Increasing reports of hate crimes against Muslims in recent years have created the impression that Muslim organizational efforts to raise awareness about Islam have been in vain, and that hostility against Muslims has been increasing in the US rather than declining. I am however reminded of the old saying that whenever you are preaching some obvious truth, the people will first laugh at you, then they will attack you, but in the end they will accept your insight as self-evident. It is only a matter of time before people connect the dots and hear Islam’s message of spiritual universalism.
This week I intended to review an obnoxious pseudo-documentary I saw at the library, which explored the question of how Islam inspires Lebanese militants to kill for the sake of God. I was so sickened by the DVD cover that I left, speechless, yet arguments rattled in my head about the extreme racism of how the question was phrased and marketed to a naïve American public, who would be almost guaranteed to have no concept of the context of political violence in Lebanon. I went to the library again today, my stomach in knots as I rehearsed how I was going to ask the librarian why they carry such vile racist stuff on their shelves. However, the DVD had already been checked out and I walked out with nothing more interesting than Blues Clues.
So now, some poor suckers are watching that slick propaganda financed by a seedy Zionist coalition of interest groups, and it will not likely occur to them to be as outraged as if they were watching a documentary questioning what psychopathology caused George Washington to decide to kill for the sake of God.
There is nothing particularly sinister about calling on God as you protect your humble village from being massacred by a foreign army. Popular freedom movements are generally based on the idea that God has given mankind certain inalienable rights. When some rag-tag militia stands up to a heavily armed, mighty empire, we usually regard such people as heroic – not as insane.
Yet, that evil racist mindset has been steadily promoted in the US throughout the past couple decades through seemingly benign but psychologically twisted docu-dramas and books, which are carefully calculated for psychological and political affect, framing religious Muslims as perpetrators of evil motivated by a bizarre alternate reality. Unfortunately, most people don’t see through it.
Today I attended a social event at a Unitarian Universalist Church in Boston, a denomination known for theological openness and social justice activism. So I was disturbed to read a recent sermon discussing forgiveness, citing Washington Post reporter Laura Blumenfeld, author of “Revenge, a Story of Hope,” whose American father, a rabbi, made “aliyah” to Israel and was shot (not seriously) in East Jerusalem by a Palestinian, Omar Khatib, who went to jail for that crime.
The pastor stated: “He says that what he did was not personal; that it was a necessary outcome of what he calls ‘the occupation’ of Palestinian lands by Israel.”
What he calls…? Why would the pastor of a respected church use newspaper-ese to downplay Israel’s siege upon the native population when people of conscience are boycotting Israel? Omar’s shortcomings aside, this level of insolence towards the oldest community of Christ’s followers on Earth, especially coming from a Christian minister, is seriously pathetic.
As the story goes, Laura writes to Omar in prison, and forgives him. Eventually, Omar goes free after promising never to hurt anyone ever again. This is all good, but the way the pastor frames it sounds blaringly racist:
“She wants her father to have a human face, to be real to them as well, and not be just some Jew that got in the way of the Palestinian quest for liberation.”
Some Jew who got in the way of the Palestinian quest for liberation? These Jews made the conscious decision to participate in a population war to squeeze out Palestinians from their own country. Her father accepted US taxpayers’ money to study Hebrew for free and receive government subsidies so that he would not have to work.
Laura didn’t participate in racist genocide because she was forced to by gunpoint, nor because she was a starving refugee. Laura was wealthy American Jew who simply decided to help ethnically cleanse people she had never met. You don’t move onto stolen property in the middle of a war zone and expect to live in peace, unless you are insane.
In this sermon, we never hear anything about how Laura realized that Zionism, a violent ethnic supremacist movement, was wrong. We never hear about how she apologized to Omar for self-worship that went so far beyond hate that she didn’t even visualize Palestinians as persons possessing legal rights. Laura never did repent for her blind arrogance, but she made a lot of money writing and promoting that book.
There are stories of Palestinians who forgave Jewish terrorists, including a Muslim father who donated his murdered son’s organs to needy Jews without getting any thanks. These Islamic examples of radical acts of charity are not mentioned in many American churches, though, because they are not part of a slick propaganda machine churning out feel-good stories that glorify Jews and vilify Muslims.
How could those Jewish parents snub the Palestinian who gave their beloved child a beating heart? It’s all part of the colonial mindset, Manifest Destiny, in which Jews feel entitled to take all of Palestine, including the body parts of murdered Palestinian children.
Yet, no American is ever asked to psychoanalyze the personality defects that would cause a person to disregard the human rights of Muslims and Christians in the Holy Land.
It would actually be very easy to copy the format of these propaganda flicks but turn the argument around to accuse the actual perpetrators of political violence. Why has it not been done? The truth stands out clear from error. My eleven-year-old recently noted that Jews treat Christians like children who can’t be expected to understand. I think it’s time for Muslims to give Christians the respect they deserve as adults, and to engage with them in all honesty.
Showing posts with label Zionism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Zionism. Show all posts
Monday, August 20, 2012
Monday, July 16, 2012
Was Israel Premeditated?
“You get punished for Holocaust denial, even if you are just revising; yet if you are a Nakba denier, your Israeli organization gets rewarded with German and American tax money. In fact, the Nakba was far more of a deliberate genocide than the Holocaust, in how carefully and openly it was premeditated.”
I posted this on Facebook the other day and as expected, I was rewarded with heaps of abuse from the under-informed. Note that I neither denied the Holocaust nor tried to quantify who has suffered more.
My post was related to a recent article in Haaretz on the proposed ‘Nakba Bill,’ which aims to withhold state funding from academic institutions that commemorate the Palestinian Nakba. Commemorating the Palestinian Catastrophe or celebrating the Israeli Independence Day as a Day of Mourning is viewed as an activity that “opposes the existence of Israel as Jewish-democratic state.” This is interesting, since in the US, Thanksgiving has been commemorated as a Day of Mourning for decades by many Native Americans and others, but nobody even blinks.
The point I was making however is that it is curious how competing historical narratives are legislated. “The victor writes the history.”
If a competing historian happens to be German or Austrian, they can expect to die in prison simply for writing a book.
From what I can gather from my now un-friends, it is taboo to compare or relate the Holocaust with any other human tragedy. Even many of those who claim sympathy for the Palestinians feel a need to reserve a special place for the Holocaust, despite the political use of the concept of “unique suffering” to give Jews special rights, including the right to commit genocide during our lifetime without comment. An Israeli Facebook friend and alleged peace activist posted:
“Palestinian people suffering does not amount to the whole sale industrial attempt to physically kill an entire people which was close to being totally successful in Europe.”
While nobody denies that millions of Jews perished in World War II, along with tens of millions of Christians and others, the number of 6 million has been reduced to 3 million in recent times by mainstream historians. Death inside German concentration camps was widespread, but in most cases, prisoners died of disease and malnutrition.
However, people tend to fixate on the belief that 6 million Jews were gassed to death in a systematic method by the German government with the same amount of passion that Christians hold for the Crucifixion.
In truth, there is no evidence that Hitler ever ordered all Jews to be killed. These beliefs are based on the Hollywood movie, the Holocaust.
The historical Hitler actually worked hand in hand with the Zionists, helping Jews emigrate to Palestine. There was even a Zionist (Jewish) faction of the Nazi party. Edwin Black’s book, The Transfer Agreement, the standard text on Nazi-Zionist collaboration, makes clear that the transfer of funds from Nazi Germany under this agreement made the Jewish State possible.
As WWII progressed, the German government had to deal with the problem of Jewish sympathy for the USSR, and with traitors giving away government secrets to Stalin with the same shamelessness with which US government secrets are leaked to Israel today, and Jewish organizations rallying to the cause of the traitor. Most people agree that this problematic situation in Germany was handled poorly.
What is almost never discussed is the context. The USSR, whose party leaders were largely Jewish or else influenced by secular Jewish philosophers such as Karl Marx, was an imperialist government that started annexing land in the 1920s, mass murdering tens of millions of Christians and burning churches. Millions of people were brutally tortured and died in Soviet prisons. It is safe to say that during the 20th century, Russia killed more people than Germany did. The US was also guilty of incinerating entire German cities as well as torturing prisoners. All in all, war is an ugly and cruel enterprise. World War II reduced the European population by 25 to 30%.
The idea that Nazi Germany is uniquely evil and that Jews in particular have suffered uniquely is a cornerstone of the creation of the State of Israel. For this reason, the State of Israel and several other countries actually mandate by law that no one can ever question the Holocaust, even if just to reduce the number to 5 million. If popularly accepted Jewish history were to be revised in the way that all other people’s histories have been revised in the light of researched evidence, the entire basis of Israel’s existence would come into question.
Yet even if we were to accept that 6 million Jews were gassed to death by Germany, it still doesn’t make any sense why Palestine should be wiped out order to create Israel. In 1934 Arab leaders offered asylum to European Jews fleeing the Nazis and presented a plan for legal Jewish immigration to Arab countries. Israeli Founding Father David Ben-Gurion refused the offer. “One cow in Palestine is worth more than all the Jews in Poland,” stated Zionist leader Izaak Greenbaum.
While the imprisonment of Jews and political dissidents in Germany can be attributed to wartime hysteria, Hitler did not run his election on an anti-Jew platform (unlike today’s politicians running on anti-Muslim platforms). By contrast, Zionist genocidal goals were openly discussed as early as 1897, at the first Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, where they discussed how to physically remove Palestinians from Palestine in order to create a Jewish State. Today in 2012, we are still experiencing debates on whether the existence of Palestinians can even be mentioned in public.
Friday, June 08, 2012
Should We Boycott Israeli Art?
Sarah Gillespie started an interesting debate on
deliberation.info with her article, “The BDS Cultural Boycott and
Integrity.” BDS stands for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against
Israel. She opposes the call by the BDS to sabotage or ban any mode of
expression delivered by state-enforced Israeli artists, musicians and
thinkers because “art has the capacity to transcend the binary world of
‘placard politics’ (‘for’ this or ‘against’ that) and deliver the
transforming might of pathos, spirit, sadness and beauty… We should
boycott Israeli products, not art, spirit and ideas.”
While I share her reservations about why only
Israeli-born Zionists are being boycotted, the inevitable ethical
inconsistencies that arise in trying to avoid supporting any type of
organized violence, especially when that would include boycotting one’s
own country, and the funding by George Soros of the BDS movement, I
disagree with her that “Art” is something that should never be
boycotted.
Art is a luxury product. Jewish gift stores give a lot of legitimacy to Israel’s folk narrative by selling Israeli made handicrafts and clothes. People who shop there are usually buying those products in order to help support the financial existence of illegal settlers in Occupied Palestine.
Likewise, the Israeli government purposely promotes
Israeli artists and musicians, considering them ambassadors for the
legitimization of the Zionist State of Israel. The Shakespeare play
shown in London, which Gillespie opposed boycotting, was not only funded
by the State of Israel but was rewritten in order to generate more
sympathy for the Jewish character, transforming it into a standard work
of propaganda.
Boycotters make exceptions for those Jewish Israelis
who are openly opposing Zionism, yet it would be ridiculous not to
assume that all Israelis who are selling us products whether art or
plastic storage boxes are participating in Zionism. In any case, they
are paying taxes to the Israeli government and are at the very least in
that way participating in genocide.
If we apply the same morals to Jews as we do to
others, all Jews as a group, if they do not consciously defect from the
Zionist racist movement, are guilty of participating in Zionist
aggression, preventing public comment, or letting racist violence happen
without comment.
It is quite standard to revile an artist or academic if he has ever been a member of any other racist organization.
For example, mainstream media consistently refers to
former Congressman David Duke without his Doctor title as a way of
belittling him, even though he has claimed that the KKK in his town was
nothing more than a neighborhood organization. Nobody starts jumping up
and down fuming at the mouth when someone condemns or boycotts a former
member of the KKK, insisting, “But not all KKK members are violent!”
Most people simply accept that the KKK is a purveyor of racist violence
and try to avoid supporting it, even indirectly.
Yet we are asked to distinguish carefully between a
non-violent Zionist and Zionism as a movement, even though all Israelis
are required to serve in the Israeli military and are thus guilty of
participating in organized crime.
The question of whether or not boycotting a theater
production would ever end the Israeli state needs to be looked at in
context of the American Jewish lobby. Any Palestinian poet who tried to
book a show in New Jersey would automatically find himself canceled and
playing outside the cafe in the street due to a deluge of angry phone
calls from Zionist Jews, even if his poster had a picture of a dove on
it.
It would probably be wise for more Americans to
become similarly aggressive about getting Zionist performances
cancelled. That way, the theater will learn to either avoid all
controversial performances OR they will be forced to adopt a more
balanced approach (for example showing both Palestinian and Israeli art
productions). What happens when only Jews protest, the Jews get what
they want while others just stew.
It is impossible to boycott entirely a country in
which you live, but you can still make wisest choices about how to spend
your money. I would only encourage a foreigner to spend money on
American artists if I knew for sure that this artist’s world view
supported something that person could morally accept. Paintings are a
dime a dozen. If all you want is a pretty picture, frame a calendar
photo. You should buy a painting because you are supporting a
revolutionary movement – you want to give money to a particular artist
because you want them to continue in their struggle for truth and
beauty.
There are Israeli musicians and writers I support
because they are outspoken anti-Zionists. But if some random Israeli
musician was playing at my children’s elementary school I would oppose
it, because that would be giving a public message that Israelis are cute
and cuddly, that we should bond with them emotionally and give them our
tax dollars and feel sorry for them because they are such good
musicians.
The main idea behind a boycott is to delegitimize the
fake Zionist narrative. There were a couple kids in my elementary
school whose parents forbade them to participate in Israeli folk dances
and it made long lasting impressions on their fellow students. At first
we did not understand why these students opposed Israel, but eventually
we figured it out.
