Stanford University study reveals: “Some 80% of (Jews of colour) respondents said that they had ‘experienced discrimination’ within Jewish settings, including synagogues, congregations, and Jewish spiritual communities.”
By Gilad Atzmon
People who are familiar with the history of Zionism are aware of the rich history of White Jewish (AKA Ashkenazi) abuse towards Arab and Sephardi Jews in Israel. In the years after the creation of the Israeli state hundreds of babies went missing. Their parents, mostly Jewish immigrants from Yemen, were told their children had died, but suspicions linger that they were secretly given away to White Jewish childless families. The Israeli government approved earlier this year a NIS162 million settlement with the families of these ‘vanishing’ children.
Volunteering the Israeli population as guinea pigs wasn’t invented by Netanyahu or/and Pfizer. Blood samples drawn from Yemenites Jews in the 1950s were tested to determine whether they had “Negro blood.” According to the Times of Israel “60 hearts were harvested from the bodies of new immigrants from Yemen post-mortem for purposes of medical research, in a project purportedly funded by the US.” Also in the same period, the Jewish state irradiated children who arrived from North Africa and the Middle East en masse in an attempt to fight ringworm. In the years to follow many of these children died from cancer. In 1995 the Israeli government decided to compensate the victims and families of the Ringworm Affair.
In the late 1950-1960s Jewish immigrants from Morocco were sprayed with DDT as soon as their feet touched the ‘promised land.’ For them, this bitter departure was merely an introduction to decades of abuse and humiliation that is still taking place.
It took the Israeli Government more than a few decades to lift its 1977 ban preventing Jews from Ethiopia donating blood. This late immigration wave of African Jews sent their children to serve in the army and to die for Israel but apparently their blood wasn’t as good as their fellow Israelis.
The Yemenites, Moroccans and Ethiopians have something in common. They are ‘Jews of colour,’ not exactly the most privileged Jews in Israel. Just slightly above the Palestinians and the African non-Jewish immigrants. Some anti-Zionists may insist that this is exactly what we should expect from a racist criminal State. However, the fate of American Jews of colour isn’t any better, in fact it is far worse.
The Jerusalem Post reported yesterday on a study conducted by researchers at Stanford University that delved into the experiences of American Jews of Color. The new report titled Beyond the Count revealed large and systemic discrimination and scrutinization based on race in the Jewish Society.
The data was gathered at Stanford University by a multi-racial team of researchers, with over 1,118 respondents participating. It revealed that “Some 80% of respondents said that they had ‘experienced discrimination’ within Jewish settings, including synagogues, congregations, and Jewish spiritual communities.”
“Additionally, respondents indicated that they had previously experienced an increased sense of awareness regarding how others perceive them because of either their race or their Jewishness.” Some participants admitted they found it “more difficult for their identities to co-exist in predominantly white Jewish spaces than in Black indigenous people of color spaces.” Furthermore, 44% said they had changed how they dress or speak in white Jewish spaces, and 66% reported feeling “disconnected from their Jewish identities at times.”
I wouldn’t dare to ask Jews or anyone else to morph, to become more tolerant or harmonious, as that is not my task in life. I wouldn’t expect anyone who upholds racist and/or white supremacist views to change their spots. I just expect Jews in general and Jewish institutions (such as the ADL or AIPAC) in particular, to look in the mirror twice before they preach to us about ‘race’ in general or white privilege in particular.
A few days ago, Ynet (the biggest Israeli media outlet) reported that the American progressive movement has come to acknowledge the problematic role of its Jewish elements. The Israeli outlet revealed that in the eyes of emerging progressive circles within the American left, Jews are perceived as “white oppressors” at the core of America’s social injustice. The Ynet report is based on a recent study made by Dafna Kaufman, an analyst at the Israeli Reut institute.
“The contemporary discourse of the American left divides society into (identitarian) squares: you are either with us or against us – and the Jews are left out.” Ynet sums up Kaufman’s argument. “Although the vast majority of American Jews support the Democratic Party, progressive circles no longer really allow Jews to be part of the struggle for social change, as long as they continue to be pro-Zionist and actively express their Jewishness.” You may have already noticed that the Israeli outlet doesn’t refer solely to ‘Zionists’ as most Palestinian solidarity campaigners do out of fear of the ‘Jews in their movement.’ The Israeli news outlet refers to ‘Jews,’ ‘Jewishness’ and also to ‘Zionists’ as an integral organic spectrum of Jewish life, culture, identity and politics.
Ynet stresses that the American Left has developed an intolerance towards Jewish politics and Jewish identitarianism. “The report further indicates that the radical progressive faction contributes to the growing exclusion of Jewish community organizations from the American left by denying Jews the right to complain about their discrimination or anti-Semitism.” Ynet quotes Kaufman’s report, “Jews are being identified as strong white oppressors, and so is the State of Israel.”
Ynet asks, ‘can I be white, Jewish, liberal and Democrat?’ Kaufman answers “Of course you can be, but some of your rights are pretty much revoked. You can be an ally in social struggles, but you can’t be at the center of the issue.” I guess that what Kaufman is telling us here is that you can be a ‘Jew’ and a ‘Lefty’ but your role as controlled opposition might have come to an end.
Ynet stresses that “it is important to remember that Jews have made progress in American society through the establishment, and this is a significant part of the influence of Jews on the United States, yet the progressive movement is very anti-establishment. Therefore, the conclusion is clearly that the Jews are the oppressive white. Of course, the real picture is more complex, but this binary division puts the Jews in certain boxes.”
The above Israeli discourse reminds me of an old Israeli joke:
An Israeli arrives at Heathrow. The immigration officer asks “occupation?”
“No” replies the Israeli, “just visiting.”
In the joke, the Israeli sees himself as an occupier, and also accepts being perceived as one, but most significantly, he is totally at ease with his role as an occupier. The British immigration officer is obviously blind to all of that, as he is engaged in routine questioning. He might even miss the joke. In the American reality as depicted by Ynet’s article, the progressives are awakening to the reality that has been openly inflicted on their movement by some powerful and loud lobbies, well-funded think tanks and pressure groups.
The Jewish fear of anti-Semitism is exactly that moment of awakening, the tormenting thought that the immigration officer actually understands the joke and even allows himself to laugh loudly. This is exactly what the French psychoanalyst JacquesLacan meant by ‘the unconscious is the discourse of the other.’ It is the fear that the other sees you for what you are and even dares to share his/her thoughts about you with everyone else. Accordingly, if Jewish power is the power to silence criticism of Jewish power, then the fear of anti-Semitism is the tormenting thought that this power wanes off: the thought about people starting to call a spade a spade and even worse: leftists sticking to their principles of equality and justice.
The other day, I asked a progressive member of my family to define history: “we learn about our past mistakes so we don’t repeat them in the future,” he cleverly said. I corrected him slightly. ‘We learn about our past mistakes so we can understand our future mistakes within context.’ Delving into this complexity from a psychoanalytical perspective brings to light the notion of ‘Repetition Compulsion.’ Repetition Compulsion is often defined as a psychological phenomenon in which a human subject repeats an event or its circumstances over and over again. This entails putting oneself in situations where the event is likely to happen again. The concept of repetition compulsion was first introduced by Freud who pointed at a situation in which “the patient does not remember anything of what he has forgotten and repressed, he acts it out, without, of course, knowing that he is repeating it …”
Yet, the Freudian concept fails to accurately describe the emerging dangerous circumstances as described by the Ynet article. As we know, self-identified Jews are fully aware of and actively identify with Jewish past suffering. But, for one reason or another, some people do not learn from their past mistakes. They keep repeating the same mistakes and expect different outcomes.
In this interview I told Pro-Palestinian activist Trond Ali Linstad about my early life in Israel and the way it shaped my position on Israel, Zionism and Jewishness.
The ongoing political stalemate in Israel brings to mind an old recycled Jewish joke that reads as follows:
Q: How many synagogues are needed in a village with one Jew?
A: Two, one to go to and one to boycott!
Self identified Jews, and especially non-religious one, are hardly defined by what they are but mostly by that which they oppose. They are basically defined by means of negation: the list of ideas, thoughts, philosophies and people whom they reject, contest and boycott.
This unique state of being describes accurately the political paralysis in Israel. Roughly two-thirds of Knesset members are hard-core right wingers. They agree with PM Benjamin Netanyahu on pretty much every crucial political matter including the most radical chauvinist interpretations of Jewish nationalism. In a normal civilized democracy this would be enough to form the strongest possible government. But in Israel they are already preparing for their fifth consecutive election, as they have failed to form a stable government in the last three years.
Like in the old Jewish joke they boycott each other. Netanyahu’s past allies such as Avigdor Lieberman and Gideon Sa’ar, who are actually to the right of Netanyahu, are committed to one goal: stopping the most popular Israeli right-wing politician. They prefer to join Netanyahu’s bitterest enemies in the vanishing Israeli ‘left’ just to make sure that Netanyahu finally disappears from the political arena. They will use every political maneuver to topple the man who, more than anyone else, transformed Israel into a right-wing regional superpower. Not many can deny that it is Netanyahu who reduced some world decaying powers into Israel’s obedient remote colonies.
How are we supposed to interpret this animosity within Israeli politics? How is it possible that right-wingers are determined to destroy their political twins? The genius philosopher Otto Weininger observed in his book Sex and Character that what we hate in others is that which we despise in ourselves. According to Weininger, this is why the most dedicated homophobes are often latent gays themselves. Similarly, according to Weininger, the most devoted Jews-haters are themselves Jews.
It was Otto Weininger’s brilliant observation that helped me grasp that it was me whom I hate the most. It was Weininger who helped me realize that the most profound study of Jewish ID politics may be achieved by means of self-reflection. It was Weininger who explained why it is that the Jews who contributed to humanity the most (such as Jesus, Spinoza and Weininger himself) were often described by fellow Jews as ‘self-haters.’ It is more than likely that those who despise Netanyahu within the Israeli political realm actually hate in Netanyahu that which they despise in themselves. They are all deeply compromised; Netanyahu is just slightly more gifted in being compromised. He harnessed this gift into an astonishing political career.
Netanyahu, in the most peculiar way, has brought to light everything the state has tried to conceal and suppress. It is Netanyahu that transformed Israel into a ‘Jewish State,’ understanding already in the 1990s that it is actually ‘Jewishness’ that unites Israeli Jews, as opposed to an ‘Israeliness’ that means less and less as time goes by. It was this realization that created that most resilient bond between Netanyahu and the Israeli orthodox parties. But Netanyahu is an elastic political character; when he realized that a coalition of ‘the Jews’ is not enough to win him the election he successfully bonded with the Islamic Party (Ra’am).
In a very short time ahead of the last election, Netanyahu managed to break the Israeli-Arab’s rising political power, with Ra’am separating from the United Arab List. If Netanyahu manages to form a government at this stage, it is almost certain that he will do this with the support of the Islamic Party. Some Jewish nationalist parties on the far right of Bibi’s ‘potential’ coalition have declared that governing with the Islamist party is unimaginable. Yet the Jewish orthodox party Shas announced that the possibility of uniting with Ra’am isn’t at all a remote option. Again we see a repetition of the synagogue joke above. The Jewish Orthodox prefer to sit with pious Muslims rather than with Jewish LGBTQ enthusiasts of the pseudo-Left type.
The Israeli Left is obviously made of the exact same material as their orthodox twins. The so-called ‘Left’ party Meretz already signaled that it is willing to sit in a coalition with the ultra-right Sa’ar and Bennett just to make sure that Netanyahu is ousted. They will join one Synagogue just to boycott the other.
One may wonder at this stage whether this absurd theater is a manifestation of some tribal irrational behavior. I don’t believe it is. The entire Israeli political establishment benefits from the current political chaos. Netanyahu knows that his lawyers will manage to postpone his trial indefinitely as long as Israel is heading towards elections. His Likud Party members also know that without Netanyahu at the helm, their party would evaporate into dust.
Netanyahu’s enemies in the Right know that the public do not believe in them or their abilities, and with good reason. Centrist parties are also a vanishing political power. The disappearance of Netanyahu and the rise of a wall-to-wall right-wing coalition is a death sentence for them. The Israeli Left doesn’t even deserve our attention as it is nonexistent by now and what is left out of it is treacherous to every recognized left value. Israel’s Left is more concerned with Identitarian matters and LGBTQ fights than anything that is remotely working class-related, labour and social oriented or concerned with Israeli-Arab reconciliation.
The truth of the matter is that everybody around Netanyahu expected him to win this election and form a coalition. The image of ‘success’ in the ‘fight against Covid’ was orchestrated by Netanyahu in the most profound manner and even this didn’t translate into a victory. The truth of the matter is that for Netanyahu and the rest of the Israeli political world, the continuing paralysis is a survival strategy.
This detachment between the masses and their oligarchs is not new to the Jewish universe. This is exactly how the Shtetl, the Diaspora Jewish town, was run. In the Shtetl, the rich and the oligarchs married their daughters to the young rabbinical protégés just to form a very successful bond between wealth and authority. Consequently, the history of the Jewish Ghetto is a story of a great divided society of a cognitive and social partition between the people and the elite, between the ‘Rothschilds,’ so to say, and the rest: “hewers of wood and drawers of water.”
Israel was born to amend the Jewish fate and correct the Jewish Diaspora’s destiny. It was made into a reality by left-leaning Zionist ideologists and agitators who vowed to equalize Jewish society, to make Jews ‘people like all others.’ They tried to defy capitalism with labour, agriculture and new ethics. But the reality of the Jewish State proves the complete opposite. In just a few decades Israel has morphed into the worst shtetl of them all. It manifests every aspect Zionism vowed to eradicate. It is corrupted, divided and run by an aloof society that cares for itself and itself alone.
John Shuck writes: Gilad Atzmon returns to discuss what he sees as a civil war brewing in the United States over dividing lines that are based on identitarian politics. In this educational and informative interview, he elaborates on a recent post of his, It’s Not About Trump or Biden, and he discusses the history of identitarian politics and why the U.S. is so polarized today. He is the author of The Wandering Who: The Study of Jewish Identity Politics and Being In Time: A Post-Political Manifesto. In May 2018 he was on my program that commemorated the 70th anniversary of the Nakba “The Catastrophe” and Palestinian resistance.
On reading the enduring horrific daily news coming out of Palestine/Israel relating to the ongoing Jewish-state Nakba, I invariably feel a strong desire to discuss what is often the elephant in the room. It’s an issue constantly on the minds of Israelis and Palestinians alike, while at the same time being difficult to discuss frankly and directly in polite society.
The issue is Jewish supremacy as it manifests itself in the Zionist settler-colonial state of Israel and beyond. (See my blog post, What is Jewish supremacy and how is it different from White supremacy?). I say “beyond”, because there is a strong existing connection to Israel by ‘ordinary’ Jews outside of Israel/Palestine, whose Jewish communities, in Europe and America, feed Israel. Even at a mature age they go there, either to visit or to stay (which is a support and confirmation for the state), but more often to serve in the military which is the most militant of brainwashing in Jewish supremacy.
