By Israel Shamir
Who Brought Olmert Down (and Why)
You would not envy the position of Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert. He did not have a snowball’s chance in hell. Every day the newspapers and the TV channels broadcast new accusations against him and announced fresh police investigations. Often the Israeli viewer learned of Olmert’s alleged misdeeds before the Prime Minister himself did. Police did not just leak the details of the case – they poured it out like tropical torrent. Charges landed all over Olmert like the bomblets he dropped on hapless Lebanon: small but plentiful.
The charges were petty, at best. They are summed up here <http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1007072.html> You and I have probably done similar things. Olmert was accused of charging two different organizations for the same expenses, of accepting some contributions in cash, of flying with his family to a trip abroad while not strictly observing the difference between his funds and those of contributors. Probably the Biblical injunction “Don’t muzzle the ox while he is threshing” (Deut 25:4) covers the case. But the police went after him, the Supreme Court began deliberations on private actions against Olmert, while newspapers and the TV blew it out of proportion. Thus two mighty powers of Israeli politics, the media and the legal system, united in one effort to unseat Olmert, and he caved in.
This episode may demonstrate who actually runs Israel. Though media amplifies, the judges judge. The Hidden Hand that unseated Olmert was that of the Supreme Court and its power-hungry President, Chief Justice Dorit Beinish. Beinish and her bosom friend Justice Arbel activated police and prosecution, while their special storm-troops, the fighting sorority of lesbian activists straight out of Barb Wire organised mass demonstration and intimidated the opposition. The reasons had nothing to do with Olmert’s alleged corruption or with his real failure in the 2006 Lebanon War, but were grounded in the power struggle between the weak elected government and the unassailable judges. Moreover, Olmert makes the third recent, high-placed victim of the Supreme Court’s drive to supreme power.
The Supreme Court of Israel is self-elected and self-perpetuated, like the Sanhedrin of old. Formally, the new judges are appointed by the President, who confirms the decisions of a committee led by the Justice Minister <http://elyon1.court.gov.il/eng/system/index.html> ; factually the sages elect the new sages from amongst their apprentices (“interim appointees”) and close colleagues. This system is called in Hebrew ‘haver mevi haver’, ‘a friend brings a friend’. After twenty years of the system’s strict application, the Supreme Court is a monolithic and highly influential body.
The Court is closely and personally connected with other legal authorities, with the attorney general office, the state prosecutor office, the police and the secret police. State prosecutors and attorney generals dream of joining the Court after leaving their jobs. Police bosses take the Court orders as if they were sent down from heaven. The Court is the top of the legal pyramid, and its president can manoeuvre and manipulate the whole system formally and informally. Under the flag of judicial activism, the Supreme Court has assumed control of the state, leaving Parliament and the existing government high and dry. The judges have assumed powers any dictator would envy: they can nullify any law; they can prosecute any MP or minister, they can block any government action or agreement. They rule whether the state has to build shelters for border towns, whether an army commander made a right tactical decision, whether a law can remain on the books and whether prisoners may be swapped.
Incidentally, these powers have no legal basis. The American professor of law Richard Posner noted that the Israeli judges abrogated these powers to themselves “without benefit of a constitutional or legislative provision. One is reminded of Napoleon's taking the crown out of the pope's hands and putting it on his own head.”
The man who took the crown of Israel and placed on his head was not Arik Sharon. It was the previous Chief Justice Aharon Barak, the most powerful man of Israeli politics. Posner called Barak “Enlightened despot … who created a degree of judicial power undreamed of even by the most aggressive [American] Supreme Court justices”. After he retired, sycophantic slime spewed forth from printed and electronic media alike. Barak had had to retire having reached the mandatory age, but he remained very much a moving force behind the scenes.
His succession by the highly ambitious Dorit Beinish brought the conflict between the Judicial and Executive branches to the fore. A tug-of-war ensued, with the government trying to cut the Supreme Court down to its natural size, and with the Supreme Court fighting for the top slot. Both sides wished to keep the struggle under the carpet, far away from the eyes of hoi polloi.
The wars of succession were concentrated around the Judges’ Nominations Committee, which is chaired by the Minister of Justice who is appointed by the prime minister, while the actual appointment of judges is done by the Israel’s president. Surely this was sheer coincidence that all three of these persons were politically assassinated!
In 2006, Minister of Justice Haim Ramon objected to the nomination of Dorit Beinish to the top post of chief justice. He also planned to break with the unwritten tradition of appointing to the Supreme Court only those interim candidates who had been invited there by the Supreme Court to serve on a temporary basis, and instead to bring in an outsider, a lawyer or a judge not vetted by Beinish.
Ramon was treading on a live wire, and the response was fierce. Within a month, Ramon was under investigation for sexual harassment; in July 2006 he was forbidden to appoint judges, and in January 2007 he was convicted.
The story went as follows. A soldier girl came to visit the Justice Minister Ramon; she looked at him with adoring eyes and asked to be photographed with him. Eventually Ramon kissed the girl who later claimed she had expected a kiss, but rather a fatherly and less fervent kiss than the one she got. The girl went away, expressed her dissatisfaction with the French kiss, and flew away to Latin America. A senior police officer flew to Latin America, located the girl and literally forced her to file a criminal complaint. The police woman in charge of the investigation admitted at the hearing that she had threatened the girl with prosecution unless she stuck to her complaint.
The newspapers and TV discussed the details of the case but practically nobody (but a few bloggers) dared to ask who had ordered Ramon’s head. It took an American Jewish journalist to break with the vow of silence and connect this “targeted judicial assassination” with the struggle for Court primacy. Halpern wrote in the Forward: “Many suggest that the judges and the attorney general had it in for Ramon because he opposed the appointment of Judge Dorit Beinish as chief justice of the Supreme Court. His trial prevented him from appointing someone else, while his conviction prevented him from making changes to the judicial system later. “
Meanwhile, the President of Israel, Moshe Katsav, the man who actually appoints judges, came under fire. He was also against Beinish’s rise to Fuhrership, and paid for it dearly.
A girl in his office codenamed “A” complained of sexual harassment. It appeared in the course of investigation, that she was lying. She had actually carried an affair with the President and had tried to blackmail him. Her lies were so obvious that the prosecution had to drop her, but meanwhile, the media had a field day, or rather a field month. The media harassment sparked many complainants; apparently every woman who ever worked with Katsav came forward to try her luck, and a few of the accusations could possibly stick. There were daily demonstrations by the angry feminists, the fighting sorority of Beinish and Arbel, demanding Katsav’s balls, or at least his resignation. In August 2006, he was forbidden to appoint judges, just a few days after Ramon's resignation. If that was not enough, on September 7, 2006 the Israeli Police declared they have the evidentiary basis for an indictment.
On that day, the Judges' Election Committee approved the succession of Dorit Beinisch to the presidency of the Supreme Court. Katsav refrained from attending, "to prevent dispute". He also stayed away from Beinisch's formal swearing-in ceremony, normally held in the presidential compound, now to be held in the Knesset, so she was sworn-in by another woman, the Knesset speaker.
Katsav agreed to be charged with indecent behaviour, then later changed his mind, but still had to resign and vacate the position to Shimon Peres, a smooth man very much to Beinish’ liking.
Olmert understood that not only his own career, but the very position of the legitimate government was being undermined. He harboured these heretical thoughts for a long time. In 2002, the fighting sorority attacked another male Oriental politician, Minister of Internal Security Avigdor Kahalani. Edna Arbel, then state prosecutor, indicted him and brought him to trial, but he was acquitted. Ehud Olmert, then mayor of Jerusalem, called upon Arbel to resign and said that she lacked the professional judgment to continue in her senior position. State Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein defended Arbel in his response to Olmert’s comments. Since then, Rubinstein has been rewarded with a seat in the Court, while Olmert has gained an enemy not to be trifled with.
Olmert went on the warpath by returning Ramon to his cabinet in a senior position (though not to the post of Justice Minister) and by hiring a new justice minister, Professor Daniel Friedmann, the very man who was most vocal in his objection to the rule by the Supreme Court. Friedmann made a two-pronged attack, by bringing into the Supreme Court the first external nominee and by proposing to limit the Supreme Court agenda by a law that would restrict the Supreme Court from ruling on political, security and budget matters. He was immediately attacked by the retired justices of the Supreme Court, especially by the former president of the Supreme Court Aharon Barak and his ex-deputy Mishael Cheshin, the very men who had established the present system, enthroned Dorit Beinish and kept advising her. While acting judges are precluded from speaking ex-cathedra, it is a moot point with the retired ones: they bear the title of Justice and they draw their Judge’s pension, but they certainly speak out all the time. They went to the Knesset, to newspapers and to TV channels and described Friedmann’s actions as a “putsch”.
They pled with Olmert to fire Friedmann and let the things go as usual. But Olmert wanted to return executive power to the government, to the elected legitimate body from the self-appointed usurpers. He stuck to his guns. Ehud Barak, the Labour leader and a minister in Olmert’s government, threatened Olmert with his resignation and the possible fall of government unless he fired Friedmann; but the unrelenting Olmert refused to bend and said he’d rather let Barak go than part with Friedmann.
And then they attacked Olmert personally. They found an American Jew Morris Talansky who claimed he had squeezed crumpled dollar notes into Olmert’s sweaty palm. In the course of interrogation it appeared that the man used to boast that he gave money to every Israeli PM, including Yitzhak Rabin, the very paragon of honesty. He had also threatened to bomb some Rabbis who did not want to pay him. The trustworthiness of his claims was severely undermined. But Olmert’s enemies did not stop: every day they produced a new complainant, a new accusation of corruption. If it was parried, they made a new one. With the police and the Attorney General at their disposal, their resources were practically unlimited.
Meanwhile, the retired justices were outspoken. They demanded Olmert’s resignation, completely forgetting the “innocent until found guilty” rule; just as they had in the related cases of Katsav and Ramon. Dalia Dorner, a retired justice, declared: “Olmert must resign. The public opinion should force him to resign.” But public opinion remained unconvinced despite the relentless spin, and Dorner bewailed Israeli simplicity of mind: “There is no public culture of politics in Israel, and people pay no attention to reports about misbehaving leaders”.
In the end, Olmert resigned to the supreme force of the Supreme Court. Was this a victory of Law over arbitrary and corrupt politicians? Do not be so sure.
Law or Democracy?
One may like or dislike Ehud Olmert, but he was elected by the people to do his job. We elected Olmert. One may be happy or unhappy about this result, but one should respect the decision of the majority. We did elect Olmert, Katsav and Ramon, and we did not elect Mrs Beinish and her fighting sorority, though she thinks she knows what we need better than we do. In a democracy, one should respect the people’s decision. A prime minister should rule the country, a hard enough job, instead of spending his time answering questions by the police.
Olmert has been neutralised as prime minister, because nobody is yet able to survive a media cum judiciary assault. Apparently, Israel may need a Berlusconi Law protecting its executive from police investigations and legal actions. Police investigation about whether Ehud Olmert took his wife along at government expense can wait until he completes his tour of duty.
But the problem lies deeper; the choice is whether we want democracy, or the rule of law. These two regimes are not identical, - they stand in direct opposition. In a democracy, the people rule via their elected representatives; under the rule of law, the sages (or Judges) rule supreme. Now Israeli democracy faces a serious challenge, more serious than Altalena crisis: unless we stop the police and the Court from meddling in politics, democracy will be lost.
A short detour is required. Of old, there were three branches of government, or ‘powers’: the Legislative, the Executive and the Judicial, as described by Montesquieu and as established by the US constitution in the 18th century. The 20th century ushered in a fourth power, Media[1].
The Legislative, in our case, the Knesset, is a democratic body, despite its limitations. The Executive is also elected - by the Knesset and is responsible to the Knesset.
But the Judicial power, i.e. the Court is not elected. It is a self-appointed and self-perpetuating oligarchy equipped with a vast apparatus which intervenes in matters of war and peace, labour, education, family life and even in questions of faith. This is, let us put it charitably, a Platonic rule by Sages. Yes there is the Law, but they interpret it as they see fit. They may nullify a law, or reinterpret it in an entirely different vein. Jewish history had a go at it, too, when the sages of Talmud reinterpreted the Written Law. The Rule of Halacha was actually rule by sages, and only the Enlightenment broke its iron grip. Now we have reverted all the way back to the Sanhedrin, this traditional (for Jews) but not very successful, non-democratic system of rule by Wise Elders.
This was noticed by the American law professor Robert Bork, who wrote: “[Aharon Barak’s rule of law… is in fact … the rule of judges, a trend to which he himself is the major contributor. Perhaps [Barak] believes that judges are simply intellectually and morally superior to other actors in the nation’s politics”.
The supporters of the Supreme Court supremacy deride the Ultra-Orthodox Jewry of Mea Shearim who accept rule by their sages, but they themselves actually want to return us all to the rule by sages, albeit sages of their own choosing. Karl Popper correctly stated that this is just another form of totalitarianism. In our case - liberal totalitarianism.
Some simple-minded people consider these judges to be “of the left”. A pro-family right-wing activist and blogger, while correctly noting the anti-family tendency of the Court, called them The Wicked Witches of the Left. One may agree or disagree with “the wicked witches”, but they certainly have nothing to do with the Left, and this blogger should have his eyesight checked. The Supreme Court sages, after twenty years of inbreeding and selection, belong to an almost pure strain of totalitarian liberals, and they indeed enforce liberalism in the worst meaning of the word:
Workers’ rights are frowned upon as an affront to humanity. Majority of Israeli workers are now employed by subcontractors on contract basis, thus eliminating benefits and social security. They approved of shifting the tax burden to the worker, while usurers pay no tax.
They do not protect tenants against rent rise and allow landlords to collect rent tax-free.
They are against children. That’s why abortions and gay marriages are welcomed; gay pride parades are approved, but life of families with children is getting increasingly difficult.
Even their favourite topic, gender equality, does not lead to a more equal society but rather encourages young girls to join the counter-insurgency fighting units.
They authorise torture, the kidnapping of civilians, the demolition of Palestinian homes, the confiscation of their land, and the building of settlements.
They accept the Secret Services version of everything, sight unseen.
They participate in the Assassination Committee, or the committee for “extra-legal executions”.
They support the illegal Wall.
They had no problem trying and imprisoning illegally kidnapped civilians, from Mordecai Vanunu to Marwan Barghouti.
They undermine religion because they hate anything smacking of compassion.
If that is “Left”, then what is Right? But let us be fair, they are not Right neither Left, they are the Third Kind, totalitarian liberals. Totalitarian liberals are profoundly undemocratic, for they are forever suspicious of the Majority. They use the Minority Rights in order to undermine Majority Rule. They do not act in the interests of the minorities whose name they bear in vain: rather, they use them as a ploy for seizing supreme power. Their world-view is essentially that of Leo Strauss, the godfather of neo-cons, “a man profoundly hostile to the concept of rule by the people. He believed it was the natural right of the wise and strong to lead societies to the fulfilment of their wise aims, using subterfuge when necessary”.
Such a subterfuge is a presentation of the Court as the only defence of pro-Western, ‘civilised’ society against the onslaught of crazy religious nationalists, Kahanists and unruly settlers. Without their approval, however, not a single settlement would ever have arisen, and not a single dunam of Palestinian land would ever have been confiscated. With one hand, they allow the Wall to encroach on the Palestinian lands, with another, they pretend to defend Palestinian peasants.
