarians that they were. The Jewish power structure was basically scared because he was getting too popular, and some of his ideas threatened the status quo; the Romans just wanted these people to calm down and not cause their empire too much inconvenience. In exchange for peace and quiet on this station, they were willing to kill a guy--in a mighty dreadful way, too--who hadn't actually done anything wrong by their lights.

That's assuming the story as I've been told it is anything remotely like the truth.

But that's a far cry from "Jews carry in their blood, and pass down to their descendants, guilt for having murdered the one true God when he was gracious enough to visit us all on earth," which seems to me to have been the foundation for at least a thousand years of anti-semitism.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

Constantine was the asshole who first wedded Christianity to imperialism by making some late-life conversion to Christianity, and, well, since he was the emperor, as he went, so went the empire.

If only he stayed a Pagan.

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Beware the bullshit factories.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Timmethy2.0 I'd love it if we pagans were always tolerant of each other. Historically, we haven't always been, but hey, I think we could take a decent stab at it.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

wendy davis's picture

@dfarrah

in your surmise that Israel (or jews) own/s a disproportionate share of wealth (my shorthand), and that might be just unreliable ‘conventional wisdom’ as per the history of some states wanting them to be money lenders as apparently christian bankers weren’t permitted to lend money with interest. that may all be hooey, as well, dunno which histories are true, not true. but i have had two commenters at the café whingeing: 'but they own all the movie studios', etc., as evidence of...something.

it’s been decades since i’d read mitchener’s ‘the source’, in which i’d remembered that he’d provided his own reasons (by way of story-telling, time-traveling, etc.) of the long history of persecutions of jews. ever did find a neat package of his theories, but i looked far and wide for explanations, found dozens already, but this page has many theories, in the OP, but even better iirc in the comments. the right sidebar asks more questions.

but the ‘minority ethos (indigenous?)’ arguments sound more likely that ‘christ killers’, as of course the romans killed christ w/ a few jews helping, or so the story goes. the author brings in ‘reform judaism’ is one created to make say, hasidic jews, less visible. where all get seriously into the weeds is in modern israel, and the killings of palestinians ‘not’ equalling nazi genocide against jews, and the psychologists who posit: many Germans sought to purge their guilt by blaming the Jews for the Hitler movement.

but yes, the billions of amerikan ‘aid’ to israel, and now more billions for ‘military aid’ is stomach churning, but then there are so many amerikan NGO (allegedly) coalitions to promote all that, included, of course, chritsians united for israel, fundie evangelicals with their biblical dispensationalist rhetoric: ‘when israel stands alone, christ will come again’. do we have any idea what percentage of the jews in israel are observant jews? i really have no idea.

but as a side note, bibi, trump, and crown prince bin salman of the orb and others seem to be okay if only shi'a muslims are killed by genocide in the proxy wars. but aye gawd: iran won't get a toe hold in syria!!!

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@wendy davis that Israel as a country is wealthy; I was talking about Jewish people.

I just want to know the facts.

I came to start thinking about this because of the stranglehold that the banks and wall street have on the consumers. I further began considering the dominance of Jews in the film industry, media, and their disproportionate influence in Congress and state governments (like the states who have outlawed BDS activities). I've read a bit about the Rothschilds and their money and power. I've read about the Sackler family and how they drove the consumption of opioids. And on and on.

After I considered all of this type of information (assuming it is true, because I don't know if all I viewed is true), I began to think that maybe those people who believe that Jews run the world are correct after all. I never gave them much thought in the past until recently.

So, now I look beyond the standard explanation of racism for the Jews expulsions. Some writers have noted economic exploitation of their non-Jewish neighbors.

But I do not know.

And I want to find out the facts.

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dfarrah

@dfarrah in "The Origins of Totalitarianism" touches on some of the why for Jews being seen as having all the money or forming some secret world wide conspiracy ruling the world. Some of it does go back to the diaspora when Jews were displaced all over the world. Many spoke multiple languages and were more worldly than some of their countrymen who were not Jewish due to the diaspora. There were and are a lot of Jewish bankers and wealthy Jews but isn't inherently due to their Jewishness as much as to their moving all to many different places. I'm not doing her full justice here, I would read it if I were you, but what it points out, to me, is how some tiny sliver of "truth" has been distorted over hundreds of years to paint them as "other" in a negative light. And the crux of it really is that the wealthy Jews did not always step in to help non-wealthy Jews as they did not want to either lose their relative privilege or call undue attention to themselves and lose that privilege. Great book, I need to read it again.

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Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@lizzyh7 In my much less informed way, I see it as all the other bankers hiding behind the Jews so they can get away with shit. Whether they are hiding behind them in order that the Jews should take the fall--as in the thirties--or whether they are hiding behind them in order to borrow their moral capital, as now.

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--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

wendy davis's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

as i'm seriously not getting your drift. as in: how do they hide behind jewish bankers? and beyond bankers, i'd say we need to add mega-hedge fund managers, fed chairs, presidential economic advisors, and other financial wall street oligarchs.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@wendy davis OK, first, "bankers" as I'm using it is shorthand for "extremely wealthy financiers of all types."

