In the War Between Judaism and Democracy in Israel, Anything Is Possible

March 19, 2023

Former British diplomat, founder and director of the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum.

Alastair Crooke

Bibi is by nature cautious – even timid. His radical ministers, however, are not, Alastair Crooke writes.

Michael Omer-Man writes: Almost exactly 10 years ago, a young star rising in the Likud party, spoke to an audience committed to the outright annexation of the occupied Palestinian territories, laying out his blueprint. A year later, this same speaker set out certain prerequisites to full annexation: Firstly, a shift in the way the Israeli public thinks about a ‘two-state solution’ for Palestine; and secondly, a radical recast of the legal system “that will allow us to take those steps on the ground … that advance sovereignty”.

What was reflected in this statement is the structural dichotomy inherent within the ‘idea’ of ‘Israel’: What then is ‘Israel’? One side holds that Israel was founded as a ‘balance’ between Jewishness and Democracy. The other says ‘nonsense’; it was always the establishment of Israel on the “Land of Israel”.

Ami Pedahzur, a political scientist studying the Israeli Right, explains that the religious Right “has always considered the Israeli Supreme Court to be an abomination”. He points out that the extremist Meir Kahane “once wrote extensively about the tension between Judaism and democracy and the need for a Sanhedrin [a biblical system of judges] instead of the extant Israeli judicial system”.

In Israel’s attempt to balance these opposing visions and interpretations of history, the Israeli Right sees the judiciary as deliberately having been tilted toward democracy (by one part of the Israeli élite). This simmering tension finally exploded with the 1995 Supreme Court claim that it possessed power of judicial review over Knesset (parliamentary) legislation deemed to be in conflict with Israel’s quasi-constitutional Basic Laws. (An Israeli constitution has been considered since 1949, but never actuated.)

Well, that ‘young star’ of 10 years ago – who asserted so forcefully “We cannot accept … a judicial system that is controlled by a radical leftist, post-Zionist minority that elects itself behind closed doors – dictating to us its own values – today is Israel’s Justice Minister, Yariv Levin.

And with time, Netanyahu has indeed already brought about that first prerequisite (outlined by Levin almost a decade ago): The Israeli public perspective on the two-state Olso formula is radically changed. Political support for that project hovers close to zero in the political sphere.

More than that, today’s Prime Minister, Netanyahu, explicitly shares the same ideology as Levin and his colleagues – namely that Jews have a right to settle in any, and all, parts of the ‘Land of Israel’; he also believes that the very survival of the Jewish people is dependent on the actuation of that divine obligation into practice.

Many on the Israeli Right, Omer-Man suggests, therefore see the Supreme Court as “the central impediment to their ability to fulfil their annexationist dreams, which for them are a combination of messianic and ideological commandments”.

They saw the 1995 Supreme Court ruling as ‘a coup’ that ushered in the judiciary’s supremacy over law and politics. This is a view that is hotly contested – to the point of near civil war – by those who advocate for democracy versus a strict Judaic vision of religious law.

From the perspective of the Right, Ariel Kahana notes that although

“they have continued to win time and again – but they have never held power in the true sense of the word. Through the judiciary, the bureaucracy, the defence establishment, academia, cultural elites, the media, and some of the economic wheelers and dealers, the Left’s doctrine continued to dominate Israel’s power foci. In fact, regardless of who the cabinet ministers were, the old guard has continued with its obstructionist insurgency”.

Today, however, the numbers are with the Right – and we are witnessing the Israeli Right’s counter-coup: a judicial ‘reform’ which would centralize power in the Knesset – precisely by dismantling the legal system’s current checks and balances.

Ostensibly this schism constitutes the crisis bringing hundreds of thousand Israelis on to the street. Prima Facie, in much of the media, at issue is who has the final word: the Knesset or the Supreme Court.

Or, is it? For, beneath the surface, unacknowledged and mostly unsaid, is something deeper: It is the conflict between Realpolitik versus Completion of the Zionist project. Put starkly, the Right says it’s clear: Without Judaism we have no identity; and no reason to be in this land.

The ‘less said’ fact is that much of the electorate actually agrees with the Right in principle, yet opposes the full annexation of the West Bank on pragmatic grounds: “They believe that the status quo of a “temporary” 55-plus-year military occupation is the more strategically prudent”.

“Formally [annexing West Bank] would make it too difficult to convince the world that Israel is not an apartheid regime in which half of the population — Palestinians — are denied basic democratic, civil, and human rights”.

That other unresolved contradiction (that of continuing occupation within ‘democracy’) is also submerged by the prevalent mantra of ‘Right wing Orbánism versus democracy’. Ahmad Tibi, an Palestinian member of the Knesset earlier has wryly noted: “Israel indeed is ‘Jewish and democratic’: It is democratic toward Jews – and Jewish toward Arabs”.

The mass of protestors gathered in Tel Aviv carefully choose to avoid this oxymoron (other than around the kitchen table) – as a Haaretz editorial a few days ago made clear: “Israel’s opposition is for Jews only”.

Thus, the crisis that some are warning could lead to civil war at its crux is that between one group – which is no longer content to wait for the right conditions to arrive to fulfil the Zionist dream of Jewish sovereignty over the entire Land of Israel – versus an outraged opposition that prefers sticking to the political tradition of buying time by “deciding not to decide”, Omer-Man underlines.

And although there are ‘moderates’ amongst the Likud lawmakers, their concerns are eclipsed by the exultant mood at their party’s base:

“Senior Likud officials, led by Netanyahu, have incited Likud voters against the legal system for years, and now the tiger is out of control. It has its trainer in its jaws and threatens to crush him if he makes concessions”.

The flames lick around Netanyahu’s feet. The U.S. wants quiet; It does not want a war with Iran. It does not want a new Palestinian Intifada – and will hold Netanyahu’s feet to the flames until he ‘controls’ his coalition allies and returns to an Hebraic ‘quietism’.

But he can’t. It’s not possible. Netanyahu is held limp in the tiger’s jaws. Events are out of his control.

A prominent member of Likud’s central committee told Haaretz this week:

“I don’t care if I have nothing to eat, if the army falls apart, if everything here is destroyed … The main thing is that they not humiliate us once again, and appoint Ashkenazi judges over us”.

The ‘second Israel’ genres have wailed against ‘the ten Ashkenazai judges’ who discredited their leader (Arye Dery), whilst breaking into a song of praise for the ‘only Sephardic judge’ who was sympathetic to Dery. Yes, the ethnic and tribal schisms form a further part of this crisis. (A bill that effectively would reverse the Supreme Court decision barring Dery from his ministerial position over previous corruption charges is currently making its way through the Knesset).

The appeal of Religious Zionism is often attributed to its growing strength amongst the young – particularly ultra-Orthodox men and traditional Mizrahi voters. What became abundantly clear and unexpected in recent weeks, however, is that the appeal of a racist such as Ben-Gvir, is spreading to the young secular left in Israel. Among young Israelis (ages 18 – 24), more than 70% identify today as Right.

Just to be clear: The Mizrahi ‘underclass’, together with the Settler Right, have ousted the ‘old’ Ashkenazi élite from their hold on power. They have waited many years for this moment; their numbers are there. Power has been rotated. The fuse to today’s particular crisis was lit long ago, not by Netanyahu, but by Ariel Sharon in 2001, with his entry to the Temple Mount (Haram al-Sharif).

Sharon had earlier perceived that a moment would arrive – with a weakened U.S. – when it might prove propitious for Israel to complete the Zionist project and seize all the ‘Land of Israel’. The plans for this venture have been incubating over two decades. Sharon lit the fuse – and Netanyahu duly took on the task of curating a constituency towards despising Oslo and the judicial system.

The project’s content is explicitly acknowledged: To annex the West Bank and to transfer any political rights of Palestinians remaining there to a new national state to the east of the River Jordan, on the site of what now is the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. In the confusion and violence which would accompany such a move, Palestinians would be ‘persuaded’ to migrate to the ‘other bank’. As Hussein Ibish warned two weeks ago:

“We’re getting awfully close to the point where the Israeli government, and even Israeli society, could countenance a big annexation – and even expulsion [of Palestinians] – done in the middle of an outbreak of violence, and it would be framed as a painful necessity,” Ibish said. Such a move, he added, would be justified “as the government saying ‘We’ve got to protect Israeli settlers – they are citizens too – and we can’t let this go on anymore. Therefore we have to annex and even expel Palestinians.’”

To be fair, the unspoken fear of many secular protesters in Israel today, is not just that of being politically deposed, and their secular lifestyle circumscribed by religious zealots (though that is a major driver to sentiment), but rather, by the unspoken fear that to implement such a radical project against the Palestinians would lead to Regional war.

And ‘that’ is far from an unreasonable fear.

So there are two existential fears: One, that survival of the Jewish people is contingent on fulfilling the obligation to establish ‘Israel’ as ordained; and two, that to implement the consequent exodus of the Palestinians would likely result in the demise of the Israeli State (through war).

Suddenly and unexpectedly, into this fraught situation – with Netanyahu buffeted by a whirlwind of external and internal pressures – arrived a bombshell: Netanyahu was stripped of his ace card – Iran. In Beijing, China had secretly orchestrated not just the resumption of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, but laid down the framework for a regional security architecture.

This represents a nightmare for Washington and Netanyahu – particularly for the latter, however.

Since the early 1990s, Iran has served both these parties as the ‘bogey man’, by which to divert attention from Israel and the situation of the Palestinians. It has worked well, with the Europeans acting as enthusiastic collaborators in facilitating (or ‘mitigating’ – as they would see it), Israel’s ‘temporary’, 55-year occupation of the West Bank. The EU even financed it.

But now, that is blown away. Netanyahu may ‘huff and puff’ about Iran, but absent a Saudi and Gulf willingness to lend Arab legitimacy to any military action against Iran (with all the risks that entails), Netanyahu’ s ability to distract from the domestic crisis is severely limited. Any call to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities is an obvious non-starter in the light of the Iranian-Saudi rapprochement.

Netanyahu may not want a show-down with Team Biden, but that’s what is coming. Bibi is by nature cautious – even timid. His radical Ministers, however, are not.

They need a crisis (but only when the ‘prerequisites’ are all lined up). It is clear that the wholesale stripping of Palestinian rights, in tandem with the emasculation of the Supreme Court, is not a project that can be expected to quietly proceed in normal circumstances – especially in the present emotive state across the global sphere.

No doubt, the Israeli Right has been watching how the Lockdown ‘Emergency-crisis fear’ in Europe was used to mobilise a people to accept a compulsion and restrictions to life that in any other circumstance they would never rationally accept.

It won’t be a new pandemic emergency, of course, in the Israeli case. But the new Palestinian Authority-led ‘SWAT-squads’ arresting Palestinian resistance fighters in broad daylight is bringing the West Bank ‘pressure-cooker’ close to blow-out.

Ben Gvir may simply decide to follow in Sharon’s footsteps – to allow and participate in the Passover ceremony of sacrificing a lamb on Al-Aqsa (the Temple Mount) – as a symbol of the commitment to rebuild the ‘Third Temple’, permission for which, hitherto has always been denied.

So what happens next? It is impossible to predict. Will the Israeli military intervene? Will the U.S. intervene? Will one side back-down (unlikely says ex-Head of Israel’s National Security Council, Giora Eiland)? Yet even if the ‘Judicial reform’ is somehow halted, as one exasperated Israeli forecast, “Even if this time the attempt does not succeed, it’s likely that they [the Right] will try again in another two years, another five years, another 10 years. The struggle will be long and difficult, and no one can guarantee what the result will be.”