One can only imagine with trepidation a world where no one ever spoke truth in the face of power and privilege.
Thursday, March 08, 2012
Psychoanalyzing Pharaoh
Today we commonly ask, “How could the Germans remain silent during the Holocaust? How could they live in denial? How could they?!” Although a few did risk their lives to reach out to those against whom Nazi violence was directed, the vast majority were patriotic citizens.
Technically, wiping out a civilization is called “genocide.” So, what is the difference between a Jewish supporter of Zionist Israel and a German supporter of Nazi Germany? The difference is that unlike in the 1930s and 40s, today there is no barrier to receiving accurate news reports. There is no Jew or Gentile who could honestly say they had no way of knowing what the Jewish homeland was doing to the Palestinians. If he does not know, it is because he does not care to know.
The Germans, by contrast, had very little access to public information except via government-controlled radio. A memorial in Munich, Germany remembers a professor and a few college students who were executed by the Nazi regime for throwing fliers out of the classroom window publicizing the war crimes of their government.
Today I see American Jews, at far less risk of peril for speaking out than what would have faced an outspoken Nazi opponent, remaining in blank-faced denial about the erasing of Palestine from the map. They want us to believe that the land simply “came to be known as Israel.”
Zionists around the world are praying and waiting for their inheritance of Biblical lands to be claimed in its entirety, without delay, in order to implement the “redemption of Israel.” Then, they believe, there can be peace on earth. Therefore, they see Palestinians as obstacles to peace.
A letter to the editor published in The Jewish State, a small New Jersey newspaper, states: “Unless and until the Palestinians stop teaching their children the virtues of jihad, martyrdom, and the destruction of Israel, the Palestinian children, cute as they are, remain my virulent enemy and I will not spend much time lamenting their demise if and when they are taken out as collateral damage.”
How can it be that this monster who seethes with hate and feels no remorse, can perceive himself as reasonable, ethical and moral? Helplessly, the world watches as many of Palestine’s best and brightest are simply ‘knocked off,’ not by a random act of terror but by the painstaking deliberations of the state military apparatus. Yet the Zionist continually feels that he is the one who has been wronged, that his violence is always and only provoked by the other. What is at the heart of all this abusive behavior?
An essay written by an American fourth grader attending Hebrew School reveals the murderers’ hidden inferiority complex: “Why do people treat Israel as if she is less important than other countries?…I cannot answer why people would treat any country as if it counts as less than another…We need to stretch out our hands to pull the Israelis from the pit into which the terrorists have thrown them. We must also show the terrorists that we will not allow them to take over our country.”
The Israeli Declaration of Independence refers to “the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land.” I find it curious that the founders of the Jewish state proclaimed as sovereign over the land not the Lord God but to themselves, with their proclaimed “natural and historical right” to take possession of it. Their entire argument for rebuilding Solomon’s Temple also seems to revolve around the idea that this will show the world that the Jews are really something.
“This right is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State.”
Jabotinsky wrote: “To the hackneyed reproach that this point of view is unethical, I answer, ‘absolutely untrue.’ This is our ethic. There is no other ethic.” (1923).
So, is Zionism a struggle for Jewish supremacy or a struggle to be as good as other nations? On one hand, the Jews declare their absolute uniqueness, and then they declare that they want to be like everyone else. Is the only way for Jews to get beyond their imagined second-class status is by declaring themselves God, making others into second-class citizens and founding a nation over their graves?
The story of Moses and the Pharaoh tells us that God destroys civilizations for their cruelty. Pharaoh is described as one who “transgressed beyond bounds in the lands, and heaped therein mischief (on mischief). Therefore did thy Lord pour on them a scourge of diverse chastisements” (Quran 89:11).
Many Muslims consider the discovery of Pharaoh’s mummy in 1898 at Thebes to be a warning specifically to the Jews from God. This Sign is the fulfillment of a Quranic prophecy where Allah says to the Pharaoh: “This day We (have decided to) preserve your body (from destruction) so that you may become a sign to (a people) who will come after you, for most people are heedless of Our signs” (10:92-93).
No country based on a racist ideology, which imposes a tyranny of one ethnic group over the others, has any need to exist as a nation among other nations.
Friday, January 20, 2012
A New, Humane Approach to Zionism
I used to enjoy musings on the "insanity" of Zionism, trying to psychoanalyze the condition, but I am now starting to wonder if we should start to consider Zionism as a type of autism. As in, a neurological deficit, and not a psychiatric condition caused by a trauma like the Holocaust.
The stereotypical autistic genius and the Zionist mind are very similar in so many ways:
- ability to function impressively in some realms while lacking common sense
- lack of empathy - while at the same time possessing a self-image of being a decent person
- inability to put himself in someone else's shoes - even if needs are explained, it does not "compute"
- compartmentalization of the mind - learning does not infer wisdom to another area of experience
- appreciation of cute animals/cries during movies yet oblivious to the real life needs of others
- unwilling to make any effort to alleviate a human's suffering - if it is caused by himself
- reacts with outrage and counter-blame when someone mentions what he did
- will not cooperate, even if it is in his own best interest
- reluctance to enter into any human relationship unless the other person is "useful"
- sense of entitlement or delusions of grandeur
- imagining others as lesser beings made to serve oneself – no sense of gratitude
- the self-explanation for harming others is always that he is "merely existing" or "surviving"
- constantly tries to get other people's sympathy for being a clueless victim of unfortunate circumstances, so that people will give him money/credibility
Scientists are still trying to understand how the human brain can malfunction. Some people's brains are found to be abnormally active in certain regions while abnormally inactive in other regions, compared to typical left and right brain activity. The autism label is used to separate people with neurological disorders from people whose antisocial behaviors may have other causes. For example, Chronic Oppositional Defiance is considered a psychiatric condition, even though it is nearly identical to Pathological Demand Avoidance Syndrome, considered a type of autism.
Autistic children can often be recognized at a very young age by their inability to understand what another person is pointing to. This is because the child CANNOT imagine herself in another person's shoes in order to guess at what he might be pointing to. It is a true disability. It is not a psychiatric condition. It cannot be cured. The person truly cannot imagine another person's point of view.
If an autistic person recognizes that he has a problem understanding others' point of view, he can learn to use his intellect to compensate for lack of intuition, for example by memorizing social rules and following them legalistically rather than understanding right and wrong on an intuitive level.
However, there is probably no limit to how the brain can analytically reinterpret even something as simple as the Ten Commandments, so that they only apply to certain people, or certain cases. Historical events can be ignored and the person who remembers what happened is labeled as "delusional."
I have found this same level of intellectual disconnect when talking to Zionists. They are seemingly unable to follow a logical argument through to its conclusion, but rather short-circuit, become defensive and irrational, and create distance, much like many good autistic people act when you try to make them understand a logical, linear argument.
They can see things in so many multi-dimensions that life becomes so complicated that something like mopping a floor - a linear progression of a series of acts aimed at a specific goal - becomes so overwhelming that they just don't even bother trying to do it. They just act helpless until someone else does it for them. A successful autistic adult (like Bill Gates) is one who is skilled in getting people do things for him while he concentrates. Autistic people try to maintain control over all circumstances, due to a rigidity of thought.
Once you realize another person is incapable, not just unwilling, to negotiate solutions – you have to change tactics. You cannot have a cooperative relationship based on human equality with an autistic individual because the neurotypical person will always be compensating for the autistic person's unwillingness or inability to reciprocate, and their refusal to negotiate constructively. Rather than keeping their agreements, they often just invent a new personality that doesn't "remember" having that conversation before. Just like an Israeli peace treaty!
We Americans have been negotiating with a people incapable of caring about our point of view. We have to see clearly that we are in a caretaking position. We are not dealing with human beings who we can talk to on our own level. The fact is, Israel is a country that would never have survived without our financial generosity. It is not a “normal” country. Israel is pretending to be normal the way a person with Aspergers pretends to be normal - so very cruel to those upon whom she so heavily relies.
Zionists have a certain mental deficit. We must decide as a people to stop begging them for empathy. We will stop trying to make agreements with them in good faith. Then, we will stop suffering from feelings of rage, hurt, and hate. We are the caretakers of Israel, like them or not. If we don't step up to the responsibility, and admit our adversary has a serious problem, no one else will.
Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based freelance writer. Karinfriedemann.blogspot.com
The stereotypical autistic genius and the Zionist mind are very similar in so many ways:
- ability to function impressively in some realms while lacking common sense
- lack of empathy - while at the same time possessing a self-image of being a decent person
- inability to put himself in someone else's shoes - even if needs are explained, it does not "compute"
- compartmentalization of the mind - learning does not infer wisdom to another area of experience
- appreciation of cute animals/cries during movies yet oblivious to the real life needs of others
- unwilling to make any effort to alleviate a human's suffering - if it is caused by himself
- reacts with outrage and counter-blame when someone mentions what he did
- will not cooperate, even if it is in his own best interest
- reluctance to enter into any human relationship unless the other person is "useful"
- sense of entitlement or delusions of grandeur
- imagining others as lesser beings made to serve oneself – no sense of gratitude
- the self-explanation for harming others is always that he is "merely existing" or "surviving"
- constantly tries to get other people's sympathy for being a clueless victim of unfortunate circumstances, so that people will give him money/credibility
Scientists are still trying to understand how the human brain can malfunction. Some people's brains are found to be abnormally active in certain regions while abnormally inactive in other regions, compared to typical left and right brain activity. The autism label is used to separate people with neurological disorders from people whose antisocial behaviors may have other causes. For example, Chronic Oppositional Defiance is considered a psychiatric condition, even though it is nearly identical to Pathological Demand Avoidance Syndrome, considered a type of autism.
Autistic children can often be recognized at a very young age by their inability to understand what another person is pointing to. This is because the child CANNOT imagine herself in another person's shoes in order to guess at what he might be pointing to. It is a true disability. It is not a psychiatric condition. It cannot be cured. The person truly cannot imagine another person's point of view.
If an autistic person recognizes that he has a problem understanding others' point of view, he can learn to use his intellect to compensate for lack of intuition, for example by memorizing social rules and following them legalistically rather than understanding right and wrong on an intuitive level.
However, there is probably no limit to how the brain can analytically reinterpret even something as simple as the Ten Commandments, so that they only apply to certain people, or certain cases. Historical events can be ignored and the person who remembers what happened is labeled as "delusional."
I have found this same level of intellectual disconnect when talking to Zionists. They are seemingly unable to follow a logical argument through to its conclusion, but rather short-circuit, become defensive and irrational, and create distance, much like many good autistic people act when you try to make them understand a logical, linear argument.
They can see things in so many multi-dimensions that life becomes so complicated that something like mopping a floor - a linear progression of a series of acts aimed at a specific goal - becomes so overwhelming that they just don't even bother trying to do it. They just act helpless until someone else does it for them. A successful autistic adult (like Bill Gates) is one who is skilled in getting people do things for him while he concentrates. Autistic people try to maintain control over all circumstances, due to a rigidity of thought.
Once you realize another person is incapable, not just unwilling, to negotiate solutions – you have to change tactics. You cannot have a cooperative relationship based on human equality with an autistic individual because the neurotypical person will always be compensating for the autistic person's unwillingness or inability to reciprocate, and their refusal to negotiate constructively. Rather than keeping their agreements, they often just invent a new personality that doesn't "remember" having that conversation before. Just like an Israeli peace treaty!
We Americans have been negotiating with a people incapable of caring about our point of view. We have to see clearly that we are in a caretaking position. We are not dealing with human beings who we can talk to on our own level. The fact is, Israel is a country that would never have survived without our financial generosity. It is not a “normal” country. Israel is pretending to be normal the way a person with Aspergers pretends to be normal - so very cruel to those upon whom she so heavily relies.
Zionists have a certain mental deficit. We must decide as a people to stop begging them for empathy. We will stop trying to make agreements with them in good faith. Then, we will stop suffering from feelings of rage, hurt, and hate. We are the caretakers of Israel, like them or not. If we don't step up to the responsibility, and admit our adversary has a serious problem, no one else will.
Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based freelance writer. Karinfriedemann.blogspot.com
Saturday, September 05, 2009
Disengaging America from the Israel Lobby
"No taxation by a foreign government without representation" is a basic American principle. Yet, the taxation currently endured by US taxpayers because of the Israel Lobby far exceeds the level of taxation by the British that led to the American Revolution. Pro-Israel organisations do everything possible to prevent Americans from openly discussing the fact that they are being taxed without consent.
Through subversion Israel advocates have orchestrated passage of the Patriot Act, Homeland Security abuses, and other erosions of civil liberties. Pro-Israel organisations file lawsuits to keep the question of Israel investments off local ballots. Jewish communal organisations bribe elected public officials with free trips to Israel to gain their support — even against the will of the majority of their constituents!
Financing Israel at the expense of basic American values victimises every citizen to benefit a very small sub-group of the population and also creates worldwide anti-US hostility, which puts all Americans at risk of terrorist retaliation. Obeying the Israel lobby goes against all logical American self-interest. Obeying Zionist pressure to invade several countries at once means watching America commit suicide, economically and politically, for the sake of Israel. Zionist activists are a real and present danger to the USA. They should be stripped of their US citizenship and sent to Guantanamo for interrogation.
America’s free press, justice system, and democracy are dependent upon the separation of American from Israeli interests. To survive, America must disentangle itself from the Zionist web of control. The common Zionist argument that Jews should get to keep what they stole just because they’ve been sitting on other people’s property for so many years is not a valid legal argument. International law as defined by the post-WW2 Nuremburg Tribunals does not confer upon occupiers any entitlement to “security.” Zionism is nothing less than a criminal ideology that completely rejects the fundamental American principle of sacred property rights.