Second, it is a stereotype with a grain of truth that a lot of Jews are in finance. The reasons for that are historically pretty well known; for quite a while it was considered improper for a Christian to lend money at interest (because the Bible disapproves of usury), so the people who were legally allowed (or culturally approved) to do so in European countries were often Jews. Christians then went and borrowed money from them with apparently no awareness of their own hypocrisy in so doing. But that's how a lot of European Jews got into banking and other forms of finance, and, of course, in many cases children follow in their parents' footsteps.

Fast forward a few centuries. Because of this historical background, when Hitler comes along, there are enough Jews in finance to lend some credibility to the notion that all Jews are wealthy financiers (obviously false); enough to lend a hand to the egregious notion that Jews were somehow responsible for Germany's economic anguish post-WWI (heinously absurd, especially given that the people actually responsible were powerful people in the political structures of Britain, France, and, arguably, the Woodrow Wilson administration, few of whom were Jewish--a fact Hitler and his colleagues must have known.) In a repulsive political sleight-of-hand, Hitler and the Nazis took Germany's problem with international finance and blamed it on Jews, simply because there were a fair number of Jews in international finance (though, as some have said here, certainly not all powerful bankers or financiers were Jews.)

Thus, in the thirties, both the international financial establishment and their friends in politics--the ones who were actually responsible for crushing Germany economically--essentially got off scot-free--or at least the ones who weren't Jewish did--while Jews in all walks of life, some mighty far from finance, took the fall for the immoral actions of a powerful and unscrupulous financial and political system.

Fast-forward again to today. Once again, we have an incredibly powerful and unscrupulous system of international finance, its leaders arguably even more openly sociopathic and vicious than they were in the early twentieth century. They are crushing, well, basically everyone everywhere, as far as they can reach. As always, people who do such things benefit from the interposition of some kind of propaganda to deflect blame from them. However, by 2008 it was obvious that George W. Bush and people like him (right-wing, wealthy, white) could no longer compel the American imagination, and probably could no longer compel the imaginations of very many people anywhere. They had behaved so badly so publicly that essentially the entire power structure lost credibility even with some of its right-wing, pro-capitalist adherents. The old propaganda, which used bigotry to redirect the people's ire elsewhere, had exhausted itself. Nobody believed anymore that the rich were rich because they were meritorious, strong, tough, and never asked for a handout, probably because they had just asked for several massive handouts in full view of the world, after having entirely fucked up their whole industry through incompetence, greed, and bile. Talking about welfare queens wasn't enough anymore. What was needed was either a damned convincing scapegoat or a quick-and-dirty reputation makeover.

I am going to limit myself here to only talking about anti-semitism and the Jews, because this comment is too damned long anyway, but it should be understood that the propaganda deployed uses all forms of bigotry as its vectors.

In the case of anti-semitism, the propagandists went back to a very polluted well and dredged up the concept that all bankers/financiers are Jews and all Jews are bankers/financiers, an ugly idea last used by reprehensible people. But where Hitler's aim (I believe) was to generate political power through hatred, which inadvertently got a lot of guilty (non-Jewish) people off the hook, this time getting rich, powerful, guilty people off the hook is the whole point of the exercise.

Here is what Hitler's formulation looked like:

Bankers and international financiers have crushed Germany and are causing your anguish. Bankers and international financiers are Jews. Jews are therefore responsible for your anguish. Let us destroy them together.

Here is what the current formulation looks like:

Bankers and international financiers are Jews. Therefore, if you have a problem with banking or international finance, you must hate Jews just like Hitler did. Criticism of the financial industry is anti-semitic.

This formulation enables the establishment to shut down all critiques, pose as virtuous victims, and essentially take over, permanently, the old languages of activism, rebellion, and moral exhortation that used to be the property of the left. We have been bought out. We do not understand this and continue as if those languages mean the exact same things they always have. That is why there is so little effective systemic critique and so much focus on those members of the extreme right wing that have little or no real power--and, of course, Trump, who does have power, but not in comparison with the people actually running the world.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

I entirely agree with you, and I think I somewhat disagree with you, but I vote in support of your comment because you've said it so well.

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wendy davis's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

great and lengthy amplification, but i believe you've obscured more for me rather than simplified, including your post-2008 contentions that just don't ring quite so to me. but this you hadn't addressed as far as i can tell: "Whether they are hiding behind them in order that the Jews should take the fall--as in the thirties--or whether they are hiding behind them in order to borrow their moral capital, as now."

now had you said 'their moral impunity due to stave off charges of anti-semitism', i might have gotten it, but i do need to let go of it for lack of time. and thank you.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@wendy davis Well, I obviously haven't said it very well, then.

How about this: the powerful of all stripes, including financiers of all kinds, are currently associating or even identifying themselves with oppressed people of all kinds, and have co-opted the languages that have been historically used in defense of those people, or in pursuit of greater justice for them. Hillary Clinton's campaign was a very good example of this.

