DISCUSSION OF ANTI-SEMITISM
By Israel Shamir
At the height of the Great Cultural
Revolution, the Chinese had the temerity to embark upon a
monumental, nature-changing enterprise: they decided to exterminate
ALL flies. The spirit of their solidarity was so powerful that they
succeeded. For a while, they enjoyed peaceful summer evenings
without this great annoyance. No buzz, no fuss: life was great
without flies!
But soon they discovered that mighty eagles
weren't seen anymore in the welkin.
Big noble salmon much favoured by
connoisseurs died out in their rivers. And soon the opulent palace
of Chinese nature began to collapse as a house of cards, for it had
thrived on flies as much as on eagles. Every species is a precious
cornerstone of the world. Remove it, and the consequences are
unpredictable. The Chinese understood this, laid off the remaining
flies, and soon they had salmon again for dinner and eagles to
compare their helmsmen with.
This story comes to my mind when I note
the vehemence of good and progressive folk confronted by ethically
doubtful tendencies. One may doubt the inherent goodness of
Traditionalists, Nationalists and Nativists. But should one exclude
them from discourse? People often react to any reference to David
Duke or Roger Garaudy or Abbe Pierre as our grandmothers to
obscenity. This appears to be the good and correct approach to avoid
causing undeserved distress to Jews. However, the equally extreme
opinions of Jewish supremacists are being spread freely by the
mainstream media. Thus, slanted discourse comes into being.
The problem is not only (not even
mainly) in deflating the sacred freedom of speech. There are worse
consequences. Joe Public, a silent participant in the discourse, is
a sane, normal and good person. He does not choose one of the
proposed extremes but seeks the middle ground on their spectrum. We
all do it instinctively: when presented with differing tendencies,
we try to capture the middle ground between the extremes. Good
people slant discourse and pervert our judgment.
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For instance, the media debates whether
Iraq should be bombed right away, frisked first or left in peace. A
good sane man, Joe Public, takes the middle ground and opts for the
frisking. Our position - 'stay out of Iraq for good and even forget
its name' - loses, for it is an extreme opinion, much like the
'bombing' one, and not the middle ground. In order for us to occupy
the middle ground, discourse should include opinions as extreme as
those of Muraviec and Perle, but together with their polar
opposites.
It is very possible that these opinions
will be as unpleasant to us as those of the Jewish chicken-hawks in
the Pentagon. As an Israeli citizen, I wouldn't enjoy an appeal to
nuke Israel or to remove all Jews from positions of influence in the
US. However, these unpleasant opinions would provide a much needed
balance to the present assault of philo-Semitism. Joe Public, while
exposed to these opinions, will take his middle ground. This good
man will say: 'Oh no, we should not nuke Israel! Maybe trade embargo
and naval blockade will be sufficient'. Or: 'Oh no, not our
wonderful Jewish mayor, but Perle and Wolfawitz can go'.
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An extreme position will usually lose.
The adversary knows it and ensures the presence of his own extreme
voices in discourse. David Duke is forever barred from participation
in discourse for he was a KKK leader, but Yossi Halevy, an ex-member
of the Kahane Band (surely racist) writes for the New Republic, and
torture-promoting Dershowitz writes for the NY Times. In
order to ensure they are not extremists, they bring in Nathan Lewin
and Amitai Etzioni. Etzioni is a tenured professor at George
Washington University and a friend of Elie Wiesel, Simon Wiesenthal
and Abe Foxman. Lewin is a candidate for a federal judgeship. They
call for the execution of the family members of suicide bombers.[1]
After their prime appearance, Dershowitz comes in as a moderate and
says, 'the same level of deterrence could be achieved by levelling
the villages of suicide bombers after the residents are given a
chance to evacuate', and the extremist Lewin disparagingly likens
this to "using aspirin to treat brain cancer"). David Duke never
reached this level of bestiality, but he is excluded from discourse
while they are not.