America stands for equal rights, which applies to property and residency rights and other legal norms such as use of public transportation and voting. The US has acknowledged the injustice involved in colonising America at the expense of the native population. Even though economic disparities still remain, Native Americans have US citizenship and are allowed to rent, buy and sell property just like other citizens. This is not true for millions of Palestinian refugees who are denied any passports while they live under Israeli curfews and martial law. It is even against Israeli law for sympathetic Jews voluntarily to reconvey stolen property that they currently hold without legitimate title to the original, rightful owners. In general, Jews cannot even sell homes to Arabs. Yet Germany returned homes stolen from the Jews in World War II to their descendants.
Many Americans are aware that the subsidisation of the Israeli military at the expense of the US taxpayer puts all Americans at risk of retaliation. Yet the criminal acts begin right under our noses here in America by bankers and real estate agents. With the deep enmeshment of Israeli agents in the United States political spectrum, the Israel Lobby acts as a mafia facilitating the looting of billions of dollars via US military acquisitions from Jewish-owned defense corporations like General Dynamics and via capital transfers including ongoing complex beneficiary-obscuring transactions. In addition to ongoing US foreign aid for weapons purchase, the USA buys billions of dollars of weapons, declares the weaponry to be obsolete and then consigns it to Israel at practically no charge. Using full-scale militarised equipment supplied and paid for by the United States, the Israeli government uses US tax money to pay the IDF to force the non-Jewish Palestinian rightful owners to vacate their own property so that subsidised real-estate magnates can bulldoze the place to build suburban-style condos for foreigners outfitted with supplies from Home Depot and JCPenney.
As the Israeli government orchestrates increasing demand for Palestinian property, ordinary American Jews wishing to escape their credit card debts buy up stolen Palestinian property by means of mortgages that roll in existing indebtedness at subsidised interest rates. American Jewish purchasers can then resell the stolen properties at a profit and return debt-free to the USA with cash in their pockets. This outrageous criminal conspiracy takes place in broad-daylight generally under the aegis of taxpayer subsidised Zionist “charities” that encourage “Aliyah” (Jewish ascension to Israel).
Are American law enforcement officials investigating this racist organised crime network operating in full daylight? The Jews who move into this stolen property are participating in an international crime. The FBI should be attending all the Pro-Israel training workshops that take place on US soil and that promote both the subversion of all our basic national beliefs and also the looting of the US economy. The United States has no choice but to start investigating, arresting, charging, prosecuting, convicting and incarcerating American citizens participating in the Zionist settlement process.
Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on Middle East affairs and US politics. She is Director of the Division on Muslim Civil Rights and Liberties for the National Association of Muslim American Women. Joachim Martillo contributed to this article
Through subversion Israel advocates have orchestrated passage of the Patriot Act, Homeland Security abuses, and other erosions of civil liberties. Pro-Israel organisations file lawsuits to keep the question of Israel investments off local ballots. Jewish communal organisations bribe elected public officials with free trips to Israel to gain their support — even against the will of the majority of their constituents!
Financing Israel at the expense of basic American values victimises every citizen to benefit a very small sub-group of the population and also creates worldwide anti-US hostility, which puts all Americans at risk of terrorist retaliation. Obeying the Israel lobby goes against all logical American self-interest. Obeying Zionist pressure to invade several countries at once means watching America commit suicide, economically and politically, for the sake of Israel. Zionist activists are a real and present danger to the USA. They should be stripped of their US citizenship and sent to Guantanamo for interrogation.
America’s free press, justice system, and democracy are dependent upon the separation of American from Israeli interests. To survive, America must disentangle itself from the Zionist web of control. The common Zionist argument that Jews should get to keep what they stole just because they’ve been sitting on other people’s property for so many years is not a valid legal argument. International law as defined by the post-WW2 Nuremburg Tribunals does not confer upon occupiers any entitlement to “security.” Zionism is nothing less than a criminal ideology that completely rejects the fundamental American principle of sacred property rights.
America stands for equal rights, which applies to property and residency rights and other legal norms such as use of public transportation and voting. The US has acknowledged the injustice involved in colonising America at the expense of the native population. Even though economic disparities still remain, Native Americans have US citizenship and are allowed to rent, buy and sell property just like other citizens. This is not true for millions of Palestinian refugees who are denied any passports while they live under Israeli curfews and martial law. It is even against Israeli law for sympathetic Jews voluntarily to reconvey stolen property that they currently hold without legitimate title to the original, rightful owners. In general, Jews cannot even sell homes to Arabs. Yet Germany returned homes stolen from the Jews in World War II to their descendants.
Many Americans are aware that the subsidisation of the Israeli military at the expense of the US taxpayer puts all Americans at risk of retaliation. Yet the criminal acts begin right under our noses here in America by bankers and real estate agents. With the deep enmeshment of Israeli agents in the United States political spectrum, the Israel Lobby acts as a mafia facilitating the looting of billions of dollars via US military acquisitions from Jewish-owned defense corporations like General Dynamics and via capital transfers including ongoing complex beneficiary-obscuring transactions. In addition to ongoing US foreign aid for weapons purchase, the USA buys billions of dollars of weapons, declares the weaponry to be obsolete and then consigns it to Israel at practically no charge. Using full-scale militarised equipment supplied and paid for by the United States, the Israeli government uses US tax money to pay the IDF to force the non-Jewish Palestinian rightful owners to vacate their own property so that subsidised real-estate magnates can bulldoze the place to build suburban-style condos for foreigners outfitted with supplies from Home Depot and JCPenney.
As the Israeli government orchestrates increasing demand for Palestinian property, ordinary American Jews wishing to escape their credit card debts buy up stolen Palestinian property by means of mortgages that roll in existing indebtedness at subsidised interest rates. American Jewish purchasers can then resell the stolen properties at a profit and return debt-free to the USA with cash in their pockets. This outrageous criminal conspiracy takes place in broad-daylight generally under the aegis of taxpayer subsidised Zionist “charities” that encourage “Aliyah” (Jewish ascension to Israel).
Are American law enforcement officials investigating this racist organised crime network operating in full daylight? The Jews who move into this stolen property are participating in an international crime. The FBI should be attending all the Pro-Israel training workshops that take place on US soil and that promote both the subversion of all our basic national beliefs and also the looting of the US economy. The United States has no choice but to start investigating, arresting, charging, prosecuting, convicting and incarcerating American citizens participating in the Zionist settlement process.
Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on Middle East affairs and US politics. She is Director of the Division on Muslim Civil Rights and Liberties for the National Association of Muslim American Women. Joachim Martillo contributed to this article
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Of Conspiracies and Plots
Many blame Ashcroft, Cheney, and Bush for ongoing campaigns against activists, politicians and organizations that try to help Arabs and Muslims.
Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner, a long time Palestinian rights advocate, told supporters that he believes former US Attorney General John Ashcroft personally orchestrated a sting operation to remove him from office. As in previous cases, strategic “media update sessions” put the media into a predatory frenzy before the accused even went to trial. Media accusations often do not even coincide with the actual charges.
Riad Hamad, founder of Palestinian Children’s Welfare Fund in Texas, believed George Bush was after him. When Hamad died mysteriously and violently after a vicious media campaign libeling him as a terrorism supporter, police and FBI refused to investigate. Clearly, there was a conspiracy involving media and law enforcement. Yet for Bush personally to take such an interest in local politics is probably beyond plausibility.
This pattern of political persecutions from Turner to Chas Freeman can be best understood with a bottom-up approach.
As Jewish wealth, power, and influence have increased so has its ability to punish those offending the organized Jewish community in some way. While the Jewish power elite seems to enjoy legal immunity, Americans and US residents targeted by these powerful political economic oligarchs suffer media and governmental abuse. This is particularly true in the Boston area, which is now a major command and control center for transnational Jewish politics and Zionist lobbying.
Not only do many such organizations that long ago should have lost 501(c)(3) tax deductible status continue to incite racism effectively with US government subsidization, but financial predation has to be truly awesome before discussion of their financial wrongdoing becomes even slightly possible, and to this day a Boston-area fraudster like longtime Madoff-associate Robert Jaffe has yet to face criminal charges.
Americans should wonder whether the studious obliviousness of US Attorney to federal criminal violations, including all the ongoing bribery of US public officials with trips to Israel, indicates that Zionist power has trumped Constitutional loyalty.
Although the pattern of abuse of power extends well beyond the Boston area, much if not most of Zionist social, political, economic, and academic misbehavior links back to the Boston-area Jewish community or educational institutions where young Jews often first hook up with vast corrupt Jewish social networks. As a major American and world education center, Boston provides the most efficient and excellent means for the Jewish power elite to influence the USA and the world. No one should be surprised US Senator from Israel Joseph Lieberman and Harvard Professor Ruth Wisse are co-in-laws.
Although the presence of extremist Zionists like Rahm Emanuel or Dennis Ross near the president is disturbing, lower rank staffers like Treasury Department official Stuart Levey or pro-Israel propagandist Matthew Levitt are far more threatening to US democracy. While serving the government, Boston-bred Levitt constructed a vast terrorist conspiracy out of paranoid Zionist fantasies trying to explain the refusal of Muslims to acknowledge that it was just to establish a Jewish state in Palestine.
In Levitt's delusions, to which other lesser ranking government officials like Daniel Pipes and Rachel Ehrenfeld contributed, Islamic finance and Islamic charity serve as a many-headed hydra of evil. Through vast numbers of meetings and internal dissemination of documents Levitt and Levey spread Zionist doctrine throughout government bureaucracy until practically every official from Ashcroft down could on cue reflexively repeat the whole litany of the sins that Levitt had fabricated about each charity or financial entity that was targeted for demonization.
Roots of the conspiracy involving Pipes, Levitt, and Levey lead back to the Boston area, where the Israel Lobby is deeply embedded in the region's educational institutions.
Aafia Siddique, who was a graduate student in cognitive neuroscience at Boston area Brandeis University, was demonized as a terrorist to punish her Muslim activism at the Jewish institution. The case constructed against Siddiqui has the flavor of psychotic paranoia so common in Matthew Levitt’s anti-Palestinian, Islamophobic fantasies.
During the Bush administration Levitt, who manipulated the US government into putting a lot of good people in jail, was a close associate of both Ashcroft and Levey, who continues in the Obama administration as an American Jewish Committee covert operative.
Understanding the centrality of Boston Jewish power in the USA requires a critical look at The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy. Professors Mearsheimer and Walt incorrectly claim the Israel Lobby is just another lobby even though the Israel Lobby is really the public face of an international criminal web, which has rendered the USA a dependent intimidated client state within the Zionist imperial system.
Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on Middle East affairs and US politics. She is Director of the Division on Muslim Civil Rights and Liberties for the National Association of Muslim American Women. Joachim Martillo contributed to this article.
Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner, a long time Palestinian rights advocate, told supporters that he believes former US Attorney General John Ashcroft personally orchestrated a sting operation to remove him from office. As in previous cases, strategic “media update sessions” put the media into a predatory frenzy before the accused even went to trial. Media accusations often do not even coincide with the actual charges.
Riad Hamad, founder of Palestinian Children’s Welfare Fund in Texas, believed George Bush was after him. When Hamad died mysteriously and violently after a vicious media campaign libeling him as a terrorism supporter, police and FBI refused to investigate. Clearly, there was a conspiracy involving media and law enforcement. Yet for Bush personally to take such an interest in local politics is probably beyond plausibility.
This pattern of political persecutions from Turner to Chas Freeman can be best understood with a bottom-up approach.
As Jewish wealth, power, and influence have increased so has its ability to punish those offending the organized Jewish community in some way. While the Jewish power elite seems to enjoy legal immunity, Americans and US residents targeted by these powerful political economic oligarchs suffer media and governmental abuse. This is particularly true in the Boston area, which is now a major command and control center for transnational Jewish politics and Zionist lobbying.
Not only do many such organizations that long ago should have lost 501(c)(3) tax deductible status continue to incite racism effectively with US government subsidization, but financial predation has to be truly awesome before discussion of their financial wrongdoing becomes even slightly possible, and to this day a Boston-area fraudster like longtime Madoff-associate Robert Jaffe has yet to face criminal charges.
Americans should wonder whether the studious obliviousness of US Attorney to federal criminal violations, including all the ongoing bribery of US public officials with trips to Israel, indicates that Zionist power has trumped Constitutional loyalty.
Although the pattern of abuse of power extends well beyond the Boston area, much if not most of Zionist social, political, economic, and academic misbehavior links back to the Boston-area Jewish community or educational institutions where young Jews often first hook up with vast corrupt Jewish social networks. As a major American and world education center, Boston provides the most efficient and excellent means for the Jewish power elite to influence the USA and the world. No one should be surprised US Senator from Israel Joseph Lieberman and Harvard Professor Ruth Wisse are co-in-laws.
Although the presence of extremist Zionists like Rahm Emanuel or Dennis Ross near the president is disturbing, lower rank staffers like Treasury Department official Stuart Levey or pro-Israel propagandist Matthew Levitt are far more threatening to US democracy. While serving the government, Boston-bred Levitt constructed a vast terrorist conspiracy out of paranoid Zionist fantasies trying to explain the refusal of Muslims to acknowledge that it was just to establish a Jewish state in Palestine.
In Levitt's delusions, to which other lesser ranking government officials like Daniel Pipes and Rachel Ehrenfeld contributed, Islamic finance and Islamic charity serve as a many-headed hydra of evil. Through vast numbers of meetings and internal dissemination of documents Levitt and Levey spread Zionist doctrine throughout government bureaucracy until practically every official from Ashcroft down could on cue reflexively repeat the whole litany of the sins that Levitt had fabricated about each charity or financial entity that was targeted for demonization.
Roots of the conspiracy involving Pipes, Levitt, and Levey lead back to the Boston area, where the Israel Lobby is deeply embedded in the region's educational institutions.
Aafia Siddique, who was a graduate student in cognitive neuroscience at Boston area Brandeis University, was demonized as a terrorist to punish her Muslim activism at the Jewish institution. The case constructed against Siddiqui has the flavor of psychotic paranoia so common in Matthew Levitt’s anti-Palestinian, Islamophobic fantasies.