Actually, the leading judges of the Supreme Court, Beinish and Arbel, are personally responsible for the outbreak of the First Intifada. As state prosecutors, they came up with a nasty legal trick, the type a rabbi might describe as “kasher aval masriach” (“it is kosher, but it stinks”). Only a minority of Palestinian lands were parcellated and privatised, while the majority of lands were in public use and were called ‘the lands of the Sultan’. The two “liberal leftist” lady lawyers claimed that these lands belong now to the Jewish State as it is now the Sultan, and thus they allowed the State to seize Palestinian common lands and give them to the settlers. Aharon Barak authorised the snatch. This mass confiscation was the reason for the First Intifada.
They are also responsible for the second intifada, as they permitted Ariel Sharon his march to the Temple Mount.
They are responsible for the terror, as this was caused by their glaring injustice. When they sentenced Nahum Korman to six months of public service for the murder of a Palestinian child, they signalled to the Palestinians that they should not expect legal remedies from this Court.
They are responsible for the Second Lebanon War, as they blocked the release of Kuntar after Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon.
More than anyone else , they are responsible for creating the apartheid system in Israel.
We should not allow them to shift their guilt to the Executive or to the Legislative powers, i.e. to the government and to the Knesset. They interfere in the affairs of the state so often and so thoroughly that they should bear the responsibility themselves.
Still, they would not be able to seize supreme power without some important help from the Media. The Media are another non-democratic, non-elected power. In Israel, the media belong to five wealthy families; they appoint chief editors and journalists as they see fit, and they decide who are their friends and enemies, and whether they should attack Olmert or Beinish, nuke Iran or make inroads into Gaza. Being inherently non-democratic, mass media owners tend to support other non-democratic structures, be it the Armed Forces or the Supreme Court.
These two non-elected and non-democratic powers of Media and Judiciary entered into conspiracy against the elected parliament and government. In every newspaper you can read that the public despises the parliamentarians and does not trust the government. The media promote these feelings, thereby undermining the democratic powers. The police and the judiciary do all they can in order to confirm our suspicions. They leak their deliberations into the media and start a witch-hunt. As a result, the elected politicians appear as sinful, if not outright criminal, weaklings, and the very concept of democracy, of Majority Rule is undermined.
When the Judicial and Media powers allied and took control over the Executive and Legislative, they create a paradigm shift. This shift is universal, rather than local. Just recently, in Turkey, the High court decided to outlaw the ruling party; in Philippines, the High court blocked an accord that was concluded by the government and the Muslim rebels. In the US, the courts allowed for abortions and same-sex marriages, for dismantling trade unions and for social insecurity. This is the great success of totalitarian liberalism. People convinced that Supremacy of Law is a good thing should consider that this puts paid to democracy as decisively as any dictatorial coup. This leads to rule by anonymous ‘Wise Elders’, while ordinary people are excluded from decision-making.
The true Left and true Right should look at this shift with horror, for these movements have their basis in the people’s will. They seek the people’s approval; they try to attract the people to their side. Even the most far out political movements, from Fascists to Communists, still turn to the people for their mandate. Deep down, they are democratic, for they believe in Majority Rule. Now is the time for the Left and the Right to unite to regain democracy, while cutting the judges power down to their normal size.
The People never had much say in Israel: the country was run for years by one party and one army, with power smoothly shifting from a party boss to a general and back. Still, there was at least the occasional appearance of democracy, and a chance to extend the democratic base. Now, the Knesset and the Government have been made irrelevant by the Court’s powers; and the Court is outside of our influence.
Under the Court’s rule, Israel is entering the dark realm of faceless and nameless dictatorship. This is not the dictatorship we were taught to be afraid of, with the dictator riding a white stallion surrounded by outriders or speaking in a stadium to the enchanted masses. We have no portraits of the new dictators in our homes; we are not asked to adore them; it’s the other way around, we may not utter their names or even suspect that they exist. They do not run for public office, they do not ask for our opinion, but they decide what will be done.
They do not belong to the left or to the right. The Left and the Right are parliamentary terms, while they are against democracy. They undermine outstanding, personable and charismatic leaders; only petty and corrupt politicians are allowed to survive their purges, for such would never dare to fight these nameless dictators. With every generation, Israeli politicians grow smaller in moral stature, until they finally disappear in all but a name.
There is an urgent need to clean up the act of the police and the Court. They should stay away from state business and leave parliamentarians alone. They should take care of their job instead of hunting for mischief. This needed roll-back can’t be done without some left-and-right cooperation.
Fighting Sorority
Active and pugnacious feminism is a part of the Court agenda. The President of the Supreme Court, Dorit Beinish, and her best friend Justice Edna Arbel are fervent feminists of Gloria Steinem’s type. The rumours in Tel Aviv are divided, whether they like women, or just gratuitously hate men. Such persons are certainly needed and useful for the society, but they are entirely unsuitable to bear the dictatorial powers they assumed. This subject is rarely discussed openly for fear of being labeled ‘sexist’; likewise US Democrats are unable to effectively fight the Neocons as they can’t politically survive an accusation of antisemitism.
It would be good to roll the sorority’s advances back a notch, for being convinced of the justices’ support, lesbian and feminist organisations have sped up their drive to convert the country to their creed: they ran gay pride parades, even in Jerusalem, though this annoys the conservative and pious Jerusalemites. They noisily demonstrate against the men pointed out by Beinish. Persecution of alleged heterosexual harassers and abusers assumed the dimensions of a Salem witch hunt. Under Beinish’s guidance, a new law has been promulgated, which classified every heterosexual relationship between two co-workers as sexual abuse, if not rape. The majority, family men and women are discriminated against as they have less disposable income than gays and lesbians.
Forceful and aggressive feminists take too much of air time and wield too much influence. They are clannish, and defend each other; criticism of such a woman is perceived as an attack on women’s rights. In the Jewish state, the lesbians became the Jews of the Jews: influential, powerful, pugnacious and protected by fear of sexism label. It’s not that they have grievances: the prosperous and numerous lesbian community is well integrated into all areas of public life. From the Jewish religious point of view, lesbianism is not a sin (as opposed to male homosexuality). They are really after re-gendering of the whole society, and here they find some extremely antidemocratic allies: re-gendering is not a way to gratify sexual desires or to correct wrongs, but a most efficient form of social taming.
Under the fighting sorority’s influence, Israel has been transformed. Once, US Jews would send their kids to Israel to get married, now, Israel is the place to find a same-sex partner. Once, Israel was a country of manly men and womanly women; not anymore. Things have changed since the macho days of Six Day War, when homosexuality was banned, one-eyed Defence Minister Dayan screwed every female conscript and the Israeli army vanquished three Arab armies in a single week. Now the gay tendency is no snag, ministers are sued for kissing a girl, and the army is beaten up by a few bearded Lebanese. Traditionally independent, Jewish women became even more so as they now serve in the combat units, earn as much as men do, and are protected from flirtatious looks by ever-alert police.
Beinish and Arbel are representative of this group. The woman they hope will become the next Prime Minister of Israel, Tsippi Livni, the foreign minister and an ex-secret service agent, is a sorority girl, she passed millions of dollars to gay organisation led by her patriotic sisters. Her victory is almost certain.
The sorority fights especially hard against men of other, non-Ashkenazi communities, not only because of their racism, but also because they – the Oriental Jews, the Arabs, the Russians – were not tamed and re-gendered. They watch out and destroy every bright or personable public man of these communities. For this purpose, they set the police to spy after him, and eventually arrange for his downfall.
Aryeh Deri, the astute and pious founder of the Moroccan Shas (“the Jewish Hamas”) religious party, was followed for ten years, until they succeeded in building a dubious case against him and sending him to jail.
Avigdor Lieberman, a brutal but personable leader of a Russian party. The many sexist remarks around him concentrate on his, and his party members, moustaches, that clear sign of hated masculinity. Lieberman has been called to the police from time to time, and this event is well publicised with the suspicions being aired, but he has never been charged. Last week (27.7.08) frustrated Lieberman appealed to the Supreme Court against the Attorney General. He demanded to termination of the case against him, still open after 12 years of police efforts: “Charge me, or close the case”. In his words, “State Prosecutor Edna Arbel continues to hound him because he is a “friend of Aryeh Deri, Russian, sports a beard, and a settler”.
Arcadi Gaydamak, the charismatic Russian businessman and philanthropist, is rather a romantic buccaneer type of a businessman; a Henry Morgan or Cecil Rhodes. His past includes stints in the Angola jungle and in the mountains of Yugoslavia, and friendship with MPLA guerrillas and Serb militants. Now he is running for mayor of Jerusalem. He was attacked by the sorority the moment he decided to enter Israeli politics. He was accused of money-laundering in a Bank ha-Poalim Affair, which came to naught despite years of investigation and much of bad publicity. He was never charged, but his name was besmirched and many Israelis are afraid to be seen in his company. He also demanded to be charged or declared innocent, but they prefer to keep the Damocles Sword hanging over his head.
Could it be that these men were rotten, and police just fulfilled its duty by investigating reports of their misdeeds? If you go to police and complain that your house was robbed or your car stolen, you’d probably will be told that they have no time or resources for such investigations. They have more pressing things to do, like spending thousands of working hours and millions of dollars to fight the politicians. And the crosshairs were being set by the fighting sorority.
[1] It may be conceived as the rebirth of the old fourth power, the Ecclesiastic one, for Media preaches, and guides minds of people, establishing normative and forbidden behaviour, just like the Church did.
Showing posts with label israel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label israel. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Sages Rule
Monday, August 18, 2008
Heemeyer Rides Again
By Israel Shamir
This is a human interest story. It could have happened anywhere, but it happened in Jerusalem. Yes, we have Jews and Arabs here, but this is a story about men and women. It would make a good subject for a film, or for a novel, as it includes romantic love, beautiful young lovers separated by prejudice, severe and unjust punishment meted out in the name of law and order - and untimely death.
A few days ago, a young Jerusalemite got aboard his Caterpillar tractor, ran amok on the main street, hitting buses and cars and was finally shot dead by a vigilante. Why did it happen? For the same reason an American, Marvin Heemeyer, did his deed. When a man is pushed too far, too hard, he snaps. One weeps, another one commits suicide, and yet another one takes a gun and shoots everybody in sight – or rolls his bulldozer over cars and people.
Marvin Heemeyer was a Colorado welder who, on June 4, 2004, drove his bulldozer through the town hall, the office of the hostile local newspaper that editorialized against him, the home of a judge and others. He was pushed too hard: the municipality had blocked his access road, his livelihood had been ruined, his simple requests were being refused. The young Jerusalemite, Hosam Dwayyat was pushed much harder.
Hosam was born in Jerusalem after the Jewish takeover, and grew up in a village on the outskirts of the city. Sur Bahr, his village on the edge of the desert with its shepherds and sheep, is not a bad place: it is walking distance from both the Old City of Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Houses are nice, spacey and covered with white limestone, surrounded by small gardens.
Hosam, like all the youth of Sur Bahr lived in the twilight zone between Jews and Palestinians. He spoke Hebrew and Arabic, had Israeli and Palestinian friends, went to discos and concerts, could go to Tel Aviv or West Jerusalem like an ordinary human being, like you and me. However, on his way he would frequently be stopped, searched, ordered to present his documents, detained, beaten and released: Israeli security police, Border Guards, do this regularly in order to remind an Arab that he is an Arab. For this reason, the dwellers of East Jerusalem hesitate to venture westward, much like you’d hesitate to visit a violent South Bronx.
But Hosam was young, and youth does not surrender easily. Some eight years ago, and he was 24, he had met a young Russian girl Marina who was 19, and they fell in love. He was her first love, and she did not hide her happiness.
The Russians are a breed apart in the social mosaic of Israel. Though nominally “Jewish”, they have kept their Russian identity, and their own ways. They were not infected with Jewish chauvinism in the cradle. For Russians, Jewishness is a private thing, not a public identity. In the internationalist Soviet Union and in its successor states, boys and girls fall in love with or befriend a person without regard to his or her ethnic and religious origin, and it does not cause a ripple, let alone a storm. Upon arrival to Israel, these good-natured young people are classified by rather arrogant Israelis as “Johnnys-come-lately”. They are snubbed and socially rejected. They have little contact with youth of good social standing, while the children of poor Oriental Jewish suburbs are too foreign for them. The Russians do not share the ideals of other Israeli Jewish communities, i.e. military valour and the amassing of wealth.
The Palestinians, especially those brought up in the bigger cities of Jerusalem, Haifa, Jaffa-Tel Aviv and Ramallah, are closer to the Russians than are members of other communities: they are smarter, behave like gentlemen, and do not look down on Russians. They intermarry, or have romantic connections with them, quite often. Among my immediate friends, a young Russian girl married a boy from Batir, and now she lives in that village near Jerusalem with her new family. Another one had a Palestinian boyfriend for two years, before breaking up for personal reasons.
Hosam and Marina went steady; they lived together for a while in Tel Aviv. “Hosam liked Israelis”, Marina told the newspaper this week. But their love was crushed upon the rocks of apartheid.
Liaisons between nominal “Jews” and goys cause much alarm or outright hatred in official Israel. A few days ago, the largest Israeli newspaper, Yediot Ahronot, informed its readers that “the Kiryat Gat municipality has decided to act against … female teenagers falling in love with young Bedouins and they … presented a 10-minute film titled Sleeping with the Enemy”. In June, the Israeli army removed an Israeli girl named Melissa, 23, who married a local man named Muhammad Hamameh, 25, from the village of Husan. There is a vigilante organisation called Yad Leakhim that fights intermarriages and conversions to Christianity or Islam, and they are busy interfering with interracial happiness.
Marina’s parents received hints and odd looks from neighbours. It was explained to them that “it is not done”, that it is “sleeping with enemy”. They conveyed this pressure to their daughter, but strong-willed Marina moved to live with her boyfriend and his family. He wanted to marry her, but Russian girls rarely marry so young, and – like other Western girls – they do not necessarily want to marry their first boyfriend. They still want to flirt with others, while seriously minded sincere young men may well disapprove of it. You do not have to be a Russian and/or Arab to know about this. Moreover, you do not have to be a Moor to be aware that jealousy may cause you to slap the flighty partner, and slap he did. In a moment of anger, Marina complained to the police, and they took away her lover. Marina tried to take her complaint back; at that time she was pregnant and lived with Hosam’s parents. “He slapped me when he had reason to feel jealous”, she said last week. But even her intervention in favour of Hosam in the court did not help – he was sentenced to 20 months of jail.
Jerusalem judges are notoriously anti-Arab; they'd have to be, as they approve of so many unjust acts towards Arabs. Here they saw a chance to break a forbidden liaison of a nominally Jewish girl with a goy, of teaching the Russians and the Palestinians a lesson. But there was another reason, and it was equally relevant. In post-feminist Israel, as in many other Western countries, a woman may not withdraw her complaint against a man. The state provides for the ham-fisted over-protection to women. It is ready to do violence to real women for the sake of “Women’s Rights.” In an unrelated case, Israeli minister Hayim Ramon kissed a soldier girl. She complained, but later withdrew her complaint. Police pursued her all the way to Latin America and forced her to complain, threatening her with charges of making a false accusation. The feminists witch-hunted Ramon all the way to court, and they still refer to him as a “rapist”. So Hosam and Marina could suffer their same fate in any feminist-ridden European country.
Last week Marina, 27, still pretty, slim and blond, bewept Hosam and told a reporter that she was and still is in love with him, her first love and the father of her child she was now bringing up alone. She was angry at the vigilante, a far-right activist who kept shooting at unarmed Hosam. She shed tears for the man Israeli authorities and media had already judged to be an “evil terrorist”. For years, Marina hoped he’d forgive her momentary lapse and come back to her after his release. But he did not return. His family arranged for his marriage, and he tried to reshape his life in the Palestinian milieu after his failure in the Israeli one.