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The Quiet Rebellion: Why US Jews Turning against Israel is Good for Palestinians

August 18th, 2021

By Ramzy Baroud

Source

Israel is now at a crossroads. It can only win back the support of US Jews if it abandons Zionism altogether, or abandon them in favor of complete reliance on the Evangelicals. In fact, some top Israeli officials are already advocating the latter. 

Aunique but critical conversation on Israel and Palestine is taking place outside the traditional discourse of Israeli colonialism and the Palestinian quest for liberation. It is an awkward and difficult – but overdue – discussion concerning American Jews’ relation to Israel and their commitment to its Zionist ideology.

For many years, Israel has conveniently dubbed Jews who do not support Israel, or worse, advocate Palestinian freedom, as ‘self-hating Jews’. This term, designated to describe dissident anti-Zionist Jews, is similar to the accusation of ‘antisemitism’ made against non-Jews, which includes Semitic Arabs, for daring to criticize Israel. This approach, however, is no longer as effective as it once was.

Recent years have unequivocally demonstrated that there is a quiet anti-Israel rebellion within the American Jewish community. This rebellion has been brewing for long, but only fairly recently did numbers begin reflecting the rise of a new phenomenon where US Jews, especially younger generations, are openly dissenting from the typical Jewish conformity on Israel and supposedly undying love for Zionism.

In the last decade or so, this new reality has sounded the alarm within various Zionist institutions, whether in the US or in Israel itself.

Several opinion polls and surveys are all pointing to an inescapable conclusion that the emotional and political rapport between Israel and US Jews is rapidly weakening. A poll published by the Laszlo Strategies for Jerusalem U in August 2013, for example, concluded that 87 percent of American Jews over the age of 50 strongly agreed that “caring about Israel is a very important part of my being Jewish,” while only 66% of young Jews between the ages of 18 to 29 felt the same.

Other polls reached similar conclusions, where the number of young Jews strongly supportive of Israel continues to decline. A particularly telling and important survey was that of the American Jewish Committee in June 2018. That was the time when the US-Israeli alliance reached its zenith under the administrations of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. Though 77 percent of all Israelis approved of the US government’s handling of US-Israeli relations, only 34 percent of American Jews did. In fact, 57 percent of US Jews outright disapproved of Trump’s policies, which practically granted Israel all of its demands and wishes.

The downward trajectory continued unabated. A May 2021 Pew research indicated that one in five US Jews believes that the US is “too supportive of Israel”. Those who hold such a belief, 22 percent of the US Jewish population, have doubled in number since an earlier poll released in 2013.

Data gathering for the above poll, though released during the deadly Israeli onslaught on Gaza (May 10-21), was, in fact, conducted in 2019 and 2020. The numbers of unsupportive US Jews must have risen since then, as if there is a clear correlation between Israeli wars resulting in massive civilian casualties, and the ongoing split between US Jews and Israel.

Libby Lenkinski, Vice President for public engagement at the New Israel Fund, told Rolling Stone magazine that she sees a “noticeable shift in American perception” on Palestine and Israel since the deadly Israeli war on Gaza in 2014, a war that killed over 2,200 Palestinians. For Lenkinski, US Jewish perception should follow an ethical paradigm. “It’s a moral issue. It’s right or wrong,” she said.

Similar sentiments emerged after the May 2021 war, where over 260 Palestinians were killed. In a recent article, American Jewish writer, Marisa Kabas, explains the dilemma felt by many in the US Jewish community regarding Israel. “Because the conflict has so often been boiled down to a binary – you either support Israel or you support its destruction – for many of us it felt like a betrayal to even consider the other side.”  Because of the likes of Kabas and Lenkinski and numerous others, the ‘other side’ is finally visible, resulting in the obvious shift in American Jewish perception of and relations to Israel.

While more space for dissenting US Jews is opening up, the discussion in Israel remains confined and is hardly concerned with ethics and morality.

Recently, the understanding that Israel is losing the support of US Jews has been accepted by the country’s main political parties, with disagreement largely focused on who is to blame for this seismic shift. Netanyahu was often held responsible for making Israel a partisan American political issue through his alliance with Trump and the Republican Party, at the expense of Israel’s relation with the Democrats.

However, the Netanyahu-Trump love affair was not as uncomplicated as Netanyahu’s critics would like to believe. Indeed, the idea of Israel has changed in American society. The notion that Israel is a supposedly vulnerable little state, facing existential threats by Arab enemies, which flourished in the past, has become almost entirely irrelevant. The new concept of Israel, which is Tel Aviv’s main selling point in America, is that of a biblical Israel, a place of prophecies and spiritual salvation, which appeals mostly to right-wing Evangelical Christian groups. Young US Jews, many of whom support the Black Lives Matter and even the Palestinian boycott movements, have little in common with Israel’s zealot American backers.

Israel is now at a crossroads. It can only win back the support of US Jews if it behaves in such a way that is consistent with their moral frame of reference. Hence, it would have to end its military occupation, dismantle its apartheid regime and reverse its racist laws. Specifically, abandon Zionism altogether, or abandon US Jews in favor of complete reliance on the Evangelicals. In fact, some top Israeli officials are already advocating the latter.

On May 9, former Israeli ambassador to the US, Ron Dermer, argued that, since Evangelical Christians are the “backbone of Israel’s support in the United States”, Israel should prioritize their “passionate and unequivocal” backing of Israel over American Jews who are “disproportionately among our critics.”

If Israel officially opts for this choice, perhaps with no other viable option, then a breakdown between Israel and US Jews becomes inevitable. As far as justice and freedom for the Palestinian people are concerned, that would be a good thing.

AIPAC and U.S. elections

Source

By Richard Anderson Falk

AIPAC is a strong lobbying group that is perceived by the political parties to exert great influence on large Jewish donors and Jewish voters generally. The leadership of both parties competes for AIPAC approval, although as an organization it refrains from political endorsements at national levels. It does have a record of opposing Congressional candidates deemed critical of Israel, making inflammatory accusations that candidates critical of Israel are by that fact alone anti-Semitic. Such a campaign has been launched with at least implicit AIPAC support to defeat the candidacy of Ilhan Omer who is running for reelection in urban Minneapolis.

Part of the effectiveness of AIPAC is due to money and tight organizational discipline, and part of its influence is due to the absence of countervailing Jewish organizations that speak for liberal Zionism and progressive Jews. J-Street has attempted to provide a voice for liberal Zionism in Washington, and has limited success at legislative levels, but not in relation to party platforms or the selection of national candidates. Jewish Voice for Peace is an admirably balanced NGO, but its influence is mainly felt in civil society, where it has created growing support for a just outcome of this struggle that has gone on for a century, which includes supported the realization of the Palestinian right of self-determination whether in the form of a viable separate sovereign state or a single state whose foundational principle is ethnic equality.

Throughout its existence, AIPAC has been and remains subservient to the priorities of the Israeli leadership and consistently supportive of maximal Zionist goals, and hence an adherent of antagonistic attitudes on international law, the UN, and international morality. In my judgment, AIPAC has harmed the role of the U.S. in West Asia and at the UN by pushing American foreign policy in belligerent and regime-changing directions, focusing on heightening the confrontation with Iran, and secondarily, with Turkey, which has intensified regional tensions and dangers of war. The recent sanctions debate in the UN Security Council manifested both U.S. belligerence and its defiance of the views of even its normally close European allies.

Richard Anderson Falk is an American professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University. In 2008, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) appointed Falk to a six-year term as a United Nations Special Rapporteur on “the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967”.

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Black Voices also Matter

Source

By Gilad Atzmon 

That we are proceeding rapidly into an authoritarian reality is hardly a news item: it is impossible not to identify the institutions at the centre of this unfortunate transition.  Every day one Jewish organization or another brags about its success in defeating our most precious Western values: political freedom and intellectual tolerance.

At the moment it seems as if silencing authentic Black voices is the Zionists’ prime objective. This morning we learned that Black Voices do not matter at all: in a total capitulation to the French Zionist Lobby group CRIF,  the great Black French comedian Dieudonné’s  YouTube channel was deleted by Google.  CRIF tweeted:

 “A month ago, the CRIF filed a complaint against Dieudonné after the broadcasting of anti-Semitic videos. Yesterday, his chain

‪@YouTube has been deleted.  CRIF welcomes this decision and encourages other platforms to take responsibility and close all of its accounts.”

In the late 18th century the Anglo Irish statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke realised that “all that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing.” I guess that in 2020 for evil to prevail all that is needed is for an internet company to become an extension of Zion.

Neither Dieudonne nor anyone else needs my  ‘kosher’ certificate, although I have no doubt that the French artist is an exemplary anti racist. What I will say is that if Zion doesn’t  want you to listen to someone, there is nothing better you could do for yourself  than defy their wishes. Dieudonne, France’s most popular comedian, is a brilliant Black man. He was brave enough to stand up and declare that he had enough of the holocaust indoctrination, what he wants to discuss is the holocaust of his people, an ongoing century of discrimination and racist abuse. Within only a matter of hours, Dieudonne was targeted by French Jewish organizations and was portrayed as a racist and an anti Semite .

I am looking forward to see what Black Lives Matter is going to do for one of Europe’s most authentic and profound Black voices.  Just an idea, maybe instead of pulling down bronze statues, BLM should consider calling for every Black artist to close their Youtube channels until Google comes to its senses. This would be a nice proper attempt at a Black power exercise, but as you can imagine, I do not hold my breath.

 Unfortunately, Zionist destruction of the little that is left out of the Western spirit has become a daily spectacle. Yesterday we saw the Jewish press bragging that  Fox Soul — a new Fox chnnel geared toward African Americans  scheduled live broadcast of a speech by Louis Farrakhan.  The Jewish Algemeiner was kind enough to reveal that the Simon Wiesenthal Center had called for the broadcast to be scrapped.

 Zionist organisations never march alone. They are effective in identifying  the odd Sabbos Goy who stands ready to lend his or her ‘credibility’ to the ‘cause.’   This time it was CNN anchor Jake Tapper who tweeted, “Farrakhan is a vile anti-LGBTQ anti-Semitic misogynist. Why is a Fox channel airing his propaganda?”

 As we all know, Jews often claim to be there for Blacks. Jewish outlets often brag about the significant Jewish contribution to the Civil Rights Movement. According to some Jewish historians, a large amount of the funds for the NAACP came from Jewish sources – some experts estimate as much as 80%. Howard Sachar begins his article  Jews in the Civil Rights movement, by claiming that “nowhere did Jews identify themselves more forth­rightly with the liberal avant-garde than in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.” This would seem a positive moment in Jewish history until we remember that Judaism has, throughout its entire history as we know it,  sustained uncompromised ‘segregation bills’. What are kosher dietary rules if not a ‘segregation bill?’ What is the rationale behind the Zionist attitude toward mixed marriage other than a segregation bill? Even within the Palestinian solidarity movement, many Jews choose to march within racially segregated political cells (JVP, IJAN, JVL etc.) rather than voluntarily strip themselves of their Jewish privilege.

It is true that some of the greatest voices of the Civil Rights Movement were Jews. But I am afraid that this is where the good part of the story ends. Historically the Jewish attitude towards Blacks has been nothing short of a disaster. It is difficult to decide how to enter this colossal minefield without getting oneself into serious trouble.

In European Jewish culture the word shvartze  (Black, Yiddish) is an offensive term referring to a low being, specifically a Black person (“She’s dating a shvartze. Her grandmother is probably rolling over in her grave”). Zein Shver, a Jewish Black American, points out that “Shvartze isn’t Yiddish for Black. Shvartze is Yiddish for Nigger!”