Most activists skirt the issue of Jewish supremacy and some deny it outright in a way they would not dream of doing with White supremacy. The only safe place to discuss the issue of Jewish supremacy, it sometimes appears, is within the confines of Mondoweiss.
But even there, we are more likely to read forceful critiques debunking the Zionist idea of a ‘Jewish nation’ as sold to the world by the world Zionist movement. A necessary exercise. Nevertheless, I often wonder, what about the concomitant fact of the religious Jewish character of the state as expressed in its Basic Law? What about the self-professed Jewish identity of millions of Jews, in Israel and outside Israel — not to mention Palestinian perceptions of them — as Jews first, and Zionist second?
It therefore seems at times that, in order to liberate Palestine from the Zionist settler-colonial regime, Palestinians must first undertake the impossible task of convincing the world that those who espouse the Zionist settler-colonial regime are less Jewish than Zionist, which of course strips them of their self-identified Jewish identity and is unacceptable to them.
More and more Jews worldwide today are saying “not in our name”, in reference to Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people. However, they too, don’t have the power to rename Israeli Jews as something else. This brings to mind Israel’s chief rabbi’s statement that “some Jews are more Jewish than others.”
When we talk about Israel, we can discuss apartheid, demographics, settler-colonialism, but we are often silenced when the issue is Jewish supremacy and the Jewish nature of the state — issues that are central to Israeli society as well as to the current and future dynamics of Palestinian-Israeli relations.
If the goal of all the analysis about Israel is to find realistic solutions for an impossible status quo, we ought not to dismiss this very real and troubling issue. It doesn’t make sense to do so.
In a 2015 article published online and titled ‘Palestine‒Israel: Decolonization Now, Peace Later’, Alaa Tartir (researcher at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland and a policy advisor at Al-Shabaka) lists a number of basic but fundamental obstacles to any future lasting peace in Israel/Palestine. Among them is the following characterization of Israeli society:
Another dominant observation that I noticed in my small, random and unrepresentative sample is the sense of superiority [among Israeli Jews]. liberal, leftist, fundamentalists, secular, religious and progressive voices, from different generations living in different cities, shared the feature of superiority, which is problematic at the very personal and human level, before it extends to politics. Statements like ‘we are God’s chosen nation’, ‘we don’t care about international law’, ‘we help those poor Palestinians to end the occupation’, ‘we offer Palestinians jobs and they work for us’, ‘Gaza is irrelevant’, ‘I have Palestinian friends but would never trust them’ characterized the discussions. Therefore, unless ‘ordinary’ Israelis perceive themselves as ordinary people and not superior to other nations it is impossible to imagine how a one-state or two-state solution could work.
Tartir goes on to say,
Just as the Palestinian people and leadership need to engage in a serious process of reforming their strategies, so do the Israelis. The Israelis need to reconcile internally a number of issues mainly related to the apartheid structures, Jewish supremacy, the Jewish nature of the state, the demographic phobia and the return of the Palestinian refugees from exile.
When we are forced to ignore the perceptions of Israelis and their set of values and beliefs (which are the root manifestation of the Zionist Jewish state in Palestine), when we are unable to confront them candidly, we Palestinians will never be able to achieve justice and equality.
Lena, a former Israeli, writes:
Many Jews, even if not overtly Zionist, share this basic belief that in order to prevent another extermination, they must become DOMINANT and exercise superiority, because “this is how the world works, either you dominate or be exterminated”. Although nobody ever has persecuted or offended these young Jews, they share the view of Goyim as a bunch of people who inherently want to erase Jews from this planet. I honestly do not know how to combat a basic belief that the world is based on domination, that whoever does not dominate will be subjugated or killed, that Jews must forever fight against an inherent existential threat, therefore not letting them dominate is the same as wanting them all dead.
Lena describes the mindset of any group of people who have been conditioned to see the world through us vs. them.
“Confronting the occupier, colonizer or oppressor is the main lesson from the history of liberation movements across the world,” writes Tartir. We must confront Israelis on the issue of Jewish supremacy, as on all others.
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Introduction by Gilad Atzmon: I found this morning that British Jewish pressure groups once again defame British anti racists. Today it is, Rosie Smith, a Black Lives Matter activist and Jim Curran, an old truth seeker. Curran is guilty of attending Keep Talking meetings, a discussion group that discusses the undiscussable (9/11, the Holocaust, Rothschild etc.).
According to the Jerusalem Post, Keep Talking is also guilty of inviting yours truly to discuss the Balfour Declaration. I am once again falsely accused of spreading ‘conspiracies’ and ‘holocaust denial’ no less no more.
Here is my Balfour declaration talk. You won’t find tere ‘Holocaust denial’ or ‘conspiracies,’ just properly sourced materials referenced to Jewish and zionist publications. I can only be thankful to the Zionist alliance for referring to my work on the Balfour as I am proud of this lecture in particular.
In this talk Atzmon elaborates on that which the historicity of Balfour is set to conceal — a century of Jewish political hegemony in Britain and beyond.
Keep Talking, London 7.11.2017
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The Balfour Declaration – One Hundred Years of (Goyim) Solitude
A talk given at Keep Talking gathering in London, 7 November 2017
By Gilad Atzmon
In Heidegger and the Jews, the French philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard points out that history claims to narrate the past but, in practice, what it does is conceal our collective shame. The Americans conceal slavery and imperial genocidal aggression, the Brits conceal their colonial blunders, the Jews turn their eyes away from anything that may have contributed to turning Jewish history into an extended shoah. The real historian, claims Lyotard, is there to unveil the shame. This week marks 100 years since the Balfour declaration and today I will try to touch upon your shame, my shame, our shame. We will try to figure out what the history of the so-called Balfour ‘Declaration’ is there to conceal.
Let’s first examine the document. Most noticeably the so-called ‘declaration’ is not printed on official British government letterhead. It is not signed by the British cabinet either. It is, instead, a letter from a sleazy British politician (Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour) to a very rich Jew (Lord Walter Rothschild). As such, the Balfour ‘declaration’ is actually a statement with somewhat limited significance. What it does is “declare[s] sympathy with Zionist aspirations.”
Yet, we must admit that the Jewish world has managed to squeeze quite a few drops of juice out of this watery statement. The Jewish world interprets this ‘sympathetic declaration’ as a commitment to their Zionist, racist and expansionist project namely the ‘Jewish State’. They claim to regard the vague statement as a license to ethnically cleanse the entire indigenous people of the land, i.e., the Palestinians. And, as if this is not enough, the British PM Theresa May has evidently bought into the most radical Zionist interpretation of the declaration.
May announced last week that she was “proud of our pioneering role in the creation of the state of Israel.”
Let me share some of the awkward history of the Balfour Declaration with you. The ‘declaration,’ as we now understand, was actually drafted and approved by British Jews before it was sent to Lord Rothschild.
The National Library of Israel reveals the flowing:
“Before the declaration was officially presented to Lord Rothschild by Lord Balfour, the draft was presented to Jewish leaders of every political stripe, both Zionist and non-Zionist. One of these leaders was Sir Philip Magnus, a Reform rabbi and British politician whose opinion on the declaration was sought.” (http://web.nli.org.il/sites/NLI/English/library/reading_corner/Pages/balfour.aspx)
Herbert Samuel, the British first High Commissioner of Palestine who served between 1920 and 1925 was an avid Zionist Jew and a close acquaintance of Chaim Weizmann, the leading pragmatic Zionist, the spirit behind the ‘declaration’ and later the first Israeli president. How did the Zionists managed to plant a Zionist Jew in such a crucial and sensitive position? The answer is devastatingly simple. They were running the show. We are talking here about Jewish domination of the relevant British foreign affairs as early as the beginning of the 20th century.
But was it really ‘The Jews,’ Moshe, Yaakov, Sarah who dominated British Middle East affairs? Unlikely. It is more reasonable to assume that the fate of the empire and its decisions were in the hands of just a very few powerful Jews, people like Lord Rothschild to whom Balfour actually addressed the declaration.
This tale of Jewish political domination extends well beyond the borders of Britain. In his invaluable book, The Pity of it All, Israeli historian Amos Elon suggests that the 1917 Balfour Declaration was at least partially motivated by the British government’s desire to win the support of pro-German Jewish- American bankers so that they would help push the USA into the war.
Elon argues that at the beginning of the war, German- American Jewish financiers sided with the Germans and rejected possible alliances between the USA and England. “Jacob H. Schiff, head of Kuhn, Loeb—at the time the largest private bank in the United States after J. P. Morgan—declared that he could no more disavow his loyalty to Germany than he could renounce his own parents. Schiff prayed for Germany’s victory. In a statement to the New York Times on November 22, 1914, he charged the British and the French with attempting to destroy Germany for reasons of trade.” (The Pity Of It All, pg. 455)
According to Elon, the Brits had encountered a Jewish problem with American Jews. “The British government took these developments very seriously. In a fit of paranoia, the British ambassador in Washington even suspected the existence of a veritable German Jewish conspiracy in the United States directed at Britain.” (Ibid)
Thanks to the Balfour declaration German Jewish bankers in the US flipped sides. Seems that they betrayed their fatherland, no more were they German patriots. Elon’s conclusion is that: “The 1917 Balfour Declaration, calling for the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine, was at least partly motivated by the British government’s desire to win support among pro-German American Jews.” (ibid)
The take home message is rather devastating. For some time our universe has been dominated by tribal interests that are foreign to most of us. And for some reason we cannot really explore the conditions that shape our reality and dictate our doomed future.
This is, in fact, the precise meaning of Jewish power. Jewish power is the power that suppresses criticism of Jewish power. Some of the less sophisticated critics of Israel accuse Zionism and Israel of various conspiratorial doings. I, on the other hand, have said repeatedly that there are no Jewish conspiracies. All is done in the open. The Balfour ‘declaration’ that was written to a Jewish financier was quickly made public. America was openly pushed into WWI for the sake of Zion. The appointment of a Zionist Jew, Herbert Samuel, as the high commissioner of Palestine wasn’t a secret either. It was actually controversial at the time.
These events were as clear at the time as are contemporary Jewish lobby groups such as AIPAC, CRIF, CFI and LFI who push, in broad daylight, for Zio-driven immoral interventionist wars against Iraq, Syria, Iran and Libya. A century of constant abuse has left us speechless. We do not know how to deal with this menace. And this is the core of our shame. This is what our history is there to conceal. This applies to you and me, but it also applies to Theresa May. To tell the truth about the Balfour Declaration is to publicly admit to 100 hundred years of Goyim solitude.
In the last few weeks, Palestinian solidarity enthusiasts have been creative in producing numerous proactive slogans. The one that grabbed my attention this week was “Balfour Declaration -100 years of ethnic cleansing.” This week actually marks a century of Zionist domination of the Western civilisation. But let me tell you, the real authentic Palestinians, those who live in Gaza and the West Bank may be slightly better off than the rest of us. While we are often overwhelmed by the sophistication of our masters in Tel Aviv, the Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza and Lebanon know exactly who their enemies are; they meet them in roadblocks, they recognise the sounds of their drones. Our enemy here, in the USA, in France and in Britain, is somehow elusive: is it Zionism, is it Israel, or maybe just the Lobby? Is it really ‘the Jews,’ or even Judaism? Where exactly does Judaism end and Jewishness start? Let me try to open your eyes. It is none of the above, and yet it might as well be all of the above and beyond. Zionism is a sophisticated matrix and it shifts rapidly. Zionism like Jewish anti Zionism strives for your intellectual castration. It somehow defies your opposition even before you can utter it yourself. How is this done? It obliterates your ability to act ethically and rationally. It targets your survival skills. How? It eradicates your Athenian roots and replaces them with a rigid Jerusalemite regulatory system.
In my recent book Being in Time – a post Political Manifesto I delve into the Straussian dichotomy between Athens and Jerusalem. Athens is where we think things through, Athens is where philosophy and essentialism are celebrated. Jerusalem is the city of revelation, where Torah, Mitzvoth and commandments are accepted blindly. Athens is where ethics is explored by means of judgment. Jerusalem, on the other hand, is where ethics is replaced by laws.
Zionism, my friends, can only operate within a Jerusalemite dominated universe. A world governed by a tyranny of correctness. Was it Herzl, Ben Gurion or Netanyahu who imposed such tyrannical conditions on us? Not at all, this is the role of the New Left, the Identitarians, the cultural Marxists, the ‘progressives’ the people who adhere to ideological collectivism. The people who in the name of diversity silence the majority. Those who instead of uniting us around that which we all share, actually seek to divide us into infinitesimal particles of biological symptoms (skin colour, sex orientation, etc.).
I started this talk with a reference to Leyotard and his Heidegger and the Jews, I conclude with a reference to the teaching of the 20th century’s greatest Athenian: Martin Heidegger.
In opposition to the Jerusalemites of the world who in the name of ‘correctness’ tell us what to say and what to think, Martin Heidegger, the Athenian, taught us that to educate is to teach others to think for themselves and how to refine the questions (as opposed to recycling answers).
Time is overdue for us to liberate ourselves from our shame. Time is ripe to call a spade a spade. Now is the time for Alethea ( truth – Ancient Greek) and Logos to prevail. We must emancipate ourselves and find our true voice once again. Emancipation is opposition to the Jerusalemite oppressive condition. It is the fight for the disclosure of human unity once again.
We elaborated on the true meaning of the Israeli occupation and the philosophy that drives the Israeli regime. Things went slightly out of hand towards the end of the show when I pointed out that if Israel defines itself as the ‘Jewish State,’ we should also allow ourselves to question what the J words (Jews, Judaism, Jewishness etc.) stand for.
A few days ahead of the previous Israeli election, Haaretz’s lead writer Anshel Pfeffer, authored a spectacular analysis of Israel’s current political deadlock: Israelis are going to the polls to decide whether they are ‘Jews’ or ‘Israelis.’
The first to point out the political rivalry between ‘the Jew’and ‘the Israeli’ was Shimon Peres who, after his narrow 1996 defeat, lamented in a Haaretz interview that “the Israelis lost the election.” When Peres asked who won, he answered, “The Jews won.” Peres, who was born in Poland, saw himself as the ‘Israeli’ candidate, Netanyahu, who was born in Israel and served as a commander in the IDF’s top unit, was in Peres’ eyes, the political choice of the ‘Jews.’ Peres’s observation was spot on. Politically astute and well imbued in early Zionist thought, Peres identified the emerging Identitarian conflict that was destined to break up Israeli society.
Pfeffer pointed out that in the 1990s Netanyahu was influenced by his American campaign guru, Arthur Finkelstein, to accept that “Jewishness” is the primary unifier for Israelis. This clearly applies to religious Jews but it is also true of those who regard themselves as secular and/or leftist.
While early Zionism can be understood as an uncompromising attempt to divorce the Jews from Jewishness, the ghetto and tribalism to make them “people like all other people,” the Israeli Right/Religious political call is openly driven by a nostalgic adherence to the myths of the shtetl and its walls, segregation and every other aspect of Jewish tribalism, chauvinism included. As bizarre as it may sound, Netanyahu’s transformation of Israel into a Jewish ghetto surrounded by walls and defined by a ‘Jewish National Bill’ makes him, by early Zionist standards, into an ardent anti Zionist.
