Do Jewish sensitivities matter at this time?
by Karin Friedemann with Joachim Martillo
My previous article talked about guarding yourself against destructive Jewish behavior patterns. These behaviors are learned and not genetic. Israel Advocacy organizations like the David Project even give workshops in linguistic aggressive-defense tactics for whenever someone uses the word "Jew" or criticizes Israel. Always manipulate the conversation so that the focus is turned on Israel's accusor. It's a psychological intimidation tactic aimed at getting the person to apologize for hurting Jewish sensitivities, or for conflating Jews and Zionists, or for thinking all Zionists are bad. Jews do not seem to hold themselves accountable to the same moral standard as they hold others. All Gentiles have to apologize for the Holocaust, yet all Jews don't have to apologize for Israel. [ecumenical deal: Jews accept Christian apology as long as Christians don't criticize Israel].
The current Jewish argument seems to be:
- You are anti-Semitic for linking Zionism and Jewishness.
- You are anti-Semitic for not acknowledging the special connection of Israel to Jewishness.
- You can't win!
- You are bad.
- Therefore we will talk about what you did, not what Jews did.
Peace Jews are for the most part coordinated by the Israeli government via the various liberal Jewish organizations in the US. They serve to deflect blame from Jews as a group by creating a false cover for the perpetrators of racist genocide. Instead of confronting the supporters of mass murder in their own community, they act as representatives of the Jewish community, creating a false impression of Jewish non-support for Israel. In truth, even the peace Jews tend to unite with the far right when the question is Jewish Israel's American tax funded existence. An example of this was when Tikkun united aggressively with the Neocon establishment to snuff out a City Council vote on taking public moneys out of Israeli investments in Somerville, Ma. This "peace" Zionist organization deliberately misled the public on the issues involved in a local ballot question regarding the Palestinian Right of Return.
Let's get this straight. Israel's existence depends on committing genocide with your tax money. All the aggression that Israel commits is done in defense of Israel's existence.
Therefore, duh, Israel should not exist. Israel cannot exist as a Jewish state AND give people back their homes and give them all a vote, which is their right under international law.
Any Jew whose family lost their home in Germany or Poland is allowed by law to claim back the property. It's elementary property rights law. Human rights include property rights. Jews have to give back what they stole. Israel's existence was dependent on the UN Resolution 181. Israel's existence depends on the condition that the Jews have to let the Palestinians stay in their homes and give them equal citizenship rights. This has never happened. Within hours of signing that agreement Israel was ethnically cleansing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in 1948.
Many people in Gaza have property in Sredot. It used to be their land, until they were evicted at gunpoint by Jewish murdering thugs. The racist settlers living on other people's stolen property in Sredot have absolutely no right to expect to live in security or peace. Americans who hear Jews and non-Jews say such genocidal racist and sick statements like Israel has the right to defend itself should be ashamed. Instead, they want you to apologize for calling Jews "Jews."
No, I really mean Jews. My fight is with the Jewish power establishment and not the Israelis per se.
Do any of the Jewish organizations support the right of Hamas to exist?
When people accept Israel's "right" to exist, or more accurately, the Jewish "right" to mass murder and plunder non-Jews including Americans, they are accepting a criminal ideology. Israel's existence does not exist in a vacuum. It is a result of American Jewish organizations, and to a large extent, European. All Americans are indoctrinated by American Jewish organizations via the media and Hollywood and even the Pentagon is informed of all its plans by the Jewish organizations.
Also alarming, nearly all American Jews go through an indoctrination process within the Jewish community that is even more extreme. It includes training in psychological manipulation tactics aimed at shifting the blame away from Jews any time someone mentions the obvious, for example, "Jews are killing Palestinans." The trick is always to make the person apologize for believing that Jews would kill Palestinians. All bystanders would be made to revile the person stating the obvious as a flaming racist. It's an interesting game. But it doesn't work forever.