Consider Israel. The full
spectre of opinions in our country stretches from Jihad extremists
who would like to expel all Jews to Marzel extremists who would like
to expel and kill all Gentiles. In this spectre, my own position is
but the middle ground: no expulsions, no killings, but peaceful life
together for all the communities. In normal discourse, my position
would win, and united free Palestine would come into being. But the
discourse is slanted: at first, extreme Arab opinions are blocked.
Then, moderate Arabs find themselves 'extremists' and are
effectively blocked. Eventually the softest non-Jews - Ahmad Tibi
and Azmi Bashara - take the place of extremists and are excluded
from discourse.
The exclusion of one
extreme causes the drift of the middle ground when the other extreme
is not in place to plug it. Thus, instead of being in the dead
middle, the supporters of equality for Jews and Palestinians find
themselves at an extreme end. As extremists they are excluded from
discourse. Though 30% of Israelis and Palestinians support the idea
of one state with equal rights for all, according to a pre-Intifada
survey by Haaretz, their opinion gets zero representation in
discourse.
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On the other hand,
leaders of Jewish terrorist organisations regularly write for
Haaretz. Haggai Segal, who was sentenced (and later pardoned by
the President) for the murder of Palestinians, is a frequent writer
on its liberal pages. But the opposite opinion, that of Hamas and
Jihad, is carefully excluded even from the Palestinian mainstream.
Thus, the drift of the middle ground continues unchecked. Likud
politicians are not extremists: they ensure they are not by
including extremists of their kind in discourse. Ariel Sharon is not
an extremist, for he promotes his right-wing opposition of Liberman
and Landau. Now, these thugs do not want to be extremists either,
and they promote a new voice, Baruch Marzel, a man-eating ogre from
the Jewish settlement of Hebron. Next to Marzel, Jack the Ripper is
a soft guy. Marzel's people have a tribune in the liberal Haaretz;
they are included in discourse.
Their Western
counterparts, the Jewish chauvinists Conrad Black and Mort
Zuckerman, are active participants in discourse by virtue of their
ownership of a large chunk of media. But their mirror opposites,
Horst Mahler or Nick Griffin, are excluded. Without these
extremists, the moderate voices of the anti-globalisation and
anti-Zionism are excluded as well, for they find themselves on the
extreme. The founding fathers of American democracy were ready to
die for the right of their opponents to express their opinion
publicly, for they intuited that in order to promote one's ideas one
should ensure the presence of more radical voices on the spectrum.
In balanced Palestinian
discourse, the opinions of Hammas and Jihad should be presented. We
can productively argue about suicide bombings only if the voices of
their fervent supporters are included and considered. Otherwise, a
dynamite-loaded belt is their only way to express their opinion.
What is worse, without them Edward Said is glossed as an extremist.
Germany is a classic case
of the 'no flies, no eagles' policy. After its defeat in WWII,
Nationalist opinion was excluded from discourse. Now, the meek
spirit of Germany is crushed. Germany spends every extra pfennig
it has on paying Zionists and arming the Jewish state. It imports
every willing descendent of Jews from the former Soviet Union and
allows the local Jewish leaders to brainwash these disoriented
refugees into hatred of Germany and separatism. I have met these
unfortunate people who arrived in Germany with a very weak Jewish
identity, if any at all. Their children are pushed into separate
Jewish schools protected by hard men with machineguns and paid for
by the German taxpayer; they are taught that Israel is their home,
while Germany is a hated place they should keep a wary eye on. It
creates many psychological problems for the children who seek
solidarity and identification with the country they live in but are
brainwashed into rejecting it.