In the case of anti-semitism, it's really easy for Wall St to identify themselves with the Jewish people and steal the rhetoric of anti-semitism for their own purposes, because historically, and even in the present, there have been a lot of Jews in finance. Thus, when the Occupy movement criticizes bankers, it's easy to charge the Occupy movement with anti-semitism and pretend that Wall St is an oppressed minority.

Where we're going with all this is that the only bigots could be discontented in this best of all possible worlds.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@Outsourcing Is Treason
not exactly.
but very illustrative.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Big Al's picture

they lose a little street cred. Wolf is full of shit on that one.
I remember not being able to say the word z-ionist on Daily Kos without it being mass flagged by a group that would suddenly appear en masse. Or if you said to abolish the federal reserve or talk about bankers ruling the world and they would come out of the woodwork to tell you that's anti-semitic. So there has been changes in the last ten years on this topic. I think much of the act is wearing thin.

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wendy davis's picture

@Big Al

when i'd asked an erstwhile commenter at the café why he'd quit firedoglake, was it over the subject of zionism? he'd told me that the use of the word proved that i was anti-semitic. oh, my, no way one can prove a negative, but i made a few attempts to explain; failed of course.

but some of your comment once again put me in mind of PP&M's 'light one candle':

Light one candle for the strength that we need
To never become our own foe
And light one candle for those who are suffering
Pain we learned so long ago...

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Pluto's Republic's picture

....of the subversive process that has successfully weaponized Zionism throughout the world. In the US, we were completely swept away over a half-century ago by the boiling tide of fear of being labeled anti-semite. The nation's moral compass was also washed away in the flood and I fear it will never be found again. Without morality or intellectual honesty, Americans have only nationism to cling to, the only identity they have left in the world. They spring to their feet for the national anthem and stare at their flag as if the face of God was staring back. Not bloody likely.

Among nations, the US hss distinguished itself as no longer honoring its treaties and ignoring international law. The US presence at the UN exists for one purpose and one purpose only — to block any votes that condemn Israel for genocide. The US President appoints — from a pool of the most repulsive and immoral American politicians we have created — the US Ambassador to the UN. The world sees this. As for the UK, it has sunk even lower, and debases itself at every opportunity. This is the fate of Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbin, as Jonathan Cook points out in his uncompromising essay. (Thank you Wendy Davis.)

Jeremy Corbyn has recently groveled before his betters in Parliment and conceded — against all evidence — that members of nation's Labour Party were awash in insidious and unrelenting anti-semitism. He castigated himself — again against all evidence — for indulging in the foul depths of anti-semitic thinking. It is truly disgusting to see a human broken by weaponized Zionism. I can sense George Orwell this minute, with his Mona Lisa smile, shimmering in my peripheral vision.

In March 2012, Jeremy Corbyn made the mistake of his life in his expression of support for street art, and his opposition to censorship amid a controversary over a London mural that was about to be painted over.

The anti-Corbyn Jewish Chronicle newspaper was... "initially unsure whether the mural was actually anti-semitic." It mumbled a concern that it might have “anti-semitic undertones” and then dropped it like a nuthinburger. But in spring 2018, when the controversy again resurfaced, the status of the mural had been magically transformed in the minds of the corporate media.

Every mainstream British commentator was convinced it was “clearly” and “obviously” anti-semitic – and by implication, Corbyn had been unmasked as an anti-semite for supporting it.

Again, no one wanted to debate how it was anti-semitic. The artist has said it was an image of historical bankers, most of whom were not Jewish, closely associated with the capitalist class’s war on the rest of us.

But the media now insists that the mural is indeed anti-semitic — yet not one of them can specify what exactly is anti-semitic about it. The fascinating video, below, is a quick timelapse of the artist, Mear One, painting the mural. In the midst of it, he begins to get hints that trouble was being manufactured.... Check this out:


"To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize." — Voltaire

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Anja Geitz's picture

@Pluto's Republic

Fits in nicely with the quote. Starting a conversation about the bankers who rule us is a conversation we should all be having. Just ask anyone still paying the interest on their school loan 10 years after they graduated.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

@Anja Geitz are nothing more than exploitation and usury.

The banks borrow from the Fed at a very low rate, yet ordinary consumers are enslaved by debt.

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dfarrah

wendy davis's picture

@Pluto's Republic

and my, oh, my...that video on the step by step painting of the mural...with the artist' commentary, no less...is worth its weight in casino monopoly money, bless his ♥. i'd run the image i'd used above thru my photo-processing program to clear it up, and still missed some of the details, such as: 'new world order', and i hadn't cottoned on to 'the illuminati' symbol (not that i now what i means, lol). but yeppers, showing the banksters as profiting off the backs of wage slaves was also brilliant, wasn't it?.

i guess we'll let your video stand as tonight's lullaby; what a treat. i'm knackered, and need to shut down for the night. sleep well, all, if you can.

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Anja Geitz's picture

@wendy davis

showing the banksters as profiting off the backs of wage slaves was also brilliant, wasn't it?.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

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