The good news is, there is nothing behind the Jewish facade, the linguistic traps of mixed messages. That is, the banal statements of believing in peace plus the absolute refusal to do what it takes to be a good person - give the Palestinians their lands back and give them citzenship rights in some country. It probably doesn't matter what you call it at this point but that's the minimum requirement for peace.
Once you get people to the point where they admit the truth, that all humans are created equal, and therefore Israel's existence is a really bad idea, they can either agree with you, or short-circuit. Those who know Israel is wrong and do not strive against its existence are just like the all Gentiles whom the Jews routinely condemn for "doing nothing" about the Holocaust. Jewish Liberals should not serve as human shields using a battle of guilt trips to stop people from discussing how to limit Jewish power.
The Islamophobic hate campaign was not just created by Israel. It was created, coordinated and disseminated in the US by Jewish organizations. Every Jew in the Jewish community participates in some way with the Zionist agenda of racist indoctrination. They are fed a steady stream of anti-Islam and anti-Arab propaganda and are brainwashed to believe that Israel has a right to exist. If you are not with the genocidaires, then, why are you shielding them?
One may choose to opt out of Jewish organizational behavior; that does not erase the very real and scary fact that this destructive deliberate and well-funded organized violent crime and extortion racket is backed up by all the well-meaning Jewish footsoldiers who are simply loyal to "Israel" or to the Jewish people without fully knowing what that means.
It is hard to see the big picture even once one notices the pattern. One of the reasons is because in polite society we are not allowed to discuss Jewish racism. Always, one of the little footsoldiers chimes in, wanting an exception to the group accusation to Jews. But this policing against anti-semitism, instead of responding in a moral and appropriate way, is exactly the Jewish behavior that the Jew has been programmed for by the B'nai B'rith Society. Rabbi Lerner, who has never been to the Occupied Territories, gets his "media updates" and talking points from the JCRC. The Liberal Zionists are trained and coordinated to cover for the Right Wing Jews. They don't even realize that their behavior is clinically abnormal and morally bankrupt.
In a recent article [http://palestinethinktank.com/2009/01/08/gilad-atzmon-the-old-testament-and-the-genocide-in-gaza/], former Israeli philosopher Gilad Atzmon writes:
"The Jewish state is the ultimate threat to humanity and our notion of humanism. Christianity, Islam and humanism came along with an attempt to amend Jewish tribal fundamentalism and to replace it with universal ethics. Enlightenment, liberalism and emancipation allowed Jews to redeem themselves from their ancient tribal supremacist traits. Since the mid 19th century, many Jews had been breaking out of their cultural and tribal chain. Tragically enough, Zionism managed to pull many Jews back in. Currently, Israel and Zionism are the only collective voice available for Jews.
The last twelve days of merciless offensive against the Palestinian civilian population does not leave any room for doubt. Israel is the gravest danger to world peace. Clearly the nations made a tragic mistake in 1947 giving a volatile racially orientated identity an opportunity to set itself into a national state. However, the nations’ duty now is to peacefully dismantle that state before it is too late. We must do it before the Jewish state and its forceful lobbies around the world manage to pull us all into a global war in the ‘name’ of one banal populist ideology or another (democracy, war against terror, cultural clash and so on). We have to wake up now before our one and only planet is transformed into a bursting boil of hatred."
I think if a Jew wants to live in the Holy Land he or she should accept to live under majority rule: Hamas rule. A modern Islamic state, whose Constitution includes a Bill of Rights for non-Muslims, is really the only viable option for peace in Historic Palestine. Hamas has every right, under international law, to fight against the occupying power, including lobbing pipe bombs over the Apartheid Wall. Israel has no right to blockade any part of a civilian population, preventing them from getting to work, getting food, or medical aid. Israel has no right to build a wall.
I've been through this Jewish indignation thing during the Jenin Massacre and so it's harder to fool me now. Among the various threads of Zionist thought, from the condescending racism of Tikkun to the openly aggressive settler movement, there is nothing cool.