This second try was even worse. Once his family had had much land, but it was confiscated to build nearby Jewish neighbourhood. The remainder of their land was confiscated to build the Wall, a fourteen-feet-tall monster that cut them off from Bethlehem and the desert. On what was left, he built a house for his new family, for his wife and two children.
But a Palestinian may not build a house in Jerusalem, even on his own land, and he can’t ever get a permit. Hosam had been met by Israeli “justice” a second time, with equally disastrous consequences. They ordered him to demolish the house and fined him $50,000. After that, he snapped, took his front-loader tractor and ran amok in the centre of Jerusalem, ramming cars and buses. He was quickly shot dead.
There are some local specifics, and bulldozers as well as killing of an attacker are permanent fixture of the Arab-Israeli conflict: a Jewish bulldozer driver drove his armoured machine over the American peace activist Rachel Corrie who defended a Palestinian home from demolition and was never prosecuted. Another Jewish bulldozer driver shared with the world his experience of razing Jenin: “I had no mercy for anybody. I would erase anyone with the D-9, and I have demolished plenty. For three days, I just destroyed and destroyed. The whole area. I didn't see, with my own eyes, people dying under the blade of the D-9. But if there were any, I wouldn't care at all. If you knocked down a house, you buried 40 or 50 people. I had lots of satisfaction in Jenin”. While the Jewish vigilante who killed Hosam was called “hero”, Arabs who killed Jewish murderers in Hebron or in Shafa Amr were prosecuted for murder.
However, putting aside le couleur locale, such a story could happen almost anywhere, in the US or in Europe. Some prejudices are common: A young girl could get cold feet right before marriage. A jealous youngster could slap his flirty girlfriend. Feminist judges could separate a young couple. She could remain alone loving him and bearing his child. City hall could demolish anybody’s house for being built without a permit or in order to build a bypass. A man could become incensed and mete his vengeance on whoever came his way Death Wish style. And here in Israel, as in your country, we are first of all human -- men and women. This is an optimistic tragedy: normalcy creeps in through the holes in apartheid.
It is not necessary to view every event through the binary, Jew-Goy, or Jew-Arab perception. This perspective is dearest with people for whom their Jewishness is more important than their humanity. For them, denial of the “tractor terrorist murder of Jews” is “another blood libel against Jewish people”. They force their binary view onto others. Thus, Prime Minister Olmert and the Labour leader Barak immediately sent their police forces to disturb the mourning family, and, equally devoted to the Jewish paradigm, President Bush, UN chief Ban Ki-moon and sundry others condemned the “bloody terrorist”. Even good guy Seth Freedman wrote that “Israelis should be under no illusions as to why we're being targeted by terrorist killers such as Hosan Dwayyat”. Their counterparts in Hamas, Hezbollah and the mythic Galilee Liberation also claimed responsibility, or “understood” Hosam’s actions as those of resistance. The yellow press of Israel and of Jewish communities abroad invented his criminal past (“the convicted rapist, burglar and drug dealer”), his terrorist call to God and his hatred of Jews.
But this miasma of obsessive hate can’t transform the human tragedy: that of an unhappy man pushed too far, whose broken body was washed by the tears of a Russian Israeli girl named Marina.
PS. Only Gilad Atzmon, Israeli saxophonist and writer of note, wondered “why the Israelis are entirely sure that it was an act of terror. It may as well be that the man was slightly mad, he might have had a phone row with his wife or alternatively a soaring dispute with his Israeli boss that made him flip. I would assume that in order to declare an incident to be an act of terror, a terrorist motivation or a scenario must be established first. Without establishing such a motivation we are doomed to admit that we are dealing here with a criminal case that must be investigated. We should as well refrain from jumping to conclusions.”
He was right here, though, in a moment of despair, he came to the wrong conclusion continuing “However, the Israelis seem to be pretty convinced here. The Israelis are indeed united, and it is good that they are so united because it allows us to see what the Jewish state is all about. Sadly, there is no partner for peace in the Israeli society… Unfortunately, and this is indeed a tragedy, the Palestinians are at the forefront of the most crucial battle for a better world. The Palestinians have been captured in a grave encounter with a psychotic, phantasmic, bloodthirsty self-centric Jewish national identity that knows no mercy.”
Not only native Palestinians, but Israelis too, including nominal Jews, are at odds with this Jewish paradigm, or identity. Just as normal women suffer from their feminist defenders, ordinary Israelis officially classified as “Jews” do not need defence from the binary perception priests. While abroad, every man can choose whether to accept Jewish identity -- in Israel we have it forced upon us. Israeli unity is a phantasm as seem from afar; up close, you see men and women with their own preoccupations, and “professional Jews” are even rarer in Israel than elsewhere.
Like Gilad, I doubt that ‘Jews’, i.e. the people who uphold this identity, will agree by their own good will to any fair arrangement with native Palestinians. But unlike Gilad, I consider Israelis, including nominal Jews, to be capable of such an arrangement. For we do not fight Jews, we fight the Jewish identity, and we can win. If the Russians succeeded in making Jewishness a private thing, not an identity, so can we.
As long as there are Israeli girls like Marina and Israeli men like Gilad, there is a chance for peace. Better than a chance -- a certainty!
This is a human interest story. It could have happened anywhere, but it happened in Jerusalem. Yes, we have Jews and Arabs here, but this is a story about men and women. It would make a good subject for a film, or for a novel, as it includes romantic love, beautiful young lovers separated by prejudice, severe and unjust punishment meted out in the name of law and order - and untimely death.
A few days ago, a young Jerusalemite got aboard his Caterpillar tractor, ran amok on the main street, hitting buses and cars and was finally shot dead by a vigilante. Why did it happen? For the same reason an American, Marvin Heemeyer, did his deed. When a man is pushed too far, too hard, he snaps. One weeps, another one commits suicide, and yet another one takes a gun and shoots everybody in sight – or rolls his bulldozer over cars and people.
Marvin Heemeyer was a Colorado welder who, on June 4, 2004, drove his bulldozer through the town hall, the office of the hostile local newspaper that editorialized against him, the home of a judge and others. He was pushed too hard: the municipality had blocked his access road, his livelihood had been ruined, his simple requests were being refused. The young Jerusalemite, Hosam Dwayyat was pushed much harder.
Hosam was born in Jerusalem after the Jewish takeover, and grew up in a village on the outskirts of the city. Sur Bahr, his village on the edge of the desert with its shepherds and sheep, is not a bad place: it is walking distance from both the Old City of Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Houses are nice, spacey and covered with white limestone, surrounded by small gardens.
Hosam, like all the youth of Sur Bahr lived in the twilight zone between Jews and Palestinians. He spoke Hebrew and Arabic, had Israeli and Palestinian friends, went to discos and concerts, could go to Tel Aviv or West Jerusalem like an ordinary human being, like you and me. However, on his way he would frequently be stopped, searched, ordered to present his documents, detained, beaten and released: Israeli security police, Border Guards, do this regularly in order to remind an Arab that he is an Arab. For this reason, the dwellers of East Jerusalem hesitate to venture westward, much like you’d hesitate to visit a violent South Bronx.
But Hosam was young, and youth does not surrender easily. Some eight years ago, and he was 24, he had met a young Russian girl Marina who was 19, and they fell in love. He was her first love, and she did not hide her happiness.
The Russians are a breed apart in the social mosaic of Israel. Though nominally “Jewish”, they have kept their Russian identity, and their own ways. They were not infected with Jewish chauvinism in the cradle. For Russians, Jewishness is a private thing, not a public identity. In the internationalist Soviet Union and in its successor states, boys and girls fall in love with or befriend a person without regard to his or her ethnic and religious origin, and it does not cause a ripple, let alone a storm. Upon arrival to Israel, these good-natured young people are classified by rather arrogant Israelis as “Johnnys-come-lately”. They are snubbed and socially rejected. They have little contact with youth of good social standing, while the children of poor Oriental Jewish suburbs are too foreign for them. The Russians do not share the ideals of other Israeli Jewish communities, i.e. military valour and the amassing of wealth.
The Palestinians, especially those brought up in the bigger cities of Jerusalem, Haifa, Jaffa-Tel Aviv and Ramallah, are closer to the Russians than are members of other communities: they are smarter, behave like gentlemen, and do not look down on Russians. They intermarry, or have romantic connections with them, quite often. Among my immediate friends, a young Russian girl married a boy from Batir, and now she lives in that village near Jerusalem with her new family. Another one had a Palestinian boyfriend for two years, before breaking up for personal reasons.
Hosam and Marina went steady; they lived together for a while in Tel Aviv. “Hosam liked Israelis”, Marina told the newspaper this week. But their love was crushed upon the rocks of apartheid.
Liaisons between nominal “Jews” and goys cause much alarm or outright hatred in official Israel. A few days ago, the largest Israeli newspaper, Yediot Ahronot, informed its readers that “the Kiryat Gat municipality has decided to act against … female teenagers falling in love with young Bedouins and they … presented a 10-minute film titled Sleeping with the Enemy”. In June, the Israeli army removed an Israeli girl named Melissa, 23, who married a local man named Muhammad Hamameh, 25, from the village of Husan. There is a vigilante organisation called Yad Leakhim that fights intermarriages and conversions to Christianity or Islam, and they are busy interfering with interracial happiness.
Marina’s parents received hints and odd looks from neighbours. It was explained to them that “it is not done”, that it is “sleeping with enemy”. They conveyed this pressure to their daughter, but strong-willed Marina moved to live with her boyfriend and his family. He wanted to marry her, but Russian girls rarely marry so young, and – like other Western girls – they do not necessarily want to marry their first boyfriend. They still want to flirt with others, while seriously minded sincere young men may well disapprove of it. You do not have to be a Russian and/or Arab to know about this. Moreover, you do not have to be a Moor to be aware that jealousy may cause you to slap the flighty partner, and slap he did. In a moment of anger, Marina complained to the police, and they took away her lover. Marina tried to take her complaint back; at that time she was pregnant and lived with Hosam’s parents. “He slapped me when he had reason to feel jealous”, she said last week. But even her intervention in favour of Hosam in the court did not help – he was sentenced to 20 months of jail.
Jerusalem judges are notoriously anti-Arab; they'd have to be, as they approve of so many unjust acts towards Arabs. Here they saw a chance to break a forbidden liaison of a nominally Jewish girl with a goy, of teaching the Russians and the Palestinians a lesson. But there was another reason, and it was equally relevant. In post-feminist Israel, as in many other Western countries, a woman may not withdraw her complaint against a man. The state provides for the ham-fisted over-protection to women. It is ready to do violence to real women for the sake of “Women’s Rights.” In an unrelated case, Israeli minister Hayim Ramon kissed a soldier girl. She complained, but later withdrew her complaint. Police pursued her all the way to Latin America and forced her to complain, threatening her with charges of making a false accusation. The feminists witch-hunted Ramon all the way to court, and they still refer to him as a “rapist”. So Hosam and Marina could suffer their same fate in any feminist-ridden European country.
Last week Marina, 27, still pretty, slim and blond, bewept Hosam and told a reporter that she was and still is in love with him, her first love and the father of her child she was now bringing up alone. She was angry at the vigilante, a far-right activist who kept shooting at unarmed Hosam. She shed tears for the man Israeli authorities and media had already judged to be an “evil terrorist”. For years, Marina hoped he’d forgive her momentary lapse and come back to her after his release. But he did not return. His family arranged for his marriage, and he tried to reshape his life in the Palestinian milieu after his failure in the Israeli one.
This second try was even worse. Once his family had had much land, but it was confiscated to build nearby Jewish neighbourhood. The remainder of their land was confiscated to build the Wall, a fourteen-feet-tall monster that cut them off from Bethlehem and the desert. On what was left, he built a house for his new family, for his wife and two children.
But a Palestinian may not build a house in Jerusalem, even on his own land, and he can’t ever get a permit. Hosam had been met by Israeli “justice” a second time, with equally disastrous consequences. They ordered him to demolish the house and fined him $50,000. After that, he snapped, took his front-loader tractor and ran amok in the centre of Jerusalem, ramming cars and buses. He was quickly shot dead.
There are some local specifics, and bulldozers as well as killing of an attacker are permanent fixture of the Arab-Israeli conflict: a Jewish bulldozer driver drove his armoured machine over the American peace activist Rachel Corrie who defended a Palestinian home from demolition and was never prosecuted. Another Jewish bulldozer driver shared with the world his experience of razing Jenin: “I had no mercy for anybody. I would erase anyone with the D-9, and I have demolished plenty. For three days, I just destroyed and destroyed. The whole area. I didn't see, with my own eyes, people dying under the blade of the D-9. But if there were any, I wouldn't care at all. If you knocked down a house, you buried 40 or 50 people. I had lots of satisfaction in Jenin”. While the Jewish vigilante who killed Hosam was called “hero”, Arabs who killed Jewish murderers in Hebron or in Shafa Amr were prosecuted for murder.
However, putting aside le couleur locale, such a story could happen almost anywhere, in the US or in Europe. Some prejudices are common: A young girl could get cold feet right before marriage. A jealous youngster could slap his flirty girlfriend. Feminist judges could separate a young couple. She could remain alone loving him and bearing his child. City hall could demolish anybody’s house for being built without a permit or in order to build a bypass. A man could become incensed and mete his vengeance on whoever came his way Death Wish style. And here in Israel, as in your country, we are first of all human -- men and women. This is an optimistic tragedy: normalcy creeps in through the holes in apartheid.
It is not necessary to view every event through the binary, Jew-Goy, or Jew-Arab perception. This perspective is dearest with people for whom their Jewishness is more important than their humanity. For them, denial of the “tractor terrorist murder of Jews” is “another blood libel against Jewish people”. They force their binary view onto others. Thus, Prime Minister Olmert and the Labour leader Barak immediately sent their police forces to disturb the mourning family, and, equally devoted to the Jewish paradigm, President Bush, UN chief Ban Ki-moon and sundry others condemned the “bloody terrorist”. Even good guy Seth Freedman wrote that “Israelis should be under no illusions as to why we're being targeted by terrorist killers such as Hosan Dwayyat”. Their counterparts in Hamas, Hezbollah and the mythic Galilee Liberation also claimed responsibility, or “understood” Hosam’s actions as those of resistance. The yellow press of Israel and of Jewish communities abroad invented his criminal past (“the convicted rapist, burglar and drug dealer”), his terrorist call to God and his hatred of Jews.
But this miasma of obsessive hate can’t transform the human tragedy: that of an unhappy man pushed too far, whose broken body was washed by the tears of a Russian Israeli girl named Marina.
PS. Only Gilad Atzmon, Israeli saxophonist and writer of note, wondered “why the Israelis are entirely sure that it was an act of terror. It may as well be that the man was slightly mad, he might have had a phone row with his wife or alternatively a soaring dispute with his Israeli boss that made him flip. I would assume that in order to declare an incident to be an act of terror, a terrorist motivation or a scenario must be established first. Without establishing such a motivation we are doomed to admit that we are dealing here with a criminal case that must be investigated. We should as well refrain from jumping to conclusions.”
He was right here, though, in a moment of despair, he came to the wrong conclusion continuing “However, the Israelis seem to be pretty convinced here. The Israelis are indeed united, and it is good that they are so united because it allows us to see what the Jewish state is all about. Sadly, there is no partner for peace in the Israeli society… Unfortunately, and this is indeed a tragedy, the Palestinians are at the forefront of the most crucial battle for a better world. The Palestinians have been captured in a grave encounter with a psychotic, phantasmic, bloodthirsty self-centric Jewish national identity that knows no mercy.”