During the Bush administration Levitt, who manipulated the US government into putting a lot of good people in jail, was a close associate of both Ashcroft and Levey, who continues in the Obama administration as an American Jewish Committee covert operative.
Understanding the centrality of Boston Jewish power in the USA requires a critical look at The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy. Professors Mearsheimer and Walt incorrectly claim the Israel Lobby is just another lobby even though the Israel Lobby is really the public face of an international criminal web, which has rendered the USA a dependent intimidated client state within the Zionist imperial system.
Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on Middle East affairs and US politics. She is Director of the Division on Muslim Civil Rights and Liberties for the National Association of Muslim American Women. Joachim Martillo contributed to this article.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Chop Shop Economics & Stealth Zionism
Khaleej Times
Causing $64 trillion of liquidity to vanish from the world financial system and then manipulating the US government to reward the perpetrators with bailout money requires the presence of the “right people” in government, academia, and finance industries.
In The Shock Doctrine Naomi Klein argues that Milton Friedman or Chicago School influenced policy makers routinely used catastrophes to facilitate rewriting of national economic rules to benefit a select subset of the world’s hyperwealthy.
President Obama, whose economic background is all Chicago School, brought the Friedmanites including National Economic Council Director Larry Summers back into government.
Summers came under recent public scrutiny because 2008 White House financial disclosure reports reveal he collected favours from the very financial institutions that received huge taxpayer bailouts. “The document provided for Summers, who serves as one of the president’s closest confidants, underscores just how close some of these officials are to the industry over which they now have oversight,” writes Sam Stein in the Huffington Post.
J.P. Morgan Chase, which received $25 billion in government bailout funds, had paid Summers $67,500 for a single speaking engagement. Citigroup, which received $50 billion in “emergency” taxpayer aid, had paid Summers $99,000. Goldman Sachs, which received a $12 billion bailout, had paid Summers $202,500.
Glenn Greenwald of Salon explains that people like Summers and friends “shuffle back and forth from the public to the private sector and back again, repeatedly switching places with their GOP counterparts in this endless public/private sector looting.”
During the Clinton administration, as Secretaries of the Treasury, Bob Rubin and Larry Summers deregulated derivative trading. After leaving government service, Rubin became a Citigroup director and used deregulation to ruin that Bank by recommending investments in derivatives like CDOs (Collateralized Debt Obligations). For eight years of service Rubin received approximately $126 million in cash and stock.
Investors from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and UAE were effectively swindled out of billions as Citigroup value crashed because of the CDO meltdown during the Bush administration. Larry Summers became president of Harvard University in 2001. Rubin was Summers’ main booster at the Harvard Corporation, which chooses the president.
Summer’s Harvard presidency erupted into scandal when the US government accused Summers’ associate, economics professor Andrei Shleifer of financial improprieties during work on a Harvard USAID grant to create a Russian stock market. The government suspected Shleifer’s wife Nancy Zimmerman of insider stock trading.
Because Shleifer put Harvard in breach of Federal regulations regarding grant money, Harvard had to pay $27 million to the US government while Summers protected Shleifer and his job. Additional questions arose over the management of the Harvard endowment, employee compensation, and suspected middle market restraint of trade involving university real estate acquisitions.
During this turbulent period in his career, Summers worked hard to improve his Jewish credentials. He badmouthed anti-Israel divestment activists on campus but supported Darfur-related divestment.. He dumped his Christian wife Victoria Perry for Holocaust Literature professor Elisa New, a close friend of Jewish Studies professor Ruth Wisse, whose husband is chairman of board of directors of CAMERA, a professional Israel advocacy organisation.
In a disastrous blow to Harvard’s academic stature, Summers rejected former UAE president Shaikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan’s $2 million donation for an Islamic Studies chair at the Harvard Divinity School under pressure from Rachel Fish of the David Project, which is another Israel advocacy group with connections to CAMERA.
The Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences twice voted “no confidence” in Summers, who resigned as Harvard president in 2006 amidst rumours of refusal to testify in an internal investigation of financial fraud. Shortly thereafter the D.E. Shaw hedge fund hired Summers with Rubin’s recommendation and paid Summers $5.2 million for approximately 50 working days.
Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel trod a similar career path perhaps more quickly because of superior Jewish Zionist credentials resulting from an Irgunist father and civilian IDF service during Iraq War I.
Boutique investment bank Wasserstein Perella, whose founder Bruce Wasserstein is heavily involved in Zionist politics, hired Emanuel in 1999 and paid him $16 million for two years of work, despite his having zero background in economics or finance.
Now this corrupt network is pushing through Congress another huge gift for their friends: the Summers-Geithner Plan, which enables banks to make their own valuation of toxic assets and then buy them with taxpayer money without restoring the lost liquidity.
Paul Krugman writes in the New York Times, “In effect, Treasury will be creating — deliberately! — the functional equivalent of Texas S&Ls in the 1980s: financial operations with very little capital but lots of government-guaranteed liabilities.”
Dean Baker of Truthout points out: “Some hedge and equity fund managers could make hundreds of millions or even billions off the Geithner plan.” This Plan looks like a premeditated attempt to loot and destroy the US financial system.
Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on the Middle East affairs and US politics
Causing $64 trillion of liquidity to vanish from the world financial system and then manipulating the US government to reward the perpetrators with bailout money requires the presence of the “right people” in government, academia, and finance industries.
In The Shock Doctrine Naomi Klein argues that Milton Friedman or Chicago School influenced policy makers routinely used catastrophes to facilitate rewriting of national economic rules to benefit a select subset of the world’s hyperwealthy.
President Obama, whose economic background is all Chicago School, brought the Friedmanites including National Economic Council Director Larry Summers back into government.
Summers came under recent public scrutiny because 2008 White House financial disclosure reports reveal he collected favours from the very financial institutions that received huge taxpayer bailouts. “The document provided for Summers, who serves as one of the president’s closest confidants, underscores just how close some of these officials are to the industry over which they now have oversight,” writes Sam Stein in the Huffington Post.
J.P. Morgan Chase, which received $25 billion in government bailout funds, had paid Summers $67,500 for a single speaking engagement. Citigroup, which received $50 billion in “emergency” taxpayer aid, had paid Summers $99,000. Goldman Sachs, which received a $12 billion bailout, had paid Summers $202,500.
Glenn Greenwald of Salon explains that people like Summers and friends “shuffle back and forth from the public to the private sector and back again, repeatedly switching places with their GOP counterparts in this endless public/private sector looting.”
During the Clinton administration, as Secretaries of the Treasury, Bob Rubin and Larry Summers deregulated derivative trading. After leaving government service, Rubin became a Citigroup director and used deregulation to ruin that Bank by recommending investments in derivatives like CDOs (Collateralized Debt Obligations). For eight years of service Rubin received approximately $126 million in cash and stock.
Investors from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and UAE were effectively swindled out of billions as Citigroup value crashed because of the CDO meltdown during the Bush administration. Larry Summers became president of Harvard University in 2001. Rubin was Summers’ main booster at the Harvard Corporation, which chooses the president.
Summer’s Harvard presidency erupted into scandal when the US government accused Summers’ associate, economics professor Andrei Shleifer of financial improprieties during work on a Harvard USAID grant to create a Russian stock market. The government suspected Shleifer’s wife Nancy Zimmerman of insider stock trading.
Because Shleifer put Harvard in breach of Federal regulations regarding grant money, Harvard had to pay $27 million to the US government while Summers protected Shleifer and his job. Additional questions arose over the management of the Harvard endowment, employee compensation, and suspected middle market restraint of trade involving university real estate acquisitions.
During this turbulent period in his career, Summers worked hard to improve his Jewish credentials. He badmouthed anti-Israel divestment activists on campus but supported Darfur-related divestment.. He dumped his Christian wife Victoria Perry for Holocaust Literature professor Elisa New, a close friend of Jewish Studies professor Ruth Wisse, whose husband is chairman of board of directors of CAMERA, a professional Israel advocacy organisation.
In a disastrous blow to Harvard’s academic stature, Summers rejected former UAE president Shaikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan’s $2 million donation for an Islamic Studies chair at the Harvard Divinity School under pressure from Rachel Fish of the David Project, which is another Israel advocacy group with connections to CAMERA.
The Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences twice voted “no confidence” in Summers, who resigned as Harvard president in 2006 amidst rumours of refusal to testify in an internal investigation of financial fraud. Shortly thereafter the D.E. Shaw hedge fund hired Summers with Rubin’s recommendation and paid Summers $5.2 million for approximately 50 working days.
Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel trod a similar career path perhaps more quickly because of superior Jewish Zionist credentials resulting from an Irgunist father and civilian IDF service during Iraq War I.
Boutique investment bank Wasserstein Perella, whose founder Bruce Wasserstein is heavily involved in Zionist politics, hired Emanuel in 1999 and paid him $16 million for two years of work, despite his having zero background in economics or finance.
Now this corrupt network is pushing through Congress another huge gift for their friends: the Summers-Geithner Plan, which enables banks to make their own valuation of toxic assets and then buy them with taxpayer money without restoring the lost liquidity.
Paul Krugman writes in the New York Times, “In effect, Treasury will be creating — deliberately! — the functional equivalent of Texas S&Ls in the 1980s: financial operations with very little capital but lots of government-guaranteed liabilities.”
Dean Baker of Truthout points out: “Some hedge and equity fund managers could make hundreds of millions or even billions off the Geithner plan.” This Plan looks like a premeditated attempt to loot and destroy the US financial system.
Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on the Middle East affairs and US politics
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Why Arabs are Backing Sudan's Bashir
10 April 2009
Khaleej Times
Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir, despite being indicted on March 4, 2009 on seven counts of war crimes by the International Criminal Court, was given a “hero’s welcome” by the Arab League Summit hosted by Qatar last week. The 22 nations warmly supported Al Bashir with a resolution opposing the dubious ICC arrest warrant.
Bashir called the ICC an “undemocratic institution that ... applied double standards, targeted the weak and gave a blind eye to the criminals.”
Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, also present at the summit, likewise objected to the ICC. “Why do they not order the capture of Bush? Why not order the arrest of the president of Israel?”
“If anything happened to Omar Al Bashir and Sudan ended up in chaos, the whole of Africa will sink into chaos,” warned Shaikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the Amir of Qatar.
Amr Moussa, the Arab League Secretary-General, said that the arrest warrant was aimed “at undermining the unity and stability of Sudan.”
In response to the arrest warrant, which was issued at behest of “Save Darfur,” an activist coalition mobilised by pro-Israel organisations committed to pressuring the US administration to treat Sudan like Iraq, Al Bashir evicted 13 western NGOs from his country.
Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report comments, “Any government in the world that believes it has been targeted for regime change by the United States and its allies would be foolish to allow western-based nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) to operate freely in its territory.”
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, “Almost the entire Arab and African world supports Sudan against the ICC, arguing it is a biased and political tool that only targets Africans and infringes sovereignty.”
“The allegations at the ICC have nothing to do with reality, and we will use our friends in the United Nations to stop them,” says Abdel Malik Al Naiem, spokesman for the Sudanese Embassy in Cairo.
“In one year we will Sudanise all the aid on the ground and we can fill the gap in food distribution within one year because the Sudanese Red Crescent already distributes 45 per cent of the food in Darfur,” Al Bashir promised during a recent visit to Saudi Arabia.
China and Russia back the central government in Khartoum and support local peace agreements between Sudan’s warring tribes while the US, Britain, Israel and France materially support insurgent militias and promote increased foreign intervention with massive, internationally coordinated propaganda. Michel Massih, Al Bashir’s leading attorney points out, “I have never heard in my legal career of a chief prosecutor that launches media campaigns against a defendant, regardless of the nature of the charges.”
Columbia Professor Mahmood Mamdani, whose new book ‘Saviours and Survivors’ just came out, says he began to look at the issue of Darfur in 2003. He was struck by the rapid globalisation and the fact-indifference of the Save Darfur movement, which consistently misrepresented the facts in a media blitz.
Mamdani points out in a recent IslamOnline interview with Ismail Ikashkash: “The Save Darfur movement does not educate the people… about what issues drive the conflict. So they know nothing about the politics of Darfur, the history of Darfur, the history of the conflict. All they know is that … Darfur is a place where ‘evil lives.’”
In his book, Professor Mamdani describes in detail how the Save Darfur Coalition presented itself primarily as an inter-religious coalition promoting Islamophobia by implicitly creating a division of responsibility among faiths:
“The Christian faith packets were the most explicit: They spoke of ‘divine empowerment’ and ‘the burden to save’…The Jewish faith packets emphasized the special moral responsibility of Jews as ‘quintessential victims’ to identify genocide whenever it occurs…Muslims were asked to fight oppressors in their midst.”
Save Darfur board chairwoman Gloria White-Hammond, an African-American Christian minister in Boston who has been groomed to promote Zionist politics by Israel advocacy group “The David Project,” met with President Obama and his Sudan envoy General Scott Gration, before their recent trip to Sudan. She and Save Darfur president Jerry Fowler pressured Obama to revive Sudan’s internal conflicts and to threaten Khartoum with further international isolation.
America imposed economic sanctions on Sudan in 1997, but peace in Sudan requires foreign investment and political reform. Sudan has the largest underground freshwater lake in all of Africa. With some technology, Sudan could become the Breadbasket of Africa. Bush made it illegal for American-allied businesses to invest in life-saving infrastructure, and even threatened a delegation of African-American businesspeople with criminal prosecution for discussing investment ideas with President Al Bashir.
President Obama will have to choose between continuing Bush’s policies, which leave millions of Sudanese civilians in mortal jeopardy, and which have earned America international scorn, and reconciling with an international community whose support for the people of Africa is destined to grow.
Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on the Middle Eastern affairs
Khaleej Times
Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir, despite being indicted on March 4, 2009 on seven counts of war crimes by the International Criminal Court, was given a “hero’s welcome” by the Arab League Summit hosted by Qatar last week. The 22 nations warmly supported Al Bashir with a resolution opposing the dubious ICC arrest warrant.
Bashir called the ICC an “undemocratic institution that ... applied double standards, targeted the weak and gave a blind eye to the criminals.”
Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, also present at the summit, likewise objected to the ICC. “Why do they not order the capture of Bush? Why not order the arrest of the president of Israel?”
“If anything happened to Omar Al Bashir and Sudan ended up in chaos, the whole of Africa will sink into chaos,” warned Shaikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the Amir of Qatar.
Amr Moussa, the Arab League Secretary-General, said that the arrest warrant was aimed “at undermining the unity and stability of Sudan.”
In response to the arrest warrant, which was issued at behest of “Save Darfur,” an activist coalition mobilised by pro-Israel organisations committed to pressuring the US administration to treat Sudan like Iraq, Al Bashir evicted 13 western NGOs from his country.
Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report comments, “Any government in the world that believes it has been targeted for regime change by the United States and its allies would be foolish to allow western-based nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) to operate freely in its territory.”
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, “Almost the entire Arab and African world supports Sudan against the ICC, arguing it is a biased and political tool that only targets Africans and infringes sovereignty.”
“The allegations at the ICC have nothing to do with reality, and we will use our friends in the United Nations to stop them,” says Abdel Malik Al Naiem, spokesman for the Sudanese Embassy in Cairo.
“In one year we will Sudanise all the aid on the ground and we can fill the gap in food distribution within one year because the Sudanese Red Crescent already distributes 45 per cent of the food in Darfur,” Al Bashir promised during a recent visit to Saudi Arabia.
China and Russia back the central government in Khartoum and support local peace agreements between Sudan’s warring tribes while the US, Britain, Israel and France materially support insurgent militias and promote increased foreign intervention with massive, internationally coordinated propaganda. Michel Massih, Al Bashir’s leading attorney points out, “I have never heard in my legal career of a chief prosecutor that launches media campaigns against a defendant, regardless of the nature of the charges.”
Columbia Professor Mahmood Mamdani, whose new book ‘Saviours and Survivors’ just came out, says he began to look at the issue of Darfur in 2003. He was struck by the rapid globalisation and the fact-indifference of the Save Darfur movement, which consistently misrepresented the facts in a media blitz.
Mamdani points out in a recent IslamOnline interview with Ismail Ikashkash: “The Save Darfur movement does not educate the people… about what issues drive the conflict. So they know nothing about the politics of Darfur, the history of Darfur, the history of the conflict. All they know is that … Darfur is a place where ‘evil lives.’”
In his book, Professor Mamdani describes in detail how the Save Darfur Coalition presented itself primarily as an inter-religious coalition promoting Islamophobia by implicitly creating a division of responsibility among faiths:
“The Christian faith packets were the most explicit: They spoke of ‘divine empowerment’ and ‘the burden to save’…The Jewish faith packets emphasized the special moral responsibility of Jews as ‘quintessential victims’ to identify genocide whenever it occurs…Muslims were asked to fight oppressors in their midst.”
Save Darfur board chairwoman Gloria White-Hammond, an African-American Christian minister in Boston who has been groomed to promote Zionist politics by Israel advocacy group “The David Project,” met with President Obama and his Sudan envoy General Scott Gration, before their recent trip to Sudan. She and Save Darfur president Jerry Fowler pressured Obama to revive Sudan’s internal conflicts and to threaten Khartoum with further international isolation.
America imposed economic sanctions on Sudan in 1997, but peace in Sudan requires foreign investment and political reform. Sudan has the largest underground freshwater lake in all of Africa. With some technology, Sudan could become the Breadbasket of Africa. Bush made it illegal for American-allied businesses to invest in life-saving infrastructure, and even threatened a delegation of African-American businesspeople with criminal prosecution for discussing investment ideas with President Al Bashir.
President Obama will have to choose between continuing Bush’s policies, which leave millions of Sudanese civilians in mortal jeopardy, and which have earned America international scorn, and reconciling with an international community whose support for the people of Africa is destined to grow.
Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on the Middle Eastern affairs
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Talking to Jews (or Not)
The very sweet Prof. Kevin MacDonald thoroughly analyzes my last blog entry:
Talking with Jews (or not)
Kevin MacDonald
A topic that is not discussed enough is the screaming, in-your-face, hostile aggression that people must withstand when they dare to trample on Jewish sensibilities. We are not talking about the sophisticated rationalization one sees in the op-ed pages of the mainstream media, or even the smear techniques of organizations like the ADL or the SPLC. We are talking about interpersonal aggression. There is something absolutely primal about it.
Now comes a refreshingly frank blog post by Karin Friedemann, an ethnically Jewish anti-Zionist. She notes the “violent intolerance” that defenders of Israel show towards people with different opinions.
American Jews are actually being trained since childhood to interact with non-Jews in a deceitful and arrogant manner, in coordination with each other, to emotionally destroy Gentiles and Israel critics in addition to wrecking their careers and interfering with their social relationships. This is actually deliberate, wicked, planned behavior motivated by a narcissistic self-righteous fury….
The problem is that Gentiles are taught through emotional pressure and violence via the media and the school system to be very sensitive to Jewish suffering so when a Zionist becomes outraged at them for challenging their world view, the Gentile really has to fight against his own inner self in a huge battle against his "inner Jew" making him feel inadequate and intimidated. But the Jew doesn’t care how much he or she hurts others. Jews only care about what's good for the Jews. …
I once reduced a 50 year old man to hysterical sobbing tears because I told him gently and lovingly that Jews were not that unique. I just told him the Jews, like everyone else, have had good times and bad times. Times when they were slaughtered and other times when they slaughtered others. Just like everyone else. Guess what he did next. He emotionally abused me in an insulting way and then cut off all further communication. Jewish behavior is so predictable that it's truly scary. …
If you mention cutting off the money or if you mention the possible compromise of living with Palestinians as equals in one state they become very angry and start using bullying tactics, unless they have some reason to fear you, in which case they shun you and complain about you to the authorities, try to get you arrested or try and destroy your career or social status through character assassination. …
Zionists all believe in the myth of "1000 years of Jewish suffering" and feel that the world owes them compensation for their ancestors' "unique" suffering. It's a criminally insane viewpoint. They cope with the contradictions between their belief that they are the good guys and what Jews are actually doing to their neighbors, both in the Middle East and in the US, by developing mental health issues. Most Zionists are functional schizophrenics.
My take:
· These tactics are not restricted to critics of Zionism. As one who has experienced a barrage of hostile email from my faculty colleagues, I can certainly attest to this. One quickly notices that assertions of the legitimacy of white identity and interests will also result in a barrage of hostility. This despite the fact that support for racial Zionism is strong throughout the entire Jewish political spectrum (see below). A correspondent sent me the following recently:
I have encountered many liberal, politically correct Jews who react vociferously (almost violently) to the most innocuous comments about any topic related to Israel or Jews. One Jew upon my mentioning that my wife and I had been to Russia spent several minutes virtually frothing at the mouth about Russians. Another upon hearing me say I was sympathetic to the problems of the Palestinians demanded to know who I was and how dare I say such a thing. Often zero tolerance for any difference in opinion.
· The media constantly present images of Jewish suffering—most recently the endless glut of Holocaust movies. But the media ignore instances, such as the early decades of the USSR and now in Greater Israel, where Jews have inflicted horrible suffering. Right now I am reading E. Michael Jones’ The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit and Its Effect on History. It is striking to read his account of Jewish violence against non-Jews in the ancient world, particularly the persecution of Christians whenever Jews had the power to do so. Long before Christians had any influence on Roman policy, Christians’ complaints about Jews were not stereotypes based on historical memory but resulted from direct experience with Jews: “Origen understood that Jewish calumny helped to cause Christian persecution, and that Jewish hatred was a fact of life for the Christians, continuing unabated after the repeated defeats of Messianic politics” (i.e., the defeats of Jewish rebels at the hands of the Romans in 70 and 135 ad) (p. 69). This is the basis of my concern on what will happen to whites when Jews become part of a hostile elite in white-minority America.
· Non-Jews absorb these media images and as a result feel inadequate, emotionally intimidated. Eventually they identify with the aggressor, much like a browbeaten hostage or, as Friedemann suggests, an abused spouse. Or they maintain their friendships but studiously avoid talking about anything related to Israel. Non-Jews do the bidding of their “inner Jew” because they have internalized images of Jewish suffering. They therefore aid and abet Jewish brutality and aggression.
· Non-Jews who persist in criticizing the organized Jewish community are threatened with loss of livelihood and social ostracism. As I noted in a previous article the organized Jewish community does not believe in free speech. It is important to keep in mind that when Jews were dominant in the first decades of the Soviet Union, the government controlled the media, anti-Semitism was outlawed, and there was mass murder of Christians and the destruction of Christian churches and religious institutions.
As Friedemann notes, the situation is nothing less than a sign of serious mental health issues for the mainstream Jewish community: “Most Zionists are functional schizophrenics.”
I think this is what happens when people who deal with Jewish issues finally realize that there is no hope for dialogue and begin to think of what to do next. Honest people finally realize that when it comes to critical issues like Israel and multicultural America, the divisions among Jews are an illusion. (Friedemann herself has renounced her Jewish identity.) As Friedemann’s husband, Joachim Martillo, notes, “Jews, who want to be decent human beings, have no choice but to renounce being Jewish and serve the anti-Zionist struggle (right now).”
Exhibit A for this right now is the murderous Israeli invasion of Gaza. We know (see, for example, John Mearsheimer’s article in The American Conservative) that this invasion occurred after a prolonged period when Israel restricted supplies into Gaza and then attacked tunnels between Gaza and Egypt. We know that the invasion was designed to “to inflict massive pain on the Palestinians so that they come to accept the fact that they are a defeated people and that Israel will be largely responsible for controlling their future.”
The tone of Mearsheimer’s article suggests a dramatic shift in attitude where the usual inhibitions on public discourse are finally beginning to fall, even for a respected academic:
There is … little chance that people around the world who follow the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will soon forget the appalling punishment that Israel is meting out in Gaza. … [D]iscourse about this longstanding conflict has undergone a sea change in the West in recent years, and many of us who were once wholly sympathetic to Israel now see that the Israelis are the victimizers and the Palestinians are the victims.
The gloves are coming off. This is what happens when smart and honest people who work hard to get the scholarship right are nevertheless smeared as anti-Semites guilty of the vilest misdeeds. Not surprisingly, Abe Foxman — a premier defender of the racial Zionist status quo in Israel — devoted an entire book to smearing Mearsheimer and Walt. Quite simply, there is no point to talking to such people or taking seriously what they say about us.
We know that the government of Israel is firmly in the hands of the racial Zionists — followers of Vladimir Jabotinsky and his view of the racial distinctiveness and superiority of the Jewish people. Indeed, the only question in the Israeli election is which brand of racial Zionism will form the next government. One knows that racial Zionism has completely won the day in Israel when Kadima — the party of Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni and the Gaza invasion — is now described by Benjamin Netanyahu as the party of the left. (The LA Times dutifully calls it “centrist” but, as Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery writes, Livni “cries to high heaven against any dialogue with Hamas. She objects to a mutually agreed cease-fire. She tries to compete with Netanyahu and [Avignor] Liberman with unbridled nationalist messages.”) Indeed, Netanyahu’s only worry is that the openly racist Liberman — a disciple of the notorious Meir Kehane — will take away too many votes from Likud.
The situation is analogous to a US election where Pat Buchanan is the candidate of the far left. (I can dream.)
Avnery analogizes the election to a joke where a sergeant tells his men: “I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that you are going to change your dirty socks. The bad news is that you are going to exchange them among yourselves.”
Once again we see at work the general principle that within the Jewish community, the most extreme elements carry the day and pull the rest of the Jewish community with them. As I noted in "Zionism and the Internal Dynamics of Judaism," "over time, the more militant, expansionist Zionists (the Jabotinskyists, the Likud Party, fundamentalists, and West Bank settlers) have won the day and have continued to push for territorial expansion within Israel. This has led to conflicts with Palestinians and a widespread belief among Jews that Israel itself is threatened. The result has been a heightened group consciousness among Jews and ultimately support for Zionist extremism among the entire organized American Jewish community."
The fanatics keep pushing the envelop, forcing other Jews to either go along with their agenda or cease being part of the Jewish community. Ominously, if elected, Netanyahu promises that a top priority will be "harnessing the U.S. administration to stop the threat" of Iran's nuclear program.
Incidentally, E. Michael Jones (The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit and Its Effect on History, p. 42ff) has expanded this argument to the ancient world. He shows how the Jewish community was pulled in the direction of fanaticism by the Zealots who expelled the followers of Jesus from the synagogue and adopted a disastrous path of revolution against Rome, leading ultimately to the defeats of 70 and 135 a.d.
A good example of the schizophrenia described by Friedemann comes from the fact that around 80% of American Jews voted for Obama but around the same percentage blames Hamas for the escalation of violence and believes that the Israeli response was “appropriate.” These results of the poll on the Gaza invasion were proudly announced by Abraham Foxman of the ADL, an organization that is one of the principal forces in promoting a post-European America. The Jewish left is a pillar of multi-cultural America but strongly supports racial Zionism in Israel.