My goal is to stop the evil so it is necessary to observe the evil - not just walk away saying "How sad."
Levels of guilt:
- those who commit atrocities
- those who justify the atrocities
- those who deny the atrocities
- those who benefit from atrocities
- those who participated in a society that allows atrocities
Israel does NOT have any "right" to exist nor any right to defend itself.
The UN has the right to dismantle Israel.
When Israel says they want to eradicate "Hamas" they mean anyone who might have ever voted for Hamas.
Meaning: all Palestinians
The Palestinians DO have the right to shoot rockets at an occupier.
We are engaged in genocide when we neglect to use the word Palestine in our speech.
We DO need good strategy for eradicating Jewish tyranny.
12 comments:
"The only reason that Jews are in pornography is that we think that Christ sucks. Catholicism sucks. We don't believe in
authoritarianism." Pornography thus becomes a way of defiling Christian culture and, as it penetrates to the very heart of the
American mainstream...becomes more charged..."
-Al Goldstein, Pornographer, Publisher of 'Screw" Magazine
"The books of the Christians must not be rescued from fire, but must be burned." — The Babylonian Talmud, Judaisms most holy book, Shabbat 116a
"If a gentile hits a Jew, the gentile must be killed." — The Babylonian Talmud, Judaisms most holy book, Sanhedrin 58b
"Why should they, the Americans, have trusted us? We were a bunch of Russians, socialist Russians." — Isser Harel, former head of Mossad, speaking of the unlikely union between America and the Marxist state of Israel.
"Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered, but never before have I watched as soldiers enticed children like mice into a trap and murdered them for sport." — Christopher Hedges, American Journalist on assignment in Gaza
"The Israeli soldiers shoot with silencers. The bullets from the M-16 rifles tumble end over end through the childrens bodies. In the hospital, I see the destruction: the stomachs ripped out, gaping holes in limbs and torsos. At this spot the Israelis shot eight young men, six who were under the age of eighteen. One was twelve. This afternoon they killed an eleven-year-old boy, Ali Murad, and seriously wound four more, three who are under eighteen."—Christopher Hedges, on assignment in Gaza
"The state of Israel must invent dangers, and to do this it must adopt the methods of provocation and revenge. And above all, let us hope for a new war with the Arab countries so that we may finally get rid of our troubles and acquire our space." — From the diary of Moshe Sharett, Israelis first Foreign Minister from 1948-1956, and Prime Minister from 1954-1956.
"They were seen by New Jersey residents on Sept. 11 making fun of the World Trade Center ruins and going to extreme lengths to photograph themselves in front of the wreckage." — Excerpt of a police report concerning the arrest of 5 Israeli intelligence operatives after they were seen by witnesses filming the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York and cheering.
"You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to Hell? Therefore I am sending you prophets and wise men and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify, others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zecharia." — Jesus of Nazareth addressing the Sanhedrin
"Regarding what took place on September 11, well its very good Well, its not good, but it will generate immediate sympathy for Israel." — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus response to the attacks on America as reported in The Jerusalem Post, September 12, 2001.
"We Jews are in a state of panic, given the fact that dead Jews are precious and deserve a special burial. The fact that 5-10 Jews might be lost forever among some 125,000 gentiles is pretty horrifying, as I am sure you can see." — Comments of an Israeli worker sent to Indonesia following the tsunami in late 2004 to prevent the bodies of dead Jews from being defiled by being buried in mass graves with non-Jews.
When the LORD brings you into the land you are to possess and cast out the many peoples living there, you shall slaughter them all and utterly destroy them You shall make no agreements with them nor show them any mercy You shall destroy their altars, break down their images, cut down their groves and burn their graven images with fire. For you are a holy people unto the LORD and He has chosen you to be a special people above all others upon the face of the earth
Deuteronomy, 7:1-8
Thank you .
To Karin Friedemann:
Your essay was very helpful to me personally -- explaining as it did Jewish verbal sleight-of-hand attempts to put any critic of Israel on the defensive.