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I wrote about the recent
visit of Israeli President Katzav to Berlin: "the German Left
betrayed its duty to demonstrate against the supplying of the
apartheid state with nuclear-bearing submarines". My friend Ingrid K
wrote from Berlin:
I did not want to stand
with very few others, lost between the police-protected Neo-Nazis
and the stupid fraction of anti-anti-Semites feeling eternal
warm-solidarity-with-Israel even as a third and more desperate
party a half-mile away chanted "weapons-for-Israel". In Germany,
the Left has come to a sad level of powerlessness and
disorientation. Its disorientation culminates in the growing
praise of a group of 'Left' political writers (part of them
connected with New Kach!) fighting the upcoming 'new
anti-Semitism' in Germany. Young people who are engaged in
anti-racism or against neo-Nazism are feverishly obsessed with
discovering the hidden anti-Semitism in the Left and in their own
souls. (It's like we Germans stop thinking when it comes to
anti-Semitism.)
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Haaretz published[2] an
extensive interview with a German 'left-wing journalist, human
rights activist and intellectual', Thomas von der Osten-Sacken, 'one
of Germany's leading authorities on human rights in Iraq'. This
'left-winger' calls for war on Iraq, pledges his support for the
Jewish state, for Globalisation, for America and for banks, while
describing himself 'a Marxist'. Such freaks are a direct result of
the slanted discourse that excludes the German nationalist
tradition. If this tradition were included, Hans Publik would find
his middle ground between calls to expel Jewish immigrants and calls
to give them their present exalted status; he would integrate them
into society and firmly stop the attempts of Jewish leaders to
promote their alienation and create a fifth column inside Germany.
Ingrid K concludes her report from the German scene:
To stand up for
Palestinians is a kind of courage test and risks one's being cited
an anti-Semite. Sad but true, the little political group I'm
working with feared to post the ingenious essay of Michael Neumann
'What is Anti-Semitism' (that I translated into German) on our
Homepage. No courage. But one must not give up.
Ingrid still does not
understand the reason for German meekness. Otherwise she would call
for true freedom of speech and full participation in discourse for
the people she hates, the German extreme anti-Globalist right. The
sheer presence of Horst Mahler in discourse would make the
publication of my friend Michael Neumann's well-thought piece the
non-controversial intellectual exercise it was meant to be.
In France, Roger Garaudy
is excluded and ostracised. The French sainted Abbe Pierre, who
dared to express some modicum of support for the old ex-Communist,
found himself excluded as well. For sure, the opinions of Garaudy
are not to everybody's liking; but his absence from discourse has
turned very moderate people and friends of Palestine into
extremists.
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The post-WWII exclusion
of the Nationalist Right was done for the best of reasons. But that
was the case with the flies in China. The Jews always had strong
influence in Europe, and in my opinion, not always a beneficial one.
Still, before the war their influence was counteracted by the
Church, by the non-elitist Left, by the Nationalist Right. The 'no
flies' policy turned this strong Jewish influence into a decisive
one, and the edifice of European and North American civilisation
began to crumble like a house of cards. Globalisation,
neo-liberalism and the withering of European culture are the results
of lack of balance.
Christianity is one of
the victims of bias, and it is the cornerstone of European art. A
recent French film, The Brotherhood of the Wolf, demonises
the Christian Church without much subtlety: a half-human monster
wears a cross that flashes at us relentlessly, the gang of murderers
is led by a priest, its lair is full of crosses and crucifixes,
church devotees perpetrate a long chain of ritual murders of
innocent women and children in order to bring France back to the
faith.
A mirror image of the
movie would substitute a Rabbi for the Priest, make the monster
brandish the Star of David and have a bunch of observant Jews commit
ritual murder for their nefarious needs. For sure, such a movie
would never be screened in France after 1945. (Although this sounds
similar to the book on ritual murders published in Syria to a chorus
of universal condemnation.) But the French movie producer Samuel
Hadad was not condemned or criticised. The French audience is so
used to attacks on Church and Christianity that they did not even
consciously notice its not-so-subliminal message; it sank directly
into their unconscious.
