WRITTEN BY Francis Clark-Lowes
‘How dare you place myself and other Jewish people in the same melting pot.’ This exclamation was one of the negative reactions to my article, ‘Gaza: The Tip of an Iceberg’ which appeared at Palestine Think Tank last month. The person who wrote it chose her words well, for it does indeed require courage to discuss such matters. In my article I had written: ‘until a majority [of Jews] turn against the supremacist culture which supports Israel’s actions I will continue to hold Jews collectively responsible for what is happening in the Middle East.’
But even those who are more sympathetic to my point of view question the wisdom of holding a whole people to account for the actions of some of them. This idea did not, however, simply arise out of some atavistic hatred of Jews. I had in mind two other societies which are often collectively held responsible for atrocities, the Germans and the British.
Like many young people in the seventies, I lived for a few months on a kibbutz in Israel. Some of my fellow volunteers were native German-speakers, all of them born since the war. Although many of the kibbutzniks shared their mother tongue, they would speak to my German colleagues in English to show their disapproval of the German culture which they associated with the Nazis. My colleagues would react by saying: ‘But I was born after the war. What has that to do with me?’ I sympathised with them, and I still think that the way they were treated was at times stupid. After all, they did not choose to be born German. But I also think there is a sense in which it is wrong to say that the Nazi period has nothing to do with post-war Germans. And the compensation paid from the taxes of post-war Germans to Jews and other dispossessed peoples indicates that I am not alone in thinking this way.
Nor do I think it is acceptable for British people (including Jews, by the way) to shrug off the slave trade because it happened a long time ago, and because we played no personal part in that dreadful history. Coming nearer to the present, when I lived in the Middle East I was constantly being reminded of our part in the plight of the Palestinians. I remember one such conversation with a family who put me up for the night in Khan Younis, in the Gaza Strip, in 1977.
Why did these Palestinians feel the need to infringe their own rules of hospitality to draw my attention to Britain’s past misdeeds? I think the answer is something like this. If I failed to own up to these misdeeds by my compatriots then they would be bound to see me as part of the problem against which they were struggling. They assumed, reasonably I believe, that I was proud to be British and that this pride might very well preclude me from being objective. In other words, they wanted to know whether I was an ally or an enemy. I am not for a moment suggesting that if I had denied all wrongdoing by Britain they would have dispatched me on the spot. No, they would have continued to be the model of courtesy. But they would not have told me anything more about their feelings towards Israel and the Jews.
I always admitted British culpability, that is I acknowledged my collective responsibility, as a Briton, for what my country did vis-à-vis Palestine. This admission has two sides to it. On the one hand it makes me aware that identifying as a Briton (which I do much more than I would sometimes like to think) has a cost – a feeling of shame about aspects of my country’s history. The other side of that coin is that it implies the need for atonement – making good. Without acknowledgement there can be no atonement, and in the case of the Palestinians, without atonement by the West in general, Israel will continue to have a free hand to oppress the Palestinians. British atonement is not enough, but it would be a good beginning.
Now Britain, as a state and as a society, shows very little inclination to atone for its terrible mistreatment of the Palestinians. On the contrary, our leadership takes every opportunity to assure the Israelis of our support, despite the self-evident atrocities of their country. A sense that we need to atone for our previous mistreatment of Jews no doubt plays its part in this. More importantly, I think, is the belief which has been inculcated in us that we Gentiles are tainted with a visceral antisemitism and must prove our credentials by loving Jews. This is, of course, a quite irrational idea, and the sooner we see it for the manipulation that it is the better. We could then get on with recognising more pressing issues.
If enough Britons were to acknowledge their collective responsibility for what we, as a state, did to the Palestinians, the situation would start to change. As a society we would come to reject the Zionist doctrine, our politicians would no longer fall over themselves to support Israel, and the BBC would stop reporting from Israel as if that state were a noble enterprise. That is why Palestinians ask me to agree that we British are collectively responsible for Balfour.
It is for precisely the same reason that I call upon all those who identify themselves as Jews to recognize their own collective complicity in the oppression of the Palestinians. It is not sufficient (though it is good) to say: ‘Not in my name!’ There is a need to acknowledge that their very Jewish identity, which they either cannot dissociate from, or choose not to, comes with a high price tag.
Now if Britons are disinclined to acknowledge their collective responsibility, it is not a patch on Jewish reluctance in this respect. For Jews have, since the Second World War, developed a self-image which almost precludes the possibility of collective wrong-doing. I believe that it is Western non-Jewish acquiescence in this view which makes it extremely difficult for our politicians to say or do anything which reflects adversely on the Jewish state. How have we allowed ourselves to be maneuvered into this disastrous position?