Not only native Palestinians, but Israelis too, including nominal Jews, are at odds with this Jewish paradigm, or identity. Just as normal women suffer from their feminist defenders, ordinary Israelis officially classified as “Jews” do not need defence from the binary perception priests. While abroad, every man can choose whether to accept Jewish identity -- in Israel we have it forced upon us. Israeli unity is a phantasm as seem from afar; up close, you see men and women with their own preoccupations, and “professional Jews” are even rarer in Israel than elsewhere.
Like Gilad, I doubt that ‘Jews’, i.e. the people who uphold this identity, will agree by their own good will to any fair arrangement with native Palestinians. But unlike Gilad, I consider Israelis, including nominal Jews, to be capable of such an arrangement. For we do not fight Jews, we fight the Jewish identity, and we can win. If the Russians succeeded in making Jewishness a private thing, not an identity, so can we.
As long as there are Israeli girls like Marina and Israeli men like Gilad, there is a chance for peace. Better than a chance -- a certainty!
Saturday, August 9, 2008
It is not only about Palestine
by Israel Shamir,
Joachim Martillo wrote an important paper called Judonia Rising: The Israel Lobby and American Society, purporting to explain, “What the Israel Lobby Really Is”. He spoke with Stephen Walt, of Walt and Mearsheimer fame, he followed the discussions of Philip Weiss, he corresponded with Noam Chomsky and Joseph Massad, he had read Israel Shamir’s Pardes and James Petras, he knows MacDonald. An American scholar Martlllo has some Polish background, and he reads Yiddish and Polish, as well as some Hebrew. In his view, understanding the Israel Lobby can be based only on a thorough hardnosed (“non-exceptionalist”) analysis of Eastern European Jewish history. This is a heretical view, very close to ours.
It is heretical, because the very far away border of permitted antizionist discourse still remains short of discussion: whether Jews did similar things before Zionism, or do we have a temporary aberration connected with the state of Israel. The moment one integrates modern Jewish behaviour with the pre-modern Jewish behaviour, the moment one notices continuity of pre-Zionist and Zionist Jewish politics, the moment one leaves the safe ground of condemning occupation, - one crosses into totally forbidden “antisemite” territory. Martillo dared and ventured there, and came with strong and startling conclusions: the real issue is not Palestine. Unless they are neutralized, Israel lobbying groups, Israel advocates, Zionists, Neoconservatives, and Friedmanites will steal America and effectively abolish the Constitution in all but name to create a society of servitude for all Americans except for those belonging to the hyper-wealthy transnational Zionist political elite.
This is exactly our view: Palestine is a symbol, a quintessence of the trouble, but the real issue is our enemy’s attempt to enslave the world. Martillo begins where Walt and Mearsheimer end their journey. In his view, in order to understand Jews, it is not necessary to venture into days of Jesus Christ; history of Poland will do. He goes to the days of Rzeczpospolita, the Polish Commonwealth (from 1505 until 1795), then ethnic Ashkenazim constituted economic elite of the realm. They lost this status in the partitions of Poland. This is the destroyed Temple, in Martillo’s view, these are good old days the Jews miss: they want to be the elite like they were in the days of Rzeczpospolita. Jews did well after the collapse of the Polish Commonwealth, notes Martillo, but not as good as they would like.
“Despite supposedly onerous Czarist oppression, Russian Jews had higher incomes, more education, and longer life spans than the non-Jewish populations among whom they lived. They were highly disaffected because of exclusion from the status and access to which they believed they were entitled, but they were not obviously more oppressed than the majority of the Czar's subjects and less oppressed than others. Yuri Slezkine belies the myth of Jewish powerless during the lead-up to WW2 in The Jewish Century.”
In the US, the Jews (or Ashkenazim, in Martillo’s terminology) resurrected their social structure and rebuilt it, like ants who rebuild anthill after being removed to a new ground. This structure is ostensibly “Israel advocacy” or “Israel Lobby” but actually advocating Israel’s cause (“Israel Lobby proper”) is a small part of its effort. He soberly states that a USA, whose dominant elite is Jewish, is not necessarily bending to the Israel Lobby proper when it pursues of pro-Israel foreign policy. The State of Israel may be a client state of America, but America is a client state of the American Jewish Zionist elite, which is probably in the process of establishing itself as the permanent national "meritocratic" elite.
Jews succeeded to act together because historically Eastern European Jewish culture strongly controlled social and intellectual deviation. Many of the social control mechanisms continue to exist, have evolved in the American environment, and may help explain why liberal Jews have so empowered the Neocons to the detriment of US foreign policy interests as James Petras has described.
It is not necessary to look for Freemasonry, the Elders of Zion, the Illuminati, dark Talmudists, malicious Cabbalists, or some other group of secret puppeteers: Israel lobbying activities constitute a natural evolution of Jewish, especially ethnic Ashkenazi, communal organizations. The structure of Israel lobbying is a response to historical developments generally unrelated to Zionism. Because there has been a sort of Darwinian selection in both the official and unofficial organizations as well as in their techniques, all of which go back often as much two centuries in European environments, Israel lobbying is naturally far more effective than a lobby that was put together over the last few decades or so in response to a specific issue or to serve a specific corporate interest.
The same question applies today. Does the so-called "Israel Lobby" merely act to secure the interests of the State of Israel or is the real goal enhancement of the wealth, status, and power of those who pay for it? Not only does Israel not pay the "Israel Lobby," but The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy does not give a hint who really does, and in any case large sections of the "Israel Lobby" like the Hollywood Crowd do not even appear in the book even though scholars like Melani McAlister have investigated the Hollywood foreign policy connection in books likes Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East, 1945-2000. With such gaps in the analysis of the "Israel Lobby," no one should be surprised with the weakness of the proposals that Professors Mearsheimer and Walt make for responding to the "Israel Lobby."
Friedmanites have been so prominent in the economic regime that the occupation has attempted to impose on Iraq that the common identification of Milton Friedman's economic thinking merely with Cato Institute libertarianism looks incorrect. In today's political intellectual environment Friedmanism looks more like an adjunct of Neoconservatism.
Israel Lobbying in Comparison with Ordinary Lobbies
Martillo notices that the Jewish lobby has many interests quite unconnected with Israel but equally nefarious:
In Boston the Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Justice (JALSA), which is a spin-off of the American Jewish Congress, has an ongoing project in regendering American society according to feminist and gay liberation principles.
Israel lobbying efforts benefit from organizational memory that does not exist in other lobbying situations. The longevity of Jewish Federation organizations can give Israel Lobbying efforts a generational aspect not seen elsewhere. For example, Israel Advocacy organizations worked for fifty years to delegitimize Arabist points of view in the foreign service and state department, drive out Arabist officers or bureaucrats and replace them with Israel sympathetic personnel (see The Marginalization of U.S. Mideast Experts, http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/1095/9510080.htm ).
Possibly because of long-standing relationships with government officials, because of the fear of the accusations of anti-Semitism, or simply because Jews are disproportionately represented among government officials especially in the legal and regulation enforcement divisions (another class of saya`nim), Israel advocacy is unique among lobbying efforts.
While the American public has not fully comprehended the nature of power relations, Israeli leaders do, and the American Zionist elite calls all shots on issues of importance to the American elite from "Who is a Jew" to whether the USA should attack Iraq or Iran first.
The political relational hierarchy and the domination of an American Zionist elite over all validate the Finkelstein and Massad critiques of The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.
The alliance between Israel and the US states is in the process of creating an internal American caste system that will be dominated by a small class of hyper-wealthy Zionists. With the sort of permanent war that has been envisioned since the beginning of the twentieth century by a segment of the Zionist elite under the influence of Sorel and with the application of the Friedmanite Shock Doctrine as described by Naomi Klein, this caste system will spread globally. (See The Shock Doctrine, The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, by Naomi Klein.)
The Israeli economy or more properly a small segment of hyper-wealthy Israeli Jews linked by family and business relations to the dominant US Zionist elite is thriving as the US economy is tanking and Iraq is being ground down. It is the outcome of which leading Zionists dreamed in the twenties, and it has a high probability of spreading from the ME throughout the Muslim world to South America, and to parts of the former Eastern block.
The Kremlin, which has never had much tolerance for internal competing power centers or external powers mucking in its backyard, saw danger in the extension of a transnational hyper-wealthy Zionist political elite to Russia and has taken preventive action against Jewish oligarchs within the territories of the former Soviet Union. It was stunning how quickly Jewish and Friedmanite groups rushed to support Mikhail Khodorkovski in his power struggle with the Russian government.
Among religious, leftist, and right wing ethnic Ashkenazim there has long been a current of thought that Jews are safest in alliance (or better in dominating) an undemocratic government. Thanks to the Patriot act and other actions of the Bush administration, the undemocratic Zionist future is coming into being right before our eyes, and McCain looks like the most likely of current present candidates to bring about the fulfillment of the ultimate globalized Zionist dystopia, but Zionists throughout the political system are poised to influence any other possible victor except Ron Paul, whom Zionist facilitators and gate-keepers in the US media are trying to starve of media attention.
Abolishing Israel and eradicating Zionism would not eliminate the exploitive tendencies of globalization but would destroy the focal point of the forces that are aiming for the worst of all globalized futures.
The Zionist movement assumed from its earliest phases that it would be dependent on wealthy and influential Jews in the Diaspora. Members of the Counsinhood of Britain's wealthiest Jews probably paid for the Balfour Declaration. After the propaganda reverses of the first Intifada, the need for an even wealthier and more influential class of Jewish Zionists in the USA became obvious.
[In this strategic framework, the Zionist movement also depends on Jews, who are not necessarily wealthy but are in critical positions to serve the Zionist movement especially in intelligence or logistics matters. Such individuals are today called saya`nim. The spy Jonathan Pollard is a particularly egregious saya`an, who was caught. I have expanded the meaning of the term in this document to include Jewish stealth helpers in Israel Lobbying efforts.]
In addition to saya`nim, Zionists have often used Shabbesgoyim like Orde Wingate during the pre-State period or more recently John McCain III and his father Admiral John McCain, Jr., who absolved Israel of blame in the attack on the USS Liberty. (See http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/01/money-jews-brain-jews-politics.html .) The Zionist movement has tended to recruit and reward Shabbesgoyim in families. New York Zionist campaign contributions have rewarded John McCain throughout his political career. Today McCain represents the Neoconservative Friedmanite position in Republican politics without — until recently — a lot of the social conservative baggage to which many American Jews and Friedmanites object.]
Zionist connections in the investment banking industry led to earlier IPOs in the 90s with little or no evidence of profitability. Subprime mortgages were a similar class of dubious investments, whose true nature was obscured in CDOs (collateralized debt obligations), and the valuation of Google and similar companies like Facebook has similar dubious characteristic. Some serious forensic analysis and financial analysis is needed to understand these economic developments, but the end result has been very clear in the development of a new class of superwealthy that is mostly Jewish and willing to put a lot of money into Israel advocacy and into influencing the US government.
While many members of this New Jewish Elite would reflexively put money into Israel because of long Zionist indoctrination, they also need Israel as a means to hide their wealth because Israel has a level of economic transparency and corruption comparable to Italy or Egypt. The Bar-Lev line in Tel Aviv is an early indicator of the degree of embezzlement and sweetheart deals in Israeli economics and politics. Israelis have long made a lot of money in providing money laundering and other transaction hiding services both to Jews and non-Jews. Obviously, all parties in this sort of business have an interest in preserving the State of Israel to make sure that this sort business continues.
Post-9/11 Islamophobic scare-mongering as well as the Iraqi occupation has created a growth industry in hardware and software for security, control, and checkpoints. This industry understands that its profitability depends on international policies that maintain conflict through unconditional support of Zionism.
A Web of Influence, Conditioned Thinking and Reflexive Behavior
Ongoing Zionist indoctrination of the American public has produced a Zionist web of influence, conditioned thinking and reflexive behavior that is breath-taking in its pervasiveness.
Even without the presence of media gatekeepers and facilitators, journalists in print, broadcast and cable media almost invariably misrepresent relevant Middle Eastern or Eastern European current events or history. There is little reluctance to turn Zionist or IDF press releases into news reports with no qualifications.
American news organizations almost invariably misquote and mistranslate Iranian President Ahmedinejad, and America media use tendentious Zionist language like the "right to self-defense," "Muslim extremism," and "Arab intransigence" while almost never conceding a similar right of Palestinian or Arab self-defense or addressing issues of Jewish racism, extremism or fanaticism. During the recent Lebanon war, the American media with rare exceptions took the Israeli point of view.
Only recently have American media begun to concede the role of Russian Jews in the Russian Revolution and the murder of the Czar's family. While scholarly journals discuss the Jewish role in the Soviet security apparatus before the end of WW2, no inkling of the Soviet Jewish role in mass murder, ethnic cleansing and genocide is allowed to reach the general public. Such facts would interfere with the Zionist legitimization narrative which requires European Jews to be innocent powerless victims of the German Nazis, and reasonable people would drawn the obvious analogy between Soviet Ashkenazi and Zionist Ashkenazi ethnic cleansing or genocidalism.
Only occasionally does accurate depiction of Zionist ethnic cleansing in 1947-8 ever reach the American public, and descriptions of the start of the 1967 war — even on NPR — still include descriptions of the movement ("barreling") of Egyptian tanks through Sinai to attack Israel.
Roman Catholics according to statistical analysis are less sympathetic. It is intriguing that practically every time the Boston Globe runs a story that features a Catholic cleric expressing a criticism of Israel, within approximately a week, it also runs a story about a Catholic cleric sex scandal sometimes featuring events from as much as 25 years ago as if to provide some crude sort of "balance" that even CAMERA and HonestReporting do not advocate. It is an often-unconscious behavior more often associated with an angry ethnic press, and it may be significant that the Boston Globe Editorial Board includes Lawrence Harmon, who was editor at the Boston Jewish Advocate, and that paid entry level newspaper jobs in the USA nowadays seem to be found mostly at the ethnic Jewish press.
The hyper-wealthy Zionist elite is trying to create Israel Studies programs in which only Zionistically correct scholars will teach while stealth and overt Israel advocacy groups and individuals attempt to drive any scholars critical of Zionism from American education. (See http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/09/jacob-lassner-and-nadia-abu-el-haj.html.)
Nadia Abu el Haj, Finkelstein, Arun Gandhi, Massad, Dabashi, Saliba, Debby Almontaser (Khalil Gibran International Academy, New York City) and many others have been subjected to such attacks. (See http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/11/zionism-penisism-and-joseph-massad.html, http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/02/arun-gandhi-and-sholem-aleichem.html, http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/12/conspiracy-against-rights-in-nyc.html.)
Altogether Israel Lobbying efforts are grinding down American Constitutional rights and Israelizing society to the point where the American political system is under attack by a wide-ranging seditious conspiracy, and the side-effect of Islamophobic and Arabophobic incitement against Arab or Muslim investments or university contributions or charitable donations, is discouraging the flow of capital from Saudia and the Gulf when the US economy most desperately needs such liquidity.
Even if American gets over the current economic crisis, the alliance with Israel at this point has probably cost every current US taxpayer at least $10,000.00, and the costs at this point are rising at least geometrically thanks to Neocon-orchestrated policies.
Fighting Back to Save America
Pointing out the cost of Israel to each and every American is a good starting point to counteract Israel lobbying and advocacy.
The Zionism of Christian evangelical fundamentalists is part of generational program of Jabotinskians but is not particularly deep. Obviously, Rapturists do not care much about the cost of Israel to America, but Christian Zionism can be fought by scriptural disputation, by questioning the patriotism of its leaders and by exposing surreptitious Jewish funding and organizing.