In fact, you seem to argue that Jews are well aware of this technique that they are dextrously employing.
For my letter below which appeared in the Cape Cod Times, I expect the usual charges of anti-Semitism!
Frank Messmann
Falmouth, Mass.
Israeli rule seems to be a hundred eyes for an eye
January 14, 2009
A former chief rabbi in Israel, Mordechai Eliyahu, has said that according to Jewish war ethics, an entire city holds collective responsibility for the immoral behavior of individuals. In Gaza, the entire populace is responsible.
"If they don't stop after we kill 100, then we must kill a thousand," the rabbi said in a letter to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. "And if they do not stop after 1,000 then we must kill 10,000. If they still don't stop we must kill 100,000, even a million. Whatever it takes to make them stop."
These views by an important rabbi are diametrically opposed to the values I was taught years ago by Franciscan nuns. This isn't an eye for an eye, but a hundred eyes for an eye.
A very interesting article Karin. Thanks. I've referred to it - because it was so appropriate to do so - in an article I wrote today called Breaking the Hex on Peace.
It's an edited version of a post on a local blog, in reply to a peace activist who was promoting an essay by Rabbi Lerner of Tikkun.
I think this is an important debate within the peace movement, which has clearly had its wings clipped over Palestine. Too many peace activists seem to spend more time worrying about their (potential) allies than the atrocities of major war criminals.
It's a 'hex' in the old fashioned sense. These discussions help to break it.
Yes brave lady, and all you say is demonstrated in this one example - This is one of the many many people who have lost our jobs because of the argumentation you describe:
*Why Did Gandhi Have to Resign?*
On January 7, 2008, Arun Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and the founder/director of the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence at the University of Rochester, wrote two paragraphs on the *Washington Post* blog, On Faith, titled "Jewish Identity Can't Depend on Violence." Within three weeks, Gandhi was forced to resign as Director after a storm of criticism that he was anti-Semitic by pro-Israel groups such as the Anti-Defamation
League (ADL), the American Jewish Committee, and by pressure from the President of the University of Rochester, Joel Seligman. Why did these two paragraphs cause the resignation of Gandhi, a respected and renowned public figure who has worked for years to promote non-violence and inter-faith understanding, study racism and prejudice, and who grew up with the daily abuses of the apartheid regime in South Africa?
The title of Gandhi's post, in itself, seems like a reasonable statement to make, one which would be true of any group. No group's identity can depend on violence. In the article, which was quickly painted as "shameful" by Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Gandhi recognized the horror of the Holocaust but observed that legitimate sympathy
for this past tragedy cannot mean blindness or justification for violence inflicted on another group in the present. This too, seems like a logical point, and one that has been made innumerable times by Jewish Americans and Israelis alike, including the children of Holocaust survivors, such as Dr. Norman Finkelstein. However, Finkelstein, author of *The Holocaust Industry*, lso paid the price for his critical scholarship and was recently denied tenure for challenging pro-Israel propaganda and campaigns headed by Foxman and the ADL. Furthermore, many have also noted that the Palestinians who were dispossessed and exiled with the creation of the Israeli state in 1948, after World War II, were paying the price for a European tragedy that was not of their own making, what Gandhi called "a German burden."
In the article, Gandhi advised those concerned about Jewish identity and the future of Israel to make genuine efforts toward peace and non-violence, rather than acquiring "weapons and bombs." Israel is the only state with nuclear weapons in the Middle East, a little known fact that causes no hysteria about WMDs in the US, let alone sanctions or invasions. Gandhi noted that when he visited Israel in 2004, he observed their "superior weapons and armaments" that make it the most powerful and advanced military power in the region. His advice was simply to point out that it would be
better for Israel to "share [its] technological advancement" with its poorer neighbors and build friendships, rather than live in a heavily armed fortress surrounded by a wall that has imprisoned Palestinians and expropriated their land. On the same trip to Israel-Palestine, Gandhi had urged Palestinians to engage in non-violent civil disobedience. Another, little known fact is that Palestinians do countless acts of non-violent resistance, and have for a long time, but they face Israeli tanks, U.S.-supplied F-16s and Apache helicopters. Rachel Corrie, an American peace activist, was killed by an Israeli bulldozer that drove over her while she
was trying to protect a Palestinian house from being destroyed.