The reference to ‘shvartze chaya’ is a direct  reference to ‘black beast,’ meaning the lowest of the low. Shvartze chaya is also how Ashkenazi Jews often refer to Arabs, Sephardi Arab and  Falasha Jews. I guess that, at least culturally, some Ashkenazi Jews find it hard to deal with the colour black, especially when it comes on people. It is therefore slightly peculiar to witness white Ashkenazi Jews complain endlessly about ‘white supremacy.’ It is, in fact,  hard to imagine any contemporary cultural code more racially oriented than the Ashkenazi ethos.  I would suggest that if Jews are genuinely interested in combating white exceptionalism, that maybe they should first uproot those symptoms from their own culture.

This is an anomaly — the same people who played a fundamental role in the civil rights movement, are themselves instrumental in an historic racist segregation project. In my work on Jewish Identity politics I have noticed that Jewish organisations dictating the boundaries of Black liberation discourse is hardly a new symptom. This political exercise is a fundamental feature and symptomatic of the entire Jewish solidarity project. It is the ‘pro’ Palestinian Jews who make sure that the discourse of the oppressed (Palestinians) will fit nicely with the sensitivities of the oppressor (The Jewish State for that matter).  It seems as if it is down to Jews to decide whether or not the civil rights activist and scholar Angela Davis is worthy of an award for her lifetime of activity for her community.

A review of the ADL’s attitude to the Nation of Islam (NOI) in general and its leader, Louis Farrakhan, provides a spectacular glimpse into this attempt to police  the dissent.  

NOI according to the ADL, has “maintained a consistent record of anti-Semitism and racism since its founding in the 1930s.” The ADL’s site states that “under Louis Farrakhan, who has espoused and promoted anti-Semitism and racism throughout his 30-year tenure as NOI leader, the organization has used its programs, institutions, and media to disseminate its message of hate.”

“He (Farakhan) has repeatedly alleged that the Jewish people were responsible for the slave trade as well as the 9/11 attacks, and that they continue to conspire to control the government, the media, Hollywood, and various Black individuals and organizations.”

The real question we need to ask is whether Farakhan’s criticism is ‘racist.’ Does he target  ‘The Jews’ as a people, as a race or as an ethnicity or does he actually target specific elements, segments or sectors within the Jewish universe?  A quick study of Farakhan’s cherry picked quotes provided by the ADL reveals that Farakhan doesn’t really refer to ‘the Jews’ as a people, a race, a nation or even as a religious community. In most cases he refers specifically and precisely to segments within the Jewish elite that are indeed politically dominant and deserve our scrutiny.

Let us examine some of Farakhan’s most problematic quotes as selected by the ADL: “During a speech at Washington, D.C.’s Watergate Hotel in November 2017, Farrakhan told his audience that the Jews who ‘owned a lot of plantations’ were responsible for undermining black emancipation after the Civil War. He also endorsed the second volume of the anti-Semitic book, ‘The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews,’ which blames Jews for promoting a myth of black racial inferiority and makes conspiratorial accusations about Jewish involvement in slave trade and the cotton, textiles, and banking industries. Farrakhan believes this book should be taught in schools.”

It is obvious in the quote above that Farakhan refers to a segment within the Jewish elite. Those who “owned plantations,” those who were specifically involved in the Atlantic slave trade, those who were and still are involved in banking and so on. And the next question is; does the ADL suggest that Jewish slave owners are beyond criticism?  Is the Jewish State axiomatically on the right side of history so neither Farakhan nor the rest of us is entitled to criticise it? And what about Jewish bankers, do they also enjoy a unique immunity? I am sorry to point out, such views only confirm the supremacist and privileged attitude that Farahkan, amongst very few others,  is brave enough to point at.

The question goes further. If Jews do empathise with Blacks and their suffering as we often hear from Jewish leaders, can’t they take a bit of criticism from the likes of Farakhan, Angela Davis or Dieudonne? If Jews care so much about the Other, as many well meaning Jews insist upon telling us, how come all this caring disappears once Farakhan, Davis  or Dieudonne appear on the scene? 

Jewish solidarity is a peculiar concept. It is a self-centred project. Jewish New Yorker Philip Weiss expressed this sentiment brilliantly in an interview with me a few years back. “I believe all people act out of self-interest. And Jews who define themselves at some level as Jews — like myself for instance — are concerned with a Jewish self-interest. Which in my case is: an end to Zionism.” Weiss supports Palestine because he believes it is good for the Jews. For him the Palestinians are natural allies. I believe that if Blacks and Palestinians or anyone else  wants to liberate themselves and to obtain the equality they deserve, they can actually learn from Zionism. Rather than counting on solidarity, they have to shape their own fate by defining their priorities. In fact this is exactly what is so unique about Farakhan and Dieudonne. This is probably why Jewish organisations see them as prime enemies and invest so highly in their destruction.  

Being Ahead of Time

FEBRUARY 17, 2020 BY GILAD ATZMON

By Gilad Atzmon

https://www.unz.com/

In my recent book, Being in Time, I analyse Jewish controlled opposition. I argue that some self-identified Jews end up being on both polar extremes of every debate that is even mildly relevant to Jewish existence: Those who have recently been disturbed about the Jews who are at the centre of the impeachment trial have also found that Jews hold key positions on Trump’s defense team. Those who accuse Jews of pushing immigration and multiculturalism can’t deny that Trump’s senior policy advisor on immigration is Stephen Miller and that breitbart.com was “conceived in Jerusalem.” The Palestinians’ solidarity movement is dominated by a few well organized Jewish solidarity groups that do little but divert the discourse from the Palestinian right of return and exhaust the movement in their relentless witch-hunting of truth speakers and seekers.

In Being in Time, I point out that as soon as an issue or event is identified as a potential Jewish problem, a Jewish satellite dissent emerges to ‘calm things down.’ As soon as Corbyn became the modern Amalek (‘existential threat’), Jews for Jeremywas formed to dismantle the idea that Jews hate Corbyn collectively. Those who view Capitalism as a Jewish construct are similarly reminded that Marx was also a Jew. In Being in Time I argue that none of this is necessarily conspiratorial. It is only natural for Jews to denounce the crimes that are committed on ‘their behalf’ by a state that defines itself as ‘The Jewish State.’ The same applies to Jews who are genuinely tormented by the vast over representation of Jews in some problematic spheres. Yet, the outcome of all this is potentially volatile: every crucial debate regarding the West and its future; Globalism, Neocons wars, capitalism, immigration, multiculturalism, Israel and so on, is too frequently reduced into an internal Jewish exchange.

It was therefore just a matter of time before some Jews would admit that the involvement of a few prominent Jewish celebrities in some spectacular sex crimes is becoming rather embarrassing and even dangerous for the Jews.

It seems as if Jonah Goldberg has launched the ‘Jews against pedophilia’ campaign. Today, The Jewish World Review published an article titled “French pedo flap a cautionary tale for OUR cultural aristocrats.” In the commentary, Goldberg digs into the activities of Jewish radical ideology, along with those of the notorious paedophile, Gabriel Matzneff.

Goldberg was triggered by a New York Times article that examined the rise and fall of the paedophilia devotee. Matzneff is 83, an old man now, but he has been the darling of the French literary world and media for decades: his work was supported by leading newspapers and literary publications. “He’d appear on highbrow TV shows,” Goldberg writes, where he’d “regale interviewers and audiences with the sublime pleasures of having sex with children in France and on sex tours of southeast Asia.”

In his book “Under 16 Years Old,” Matzneff wrote, “To sleep with a child, it’s a holy experience, a baptismal event, a sacred adventure.”

But the contrast Goldberg draws between Jeffrey Epstein and Matzneff is surprisingly clumsy: “The well-connected billionaire spent vast sums to keep his sexual abuses at least somewhat secret. Matzneff not only confessed to his crimes, his confessions were celebrated as literary contributions.” I feel the need to remind Goldberg that nicknaming one’s plane the “Lolita Express” is hardly an attempt to hide one’s sexual morbidity and crimes. If anything Matzneff is like Epstein in that both celebrated a peculiar sense of impunity. Needless to mention, no Jewish outlet denounced either of them or their not very secretive activities before they were caught and charged.

Jewish Radicals and the role of the Orgasm

Next comes the ‘rationalisation.’ “Matzneff was a Child of 68,” Goldberg writes, “a product of the left-wing ‘May 68’ movement that shook France in the 1960s. These radicals subscribed to the idea that anything smacking of traditionalism or bourgeois morality was backward. Conventional sexual morality was part of the same rotten edifice as imperialism and racism.”

Goldberg doesn’t approve of the ‘Jewish radicals and their ideology. He reminds us that “a few years ago, Daniel Cohn-Bendit (a.k.a. Dany le Rouge), the famous former radical and leader of the European Green movement, got in hot water for his earlier writings and statements about “erotic” encounters with 5-year-olds. He (Cohn-Bendit ) dodged major consequences by disavowing his own words, saying they were merely intended to provoke.”

Goldberg is a well-known and successful writer, he could have published his criticism of Matzneff and Jewish radicals in numerous national American news outlets but, presumably he made the decision to use a Jewish outlet. Whether intentionally or not, Goldberg provides an insight into Jewish survival strategy in general and Jewish controlled opposition in particular. Criticizing radical philosophy and the advocacy of pedophilia on ideological grounds by Jews in a Jewish media outlet conveys the image that Jews can deal with their problems. The goyim should let it go or, even better, move on.

But Goldberg’s account is either mistaken or misleading. The sex revolution that branched into advocating paedophilia wasn’t invented in 1968. Its radical Jewish roots take us back to the 1920-30s and, in particular, to the early work of Wilhelm Reich.

The Following is an excerpt from Being in Time in which I delve into Wilhelm Reich and his ‘genital utopia.’

In his 1933 work, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, Jewish Marxist and Freudian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich attempted to explain the striking victory of ‘reactionary’ Fascism over ‘progressive’ Communism. Reich was desperate to rescue the relevance of revolutionary Marxism. In order to do so he formed a new ‘post Marxist’ theoretical outlook to explain why the Germans of his time favoured ‘authoritarianism’ over a ‘preferable’ communist revolution.

According to Reich, the attraction of reactionary and conservative politics and the inclination towards fascism is driven by a long history of rigid, authoritarian patriarchy which affects the family, parenting, primal education and eventually, society as a whole.
Of course, the remarkable popularity of fascism in Europe could have provided the scientifically-orientated Reich with a clear refutation of Marxist working class politics, theories and predictions. After all, dialectical Marxism had failed as a social theory as well as a methodical prophecy. But for some reason, he, like many other Jewish intellectuals of his time, decided to stick with Marx. Hoping to rescue what was left of dialectical materialism, and insisting that true communist political revolution would prevail once sexual repression was overthrown, Reich synthesized Marx and Freud into a ‘Sex Revolution.’

Wilhelm Reich posited that sexual liberation on a mass scale would save Marxist dogmatism and working people as well. In chapter five of The Mass Psychology of Fascism, he declared war on the patriarchal and conservative family which he saw as being at 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.”

In the eyes of the neo-Marxist affection, both romanticism and traditional family values were obstacles to socialist reform and Reich’s vehicle towards the new world order was … orgasm! In his 1927 study, The Function of the Orgasm, he came to 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 was leading to what some critical cynics dubbed “genital utopia.”