In other areas Israel advocates have had so much success because in today's America Jews play by a set of rules completely different from all other Americans, and even not particularly Zionist Jews have no real incentive to challenge the system, when renders them Moral Arbiters, Major players in a dramatic narrative of national rebirth, Beneficiaries of programs like Taglit (Birthright Israel), Jewish networks in academia, the professions and politics, Certain of their own righteousness, and Wielders of the all-powerful accusation of anti-Semitism.
At the college level, the International Hillel Society acts like a junior auxiliary to the KKK by running racist programs like Taglit/Birthright Israel and by hosting extremist speakers that incite murder and genocide against Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims or deny that they are human.
Jewish organizations, no matter how much they campaign against laws and candidates, get a completely pass of the rules and regulations of 501(c)(3) organizations. The tax fraud probably reaches tens of billions of dollars at this point.
Neutralizing Israel lobbying and advocacy groups will be extremely difficult without a push for the US government to enforce laws equally for Jews and non-Jews. Then once a good part of the American public realizes that Israel is a terror state, the USA will be forced to apply anti-terror laws apply and seize assets of organized Jewish community along with those of Zionist billionaires as terrorism supporters just as Islamic charities have been stripped of their funds.
•Until the US government begins to enforce laws equitably, activists will have to research real estate transactions and investigate who is paying for Israel advocacy programs. They will have to put together a who’s who of Zionist subversion in the USA.
To change the consciousness of Americans, activists must fight American Holocaust religion and work for recognition that the mass murders of Jews during WW2 were not exceptional or unique,
that Palestinians, Armenians, Balkan Muslims, and Circassians have all been genocided from the nineteenth through the twentieth century and that Soviet Jews were up to the eyeballs in mass murder, ethnic cleansing and genocide long before German Nazis, Eastern Europeans, and liberated Soviet nationalities began to kill Jews systematically out of fear and hatred resulting from the Jewish role in the Soviet Union.
Activists will have to challenge American Jews socially at interfaith activities, community events and elsewhere. They must demand clarification of Jewish loyalties and force Jewish leaders to acknowledge that Americans are not obligated to support Israel and that hating Jews for what they do (unlike hating Jews for being Jews) is not anti-Semitism.
Activists need to make effort to counter Israel advocacy and Holocaust studies at the high school and even grammar school levels. They need to work for coordination among anti-Zionist Arab American, Muslim American, genuinely anti-Israel Jewish American, conservative, liberal, and other religious (especially Catholic) groups.
Bottom line: Joachim Martillo came to the same conclusion as Israel Shamir and James Petras, namely, it is not only about Palestine. And we have to deal with it, if we want to liberate Palestine, or stay free wherever we are.
Joachim Martillo wrote an important paper called Judonia Rising: The Israel Lobby and American Society, purporting to explain, “What the Israel Lobby Really Is”. He spoke with Stephen Walt, of Walt and Mearsheimer fame, he followed the discussions of Philip Weiss, he corresponded with Noam Chomsky and Joseph Massad, he had read Israel Shamir’s Pardes and James Petras, he knows MacDonald. An American scholar Martlllo has some Polish background, and he reads Yiddish and Polish, as well as some Hebrew. In his view, understanding the Israel Lobby can be based only on a thorough hardnosed (“non-exceptionalist”) analysis of Eastern European Jewish history. This is a heretical view, very close to ours.
It is heretical, because the very far away border of permitted antizionist discourse still remains short of discussion: whether Jews did similar things before Zionism, or do we have a temporary aberration connected with the state of Israel. The moment one integrates modern Jewish behaviour with the pre-modern Jewish behaviour, the moment one notices continuity of pre-Zionist and Zionist Jewish politics, the moment one leaves the safe ground of condemning occupation, - one crosses into totally forbidden “antisemite” territory. Martillo dared and ventured there, and came with strong and startling conclusions: the real issue is not Palestine. Unless they are neutralized, Israel lobbying groups, Israel advocates, Zionists, Neoconservatives, and Friedmanites will steal America and effectively abolish the Constitution in all but name to create a society of servitude for all Americans except for those belonging to the hyper-wealthy transnational Zionist political elite.
This is exactly our view: Palestine is a symbol, a quintessence of the trouble, but the real issue is our enemy’s attempt to enslave the world. Martillo begins where Walt and Mearsheimer end their journey. In his view, in order to understand Jews, it is not necessary to venture into days of Jesus Christ; history of Poland will do. He goes to the days of Rzeczpospolita, the Polish Commonwealth (from 1505 until 1795), then ethnic Ashkenazim constituted economic elite of the realm. They lost this status in the partitions of Poland. This is the destroyed Temple, in Martillo’s view, these are good old days the Jews miss: they want to be the elite like they were in the days of Rzeczpospolita. Jews did well after the collapse of the Polish Commonwealth, notes Martillo, but not as good as they would like.
“Despite supposedly onerous Czarist oppression, Russian Jews had higher incomes, more education, and longer life spans than the non-Jewish populations among whom they lived. They were highly disaffected because of exclusion from the status and access to which they believed they were entitled, but they were not obviously more oppressed than the majority of the Czar's subjects and less oppressed than others. Yuri Slezkine belies the myth of Jewish powerless during the lead-up to WW2 in The Jewish Century.”
In the US, the Jews (or Ashkenazim, in Martillo’s terminology) resurrected their social structure and rebuilt it, like ants who rebuild anthill after being removed to a new ground. This structure is ostensibly “Israel advocacy” or “Israel Lobby” but actually advocating Israel’s cause (“Israel Lobby proper”) is a small part of its effort. He soberly states that a USA, whose dominant elite is Jewish, is not necessarily bending to the Israel Lobby proper when it pursues of pro-Israel foreign policy. The State of Israel may be a client state of America, but America is a client state of the American Jewish Zionist elite, which is probably in the process of establishing itself as the permanent national "meritocratic" elite.
Jews succeeded to act together because historically Eastern European Jewish culture strongly controlled social and intellectual deviation. Many of the social control mechanisms continue to exist, have evolved in the American environment, and may help explain why liberal Jews have so empowered the Neocons to the detriment of US foreign policy interests as James Petras has described.
It is not necessary to look for Freemasonry, the Elders of Zion, the Illuminati, dark Talmudists, malicious Cabbalists, or some other group of secret puppeteers: Israel lobbying activities constitute a natural evolution of Jewish, especially ethnic Ashkenazi, communal organizations. The structure of Israel lobbying is a response to historical developments generally unrelated to Zionism. Because there has been a sort of Darwinian selection in both the official and unofficial organizations as well as in their techniques, all of which go back often as much two centuries in European environments, Israel lobbying is naturally far more effective than a lobby that was put together over the last few decades or so in response to a specific issue or to serve a specific corporate interest.
The same question applies today. Does the so-called "Israel Lobby" merely act to secure the interests of the State of Israel or is the real goal enhancement of the wealth, status, and power of those who pay for it? Not only does Israel not pay the "Israel Lobby," but The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy does not give a hint who really does, and in any case large sections of the "Israel Lobby" like the Hollywood Crowd do not even appear in the book even though scholars like Melani McAlister have investigated the Hollywood foreign policy connection in books likes Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East, 1945-2000. With such gaps in the analysis of the "Israel Lobby," no one should be surprised with the weakness of the proposals that Professors Mearsheimer and Walt make for responding to the "Israel Lobby."
Friedmanites have been so prominent in the economic regime that the occupation has attempted to impose on Iraq that the common identification of Milton Friedman's economic thinking merely with Cato Institute libertarianism looks incorrect. In today's political intellectual environment Friedmanism looks more like an adjunct of Neoconservatism.
Israel Lobbying in Comparison with Ordinary Lobbies
Martillo notices that the Jewish lobby has many interests quite unconnected with Israel but equally nefarious:
In Boston the Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Justice (JALSA), which is a spin-off of the American Jewish Congress, has an ongoing project in regendering American society according to feminist and gay liberation principles.
Israel lobbying efforts benefit from organizational memory that does not exist in other lobbying situations. The longevity of Jewish Federation organizations can give Israel Lobbying efforts a generational aspect not seen elsewhere. For example, Israel Advocacy organizations worked for fifty years to delegitimize Arabist points of view in the foreign service and state department, drive out Arabist officers or bureaucrats and replace them with Israel sympathetic personnel (see The Marginalization of U.S. Mideast Experts, http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/1095/9510080.htm ).
Possibly because of long-standing relationships with government officials, because of the fear of the accusations of anti-Semitism, or simply because Jews are disproportionately represented among government officials especially in the legal and regulation enforcement divisions (another class of saya`nim), Israel advocacy is unique among lobbying efforts.
While the American public has not fully comprehended the nature of power relations, Israeli leaders do, and the American Zionist elite calls all shots on issues of importance to the American elite from "Who is a Jew" to whether the USA should attack Iraq or Iran first.
The political relational hierarchy and the domination of an American Zionist elite over all validate the Finkelstein and Massad critiques of The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.
The alliance between Israel and the US states is in the process of creating an internal American caste system that will be dominated by a small class of hyper-wealthy Zionists. With the sort of permanent war that has been envisioned since the beginning of the twentieth century by a segment of the Zionist elite under the influence of Sorel and with the application of the Friedmanite Shock Doctrine as described by Naomi Klein, this caste system will spread globally. (See The Shock Doctrine, The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, by Naomi Klein.)
The Israeli economy or more properly a small segment of hyper-wealthy Israeli Jews linked by family and business relations to the dominant US Zionist elite is thriving as the US economy is tanking and Iraq is being ground down. It is the outcome of which leading Zionists dreamed in the twenties, and it has a high probability of spreading from the ME throughout the Muslim world to South America, and to parts of the former Eastern block.
The Kremlin, which has never had much tolerance for internal competing power centers or external powers mucking in its backyard, saw danger in the extension of a transnational hyper-wealthy Zionist political elite to Russia and has taken preventive action against Jewish oligarchs within the territories of the former Soviet Union. It was stunning how quickly Jewish and Friedmanite groups rushed to support Mikhail Khodorkovski in his power struggle with the Russian government.
Among religious, leftist, and right wing ethnic Ashkenazim there has long been a current of thought that Jews are safest in alliance (or better in dominating) an undemocratic government. Thanks to the Patriot act and other actions of the Bush administration, the undemocratic Zionist future is coming into being right before our eyes, and McCain looks like the most likely of current present candidates to bring about the fulfillment of the ultimate globalized Zionist dystopia, but Zionists throughout the political system are poised to influence any other possible victor except Ron Paul, whom Zionist facilitators and gate-keepers in the US media are trying to starve of media attention.
Abolishing Israel and eradicating Zionism would not eliminate the exploitive tendencies of globalization but would destroy the focal point of the forces that are aiming for the worst of all globalized futures.
The Zionist movement assumed from its earliest phases that it would be dependent on wealthy and influential Jews in the Diaspora. Members of the Counsinhood of Britain's wealthiest Jews probably paid for the Balfour Declaration. After the propaganda reverses of the first Intifada, the need for an even wealthier and more influential class of Jewish Zionists in the USA became obvious.
[In this strategic framework, the Zionist movement also depends on Jews, who are not necessarily wealthy but are in critical positions to serve the Zionist movement especially in intelligence or logistics matters. Such individuals are today called saya`nim. The spy Jonathan Pollard is a particularly egregious saya`an, who was caught. I have expanded the meaning of the term in this document to include Jewish stealth helpers in Israel Lobbying efforts.]
In addition to saya`nim, Zionists have often used Shabbesgoyim like Orde Wingate during the pre-State period or more recently John McCain III and his father Admiral John McCain, Jr., who absolved Israel of blame in the attack on the USS Liberty. (See http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/01/money-jews-brain-jews-politics.html .) The Zionist movement has tended to recruit and reward Shabbesgoyim in families. New York Zionist campaign contributions have rewarded John McCain throughout his political career. Today McCain represents the Neoconservative Friedmanite position in Republican politics without — until recently — a lot of the social conservative baggage to which many American Jews and Friedmanites object.]
Zionist connections in the investment banking industry led to earlier IPOs in the 90s with little or no evidence of profitability. Subprime mortgages were a similar class of dubious investments, whose true nature was obscured in CDOs (collateralized debt obligations), and the valuation of Google and similar companies like Facebook has similar dubious characteristic. Some serious forensic analysis and financial analysis is needed to understand these economic developments, but the end result has been very clear in the development of a new class of superwealthy that is mostly Jewish and willing to put a lot of money into Israel advocacy and into influencing the US government.
While many members of this New Jewish Elite would reflexively put money into Israel because of long Zionist indoctrination, they also need Israel as a means to hide their wealth because Israel has a level of economic transparency and corruption comparable to Italy or Egypt. The Bar-Lev line in Tel Aviv is an early indicator of the degree of embezzlement and sweetheart deals in Israeli economics and politics. Israelis have long made a lot of money in providing money laundering and other transaction hiding services both to Jews and non-Jews. Obviously, all parties in this sort of business have an interest in preserving the State of Israel to make sure that this sort business continues.
Post-9/11 Islamophobic scare-mongering as well as the Iraqi occupation has created a growth industry in hardware and software for security, control, and checkpoints. This industry understands that its profitability depends on international policies that maintain conflict through unconditional support of Zionism.
A Web of Influence, Conditioned Thinking and Reflexive Behavior
Ongoing Zionist indoctrination of the American public has produced a Zionist web of influence, conditioned thinking and reflexive behavior that is breath-taking in its pervasiveness.
Even without the presence of media gatekeepers and facilitators, journalists in print, broadcast and cable media almost invariably misrepresent relevant Middle Eastern or Eastern European current events or history. There is little reluctance to turn Zionist or IDF press releases into news reports with no qualifications.
American news organizations almost invariably misquote and mistranslate Iranian President Ahmedinejad, and America media use tendentious Zionist language like the "right to self-defense," "Muslim extremism," and "Arab intransigence" while almost never conceding a similar right of Palestinian or Arab self-defense or addressing issues of Jewish racism, extremism or fanaticism. During the recent Lebanon war, the American media with rare exceptions took the Israeli point of view.
Only recently have American media begun to concede the role of Russian Jews in the Russian Revolution and the murder of the Czar's family. While scholarly journals discuss the Jewish role in the Soviet security apparatus before the end of WW2, no inkling of the Soviet Jewish role in mass murder, ethnic cleansing and genocide is allowed to reach the general public. Such facts would interfere with the Zionist legitimization narrative which requires European Jews to be innocent powerless victims of the German Nazis, and reasonable people would drawn the obvious analogy between Soviet Ashkenazi and Zionist Ashkenazi ethnic cleansing or genocidalism.
Only occasionally does accurate depiction of Zionist ethnic cleansing in 1947-8 ever reach the American public, and descriptions of the start of the 1967 war — even on NPR — still include descriptions of the movement ("barreling") of Egyptian tanks through Sinai to attack Israel.
Roman Catholics according to statistical analysis are less sympathetic. It is intriguing that practically every time the Boston Globe runs a story that features a Catholic cleric expressing a criticism of Israel, within approximately a week, it also runs a story about a Catholic cleric sex scandal sometimes featuring events from as much as 25 years ago as if to provide some crude sort of "balance" that even CAMERA and HonestReporting do not advocate. It is an often-unconscious behavior more often associated with an angry ethnic press, and it may be significant that the Boston Globe Editorial Board includes Lawrence Harmon, who was editor at the Boston Jewish Advocate, and that paid entry level newspaper jobs in the USA nowadays seem to be found mostly at the ethnic Jewish press.