This film did not horrify
the French, as at the same time they were treated to The Body,
produced by Rudy Cohen. My reader and friend Francois B. describes
it:
The Israeli soldiers
are like the cowboys, brave and immortal, and the Palestinian
terrorists like the Indians, stupid and cowardly. The villain of
the movie is a Catholic very high up in the Vatican hierarchy,
like No2 or No3 after the Pope, and the very honest, pretty and
unreligious Israeli archaeologist calls the Holy Shroud from
Torino 'a vulgar fake'.
This film did not horrify
the French either, as they are used to films like Amen, which
attacked the late Pope Pius XXII. Suggestively, the Cross on the
movie's posters turns into a Nazi swastika.
'One evil thing does not
justify another one', good people usually say. 'Jewish racists are
bad, and anti-Christian films are perhaps unpleasant, but it does
not mean we should welcome anti-Jewish racists and support
anti-Jewish movies. We shall speak against them all.'
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The problem is, good
people are quite unable to stop the anti-Christian and pro-Jewish
tendency, for the Jewish supremacists today control a major chunk of
world media and wealth. Besides, the tendencies are unstoppable:
they can only be counterbalanced. What good people can do is stop
the opposite thought, and they do that very efficiently. In my
essays I have frequently noted the advantages of Christian and
Muslim universalism over Jewish particularism. The editor of La
Fabrique, the good Jewish leftist Eric Hazan, refused to publish
my essays, for "despite their literary qualities they include some
ideas which are difficult to promote in France, namely, the
superiority of Christianity". I am sure Eric Hazan would not publish
a treatise on the vast superiority of Judaism either, but it would
be printed in millions of copies by the publishers of Goldhagen and
Oriana Falacci. This has the look of job-sharing: Jewish
supremacists promote Jewish supremacy, while the Leftists' job is
just to stop the balancing attempt by appealing to universal values.
Thus good people participate in slanting discourse as much as bad
ones.
The attempts to find
anti-Semitism in the gentle writings of the friends of Palestine are
enabled by the lack of real and explicit enemies of the Jewish
paradigm in all its aspects from Soros to Sharon, from Judas to
Maimonides, from Freud to Popper, from Podhoretz to Gusinsky, from
Lubawitscher Rebbe to Sulzberger. Such people exist but their voices
are silenced. We do not have to love them, or agree with them, but
we need them as active participants in our discourse, as otherwise
the middle ground of the Western world will remain somewhere between
Peres and Soros.
For as long as Richard
Perle sits in the Pentagon, Elie Wiesel brandishes his Nobel Prize,
Mort Zuckerman owns the USA Today, Gusinsky bosses over
Russian TV, Soros commands multi-billions of funds and Dershowitz
teaches at Harvard, we need the voices of Duke, Sobran, Raimondo,
Buchanan, Mahler, Griffin and of other anti-bourgeois nationalists.
If we accept their exclusion from discourse, Jewish bigotry will be
tolerated while anti-Jewish bigotry is removed. Then, the middle
ground for Joe Public will be 'a little bit of Jewish bigotry', or
'Zionism lite', in the words of my dear friend Bob Green.
Millennia before the
Great Cultural Revolution, the Chinese knew the secret of harmony:
the non-Manichean balance of opposing ideas, the principles of Ying
and Yang. Properly balanced, Jewish ideas can be beneficial:
anti-Christian zeal would limit Church excesses, just as materialism
and egoism can keep the feet of Man on the ground while his head is
in heaven, feminism can balance male chauvinism, and the sex
obsession of Freud can balance the asceticism of spiritualists.
Balanced, even Zionism will shrink to the humane proportions of
Jewish love for Palestine. But balanced it should be.
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The Martial Arts of Discourse
(Response to the article
'In the Same Camp as Hamsun?' by Haakon Kolmanskog[3] in the
Norwegian newspaper Klassekampen.).