According to Pfeffer, when Netanyahu returned to power in 2009 and formed a right-wing/ religious coalition, “the Jews prevailed” and have done so ever since.
On Monday, Netanyahu won a significant political and personal victory. He earned the votes of the people despite his complicated legal situation and some would even say, because of his legal complications. In this rivalry between the ‘Israeli’ and the ‘Jew,’ the ‘Israeli’ is beaten time after time and the ‘Jew’ consistently prevails.
The ‘Jews,’ as Shimon Peres referred to them, see in Netanyahu a clear path towards a true spiritual homecoming. Being Likudnics can be realised as a true celebration of who and what they truly are. The ‘Israelis,’ on the other hand, were hoping for Gantz and Kachol Lavan to revive the early Zionist promise to be emancipated from what they are and to finally become people like all other Goyim whether this means nationalist patriots or cosmopolitan pacifist.
The demography of the ‘Jewish’ camp and its ‘Israeli’ rival is pretty much separated. Netanyahu is largely supported by Mizrahi Jews and the Israeli Religious sectors (the orthodox and settlers). Gantz and Kachol Lavan have managed to ignite the imagination of the old elites: the Ashkenazi and educated Israelis. The ‘Jews,’ as Peres referred to them, love Bibi because he manipulates the Goyim. He reduced America into an Israeli colony and practically a ‘side in the conflict’ (as opposed to an impartial negotiator). They are proud of their Bibi and his ability to puppeteer world leaders. He bonds with the Diaspora and the Lobby, he also manages to keep American taxpayers’ dollars flowing. Bibi, as far as they can tell, is the best thing that happened in modern Jewish history.
The ‘Israelis’ vote Kachol Lavan because they don’t like Netanyahu, they can’t stand the idea that his voters and they are considered ‘one people.’ The ‘Israeli’ shares little with the religious sectors, the settlers and even less with the ‘Jews’ who live in the periphery. The ‘Israeli’ would like Netanyahu to be locked up behind bars and subliminally hope that his voters will evaporate into thin air. Kachol Lavan is not a centre party. Its vision of the conflict is actually to the right of the Likud party and its vision of social matters is vague to non-existent. It is more likely that its leaders, veteran IDF Generals, evoke amongst the ‘Israelis’ nostalgic memories of 1967: an Ashkenazi ruled state, committed to the Zionist mantra of the rejection of Jewishness.
But the ‘Israeli’ was defeated again on Monday. Nostalgia for the most heroic moment in Israeli history didn’t seem to mature into the necessary revolution and Gantz may have finished his political role. It is likely that Kachol Lavan will disintegrate into its elements in the coming weeks.
The phantasy of becoming ‘people like all other people’ has collapsed for two obvious reasons: 1. no other people want to be like all other people. 2. The ‘Israeli’ is far more Jewish than he or she is willing to admit.
Arthur Finkelstein figured it out in the 1990s and Netanyahu continues to follow his campaign mentor, refining his political agenda in line with Judeo-centrism. In the state that calls itself the ‘Jewish State,’ the ‘Israeli’ is gradually becoming rare, he has been supplanted by ‘the Jew.’
My battle for truth and freedom involves some expensive legal services and security expenses. I hope that you will consider committing to a monthly donation in whatever amount you can give. Regular contributions will enable me to avoid being pushed against a wall and to stay on top of the endless harassment by Zionist operators attempting to silence me.
I launched my study into Jewishness two decades ago. It began as a result of my reaction to the relentless attacks on dissident Jewish thinkers who didn’t fit with the ‘revolutionary agenda’ of the so-called Jewish ‘anti Zionist’ Left. I quickly grasped that it was actually the Jewish Left, the radicals and progressives, who displayed the most problematic traits associated with Zionism and Jewish identitarianism.
I was perplexed: the same people who adhere to tribal politics and operate in racially segregated political cells preach universalism to others. I came to understand that nothing was transparent or obvious about Jewish culture and identitarianism, and that this was by design. I decided to untangle the Jewish enigma from a new perspective: instead of asking who or what Jews are, I asked what those who self-identify as Jews believe in, what precepts they adhere to. This question was the beginning of my struggle.
By the time I published The Wandering Who? (2011), I realised that those who identify as Jews can be divided into three non-exclusive categories. 1. Those who follow Torah and Mitzvoth. 2. Those who identify with their Jewish ancestry. 3. Those who identify politically as Jews. In The Wandering Who I argued that while the first and the second categories are innocent, the third category is always contaminated by biological determinism. The third category is, in fact, racist to the core. While Jews aren’t necessarily a race, Jewish politics are, too often, racially oriented. This applies to both Zionists and the so called ‘anti’ Zionists. In my work there is no real distinction between Jewish Zionists and their Jewish dissenters. I have found them to be equally racist.
There is more to draw from this categorical approach. It is apparent that not many self identified Jews fall exclusively into just one of the categories. Jewish identity is a multilayered construct. A West Bank settler, for instance, is usually a follower of Torah and Mitzvoth (cat’ 1), most often he/she speaks in the name of their Jewish ancestry and even claims lineage to Biblical figures (cat’ 2). And it goes without saying that a West Bank Jewish settler identifies and acts politically as a Jew (cat’ 3). Surprisingly, a JVP activist in Brooklyn isn’t all that different. He or she may not adhere to the Torah but likely identifies ethnically as a Jew (cat’ 2) and certainly acts politically as a Jew (cat’ 3).
In The Wandering Who I argued that If Zionism is a racist ideology, then Jewish anti Zionists are at least as guilty of the same crime. In fact, in the Israeli Knesset, the third biggest party is a Palestinian party. You do the goy count: try to figure out how many Palestinians or Gentiles are on JVP’s board or amongst the British Jewish Voice for Labour (that doesn’t even accept gentiles as equal members). Needless to mention, this observation didn’t make me overwhelmingly popular amongst Zionists and the so called ‘anti.’
On the day of the publication of The Wandering Who, hell broke loose. What started as a struggle to seek the truth or at least some understanding, evolved into a bloody war. Oddly, no one bothered to find a mistake in my work or pointed to where my argument was lacking. No one claimed that the facts I based my argument on were inaccurate. Both Zionists and ‘anti’ have deployed every trick in their Hasbara book to try and silence me. I was called a racist, an anti-Semite and a Nazi despite the fact that my entire work is anti racist and in defiance of the Jewish racial argument.
Since 2011 I have been subject to a cowardly smear campaign. But the war called upon me has actually helped me to refine my views on Jewish Identity Politics. I realised that Jewishness (yehudiyut) is a manifold of different forms of chosenness. Rabbinical Jews celebrate being God’s favorite children. Atheist Jews in practice, dumped the God who first chose them in order to validate their own superiority as godless people. Jewish Marxists are special for their belief in equality. Tikun Olam Jews believe that it is down to them to save the Goyim. After a few more years of this study I realised that Judaism is just one Jewish religion amongst many and it is not even the most popular Jewish religion.
The great Israeli philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz figured out in the 1970s that while Jews uphold many religions and beliefs, all Jews believe in the Holocaust. It was this observation by Leibowitz that planted the notion of the Holocaust religion. When I wrote Being in Time, I realised that practically every precept can become a Jewish religion as long as it sustains a lucid concept of ‘chosenness’, self-love or auto validation.
The French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan revealed that the ‘unconscious is the discourse of the Other;’ the fear that one’s deepest secrets could be unveiled and make it into the public discourse. In Lacanian terms, the Jewish unconscious is the fear that the ‘Goyim Know.’ Their torment is that people ‘out there’ will start to converse about what has taken place in front of their eyes: whether it is AIPAC dominance of US foreign policy or the destruction of the Labour Party or the constant threat to world peace imposed by Israel and its Lobby.
Judging by their desperate attempts to silence me, I assume that I must be seen, at least in the eyes of my Jewish detractors, as a prime conduit for that ever expanding general awareness – after all I have been blowing the whistle for a while.
Jews do not like those who leave the tribe. Jesus paid a price, as did Uriel da Costa and Spinoza. For Jews, the former Jew, or ex-Jew, is a threat most likely because many Jews may feel insecure about the ethical ground of their core beliefs, culture and ideology. Enlightened Jewish progressives are probably clever enough to admit to themselves that being born into chosenness is a problematic racially supremacist concept. Honest Jews may have gathered that being chosen by a God you yourself invented to favour you over the rest of humanity is actually funny. Orthodox Jews understand that large parts of their core beliefs are inconsistent with the western universal humanist tradition. Many Zionists know that their claims to a historic right to a land they have never been in are ridiculous.
The Jewish strategy to handle their fears includes the suppression of elementary freedoms: Jewish Power as I define it, is the power to suppress criticism of Jewish power. I believe that it was I who coined the slogan, ‘We Are All Palestinians.’ In accordance with my definition of Jewish power, Palestinians are those who can’t even utter the name of their oppressor. While Israel calls itself the Jewish State and boasts about itself as Jewish, the Palestinians and their solidarity movement go out of their way to avoid the ‘J word.’ When British Jewish institutions including the chief rabbi and the British Jewish press called an open war on the British Labour and its leader no one in the Labour party dared utter the ‘J word’ except when asking for Jewish forgiveness. The condition of being Palestinian, of not being able to name one’s oppressor, is now a global symptom. This suppression of speech and thought has evolved into a tyranny of correctness.
By the time I wrote Being in Time I understood that my struggle has implications that far exceed my initial intellectual objectives. What we face as western subjects is a massive battle between Athens and Jerusalem, where Athens is the birthplace of Western thought and Jerusalem is the city of revelation. Athens teaches us how to think, Jerusalem demands our obedience.
The Western humanist values and intellectual assets we are now nostalgic for came from Athens: democracy, tolerance, freedom of speech, philosophy, Agora, science, ethics, poesis and the tragedy. Jerusalem gave us laws, mitzvoth, regimes of prescribed and proscribed behavior. Athens teaches us how to think ethically: in Jerusalem, ethics are replaced by the Ten Commandments; rules to obey. Jerusalem is not solely a ‘Jewish domain.’ The Jerusalemization of our universe is apparent in every corner of society: from pop culture, to the work place, to academia and beyond. It is the tyranny of correctness adopted by the new Left and it is at least as infectious within right identitarianism.
My struggle as I now understand it, has evolved into a metaphysical quest. I battle to reinstate Athens within my soul. If you want to make the West great again, my struggle is your struggle. Defy Jerusalem, say no to authoritarianism, embrace Athens in your heart: learn to speak your mind, tell the truth as you see it and bear the consequences.
For more than a decade and a half I have been subjected to a relentless and sometimes violent smear campaign. I have been accused of all sorts of ‘hate crimes’ including the totally ludicrous claim that I advocate the ‘burning of synagogues,[ ‘incitements of violence,’ and have routinely been labelled, among other slurs, a ‘notorious anti semite’ and a ‘Holocaust denier.’ Of course, if any of these accusations had merit, I would have spent time behind bars. The truth, as should be embarrassing for the name callers, is that I have never been charged with hate speech or any other crime. No law enforcement authority anywhere has ever even questioned me about anything I wrote or said. I perform and teach all over the world, including in Germany and Austria, where ‘holocaust denial’ is vigorously prosecuted.
My detractors boast that they intend to ruin my reputation, smear and impoverish me and any others they deem improperly critical of Israel. I should have written this piece long ago but I found it demeaning to deny baseless accusations founded on lies and misquotes. For the record, I am not an anti-Semite, a Holocaust denier, nor a conspiracy theorist.
My detractors are now terrorizing the extended music community in an attempt to accomplish their insane mission. I defy the idea that we live in a ‘post truth era.’ Athens, for me, is a core of inspiration and truth seeking and is my life time adventure. Here, in response to the fabrications attributed to me by various Jewish institutions such as the JC and the CAA, are the actual statements I made.
Gilad on Burning Synagogues: Rationality vs. Justification
Zionist pressure groups have claimed that I advocated burning synagogues. The origin of this preposterous assertion is a misquote attributed to me in a Guardian article in 2005. According to the Guardian “Gilad Atzmon, a pro-Palestine advocate, gave a talk to students this month, arguing: ‘I’m not going to say whether it is right or not to burn down a synagogue, I can see that it is a rational act.’” A week later the Guardian agreed to publish my letter in which I explain and refute this claim. “Your quote …[of me] is inaccurate and taken out of context. By no means did I justify any form of violence against Jews, Jewish interests or any innocent people. In the School of Oriental and African Studies we were debating the question of rationality of anti-semitism. I claimed that since Israel presents itself as the ‘state of the Jewish people’, and bearing in mind the atrocities committed by the Jewish state against the Palestinians, any form of anti-Jewish activity may be seen as political retaliation. This does not makeit right.”
At the time, pro Zionist online discussion groups complained that the police failed to charge me with incitement of hatred. The reason for that is obvious, there was no evidence, I never advocated burning synagogues. I have always opposed any form of violence against Jews or anyone else! The British authorities understood that I was discussing the ‘discourse of rationality’ (Reasoning) and not the ‘context of rationalisation’ (Justification). Horrendous war crimes are grossly unethical but may also be rational. The decision to nuke Hiroshima, for instance, was a rational decision although insanely immoral. The same applies to Israel shelling Gaza with white phosphorus. A calculated military decision was made to engage in these vile war crimes. Examining the rationale for such crimes may be our best hope to prevent them. Rationality and morality are categorically distinct concepts as my actual words made clear.
Is Gilad a ‘Holocaust Denier?’
I have been accused of being a ‘Holocaust denier’ or a Holocaust revisionist. This is simply false. I have never denied the Holocaust nor have I written a single revisionist text as I am not an historian of any sort. I guess no need to mention once again that my mother’s family suffered enormously in that terrible period.
I am a philosopher. As such, I argue that this chapter in our past should be treated not as a religion or dogma, but must, like all other past events, be subject to scrutiny and open discussion. If history is the art of narrating the past as we move along, then revising our understanding of the past is the true meaning of the historical endeavour. In my work I argue that engaging in a discourse of history that is open to revision is at the core of the ethical insight.
It is also crucial to mention that the notion of ‘holocaust religion’ was actually coined by the legendary Israeli philosopher prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz back in the 1970s. Leibowitz was followed by Adi Ophir, another prominent Israeli philosopher who offered his own criticism of the Holocaust religion in his paper On Sanctifying the Holocaust: An Anti-Theological Treatise.
Did Gilad really say that Hitler was right after all?
My words as they appear in my 2011 book, “The Wandering Who?” shows that I said the opposite: even the thought by some that Hitler might have been right is presented as an unacceptable scenario.