Reich believed that for women within the patriarchal society, sex was within the realm of duty and/or restricted to procreation. “The maintenance of the authoritarian family institution requires more than economic dependence of wife and children on husband and father. This dependence can be tolerated only under the condition that the consciousness of being a sexual being is extinguished as far as possible in women and children. The woman is not supposed to be a sexual being, only the producer of children.”(The Mass Psychology of Fascism, Wilhelm Reich pg 56 37. Ibid pg 56)

Within the traditional society, the woman was robbed of any libidinal consciousness: “This idealization of motherhood is essentially a means of keeping women from developing a sexual consciousness and from breaking through the barriers of sexual repression, of keeping alive their sexual anxieties and guilt feelings. The very existence of woman as a sexual being would threaten authoritarian ideology; her recognition and social affirmation would mean its collapse.” Women were mere baby factories, who had only an instrumental role because: “Imperialistic wars require that there be no rebellion in the women against the function that is imposed on them, that of being nothing but child-bearing machines.” This description of the woman and the family fits the traditional Jewish orthodox family rather better than, say, the German, French, Italian or Spanish family cell.

But Wilhelm Reich wasn’t only a dialectic social revolutionary, he was also a pragmatist. He invented the Orgone Energy Accumulator, a wooden box about the size of a telephone booth, lined with metal and insulated with steel wool. The Orgone itself was a vague concept: an esoteric energy, a universal life force that was massless yet omnipresent and promised to charge up the body with the life force that circulated in the atmosphere and which he christened “orgone energy.” His Orgone box promised to improve “orgastic potency” and, by extension, physical and mental health . Thus, the newly liberated Western subject was invited to experience the true meaning of Marx and Freud through sweating towards full emancipation by means of accumulating ‘Orgone energy’ in this wooden box.

Those who watched Woody Allen’s comedy film Sleeper (1973) probably remember the Orgasmatron – the orgasm inducing machine. In Allen’s satirical take on Reich’s Orgone box, it is actually the authoritarian regime that encourages its citizens to emancipate themselves by means of their genitalia. In Allen’s prophetic movie, the orgasm, like consumerism is a reward from the oppressive regime that diverts the masses’ attention from their existential misery.

The ‘authoritarian’ Germans, both fascist and communist, quickly expelled Reich from their ranks. By 1934, even Freud didn’t want anything to do with Reich. The progressive Americans however, tolerated his ideas, at least for a while. Reich was eventually arrested and died in an American prison leaving behind some radical minds, still convinced that the Orgone box was acting as a greenhouse for cosmic, libidinal energy. Within the free-ranging pornographic realm in which we live, the universe has become an extended Orgone container: pornography is free to all; genital sex is deemed almost Victorian; heterosexuality, at a certain stage, was on the verge of becoming a marginal adventure. And yet authoritarianism hasn’t disappeared. Quite the opposite; to borrow Marx’s metaphor – it is sex and pornography rather than religion that have become the opium of the masses. And yet, this ‘progressive’ universe in which we live didn’t defeat the inclination towards violence. We are killing millions by proxy in the name of moral interventionism and Coca Cola.

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Jews vs. Israelis

SEPTEMBER 16, 2019 BY GILAD ATZMON

by Gilad Atzmon

 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.”

To illustrate this Pfeffer cites the 2012 Israeli  High Court of Justice decision to deny a petition by writer Yoram Kaniuk and others to allow themselves to be registered solely as ‘Israelis’ as opposed to ‘Jews.’

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.

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Predators United

AUGUST 09, 2019

by Gilad Atzmon

source: http://www.unz.com/gatzmon/predators-united/

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 Hollywood are Jewish. 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.

https://youtu.be/9qaHa3M8q8E

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.

https://youtu.be/vLRT47mvBig

Also watch this reaction of a gentile woman to being called shikse.

https://youtu.be/Vo3qJrl5Pyc

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.

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The Goy Spouse is the New Hitler

JULY 15, 2019

by Gilad Atzmon

In July 2018 the three leading Jewish papers in Britain declared that Jeremy Corbyn, a man who has dedicated his life to the battle against racism, was an “existential threat” to British Jewry. As of today, Mr Corbyn is no longer the enemy  #1. The Labour leader can now chill out. The new global enemy of the Jews is apparently the Goy partner.   Earlier this month, Rafi Peretz, Israel’s education minister likened intermarriage to a  ‘second Holocaust’.

Minister Peretz said that assimilation of Jews around the world, but primarily in the US was “like a second Holocaust.” He also said that, due to intermarriages in the last 70 years, the Jewish people “lost 6 million people.” I guess that if just one more Jew falls for a ‘shikse*’’, the number of ‘lost Jews’ will climb to as many as 6.000.001.  When this happens, the Goy spouse may well have become the new Hitler.

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, was among the American Jewish leaders critical of Peretz’s remarks.  “It’s inconceivable to use the term ‘Holocaust’ to describe Jews choosing to marry non-Jews. It trivializes the Shoah,”  Greenblatt didn’t protest the inhumane attitude to Goyim expressed by Peretz’s supremacist statement. Instead, Greenblatt confirmed what many of us learned to accept long ago: that the Holocaust is the new Jewish God.  Jews can do pretty much whatever they like,  except ‘trivialize” the (holy) Holocaust.

I hope that our  Jewish anti Zionist ‘allies’ at JVP & co now realise that “Jews for Shikzes” (JFS) will probably become their next international ‘solidarity’ move.

*Shiksa (Yiddish: שיקסע, romanized: shikse) is a horrid derogatory Yiddish term often used by European Jews to mean a non-Jewish woman or girl.

When Jews Invoke The Holocaust

July 01, 2019  /  Gilad Atzmon

by Gilad Atzmon

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”

Full press release: https://www.neveragainaction.com/press/for-immediate-release-two-hundred-jews-shut-down-elizabeth-detention-center-36-arrested-say-never-again-is-now …

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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.

Making Prayer Safer: 94% of DHS Grants to Enhance Security Goes to Jewish Groups

By Philip Giraldi
Source

There is an unfortunate tendency in the United States to throw money at a problem, particularly when the problem is related to powerful constituencies. The recent attacks on synagogues, churches, and mosques have included two attacks on synagogues in Pittsburgh and San Diego that killed 12 and a shooting at a Texas church in 2017 that killed 26. The recent massacre of 51 Muslims in New Zealand also resonated in the United States.

Attacks on religious sites are increasingly being seen as a national problem in the U.S., even though they are statistically speaking extremely rare, far less frequent than attacks on or inside public schools. The characteristic government response to the incidents has been to authorize and granting money to provide surveillance cameras, bulletproof glass and armed guards for those sites that are considered to be particularly vulnerable.

It also is happening at state and local levels. The New York city council is considering including funding for security at houses of worship in the next year’s budget, while Connecticut is proposing a grant of $5 million to pay for specific physical security upgrades.  Not to be left behind, a bipartisan bill has been introduced in the Senate by Senators Rob Portman and Gary Peters to authorize $75 million in grants to protect religious sites as well as select nonprofit organizations. The nonprofits would include facilities that are considered vulnerable to violence, including abortion clinics.

As usual, however, the devil is in the details and, most particularly, in the process used to determine who gets the cash. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) already doles out considerable money, $1.7 billion in 2019, in grants to various organizations and both governmental and non-governmental entities. Included are grants to “nonprofit” groups that are considered to be particularly targeted by terrorists. This process is not particularly objective and it was reported in 2014 that fully 94% of all grants issued by DHS to enhance security had gone to Jewish groups and their associated facilities. Jewish groups also received nearly all of the grants since the inception of the program in 2005, totaling $151 million. This disparity, which was the case even before the two recent armed attacks on synagogues, is a tribute to the political power of Jewish organizations versus the lack of the same relating to small and relatively impecunious congregations of Christians and Muslims.

Indeed, many religious groups have taken steps on their own, without a government handout, to enhance their own security. They are to be commended for doing so. It is to be presumed that some other houses of worship have been hesitant about upgrading security, even if they can afford it, because they are waiting for the government to cover the costs. Other religious entities have eschewed overt security because it sends the wrong message about their accessibility to the public.

In theory, community policing means that law enforcement officers, paid for by the entire community, will be deployed at locations where their presence contributes to public safety. This is already the case in most towns and cities, where policemen are present and highly visible at the times of religious services to handle traffic and other security problems. This is all accomplished without any particular fuss and without any special federal government grants.

There is also the question of how the grants would be awarded. As noted above, the politically powerful who have access to the bureaucrats will inevitably be the principal beneficiaries. Sarah Levin, director of governmental affairs for the Secular Coalition for America, has observed that there is no particular reason why grants for security enhancement at religious sites should not be made available to anyone who believes him or herself targeted for any particular reason or even for no reason at all. She cites the example of non-religious nonprofits, to include abortion clinics, explaining that “Favoring the security of houses of worship over the security of other communities is not only violation of separation of church and state, it’s wrong.”

Levin is right but she is wrong about the broader acceptability of government issuing grants to specific communities or constituencies that are considered to be threatened. Government should be neutral, leaving it up to local police and the resources of the communities themselves to assess the security situation and provide appropriate protection against potential criminals.

The desire on the part of some in government to pander to some constituencies that are most vocal is understandable, but it is not acceptable to do so because that ultimately means that the state is enabling the activities of one group over another based on a subjective grant-giving process. And doing so also raises moral issues. Why should I as a Roman Catholic who does not believe acceptable some forms of abortion be required to pay taxes to protect the activity of abortion clinics?

The mentality of those in government that compels some legislators to seek to favor certain groups derives from the unfortunate tendency to regard some actions as more heinous than others. Is it really worse to shoot people in a synagogue rather than in an elementary school, requiring national level remedial action consisting of grants to upgrade security in the former rather than the latter?

The willingness of some in government to use taxpayer money to support constituencies near to their hearts rather than based on objective standards that apply to everyone all began with the popularization of the concept of the “hate crime.” For the first time killing, robbing or maiming someone was considered somehow to be worse if hatred for that individual or the group he or she represented was involved. Now we Americans will have religious groups and abortion clinics alike lining up for assistance to protect themselves against maniacs and the ones who shout the loudest will, as ever, get the lion’s share of the money.

There Goes The Neighborhood

May 16, 2019  /  Gilad Atzmon

By Devon Nola

I believe it’s a fair assumption that most social creatures understand when one is the newest arrival to, say, a party or a community, it is their responsibility to ingratiate themselves to the local, existing populace.  The most unwelcome guest is the one who arrives late and then proceeds to redecorate.  But this is exactly what we see happening, repeatedly, when Hasidic Jews descend on predominantly gentile communities.  In every case, the arrival of these orthodox groups is met with hostility and resistance by their host.  Is it possible that anti-Jewish sentiment is inherent in the gentile mind or are there natural grievances that need to be explored?

 Having lived for 8 years in a neighborhood that is home to a very large and quite powerful Chabad Lubavitch Hasidic community, I can say there are legitimate grievances.  I began delving into this phenomenon some time ago when I learned about the chaos surrounding Kiryas Joel, a Satmar sect of Hasidim in the town of Monroe in Orange County, NY.  The Satmar purchased land in an unincorporated section of Monroe to relocate some of the sect from Williamsburg in Brooklyn. The community started small, but due to the nature of Jewish ultra orthodox pro-creation practices, it multiplied at lightening speed.  The existing residents of Monroe grew weary as they watched their green, sprawling small town become inundated with multi-family dwellings to house the growing Hasidic population. The Satmar fought to become part of the incorporated section, which would allow them access to public funds. It wasn’t long before plans to annex massive acres of public land were put in motion for Jewish-only use and this sparked a fire storm between the two communities.  The details of the struggle can be seen in this 2016 documentary, Love Thy Neighbor.   Another issue was the exceedingly high numbers of Hasidics, who typically vote in blocs, impacting the local governing board in their favor, at the expense of the rest of the population.  Public school funds were being diverted to Jewish-only yeshivas. In some cases, public schools have actually collapsed as a result of this. It’s worth mentioning Kiryas Joel has the highest poverty rate in the nation (although, it is estimated that the dynasty controls $1 billion in assets in the U.S.)    More than 2/3 of the population live below the poverty line with 40% receiving food stamps.  So, we see a large handout to this community with zero return on investment.