Usually, newspaper
polemic is akin to epee fencing: one tries to keep the opponent at
arm's length, avoid his thrusts and draw his blood. The thoughtful
and friendly query of Haakon Kolmanskog deserves a quite different
attitude and a most sincere reply. Haakon poses a question:
We can't be
indifferent if friends of the Palestinians are branded
anti-Semites. Who will benefit in allowing the Zionists to have
a free go playing the anti-Semite card against anyone who
criticise them?
The sad answer is that we
have no means of stopping their playing it. For years, the friends
of Palestine tried to evade the label by saying:
Israel behaves
horribly, but it has nothing to do with the fact that it is
defining itself as 'the Jewish state'. It has nothing to do with
Jews elsewhere, and therefore criticism of Israel is not related
to anti-Semitism.
But this easy answer was
rejected by the Masters of Discourse. Friends of Palestine were
forced into daily confessions of their love of Jews, as the
suspected heretics of Middle Ages had been of their orthodoxy. Their
protestations are without avail, for our opponents can effectively
decide what is and what is not anti-Semitism. They can decide
because they hold commanding heights in discourse: by virtue of
media ownership, economic power and international connections
integrated into one armoured fist.
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And they use this power
by stretching the definition of anti-Semitism as they find fit.
Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, according to Professor Ruth Wisse of
Harvard University and to a plethora of other Judeo-American
pundits. Anti-Americanism is a new, virulent form of anti-Semitism,
wrote David Quinn in The Sunday Times. 'Anti-Globalisation is
anti-Semitism', 'the Green policies of Environmentalism' is
'anti-Semitism now' are frequent headlines in Israeli newspapers.
'Christianity is anti-Semitism' is the recent title of Goldhagen's
book. In 1990's Russia, anti-market forces were described as
'anti-Semites'. Recently, Christine Mohn in the Nationen
described Russian Communists as 'anti-Semites'.
In no way can you,
Haakon, nor your friends in this uniquely free newspaper, define
'anti-Semitism'. Likewise, you cannot define 'Communism'.
Definitions of these terms are forced on us by the Masters of
Discourse. We can work only with them, the existing and prevailing
definitions, though we might regret their existence sometimes and
offer our own understanding of the phenomena they classify.
Alternatively, we can invent our own definitions, as did the
Trotskyites: they called Communism 'Stalinism'. But that was a
sectarian escape.
What we can and should do is
analyse the definitions forced upon us. If all the above is, indeed,
anti-Semitism as decreed by the Masters of Discourse, what is this
legendary 'Semitism'? Surely it has nothing to do with the Semitic
race? It is, by their definition, a fusion of Zionism,
Americanism, Globalisation, Neo-Liberalism, anti-Communism,
destruction of Nature and reduction of the Church. As the Masters of
Discourse declared this 'Semitism', and their definition is the only
one that matters, I can freely acknowledge my (and hopefully your)
'anti-Semitism'.
Accepting their definition
is tactically much better than fighting it. In Oriental martial arts
one lets the brute strength of the adversary work against him. That
is exactly what I try to do in my essays that you printed. The
adversary is strong: let it be his undoing.
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II
Let us deal now with the second
question of Haakon. How should we view the anti-Semitism of Hamsun
the Nazi? he asks. The answer is that we should place Hamsun in his
historical context.
ALL participants in WWII were
homicidal racists, in modern terms. While the German Nazis killed a
lot of Slavs, Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and the mentally deranged,
the democratic US deported thousands of American citizens of
Japanese descent or locked them up for years in concentration camps;
the Soviets deported ethnic Germans, Chechens and Crimean Tatars and
destroyed their centuries-old villages and homes. Britain invented
concentration camps in the Boer War when Hamsun was a child, and
deported the ethnic Germans from British Palestine. The British
Bomber Harris probably killed as many innocent civilians as any
German war criminal.