“We, for instance, can envisage an horrific situation in which an Israeli so-called ‘pre-emptive’ nuclear attack on Iran escalates into a disastrous nuclear war, in which tens of millions of people perish. I guess that amongst the survivors of such a nightmare scenario, some may be bold enough to argue that ‘Hitler might have been right after all.’ The above is obviously a fictional scenario, and by no means a wishful one, yet such a vision of a ‘possible’ horrific development should restrain Israeli or Zionist aggression towards Iran.”(The Wandering Who? pg 179)
As you can read, my actual words are diametrically opposed to the manufactured misquotes attributed to me by various Zionist pressure groups. I used the extreme example of a nuclear war to argue that Israel should finally seek peace with its neighbours to deny anyone the thought that Hitler was right after all.
Did Gilad ask Jews to apologise for the Holocaust?
In 2014, in the light of huge anti Jewish protests in Paris, I wrote a piece titled Holocaust Day – The Time Is Ripe For A Jewish Apology. In the article I briefly elaborated on historical hatred of Jews and the Zionist promise to prevent the Jewish fate by ‘fixing’ the Jews and making them ‘people like all other people.’ I closed the article with the following paragraph. “Many Jews around the world are commemorating the Holocaust this week. But if I am correct, maybe the time is ripe for Jewish and Zionist organisations to draw the real and most important lesson from the Holocaust. Instead of constantly blaming the Goyim for inflicting pain on Jews, it is time for Jews to look in the mirror and try to identify what it is in Jews and their culture that evokes so much fury. It may even be possible that some Jews would take this opportunity to apologise to the Gentiles around them for evoking all this anger.”
Nowhere in the article did I suggest Jews apologise for the Holocaust. I accept that my words may be infuriating to those who are contemptuous of conciliatory efforts. I reckon that it would not be such a bad idea for Campaign Against Antisemitism to apologise to Labour members and Jeremy Corbyn whom they smeared mercilessly. The British Chief Rabbi could join them, as might the editors of the three British Jewish papers who literally referred to Corbyn as an ‘existential threat’ and practically equated him with Hitler. Such a peace-seeking approach on the part of some Jewish institutions will help to diffuse the anger these bodies engendered during the GE 2019 amongst many segments of the British Left.
Is Gilad a “promoter of classic anti-Semitic conspiracy theories?”
According to the ADL, I’m an “outspoken promoter of classic anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and a fierce critic of the State of Israel.” I am indeed a fierce critic of Israel and I am outspoken. But not only do I not promote ‘antisemitic conspiracy theories,’ as I repeatedly state throughout my entire body of work, ‘there are no Jewish conspiracies. Everything is done in the open’ and in front of our eyes.
What I do observe is that we cannot speak about any of that: Jewish power, as I define it, is the power to suppress criticism of Jewish power. The Israel Lobby dominates American foreign policy, it pushes for a conflict with Iran. Similarly, the Congress’ performance of one standing ovation after the other for Netanyahu wasn’t a secret ritual. In Britain, Jewish institutions such as the Jewish papers, the Chief Rabbi and a Jewish charity declared an open war on the opposition party and its leader. None of that was ‘conspiratorial’ or secretive. We are dealing with mainstream news, yet we dare not talk about it let alone criticise it.
Evoking animosity in others
In 2013 I was interviewed by Swiss writer Alimuddin Usmanani who asked me to define what it means to be a Jew. My answer was short and conclusive: “To be a Jew is to evoke animosity in others.” My answer was provocative and at least as challenging as the official Tikun Olam’s answer to the same question, i.e., ‘to be a Jew is to fix the world.’ However, while there are no statistics that show that Jews are actually engaged in fixing the world, my critics within the CAA, the ADL, The Jewish Chronicle and other Zionists institutions publish polls on an almost daily basis that suggest that Jews are hated globally and locally.
The ethos that drove early Labour Zionism both ideologically and politically was the acceptance that, for one reason or another, Jews can’t assimilate and would be safer somewhere else where they would become, through political training, into ‘people like all other people.’ I do not say that Jews should be hated. Rather like those early Zionists, I contend that Jewish institutions must self-reflect. Instead of accusing Goyim, Brits, Labour members, Americans, etc. they should engage in a true introspective process. Crying about antisemitism and/or terrorising jazz clubs and music venues won’t solve the Jewish problem, it will make it worse and the situation is clearly deteriorating as the ADL/CAA/CST statistics on anti semitism reveal.
Is David Duke a humanist?
I oppose all forms of biologically oriented politics. I oppose all forms of politics that are defined by race, gender or sexual orientation. I contend that politics ought to unite us as equals rather than divide us on the basis of biology. David Duke and I hold distinctly opposite positions on this and other fundamental issues.
In March 2014 I gave an interview to larmurerie.fr/ I can’t trace the original French article but a Google translation of the French original exists on my site. I was asked by the French Journalist the following question: Many French people share your opinion. For example, there is a French thinker, Hervé Ryssen, who uses the same metaphor as you when you talk about the mirror, saying that when a Jew accuses you of being an anti-semite, you just have to read the mirror image of the argument to reveal his racism towards goyim.”
My answer was as follows. “I actually use the word projection, but the mirror image is no doubt similar. And projection, by the way, is something that Freudtaught us about. You know, we have to admit that some of the most interesting humanists in the history of the West are Jews: Christ, Spinoza, Marx were Jews. Why is that?…Now there is something very interesting and it’s again the first time I’m saying it. The left is devastated by David Duke for instance. He was in the KKK when he was young. But here is something quite amazing: I read him and I was shocked to find out that this guy knows more about Jewish identity than I do! How could a supposedly ‘racist’ Gentile who probably never entered a synagogue knows more than I do about Judaism? The reason is in fact very simple: he is a proud white man. He’s interested in nationalism, in the culture of his own people, so he understands things that I am not even allowed to think about. Believe it or not, even as a Jew, I wasn’t allowed to think of myself as a racist. I was a racist, maybe I am still one, but I was not allowed to acknowledge it. Once he acknowledges that he’s talking about white people’s rights, in a way he thinks like Avigdor Lieberman! But in fact, he is way better than Lieberman. David Duke is a humanist because he says, «I want to celebrate my right and you should celebrate your rights» whether you are Muslim or black or whatever. He believes that all people should celebrate their rights, this is his current philosophy. Avidgor Liberman is not a humanist, because he wants to celebrate his rights at the expense of other people.”
In my book. Humanism is primarily a universal adventure. Duke, today, is no doubt a separatist. He prefers to see people living in partitioned enclaves, he opposes immigration and his political thought is racially oriented, yet, if I understand it correctly, he believes that all people regardless of their race, ethnicity, skin colour or religion should enjoy such a right. At least in comparison with the right wing Zionist philosophy that adheres to the idea that one people should celebrate their self determination on the expense of another people, Duke’s current offering is more ethical, universal and humane. I understand that some Jews may be upset by the comparison, however, the way to deal with disagreement is to produce a counter argument rather than terrorising the music community. I myself hold completely opposing views to Duke’s on the matter: I believe that people should learn to live together and seek harmony. This is why I left Israel. However, despite of my disagreement with Duke on some fundamental and crucial issues, in consistance with the Western intellectual tradition, I take pride in making an effort to understand positions before I criticize them.
Does Gilad Hate Jews?
As I have stated time and time again, I have never criticized Jews or anyone else as a people, a race, an ethnicity or a biology. I challenge my detractors to produce a single reference in my work that contradicts this. No one has ever produced the goods. In my work there is no hatred whatsoever, against Jews or anyone else. Many years ago, I accepted that some Jews regard me as a ‘self hater’ yet, I fail to see how me hating myself is so unsettling for other Jews.
In 2014 I produced a statement that some mistakenly saw as an admission of ‘Jew hatred’ and racism. At the time, I engaged in a brief twitter exchange with @OnePoundOne, an Israeli nationalist who frequently urged the murder of Palestinians, Muslims and Arabs.
On one occasion @OnePoundOne insisted that ‘as a Jew’ I should support his violent anti Arab/Muslim rampage. I replied:
“@OnePoundOne 1. I am not a Jew anymore 2. I indeed despise the Jew in me (whatever is left) 3. I absolutely detest the Jew in you.”
@OnePoundOne’s twitter account was suspended shortly after our exchange for spreading hate speech and advocating violence.
Despite the suspension of @OnePoundOne’s account, some examples of his hateful communications survive on the internet in the form of screenshots.
I have never before publicly addressed the criticism over my answer to @OnePoundOne. Anti-Semites are people who hate Jews for being Jews. Anti-Semites do not accept that Jews can stop being Jews and morph into something else. My response to @OnePoundOne dismantles this racist doctrine:
1. I suggest that one can choose to stop being a Jew. In this view, Jewishness is a cultural or religious construct and is not either racially or biologically determined.
2. To the extent I myself retain that culture, I admit that I detest that cultural aspect in myself.
3. Further, I rejected any cultural impetus that may exist in @OnePoundOne’s hateful statements that called for violence against Arabs, Palestinians and Muslims ‘as a Jew’.
But there is a fascinating intellectual exercise to apply here that helps explain my reaction to @OnePoundOne’s vile incitement of violence. Replacing the word ‘Jew’ with ‘Protestant’ in my answer to @OnePoundOne would read as follows: “1. I am not a Protestant anymore 2. I indeed despise the Protestant in me (whatever is left) 3. I absolutely detest the Protestant in you.” While some might find this offensive, it is not racist as Protestantism is a belief system rather than a racial identification. If we proceed with this exercise and replace the word Jew with a biological category such as skin-colour or race, the statement collapses instantly as ‘I am not Black anymore’ is a meaningless statement for someone who is Black. Similarly, ‘I am not Caucasian anymore’ is just as silly and hollow. In other words, my answer to @OnePoundOne could never be grasped as a ‘racist’ offensive statement as it defies the idea that Jews are actually a race, as I myself managed to stop being one.
I am afraid to inform my detractors once again, that at least intellectually, I operate as a philosopher. If they want to fight my ideas, they will first have to invest some energy in understanding what I am saying.
I accept that my deconstruction of Jewish Identity politics upsets some Jews: no one likes to be scrutinized or criticized. But my work is limited to questioning politics and culture. I have never criticized Jews or anyone else in racial, biological, physiological or ethnic terms. I dig into ideology, politics and culture assuming that these three must be subject to criticism. The fact that I am smeared and defamed for doing so, only suggests to me and others that in the eyes of some self identified Jews, their politics, ideology and culture are beyond criticism. In fact, this is exactly the supremacist view I deconstruct in my work.
I would expect that by now, considering their relentless efforts to destroy me, my detractors would have managed to spot a single incriminating line in my work so they don’t have to keep fabricating quotes and taking words out of context while terrorizing jazz clubs in between. So far they have failed to do so. This raises the assumption that their insane campaign against me, one that reflects very badly on my detractors, suggests that I have something very important to say.
I honestly believe that if my detractors would engage with my writing instead of attempting to burn my books, anti-Semitism wouldn’t be an issue in Britain or anywhere else. Jews would enjoy their lives and live in harmony with their neighbors. I guess that in the minds of some Zionists crucifying me is the way forward. Some people must be foolish not to see that they turn me into an intellectual martyr, a Jazzus figure.
My battle for truth and freedom involves some expensive legal services and security expenses. I hope that you will consider committing to a monthly donation in whatever amount you can give. Regular contributions will enable me to avoid being pushed against a wall and to stay on top of the endless harassment by Zionist operators attempting to silence me.
A year ago I interviewed Yonatan Stern in a kosher pizzeria in Monticello, Catskills, New York. Yonatan is the man behind Cherev Gidon, an ‘Israeli Tactical Training Academy.’ Yonatan, an American who is also a former Israeli settler, correctly identified the demand for an Israeli-style military school to teach American Jews some of the IDF commando’s essentials for self-defense and the ability to fight back if necessary.
Yonatan was a perfect subject to interview: his views may be radical but they are based upon a sharp, coherent and consistent rationale. He was open in expressing his thoughts, which included some outrageous statements but which all left no doubt that he both meant what he said and said what he meant. I’ve observed that in America 2020, after half a century of the tyranny of correctness, very few Americans are brave enough to celebrate their constitutionally protected liberty to think and express themselves freely and authentically.
I heard from Yonatan, just before Christmas. “Things have been getting hot since we last met,” he wrote, referring to a string of attacks on Orthodox Jews in the NY area. He added, “Anyhow, all this antisemitism has brought me lots of clients so I’m keeping busy.”
This week Yonatan and I returned to the same kosher pizzeria in Monticello where we met before. Yonatan is very upset with Jewish Leftists. He believes that they are set to destroy the Jews, America and the whole world.
“My take on the current impeachment circus is that it is a typical display of subversive leftist Jewish attempts to undermine America from within.” In a manner of speech that is typical of so called ‘anti Semites’ Yonatan, a hard core ultra right wing Jew of the Rabbi Meir Kahane type, wrote to me that the “powerhouse behind this (impeachment) campaign are Jews, very visible Jews. And the worst part is that they are claiming it’s their “Jewish values” that are driving them to do this.”
I asked Yonatan who is a Jew, or rather what is a Jew and what are ‘Jewish values’? “The Jewish people is a nation, we are an ancient nation going back to the Biblical Israelites. But we are also a religion in a sense that we are guided by a religious dogma.” For Yonatan a Jew who is separated from the Torah can no more be called a Jew. Yonatan contends that Jewish liberals are engaged in a fraudulent exercise “pretending that multi cultural values and their misinterpretation of Tikun Olam are intrinsic to Judaism. [In fact] real Judaism of the Torah promotes things which Liberal Jews would consider brutality: such as slavery, polygamy, rape (at a time of a war), animal sacrifice, total prohibition on homosexuality etc.”
His answer surprised me and I asked Yonatan to elaborate on Judaism and slavery. Yonatan’s had no doubts. “Slavery is allowed in Judaism subject to rules of course.” I guess the take home message is that some Jews may oppose slavery however, the opposition to slavery is not a ‘Jewish value.’ They may even oppose slavery despite so-called ‘Jewish values.’
Like President Trump, Yonatan has harsh words on the Jewishness of the Jewish Left. “In reality these are assimilated, pork-eating, sabbath-desecrating fake Jews affiliated with the radical left wing Reform movement who ordain women as rabbis and conduct homosexual ‘marriages’ under a Chuppa. These Hellenist (Greek) frauds represent everything that is evil and ugly about American Judaism and they perpetuate the myth of the hook-nosed subversive Jew being behind every insidious attempt to undermine their host countries.”
It goes without saying that Yonatan doesn’t approve of the Jewish Left and its duplicitous mantra yet, I had to ask Yonatan whether he would be willing to militarily train a female rabbi or a gay cantor.
“The reality is this, these people caused the problem. It will come back to bite them in the end. Now should I come and save them from the trouble they caused me and all the Jews?”
“Their actions are endangering all of us, as many American gentiles see this rightly as an attempt to subvert our republic for which they fought and died, and identify the Jew as the subversive enemy behind it.” It is clear that in Yonatan’s universe, the Left Jew is by far the most dangerous element in Western society in general and in the USA in particular.