Gandhi actually posted an apology for what he called his "poorly worded" comments and wrote:
*I do not believe and should not have implied that the policies of the Israeli government are reflective of the views of all Jewish
people.*Indeed, many are as concerned as I am by the use of violence for state purposes, by Israel and many other governments. I do believe that when a people hold on to historic grievances too firmly it can lead to bitterness and the loss of support from those who would be friends. But as I have noted in previous writings, the suffering of the Jewish people, particularly in the Holocaust, was historic in its proportions. While we must strive for a future of peace that rejects violence, it is also important not to forget
the past, lest we fail to learn from it. Having learned from it, we can then find the path to peace and rejection of violence through forgiveness.
Yet President Seligman described the apology as "inadequate," rather that supporting Gandhi's freedom of speech. It was not enough for University of Rochester that he had been pressured to apologize. Gandhi's resignation makes it clear that he was the latest casualty of the powerful and highly organized pro-Israel lobby in the U.S. that immediately deems any and all criticism of Israel's policies as anti-Semitic. The irony is that in his post, Gandhi was actually noting the very phenomenon of a community overplaying its historic experience that was enacted in the vitriolic response of powerful and well-funded organizations created to silence and intimidate critics of Israel. Foxman is one of the staunchest apologists for Israel's inhuman treatment of the Palestinians, about whom a Wall Street Journal editor once quipped: "[he] has become drunk with power…knowing he can label anyone who challenges him an anti-Semitic bigot." One only needs to look at the hundreds of responses to Gandhi's posting on the blog to realize that there were, in fact, countless letters supporting Gandhi and decrying the bullying tactics and censorship of the Israel lobby. Stephen Walt (Harvard) and John Mearsheimer (University of Chicago), authors of the much-publicized book, *The Israel Lobby*, know a thing or two about this repression. So does Jimmy Carter who was slammed as an anti-Semite after he published *Palestine**: Peace, not Apartheid*.
It is shameful that groups such as the Hindu American Foundation who claim to promote "tolerance and understanding" would support such blatant censorship of Gandhi's grandson. Perhaps they choose to ignore Mahatma Gandhi's statement in 1946 that Jewish settlers "have erred grievously in seeking to impose themselves on Palestine with the aid of America and Britain and now with the aid of naked terrorism ... Why should they resort to terrorism to make good their forcible landing in Palestine?" The HAF has chosen instead to ally itself with groups such as the ADL and to participate in the dishonest and cowardly silencing of any one who dares to criticize the racism and violence directed against Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims. Hindu, Indian, South Asian groups that profess to support dialogue and mutual respect should respect the rights of individuals to freely express their views without fear of losing their jobs and being publicly defamed. Such actions are insulting to the memory of courageous leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi who risked their lives for national self-determination and an end to colonialism and racism. Like his grandfather, Arun Gandhi has paid a price for the larger principle of speaking out in support of justice and freedom.
*References to the postings, in chronological order:
*
1. Arun Gandhi's Blog Entry to the Washington Post/Newsweek's On Faith
blog: (Jan 7, 2008)
"Jewish Identity Can't Depend on Violence"
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/arun_gandhi/2008/01/jewish_identity_in_the_past.html
2. Arun Gandhi's "Apology for my poorly worded post" (Jan 10, 2008)
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/arun_gandhi/2008/01/my_apology_for_my_poorly_worde.html
3. Joel Seligman, University of Rochester (Jan 11, 2008), describing Arun
Gandhi's apology as inadequate:
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2008/01/u_of_rochester_statement_on_ga.html
Excellent article.