A key element in this is the ‘Holocaust’ narrative. Have you heard this Jewish joke? A Gentile asks: ‘How many Holocaust Centres can you fit in one country.’ A Jew answers: ‘I don’t know. But we’ll try it and see.’(i) Without our noticing it, we have allowed the story of Nazi atrocities to be hi-jacked by Jews. Again leaving aside the question as to what precisely those atrocities were – I am confident we will have a quite different picture in twenty years time – a key element in the standard narrative is the idea that the Nazi persecution of the Jews occurred in a contextual vacuum. In other words, Jews were in no way responsible for what happened to them (and the Nazis were simply unimaginably evil). They were entirely ‘innocent’, and indeed had always been entirely ‘innocent’ in their previous history of persecution.
This was not the view of Jewish historians until the rise of Zionism. Bernard Lazare, for example, was quite clear that Jews were as much responsible for their own persecution as Christians. In his view, expressed in his book Antisemitism: Its History and Causes,(ii) Christian rejection of Jews worked hand-in-hand with Jewish exclusiveness to produce the evils about which he writes. It seems to me that it was only after Herzl published The Jewish State a year later, in 1895, that the idea of an inbuilt predisposition of Gentiles to ‘antisemitism’ began to gain currency. The conclusion drawn from this idea was not only that there need be no explanation for hatred of Jews, but that there is none. After the Second World War this became the predominant view.
I have written the word ‘innocent’ above in inverted commas because I do not want to be understood to be endorsing either the reasons that Jews were hated at certain times in history, or indeed the forms that that hatred took. What I am opposing is the idea that this hatred was uncaused. This seems a wholly implausible idea. But its entrenchment in Jewish thinking is so complete that any suggestion, as in my essay, that Jews are currently collectively responsible for what is happening in Gaza, is met with a howl of rage. And that expected howl deters most non-Jews from saying anything about Jewish culpability.
Somewhere at the root of all this is a debate about the relationship between the individual and society. The modern Western ethos tends to emphasise the primacy of the individual. But post-modernism has taught us that the individual can only properly be understood in his or her cultural context. It is a severe blow to our individual pride to acknowledge that our thoughts and feeling are to a very large extent moulded by the society (or more accurately ‘cultures’ in the plural) in which we live.
People who cry: ‘Don’t hold me collectively responsible for the misdeeds of my country’ – or some other group – are, I believe, in a state of denial about the extent to which they are their country – or society, or family, or even corporation. Why, otherwise, do they say ‘my country’. Such people benefit from the sense of security and belonging their membership of the group gives them. This is the feeling I have whenever I step out of the terminal building at Heathrow. That benefit, to repeat myself, comes with a cost, and it is one which most of us cannot avoid, for most of us cannot ‘unidentify’.
Let us use the generic term ‘group’ to describe any gathering of human beings which has a sense of its own identity for this will enable me to answer a fundamental objection to my argument. I write as if there were no categorical difference between ‘the Jews’ and, for example, ‘the British state’. The latter is a clearly delineated and incorporated organisation, ‘the Jews’ are nothing of the kind. It is arguable that they have no universally recognised authority and that Jews are in no way incorporated. It would follow from this line of thinking that it is wrong to make any generalisation about Jews. Worse, that such generalisations arise from racial prejudice, or are, to use the misleading term, ‘antisemitic’.(iii)
My approach to this subject arises from my reading of sociology, history and especially psychology. It seems to me that the human instinct to combine together in groups is a fundamental phenomenon of human nature. The role model for all groups is the family. Thus humans seek to recreate in all their groupings their first experience of a group; or at least their instinctive understanding of what a group should be like. Whatever we may believe about equality, groups always tend to endorse an authority structure. In other words they always have ‘parents’ and ‘children’. The development of group culture occurs as a complex interaction between (1) elements imposed by the elite from above, (2) history and (3) elements introduced by the ordinary membership. A further characteristic of groups is that they tend to view outsiders as unreliable, at best, and enemies at worst, while one’s own group is reliable and friendly and deserves our loyalty – in other words it is psychologically the bosom of the family.
Whether a group is incorporated or not, whether it has a clear authority structure or not, its existence is confirmed once someone can say: ‘I am a ….’ with the meaning that s/he is a member. And once a group exists it has power (that is its purpose) and becomes a player, however large or small, on the world stage. Thus the fact that people can say: ‘I am a Jew’ confirms that a group called ‘the Jews’ exists. It follows that it is quite legitimate to ask questions about ‘the Jews’ and to attempt to arrive at generalised conclusions about that group.