This same schizophrenia was on display at a recent presentation at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles by Chris Hedges and Mark Potok — he of the Southern Poverty Law Center. The program dealt with the usual bogey-men of the organized Jewish community: Christian fundamentalists, skinheads, David Duke, and (I am gratified to report) The Occidental Quarterly. In a comment on the alliance between Christian conservatives and Zionists, an audience member mentioned (to stifled applause) that “There are Jewish fascists.” But the moderator, Ian Masters, saved the day when he stated that “the vast majority of American Jews are secular and liberal” — a comment that brought much applause, presumably because it reassured the many Jews in the audience that they weren’t like THOSE Jews. For his part, Potok, that stalwart warrior against white America, expressed his support for what he sees as a beleaguered Israel on the verge of apocalypse at the hands of the Arabs. Schizophrenia indeed.
The politicians who are running Israel are, if anything, more racialist and nationalist than anything even remotely on the horizon in American or European politics. As Avnery notes:
In every other country, Liberman’s program would be called fascist, without quotation marks. Nowhere in the Western world is there a large party that would dare to advance such a demand [to annul the citizenship of Arabs]. The neo-fascists in Switzerland and Holland want to expel foreigners, not to annul the citizenship of the native-born. …
When Joerg Haider was taken into the Austrian cabinet, Israel recalled its ambassador from Vienna in protest. But compared to Liberman, Haider was a raving liberal, and so is Jean-Marie le Pen. Now Netanyahu has announced that Liberman will be “an important minister” in his government, Livni has hinted that he will be in her government, too, and Barak has not excluded that possibility.
The optimistic version says that Liberman will prove to be a passing curiosity. … There is also a pessimistic version: Fascism has become a serious player in the Israeli public domain. The three main parties have now legitimized it. This phenomenon must be stopped before it is too late.
So I have a suggestion for the Foxmans, the Potoks, the neoconservatives, and the secular Jewish liberals of the world: If you want to fight racism and ethnic nationalism, start in your own backyard. And my suggestion for the rest of us is to get rid of what Friedemann calls the “inner Jew.” I know it’s hard to do. But once you tune out the screaming hostility (and assuming you don’t fear losing your job), it’s easy. Just don’t expect a pleasant or rational conversation.
Kevin MacDonald is a professor of psychology at California State University–Long Beach.
Permanent URL:
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/articles/MacDonald-talk.html
Talking with Jews (or not)
Kevin MacDonald
A topic that is not discussed enough is the screaming, in-your-face, hostile aggression that people must withstand when they dare to trample on Jewish sensibilities. We are not talking about the sophisticated rationalization one sees in the op-ed pages of the mainstream media, or even the smear techniques of organizations like the ADL or the SPLC. We are talking about interpersonal aggression. There is something absolutely primal about it.
Now comes a refreshingly frank blog post by Karin Friedemann, an ethnically Jewish anti-Zionist. She notes the “violent intolerance” that defenders of Israel show towards people with different opinions.
American Jews are actually being trained since childhood to interact with non-Jews in a deceitful and arrogant manner, in coordination with each other, to emotionally destroy Gentiles and Israel critics in addition to wrecking their careers and interfering with their social relationships. This is actually deliberate, wicked, planned behavior motivated by a narcissistic self-righteous fury….
The problem is that Gentiles are taught through emotional pressure and violence via the media and the school system to be very sensitive to Jewish suffering so when a Zionist becomes outraged at them for challenging their world view, the Gentile really has to fight against his own inner self in a huge battle against his "inner Jew" making him feel inadequate and intimidated. But the Jew doesn’t care how much he or she hurts others. Jews only care about what's good for the Jews. …
I once reduced a 50 year old man to hysterical sobbing tears because I told him gently and lovingly that Jews were not that unique. I just told him the Jews, like everyone else, have had good times and bad times. Times when they were slaughtered and other times when they slaughtered others. Just like everyone else. Guess what he did next. He emotionally abused me in an insulting way and then cut off all further communication. Jewish behavior is so predictable that it's truly scary. …
If you mention cutting off the money or if you mention the possible compromise of living with Palestinians as equals in one state they become very angry and start using bullying tactics, unless they have some reason to fear you, in which case they shun you and complain about you to the authorities, try to get you arrested or try and destroy your career or social status through character assassination. …
Zionists all believe in the myth of "1000 years of Jewish suffering" and feel that the world owes them compensation for their ancestors' "unique" suffering. It's a criminally insane viewpoint. They cope with the contradictions between their belief that they are the good guys and what Jews are actually doing to their neighbors, both in the Middle East and in the US, by developing mental health issues. Most Zionists are functional schizophrenics.
My take:
· These tactics are not restricted to critics of Zionism. As one who has experienced a barrage of hostile email from my faculty colleagues, I can certainly attest to this. One quickly notices that assertions of the legitimacy of white identity and interests will also result in a barrage of hostility. This despite the fact that support for racial Zionism is strong throughout the entire Jewish political spectrum (see below). A correspondent sent me the following recently:
I have encountered many liberal, politically correct Jews who react vociferously (almost violently) to the most innocuous comments about any topic related to Israel or Jews. One Jew upon my mentioning that my wife and I had been to Russia spent several minutes virtually frothing at the mouth about Russians. Another upon hearing me say I was sympathetic to the problems of the Palestinians demanded to know who I was and how dare I say such a thing. Often zero tolerance for any difference in opinion.
· The media constantly present images of Jewish suffering—most recently the endless glut of Holocaust movies. But the media ignore instances, such as the early decades of the USSR and now in Greater Israel, where Jews have inflicted horrible suffering. Right now I am reading E. Michael Jones’ The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit and Its Effect on History. It is striking to read his account of Jewish violence against non-Jews in the ancient world, particularly the persecution of Christians whenever Jews had the power to do so. Long before Christians had any influence on Roman policy, Christians’ complaints about Jews were not stereotypes based on historical memory but resulted from direct experience with Jews: “Origen understood that Jewish calumny helped to cause Christian persecution, and that Jewish hatred was a fact of life for the Christians, continuing unabated after the repeated defeats of Messianic politics” (i.e., the defeats of Jewish rebels at the hands of the Romans in 70 and 135 ad) (p. 69). This is the basis of my concern on what will happen to whites when Jews become part of a hostile elite in white-minority America.
· Non-Jews absorb these media images and as a result feel inadequate, emotionally intimidated. Eventually they identify with the aggressor, much like a browbeaten hostage or, as Friedemann suggests, an abused spouse. Or they maintain their friendships but studiously avoid talking about anything related to Israel. Non-Jews do the bidding of their “inner Jew” because they have internalized images of Jewish suffering. They therefore aid and abet Jewish brutality and aggression.
· Non-Jews who persist in criticizing the organized Jewish community are threatened with loss of livelihood and social ostracism. As I noted in a previous article the organized Jewish community does not believe in free speech. It is important to keep in mind that when Jews were dominant in the first decades of the Soviet Union, the government controlled the media, anti-Semitism was outlawed, and there was mass murder of Christians and the destruction of Christian churches and religious institutions.
As Friedemann notes, the situation is nothing less than a sign of serious mental health issues for the mainstream Jewish community: “Most Zionists are functional schizophrenics.”
I think this is what happens when people who deal with Jewish issues finally realize that there is no hope for dialogue and begin to think of what to do next. Honest people finally realize that when it comes to critical issues like Israel and multicultural America, the divisions among Jews are an illusion. (Friedemann herself has renounced her Jewish identity.) As Friedemann’s husband, Joachim Martillo, notes, “Jews, who want to be decent human beings, have no choice but to renounce being Jewish and serve the anti-Zionist struggle (right now).”
Exhibit A for this right now is the murderous Israeli invasion of Gaza. We know (see, for example, John Mearsheimer’s article in The American Conservative) that this invasion occurred after a prolonged period when Israel restricted supplies into Gaza and then attacked tunnels between Gaza and Egypt. We know that the invasion was designed to “to inflict massive pain on the Palestinians so that they come to accept the fact that they are a defeated people and that Israel will be largely responsible for controlling their future.”
The tone of Mearsheimer’s article suggests a dramatic shift in attitude where the usual inhibitions on public discourse are finally beginning to fall, even for a respected academic:
There is … little chance that people around the world who follow the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will soon forget the appalling punishment that Israel is meting out in Gaza. … [D]iscourse about this longstanding conflict has undergone a sea change in the West in recent years, and many of us who were once wholly sympathetic to Israel now see that the Israelis are the victimizers and the Palestinians are the victims.
The gloves are coming off. This is what happens when smart and honest people who work hard to get the scholarship right are nevertheless smeared as anti-Semites guilty of the vilest misdeeds. Not surprisingly, Abe Foxman — a premier defender of the racial Zionist status quo in Israel — devoted an entire book to smearing Mearsheimer and Walt. Quite simply, there is no point to talking to such people or taking seriously what they say about us.
We know that the government of Israel is firmly in the hands of the racial Zionists — followers of Vladimir Jabotinsky and his view of the racial distinctiveness and superiority of the Jewish people. Indeed, the only question in the Israeli election is which brand of racial Zionism will form the next government. One knows that racial Zionism has completely won the day in Israel when Kadima — the party of Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni and the Gaza invasion — is now described by Benjamin Netanyahu as the party of the left. (The LA Times dutifully calls it “centrist” but, as Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery writes, Livni “cries to high heaven against any dialogue with Hamas. She objects to a mutually agreed cease-fire. She tries to compete with Netanyahu and [Avignor] Liberman with unbridled nationalist messages.”) Indeed, Netanyahu’s only worry is that the openly racist Liberman — a disciple of the notorious Meir Kehane — will take away too many votes from Likud.
The situation is analogous to a US election where Pat Buchanan is the candidate of the far left. (I can dream.)
Avnery analogizes the election to a joke where a sergeant tells his men: “I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that you are going to change your dirty socks. The bad news is that you are going to exchange them among yourselves.”
Once again we see at work the general principle that within the Jewish community, the most extreme elements carry the day and pull the rest of the Jewish community with them. As I noted in "Zionism and the Internal Dynamics of Judaism," "over time, the more militant, expansionist Zionists (the Jabotinskyists, the Likud Party, fundamentalists, and West Bank settlers) have won the day and have continued to push for territorial expansion within Israel. This has led to conflicts with Palestinians and a widespread belief among Jews that Israel itself is threatened. The result has been a heightened group consciousness among Jews and ultimately support for Zionist extremism among the entire organized American Jewish community."
The fanatics keep pushing the envelop, forcing other Jews to either go along with their agenda or cease being part of the Jewish community. Ominously, if elected, Netanyahu promises that a top priority will be "harnessing the U.S. administration to stop the threat" of Iran's nuclear program.
Incidentally, E. Michael Jones (The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit and Its Effect on History, p. 42ff) has expanded this argument to the ancient world. He shows how the Jewish community was pulled in the direction of fanaticism by the Zealots who expelled the followers of Jesus from the synagogue and adopted a disastrous path of revolution against Rome, leading ultimately to the defeats of 70 and 135 a.d.
A good example of the schizophrenia described by Friedemann comes from the fact that around 80% of American Jews voted for Obama but around the same percentage blames Hamas for the escalation of violence and believes that the Israeli response was “appropriate.” These results of the poll on the Gaza invasion were proudly announced by Abraham Foxman of the ADL, an organization that is one of the principal forces in promoting a post-European America. The Jewish left is a pillar of multi-cultural America but strongly supports racial Zionism in Israel.
This same schizophrenia was on display at a recent presentation at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles by Chris Hedges and Mark Potok — he of the Southern Poverty Law Center. The program dealt with the usual bogey-men of the organized Jewish community: Christian fundamentalists, skinheads, David Duke, and (I am gratified to report) The Occidental Quarterly. In a comment on the alliance between Christian conservatives and Zionists, an audience member mentioned (to stifled applause) that “There are Jewish fascists.” But the moderator, Ian Masters, saved the day when he stated that “the vast majority of American Jews are secular and liberal” — a comment that brought much applause, presumably because it reassured the many Jews in the audience that they weren’t like THOSE Jews. For his part, Potok, that stalwart warrior against white America, expressed his support for what he sees as a beleaguered Israel on the verge of apocalypse at the hands of the Arabs. Schizophrenia indeed.
The politicians who are running Israel are, if anything, more racialist and nationalist than anything even remotely on the horizon in American or European politics. As Avnery notes:
In every other country, Liberman’s program would be called fascist, without quotation marks. Nowhere in the Western world is there a large party that would dare to advance such a demand [to annul the citizenship of Arabs]. The neo-fascists in Switzerland and Holland want to expel foreigners, not to annul the citizenship of the native-born. …
When Joerg Haider was taken into the Austrian cabinet, Israel recalled its ambassador from Vienna in protest. But compared to Liberman, Haider was a raving liberal, and so is Jean-Marie le Pen. Now Netanyahu has announced that Liberman will be “an important minister” in his government, Livni has hinted that he will be in her government, too, and Barak has not excluded that possibility.
The optimistic version says that Liberman will prove to be a passing curiosity. … There is also a pessimistic version: Fascism has become a serious player in the Israeli public domain. The three main parties have now legitimized it. This phenomenon must be stopped before it is too late.
So I have a suggestion for the Foxmans, the Potoks, the neoconservatives, and the secular Jewish liberals of the world: If you want to fight racism and ethnic nationalism, start in your own backyard. And my suggestion for the rest of us is to get rid of what Friedemann calls the “inner Jew.” I know it’s hard to do. But once you tune out the screaming hostility (and assuming you don’t fear losing your job), it’s easy. Just don’t expect a pleasant or rational conversation.
Kevin MacDonald is a professor of psychology at California State University–Long Beach.
Permanent URL:
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/articles/MacDonald-talk.html
Monday, February 02, 2009
The Emotional Violence of Jewish Advocacy
Gideon Levy a Ha’aretz newspaper reporter recently asked: “If Israelis were so sure of the rightness of their cause, why the violent intolerance they display toward everyone who tries to make a different case?”
In "Survival Instinct or Jewish Paranoia?" my favorite shrink, ex-Israeli Avigail Barbanel writes that, “The implications of seeing the conflict from within the lens of Jewish trauma are very serious. Can we really negotiate with this? Can we explain to Israelis that their perspective on life and on the conflict is seriously flawed? If we tried will they listen, and do the Palestinians have time to wait until they do?”