The great Knut Hamsun, whose
beautiful books we cherish, was a man of his times. He was a
contemporary of the Russian Jewish writer and publicist, Iliya
Ehrenburg, whose brilliant early novel, Julio Jurenito, was
rightly acclaimed by Lenin. Ehrenburg was a worldly communist and
humanist, a great friend of Picasso and Matisse, of Aragon and
Castro. He also pioneered the anti-Zionist genre with his sarcastic
novel, Lazik Roitschwantz. However, during WWII, Ehrenburg
wrote in the Pravda: "Kill the
German! Kill this sausage- and sauerkraut-eating vermin! Exterminate
his seed!"
Horrified,
Joseph Stalin personally responded to this call to genocide by
disavowing Ehrenburg in the Pravda: "We are not fighting the
German people", he wrote, "but the Nazi regime". He was true to his
words, and in 1945 derailed the Henry Morgenthau plan to cripple
Germany and starve millions of Germans to death.
Was the
anti-Semitism of Hamsun the Nazi ethically worse than the anti-Germanism
of Iliya Ehrenburg the Jew? Yes: if you think that Jewish life is
much more precious than the life of a non-Jew, in which case you
find yourself in the nauseating company of Eli Landau and Ivett
Lieberman, two Israeli MPs who called for the extermination of a
thousand Palestinians for each murdered Jew, and of Madeleine
Albright, who thought the killing of half-a-million Iraqi children
for the protection of Israel "worth it". No: if you share my belief
in the equality of Man. That is why you have no reason to reject
your great national treasure, Knut Hamsun; just view him in the
context of his time.
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While the time of Hamsun and
Ehrenburg is over, Elie Wiesel is still very much with us. In his
book, Legends of Our Time, this Jewish writer wrote: "Every
Jew, somewhere in his being, should set apart a zone of hate -
healthy, virile hate - for what the German personifies and for what
persists in the German". Not 'the Nazi', but 'the German'. For this
sermon of hate he received the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize from the
Norwegian Academy, in company with the Cambodia-destroyer Henry
Kissinger and the Kana-murderer, Shimon Peres. Armed with this
recognition of the Norwegians, Elie Wiesel called (at Christmas
Eve!): War [with Iraq] is the only option".[4] If you need to feel
guilt, feel guilt for this Nobel Peace Prize.
This vast
difference in the feelings of Norwegians towards their national
genius Hamsun and towards Elie Wiesel the schmaltzy hate-monger
leads us to a conclusion: in prevailing post-WWII mainstream
discourse, the taboo on criticism of Jews has caused strong bias and
undermined the humanist idea of the Equality of Man. Pre-war
anti-Semitism has been superseded by another extreme, philo-Semitism,
a belief that Jews can do no wrong and should never be referred to
except in the most complimentary terms. This equally racist attitude
has created severe misbalance in politics and discourse. It has to
be corrected in order to save our planet and mankind from the
triumphant 'Semitism' of their definition.
III
The third question
of Haakon was:
Israel's
president Moshe Katsav recently visited Germany. He was last
Monday confronted by German neo-Nazis carrying Palestinian flags
and banners saying "Hands off Palestine - No German armaments to
Israel". It was a disaster! If the neo-Nazis hadn't thought of it
themselves, I guess Ariel Sharon would have phoned them to give
them the idea. I'm wondering if Israel Shamir shares my concerns
and if he agrees with me that at all means we have to avoid a
situation where Nazis march in support of Palestine? Or if it
means nothing since "Anti-Semitism" has become an empty and
meaningless phrase and only a weapon in the hands of Israeli
Zionists? Is this a question of no importance?
In the Gospel, the
Disciples of Christ acclaimed him as 'the King who comes in the name
of the Lord'. The Pharisees demanded: Rabbi, rebuke your disciples!
But Jesus replied: If they keep silent the stones will cry out.[5]
This prophecy was
fulfilled in Germany. The German Left betrayed its duty to
demonstrate against the supplying of the apartheid state with
nuclear-bearing submarines, the most fearsome weapons of mass
destruction of our age, for it to target the peaceful cities of man.