This fear of the assimilated and Leftist Jew may sound bizarre to those who are foreign to Jewish culture, history and tradition. The fear of Hellenist (Greek) Jews is as old as Judaism. There is nothing more frightening for rabbinical Jews than the thought that some of their brethren endorse the ethics of Goyim, subscribe to universalism, peace, harmony and equality. Zionism was born to stop assimilation; it promised to take the Diaspora Jews away to Palestine and to make them people like all other people. The anti Zionist Bund, an East European revolutionary Communist Jewish party that was literally born the same year as Zionism (1897), was also an attempt to prevent Jews from joining the ‘Hellenic’ route by offering Jews a tribal path within the context of a future Soviet revolution. Golda Meir thought the real threat to Jewish existence wasn’t the Arab-Israeli conflict but mixed marriages. Yonatan, like every observing Jew, knows that Hanukah is a celebration of the victory of traditional conservative Judaism over the Hellenic Jewish voices that threatened to liberate the Jews from themselves.
I asked Yonatan why Jews seem to be prone to subversive and revolutionary politics. For Yonatan, “there is a subversive and evil element within Judaism even before the Torah was given. There are numerous examples of the above in the Torah of Jews who are living in our midst and subverting our cause.” According to Yonatan Saul Alinsky is a perfect exemplar of such a revolutionary destructive Jew, as is Marx. I asked Yonatan whether Jesus should be added to the list of these subversive Jewish characters. Yonatan avoided the question probably because the wrong answering could jeopardise his wishful future alliance with the Christian Right.
Yonathan wrote to me that “it is usually the most identifiable (the Orthodox Jews ) who are the targets of the understandable antisemitic backlash.” It is people like himself, he wrote, who “are put into the position of having no choice but to fight right wing white Christian Conservatives, people who would be our natural allies under normal circumstances if these Hellenist Jews weren’t disgracing G-d’s name with their evil.”
I felt the need to correct Yonatan and pointed out to him that, at the moment, it isn’t ‘White nationalists’ who have targeted Orthodox Jews. It has been the Black communities in the NYC area who feel ethnically cleansed by the ever expanding Orthodox ghettos. I asked Yonatan what is at the core of this apparently emerging Jew/Black street war? Does it have something to do with Orthodox Jewish communities who may display some unethical tactics?
Yonatan is not impressed with Black Americans. For some reason he sees the clash between Jewish Orthodox and Black communities as a manifestation of a ‘Left’ revolutionary act. I pointed out to Yonatan that there is nothing remotely ‘lefty’ in recent attacks on orthodox communities. Yonatan then expressed some ardent racist views. I quote them not because they are true, as they are not, but to provide an accurate portrayal of Yonathan’s world view. He said that we are dealing with “wild people, they have been in America as long as Whites have been here. They are free of slavery for over 150 years. They enjoy the same freedom as whites, segregation ended 50 years ago… Despite that look where are they now, living on welfare, broken families, using crack, mayhem. Yet look at the Jews, we came over at the late 1800s and early 19th century. And look where we have come, we came poor, with rugs on our backs, we worked in sweatshops. We are now at the head of society. Trump’s son in law is Jewish, the Jews are the biggest bankers, we control the Fed, we control Hollywood, all those lawyers, the best attorneys, the best accountants, all the biggest doctors, we have wealth, we have power, yet this proportionate to our size we are only 2%of the population. Look at the Black man. He is 13% of the population, he for the most part, is living in poverty. They feel a tremendous sense of jealousy towards us which turns into a tremendous blood-thirsty hate.”
I pointed out to Yonatan that the recent attacks in NYC didn’t target Jewish bankers, doctors or lawyers but Orthodox Jews who tend to be poor and dependent on income support. Yonatan thinks this is simply because the Orthodox Jews are easily identifiable as Jews. I pointed to Yonatan that rabbinical communities have used some barbarian expansionist tactics to cleanse Blacks and others from areas they want to expand into such as Kiryas Joel, Crown Heights, New Jersey City etc. Yonatan admitted that this is true. The Jewish orthodox communities do indeed use some “unethical means” to accomplish their goal but, he said, they do not behave that way exclusively to Blacks but use such means against Whites as well. Yonatan seems to be saying that Orthodox Jews do not discriminate against Black people in particular, they are, in general, dismissive of others.
Yonatan believes that “Trump is the best friend the Jews have ever had and he has devoted so much effort to standing up for us and defending us…The least we owe him is to stand up for him against this evil leftist Jewish plot to overthrow the greatest hope America has had in many generations. It is our job to be a light onto the nations and that is exactly what we must do – by fighting our enemy from within, the leftist, multiculturalist, reform Jews.”
When I asked Yonatan whether we should expect an open battle between the so-called ‘real Jews’ and the ‘Leftist’ ones any time soon he said he thought so. Yonatan believes that the so-called Goyim do not have the ability to confront or even to address the symptoms of Left Jews: others don’t even begin to understand the depth of the problem. Only ‘real Jews’ can deal with the culturally invasive menace and eventually save the Jews, liberate America and the rest of the world. America is divided, he said, we are “digging in preparing for a boogaloo,” the coming all out civil war between American patriots who adhere to ‘Judeo-Christian values’ and the so called multi cultural left. In placing this future conflict within the context of the American southern/northern division Yonatan sees himself as a contemporary Confederate platoon.
I ended by asking Yonatan whether he can see that the situation in America in some ways resembles Germany in the 1930s. “Certainly,” he said.
My battle for truth and freedom involves some expensive legal services. I hope that you will consider committing to a monthly donation in whatever amount you can give. Regular contributions will enable me to avoid being pushed against a wall and to stay on top of the endless harassment by Zionist operators attempting to silence me.
Three weeks ago the Zionist ADL produced a “short list of social media accounts that should have been removed long ago.” Catholic scholar E Michael Jones, myself amongst other academics and intellectuals were shortlisted by the Zionist book burning apparatus. Three days ago I was interviewed by E Michael Jones. We agreed on many things, we disagreed on others. We touched upon many ‘hot topics’ such as: Identitarian politics, White Nationalism, Logos, Athens vs. Jerusalem, Jewish wisdom and others. I do believe that a society that cannot handle such a well mannered dialogue between scholarly oriented thinkers is doomed!
My battle for truth and freedom involves some expensive legal and security services. I hope that you will consider committing to a monthly donation in whatever amount you can give. Regular contributions will enable me to avoid being pushed against a wall and to stay on top of the endless harassment by Zionist operators attempting to silence me and others.
For the last 15 years I have been warning both Brits and Jews of the possibility of serious consequences that might result from the intensive activities of the Jewish Lobby in Britain and beyond. I have written thousands of commentaries about the topic, given endless talks and interviews and published the best selling books on Jewish Identity politics in return for which I have received relentless abuse. However, I survive and with just a bit of luck Britain may also survive the present chaos inflicted on it by the Lobby and by its own compromised political establishment.
For the last three years we have witnessed an orchestrated smear campaign conducted by many Jewish institutions against British political parties, politicians, intellectuals, artists, and various other members of the public. The Labour Party has been subjected to a uniquely vile smear campaign: its leadership accused of being ‘anti-Semitic.’ The Labour Party, not, perhaps, a collective of distinctly sharp minds, was clumsy in its attempts to counter these empty accusations. The Party foolishly responded by surrendering to the Lobby’s every demand: suspending and expelling some of its best members for telling the truth about Palestine and accepting the primacy of Jewish suffering by adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism. The Party and its leader repeatedly apologized to the Jewish community for acts it hadn’t committed although this failed to assuage the Lobby’s unquenchable appetite.
In July 2018, the three British Jewish newspapers united in an attempt to finish Corbyn’s political career by simultaneously issuing a joint editorial that declared: “Today, Britain’s three leading Jewish newspapers – Jewish Chronicle, Jewish News and Jewish Telegraph – take the unprecedented step of speaking as one by publishing the same front page. We do so because of the existential threat to Jewish life in this country that would be posed by a Jeremy Corbyn-led government.”
Since then Corbyn has been accused by Labour MP Margaret Hodge and other Jewish celebrities of being “racist” and “an anti-Semite”. In a uniquely foolish move that conveys a severe inability to read his neighbours’ mood, British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has launched an explosive and unprecedented attack on Jeremy Corbyn calling on the Brits not to vote Labour.
When Rabbi Mirvis published his article the Tories were leading in the polls by 12-14 percent. Then came a remarkable shift. Corbyn was confronted by the BBC’s Andrew Neil who no doubt expected him to offer his customary words of appeasement but for some reason, this time the Labour leader refused to provide the goods. Four times Neil used the BBC to demand Corbyn’s apology and each time the Labour leader demurred. Corbyn stood firm and in the next poll, not surprisingly, the Labour Party bounced back. The Tories and their leader, or so I read in the press, are in a panic and for good reason. A hung parliament may well result in Corbyn being the next British prime minister. Leading polling expert Sir John Curtice has warned that the recent election headlines predicting a Tory landslide were premature. The Brits have had enough of foreign Lobby interference with their politics. They are tired of a hostile pressure groups weaponizing anti-Semitism, vandalising their culture and politics and openly defying the Athenian roots at the core of the British value system and its ethos.
The outlandish conduct of British Jewish institutions is perplexing. The Jewish press, the Chief Rabbi, the unelected BOD that claims to represent British Jewry have all apparently focused their energies on smearing Britain’s opposition leader. But here is an interesting riddle. Jewish institutions and celebrities have repeatedly described Corbyn as an “existential threat to British Jews.” They practically equate the life long anti racist campaigner with Hitler. I assume that British Jews know that in 1933 Hitler won the German election with the support of just 33% of the German population. As of yesterday’s polls, Corbyn and the Labour party enjoy the same level of support from the British public. I reckon that if these Jewish institutions really believed that Corbyn is a Hitler figure as he is so often outrageously described by their leaders and press, the fact that a third of the Brits support him would mean that Britain is the new Nazi Germany and a Shoah is just around the corner. If British Jews really believed in such a ludicrous scenario there would be a mass exodus of Jews out of Britain and real estate prices in North West London would plummet. As of now, this is not the case. The cost of a three bedroom house in Golders Green is still way above the British average.
Not many scholars in the West tackle issues to do with Jewish politics, they don’t dare criticise Jewish power since Jewish power is the power to silence every person who dares to criticise Jewish power. I first realised in the early 2000s that Jewish power is very dangerous for Jews and gentiles alike. Jewish power is a sophisticated apparatus. In fact it wasn’t the British politicians or establishment that defied that treacherous spirit that has haunted British politics for too long. It is actually the British people who have stood up and said, essentially, ‘enough is enough.’
A video popped out this weekend showing health secretary Matt Hancock being humiliated, booed and heckled at a general election meeting. In response to the Tory MP attempt to recycle the ‘antisemitism’ spin, the entire gathering protested and ousted him within seconds.
The sudden unpredicted rise of Corbyn and Labour’s popularity is a fascinating phenomenon in light of the failure of the dysfunctional British institutions to defend elementary freedoms in the kingdom. The transition of the Guardian, once a respected outlet, into a ‘Guardian of Judea’ is almost as compelling as the transformation of the BBC into BiBiC. Yet, in Britain, only a few brave souls have dared to look into these topics. David Icke has been doing an incredible job of this for which he has been subjected to relentless abuse. Stuart Littlewood has produced a substantial body of work on Zionist and Jewish pressure groups. Craig Murray has written a number of commanding articles about the Israeli grip on British politics. Jonathan Cook watches his homeland crumbling from the vantage point of Nazareth, Palestine. Each of them are intellectuals. They are not political nor activists yet are subjected to unrelenting abuse from the Lobby and its stooges within the British establishment.
I have immersed myself in the study of the J-word. I realised a long time ago that as Israel defines itself as the Jewish State and enjoys the almost absolute support of world Jewry and its institutions, we need to ask what the J-word stands for. Instead of asking who or what are the Jews, I decided to examine what those who self-identify ‘as Jews’ mean by that term. In my books The Wandering Who and its sequel, Being in Time, I produced a study of the metaphysics of Jewishness. I examined different perspectives of Judeo-centrism. I attempted to untangle the concept of choseness. I have tried to understand what it is in Jewish culture that provokes animosity and causes Jewish history to be a tragic continuum.
In The Wandering Who I delved into the notion of Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PRE TSD). In PRE TSD, stress results from a phantasmic event, an imaginary episode set in the future; an event that has never taken place. Unlike PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) in which stress comes as a direct reaction to an event that (may) have taken place in the past, with PRE-TSD, the trauma is caused by an imaginary scenario of destruction. The fear of Corbyn is clearly an example of such a phantasy. The illusion is self- perpetuating as neither Corbyn nor his party did anything to contribute to its escalation. No one within the British Jewish community managed to stop this snowball of collective stress. And now the results of this are devastatingly clear. A crack of mistrust has opened in British society between the Jews and their host nation. I would think that Jews who find this upsetting can easily identify the Jewish pressure groups, leaders and media outlets that led to this unnecessary development.
My guess is that reading my work rather than burning my books could have helped the Jewish community to introspect and prevent this development. Engaging with me rather than attempting to cancel my talks might have saved the Jewish institutions from repeating their most obvious historic mistakes. I accept that blowing the whistle is a challenge. I understand that for most people, living in a state of denial is convenient, but I also know that truth unveils itself to us, often, unexpectedly. In the real world it is not us, the people, who seek the truth, instead it is actually the truth that haunts us wherever we are and against all odds.
My battle for truth and freedom involves some expensive legal and security services. I hope that you will consider committing to a monthly donation in whatever amount you can give. Regular contributions will enable me to avoid being pushed against a wall and to stay on top of the endless harassment by Zionist operators attempting to silence me and others.
In the last few days Zionist and Israeli advocacy groups were desperate to cancel the gathering of many local peace enthusiasts, intellectuals and religious leaders. Every Hasbara trick was put into play: Social media abuse, intimidating phone calls, smears and lies. But none of it worked. The pro- Israeli bigoted efforts backfired – – interest in the conference grew immediately, the local community stood for Palestine, peace, harmony and free speech!
Roderick Heather MBE, Chairman of Hoole Community Centre was subjected to vitriolic abuse. I learned yesterday that Mr Heather decided to attend the conference meetings and to judge for himself whether it was a ‘hateful’ gathering. Apparently he was impressed and announced to the group at the end of the first day that they will always be welcome at the Hoole Centre. Here is the message Mr Heather sent to North West Friends of Israel, the advocacy pressure group that led the campaign.
One may wonder why Zionist operators are so desperate to cancel Palestinian meetings and are so fearful of my work in particular. As things stand, the law seems to be on their side. With the IHRA definition of antisemitsm and current legislation designed to supress all criticism, the Zionist advocacy groups could theoretically seek to punish everyone who even comes close to any disputes of the operation of their community or their beloved state. You would expect Zionists to ignore Palestinian gatherings. If those gatherings were indeed ‘hateful’ they could have locked many of us up behind bars a long time ago. Clearly, the friends of Israel know that the reality is different. Palestine solidarity is a peaceseeking mission. Despite my huge body of work, I have never been accused of making a single hate statement. Needless to mention, I do not need to mention that I have never been charged or even questioned by a any legal authority anywhere in the world about anything I have said or written. The same applies to Stephen Sizer. The Zionist Lobby groups accuse Palestinian solidarity gatherings of being ‘hateful’ while knowing that this type of behaviour is something that Palestinian activism is free of.