The hyper-wealthy Zionist elite is trying to create Israel Studies programs in which only Zionistically correct scholars will teach while stealth and overt Israel advocacy groups and individuals attempt to drive any scholars critical of Zionism from American education. (See http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/09/jacob-lassner-and-nadia-abu-el-haj.html.)
Nadia Abu el Haj, Finkelstein, Arun Gandhi, Massad, Dabashi, Saliba, Debby Almontaser (Khalil Gibran International Academy, New York City) and many others have been subjected to such attacks. (See http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/11/zionism-penisism-and-joseph-massad.html, http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/02/arun-gandhi-and-sholem-aleichem.html, http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/12/conspiracy-against-rights-in-nyc.html.)
Altogether Israel Lobbying efforts are grinding down American Constitutional rights and Israelizing society to the point where the American political system is under attack by a wide-ranging seditious conspiracy, and the side-effect of Islamophobic and Arabophobic incitement against Arab or Muslim investments or university contributions or charitable donations, is discouraging the flow of capital from Saudia and the Gulf when the US economy most desperately needs such liquidity.
Even if American gets over the current economic crisis, the alliance with Israel at this point has probably cost every current US taxpayer at least $10,000.00, and the costs at this point are rising at least geometrically thanks to Neocon-orchestrated policies.
Fighting Back to Save America
Pointing out the cost of Israel to each and every American is a good starting point to counteract Israel lobbying and advocacy.
The Zionism of Christian evangelical fundamentalists is part of generational program of Jabotinskians but is not particularly deep. Obviously, Rapturists do not care much about the cost of Israel to America, but Christian Zionism can be fought by scriptural disputation, by questioning the patriotism of its leaders and by exposing surreptitious Jewish funding and organizing.
In other areas Israel advocates have had so much success because in today's America Jews play by a set of rules completely different from all other Americans, and even not particularly Zionist Jews have no real incentive to challenge the system, when renders them Moral Arbiters, Major players in a dramatic narrative of national rebirth, Beneficiaries of programs like Taglit (Birthright Israel), Jewish networks in academia, the professions and politics, Certain of their own righteousness, and Wielders of the all-powerful accusation of anti-Semitism.
At the college level, the International Hillel Society acts like a junior auxiliary to the KKK by running racist programs like Taglit/Birthright Israel and by hosting extremist speakers that incite murder and genocide against Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims or deny that they are human.
Jewish organizations, no matter how much they campaign against laws and candidates, get a completely pass of the rules and regulations of 501(c)(3) organizations. The tax fraud probably reaches tens of billions of dollars at this point.
Neutralizing Israel lobbying and advocacy groups will be extremely difficult without a push for the US government to enforce laws equally for Jews and non-Jews. Then once a good part of the American public realizes that Israel is a terror state, the USA will be forced to apply anti-terror laws apply and seize assets of organized Jewish community along with those of Zionist billionaires as terrorism supporters just as Islamic charities have been stripped of their funds.
•Until the US government begins to enforce laws equitably, activists will have to research real estate transactions and investigate who is paying for Israel advocacy programs. They will have to put together a who’s who of Zionist subversion in the USA.
To change the consciousness of Americans, activists must fight American Holocaust religion and work for recognition that the mass murders of Jews during WW2 were not exceptional or unique,
that Palestinians, Armenians, Balkan Muslims, and Circassians have all been genocided from the nineteenth through the twentieth century and that Soviet Jews were up to the eyeballs in mass murder, ethnic cleansing and genocide long before German Nazis, Eastern Europeans, and liberated Soviet nationalities began to kill Jews systematically out of fear and hatred resulting from the Jewish role in the Soviet Union.
Activists will have to challenge American Jews socially at interfaith activities, community events and elsewhere. They must demand clarification of Jewish loyalties and force Jewish leaders to acknowledge that Americans are not obligated to support Israel and that hating Jews for what they do (unlike hating Jews for being Jews) is not anti-Semitism.
Activists need to make effort to counter Israel advocacy and Holocaust studies at the high school and even grammar school levels. They need to work for coordination among anti-Zionist Arab American, Muslim American, genuinely anti-Israel Jewish American, conservative, liberal, and other religious (especially Catholic) groups.
Bottom line: Joachim Martillo came to the same conclusion as Israel Shamir and James Petras, namely, it is not only about Palestine. And we have to deal with it, if we want to liberate Palestine, or stay free wherever we are.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Breakout from Ghetto Gaza
By Israel Shamir
They went out, risked their lives, rushed the army, overturned the fence, strode the barbed wire, wiped out the border between two states, committed so many heroic acts, worthy of great warriors, suffering casualties -- and when they were through, they went to shop and bought bread for their children. This gave a lie to the image of Palestinians that the Jews had tried to plant in world conscience: that of wild violent fanatics bent on rampage. Instead, the guys broke out of jail and bought bread. Meaning, they were kept hungry by their Jewish overlords. A stronger picture will not come soon from the Middle East than that of these family men carrying bread back home.
They are so normal, these Gaza, like you and me – they carry out their normal lives, they work in a bank or a garage -- but they get full medieval treatment. First, they were dispossessed and corralled into Gaza, then they were treated like even dogs should not be treated; they were not allowed to travel by a highway if the road is used by a Jew, they were not permitted to see their immediate family living only a mile away. And then, this siege. No food, nothing to feed the children with. No future, either, with Israel as the neighbour. They suffer for only one crime: they are not Jews, though, ironically, many of them are descendent of Jews, some with famous Jewish family names, who embraced Christ or the Prophet.
They were supposed to suffer quietly, but the Gazans have a lot of dignity. They voted for Hamas against the will of Israel and America, and they expelled the collaborationist gang of Dahlan. Now, they have rushed the fence, and that was a good example for all of us: nothing can be done within the legal limits our enemies had enforced. There is a need for the push that is called Revolution.
When the brave Gazans walked back, loaded with their lucky catch, with bread and rice, with salt and blankets, with vegetables and lambs, the Jews were decidedly unhappy. The natives will forget that we are like God unto them; we provide and we punish, we feed and we starve. Instead of accepting our doom, they took their fate in their hands. With bread and rice, the Gazans will smuggle guns, and this may force us to postpone the big offensive already agreed upon with George W. The Jews prefer to assail weapon-less victims.
The Egyptians also failed Jewish expectations. “I believe Egypt knows what its job is”, said the arrogant Israeli general Ehud Barak. The job he gave to Egypt is the job of jailer of their Palestinian brothers. “The Gazans would never dare to break the siege to Sinai, - wrote Israeli pundits a week, even a day ago - Egyptians will meet them with deadly fire.” When there was a shoot-out, the Israelis were so happy for a while. Effi Eitam, a right-wing religious Jewish leader, who looks like a ‘well-fed kosher pig in yarmulke’ (in words of Gilad Atzmon) wrote in the Yediot Ahronot an op-ed dripping of crocodile tears. We Jews are so soft and merciful in comparison to the Egyptians, he wrote. But Mubarak wants to survive, and he knows there are limits he may not push too far. He gave orders to his soldiers to cease fire. The Jews wailed that Egyptians must enforce the border, and supply their pound of flesh per agreement. In vain. Mubarak does not want to follow Anwar as-Sadat to hell.
Deeply dissatisfied, the Jews watched this stream of people that got out of their jail for a short break. But then, they are hard to please, these Jews are. The Palestinians have to kill each other in a civil war, or die of hunger to please the Jews.
My grandfather did that, he died of hunger and exhaustion in 1942 in the ghetto of Stanislaw. The Germans and their Ukrainian quislings did to Jews what the Jews did to Gazans: they gathered them in the ghetto, and left them to starve there. The slogans of the Nazis were also taken from Olmert-Barak’s book, mutatis mutandis: “they must suffer because their leaders are our enemies, they should be punished for their terrorism in the revolution, let them go hungry because their brothers harass the German troops and bomb German cities”. My grandfather Israel – I was named after him – succumbed to hunger, cold and exhaustion, they did not even have to shoot him; he did not qualify for their targeted killing program.
Wait, you’ll say, how could Barak and Olmert starving Gazans in 2008 influence the Germans of 1942? How could they be responsible for death of my granddad? The answer is given in the secret language of Jewish mysticism: Ein mukdam, ein meuhar beTorah. The sequence of events - in the Holy Writ and in the world – is irrelevant, because all events and their alleged consequences take place in the same meta-time, forever playing vicious circles of Cat-pursuing-Mice-that scared-Elephant-that trampled-the-Cat. In Christian theology the transcendent meta-time is defined as Kairos rather than Chronos....time past, present and future as one, in a moment, "a twinkling of an eye".
Poincare and Einstein translated this concept into the language of modern physics when they described Time as just one of dimensions as bendable as the others.
Douglas Adams popularised this in his novel: his characters go back in time to fix a problem, they do it, but at some cost: they save a fish, but dodo dies out, they gain music of Bach, but lost Coleridge’s poems. The people are not aware that the world already changed; that now they have more of Bach but less of Coleridge. Only those, who could exit the time frame, know: the world is changing all the time because of our deeds, and these changes go “back” and “forth”, because there is no such thing as “back” and “forth”. Thus, the Armenians slaughtered and expelled the Azeris, and their ancestors were deported into desert to suffer in the Kurds’ hands, and the Kurds suffer for this crime, and for their support of the US-Zionist occupation.
And some things have not materialised yet, but they will: when I listen to the Jews (and Poles, and Ukrainians, and Americans) who insist that “Stalin was as bad as Hitler” and “there is no difference between Nazis and Commies” and of “Russian antisemitism”, I know that in the next future, the Red Army will not fight the Germans, will not liberate Poland and Czechia, will not open the gates of Auschwitz and Treblinka.
This world is just, and the Lord is just. He punishes ingratitude by undoing the deed one had to be grateful for. The Lord of Justice is not chained to wrist watch chronology or the Western calendar, the past is not nailed down. And, an emphatic yes, we have witnessed a sign of all of this time above time in the Gaza events.
Do an evil thing today, and the past will change and kick you back. Starve the Gazans and your grandfathers will die of thirst and hunger. Torture Palestinians, and your ancestors will be tortured by the inquisition using the same reasoning you applied today to your enemies. Turn Hebron into a prison for its inhabitants, and the Jews will be slaughtered in 1929. The crime of Jewish mistreatment of Palestinians is being punished even now. Do not ask who is starved and who is tortured: it is somebody quite close to you.
25-26 January 2007 Tel Aviv-Havana
Edited by Ken Freeland, incorporating a letter by Thomas Getman, Geneva, Switzerland
They went out, risked their lives, rushed the army, overturned the fence, strode the barbed wire, wiped out the border between two states, committed so many heroic acts, worthy of great warriors, suffering casualties -- and when they were through, they went to shop and bought bread for their children. This gave a lie to the image of Palestinians that the Jews had tried to plant in world conscience: that of wild violent fanatics bent on rampage. Instead, the guys broke out of jail and bought bread. Meaning, they were kept hungry by their Jewish overlords. A stronger picture will not come soon from the Middle East than that of these family men carrying bread back home.
They are so normal, these Gaza, like you and me – they carry out their normal lives, they work in a bank or a garage -- but they get full medieval treatment. First, they were dispossessed and corralled into Gaza, then they were treated like even dogs should not be treated; they were not allowed to travel by a highway if the road is used by a Jew, they were not permitted to see their immediate family living only a mile away. And then, this siege. No food, nothing to feed the children with. No future, either, with Israel as the neighbour. They suffer for only one crime: they are not Jews, though, ironically, many of them are descendent of Jews, some with famous Jewish family names, who embraced Christ or the Prophet.
They were supposed to suffer quietly, but the Gazans have a lot of dignity. They voted for Hamas against the will of Israel and America, and they expelled the collaborationist gang of Dahlan. Now, they have rushed the fence, and that was a good example for all of us: nothing can be done within the legal limits our enemies had enforced. There is a need for the push that is called Revolution.
When the brave Gazans walked back, loaded with their lucky catch, with bread and rice, with salt and blankets, with vegetables and lambs, the Jews were decidedly unhappy. The natives will forget that we are like God unto them; we provide and we punish, we feed and we starve. Instead of accepting our doom, they took their fate in their hands. With bread and rice, the Gazans will smuggle guns, and this may force us to postpone the big offensive already agreed upon with George W. The Jews prefer to assail weapon-less victims.
The Egyptians also failed Jewish expectations. “I believe Egypt knows what its job is”, said the arrogant Israeli general Ehud Barak. The job he gave to Egypt is the job of jailer of their Palestinian brothers. “The Gazans would never dare to break the siege to Sinai, - wrote Israeli pundits a week, even a day ago - Egyptians will meet them with deadly fire.” When there was a shoot-out, the Israelis were so happy for a while. Effi Eitam, a right-wing religious Jewish leader, who looks like a ‘well-fed kosher pig in yarmulke’ (in words of Gilad Atzmon) wrote in the Yediot Ahronot an op-ed dripping of crocodile tears. We Jews are so soft and merciful in comparison to the Egyptians, he wrote. But Mubarak wants to survive, and he knows there are limits he may not push too far. He gave orders to his soldiers to cease fire. The Jews wailed that Egyptians must enforce the border, and supply their pound of flesh per agreement. In vain. Mubarak does not want to follow Anwar as-Sadat to hell.
Deeply dissatisfied, the Jews watched this stream of people that got out of their jail for a short break. But then, they are hard to please, these Jews are. The Palestinians have to kill each other in a civil war, or die of hunger to please the Jews.
My grandfather did that, he died of hunger and exhaustion in 1942 in the ghetto of Stanislaw. The Germans and their Ukrainian quislings did to Jews what the Jews did to Gazans: they gathered them in the ghetto, and left them to starve there. The slogans of the Nazis were also taken from Olmert-Barak’s book, mutatis mutandis: “they must suffer because their leaders are our enemies, they should be punished for their terrorism in the revolution, let them go hungry because their brothers harass the German troops and bomb German cities”. My grandfather Israel – I was named after him – succumbed to hunger, cold and exhaustion, they did not even have to shoot him; he did not qualify for their targeted killing program.
Wait, you’ll say, how could Barak and Olmert starving Gazans in 2008 influence the Germans of 1942? How could they be responsible for death of my granddad? The answer is given in the secret language of Jewish mysticism: Ein mukdam, ein meuhar beTorah. The sequence of events - in the Holy Writ and in the world – is irrelevant, because all events and their alleged consequences take place in the same meta-time, forever playing vicious circles of Cat-pursuing-Mice-that scared-Elephant-that trampled-the-Cat. In Christian theology the transcendent meta-time is defined as Kairos rather than Chronos....time past, present and future as one, in a moment, "a twinkling of an eye".
Poincare and Einstein translated this concept into the language of modern physics when they described Time as just one of dimensions as bendable as the others.
Douglas Adams popularised this in his novel: his characters go back in time to fix a problem, they do it, but at some cost: they save a fish, but dodo dies out, they gain music of Bach, but lost Coleridge’s poems. The people are not aware that the world already changed; that now they have more of Bach but less of Coleridge. Only those, who could exit the time frame, know: the world is changing all the time because of our deeds, and these changes go “back” and “forth”, because there is no such thing as “back” and “forth”. Thus, the Armenians slaughtered and expelled the Azeris, and their ancestors were deported into desert to suffer in the Kurds’ hands, and the Kurds suffer for this crime, and for their support of the US-Zionist occupation.
And some things have not materialised yet, but they will: when I listen to the Jews (and Poles, and Ukrainians, and Americans) who insist that “Stalin was as bad as Hitler” and “there is no difference between Nazis and Commies” and of “Russian antisemitism”, I know that in the next future, the Red Army will not fight the Germans, will not liberate Poland and Czechia, will not open the gates of Auschwitz and Treblinka.