It seems that Americans are kind of in an abusive marriage situation with Israel, where because love and friendship are assumed to be there, the abused partner keeps feeling guilty and acting hyper-responsible, and tries even harder to please the abuser. Many Americans maintain friendships with pro-Israel Jews and simply decide not to discuss politics; however there is an emotional blackmail going on because if you did mention Israel or Jewish-American genocidalism, the relationship would be over.
I was just thinking today about the aspect of emotional violence within Israel advocacy techniques that are used to shut down discussion about Jewish destructive behavior patterns or the State of Israel. This method is used against Gentiles primarily. Sometimes there is even a good cop-bad cop routine, with groups ganging up on someone to try and make the person feel ashamed for their alleged anti-semitism.
A Gentile in America, even a child, is raised to accept a very heavy sense of personal responsibility that far exceeds anyone else's normal sense of personal responsibility. It creates a neurotic personality who is always feeling guilty and thus is too weak to stand up to Zionist criminal behavior and the comical, obviously non-factual Zionist ideology.
Jews in America are socially empowered to go way beyond the learned trauma of the Jewish experience that results in typical reactionary behavior. They actually participate in group behavior that is deliberately manipulative and abusive - aimed at punishing activists who stand up for human equality and justice. Over the years, US Jews have become increasingly nutty not only due to current events but due to the internet "alerts" coming to them from Jewish lobbyists, who solidify their brains in this self-righteous fantasy world where Hamas is a terrorist organization, where Israel has some kind of right to kill and rob non-Jews.
So we are dealing with not only dangerous reactions based on past trauma - actually learned trauma based on a glorified and fictionalized past - but American Jews are actually being trained since childhood to interact with non-Jews in a deceitful and arrogant manner, in coordination with each other, to emotionally destroy Gentiles and Israel critics, in addition to wrecking their careers and interfering with their social relationships. This is actually deliberate, wicked, planned behavior motivated by a narcissistic self-righteous fury.
I think it's impossible to help heal Jews from Zionism without first somehow snapping off that connection with the Lobbyists. Mainstream gullible Jews and their dishrag friends tend to naively believe anything racist against Muslims – even from someone as disloyal to the United States Constitution like Charles Jacobs of CAMERA or the psychotic racist freaks at HonestReporting - who send them some unsubstantiated talking points memo - and people never even do any fact-checking.
American Jews tend to enforce blind conformity, bullying and shaming people into agreeing with a bogus sham written by a Polish immigrant funded indirectly by US taxpayers whose money was illegally laundered through the JCRC. Whatever happened to “Question Authority”?
So many Gentiles fall into this trap and start doing the work of the Zionists, attacking people if they deviate from political correctness. If we could focus on the emotional violence of Israel advocacy techniques we might be able to empower Gentiles to stand up to the psycho Zionists without enduring quite as much emotional pain.
The problem is that Gentiles are taught through emotional pressure and violence via the media and the school system to be very sensitive to Jewish suffering so when a Zionist becomes outraged at them for challenging their world view, the Gentile really has to fight against his own inner self in a huge battle against his "inner Jew" making him feel inadequate and intimidated. But the Jew doesn’t care how much he or she hurts others. Jews only care about what's good for the Jews.
The world needs to intervene to save Jews from their murderous selves, and to save the Palestinians. However, sending in the UN as an occupation force would be an insult to the Palestinians especially given the UN's past record of backing up Israel and neocon wars in general and the previous example of Bosnia. Instead of helping Bosnians, NATO dismantled their country and now uses it as a CIA base for kidnapping white prostitutes to sell to Israel.
Intervention involves convincing world leaders to do the right thing, which seldom happens and does not empower us to action other than begging them.
What is possible and in fact quite easy is to find a way to deal with Zionist Jews in our local area, especially those who are involved in the organizational structures of Zionist organized racism.
Obviously, prosecuting Zionist organizations also requires convincing the establishment to define Zionism as a criminal ideology, like we do Nazism, and going after the leadership.
However, meanwhile, there should be a way for ordinary people to wear down ordinary Jews and their leadership by engaging them in arguments, and so on. The nicey nice "interfaith dialogue" routine is not working to help the situation as it just teaches Gentiles to be friends with Jews by never mentioning Israel's crimes against humanity.
One occasionally effective path for helping Jewish friends snap out of their ideological programming is to simply state the facts over and over again.
Obviously, coming up against a Jewish narcissist is always a painful experience and yet - as with a child molester - you have to intervene. If a person is walking around believing lies that enable violent crime, you would be a BAD person not to mention it to them.
If the Zionists on the local level could be made to feel a bit less comfortable with their ideology, and they were robbed of the freedom that comes with privacy and non-discussion, things could change very fast.
Most people in Israel who want peace say it's the American Jews and other Diaspora lobbies raising the money for the hate propaganda and the campaigns to elect war criminals in Israel and so on. Getting rid of Israel would not solve the problem of this Jewish international crime network. If they lost Israel they would just find something else to mess up. The American Jews are arming the rebels in Darfur now.
Something has to be done to break the spell of hypnosis that these Israel advocacy organizations have put on the local Jews and their intellectually deficient so-called friends. Discrediting the people who are spreading Israeli propaganda to the American public is absolutely paramount.
Part 2
I can't express how much more at peace I feel since I decided not to engage Zionists as friends anymore, but to treat them like people treat any other member of a racist criminal organization like the KKK. I consider a Zionist anyone who believes that Israel must exist as a Jewish State, especially if they are emotional about the issue, because that means they believe Jews have a right to steal from non-Jews, and they believe Jews have more rights than others, which is an indefensible position to maintain.
In the past it was always the other way around. I mention Palestinians, and they would act like I did something bad and not talk to me for some months or years. I used to feel very hurt because I was not trying to offend them. I had actually spoken politely to them. From now on I'm just ignoring them.
Many people deal with Zionists by making light talk and never discuss politics, but I think we should stop doing that since it normalizes their support for racist genocide.
Many Zionists don't call themselves Zionists but to me, a Zionist is someone who would deny Palestinians equal rights in order for the Jews to keep what they stole and call it Israel. They are very brainwashed so it's usually not useful arguing with them. Jewish organizations and synagogues teach classes in linguistic martial arts tactics (how to confuse your opponent etc.) to deflect blame from Jews and Israel. It's extremely dishonest and manipulative. According to the David Project, an organization which teaches these Israel Advocacy techniques and also disseminates Islamophobic misinformation to the public, states that their goal is to diminish the impact of Israel's detractors.
Obviously, those Zionists who are simply ignorant, if they are willing to hear my point of view and to ask questions in a polite way, that's different. But normally they act manipulative and do everything to prevent a normal discussion on Jews/Israel. I once reduced a 50 year old man to hysterical sobbing tears because I told him gently and lovingly that Jews were not that unique. I just told him the Jews, like everyone else, have had good times and bad times. Times when they were slaughtered and other times when they slaughtered others. Just like everyone else. Guess what he did next. He emotionally abused me in an insulting way and then cut off all further communication. Jewish behavior is so predictable that it's truly scary.
Most of the Zionists claim to want a Palestinian State side by side an Israeli state, but as Israel Shamir points out in his book, Flowers of Galilee, it's a political maneuver: a bluff. They are simply taking advantage of your good faith to keep you engaged, to give Israel more time to steal more land. What I tell them is, even if the Jews just stole half of Palestine instead of the whole thing, it's still stealing and they need to give it back and let the refugees come home, according to legal and ethical norms. The UN definition of "genocide" says destroying a people "in whole or in part" so even if they just took part of the land, it's still considered genocide.
The two-state Zionists show their true colors when the issue is cutting off US funding to Israel. They are very attached to the idea of a racist apartheid state for Jews paid for by non-Jews. If you mention cutting off the money or if you mention the possible compromise of living with Palestinians as equals in one state they become very angry and start using bullying tactics, unless they have some reason to fear you, in which case they shun you and complain about you to the authorities, try to get you arrested or try and destroy your career or social status through character assassination.
Rabbi Michael Lerner is a good example of this type of racist. He believes that Jews need to take care of the Palestinians and teach them how to become civilized. He considers stealing Palestinian land as "affirmative action for Jews."
Zionists all believe in the myth of "1000 years of Jewish suffering" and feel that the world owes them compensation for their ancestors' "unique" suffering. It's a criminally insane viewpoint. They cope with the contradictions between their belief that they are the good guys and what Jews are actually doing to their neighbors, both in the Middle East and in the US, by developing mental health issues. Most Zionists are functional schizophrenics.
A few Zionists are not schizophrenic. If you say, "You stole their country," they just say, "Yeah, so? And what are you going to do about it?" I'm actually more willing to deal with those kind of Zionists because at least they are honest, and this does leave some room for discussion. But why. Just as Americans are not required to support Israel, we are not obliged to interact with racists.
In "Survival Instinct or Jewish Paranoia?" my favorite shrink, ex-Israeli Avigail Barbanel writes that, “The implications of seeing the conflict from within the lens of Jewish trauma are very serious. Can we really negotiate with this? Can we explain to Israelis that their perspective on life and on the conflict is seriously flawed? If we tried will they listen, and do the Palestinians have time to wait until they do?”
It seems that Americans are kind of in an abusive marriage situation with Israel, where because love and friendship are assumed to be there, the abused partner keeps feeling guilty and acting hyper-responsible, and tries even harder to please the abuser. Many Americans maintain friendships with pro-Israel Jews and simply decide not to discuss politics; however there is an emotional blackmail going on because if you did mention Israel or Jewish-American genocidalism, the relationship would be over.
I was just thinking today about the aspect of emotional violence within Israel advocacy techniques that are used to shut down discussion about Jewish destructive behavior patterns or the State of Israel. This method is used against Gentiles primarily. Sometimes there is even a good cop-bad cop routine, with groups ganging up on someone to try and make the person feel ashamed for their alleged anti-semitism.
A Gentile in America, even a child, is raised to accept a very heavy sense of personal responsibility that far exceeds anyone else's normal sense of personal responsibility. It creates a neurotic personality who is always feeling guilty and thus is too weak to stand up to Zionist criminal behavior and the comical, obviously non-factual Zionist ideology.
Jews in America are socially empowered to go way beyond the learned trauma of the Jewish experience that results in typical reactionary behavior. They actually participate in group behavior that is deliberately manipulative and abusive - aimed at punishing activists who stand up for human equality and justice. Over the years, US Jews have become increasingly nutty not only due to current events but due to the internet "alerts" coming to them from Jewish lobbyists, who solidify their brains in this self-righteous fantasy world where Hamas is a terrorist organization, where Israel has some kind of right to kill and rob non-Jews.
So we are dealing with not only dangerous reactions based on past trauma - actually learned trauma based on a glorified and fictionalized past - but American Jews are actually being trained since childhood to interact with non-Jews in a deceitful and arrogant manner, in coordination with each other, to emotionally destroy Gentiles and Israel critics, in addition to wrecking their careers and interfering with their social relationships. This is actually deliberate, wicked, planned behavior motivated by a narcissistic self-righteous fury.
I think it's impossible to help heal Jews from Zionism without first somehow snapping off that connection with the Lobbyists. Mainstream gullible Jews and their dishrag friends tend to naively believe anything racist against Muslims – even from someone as disloyal to the United States Constitution like Charles Jacobs of CAMERA or the psychotic racist freaks at HonestReporting - who send them some unsubstantiated talking points memo - and people never even do any fact-checking.
American Jews tend to enforce blind conformity, bullying and shaming people into agreeing with a bogus sham written by a Polish immigrant funded indirectly by US taxpayers whose money was illegally laundered through the JCRC. Whatever happened to “Question Authority”?
So many Gentiles fall into this trap and start doing the work of the Zionists, attacking people if they deviate from political correctness. If we could focus on the emotional violence of Israel advocacy techniques we might be able to empower Gentiles to stand up to the psycho Zionists without enduring quite as much emotional pain.
The problem is that Gentiles are taught through emotional pressure and violence via the media and the school system to be very sensitive to Jewish suffering so when a Zionist becomes outraged at them for challenging their world view, the Gentile really has to fight against his own inner self in a huge battle against his "inner Jew" making him feel inadequate and intimidated. But the Jew doesn’t care how much he or she hurts others. Jews only care about what's good for the Jews.
The world needs to intervene to save Jews from their murderous selves, and to save the Palestinians. However, sending in the UN as an occupation force would be an insult to the Palestinians especially given the UN's past record of backing up Israel and neocon wars in general and the previous example of Bosnia. Instead of helping Bosnians, NATO dismantled their country and now uses it as a CIA base for kidnapping white prostitutes to sell to Israel.
Intervention involves convincing world leaders to do the right thing, which seldom happens and does not empower us to action other than begging them.
What is possible and in fact quite easy is to find a way to deal with Zionist Jews in our local area, especially those who are involved in the organizational structures of Zionist organized racism.
Obviously, prosecuting Zionist organizations also requires convincing the establishment to define Zionism as a criminal ideology, like we do Nazism, and going after the leadership.
However, meanwhile, there should be a way for ordinary people to wear down ordinary Jews and their leadership by engaging them in arguments, and so on. The nicey nice "interfaith dialogue" routine is not working to help the situation as it just teaches Gentiles to be friends with Jews by never mentioning Israel's crimes against humanity.
One occasionally effective path for helping Jewish friends snap out of their ideological programming is to simply state the facts over and over again.
Obviously, coming up against a Jewish narcissist is always a painful experience and yet - as with a child molester - you have to intervene. If a person is walking around believing lies that enable violent crime, you would be a BAD person not to mention it to them.
If the Zionists on the local level could be made to feel a bit less comfortable with their ideology, and they were robbed of the freedom that comes with privacy and non-discussion, things could change very fast.