In Rockland County, NY, the once idyllic suburban community of Ramapo has become chaotic with conflict due to the rapidly expanding Hasidic community.  The formerly picturesque neighborhoods with manicured lawns inside picket fences have been consumed by high-density multi-family dwellings.  In Ramapo, early residents bought single family homes and expected it to remain a neighborhood of single-family homes. This helps to preserve the value and the esthetic of the neighborhood.  But suddenly, they found themselves living next to a monstrous multi-family dwelling when the previous home had been leveled by the new orthodox owner and replaced with a structure housing four families. Another house was turned into a yeshiva. In one case, a trailer was dumped on the once-green lawn and the new Hasidic owner was running a business out of it.  It doesn’t seem as though rational people should need zoning laws enforced to tell them not to do this. Look around. Is anyone else operating a business out of trailer on their front lawn?

While the exploding demand for housing might be advantageous to property values in the short term, there are pitfalls. The increasing number of tax-exempt yeshivas and synagogues left crumbs in the town’s tax base.   Negligent (or greedy) city officials looked the other way, ignoring zoning, building and fire safety code violations. This created environmental implications by putting a strain on the sewer system, creating dangerous traffic congestion and in, some cases,  made it impossible for first responders to find an address since there was no municipal record of it. They ultimately overrun school boards and town councils, get zoning laws changed in their favor and in the end, property values plummet.

The neighboring communities, horrified by what happened in Ramapo, took measures to safeguard their town.  A significant step was having their local government put in place “no-knock” ordinances, prohibiting the oh-so common practice of hardcore real estate solicitation.  Hasidim come out in droves, knocking on doors, using very unethical methods such as intimidation, offering fistfuls of cash, in an effort to get the homeowner to sell. This practice is known as “blockbusting”. It’s intrusive and more importantly, it’s illegal and has been since 1968.  Nevertheless, they ignore the law and come back, repeatedly, in the hopes of wearing down the homeowner.  They often threaten the if they don’t sell. Many towns are now adopting this “no-knock” ordinance as a direct result of relentless orthodox solicitation.  Violation of the ordinance carries a fine anywhere from $100-$1250, depending on the town.

Watch Troublemakers in Ramapo:

We have seen these conflicts in virtually every suburban neighborhood on which the ultra-orthodox Jews descend.  Mahwah, in New Jersey, got a jump start.  After seeing the take-over in neighboring townships, they weren’t going to wait for the situation to accelerate.  The first sign of an eruv prompted the residents to put it into high gear. An eruv is essentially a symbolic boundary designated by white PVC pipe fixed to utility poles. This marks the area in which the orthodox Jews can engage in tasks the Torah forbids on the sabbath.  Apparently, G-d’s divine vision can’t see passed PVC. In the case of Mahwah, the eruv was put up by orthodox Jews from Orange County, NY.  Holy expansionism. Mahwah residents were already experiencing a problem in their community park, where the out-of-state Hasidim were crossing the state border, by the bus load, sometimes exceeding 100 people.  It made the park so over-crowded that local Mahwah residents weren’t bringing their own children to play for fear of injury based on the number of occupants.

Mahwah had very clear ordinances about signage within the community.  There are to be none. This ordinance, which is legal, had always been enforced. Not even so much as a ‘missing dog’ sign had ever been posted.  Residents of a township have the right to determine things like signage, overnight parking, etc., in their community and the ordinances are there to protect these decisions as long as they aren’t discriminatory or selectively enforced. However, the Bergen Rockland Eruv Association didn’t see it that way and filed a law suit, claiming the Mahwah residents were discriminating against them based on their religion. The Eruv Association insisted that the orthodox families had the right to religious freedom and the eruv was there to preserve this.  Apparently, the rights of the non-orthodox, who actually live and pay taxes in Mahwah, don’t figure into this equation.

In the end the Mahwah township council members, following the advice of their legal representation and under pressure from state government, voted 5-2 to settle.  The Eruv stayed, the township paid the Bergen Rockland Jewish association’s legal fees of $10,000 and the settlement stated that nothing would prevent the eruv association from expanding the boundary in the future.  Ahh, but the Mahwah residents didn’t walk away completely empty-handed.  The settlement stated that the PVC pipe would be painted to blend in with the pole.  Jackpot.

And this brings us to Lakewood, New Jersey, the latest victims of these unfriendly take-overs. Lakewood is in Ocean County.  What was once a rural vacation community is now home to one of the largest yeshivahs in the world. The population is exploding, as it often happens with Hasidic communities and with this comes all the problems we’ve seen in the other towns. Blockbusting, diversion of public-school funds for private Jewish institutions, taxpayers’ money and funds for public school buses have been siphoned to bus children to and from the Jews only school, over development of lands, negative impact on the environment due to over population, traffic congestion, etc. plague this community.  Even a senior community was overrun by these orthodox Jews. A serene, gated golf community, The Enclave, was where affluent people, 55 and over, thought they would take their last breath. They forged friendships and joked how the only way they would leave their community was feet first.  Sadly, that’s not how things turned out.  Aggressive solicitation began.  Seniors are often a vulnerable community to predatory practices,  and when they were told, “you better sell, you don’t want to be the only non-orthodox left in the community”, many panicked and relented to the pressure.  Eventually the golf course was slated to be replaced by multi-family dwellings to accommodate more Hasidim. Beginning with the first few orthodox that moved into The Enclave, trouble began to brew. The security bar at a side entrance, which wasn’t preventing strangers (or aggressive solicitors) from entering the community on foot as it should, was to be replaced with a proper gate operated by a card swipe. One orthodox man, who used this entrance on his way to synagogue on the sabbath, objected. He wasn’t permitted to use the technology that would open the gate. When the board wasn’t persuaded to reconsider the new gate, he filed a discrimination complaint with New Jersey Division on Civil Rights.  It begs the question, why on earth would one buy in a gated community full of goyim?  Future plans to have regulations put in place at the pool so that men and women would have separate swim times was also on the orthodox agenda. This was instituted in another community and violators were fined.

 A group, Rise Up Ocean County, is fighting back. RUOC is a collective of engaged citizens from approximately five townships, including Lakewood.  Their mission is concise: Mobilizing to preserve and improve the quality of life in Ocean County.  They have had enough of the yeshiva’s practices of “fueling ugly, unhealthy, inequitable economic development”, as quoted by the Jewish commentary outlet, ‘The Forward.’  RUOC is working on a documentary on this ordeal and here you can see a little taste, which exposes the 10 orthodox Rabbis that make up the Vaad, or council. They wield their power far beyond the religious community to influence public policy in their favor. If this power or their actions are contested, they rely on attacks of antisemitism.  I’ll be honest, if this is the definition of ‘Semitism,’ they give their neighbors ample reason to be disgruntled.

While Hasidim pride themselves on their love of community, it seems many of them don’t apply this fellowship in universal terms. What is it that drives such an institutional collective dismissal of the Other?   Why is it they don’t learn from their past?  I’m fairly confident that other than finding them a bit curious, no one would reject them if they didn’t insinuate themselves into lives outside Haredim.  Learning to live cooperatively as opposed to competitively with their neighbors might result in much more harmonious existence for everyone.

Netanyahu is not the Disease, he is a Symptom

March 25, 2019  /  Gilad Atzmon

By Gilad Atzmon

In a recent thought-provoking article Gideon Levy, probably one of the last genuine Israeli voices for peace, claims that “It is not Netanyahu who is responsible for Israeli ‘racism, extreme nationalism, divisiveness, incitement, hatred, anxiety and corruption.’” Behind Netanyahu, Levy says, there’s a nation of voters and other elected officials that aren’t very different from their leader.

“Simply put, the people are the problem… There are those who have hated Arabs long before Netanyahu. There are those who despise blacks, detest foreigners, exploit the weak and look down their noses at the whole world – and not because of Netanyahu. There are those who believe they are the chosen people and therefore deserve everything.”

Levy reaffirms the observation that I have been pushing for two decades. The problem with Israel is not of a political kind. The conflict with the Palestinians or the Arabs is not of a political nature as some delusional characters within the Palestinian solidarity movement have been proclaiming for years. Israel defines itself as the Jewish state. In order to grasp Israel, its politics, its policies and the intrusive nature of its lobby, we must understand the nature of Jewishness. We must learn to define the differences between Jews (the people), Judaism (the religion) and Jewishness (the ideology). We have to understand how those terms are related to each other and how they influence Israeli and Jewish politics globally.

Levy writes that “there are those who think that after the Holocaust, they are permitted to do anything. There are those who believe that Israel is tops in the world in every field, that international law doesn’t apply to it, and that no one can tell it what to do. There are those who think Israelis are victims – always victims, the only victims – and that the whole world is against us. There are those who are convinced that Israel is allowed to do anything, simply because it can.”

In order to understand what Levy is referring to we must dig into the core of Jewish identification and once and for all grasp the notion of Jewish choseness. Levy contends that “racism and xenophobia are deeply entrenched here, far more deeply than any Netanyahu…The apartheid did not start with him and will not end with his departure; it probably won’t even be dented. One of the most racist nations in the world cannot complain about its prime minister’s racism.” Netanyahu as such, is not the disease. He is a mere symptom.

The devastating news is that neither the Israeli ‘Left’ nor the Jewish so-called ‘anti’ Zionist league are any less racist than their Zionist foes. The Israeli Left pushes for a ‘two state solution.’ It crudely ignores the Palestinian cause i.e. the Right of Return. The Israeli Left advocates segregation and ghettoization; not exactly the universal message of harmony one would expect from ‘leftists.’ Disturbingly, the Diaspora Jewish ‘anti’ Zionist Left is even more racially exclusive than the Israeli Right. As I have explored many times in the past, Corbyn’s ‘favourite Jewish political group namely, Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL)  is a racially exclusive political cell. It wouldn’t allow gentiles into its Jews-only club. Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) is no better. It will happily take donations from Goyim but will never allow those Goyim to become its board members.

Levy proclaims that “Netanyahu is the best thing to ever happen to Israeli politics – you can dump everything on him.” But in his most astute observation, which has been explored before by Uri Avnery (may he rest in peace) and yours truly, Levy continues, “It would be great if some local Nelson Mandela would arise, a brave leader with vision who would change the country’s basic values and lead a revolution. But no such person has been born here, and it’s doubtful he ever will be.”

Levy points at the core of the Zionist failure. If early Zionism was a promise to civilise the diaspora Jew by means of ‘homecoming,’ Israel happened to do the complete opposite. Not much is left out of the Zionist promise to make the Jews ‘people like all other people’: as Israel is about to perpetrate another colossal war crime in Gaza, we have to admit that we are dealing with an institutionally racist and dangerous identity like no other.

Forget “anti-semitism, this is real racism: israelis ‘undergo Jewish DNA test before being allowed to marry’

Israelis ‘undergo Jewish DNA test before being allowed to marry’

MEMO | March 12, 2019

DNA test sample [File photo]

Israel’s rabbinate “has been performing genetic testing on Israelis from the former Soviet Union, to check if they are ‘genetically Jewish’ as a condition for marriage registration”, according to Ynet.

The new site reported that “at least 20 couples have come forward after having been asked to undergo the procedure in the past year.”

“Although the existence of such tests was initially denied by Interior Minister Aryeh Deri, Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi David Lau admitted to having requested that some couples prove their Jewish status,” Ynet added, noting that “Lau claimed those were isolated incidents and there was no coercion.”