This world is just, and the Lord is just. He punishes ingratitude by undoing the deed one had to be grateful for. The Lord of Justice is not chained to wrist watch chronology or the Western calendar, the past is not nailed down. And, an emphatic yes, we have witnessed a sign of all of this time above time in the Gaza events.
Do an evil thing today, and the past will change and kick you back. Starve the Gazans and your grandfathers will die of thirst and hunger. Torture Palestinians, and your ancestors will be tortured by the inquisition using the same reasoning you applied today to your enemies. Turn Hebron into a prison for its inhabitants, and the Jews will be slaughtered in 1929. The crime of Jewish mistreatment of Palestinians is being punished even now. Do not ask who is starved and who is tortured: it is somebody quite close to you.
25-26 January 2007 Tel Aviv-Havana
Edited by Ken Freeland, incorporating a letter by Thomas Getman, Geneva, Switzerland
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Scorpion Logic
By Israel Shamir
The Arctic cold spell that has frozen Palestine for a few weeks apparently departed with President Bush, leaving us to ponder why this strange man came here at all. Some incorrigible optimists expressed belief that Bush had called the Annapolis conference and departed on his present journey in order to achieve peace in the Middle East and to improve his image for future generations. “He does not want to retire with the blemish of Abu Ghraib and the Iraqi war, he dreams of being well remembered”, they say. The same optimists used to say the same things about General Sharon during his much publicised withdrawal from Gaza. It took a year or two for even the dumbest optimists to understand that (as we wrote in real time during the withdrawal) this act allowed the Jews to inflict more suffering on Palestinians and at a cheaper price. Now they can bomb Gaza at ease, without worrying about the stray Jew who might be hit as well. Now they can starve Gaza and make billions by selling their goods to the besieged while the price tab is paid by international community. That was Sharon’s nature: if he’d give you a piece of bread, look for a needle in it; if he’d give you a glass of water, check it for poison. Like the scorpion in the Middle Eastern tale, he could not behave differently. Bush is an American twin of his vegetable friend Sharon who is now stuck in a comatose limbo reacting to pain. These guys simply can’t do good. If you see Bush doing a good deed, run to the optician! Our friend Jack Graham wrote recently that America is not the Great Satan. True, but under Bush, it will fill the bill until the real Satan comes along.
A psychologist might try to unravel the mystery of Bush’s deep connection with the Neocons -- we won’t go into his motives (Is he zombified? Blackmailed? Bewitched?), we’ll just accept it as a fact. For Neocons, Israel/Palestine is the most important core issue. But they are not satisfied with full control over Palestine; whatever it is they conspire towards requires securing the entire East from India to Ethiopia. They will come back to deal with Palestinians later, when the rest is secured. Now they wreak havoc and let slip the dogs of war to run free. They intend to undo Pakistan and seize its nuclear assets, they want to bring Russia and China under control, but their immediate desire is to subdue Iran. For this purpose, Bush needs some Arab stooges standing by. The Masters of Discourse claim that the Arabs “are trembling with fear of the alleged 'nuclear ambitions' of Iran and might even be willing to sell out the Palestinian people if the United States were to 'take out' Iran on their behalf”, says John Whitbeck, correctly describing this claim as “psychedelic”. (In reality, “[t]he [Arab] street would be thrilled if any Muslim state within reach of Israel (even a non-Arab and Shiite one) were to acquire nuclear weapons and establish a ''balance of fear" in place of the unilateral terror of the past four decades,” Whitbeck avers.)
It is possible to convince Americans that this psychedelic claim is correct: The Masters of Discourse can convince the majority of US citizens of anything at all, even of Gray Aliens. Americans were convinced that the Vietcong were soon to land in California, that Saddam Hussein has WMD and that Iraqis would embrace the US Marines as their liberators, so they can be convinced again and again, until such time as they undo the brainwashing yoke of the Masters. But the Arabs won’t take it, just as the Iraqis did not. For the next move, Bush must deliver some progress in Palestine. It can’t be true progress of course, because Palestine is the core, the final goal; it will be enough if it just looks like a step forward.
That is why Bush went on with the futile farce of Annapolis. If you believe Annapolis and Bush’s visit have moved the notorious “peace process” forward one inch, you do not need an Electric Monk, the device described by Douglas Adams as a machine created to believe anything people find hard to believe – you can beat this machine at its own game! The soon-to-retire Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem, Msgr Michel Sabbah correctly explained in his Christmas talk: “A new peace effort was begun these last few weeks. In order for it to succeed, there must be a firm willingness to make peace. Until now, there has been no peace, simply because there has been no willingness to make it” and he pointed out “the strong party, the one with everything in hand, the one who is imposing occupation on the other”. Indeed Israel does not want a peace acceptable to Palestinians, but it [along with President Bush] wants peace on its own terms.
The Arabs understand this as well as anybody. Even the most pro-Western Arab mainstream paper, the Gulf News of Abu Dhabi, wrote a “Letter to George W. Bush” saying: “You said that your current tour aims to realise the long neglected peace in the Middle East. Regional peace will not be achieved by escalating tension and threatening to change regimes. And most importantly, it will not be achieved by supporting Israel, which continues to defy international law, occupy Arab lands, oppress the Palestinians and rebuff peace initiatives.”
Al Jazeera says referring to ‘analysts’ that “the US president is too late in his calls to Arab allies to confront Iranian 'extremism', as key American allies in the Arab world have thrown their weight behind a growing rapprochement with Iran… American fumbling in the Middle East has pushed Arabs to adopt dialogue with the Islamic Republic”.
Russia’s rejection of the sanctions against Iran was also instrumental in creating the weather change, and it is possible to say that Bush missed his chance for building an anti-Iranian coalition. However, Western anti-Iranian propaganda did influence many Arabs; even the relatively friendly site of Iraqi resistance, www.uruknet.info, publishes terrible diatribes against “the Persians”. Dr Theodor Reik wrote that people and cultures always trip on the same rake: the Arabs were tricked once into supporting England against the Ottoman Empire. The result was sad; but will this experience keep them from repeating the error, or will they support the US against the Iranians, if offered some convincing performance by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas? Palestine is still the key.
The Arctic cold spell that has frozen Palestine for a few weeks apparently departed with President Bush, leaving us to ponder why this strange man came here at all. Some incorrigible optimists expressed belief that Bush had called the Annapolis conference and departed on his present journey in order to achieve peace in the Middle East and to improve his image for future generations. “He does not want to retire with the blemish of Abu Ghraib and the Iraqi war, he dreams of being well remembered”, they say. The same optimists used to say the same things about General Sharon during his much publicised withdrawal from Gaza. It took a year or two for even the dumbest optimists to understand that (as we wrote in real time during the withdrawal) this act allowed the Jews to inflict more suffering on Palestinians and at a cheaper price. Now they can bomb Gaza at ease, without worrying about the stray Jew who might be hit as well. Now they can starve Gaza and make billions by selling their goods to the besieged while the price tab is paid by international community. That was Sharon’s nature: if he’d give you a piece of bread, look for a needle in it; if he’d give you a glass of water, check it for poison. Like the scorpion in the Middle Eastern tale, he could not behave differently. Bush is an American twin of his vegetable friend Sharon who is now stuck in a comatose limbo reacting to pain. These guys simply can’t do good. If you see Bush doing a good deed, run to the optician! Our friend Jack Graham wrote recently that America is not the Great Satan. True, but under Bush, it will fill the bill until the real Satan comes along.
A psychologist might try to unravel the mystery of Bush’s deep connection with the Neocons -- we won’t go into his motives (Is he zombified? Blackmailed? Bewitched?), we’ll just accept it as a fact. For Neocons, Israel/Palestine is the most important core issue. But they are not satisfied with full control over Palestine; whatever it is they conspire towards requires securing the entire East from India to Ethiopia. They will come back to deal with Palestinians later, when the rest is secured. Now they wreak havoc and let slip the dogs of war to run free. They intend to undo Pakistan and seize its nuclear assets, they want to bring Russia and China under control, but their immediate desire is to subdue Iran. For this purpose, Bush needs some Arab stooges standing by. The Masters of Discourse claim that the Arabs “are trembling with fear of the alleged 'nuclear ambitions' of Iran and might even be willing to sell out the Palestinian people if the United States were to 'take out' Iran on their behalf”, says John Whitbeck, correctly describing this claim as “psychedelic”. (In reality, “[t]he [Arab] street would be thrilled if any Muslim state within reach of Israel (even a non-Arab and Shiite one) were to acquire nuclear weapons and establish a ''balance of fear" in place of the unilateral terror of the past four decades,” Whitbeck avers.)
It is possible to convince Americans that this psychedelic claim is correct: The Masters of Discourse can convince the majority of US citizens of anything at all, even of Gray Aliens. Americans were convinced that the Vietcong were soon to land in California, that Saddam Hussein has WMD and that Iraqis would embrace the US Marines as their liberators, so they can be convinced again and again, until such time as they undo the brainwashing yoke of the Masters. But the Arabs won’t take it, just as the Iraqis did not. For the next move, Bush must deliver some progress in Palestine. It can’t be true progress of course, because Palestine is the core, the final goal; it will be enough if it just looks like a step forward.
That is why Bush went on with the futile farce of Annapolis. If you believe Annapolis and Bush’s visit have moved the notorious “peace process” forward one inch, you do not need an Electric Monk, the device described by Douglas Adams as a machine created to believe anything people find hard to believe – you can beat this machine at its own game! The soon-to-retire Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem, Msgr Michel Sabbah correctly explained in his Christmas talk: “A new peace effort was begun these last few weeks. In order for it to succeed, there must be a firm willingness to make peace. Until now, there has been no peace, simply because there has been no willingness to make it” and he pointed out “the strong party, the one with everything in hand, the one who is imposing occupation on the other”. Indeed Israel does not want a peace acceptable to Palestinians, but it [along with President Bush] wants peace on its own terms.
The Arabs understand this as well as anybody. Even the most pro-Western Arab mainstream paper, the Gulf News of Abu Dhabi, wrote a “Letter to George W. Bush” saying: “You said that your current tour aims to realise the long neglected peace in the Middle East. Regional peace will not be achieved by escalating tension and threatening to change regimes. And most importantly, it will not be achieved by supporting Israel, which continues to defy international law, occupy Arab lands, oppress the Palestinians and rebuff peace initiatives.”
Al Jazeera says referring to ‘analysts’ that “the US president is too late in his calls to Arab allies to confront Iranian 'extremism', as key American allies in the Arab world have thrown their weight behind a growing rapprochement with Iran… American fumbling in the Middle East has pushed Arabs to adopt dialogue with the Islamic Republic”.
Russia’s rejection of the sanctions against Iran was also instrumental in creating the weather change, and it is possible to say that Bush missed his chance for building an anti-Iranian coalition. However, Western anti-Iranian propaganda did influence many Arabs; even the relatively friendly site of Iraqi resistance, www.uruknet.info, publishes terrible diatribes against “the Persians”. Dr Theodor Reik wrote that people and cultures always trip on the same rake: the Arabs were tricked once into supporting England against the Ottoman Empire. The result was sad; but will this experience keep them from repeating the error, or will they support the US against the Iranians, if offered some convincing performance by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas? Palestine is still the key.
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Interview with Israel Shamir
by Raja Bahari (of the leading radical left-wing magazine of Sweden, FiB)
Question. You claim that anti-semitism doesn’t exist today. Can you explain what you mean by saying so?
Shamir: Antisemitism was a short-lived racial theory of late 19th century claiming that - like zebras are what they are, jews are what they are; that they possess some racial qualities making them an inherent enemy of the Nordic race, like a wolf is an enemy of a rabbit. This view was unknown previously, as the Church and the Ulema thought that the problem between Jews and Gentiles is a religious problem; conversion of a Jew into Christianity or Islam removed the problem. The racial view is quite out of fashion today; and I have never met a person who would consider jews being some race apart, dangerous to the rest.
Or, taking a less learned approach, antisemitism is presented as 'hatred of Jews for what they are'. Such a phenomenon vanished completely. There are people who object to policies of Jews, but none - to Jews per se.
That is why we can say that antisemitism disappeared after a very short shelf-life. Jews tend to use this word for perfectly legitimate, nay, commendable objection to their policies; for instance, to the policies of Israel etc, but then it is just an offensive label.
Question: When you say that antisemitism doesn't exist today you define antisemitism as an old racial theory. Is it correct that you define for example vandalism of Jewish graveyards and private belongings for "objecting to policies of Jews". If a young person with Jewish background living in Sweden who is not engaged in politics is beaten up by neo nazis or someone else. What do you call that? Doesn’t there exist violence and hatred towards Jews based on the fact that they are Jews, call it a race or call it an ethnicity or religion. Would you still call this violence and hatred "objecting to policies of Jews"?
Shamir: Illegal and criminal acts are exactly that, and the reasoning of the criminal is of little importance. Nobody is allowed to vandalise cemeteries or beat up people, whether they are Jews or not. Do you think if a goy is beaten up, or a non-Jewish cemetery is vandalised - it is less grievous? Take Jews off your mind. If an act is criminal - then it is criminal, if it is not - then it is not criminal. There is no reason to assume that jews are special; that a beaten up Jew is a worse affront than a beaten up goy.
You've asked: "If a young person with Jewish background living in Sweden who is not engaged in politics is beaten up by neo nazis or someone else. What do you call that? "
I am not sure such events occur - more often than any sort of gang violence. In France, Jewish militants beat up anti-Zionists quite often, but I have not heard of non-fake case of French beating Jews. In New York, Jewish Defence League beats and kills goyim, and somehow nobody discusses 'Jewish hatred of Goy'. Indeed, criminal behaviour of miscreants is not a reason to build up case for 'antisemitism' or 'goy hatred' - police should just attend to criminals.
You've asked: "Doesn’t there exist violence and hatred towards Jews based on the fact that they are Jews, call it a race or call it an ethnicity or religion." The answer is NO. Not yet, but if good wishers would promote this idea ad nauseam they may succeed :-)
As for hatred, it is such a mother-in-lawish word:
"Son, I know you hate me and want me dead!"
"No, mama, but I want us to control our lives ourselves".
Question: Do you believe that such a thing as a Jewish world conspiracy exists. If so, what’s the aim of this conspiracy?
Shamir: If the question is whether I believe in a millennia-old secret plan carried out by some hidden Jewish leaders the answer is no. Not many people do. Nor do I believe in existence of a hidden Jewish world leadership activating a single plan.
However, we may try to deconstruct the question in order to find some other levels to it.
If there were a 'Jewish plan' - would it mean that all the Jews belong to the conspiracy? We use expressions "Sicilian mafia", "Communist plan of world revolution", "American imperialism", fully understanding that not every Sicilian, not every Communist, not every American is a member of some secretive body that tries to achieve this particular goal. Equally, 'Jewish conspiracy' would imply that there are some Jews who have certain plans.
'Conspiracy' is a dirty word for undeclared goal in politics achieved by obscure means. For instance, there was an American Cold-War conspiracy (or 'plan') to get the USSR into Afghanistan in 1980. Please read the following except:
"How the US provoked the Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan and starting the whole mess"
Le Nouvel Observateur (France), Jan 15-21, 1998,
Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs [From the Shadows], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan six months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aidto the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Sovietarmy invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, closely guardeduntil now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 thatPresident Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to theopponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrotea note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinionthis aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
Question: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
Brzezinski: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Question: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?
Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea.