Most people in Israel who want peace say it's the American Jews and other Diaspora lobbies raising the money for the hate propaganda and the campaigns to elect war criminals in Israel and so on. Getting rid of Israel would not solve the problem of this Jewish international crime network. If they lost Israel they would just find something else to mess up. The American Jews are arming the rebels in Darfur now.
Something has to be done to break the spell of hypnosis that these Israel advocacy organizations have put on the local Jews and their intellectually deficient so-called friends. Discrediting the people who are spreading Israeli propaganda to the American public is absolutely paramount.
Part 2
I can't express how much more at peace I feel since I decided not to engage Zionists as friends anymore, but to treat them like people treat any other member of a racist criminal organization like the KKK. I consider a Zionist anyone who believes that Israel must exist as a Jewish State, especially if they are emotional about the issue, because that means they believe Jews have a right to steal from non-Jews, and they believe Jews have more rights than others, which is an indefensible position to maintain.
In the past it was always the other way around. I mention Palestinians, and they would act like I did something bad and not talk to me for some months or years. I used to feel very hurt because I was not trying to offend them. I had actually spoken politely to them. From now on I'm just ignoring them.
Many people deal with Zionists by making light talk and never discuss politics, but I think we should stop doing that since it normalizes their support for racist genocide.
Many Zionists don't call themselves Zionists but to me, a Zionist is someone who would deny Palestinians equal rights in order for the Jews to keep what they stole and call it Israel. They are very brainwashed so it's usually not useful arguing with them. Jewish organizations and synagogues teach classes in linguistic martial arts tactics (how to confuse your opponent etc.) to deflect blame from Jews and Israel. It's extremely dishonest and manipulative. According to the David Project, an organization which teaches these Israel Advocacy techniques and also disseminates Islamophobic misinformation to the public, states that their goal is to diminish the impact of Israel's detractors.
Obviously, those Zionists who are simply ignorant, if they are willing to hear my point of view and to ask questions in a polite way, that's different. But normally they act manipulative and do everything to prevent a normal discussion on Jews/Israel. I once reduced a 50 year old man to hysterical sobbing tears because I told him gently and lovingly that Jews were not that unique. I just told him the Jews, like everyone else, have had good times and bad times. Times when they were slaughtered and other times when they slaughtered others. Just like everyone else. Guess what he did next. He emotionally abused me in an insulting way and then cut off all further communication. Jewish behavior is so predictable that it's truly scary.
Most of the Zionists claim to want a Palestinian State side by side an Israeli state, but as Israel Shamir points out in his book, Flowers of Galilee, it's a political maneuver: a bluff. They are simply taking advantage of your good faith to keep you engaged, to give Israel more time to steal more land. What I tell them is, even if the Jews just stole half of Palestine instead of the whole thing, it's still stealing and they need to give it back and let the refugees come home, according to legal and ethical norms. The UN definition of "genocide" says destroying a people "in whole or in part" so even if they just took part of the land, it's still considered genocide.
The two-state Zionists show their true colors when the issue is cutting off US funding to Israel. They are very attached to the idea of a racist apartheid state for Jews paid for by non-Jews. If you mention cutting off the money or if you mention the possible compromise of living with Palestinians as equals in one state they become very angry and start using bullying tactics, unless they have some reason to fear you, in which case they shun you and complain about you to the authorities, try to get you arrested or try and destroy your career or social status through character assassination.
Rabbi Michael Lerner is a good example of this type of racist. He believes that Jews need to take care of the Palestinians and teach them how to become civilized. He considers stealing Palestinian land as "affirmative action for Jews."
Zionists all believe in the myth of "1000 years of Jewish suffering" and feel that the world owes them compensation for their ancestors' "unique" suffering. It's a criminally insane viewpoint. They cope with the contradictions between their belief that they are the good guys and what Jews are actually doing to their neighbors, both in the Middle East and in the US, by developing mental health issues. Most Zionists are functional schizophrenics.
A few Zionists are not schizophrenic. If you say, "You stole their country," they just say, "Yeah, so? And what are you going to do about it?" I'm actually more willing to deal with those kind of Zionists because at least they are honest, and this does leave some room for discussion. But why. Just as Americans are not required to support Israel, we are not obliged to interact with racists.
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Hate Incited in Somerville
Hate-mongers do not represent Somerville residents.
Hate Incited in Somerville
Karin Friedemann, Boston, MA
Saturday, August 6, 2005
An unknown person scrawled "KILL ALL ARABS" on an electricity pole
down the street from the Broken Yolk cafe. This expression of
genocidal racism is unusual in Somerville. While the majority of
Somerville residents support equal rights for Muslims, Christians and Jews in America and in the Holy Land, a small minority believes in the existence of an exclusively Jewish State funded by American tax dollars. Very worrying is the fact that Somerville city employees' 401K plans are invested in Israel - a scam perhaps explained by the gifts the mayor of Somerville received from the Jewish Lobby.
Despite Israel's ongoing human rights violations including the
bulldozing of Palestinian Muslim and Christian homes, Somerville city employees are not even given the option to opt out of their personal investments in these Israel bonds which are continually losing value. This irresponsible investment has lost the city a lot of money.
The hate crime committed in Somerville is a wake-up call to the city of Somerville not to let pro-Israel advocates dictate the use of Somerville public money to line their own pockets.
Genocidal racists do not represent Somerville. It's time to divest now.
Hate Incited in Somerville
Karin Friedemann, Boston, MA
Saturday, August 6, 2005
An unknown person scrawled "KILL ALL ARABS" on an electricity pole
down the street from the Broken Yolk cafe. This expression of
genocidal racism is unusual in Somerville. While the majority of
Somerville residents support equal rights for Muslims, Christians and Jews in America and in the Holy Land, a small minority believes in the existence of an exclusively Jewish State funded by American tax dollars. Very worrying is the fact that Somerville city employees' 401K plans are invested in Israel - a scam perhaps explained by the gifts the mayor of Somerville received from the Jewish Lobby.
Despite Israel's ongoing human rights violations including the
bulldozing of Palestinian Muslim and Christian homes, Somerville city employees are not even given the option to opt out of their personal investments in these Israel bonds which are continually losing value. This irresponsible investment has lost the city a lot of money.
The hate crime committed in Somerville is a wake-up call to the city of Somerville not to let pro-Israel advocates dictate the use of Somerville public money to line their own pockets.
Genocidal racists do not represent Somerville. It's time to divest now.
Boston NeoCons to Wiretap Mosques
Boston NeoCons to Wiretap Mosques
by Karin Friedemann
Sept. 16, 2005
http://boston.indymedia.org/newswire/display/41763/index.php
The Pro-Israel lobby gave MA Governor Romney payola. Now he is
revoking the Constitution to help Israel spy on American Muslims.
Boston Jewish groups were given $2.1 million of US tax money to "beef up security."
They used some of this money to give the governor and several mayors free trips to Israel. Now our elected officials are accepting strategy from neocon advisors to spy on Muslim Americans.
In order to fight against being wiretapped, the local community must do more than protest. They must pinpoint and prosecute those
individuals and organizations involved in the treasonous advising of our elected officials to drop the Constitution. The treasonous Neocons want to go after American Muslims simply because the Jewish
organizations don't agree with them on certain issues. The decision to give Homeland Security to Israeli security companies has all to do with the Israel Lobby funneling public money into private pockets.
Boston Zionist organizations have millions of dollars but what they don't have is public support. They have successfully controlled the "slant" of any discussion about Muslims but they cannot stop
Somerville from divesting from Israel. Less than 5% of Somerville supports Israel's US-subsidized existence. 70% strongly support the divestment ballot petition up for vote in 2007.
Will the Boston Jewish organizations destroy all that America stands for? Wll the Boston Muslim community stand up and defend America alongside their neighbors? If you want to help the Muslims you have to help America get rid of these subversive pro-Israel fanatics trashing democracy.
I am sure that there is no question in anyone's mind that bulldozing Palestinian homes, bombing Iraq and Afghanistan, the
normalization of torture, sending tax money to Israel instead of
repairing New Orlean's levee before the hurricane hit, wiretapping
American mosques, etc are pure evil. But Somerville has made the
neocons vulnerable. A handful of Americans can take their country back one city at a time. Please make the decision to help Somerville Divestment Project defeat the pro-Israel lobby one day this week. Or talk to your church or synagogue encouraging them to boycott Israel.
You don't have to be a citizen or a Somerville resident
to help. See divestmentproject.org for info
by Karin Friedemann
Sept. 16, 2005
http://boston.indymedia.org/newswire/display/41763/index.php
The Pro-Israel lobby gave MA Governor Romney payola. Now he is
revoking the Constitution to help Israel spy on American Muslims.
Boston Jewish groups were given $2.1 million of US tax money to "beef up security."
They used some of this money to give the governor and several mayors free trips to Israel. Now our elected officials are accepting strategy from neocon advisors to spy on Muslim Americans.
In order to fight against being wiretapped, the local community must do more than protest. They must pinpoint and prosecute those
individuals and organizations involved in the treasonous advising of our elected officials to drop the Constitution. The treasonous Neocons want to go after American Muslims simply because the Jewish
organizations don't agree with them on certain issues. The decision to give Homeland Security to Israeli security companies has all to do with the Israel Lobby funneling public money into private pockets.
Boston Zionist organizations have millions of dollars but what they don't have is public support. They have successfully controlled the "slant" of any discussion about Muslims but they cannot stop
Somerville from divesting from Israel. Less than 5% of Somerville supports Israel's US-subsidized existence. 70% strongly support the divestment ballot petition up for vote in 2007.
Will the Boston Jewish organizations destroy all that America stands for? Wll the Boston Muslim community stand up and defend America alongside their neighbors? If you want to help the Muslims you have to help America get rid of these subversive pro-Israel fanatics trashing democracy.
I am sure that there is no question in anyone's mind that bulldozing Palestinian homes, bombing Iraq and Afghanistan, the
normalization of torture, sending tax money to Israel instead of
repairing New Orlean's levee before the hurricane hit, wiretapping
American mosques, etc are pure evil. But Somerville has made the
neocons vulnerable. A handful of Americans can take their country back one city at a time. Please make the decision to help Somerville Divestment Project defeat the pro-Israel lobby one day this week. Or talk to your church or synagogue encouraging them to boycott Israel.
You don't have to be a citizen or a Somerville resident
to help. See divestmentproject.org for info
Friday, December 16, 2005
Time to Change Tactics
Time to Change Tactics
by Karin Friedemann
Getting Americans and the politicians to understand that invading Iraqis bad for US is probably the only way to get this movement into the mainstream and away from the leftist progressive fringes of society. I advocate a turn-around in rhetoric. The group of people responsiblefor the Iraq war are the Israel-Firsters. Instead of trying to makeAmericans care about Arabs - too hard - we need to increase their awareness that the Jewish Lobby is the enemy of all traditionalAmericans. Especially since activists can destroy the movement if they dwell upon who the good guys are (there are various opinions), we should concentrate on what we can all agree on: The Jewish Lobby is undermining American democracy. The Jewish Lobby needs to be stopped. That's the only way to stop the wars. I would suggest a public rhetoric campaign against all Jewish lobbyists suggesting prison. On campus, target the Israel advocacy groups. Smear them. Make it social suicide to participate with Hillel or other pro-Israel student organizations training future lobbyists. The pro-Israel lobby operates on every level of American society.
This year they are introducing Holocaust Mythology in the public school curriculum starting in Pre-K. There are plenty of ways to address this problem in PTA meetings, parent-teacher conferences, and other mundane ways. Causing a huge stir at a "MLK" school assembly will create a lot more word-of-mouth grassroots pressure than a protest in DC which doesn't even get discussed. In each small town, pro-peace people need to identify the Zionist individuals who are pushing Holocaust curriculum in the local schools. As soon as you start circulating a petition, all their Zionist supporters will come out of the woodwork. Every town has a web of Jewish groups that work together to undermine American democracy to promote their personal interests. Once you know who the participating individuals are, then you will be able to protest directly to these local people who are personally responsible for pushing Americans to die for Israeli interests. You probably know where they live. If Americans started talking to their neighbors we could stop this war.
by Karin Friedemann
Getting Americans and the politicians to understand that invading Iraqis bad for US is probably the only way to get this movement into the mainstream and away from the leftist progressive fringes of society. I advocate a turn-around in rhetoric. The group of people responsiblefor the Iraq war are the Israel-Firsters. Instead of trying to makeAmericans care about Arabs - too hard - we need to increase their awareness that the Jewish Lobby is the enemy of all traditionalAmericans. Especially since activists can destroy the movement if they dwell upon who the good guys are (there are various opinions), we should concentrate on what we can all agree on: The Jewish Lobby is undermining American democracy. The Jewish Lobby needs to be stopped. That's the only way to stop the wars. I would suggest a public rhetoric campaign against all Jewish lobbyists suggesting prison. On campus, target the Israel advocacy groups. Smear them. Make it social suicide to participate with Hillel or other pro-Israel student organizations training future lobbyists. The pro-Israel lobby operates on every level of American society.
This year they are introducing Holocaust Mythology in the public school curriculum starting in Pre-K. There are plenty of ways to address this problem in PTA meetings, parent-teacher conferences, and other mundane ways. Causing a huge stir at a "MLK" school assembly will create a lot more word-of-mouth grassroots pressure than a protest in DC which doesn't even get discussed. In each small town, pro-peace people need to identify the Zionist individuals who are pushing Holocaust curriculum in the local schools. As soon as you start circulating a petition, all their Zionist supporters will come out of the woodwork. Every town has a web of Jewish groups that work together to undermine American democracy to promote their personal interests. Once you know who the participating individuals are, then you will be able to protest directly to these local people who are personally responsible for pushing Americans to die for Israeli interests. You probably know where they live. If Americans started talking to their neighbors we could stop this war.
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