The German Left accepted the thoroughly racist concept of 'Jewish
property' and transferred billions of dollars to Sharon and his
American Jewish partners.[6] 'Fear of the Jews'[7] befell them, and
caused them to forget their ideals. The Left is the salt of the
earth by virtue of upholding the values of equality, mercy,
humanity. But if the salt has lost its taste, it is to be thrown out
and walked on by the people.[8] The Left kept silent, therefore the
stones cried out. Whoever demonstrated against the monstrous
decision to arm Israel is surely blessed.
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Haakon describes
these people as 'neo-Nazis'. I greatly doubt this definition. German
law is very strict, and the real Nazis are in jail or in exile. The
neo-Nazis of our day usually support Israel: representatives of
Israeli parties were welcome guests at their gathering in Holland.
They even marched together in Amsterdam under Israeli banners and
with anti-Muslim slogans.
The Masters of
Discourse can call whomever they wish 'neo-Nazi'. Nasser was
'Hitler', Arafat was 'Hitler', Saddam Hussein is 'Hitler'. In
Russia, they gave this name to everybody who objected to
privatisation, Americanisation, globalisation. As the majority of
these people were actually communists, the Masters of Discourse
coined the term 'Red-Brown'. They called the veterans of the Battle
of Stalingrad 'Nazis'. They wrote that for them there is no
real difference between the Communists and the Nazis. The Russian
people responded to it by forming a new Left-and-Right alliance
against these globalising, predatory forces.
They followed the
great example of Mao Zedong, who allied with the Right Nationalists
of the Kuomintang when the very existence of China was endangered.
Recently, the exiled Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, billionaire
and a media-lord and man of impeccable Jewish origin who embraced
Christ, publicly joined this alliance in an earth-shaking interview
with Zavtra, the leading newspaper of the Left-and-Right. He was
warmly welcomed by the jailed leader of National Bolshevik Party,
writer Edward Limonov, who is often described as an 'anti-Semite and
neo-Nazi'. Zeh lo kol kach pashut, as we say in Hebrew: life
is not as simple as comics and the Masters of Discourse present it.
WWII is long over.
Present-day Communists are not 'Stalinists', present-day
Traditionalists are not 'Nazis', present-day 'Semitists' are not the
Democrats of yesteryear. If we forever look back to the fields of
Stalingrad and to the ravaged Finnmark, we are liable to overlook
the new dangers mankind faces. The dreadful fate of Palestine calls
us, the men of thought, to develop new paradigms for the new
situation.
Philo-Semitism
is Racism
(Norwegian daily
newspaper Nationen (Oslo) on 28.11.02 published an op-ed
attacking me.[9] Here is my reply. I used contributions of our
comrades Dave Kersting and Michael Neumann.).
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I do not like philo-Semites,
i.e. people choosing to fight anti-Semitism, of all ills. In
this world, so full of trouble and real suffering, there is
something deeply pervert in persons preferring to protect and
support - not the poor, not the refugees, not the oppressed, but the
wealthy, influential and well-connected group actively engaged in
ethnic cleansing of Palestine. The Chief proponent of this
well-endowed movement is an American Jew, the head of ADL, Abe
Foxman. Two years ago he was caught taking large sums of money from
the super-thief Marc Rich, a crook who cheated American tax-payer
and found refuge in Switzerland. For years Foxman and his
organisation collected dossiers on people who objected to apartheid
and sold them to Mossad and to South Africa of Forster. They broke
into houses, stole documents, run professional surveillance of the
left activists in California. Last year, Foxman and ADL were found
guilty in the US court of law, and paid millions of dollars to
people they intimidated and smeared. Foxman's best chum is Ariel
Sharon, the mass murderer of Sabra, Shatila, Kibie and Jenin. A new
book by Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon, "The Assassination of
Robert Maxwell: Israel's Super Spy" confirms the professional philo-Semites
have permanent ties with Mossad, the long arm of Israeli apartheid,
memorable to you by Lillehammer murders. In brief, the philo-Semites
are sleazy guys taking money from sleazy crooks in order to cover up
the creeping genocide of Palestinians.