Here are final words from Chester Interfaith Palestine Conference:
Chester Palestine Conference November 2nd 2019
The Chester Palestine Conference was even more successful on its second day. We actually ran out of chairs!
The theme for the day was “Grassroots for Palestine: making local links”.
The day started with a brief interfaith service.
Burnley Women’s Peace Group shared the experience of their Jerusalem Peace Pilgrimage this year. The images of Palestinian suffering were very moving. They are a Jewish, Christian and Muslim interfaith group.
A Jewish Roma activist addressed the similarities between the Roma and Palestinian experience.
Andrew Herbert from Chester’s Methodist Church spoke of his Palestinian house rebuilding experience with the Amos Trust.
Gilad Atzmon the international jazz artist and author of best-selling books on Jewish identity politics flew in from Greece to give a wide-reaching presentation entitled “Zionism from Herzl to Bibi”.
Atzmon was born into a Jewish family in Tel Aviv, and conscripted into the Israeli regime army where he had a life-changing experience when he was shocked by the barbaric conditions imposed by the Israeli regime on the Palestinians during the Israeli invasion into Lebanon in 1982.
In his intellectual, philosophical and polemical style he engaged us to think deeply about the causes of the worsening trauma of the Palestinian people.
Damien Short’s presentation on the Genocide of the Palestinians was unable to be shown due to technical problems. We will endeavour to distribute it to the conference attendees. Damien is a Reader in Human Rights at the University of London. His book “Redefining Genocide: Settler Colonialism, Social Death and Ecocide”, which includes a chapter on Genocide and Palestine, is highly recommended.
The Israeli artist Zohar’s exhibition of Palestinian paintings is on show at Chester University Kingsway Arts Campus, Kingsway, Chester CH2 2LB for the month of November.
These accomplished and thought-provoking pictures are “witnessing the chaos and brutality inflicted on the Palestinian civilian population by an ever more confident and belligerent military power.”
(For insurance and practical reasons we were unable to show these at the conference).
We look forward to the 3rd Annual Chester Palestine Conference in 2020 !
My battle for truth and freedom involves some expensive legal and security services. I hope that you will consider committing to a monthly donation in whatever amount you can give. Regular contributions will enable me to avoid being pushed against a wall and to stay on top of the endless harassment by Zionist operators attempting to silence me and others.
Forever Pure, a riveting documentary by Maya Zinshtein currently available on Netflix, reports on the 2012-3 season of Israel’s Beitar football team. In 2005, Arcadi Gaydamak, a Russian born billionaire and convicted arms dealer, bought the team and used it as a propaganda tool in his unsuccessful 2008 run for mayor of Jerusalem (he got less than 4% of the vote). In 2012 Gaydamak took the team to Chechnya for an exhibition game. Ahead of the trip, one of the players worried that:”there will be Muslims there who hate us.” Instead what awaited them in Chechnya was a tie game, a banquet and dancing to Israeli songs. A Chechen official said he wanted to develop ties to Israel, following his prophet who said he should “develop economic ties with the Jews – not kill them.”
Perhaps in response to the enthusiastic reception, Gaydamak hired 2 young Chechen football players to join his team, then the only soccer team in the Israeli league that had never had an Arab Muslim player. The Chechens were met from their first practice by Beitar fans who shouted “war” and ‘death to the Arabs.” At first the Chechens seem bewildered, one said “someone should explain we are not Arabs.” Even the athlete’s mother naively coaches him, to “make sure you play well, then the fans will love you.”
The team is named for the Beitar movement, a revisionist Zionist movement that fought with Irgun against the British mandate. Among the team’s fans are a vocal group of right wing, mostly working class Mizrahi (Arab) Jews called the “familia” who see the team as their own. Politicians such as Lieberman and Netanyahu regularly attend Beitar’s games, pandering to the team’s supporters, one of whom boasts, “Today we are the country. The second Israel has become the first Israel.”
As the hostility against the Muslim players escalates, some Israelis tell the filmmaker that the familia are only a small percentage of Beitar’s fans. The familia demonstrate outside the players’ and coaches’ homes, and at one point scream obscenities and threats at the chairman, including a repeated threat to rape his 6 year old daughter.
At Beitar’s Teddy stadium, the familia displays a huge sign that reads “Beitar Forever Pure.” The team’s chairman begs for tolerance, and says that Jews should not hold such a sign given the parallels between the sign’s racism and the racism Jews have faced. Gaydamak’s reaction to the familia’s blatant racism is the claim that he invited the Chechen players, not because of their soccer skills, but to “show this society (Israel) as it really is.”
Following news that bombing suspects in Boston are Chechen, the familia calls for a boycott of Beitar. The stadium, usually packed with tens of thousands, has only a few hundred guests. Some on the team wonder what happened to all the Israelis who claimed that the racists were only a small group. Beitar’s offices and its museum of trophies, apparently a feature in many bar mitzvah pictures, are destroyed by a bomb.
The pressure on the team is evident, and a player whose brother is part of the familia honors the boycott. Distracted and disheartened, Beitar begins a long losing streak.
At the end of the season, the familia calls off the boycott for one game only; the last crucial game, ironically against the only Arab team in the Israeli league, to determine which of the teams will qualify to remain in their league. After a tied score favors Beitar, its season ends and the Chechens go home. Gaydamak cedes ownership, literally giving Beitar away. By the following year the manager and the chairman have been fired, and the player who joined the boycott becomes the youngest captain in the league.
In a fitting coda to the story, in 2018, Beidar’s owner Moshe Hogeg, hired a Nigerian player named “Ali Mohammed.” When the familia begins its protests, chanting “Mohamed is dead” and “Ali is dead,” Hogeg demands apologies and threatens lawsuits. Apparently because Ali Mohamed is a Christian, the familia decides to accept him although they vow to “make sure that his name is changed so that Mohamed is not heard at Teddy Stadium.”
“Forever Pure” was funded in part by the liberal “New Israel Fund,” that uses its website to claim that chanting has been reduced and racism has been kicked out of the soccer field. Others may be less sanguine.
Now would be the correct time for Ali Abunimah, JVP, & CO to form an orderly queue to issue their deep and sincere apology to me. Since the early 2000s my detractors within the so called Jewish ‘Left’ together with their sometime stooges, have been harassing me, my publishers and my readers for pointing out that Zionism is an obsolete concept with little meaning for Israel, Israelis and their politics let alone the conflict that has been destroying the Eastern Mediterranean region
In my 2011 book The Wandering Who, I argue that “Since Israel defines itself openly as the ‘Jewish State’, we should ask what the notions of ’Judaism’, ‘Jewishness’, ‘Jewish culture’ and ‘Jewish ideology’ stand for.” Just before the publication of the book I was urged by both JVP’s leader and Ali Abunimah to drop the J-Word and focus solely on Zionism. In Britain, a gang of so called ‘anti’ Zionist Jews relentlessly terrorised my publisher and promoters. Funny, most of these authoritarian tribals who worked 24/7 to silence me have been expelled from the British Labour Party for alleged anti-Semitism. Now, they promote the ideal of ‘freedom of speech.’
In ‘The Wandering Who’ and in the years preceding its publication, I realised that the Palestinian solidarity discourse has been suffocated with misleading and often duplicitous terminology that was set to divert attention from the root cause of the conflict and that acted to prevent intelligible discussion of possible solutions.
Let’s face it. Israel doesn’t see itself as the Zionist State: not one Israeli party integrated the word ‘Zionism’ into its name. To Israelis, Zionism is a dated and clichéd concept that describes the ideology that promised to erect a Jewish homeland in Palestine. For Israelis, Zionism fulfilled its purpose in 1948, it is now an archaic term. In ‘The Wandering Who’ I presented a so-far unrefuted argument that an understanding of ‘Jewishness’, a term familiar to every self-identified Jew, may provide answers to most questions related to Israel and its politics. It may also help us to grasp the fake dissent that has dominated the so- called Jewish ‘anti’ Zionist campaign for the last two decades.
Though I was probably the first to write about the crucial shift in Israeli society in favour of Judeo-centrism, this shift is now mainstream news. Haaretz’s lead writer, Anshel Pfeffer, just wrote a spectacular analysis of this transformation. Pfeffer’s view is that Israelis are going to the polls this Tuesday to decide whether they are “Jews” or “Israelis.”
According to Pfeffer, in the mid 1990s it was Netanyahu’s American campaign guru, Arthur Finkelstein, who promoted “a message that could reach secular and religious voters alike. In his polling, he had asked voters whether they considered themselves ‘more Jewish’ or ‘more Israeli.’ The results convinced him there was a much larger constituency of voters, not just religious ones, who emphasized their Jewish identity over their Israeli one.”
In light of Finkelstein’s observation, Likud focused its message on Jerusalem. Its campaign slogan was: “Peres will divide Jerusalem.” In the final 48 hours before Election Day there was also “an unofficial slogan, emblazoned on millions of posters and bumper stickers distributed by Chabad Hasidim: “Netanyahu is good for the Jews.”
In a Haaretz interview after his narrow 1996 defeat, Peres lamented that “the Israelis lost the election.” When asked then who had won, he answered, “The Jews won.”
Pfeffer points out that Netanyahu learned from Finkelstein that the “Jew” is the primary unifier for Israelis. This certainly applies to religious Jews but also to those who regard themselves as secular. After all, Israel has really been the “Jewish State” for a while.
This is probably the right place to point out that Netanyahu’s move of locating Jewishness at the heart of Israel is a reversal of the original Zionist promise. While early Zionism was a desperate attempt to divorce the Jews from the ghetto and their tribal obsession and make them “people like all other people,” the present adherence to Jewishness and kinship induces a return to Judeo-centric chauvinism. As odd as this may sound, Netanyahu’s transformation of Israel into a ‘Jewish realm’ makes him an ardent anti Zionist probably more anti Zionist than JVP, Mondoweiss and the BDS together.
Pfeffer points out that when Netanyahu returned to power in 2009 and formed a right-wing/ religious coalition, was when “the Jews prevailed — and have done so ever since in four consecutive elections, including the last one in April 2019.”
Every so often we hear from one Torah rabbi or another that “Zionism is not Judaism.” Those who have reached this point surely grasp that ‘Zionism vs. Judaism’ is a fake dichotomy. It serves to confuse and to divert questioning minds from the path toward an understanding of the conflict: In Israel Zionism is an empty concept, politically, ideologically and spiritually. Israel defines itself as ‘The Jewish state’ and orthodox rabbis are at the centre of this transition in Israeli politics and life.
I guess that Abunimah and JVP were desperate to silence me at the time as they foolishly believed that shooting the messenger or alternatively burning books was the way forward for human rights activism. I stood firm. The observations I produced in ‘The Wandering Who’ were endorsed by the most profound thinkers associated with the conflict and the anti war movement. My observations are more relevant than ever and in Israel they have entered mainstream analysis. When it comes to Palestine solidarity we have managed to waste a good two decades of intellectual progress thanks to authoritarian lobbies operating in our midst. For truth and justice to prevail, we have to learn to speak the truth as we see it, and to accept JVP and Abumimah’s apologies when they are mature enough to come clean.
The lesson to be drawn from the current Israeli political stalemate is that Israel is imploding, breaking into the elements it has never managed to integrate into one. The schism is no longer the more quotidian dichotomy of Ashkenazi vs. Arab Jews (aka Sephardim); this divide is ideological, religious, spiritual, political, ethnic and cultural. Nor does it break down to Left and Right, Jewish Israelis are politically with the right even when they pretend to be ‘Left.’ Although some of the most astute critical voices of Israeli politics and Jewish fundamentalism are Israelis (such as Gideon Levi, Shlomo Sand, Israel Shamir and others), there is no political Israeli Left. Israeli politics break down into a lot of extreme right voters and many ordinary hawks. The Arab Joint List Party is practically the only Left party in the Israeli Knesset. This should not be surprising any more. Jewish Left, as I have been arguing for many years, is an oxymoron; Jewishness is a form of tribal identification and Left is universal. The ‘tribal’ and the ‘universal’ are like oil and water, they do not mix very well.
What is peculiar about the Israeli political divide is that the Israelis are more united than ever in their nationalist beliefs and in the primacy of their Jewish symptoms. Why is it, if the Israelis are so unified, that no one can form a government in their so-called ‘Jewish State’?
Avigdor Lieberman, formerly an enthusiastic Netanyahu ally and himself a radical Jewish nationalist, delved into the Israeli political deadlock yesterday. He maintained that the elections had already been decided: “The ultra-Orthodox and Messianic bloc reaches 62-61 seats.” The leader of the rabid nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu said, “If there is no voting rate of at least 70% in Gush Dan and Sharon, the Halacha government will be established.”
Basically, Lieberman said that unless secular Israelis in Tel Aviv go to the polls, they should expect to live in a Halacha State under an ultra right wing Netanyahu government. Lieberman appears to hold the key to Israel’s political stability. Although he and Netanyahu are ideological twins regarding Israeli security and nationalist matters, the two are bitter rivals who fight aggressively against each other. Netanyahu has known for a few years that, absent a strong ultra right wing government, he can expect to spend some time behind bars, an adventure that has become common for Israel’s prime political figures. Netanyahu’s natural partners are the ultra right parties and the orthodox parties. Ideologically, Lieberman should also feel comfortable within such a political coalition but Lieberman has made a crucial political decision, essential for his political survival. A while back he grasped that his political home base, Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union, many of them barely Jewish and subjected to constant rabbinical terror, regard the Jewish Orthodox parties as their ultimate foes. Many of these Russian and Ukrainian Jews hold ultra right wing political positions but also see the Rabbis as an imminent threat to their survival.
Theoretically, Lieberman could broker a huge unity coalition with Netanyahu at the top, joined by Blue and White (Kachol Lavan) and its three right wing field marshals, Lieberman’s own party and probably the Labour party. Such a coalition would hold around 80 Knesset seats, more than enough to sustain a strong government but this coalition would refuse to guarantee Netanyahu’s immunity.
Netanyahu gambles instead on a weak ultra right wing religious government, a government that may not hold for very long but would buy more time for its PM to stay out of jail.
This conflict at the heart of Israeli politics is a window into the Jewish state and its fears. Israel is rapidly becoming an Orthodox Jewish state. Israel’s Orthodox Jews are the fastest growing group in the country. They are also the country’s poorest population, 45 percent live below the poverty line in segregated communities. Ordinarily, one would expect the poor to support the left, but Israeli Torah Jews are rabid nationalists and openly lend their support to Benjamin Netanyahu and his party.
Prof. Dan Ben-David of Tel Aviv University warned recently that Israel could cease to exist in a couple of generations. He pointed to the astonishingly high birth rate among ultra Orthodox Jews and predicted that, based on current trends, they will comprise 49% of Israel’s population by 2065. The ultra Orthodox parties are destined to dominate the Knesset within a generation or less. Ben David predicts that their dependence on Israel’s welfare system will lead to a rapid decline is Israel’s economy. This is economically damaging enough and is made worse by the refusal of most rabbinical schools to incorporate standard Western subjects such as mathematics, science and English into their core curriculum. Consequently, Israel is educating a growing percentage of its population in a fashion that fails to equip them to contribute to the needs of a hi-tech society that is immersed in a conflict for survival.