Congratulation Karin for this article. I invite you to look in www.bloggen.be/jesjoeroen and www.bloggen.be/yechouroun. There is in the French version a letter to the Jewish People, an right continuation to your article.
I find some of your essay alarmingly antisemitic, though that is no surprise to me after having known you for many years.
It makes me sad.
Judaeophobia is alive and well, and it IS a mistake to equate Zionism and Judaism. Jewishness is more than just a religious identity, it is an ethnicity. There are many secular nonZionist Jews in America. You generalize far too much,Karin.
SJC
I self-identify as being ethnically jewish and that is the only sense that I identify with Jewishness. Still can't quite rap my brain around the idea of renouncing my ethnicity (and don't tell me that's because my brain is too small;)). I do think that probably the best solution would be to "phase out" Judaism and Jewish identity (without killing people, that is). But until that time, to me it feels a bit like a rat leaving a sinking ship (not calling you a rat). Many Jews *can* be easily identified by their physical characteristics, contrary to what you claim. Should they be the ones made to bear all the burden, regardless of their beliefs?
@Zwarich
The Canaanites have been slaughtered by the Christian crusaders from what I read in various sources.
Now these sources may be zionist-friendly but one of them I'm sure he's not.
Amin Maalouf' "crusades seen by Arabs" is an amazing book and he depicts the CANAAN massacre as the worst inimaginable infamy...as after a siege of weeks in front of this city, the crusaders invaded it and have eaten the population because they were starving...First trace of cannibalsim in history...probably why it's still frehsin my mind...now I'll investigate it but I'm sure we can deduct that from the list of the numerous Zionist crimes against the other humanity that we represent...non-choosen people!
***************
Amin Maalouf' "crusades seen by Arabs" is an amazing book and he depicts the CANAAN massacre as the worst inimaginable infamy...as after a siege of weeks in front of this city, the crusaders invaded it and have eaten the population because they were starving...First trace of cannibalsim in history...probably why it's still frehsin my mind...now I'll investigate it but I'm sure we can deduct that from the list of the numerous Zionist crimes against the other humanity that we represent...non-choosen people!
***************
There is no doubt that the crusades represented an economic and political opportunity for Europe, hiding under the fig leaf of disinterest religious zeal...with that came profiteers, marauders, adventurists, sociopaths...
Fine.
Our beloved lefty liberal pundits never stop playing the flute of white/Euro-christian guilt...
Just one question...
If the Crusaders were just assaulting pirates, what about the Muslim tide that had drunk Spain, North-Africa etc...
Were THOSE fantastic messengers from an equally fantastic culture that brought so much and took so little?
Who feels sorry for the cultures Muslims eradicated or obliterated (Istanbul being THE example)? American Indians or Indios aren't the only one to have suffered.
Not our "marxian" scholars...
So while I strongly disagree with Israeli policies, Muslims at large should not condemn the same logic that propelled their civilization.
ABOUT THE "RIGHT OF ISRAEL TO EXIST"...
I agree with much of what is said about "sensibility" and about the (ab)use of ossified punchlines relating to WWII to serve actual purposes of dubious moral standard.
However, I think Israel has no more and no less a right to exist than the countless countries do, which materialized on the drawing board of the post-colonial meltdown.
Even in Black Africa countries were made up without consideration for historical or ethnic "borders", which created endless problems often rooted -in turn- in the criminal, situational ethics of the former colonial rulers: the conflict between India and Pakistan; or the bloody secession of "eastern Pakistan" (now Bangladesh) is just ONE example; the "Hindu question" created in some African regions, and "finally solved" by Amin in Uganda is another example clearly documenting the criminal legacy of the former rulers, who made no mystery of pitting the various ethnic and/or religious groups against one another, sponsoring and abetting mass migrations at times to make it possible.
I see Israel's problem as the most publicized among many similar conflicts post colonialism created, which doesn't alter the questionable fact of Israeli military practice and praxis over the last decades.
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