Ynet’s investigation revealed that “the complicated procedure was undertaken not only by the couples themselves but also by their relatives.”

“In one instance, a young woman who went to the rabbinate before her wedding was asked to conduct a DNA test along with her mother and her aunt, in order to eliminate the possibility that her mother was adopted,” the article stated.

“The young woman was told that if she refused the request, her marriage application would be denied,” Ynet added. “The rabbinate has control over Jewish religious rites in Israel.”

“According to the evidence accumulated by Ynet, these instances are examples of what appears to be a growing phenomenon where those applying to register for marriage, are being asked to undergo genetic testing if they want to have their requests granted,” the paper stated.

“Unfortunately, there are immigrants who, despite their eligibility under the Law of Return, are not defined as Jews according to Halacha,” said Lau in response. “In a few cases, there are those who claim to be Jews, but don’t possess the necessary documents to confirm it…or we find contradictions between their statements and what we would uncover about them”.

“In these cases we suggest undergoing DNA tests that would strengthen their claims,” he said. “It’s never forced upon anyone and only used to assist applicants in the research process.”

So much for the ridiculous claim that israel is a democracy: israeli Supreme Court Refuses to Allow Discussion of Full Equal Rights & ‘State of All Its Citizens’ Bill in Knesset

Israeli Supreme Court Refuses to Allow Discussion of Full Equal Rights & ‘State of All Its Citizens’ Bill in Knesset

By Adalah,

The Israeli Supreme Court early this afternoon, Sunday, 30 December 2018, dismissed the petition filed by Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel on behalf of Knesset Members Jamal Zahalka, Hanin Zoabi, and Joumah Azbarga (Joint List) against the Knesset Presidium’s decision to reject their proposed bill Basic Law: State of all its Citizens. In doing so, the Supreme Court refused to even allow a discussion of equal rights and a state for all of its citizens in the Knesset.

The Knesset Presidium refused to allow the submission of the bill – which declares Israel a “state of all its citizens” – based on the claim that Israel is a Jewish state.  This bill was initiated by Zahalka, Zoabi, and Azbarga in response to the new Basic Law – The Nation State of the Jewish People, passed by the Knesset in mid-July 2018.

The judgment follows a hearing on the petition last week, Monday, 24 December 2018, during which the justices received an announcement of early elections, and the decision to dissolve the 20th Knesset.

Israel Persecuting Palestinian Knesset Member Hanin Zoabi

Adalah General Director Hassan Jabareen (center with hat) speaks to journalists together with Arab members of Knesset on Monday, 24 December 2018, prior to the hearing on their petition at the Israeli Supreme Court in Jerusalem. (Photo by Mati Milstein)

Chief Justice Hayut, who headed the three-justice panel hearing the case, hinted then that the court would consider the MKs’ petition, filed six months ago and not heard to date, as theoretical. Today, the petition was indeed dismissed for these reasons.

As the petition also attacks the constitutionality of the very bylaws used to disqualify the bill, there is no justification for the court’s decision to consider the petition as purely theoretical in nature, in Adalah’s view.

The court today chose to uphold the Knesset Presidium’s decision to prevent its own Palestinian Arab minority members from initiating a bill and a debate to promote democratic values on the basis of equality for all.

Adalah responded immediately to the court’s decision:

“This decision violates the basic right to full equality for Palestinian Arab citizens of the state. This judgment is the second in six years that the Israeli Supreme Court has decided to uphold the Knesset Presidium’s authority to prevent Arab MKs from submitting bills and initiating debate that challenges Israel’s character as a state of the Jewish people only. In both of these cases, the court exploited the announcement of early elections as a justification to dismiss these cases.

“This petition confronts a matter of principle – the right to equality and a state for all its citizens – that will certainly remain in the public discourse and as a key political platform of Arab MKs, and it is not expected to change.”

Adalah’s General Director Hassan Jabareen and Adalah Attorney Fady Khoury represented the Arab MKs in this case.

The original source of this article is Adalah

Jewish Politics in America – A Post Political View

November 14, 2018  /  Gilad Atzmon

I was invited to join the Unz Review, here is a link to my first contribution:

http://www.unz.com/

“The two contradictory Jewish ideologies (Identitarianism and Israelism) are each well- ensconced within the two rival ideologies that are tearing America apart. The red Republican counties want America to be Israel Again. The large metropolitan areas near America’s coasts have adopted the twelve tribes of Israel model – a loose Identitarian coalition threatened by Samaritans, Canaanites, Amalekites or as Hillary Clinton calls them the ‘basket of deplorables.’

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In 1994 I enrolled in a postgraduate course in philosophy at a British University. On my first day at the University I had to complete a few routine administrative duties such as registering my name with the philosophy department and meeting my supervisors. I was also told that I had to join the student union. Being a subservient type, I walked over to the Student Union hall where I soon realized that the task was slightly more complicated than I had expected. There were a plethora of student unions to choose from: The Black Student Union, The Asian Student Association, The Socialist Students, The Gay Student Society and more. Confused, I asked for assistance. They asked where I was from. When I told them “Israel,” I was told that the “Jewish Student Union” was my home.

It was then, at the Student Union Hall, that I first encountered the identity split between Israel and the Jewish Diaspora. It would take some time before I was able to define this binary tension in philosophical or post political terms and before I understood the Jewish dilemma in terms of Nationalist/Identitarian dialectics. Two decades later, the political battle now going on in America is basically an extension of that internal Jewish debate.

Back in 1994 I didn’t see any reason to join the Jewish Student Union. I had never identified ‘as a Jew’ and Judaism meant little to me. Israel was my place of birth. My ‘identity’ as I then saw it was geographically oriented. Fortunately, I managed to complete my postgraduate course without becoming a ‘union member.’ But my thoughts about that morning at the student union hall have evolved into a few controversial books and hundreds of papers on ID politics and the current Identitarian dystopia.

In 2011 I wrote The Wandering Who? A Study of Jewish Identity Politics. The premise of the book was that if Israel defines itself as the ‘Jewish State’ then we have to dissect the meaning of the J-Word. We have to grasp how Judaism (the religion), Jews (the people) and Jewishness (the spirit, ideology and culture) relate to each other and how these terms influence Israeli politics and the activities of the Jewish Lobby around the world. Instead of studying ‘Zionism,’ an archaic term that is not relevant to most Israelis, my book focused on Jewish identifications. I did not address the problematic question of ‘who and what Jews are,’ I tried instead to find out what those who call themselves Jews identify with.

While this question is certainly germane to an understanding of Israel and the Middle East conflict, it is also crucial to an understanding of the current American dystopia. Instead of asking ‘who Americans are’ let us explore what Americans identify with.

In the post-political era, America is divided into two camps, let’s call them Americans and Identitarians. Americans see themselves primarily as American patriots. They often subscribe to a nationalist populist ideology and, like the Israelis, identify with a piece of geography. On the other hand, Identitarians are primarily liberals and progressives. They identify themselves in biological and sociological terms, and they see themselves first as LGBTQ, Latino, Black, Jewish, feminist etc. Their bond with the American nationalist ethos is at most secondary and often non-existent.

This division in America between ‘nationalism’ and ‘identitarianism’ is similar to the dichotomy I observed at the student union hall in 1994. In fact, Israel has become a prime model for American nationalists. Similarly, it is Jewish progressive ideology that inspires Identitarians globally and in America in particular. It is the pervasiveness of Jewish ideologies within both nationalist and Identitarian discourses that sustains the dominance of Jewish and Israeli political institutions in American politics.

The Israeli Lobby’s hegemony over American foreign policy and its force in advocating policies that favor Israel has been widely recognized. Numerous studies on the topic have been published, such as: The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Polic^y (Prof John Mearsheimer and Prof Stephen Walt), The Power of Israel in The United State (Professor James Petras). Alison Weir’s website, If Americans Knew routinely presents a devastating chronicle of Israeli intervention in American politics. The Washington Report on the Middle East Affairs has been producing outstanding work as well. The crucial question is, why have Americans let this happen?

My study of Jewish ID politics suggests that America isn’t just influenced by one Jewish lobby or another. The entire American political-cultural-spiritual spectrum has been transformed into a internal Jewish exchange. Most American do not see the true nature of the battle they participate in and, for the obvious reasons, their media and their academics do not help. It is more convenient to keep Americans in the dark.

America is rapidly moving towards a civil war. The divide isn’t only ideological or political. The split is geographical, spiritual, educational and demographical. In a Voxarticle titled, “The Midterm Elections Revealed that America is in a Cold Civil War,” Zack Beauchamp writes, “This is a country fundamentally split in two, with no real room for compromise.” Of the midterm election Beauchamp reports that “American politics is polarized not on the basis of class or even ideology, but on identity… One side open to mass immigration and changes to the country’s traditional racial hierarchy, the other is deeply hostile to it.” He correctly observes that “Republicans and Democrats see themselves as part of cultural groups that are fundamentally distinct: They consume different media and attend different churches; live in distinct kinds of places and rarely interact with people who disagree with them.”

Despite this American schism, Israel and its Lobby are somehow able to influence both sides, managing to finding pathways to the secluded corridors of both parties. Although Democrats and Republicans can no longer talk to each other, it seems that both are happy to talk to Israel and the Lobby. And it is at AIPAC’s annual conference that these political foes compete in their eagerness to appease a foreign state. This anomaly in American politics demands attention.

As a former Israeli, I had not observed the effects of the Israel/ Jewish Diaspora dilemma until I had my experience at the Student Union Hall in Britain. Israel was born with the Zionist desire to eradicate the identity of Jews as cosmopolitans. Zionism promised to bond the Jew with the soil, with a territory, with borders. Thus, it is consistent with the Zionist paradigm that Israel is notorious for its appalling treatment of asylum seekers, immigrants and, of course, the indigenous people of the land. Israel has surrounded itself with separation walls. Israel deployed hundreds of snipers in its fight to stop the March of Return – a ‘caravan’ of Palestinian refugees who were marching towards its border. Israel has been putting into daily practice that which Trump has promised to deliver. For a Trump supporter, Israel’s politics is a wet dream. Maybe Trump should consider tweaking his motto in 2020 into ‘Let’s make America Israel.’ This would encompass building separation walls, bullying America’s neighbors, the potential to cleanseAmerica of the ‘enemy within,’ and so on. It is not surprising that in 2016 Trump beat Clinton in an Israeli absentee exit poll. The Israelis do love Trump. To them, he is a vindication of their hawkish ideological path. Although during the election Trump was castigated as a vile anti-Semite and a Hitler figure by the Jewish progressive press, once elected, Fox News was quick to point out that Trump was actually the ‘First Jewish President.’

We can see that Israel, Trump and his voters have a lot in common. They want militant anti immigration policies , they love ‘walls,’ they hate Muslims and they believe in borders. When alt right icon Richard Spencer described himself on Israeli TV as “a White Zionist” he was actually telling the truth. Israel puts into practice the ideas that Spencer and Trump can so far only entertain. But the parallels between Israel and the Trump administration’s Republican voters is just one side of the story.

In my recent book, Being in Time – A Post Political Manifesto, I point out that while the old, good Left tried to unite us by insisting that it was not important whether one was Black, a Woman, a Muslim, a Jew or Gay; in the class war, we were all united against capitalism. It was the new Left that taught us to speak ‘as a’: as a Jew, as a Gay, as a Black and so on. Instead of being one people united in the struggle for justice and equality, within the post political realm we are pulled into endless identity battles.