The picture that comes across is peculiar. As Israel becomes increasingly Jewish and fundamentalist in its nationalist and religious ethos, it has also become more divided on everything else. The Russian immigrants find it impossible to live alongside the ultra Orthodox and vice versa. The secular enclave in Tel Aviv is committed to seeing their metropolis as an extension of NY. The Israeli Left has morphed into an LGBT hasbara unit. It has practically removed itself from the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Jewish settlers adhere to the concept of a ‘Two Jewish States Solution.’ They want to see the West Bank become a Jewish land. Orthodox Jews are barely concerned with any of these political issues. They well know that the future of the Jewish state belongs to them. All they need to do is sustain a productive secular Jewish minority to serve as their milk cow. On top of all of that we face Bibi’s survival wars that threaten to escalate any minute into a world conflict.
In light of all of this, the Palestinians are in relatively good shape.. They simply need to survive. Israel seems to be Israel’s fiercest enemy.
My battle for truth and freedom involves some expensive legal and security services. I hope that you will consider committing to a monthly donation in whatever amount you can give. Regular contributions will enable me to avoid being pushed against a wall and to stay on top of the endless harassment by Zionist operators attempting to silence me and others.
In this study I intend to delve into a deeply troublesome topic. Due to the growing sensitivity concerning ‘anti-Semitism’ and new legislation designed to restrict discussion of topics related to Jewish politics, culture and history, I have limited myself to sources that are Jewish, Israeli or mainstream news.
From Weinstein to Epstein and Beyond
“Not Just Weinstein: The Year #MeToo Rocked and Shocked the Jewish World” was the title of a 2018 Haaretz article that reviewed the large number of Jews involved in sex scandals that year. “Over the past year,” Haartez wrote, “a high number of powerful Jewish men have been accused of sexual misconduct. While it has provided fodder for anti-Semites, activists say addressing the problem is vital.”
Haaretz listed some of the prominent Jewish men accused of predatory sexual behaviour. “In addition to (Harvey) Weinstein and (Leon) Wieseltier, the list of Jewish men implicated in #MeToo over the past 12 months includes former Democratic senator Al Franken; ousted CBS chief Les Moonves; actors Dustin Hoffman, Jeffrey Tambor and Jeremy Piven; directors Woody Allen, James Toback and Brett Ratner; playwright Israel Horowitz; journalists Mark Halperin and Michael Oreskes; conductor James Levine; and radio show hosts Leonard Lopate and Jonathan Schwartz.”
Apparently someone decided to ‘clean the swamp’. Harvey Weinstein was just an early bird. In 2018 we also learned about the Nxivm sex cult and the role of Clare Bronfman at its centre. The Jewish Forward wrote that Nxivm’s leader attracted “several prominent figures to his group, including heiress Clare Bronfman, who pleaded guilty in April to credit card fraud and harbouring an undocumented immigrant who provided unpaid “labor and services.” Bronfman is the daughter of the legendary ultra Zionist billionaire Edgar Bronfman (1929 –2013) who was president of the World Jewish Congress. In his obituary, Edgar Bronfman was described by Haaretz as “prince of the Jews.” His daughter has been ordered to pay a penalty of $6 million out of her $200 million fortune, and she faces up to two years in prison.
In November 2017, genius comedian Larry David admitted on Saturday Night Live that he was uncomfortable with the fact that so many of those accused of sexual harassment in HollywoodareJewish. David allowed he would much prefer Jews to be associated with the theory of relativity and the cure for polio.
When it seemed the Jewish universe couldn’t cope with any more scandals involving predatory sexual behaviour, the Epstein affair resurfaced. The Jeffrey Epstein spectacle is one of the biggest of its kind in the history of America ensnaring presidents and prime ministers. Some of the world’s most influential men in cultural, financial and academic fields are allegedly implicated in predatory behaviour with underage girls. And it doesn’t take a genius to observe that the Epstein drama is, unfortunately, unfortunately, a ‘Jewish drama.’
Bloomberg, not exactly an ‘anti-Semitic’ outlet, dug into The Complicated Orbit of Jeffrey Epstein. Zionist enthusiast Leslie Wexner was identified as Epstein’s ‘patron’. The Jewish virtual library informs us that Wexner “often support[s] .. Jewish projects. He serves as Honorary Vice Chairman of the Board of Congregation Aguda Achim… [And] established the Wexner Foundation, which runs both a Graduate Fellowship and an Israel Fellowship Program.”
Bloomberg lists the following as amongst Epstein’s ‘business partners’: Harvey Weinstein, Mort Zuckerman, Donny Deutsch, Nelson Peltz, Ehud Barak and Ponzi aficionado Steven Hoffenberg.
Ghislaine Maxwell, the daughter of notorious Zionist pension plunderer Robert Maxwell, is described by Bloomberg as Epstein’s ‘Inner Circle.’ And then there is Alan Dershowitz who has been labouring tirelessly to try to convince the American media and anyone else willing to listen that he didn’t have sex with underage girls.
Again I find myself admitting that the list of Jewish names surrounding an unsavoury character, this time Epstein, resembles my Bar Mitzvah’s guest list: a lot of Jewish names with just a few goyim at the margin.
This raises critical questions, the most elementary of which is, why? Why are so many Jewish men currently in the news in connection with sexually predatory behaviour? What is it about these rich and influential people that pushes them over the edge?
And there are deeper questions that beg attention. Why is it that with so many Jews in academia and media ordinarily so clever in explaining in a ‘professorial manner’ the psychology and sociology behind every world development and political shift, not one has volunteered to explain the cultural, ideological and spiritual continuum between Weinstein and Epstein and beyond? How is it that the academics and think tanks that are so adept in analysing ‘cultural clashes’ and, as they call it, ‘Islamofascism,’ are unwilling to analyse the roots of the cultural crisis at the core of the Epstein saga? And I must extend this inquiry just one step further, why does the Jewish solidarity industry that cares so much for Palestine, Immigrants, the Civil Rights Movement and LGBT issues remain silent when it comes to the crimes committed, and on a mass scale, against underage girls just a few blocks from JVP’s New York headquarters?
I tend to think that it is just a question of time before we see the formation of ‘Jews against Epstein’ or some other racially exclusive ‘Jews only’ group of that sort. Dominating the dissent is a Jewish survival instinct. ‘As Jews’ they will protest against Epstein, Maxwell, Barak, Weinstein and Dershowitz just to make sure that the boundaries of criticism are kept within the safety zone. If this happens, the battle against pedophilia will slowly evolve into an internal Jewish dispute. Gentiles will be assured that Jews can safely take care of their problems.
Some may argue that the sickening stories to do with Weinstein, Epstein et al have nothing to do with Jewishness, Judaism or the Jews. It is a legitimate contention that what we are actually dealing with are the predatory symptoms that can be associated with money and power. The argument is that capitalism and greed corrupts the rich and the powerful and that because Jewish men are over represented in these circles, they only appear to be disproportionately prone to such predatory symptoms. I could easily buy into such a theory. It certainly explains why sex crimes are prevalent within the Jewish elite as Haaretz was brave enough to admit. But it fails to explain the widely spread predatory behaviour within Rabbinical communities. It is even less successful in explaining why a bunch of Israelis were caught recently in Columbia apparently running a human trafficking network that specialised in marketing underage sex tourism packages for Israelis.
Not just the Rich and the Influential
In March 2017 Israeli police arrested 22 ultra-Orthodox Jews for sex crimes against minors and women. In April 2019 Haaretz admitted that “There’s a Hole in the System. Israel Became a Haven for Suspected Jewish Sex Offenders.” The Israeli paper reported that “65 suspected sexual offenders [are] allegedly seeking refuge in Israel.”
In July 2019 The Times of Israel reported that “Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman was alleged to have improperly intervened to aid at least 10 sex offenders from Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community.” Litzman, who is himself ultra-Orthodox and the leader of the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism Party, “had been questioned by police over suspicions that he had attempted to prevent the extradition of accused child molester Malka Leifer to Australia.”
Malka Leifer was formerly the principal of an orthodox Jewish girls school in Melbourne and has been charged with as many as 74 assaults against minors. The extradition battle over Malka Leifer, who fled Melbourne in 2008 with the help of some in the local ultra-Orthodox community, has dragged on for several years, frustrating her accusers.
In 2015 Michael Lesher, an orthodox Jewish attorney, published a book titled “Sexual Abuse, Shonda and Concealment in Orthodox Jewish Communities.” In the introduction Lesher writes that his book isn’t “about sexual abuse per se but on the dismal history of how far too many of those cases have been assiduously concealed both from the public and from the police: how influential rabbis and community leaders have sided with the alleged abusers against their victims; how victims and witnesses of sexual abuse have been pressured, even threatened, not to turn to secular law enforcement for help; how autonomous Jewish ‘patrols,’ displacing the role of official police in some large and heavily religious Jewish neighbourhoods, have played an inglorious part in the history of cover-ups; … how some Jewish (orthodox) communities have even succeeded in manipulating law enforcement officials to protect suspected abusers.”
Lesher finds the Jewish media culpable. Jewish media outlets steer clear of stories about such predatory behaviour or at most publish them only sparingly. It would be reasonable to postulate that we are dealing with an institutional operation to conceal sex crimes that concern the ‘Jewish orthodox ghetto.’
Far away from the Jewish orthodox ghetto, in Ayia Nap, Cyprus, next to the sunny Mediterranean Sea, a bunch of young Israelis described by the Israeli press as ‘the salt of the Jewish earth,’ were falsely accused this month of a brutal gang rape of a young British citizen. The Israeli youngsters were eventually cleared and sent home. The 19 old British woman is now facing charges for falsifying a rape account.
Unlike Orthodox Jewry whom Lesher claims conceal sex crimes and often take the side of the predator, as did Israeli Deputy Health Minister Litzman, the alleged Israeli gang rape was a headline article in every Israeli media outlet for almost two weeks. Israel didn’t attempt to conceal the story. Israelis were discomfited by the saga and engaged in soul searching. In fact, the Israeli press was alone amongst the media to follow this horrible story closely.
The Daily Mail was probably the only British paper to produce a detailed account of the alleged gang rape. The British tabloid described the attitude of Israeli tourists to others on the Mediterranean island as beyond unacceptable. “Other girls living at the Pambos Napa Rock hotel have told how they were constantly pestered for sex by Israeli men staying at the budget hotel. ‘One of my friends was asleep in her room an Israeli came in and demanded sex. She screamed at him to get out, but the management do not seem to care.’ Another male worker said a friend of his was followed into the ladies toilet and proposition for sex. ‘He just held out some Euros and said he wanted sex. It is disgusting.’ ‘The Israeli men come up behind you and just stand there. Not many of them speak English and it is creepy. I had no idea what it was like here. I do not feel safe.”
Many in Israel were relieved to read that the young Israelis were cleared of the serious allegations. And others may claim that the Daily Mail’s description of the behaviour of young Israelis in Ayia Napa is not representative of Israel or of Jewish culture. After all, the Ayia Napa saga shares little in common with the Epstein/Weinstein continuum. The Israeli suspects were not particularly rich or influential. The British woman who claimed she was raped wasn’t underage. Yet the Ayia Napa story shares a peculiar similarity to the Epstein saga. When the Cypriot police examined the mobile phones of the Israeli suspects, they found a large number of videos of the event.
One may wonder what people video themselves engaged in intimate intercourse and even share such footage with others? Is it possible that they believe that the world surrounding them is a porn set? What kind of gratification is found in such images? Is it romantic memorabilia, libidinal enthusiasm or does it provide some other type of ‘self assurance’? Harvey Weinstein allegedly insisted that his victims watch him indulging himself. We may be tapping here into one of the most intimate aspects of narcissism. The Daily Mail wrote that Epstein is “believed to have used the cameras to tape his famous friends in sex acts with underage girls for blackmail purposes.” And I wonder. Does this explanation also apply to the cinematic enthusiasm of the young Israelis?
In December 2018, law enforcement authorities in Colombia suspected 12 Israelis of running a sex-trafficking network. Haaretz reported that the “alleged sex trafficking ring provided Israeli travellers with ‘tourism packages’ that included prostitutes, some of whom were minors, who received between 200,000 pesos ($63) to 400,000 pesos ($126) in return for sexual services.” Ynet revealed that the Israeli “suspects reportedly scouted local schools, recruiting underage girls as sex workers for drug-fuelled parties, attended largely by Israeli businessmen and discharged IDF soldiers.”
These Israelis are alleged to specialise in the wide scale exploitation of minors. The consumers of these ‘tour packages’ are ordinary Israelis not Wall Street’s financiers or Harvard professors.
Here we may be detecting a significant and disturbing similarity among Epstein, the Israelis at Ayia Napa and their brethren in Columbia. While orthodox Jewish sex criminals target members of their own community, Epstein, the boys at Ayia Napa (as described by the Daily Mail) and the alleged criminals in Columbia prey on others. These others aren’t necessarily Jewish or more likely, aren’t Jewish at all.
This may be the right point to introduce the problematic notion of the Shikse.
Shikse is a derogatory term for a gentile woman or girl. The word, which is of Yiddish origin, is widely used by Jews and others many of whom do not speak Yiddish. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word came into English usage in the late 19th century. It is derived from the Hebrew word sheqeṣ (שקץ ) meaning ‘a detested thing.’ In fact, the Oxford Dictionary is taking a light approach to the pejorative term. Sheqes is a Biblical Hebraic term that expresses abomination and disgust, especially towards a small animal that is unclean.
The notion of the Shikse and the way in which it is utilised in reference to non-Jewish woman is as revealing as it is devastating. You might ask what crime non-Jewish women have committed to be labelled with such a horrendous and disrespectful term.
Once again it is the genius work of Larry David who together with Jerry Seinfeld, brought to light the embarrassing as well as irritating fact that at least culturally, the Shikse is basically a Jewish sex object. It is a subject of Jewish male fascination and libidinal phantasy. The Shikse is an ideal date, a one night stand, a mistress, but not a wife. As you will notice in this short video, this applies to thirteen years old Bar Mitzvah boys, their fathers and even the local Rabbi. Sometime Jewish humour tells us more than we should know.
Genital Utopia from Shabbatai Zvi to Jeffrey Epstein
Jews didn’t invent predatory sexual behaviour nor do they collect royalties for pedophilia. Most Jews are likely embarrassed and disgusted by Epstein, Maxwell, Weinstein and Malka Leifer. And despite Israel’s notorious record of human trafficking in the 1990s, the country is now one of the leaders in the battle against human trafficking. As I noted in Part 1, the Israeli media published clear and reliable accounts of the Ayia Napa saga as well as all the other embarrassing stories of predatory sex scandals involving Israelis and Jews. On top of that, Tel Aviv is a gay capital, famous for its liberal approach to gender and LGBTQ.