It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, in substance: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Thus, conspiracies are a usual way of achieving some political purposes. When we demystify the expression 'Jewish conspiracy' in such a way, your question could be read: 'are there some secret plans and strategies carried out by some Jewish groups in their own interests'? Then. certainly, the answer is Yes; neocons are a group of (predominantly) Jews who plot and conspire for their own reasons; in the Shadow of Zog I've described another hidden plan carried out by some wealthy French Jews who wished to influence French media. In Prince Charming I present the Zionist conspiracy, which started with Weitzman and others offering the support of Jews to Balfour in exchange for the Declaration.
As for an "all-Jewish world conspiracy", in my essay on the Protocols I prove that the concept of 'Jewish conspiracy' is not needed in order to understand Jewish influence. As a rule, Jews seek to make things better for Jews - but it is not a "conspiracy". There are non-conspiratorial actions which influence the world affairs. There are many Jews in world media; they have differing views, but they usually agree on certain things, for instance, they try to spike unfavourable to Jews news items. Majority of Jews are sympathetic to the US, dislike Christianity, prefer multiculturalism, support Israel - this is not a "conspiracy", but just their preference.
Question: You have a Jewish background and you lost family members during the Nazi period. In what way does this affect your view on Judaism and Christianity?
Shamir: A man is influenced by his background. But the cult of holocaust wasn't a part of my background, for I grew in Soviet Russia. Every Russian family lost somebody at the World War Two; so I did not feel my case a special one.
Question: You have converted to Christianity. How does this fact influence your view on Judaism?
Shamir: In my view, Christianity is reformed, corrected Judaism, ideologically and theologically in permanent tension towards Rabbinic Judaism. I reject Judaism completely, and think it is a dangerous and troublesome ideology.
Question: In the present debate you are being accused of having opinions similar to those of the nazis during the 1930’s: i.e. there’s a Jewish conspiracy, the Jews govern the world through controlling economy and moulding of public opinions. What’s your comment to that?
Shamir: My accusers do not mind to have the same opinion as George Bush, Ariel Sharon or Abe Foxman, great warriors against "antisemitism". In a way they are right - it does not matter who else has similar ideas. Foxman is against antisemitism, but it is still legitimate to be against antisemitism. Hitler was a vegetarian, but it is still legitimate to avoid meat. Every idea stands or falls at its own merit.
Question: You have also been accused of having contacts with neo nazis on the Internet. Your texts can be read on their web sites. How do you comment on that?
Shamir: My articles have appeared in the Israeli liberal daily Haaretz which is running Judeo-Nazi materials, for instance
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/489306.html
but somehow nobody objected to it...
Question. You claim that anti-semitism doesn’t exist today. Can you explain what you mean by saying so?
Shamir: Antisemitism was a short-lived racial theory of late 19th century claiming that - like zebras are what they are, jews are what they are; that they possess some racial qualities making them an inherent enemy of the Nordic race, like a wolf is an enemy of a rabbit. This view was unknown previously, as the Church and the Ulema thought that the problem between Jews and Gentiles is a religious problem; conversion of a Jew into Christianity or Islam removed the problem. The racial view is quite out of fashion today; and I have never met a person who would consider jews being some race apart, dangerous to the rest.
Or, taking a less learned approach, antisemitism is presented as 'hatred of Jews for what they are'. Such a phenomenon vanished completely. There are people who object to policies of Jews, but none - to Jews per se.
That is why we can say that antisemitism disappeared after a very short shelf-life. Jews tend to use this word for perfectly legitimate, nay, commendable objection to their policies; for instance, to the policies of Israel etc, but then it is just an offensive label.
Question: When you say that antisemitism doesn't exist today you define antisemitism as an old racial theory. Is it correct that you define for example vandalism of Jewish graveyards and private belongings for "objecting to policies of Jews". If a young person with Jewish background living in Sweden who is not engaged in politics is beaten up by neo nazis or someone else. What do you call that? Doesn’t there exist violence and hatred towards Jews based on the fact that they are Jews, call it a race or call it an ethnicity or religion. Would you still call this violence and hatred "objecting to policies of Jews"?
Shamir: Illegal and criminal acts are exactly that, and the reasoning of the criminal is of little importance. Nobody is allowed to vandalise cemeteries or beat up people, whether they are Jews or not. Do you think if a goy is beaten up, or a non-Jewish cemetery is vandalised - it is less grievous? Take Jews off your mind. If an act is criminal - then it is criminal, if it is not - then it is not criminal. There is no reason to assume that jews are special; that a beaten up Jew is a worse affront than a beaten up goy.
You've asked: "If a young person with Jewish background living in Sweden who is not engaged in politics is beaten up by neo nazis or someone else. What do you call that? "
I am not sure such events occur - more often than any sort of gang violence. In France, Jewish militants beat up anti-Zionists quite often, but I have not heard of non-fake case of French beating Jews. In New York, Jewish Defence League beats and kills goyim, and somehow nobody discusses 'Jewish hatred of Goy'. Indeed, criminal behaviour of miscreants is not a reason to build up case for 'antisemitism' or 'goy hatred' - police should just attend to criminals.
You've asked: "Doesn’t there exist violence and hatred towards Jews based on the fact that they are Jews, call it a race or call it an ethnicity or religion." The answer is NO. Not yet, but if good wishers would promote this idea ad nauseam they may succeed :-)
As for hatred, it is such a mother-in-lawish word:
"Son, I know you hate me and want me dead!"
"No, mama, but I want us to control our lives ourselves".
Question: Do you believe that such a thing as a Jewish world conspiracy exists. If so, what’s the aim of this conspiracy?
Shamir: If the question is whether I believe in a millennia-old secret plan carried out by some hidden Jewish leaders the answer is no. Not many people do. Nor do I believe in existence of a hidden Jewish world leadership activating a single plan.
However, we may try to deconstruct the question in order to find some other levels to it.
If there were a 'Jewish plan' - would it mean that all the Jews belong to the conspiracy? We use expressions "Sicilian mafia", "Communist plan of world revolution", "American imperialism", fully understanding that not every Sicilian, not every Communist, not every American is a member of some secretive body that tries to achieve this particular goal. Equally, 'Jewish conspiracy' would imply that there are some Jews who have certain plans.
'Conspiracy' is a dirty word for undeclared goal in politics achieved by obscure means. For instance, there was an American Cold-War conspiracy (or 'plan') to get the USSR into Afghanistan in 1980. Please read the following except:
"How the US provoked the Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan and starting the whole mess"
Le Nouvel Observateur (France), Jan 15-21, 1998,
Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs [From the Shadows], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan six months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aidto the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Sovietarmy invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, closely guardeduntil now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 thatPresident Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to theopponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrotea note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinionthis aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
Question: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
Brzezinski: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Question: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?
Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea.
It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, in substance: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Thus, conspiracies are a usual way of achieving some political purposes. When we demystify the expression 'Jewish conspiracy' in such a way, your question could be read: 'are there some secret plans and strategies carried out by some Jewish groups in their own interests'? Then. certainly, the answer is Yes; neocons are a group of (predominantly) Jews who plot and conspire for their own reasons; in the Shadow of Zog I've described another hidden plan carried out by some wealthy French Jews who wished to influence French media. In Prince Charming I present the Zionist conspiracy, which started with Weitzman and others offering the support of Jews to Balfour in exchange for the Declaration.
As for an "all-Jewish world conspiracy", in my essay on the Protocols I prove that the concept of 'Jewish conspiracy' is not needed in order to understand Jewish influence. As a rule, Jews seek to make things better for Jews - but it is not a "conspiracy". There are non-conspiratorial actions which influence the world affairs. There are many Jews in world media; they have differing views, but they usually agree on certain things, for instance, they try to spike unfavourable to Jews news items. Majority of Jews are sympathetic to the US, dislike Christianity, prefer multiculturalism, support Israel - this is not a "conspiracy", but just their preference.
Question: You have a Jewish background and you lost family members during the Nazi period. In what way does this affect your view on Judaism and Christianity?
Shamir: A man is influenced by his background. But the cult of holocaust wasn't a part of my background, for I grew in Soviet Russia. Every Russian family lost somebody at the World War Two; so I did not feel my case a special one.
Question: You have converted to Christianity. How does this fact influence your view on Judaism?
Shamir: In my view, Christianity is reformed, corrected Judaism, ideologically and theologically in permanent tension towards Rabbinic Judaism. I reject Judaism completely, and think it is a dangerous and troublesome ideology.
Question: In the present debate you are being accused of having opinions similar to those of the nazis during the 1930’s: i.e. there’s a Jewish conspiracy, the Jews govern the world through controlling economy and moulding of public opinions. What’s your comment to that?
Shamir: My accusers do not mind to have the same opinion as George Bush, Ariel Sharon or Abe Foxman, great warriors against "antisemitism". In a way they are right - it does not matter who else has similar ideas. Foxman is against antisemitism, but it is still legitimate to be against antisemitism. Hitler was a vegetarian, but it is still legitimate to avoid meat. Every idea stands or falls at its own merit.
Question: You have also been accused of having contacts with neo nazis on the Internet. Your texts can be read on their web sites. How do you comment on that?
Shamir: My articles have appeared in the Israeli liberal daily Haaretz which is running Judeo-Nazi materials, for instance
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/489306.html
but somehow nobody objected to it...
Monday, July 21, 2008
Paschal Greetings
By Israel Adam Shamir
Was it good or bad in Egypt for the people of Israel? The Bible leaves the reader confused. On one hand, they were enslaved and had to built the cities in fear of the brutal overseer’s whip. Exodus 5:7-19 tells that the Pharaoh ceased to provide them with straw to make bricks of (even to this day they mix straw and clay to make bricks in the Nile Valley) and they ran around gathering stubble and straw for the quota of bricks remained as it was. Whenever they would say: “We would rather go and pray”, the Pharaoh would answer: you say so because you are idle, you have too much time on your hands; hurry, do your job, deliver more bricks! And they were beaten to work harder and faster.
A legend (“midrash”) tells of a pregnant woman who was mixing straw and clay for bricks, worked hard, and when she gave birth, her child fell into the pit and was made into a brick. This brick was taken up to heaven and laid at the feet of God.
On the other hand, in the desert, the Israelites complained that they had left the flesh-pots of Egypt, the land of plenty, where they had everything they ever could wish - for the hardships of desert life.
So what it was – a cruel bondage or prosperity? This contradiction can’t be settled convincingly, unless one understands that the story of Exodus is an extended metaphor. The bondage is the bondage of flesh, of our everyday life, of pursuit of things. The Pharaoh, call him Satan, or Consumer spirit, demands from us to make more and more bricks, to earn more money, so we will forget about God. Every day we sacrifice some time of our children (“turn them into bricks”) for instead of attending to them we work more to pay mortgage, this is the quota of bricks, to repay for the car credit, and what not. And from time to time we go to a nice candle-lit restaurant on the seaside for a good meal – this is the fleshpots.
God takes you out of bondage of flesh (“Egypt”) to the freedom of spirit (the “Promised Land”). He Himself comes to take you out, and He will overcome even death to save you for spiritual life. Life is more than small talk about mortgages and new cars and candle-lit dinners, Man is more, much more than a consumer of goods, He is Godlike and can enter the Promised Land of spirit in flesh. This is the Paschal message, and that is why this is the most important message mankind ever received.
An ordinary Jew takes this metaphor literally; he thinks this is a story of his physical ancestors who were enslaved in the land of pyramids and escaped into the Promised Land. An ordinary Jew thinks that God actually killed the first-born of Egypt and empowered Joshua to kill the natives of Canaan in order to provide his family with a valuable seaside real estate. He thinks that the Promised Land of the Bible is a physical real land, Palestine, that this is a story of liberation from national slavery and conquest of a country. By such interpretation, he debases this great message of its spiritual and universal meaning; he privatises the story and robs others and himself of its true meaning. The recurring motive of Jews using blood of children for the Passover ritual is a symbolic reply to this literalism. The Christian replies: if you are that literal, if you read the metaphoric story of Man’s liberation as some trivial Drang Nach Osten, you may as well pour real blood of children into your crystal goblets.
Much blood - of children and of adults – was poured on the altar of Zionist conquest. But this conquest of Palestine was inbuilt in the literalist Judaic reading of Exodus for Zionism is a literalist realization of the metaphor, the project of conquering the Promised Land by force of arms instead of connecting to spirit by means of prayer, good deeds and grace. It was a titanic, gigantic project; I mean the titans and giants who tried to conquer Olympus and unseat the blessed gods. And whenever people applied this literalist reading, no good came out of it, vide the conquest of North America, where very few natives survived (as opposed to South America) and the resulting nation causes much trouble to the rest of the world.
Ignorant vulgar materialists are prone to “defend Jews” while accusing “Zionists”, for they are not aware of theological grounds of Zionism, and these grounds are deeply entrenched in Judaic literalism. For sure, there were Jewish divines who proclaimed metaphoric reading, for instance, they explained “there was no water for three days” (Exodus 15:22-25) passage as reference to three days without God’s Word. Thanks to these wise men who were aware of the secret spiritual meaning of the Holy Land, that is the Land of Spirit; Zionism did not break forth until late 19th century. But literalism was never far away, never sufficiently exorcised, and with rise of materialism and decline of understanding, the spiritual reading of the Scripture was altogether discarded.
Likewise, the sad story of Exile can and should be understood as departure of man from the Grace of God. The First Man was in eternal communion with God, in eternal state of grace. Since the exile of Adam from Paradise, we sorely miss this grace. The Christians have Christ who offered us the way to regain the grace; Gnostics created a pretty myth of Sophia entering the sacred marriage with Christ, but in Jewish literalist reading even the concept of grace was forgotten and transplanted by quite trivial physical relocation into Palestine.
Blessed are the Buddhists who did not entertain the thought that the Pure Land is a part of Nepal where Gautama Buddha was born and found his enlightenment. Indeed, literalism debases its followers, as Karl Marx noted in his witty remark: “Christianity is sublime Judaism, while Judaism is sordid Christianity”. The schism between old Israel of flesh and new Israel of spirit is the split between metaphoric and literal readers of the Exodus. Anti-judaic polemics carried out by St John Chrysostom and Martin Luther were arguments – not against a small tribe, but against the deniers of spirit. Extremely potent anti-spiritual attack of modernity which almost obliterated Christ’s footsteps is deemed “Judaic”, and is supported by spirit-denying Jews, though it has wider and not exclusively Jewish following.
Fathers of the Church were aware of extremely troublesome consequences of literalism. Origen was an enemy of "literalists who believe such things about [God] as would not be believed of the most savage and unjust of men".[Origen, Principles 4.1.8] He could tolerate simple believers, but not the Judaisers. By means of a more sophisticated literalism this group attempted to continue obedience to the Law within the Christian Church, writes Bradshaw, but the real problem with the Judaisers was their opposition to spirit. They were with Letter, i.e. they were literalists and spirit deniers.
The Eastern Orthodox Church preserved the uncorrupted traditions of the Church Fathers, and that is why she stresses the metaphoric reading of the Bible narrative. Orthodox icons do not depict suffering of Christ, as opposed to the Western paining: though the Church surely does not deny it as the Gnostics were prone to, she prefers the image of Christ Resurrected, the Pantocrator, the Supreme King victorious over Death. On the icons, Christ is equally serene on the Cross and on his Throne in heaven.
For us, this week is the time to obtain the most important and most precious gift of God, the Grace. See though myths for their only purpose is to concentrate your mind on spirit, like rosary helps to concentrate on prayer. Do not become inordinately concerned with the details of the myth, or with material of the rosary. Remember, if we get grace, we can solve all small problems of this world. Out of Egypt of flesh to the Promised Land of spirit, this is the call.
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