Seemingly, this Identitarian revolution has been inspired by a few Jewish ideological and philosophical schools including, most importantly, the Frankfurt School. Truth must be said, when it comes to ID politics, Diaspora Jewish ideologists are often slightly more advanced than others, not because Jews are more clever than anyone else but simply because Jews have engaged in identity politics far longer than anyone else. While Gay identity politics is about four decades old and Feminism is maybe a century old, Jewish identity politics started in Babylon two and a half millennia ago. In fact, Judaism can be realised as an exilic Identitarian project. It deliberately and carefully sustains Jewish cultural, spiritual and physical segregation. Although Jews often drop their religion and dispose of God, many cling to Jewishness. For one reason or another, Jews often choose to operate within Jews- only political cells such as Jewish Voice for Peace, Jewish Voice for Labour and so on. These Jewish bodies tend to preach inclusiveness while practicing exclusivity.

So it is hardly surprising that Jewish Identitarian philosophy and Jewish Identitarian success provides the model that inspires most, if not all, Identitarian politics within the New Left milieu in general and the current Democratic Party in particular. This isn’t the place to discuss at length or in depth the reasons behind Jewish identitarian success, however, it should be mentioned that while most Identitarians are taught to celebrate victimhood, to blame others for their misfortune, Jewish Identitarianism has a subtle dynamic balance between victimhood and entitlement.

Naturally, Jewish ideologists are at the helm of the Identitarian revolution. Maybe more well known is the fact that a chief funder of that revolution is financier George Soros and his Open Society Institute. Soros may genuinely believe in the Identitarian future: It is cosmopolitan, it is global, it defies borders and states but far more significantly, it also serves to divert attention from Wall Street and capitalist crimes: as long as Identitarians fight each other, no one bothers to fight Wall Street, Goldman Sachs and corporate tyranny. Soros didn’t invent this strategy, it has long been called ‘divide and conquer.’

The abovesheds light on the depth of influence of Jewish politics in America. While Israel is an exemplar of contemporary Republican goals, Democrats are emulating Jewish Diaspora identitarianism. The two contradictory Jewish ideologies are each well- ensconced within the two rival ideologies that are tearing America apart. The red Republican counties want America to be Israel Again. Thelarge metropolitan areas near America’s coasts have adopted the twelve tribes of Israel model – a loose Identitarian coalition threatened by Samaritans, Canaanites, Amalekites or as Hillary Clinton calls them the ‘basket of deplorables.’

The story of Jewish political strength in America doesn’t end there. A New York Jew can easily metamorphosize from an hard-core Identitarian into rabid Zionist settler and vice versa, but such a manoeuvre is not available to ordinary Americans. White nationalist Richard Spencer can not make the political shift that would turn him into a progressive or a liberal just as it is unlikely that a NY transsexual icon would find it possible to become a ‘redneck.’ While Jewish political identity is inherently elastic and can morph endlessly, the American political divide is fairly rigid. Jewish ideologists frequently change positions and camps, they shift from left to right, from Clinton to Trump (Dershowitz), they support immigration in their host counties yet oppose it in their own Jewish State, they are against rigid borders and even states in general, yet support the two state solution in Palestine (Chomsky). Gentiles are less flexible. They are expected to be coherent and consistent.

It was this manoeuvrability that made PM Netanyahu’s 2015 speech in front of a joint session of Congress a ‘success,’ although it might well have been considered a humiliation for any American with an ounce of patriotic pride. As we wellknow, Bibi can communicate easily with both Republicans and Democrats just as he cansimultaneously befriend Trump and Putin. He deploys snipers at the Gaza border with orders to kill while considerately peppering his statements with LGBTQ human rights advocacy. Not many Americans have dared to address this topic, but I believe that there are some who, by now, can see the situation clearly.

It was the Israeli in me who saw the disparity between ‘Israeli’ and ‘Jew’ at the Student Union Hall because I was raised as an Israeli patriot. I was trained to love and even die for the soil I mistakenly believed to be mine. As an Israeli, I was also trained to think tribal but speak universal, and I learned how to whine as a victim yet exercise oppression. But at a certain point in my life, around my thirties, I started to find all of it too exhausting. I wanted to simplify things. I demoted myself into an ordinary human being.

Questioning Jewish Progressive Wisdom

November 02, 2018  /  Gilad Atzmon

There is an element of truth in the above…

By Gilad Atzmon

Earlier this week the Jewish Forward reported on Monday’s counter-Trump demonstration in Pittsburgh.

“They came in their thousands, singing Jewish songs and folksy protest anthems … (they were) holding signs denouncing Donald Trump as ‘President Hate.’”

I think it is not a clever move for leftist Jewish groups to declare that Trump is to blame for the terror attack in Pittsburgh. In fact, some might see it as irresponsible, and a response that could easily provoke further harassment and violence.

Most disturbing to me about the Jewish progressives’ response to Trump’s visit was the blunt dishonesty reflected in the signs and announcements of the protestors and organisers.

According to the Forward one sign read,

“you know who else was a nationalist? Hitler.”

Hitler was indeed a nationalist but so was Churchill, Gandhi, Herzl and even the 52% of the Brits who voted for Brexit. Nationalism isn’t the problem: Racism is.  Accordingly, we tend to believe that it was racism that drove Hitler’s discriminatory ideology. But the ‘progressive’  Jewish groups who opposed Trump this week aren’t free of racism. They themselves are operating as racially exclusive political groups. I have said it many times before. I struggle to see a categorical difference between Aryans only and Jews only clubs. To me, both are equally racist.

“Speakers from Bend the Arc, the progressive Jewish group that organised the march, castigated Trump and what they saw as his complicity in the attack, allegedly perpetrated by an anti-Semite who shared Trump’s anti-refugee views.”

It is comforting to learn that  Jewish progressives support some refugees; do they also support the Palestinian refugees?

Israel has prevented the ethnically cleansed Palestinians from returning  to their land for more than 70 years.  The Jewish State’s record on refugees and asylum seekers is appalling. But it seems the progressive Jews at Bend the Arc have little to say about that. I searched Bend the Arc’s web site and didn’t find any denouncements of the Jewish State’s anti refugee policies.  Maybe in the Jewish progressive universe one rule applies to the Jewish State and another rule to the sea of Goyim.

Noticeably,  the Bend the Arc event was not the only protest in town: A previous rally event had been held nearby, organized by the leftist Jewish group IfNotNow in collaboration with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and other groups.

“We know Trump is responsible for violence in our city,” IfNotNow and DSA organizer Arielle Cohen told the Forward. “ Trump has been the enabler-in-chief.” I fail to see the evidence that supports Cohen’s strongly worded accusations. And I wonder whether the decision makers at IfNotNow and JVP grasp the danger they may inflict on their communities by making such provocative accusations.

It is interesting to contrast this reaction to that of the members of the African American congregation that was targeted in 2015 by Dylann Roof, a self-professed racist shooter, who killed 9 people who had invited him into their bible study. After the shooting, Mr. Roof was unrepentant but the reaction of the victims and their families contrasts sharply with the progressive reaction to the Pittsburg massacre.

At Mr. Roof’s bond hearing, the victim’s relatives spoke directly to Roof. “You took something very precious from me”  Nadine Collier, the daughter of Ethel Lance said. “But I forgive you. And have mercy on your soul.”

“I acknowledge that I am very angry,” said the sister of DePayne Middleton-Doctor. “But one thing that DePayne … taught me that we are the family that love built. We have no room for hating, so we have to forgive. I pray God on your soul.”

Each speaker offered Roof forgiveness and said they were praying for his soul, even as they described the pain of their losses. Not one speaker blamed political leaders or anti Black sentiment. They correctly saw Roof as the culprit, even as they compassionately prayed for him. There is much to admire in the congregation’s reaction. It was the opposite of inflammatory, intended to calm the situation.

If the goal is to unite America, to bridge the divide and calm things down, probably equating your president with Hitler and accusing him of the hate crimes of others is the worst possible path to choose.

 

Is Citizenship a Jewish Issue?

November 01, 2018  /  Gilad Atzmon

By Eve Mykytyn

Aviya Kushner’s piece in The Forward, “Why Trump’s Callous Call to End Birthright Citizenship is a Jewish Issue,” is a bizarre attempt at victimhood especially after a group of Jews have just experienced real victimhood. Mr. Trump has made no secret of his desire to stop illegal immigration from the south, and Jews may rightly be incensed that he is using immigration as a campaign tactic, particularly demonising Hispanics, but Ms Kushner fails to show how this is a Jewish issue rather than an issue for the United States as a whole.

Ms Kushner begins by raising the alarm that Trump has threatened to strip American-born citizens of their citizenship. First, as Matt Flegenheimer and Jonathan Martin point out in the New York Times, the president’s threat rings hollow. Like his promise of a 10% tax reduction, this seems a campaign line with little chance of success.  Second, his threat, although it is difficult to discern its precise terms, did not seem to be meant to apply retroactively. Third, it is generally accepted that the 14th Amendment, although intended to confer citizenship on former slaves, clearly states that citizenship in the United States is given to all born here. The words are clear.

 “All persons born or naturalised in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Trump has stated erroneously that no other country grants citizenship by birth, once again dissing our neighbor to the north. He is generally correct however, most countries including all of Europe, do not grant citizenship by place of birth alone. So if  citizenship by place of birth is a problem, it is not uniquely a Jewish problem or even an American problem.

Ms Kushner recites a number of places and times that Jews were denied citizenship and/or expelled. She ends this list  with the confusing line that, “Citizenship also means the right to leave. To flee, life intact. By the late 1930s, it became virtually impossible for Jews to find shelter elsewhere.”  While it is true Jews had trouble finding refuge during World War II, the problem was that citizenship did not protect them. In the context of the holocaust, citizenship was irrelevant. If anything, the Nuremberg Laws stripping Jews of their citizenship, encouraged Jews to find safety elsewhere.

“President Trump’s comments that he could override the Constitution and remove citizenship, at will, should send alarms throughout the Jewish community…History says so.”  Actually, there may be many reasons to disagree with President Trump, but perhaps the alarm in the Jewish community should come from incorrectly positing themselves as victims.

Ryan Dawson and Gilad Atzmon on Palestine and the rest of Us

October 15, 2018  /  Gilad Atzmon

In this extended discussion Ryan Dawson and yours truly delve into the Jerusalemisation of our universe. We identify that which sustains tyranny of correctness, the Zionification of our politics and even the elements that control the opposition and suppress a prospect of a better future.

Smear and Shekels

October 04, 2018  /  Gilad Atzmon

By Gilad Atzmon

Haaretz reveals today that Canary Mission a Hasbara defamation outlet that was established to  “spread fear among undergraduate activists, posting more than a thousand political dossiers on student supporters of Palestinian rights,” is funded by one of the largest Jewish charities in the U.S.

According to Haaretz; the Forward, an American Jewish outlet,  “has definitively identified a major donor to Canary Mission. It is a foundation controlled by the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, a major Jewish charity with an annual budget of over $100 million.” We could have guessed the funding was from such an organisation. We somehow knew that it wasn’t the Iranian government or Hamas who sent shekels to the Zionist smear factory.  Haaretz continues, “for three years, a website called Canary Mission has spread fear among undergraduate activists, posting more than a thousand political dossiers on student supporters of Palestinian rights. The dossiers are meant to harm students’ job prospects, and have been used in interrogations by Israeli security officials.”

Canary Mission is indeed a nasty operation and far from unique. We have seen similar efforts within the Jewish institutional universe for some time. It might be reasonable to opine that smear has become a new Jewish industry. Consistent with the rules of economics, many new Jewish bodies have entered the profitable business, and these outlets have competed mercilessly with each other for donations and funds.

This is precisely a variation on the battle we have seen in Britain in the last few years. Almost every British Jewish institution joined the ‘Corbyn defamation’ contest, competing over who could toss the most dirt on the Labour party and its leader. The outcome was magnificent. Last week at Labour’s annual conference, the party unanimously expressed its firm opposition to Israel and took the Palestinian’s side.