It is not strange,
as the very emphasis on "anti-Semitism" is disgustingly racist, as
if it were worse than racism against anyone else. People who decry
"anti-Semitism", instead of "racism" or "ethnic-prejudice", are
actually saying that there is something really special - and
particularly bad - about discrimination against this one particular
group. In other words, they are racists.
Your average
Norwegian does not hesitate to say he dislikes Swedes. Sometimes he
corrects himself and says he actually hates Swedes. Older Norwegians
freely speak of their hatred to Germans. So do Jews: recent
bestseller by a philo-Semite Goldhagen called all Germans 'willing
executioners of Hitler'. 'Every Jew must maintain in his heart holy
hatred to Germans', quoth Elie Wiesel, another professional philo-Semite.
Somehow nobody is worried about these racist statements; Wiesel even
received Nobel peace prize from the Norwegian Academy.
Germans are not
exclusion. A Jewish scribe, Daniel Pipes, wrote a piece together
with a Dane Lars Hedegaard in the Canadian daily National Post
(August 27, 2002), published by the Jewish media lord, Israel Asper,
a great friend of my country, saying:
"Predominantly
Muslim immigrants constitute 5% of the population but consume
upwards of 40% of the welfare spendingÖ Muslims are only 4% of
Denmark's 5.4 million people but make up a majority of the country's
convicted rapists, an especially combustible issue given that
practically all the female victims are non-Muslim". I am not sure
one can be more racist than that, even if one mobilises Der Sturmer.
But somehow nobody is worried about it.
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The
racist talk of anti-Semitism is used to protect Israeli racism. It
is amazing that some people still pay attention to it, and their
crocodile tears drip into newspapers. I wonder why the Third Reich
did not try to stop the Allied forces by claiming they are led by
'anti-German prejudice'. One imagines Russian soldiers at Stalingrad
listen to such a broadcast and drop their weapons in shame. Or is it
only anti-Jewish prejudice that is objectionable? Apparently, it is
the case for philo-Semites: the Guardian wrote about assassinated
Dutch racist leader that though he hated Muslims and Arabs, he was
not a bad guy, as he liked Jews. Can one be more racist than that?
The
piece by Christine Mohn is true to its racist genre. She described
me as 'an ethnic Jew who defines himself as a Christian'. Like Adolf
Hitler, she thinks 'once a Jew, forever a Jew', baptism
notwithstanding, he can only 'define himself as a Christian'.
However, non-racists are of different opinion. A philo-Semite is a
potential Jew, as he considers Jews being more equal than other
people. A Jew by birth can leave Jewry if he believes in equality of
Man as did St Paul, Marx and Trotsky. Here the opinions of the
Church and of the Communist party coincide.
Indeed, that was
the vision of Abram Leon, a young follower of Trotsky, who perished
in Auschwitz in 1944. In his important book, The Jewish Question:
Marxist Interpretation (I am grateful to Noam Chomsky who
introduced me to this author), this communist of Jewish origin
described the Jews, "people-class", historically attuned to
exploitation of others. A man of Jewish origin always could leave
'the Jews' and join mankind, wrote Leon.
But Ms Mohn is
totally ignorant of Judaism. She writes: "The phenomenon of
'Chosen-ness', as understood in Jewish tradition, has nothing to do
with closeness to God or superiority versus non-Jews". We can
believe her, or we can believe the late Chief Rabbi of Israel, the
greatest modern proponent of Judaism, Rabbi Kook, who wrote: "The
difference between a Jewish soul and souls of non-Jews is greater
and deeper than the difference between a human soul and the souls of
cattle"[10]
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