Yet, in contradiction to the openness described above, in the Jewish State women are segregated and essentially barred from certain streets for ‘religious reasons.’ In the Jewish State women are segregated on public transport for the same ‘religious reasons.’ Haaretz writes “In the ultra-Orthodox community today, not only do men and women not sit together at celebrations, there are even separate entrances to the places where the events are held.” Haaretz explains the Jewish orthodox community is fearful of the corrupting powers of women and continues, “there is this fear they (male orthodox Jews) will not be able to withstand the temptation of being near women, and therefore they must remove even the smallest doubt – lest the evil urge cause them to commit a sin.”
Jews are amongst the leading advocates on issues to do with women’s rights yet Harvey Weinstein is at the centre of the #MeToo scandal. Many Jews claim to uphold the most precious universal humanist values yet prominent Jewish characters such as Wexner, Maxwell, Barak and Dershowitz are regularly in the news for their association with the Epstein sex trafficking affair.
How can we encapsulate the contradictions presented by humane, progressive and liberal attitudes towards gender, rabbinical dark religious morbidity and the current chain of spectacular predatory criminal affairs with so many famous Jews at their centre?
The issues to do with Jews, sexuality and abuse are confusing, ambivalent and multi layered. Although in the Jewish orthodox home it is the mother who has the dominant and most significant educational and spiritual role, rabbinical Judaism treats women as walking menaces. How are we to interpret that fact that the Judaic morning blessing includes a praise to God “who has not made me a woman”?
Jewishness and Judaism can be realised as existing on fierce dialectical battle grounds. Jews are people distinguished by their relentless inclination towards self-negation. Some have observed that Jews can be defined (politically and culturally) as people who strive to stop being themselves while continuing to be themselves. Early Zionism promised to fix Diaspora Jews by means of a homecoming. It promised Diaspora Jews that it could heal their symptoms and make them ‘people like all other people’ and still stay Jews. Bolshevism promised to fix the Jews by proletarianization, it promised the Jews they could integrate into the working class, be proletarians like all other proletarians and still sustain their Jewishness. Haskala (Jewish Enlightenment) and Assimilation gave Jews the ability to look like goyim in the street while sustaining their Jewish identity behind doors. Judah Leib Gordon illustrated this idea with a simple problematic mantra: “Be a Jew in your home and a man outside it.” Liberalism and progressivism offer similar promises. Jewishness can be realised as a rebellious form of self-rejection, whose revolutionary inclinations are set in measured terms and restricted by overarching tribal interests and agendas.
This radical trait of self-rejection is as old as the Jews. The Biblical prophets’ harsh critiques, guided by their thorough self-reflection, offer us a glimpse into Judaic revolutionary dialectics. Judaism and Jewishness can be realised as the medium of the battle between those who adhere to the religion, the politics, the culture, the primacy of the tribe, the spirit of Judaism and Jewish revolutionary dissenters who oppose the above. This Biblical dialectic and rebellious spirit is embedded in Jewishness and Judaism and has never faded.
Shabbtai Zvi was born in Izmir, Turkey in 1625 and became a Muslim in the 1660s. In between he managed to become a Jewish messiah and attracted the admiration of the vast majority of Jews around the globe.
The movement that developed around Shabbetai Zvi became known as Shabbetaianism. It evolved into a secret yet influential sect of Muslim Jewish converts called the Donme. The Shabbetains and the Donme embraced the theory of “sacred sin.” They believed that the Torah could be fulfilled only by amoral acts representing its seeming annulment.
Zvi replaced the Ten Commandments with a new religious order based on 18 precepts that the Donme called ‘Las Incommendensas.’ Las Incommendensas included the Ten Commandments although the formulation of the prohibition on adultery is ambiguous, resembling a suggestion of prudence.
One of the Donme’s distinctive rituals was the Festival of the Lamb, celebrated in the spring. At least two married couples and often many more participated in the ceremony. For the first time that year, they ate the meat of spring’s newly born lambs. After the meal, the lights were extinguished and couples made love without distinguishing among their partners. Children born from these encounters were considered sacred. The practice had its roots in pagan beliefs and orgiastic rituals known from other ancient cultures of the Middle East. The analogy between this practice and messianic rebirth after the days of the apocalypse is clear: the existing order will be abolished and instinctive needs will be freely enjoyed.
The primary concept of Sabbatean theology was that when Zvi entered the Jewish arena, the messianic era had begun. In this new world, everything was turned upside down: the old law was cancelled, all the ‘do not’ commandments, including the strong prohibitions against incest, became ‘do’ mitzvahs.
Jacob Frank was born in Podolia in 1726 to a wealthy Jewish Sabbatean family. Around the year 1755 it dawned on Frank that he was the true successor of Shabbetai Zvi. He gathered a sect of believers who were attracted by his charismatic personality. Frank formed a new, improved Sabbatean theology based on radical mystical symbols that were infused with destruction and nihilism. Frank addressed his followers: “I came not to elevate your spirits, but to humiliate you to the bottom of the abyss…” By ‘abyss’ he meant sexual rituals that included sacred orgies with just a touch of incest.
Both Zvi and Frank’s theology, history and influence deserve deeper analysis. I touch upon them briefly to illustrate the dialectic force within Judaism. It was the rebellious Judaic spirit that opposed rabbinical rigidity. It was the detachment from nature, the human body and soil that brought about its counter movement and the obscene theology promulgated by Zvi and Frank. Zvi managed to excite the majority of his contemporaneous Jews. He offered them the opportunity to emancipate themselves from themselves while being themselves.
The revisionist populist messianic Shabbetianism that arose in opposition to rabbinical Judaism’s prudish obsession with sex and gender central didn’t disappear after Jewish secularization and emancipation in the 19th century, quite the opposite. It morphed into a set of authoritarian pseudo scientific discourses.
The ‘Oedipal Complex,’ a notion introduced by Freud, was at least as sick as it was revolutionary. The idea that love between mother and son involves an ‘oedipal complex,’ an erotically driven murderous intent on the infant’s part, is deeply troubling and has never been scientifically verified. Freud’s theoretical attempt to reduce love, intimacy and compassion to mere (sexual) ‘drives’ suggests that Freud and his cult of avid disciples may have had severe deficits on the human side.
Freud didn’t resolve the complex Jewish relationship to sex and gender, he opened a Pandora’s Box, and at least for a while, inflicted his own morbidity on the entire West.
When Wilhelm Reich was ten years old, his parents allegedly hired tutors to prepare him for the gymnasium entrance exams. According to Reich, his mother had an affair with one of his tutors and the young Reich became jealous. Reich later claimed that he briefly thought of blackmailing his mother to have sex with him by threatening to tell his father about the affair. Eventually, Reich confided in his father, who reacted harshly. In 1910, after a protracted period of beatings from his father, his mother committed suicide, a consequence for which Reich blamed himself.
That an influential man such as Wilhelm Reich, one who rightly claimed a major role in the sexual liberation of western women and children, had such a problematic ‘beginning’ interested me and led me to look into the origin of his ‘Oedipal’ confession.
In Being in Time I wrote that the person who brought attention to this disturbing incident was Wilhelm Reich’s biographer, Myron Sharaf, an American psychotherapist and a Harvard academic. Sharaf was a student, patient, and colleague of Reich’s from 1948 to 1954, and his book, Fury on Earth is widely regarded as the definitive biography of Wilhelm Reich.
After reading Sharaf’s account of Reich’s ‘blackmail’ fantasy, I realized that it raised issues far more disturbing than the alleged incest incident (which I doubt actually occurred).
The manner by which the affair came to light is itself rather peculiar. In late 1919 or early 1920, when Reich was about twenty-three and already a practicing analyst within Freud’s circle, Reich wrote his first published article , The Breakthrough of the Incest Taboo in Puberty. In this article, Reich reported on ‘a patient’ who displayed certain ‘Oedipal patterns.’ The ‘patient’ was attracted to his mother, he was jealous of a visiting tutor who slept with his mother so he informed his father about his mother’s affair, his mother was beaten and eventually committed suicide. According to Sharaf, there is little doubt that the ‘patient’ was Reich himself. Many years later Reich “told his elder daughter that the article was a self-analysis.” (Myron Sharaf: Fury on Earth, pg. 40)
This is a disturbing revelation. First, young Reich published a fabricated patient account in a scientific magazine. This alone is enough to discredit him, and there is more. Reich was under the spell of Sigmund Freud when he penned his ‘revelation.’ This suggests that Reich might have fabricated a patient’s story in order to verify or validate his master’s ‘Oedipal complex.’ Were fabricated tales of incest the path to gaining a position within the Freud academic orbit? Scientists and academics attempt to form theories that correspond with reality and facts: Reich, then a member of the cult of Freud, apparently reversed the scientific method, contriving ‘facts’ to correspond with a theory.
In the 1930s when things turned sour for German and Austrian Jews, the Jewish ‘left’ was quick to diagnose what was wrong with ‘the Germans.’ Wilhelm Reich claimed it was their ‘repressed sexuality.’
Reich posited that sexual liberation on a mass scale would save Marxist dogma and the working people as well. In chapter five of The Mass Psychology of Fascism, he declared war on the traditional patriarchal family which he saw as maintaining the core of mass conservatism: “From the standpoint of social development,” Reich wrote, “the family cannot be considered the basis of the authoritarian state, only as one of the most important institutions which support it.” The traditional family is a “central reactionary germ cell, the most important place of reproduction of the reactionary and conservative individual. Being itself caused by the authoritarian system, the family becomes the most important institution for its conservation.”
Reich, a neo-Marxist, found both romanticism and traditional family values obstacles to socialist reform. Reich’s vehicle towards the new world order was ‘orgasm’! In his 1927 study, The Function of the Orgasm, he reached the conclusion that: “there is only one thing wrong with neurotic patients: the lack of full and repeated sexual satisfaction.” In the hands of Reich, the Marx-Freud hybrid led to what some critical cynics dubbed “genital utopia.” And isn’t ‘genital utopia’ a fair description of the universe Weinstein and Epstein built around themselves?
Reich’s ideas evolved and spread rapidly in America and the West. Probably the most prominent proponent of such liberal ideas was the Frankfurt School and its primary star as of 1968, Herbert Marcuse.
Marcuse focused on resolving the Freudian conflict between the Reality Principle (work orientated and leisure-less) and the Pleasure Principle (Eros). According to him, the conflict was between alienated labour and Eros. Sex, he declared, was freely accessible to those in power, namely the capitalists, but was available to workers only when it did not disturb their performance. Marcuse contended that in a proper socialist world we will manage without the labour of the “poor” and without the suppression of sexual drives. He predicted that “non-alienated libidinal work” would replace “alienated labour.” Marcuse’s theories offered a post Marxist interpretation of Reich’s genital utopia.
Of course, both Marcuse and Reich were totally delusional. As we know, sex and sexualization didn’t liberate the working class. It did the opposite. Pornography is a distraction that helps blind the workless class from detecting the root cause of their plight. In reference to Marx’s most misinterpreted adage, I allow myself to say, that at least in the post political era in which we live, “pornography is the actual opium of the people.”
I doubt college dropout Jeffrey Epstein has read Marcuse, Reich, Zvi or Frank but he certainly put Reich-Marcuse’s philosophy into practice. As it now seems, Epstein wasn’t really a ‘financier.’ He hardly engaged in labour in any form and was totally consumed by the ‘pleasure principle.’ According to recent reporting, Epstein was dedicated to Eros except when he was amassing footage of his best friends fiddling with underage girls.
The centrality of prominent Jewish names in the current predatory scandals can’t be denied, but I do not at all contend that predatory behaviour or sexual morbidity is a Jewish trait or even something predominantly Jewish. Instead these incidents are consistent with a Jewish as well as Judaic revolutionary continuum driven by sexual obsession. This continuum includes Zvi, Frank, Freud, Reich, the Frankfurt School, Marcuse and many contemporary gender activists such as Jonathan ‘Jessica’ Yaniv who made the state of his/her hairy testicles into main stream news. This continuum may well also include Epstein, Weinstein and the many other Jewish celebrities implicated in these far too many nasty predatory acts.
Jewishness, as I see it, is a dynamic dialectical morphing spirit. It contains a bold critical attitude that often evolves into a sense of empowerment, grandeur, impunity and narcissism. This self-confidence often produces sensational scientific and social revolutions as well as spectacular artistic achievement. But it can equally help cause global disasters, social-disorder, financial meltdowns, spiritual confusion and spectacular criminal endeavours.
My battle for truth and freedom involves some expensive legal and security services. I hope that you will consider committing to a monthly donation in whatever amount you can give. Regular contributions will enable me to avoid being pushed against a wall and to stay on top of the endless harassment by Zionist operators attempting to silence me and others.
30 Jewish protesters were arrested on Sunday outside a privately managed ICE detention centre in New Jersey, which has been used to hold undocumented immigrants.
Invoking the Holocaust, demonstrators described the facilities in which immigrants are being held as concentration camps and spoke of the immigrant children who have died while being held by ICE. The Jewish protesters travelled from cities all over the USA. They were holding signs and singing and chanting in Hebrew and English.
Never Again Action @NeverAgainActn
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: TWO HUNDRED JEWS SHUT DOWN ELIZABETH DETENTION CENTER, 36 ARRESTED, SAY “NEVER AGAIN IS NOW”
The Jews behind the protest say about themselves, “we are #JewsAgainstICE because #NeverAgainMeans never again for anyone.” This sounds good enough to me and I have no criticism of the official objective behind this humanist protest. Yet the Jewish nature of the gathering raises some crucial and necessary questions:
Are these Jewish protestors willing to describe Gaza as a concentration camp?
Will the Jewish activists protest in front of the Israeli embassy invoking the holocaust, pointing out that the Palestinians are subject to long-term genocidal policies?
Will these Jewish protestors allow gentile pro Palestinian activists, for instance, to equate Israel with Nazi Germany or maybe invoke the holocaust is a Jews-only domain?
Would the activists consider a Jewish protest in front of Goldman Sachs headquarters or George Soros’ offices, pointing at the carnage these investors inflicted on states and millions of people around the globe?
How far are these well-meaning Jewish protestors willing to go to identify problems that might be related to Jewish exceptionalism, nationalism or racism?
But the Jewish protest raises a much deeper question. What kind of people make a conscious and collective effort to look humane and empathic? I guess one possible answer is that we are dealing with people who accept that some of the actions and politics associated with their tribe are deeply disturbing.
Newsweek reports that “the protest brought together Jews with a range of religious leanings, creating what Alona Weimer, a member of New York ‘s Yeshivat Hadar, described as an atypical cross-section of attendees for a demonstration.” Once again, it is not Judaism or a meta-Jewish ethos that unites these diverse good Jews and Tikkun Olam enthusiasts. One may wonder: what is it then that bonds this Jewish ‘cross-section’? Is it the phantasy of Jewish humanist DNA? Is it the Jewish revolutionary spirit, or is it the controlled opposition gene?
Unless Jews learn to fight for humanity as ordinary people, these questions may keep surfacing.
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 