Badmouthing is not really a ‘Zionist symptom.’ Unfortunately, it is a Jewish political obsession. In between its fund raisers, it seems that Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) invests a lot of energy in smearing some of the more dedicated truth tellers. Mondoweiss, another Jewish outlet, practices this game as well.

I, myself, have been subjected to hundreds of such smear campaigns by so called ‘anti’ Zionist Jews who were desperate to stop the circulation of my work on Jewish ID politics. But these frantic efforts only served to support my thesis that the issues to do with Israel and Palestine extend far beyond the Zionist/anti debate. We had better dig into the meaning of Jewishness and its contemporary political implications.

Once again the question is, why do self-identified Jewish activists use these ugly tactics? Why do they insist upon smearing and terrorising instead of engaging in a proper scholarly and/or political debate?

Choseness is one possible answer. People who are convinced of their own exceptional nature often lack an understanding of the ‘other.’ This deficiency may well interfere with the ability to evolve a code of universal ethics.

The other answer may have something to do with the battle for funds. As we learned from Haaretz, the Canary Mission is funded by one of the richest Jewish American funds. Badmouthing has value. ‘You defame, we send money.’  Unfortunately this holds for Zionists and ‘anti’ alike.

Crucially, in this battle, Jews often oppose each other.  Haaretz writes that the Canary Mission “has been controversial since it appeared in mid-2015, drawing comparisons to a McCarthyite blacklist.” And it seems that some Zionist Jews eventually gathered that the Canary smear factory gives Jews a bad name.

Tilly Shames, who runs the campus Hillel at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, told the Forward that  “the tactics of the organisation are troubling, both from a moral standpoint, but have also proven to be ineffective and counterproductive,”

Shames said that Canary Mission’s publication of dossiers on students on her campus had led to greater support for the targeted students and their beliefs, and had spread mistrust of pro-Israel students, who were suspected of spying for Canary Mission.

This dynamic can be explained. My study of Jewish controlled opposition postulates that self-identified Jewish activists always attempt to dominate both poles of any debate that is relevant to Jewish interests. Once it was accepted that Palestine was becoming a ‘Jewish problem,’ a number of Jewish bodies became increasingly involved in steering the Palestinian solidarity movement. We then saw that they diluted the call for the Palestinian Right of Return and replaced it with watery notions that, de facto, legitimise Israel.

When it was evident that the Neocon school was, in practice, a Ziocon war machine, we saw bodies on the Jewish Left steer the anti-war call. When some British Jews realised that the Jewish campaign against Corbyn might backfire, they were astonishingly quick to form Jews for Jeremy that rapidly evolved into Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL). The battle over the next British PM became an internal Jewish debate. The rule is simple: every public dispute that is somehow relevant to Jewish interests will quickly become an exclusive internal Jewish debate.

Hillel activists see that Canary Mission is starting to backfire. Together with Forward and Haaretz, they have quickly positioned themselves at the forefront of the opposition.

Jewish Lesson on Racism

October 03, 2018  /  Gilad Atzmon

Text analysis by Gilad Atzmon

The JVL (Jewish Voice for Labour), a pro Corbyn racially exclusive Jews-only cell that does not accept non Jews into its ranks, is attempting to teach us about racism and anti Semitism.

Instead of opposing all forms of racism and bigotry on a universal basis, the Jews only ‘left’ group has adopted the ‘anti Semitism’ cry. Together with FSoI (Free Speech on Israel), a ‘predominantly Jewish campaign group,’ it has published a disturbing document that confirms that their primary concern is Jewish suffering.

The document: https://freespeechonisrael.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/definitionBooklet.pdf

“We,” the Jewish bodies unanimously state,” believe that the following comments will be helpful to those drawing up Labour’s disciplinary code, and perhaps more widely.”

I will review each of the JVL/FSoI’s comments.

Implications of taking this view of antisemitism

1.  Stereotypes

Racism commonly stereotypes groups as inferior in ways that enable discrimination against them. Such stereotypes function by scapegoating a targeted group, deflecting blame for society’s problems from their real causes. Antisemitic stereotyping has historically been used to dehumanise Jewish people, giving license to treat them in ways not otherwise acceptable. Use of such stereotypes is unarguably antisemitic conduct.

Gilad: It has been a while since the Jews have been treated as an ‘inferior’ collective. On the contrary, it is the hegemony of Jews in certain domains that is often criticised.  Much has been written, for instance, about Jewish lobby groups dominating American and British foreign affairs. Jewish pressure groups have imposed the IHRA definition of antisemitism on governments, political parties and institutions. Prominent Jews such as Alan Dershowitz boast about “Jews contributing disproportionally..” raising the question of whether JVL would allow goyim to do the same: to point at the very power Jews often brag about.  

 

2.  Expressions of antisemitism

Certain words and phrases that refer to Jews in a derogatory way are unquestionably antisemitic. Terms which associate Jews with malevolent social forces clearly fall into this category. Extreme examples are the blood libel (that Jews kill Christian children to use their blood in religious ceremonies), and the claimed existence of a powerful but secret Jewish cabal that controls the world.
Seemingly neutral or positive terms can also be used in antisemitic ways. For example, assertions that Jews are unusually clever or especially ‘good with money’ make the unwarranted assumption that all Jews share similar characteristics. Commonly, there is a negative, antisemitic edge to such views.

 Gilad: Not surprisingly and consistent with their Zionist brethren, the JVL and the so called ‘Free’ Speech on Israel attempt to impose a Jerusalemite regime of correctness to suppress any attempt to look into Jews, their culture and their political settings. Is it racist to acknowledge that Blacks are great jazz musicians, or often superb at sports? If it isn’t, why is it anti-Semitic to discuss Jews as being powerful, clever or even influential? 

3.  Terminology

Jews, Israelis and Zionists are separate categories that are too frequently conflated by both supporters and critics of Israel. This conflation can be antisemitic. Holding all Jews responsible for the actions of the Israeli government is antisemitic. Many Jews are not Zionist. The majority of Zionists are not Jewish but fundamentalist Christian Zionists. Over 20 percent of Israeli citizens are not Jewish.

Gilad: Although not all Jews are Zionists, Israel defines itself as ‘The Jewish State’ and Israel is racist and abusive entity. Sadly, the racially exclusive JVL in accepting gentiles only as ‘solidarity members’ and not as full members, is actually more racist than Israel. In Israel, Arabs can be citizens and their politicians can be proper members of the Israeli Knesset. How many Arabs or Goyim are included in JVL’s steering body? Not one…

4.  Political discourse

Free speech is legally protected. Within these legal limits political discourse can be robust and may cause offence. There is no right not to be offended. The fact that some people or groups are offended does not in itself mean that a statement is antisemitic or racist. A statement is only antisemitic if it shows prejudice, hostility or hatred against Jews as Jews.
The terms ‘Zionism’ and ‘Zionist’ describe a political ideology and its adherents. They are key concepts in the discussion of Israel/Palestine. They are routinely used, approvingly, by supporters of Israel, but critically by campaigners for Palestinian rights, who identify Zionist ideology and the Zionist movement as responsible for Palestinian dispossession. Criticising Zionism or Israel as a state does not constitute criticising Jews as individuals or as a people and is not evidence of antisemitism.
There have been claims that any comparison between aspects of Israel and features of pre-war Nazi Germany is inherently antisemitic. Similar objections have been raised to likening Israel’s internal practices to those of apartheid South Africa. Drawing such parallels can undoubtedly cause offence; but potent historical events and experiences are always key reference points in political debate. Such comparisons are only antisemitic if they show prejudice, hostility or hatred against Jews as Jews.

Gilad: Here a Jewish group is dictating the terminology that may be used to criticise Jewish power, history or culture. This is a classic example of a Jewish controlled opposition in which the discourse of the oppressed is defined by the sensitivities of the oppressor. JVL & Co kindly allow us to compare Zionism and Nazism but may we dig into the Jewish nature of the self- defined “Jewish State”? What about comparing the Nazi Party and JVL?  Both are racially exclusive: the former Aryans–only, the latter Jews-only.   

5.  Boycott, divestment and sanctions

A common focus for allegations of antisemitism is the campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) targeted on Israel. The three elements of BDS are internationally recognized as legitimate and non-violent strategies for securing political change. So, advocating for BDS would only be antisemitic if accompanied by evidence that it is motivated not by this purpose but by racially-based hostility towards Jews.

Gilad: it is predictable that the JVL is keen on BDS. While the Palestinians are primarily seeking the ‘Right of Return,’ the Jewish solidarity project is dedicated to replacing the right of return with the ‘right to BDS.’ This agenda is, practically, a back door legitimisation of the Jewish State with the 1967 borders.

6.  When Antisemitism Is Alleged

As with any allegations of racism, accusations of antisemitism must be taken seriously and investigated. But principles of natural justice and due process must be respected and applied: the person accused should be accorded the normal presumption of innocence until the case is resolved. Allegations do not constitute proof.
Antisemitic attitudes may be more or less intense.* Some people are deeply antisemitic, others less so. Yet others whom it would be unreasonable to class as antisemitic may nevertheless hold some attitudes, in dilute form, which will make some Jews uncomfortable. Following a finding of antisemitism there remains a decision to be made about whether discussion and education, rather than a formal disciplinary approach, is more appropriate.
Indirect discrimination could inadvertently occur, where actions have the effect of selectively disadvantaging Jewish people even though no hostile motive towards Jews is present.  Once a case of such discrimination comes to light, those responsible should take all reasonable steps possible to eliminate the problem.  Unwillingness to take such steps would be evidence of antisemitism.
The systematic murder of millions of Jews (and so many others) is exhaustively documented. It is therefore inconceivable that Holocaust denial or expressions of doubt over its scale could be motivated by genuine investigatory scepticism. The implication of antisemitic intent is, for practical purposes, inescapable.

* See Institute of Jewish Policy Research report Antisemitism in Contemporary Great Britain, 2017

 

Gilad: It took the JVL/FSoI only a few lines before they produced a blanket rejection of WWII historical revisionism. This is not a convincing definition of anti Semitism. I wonder if the JVL or FSoI could explain how exploring the past and drawing whatever conclusions, can be interpreted as ‘discrimination of the Jews for being Jews.’ As we can see, the ‘predominantly  Jewish’ Free Speech on Israel isn’t about freedom of speech in general. Quite the opposite It is actually set to define the boundaries of freedom.

 Overview

The understanding of antisemitism on which this analysis is based reaffirms the traditional meaning of the term. This is important in the light of attempts to extend its meaning to apply to criticisms often made of the state of Israel, or to non-violent campaigns such as BDS. A charge of antisemitism carries exceptional moral force because of the negative connotations rightly attaching to the term. It is illegitimate to make such claims to discredit or deter criticism, or to achieve sectional advantage. To do so is to devalue the term.

To be clear: conduct is antisemitic only if it manifests ‘prejudice, hostility or hatred against Jews as Jews’.

 Gilad: This removes any doubt that JVL/FSoI are not committed to a universal fight against bigotry. Racial bigotry is ‘hatred or discrimination against X for being X.’ The JVL/FSoI are committed to the fight against (alleged) Jew hatred. The JVL is an exclusive Jewish body focused on the primacy of Jewish suffering. As such, the difference between JVL and Zionist bodies is marginal. We are dealing with a crypto Zionist body.

Left open are questions of: 1. How does this racially driven body fit with Labour’s values? And, 2. How Labour’s leader, a man who genuinely opposes all forms of racism, agrees to count such a bluntly racist group amongst its supporters?