My generalized – but tentative – conclusion about ‘the Jews’ is that they are a group who identify much more strongly around the idea of Zionism than they do around their religion – which a majority do not practise. Indeed, this is what Herzl had intended. In this sense a majority of Jews are clearly complicit in the crimes of Gaza. But there is, of course, a small minority of Jews who reject Zionism. Should I then conclude that the anti-Zionist Jews are not complicit in the crimes of Gaza? Should I revise my ‘Jews collectively’ to ‘all Zionist Jews’ when speaking of complicity?
I have already tried to explain why I think this is a mistake when talking about my own collective complicity in slavery and the Balfour Declaration. I will not repeat the argument. But I do want to comment on the degree of anger aroused when I suggest this idea which is, after all, not seriously dissimilar from the widely accepted religious idea of original sin. If I started to doubt my own ideas on this subject, the reaction to what I say would stop me in my tracks. For there is no smoke without fire.
On the subject of slavery, by the way, it is interesting that while I am quite prepared to admit my collective complicity in slavery (from which, after all, my country benefited materially), Jews in America have reacted hysterically to the revelation of Jewish involvement in the organisation of the slave trade. Tony Martin, who is black, has described the onslaught against him when he started to teach on this subject.(iv) In other words, this determination to avoid all culpability is a phenomenon which does not limit itself to the Israel-Palestine conflict but which spills over into a much wider Jewish context. Under no circumstances may Jews be represented as sinful. Put like that, it seems absurd, and yet so I believe it has become.
And so, when I say that Jews are collectively responsible for Gaza, I am crossing a red line. ‘How dare you place myself and other Jews in the same melting pot?’ I am asked. My answer is: ‘Because you put yourself in the same melting pot by reacting the way you do. You mock the idea of boycotting Israel on the grounds that many of its products are useful. So were the rockets which the Nazis developed and the Americans took over, so that argument takes us to a strange place! But since you oppose even this soft non-violent option for putting pressure on Israel, we can surely conclude that you are indeed in the same melting pot as most Jews in supporting the Jewish state.’ The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
Francis Clark-Lowes is a freelance writer and adult educator. He has been campaigning for Palestine for many years and was for two years Chair of the British Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC). He also revived, and was for some years the Chair of, the Brighton branch of PSC. His doctoral research was on the early psychoanalyst, Wihelm Stekel. Before that he did a master’s dissertation on the influence of Goethe on Freud. In his thirties and forties he lived for a period of ten years in the Middle East. He is 64 and has two adult children.
Footnotes:
(i)Actually, I invented that joke. Now how do you feel about it? It is interesting to me that we view jokes about Jews quite differently according to whether they are Jewish or not.
(ii)Published as L’Antisémitisme, son histoire et ses causes in 1894.
(iii)That subject needs another essay, but briefly I believe the unspoken concept of ‘semitism’ is a king-pin of Zionist thinking, and should therefore be avoided like the plague.
(iv)Martin, Tony, The Jewish Onslaught: Dispatches from the Wellesley Battlefront, Dover, Mass, The Majority Press, 1993.
We Write What We Like 
I like this article….
It begs the question……
What did the Jew do in the lead up to WW2..??
No even before that….why were there progroms…???
Is the behaviour of Israel today
Reflectiveon what might have happend in the past…???
Can this beahvour be differentiatedbetween those who
Come from the pure judiac blood lines of the original jews..
And those who come from converted blood lines???
We have all seen hw good the Israelis are at making themselves appear like guiltless victims
Is this a new behaviour or is this a learned behaviour…???
Wonders if anyone understands what i am getting at here…sigh…
I read the article ‘Gaza: the tip of the Iceberg with interest. Today, I came upon ‘The Outrage of the Guilty’ by the same autor. How much I agree or disagree with an author’s viewpoint are my notations on the printed copy. I write comments on the printed copy or circle text and put question marks, and so on. There were hardly any disagreements when I read the first one but quite a few as I was reading this one. I will quote some of the statements that rubbed me the wrong way or made me feel uncomfortable and try to address them as best as I can.
I will put the text that I am disputing in brackets followed by my remarks.
1. [They assumed, reasonably I believe, that I was proud to be British and that this pride might very well preclude me from being objective. In other words, they wanted to know whether I was an ally or an enemy.]
This statement does not make sense to me on many levels: (1) I think the writer may be the one ‘assuming’ and not his hosts the Palestinians. Arab people as a group do have one thing in common, and that is extreme hospitality. They could care less how proud one is to be this or that nationality or race. Was he suggesting that they would have been less accommodating towards a non-proud Englishman? I often have a hard time understanding people who claim to be proud because they happen to have a certain sort of biologic make up or because of the place or origin or ancestry. I just do not understand racial pride or national pride. Most of us had no control on the destiny of where we were born.
2. [The other side of that coin is that it implies the need for atonement – making good.]
How can we even speak of atonement regarding the Palestinian case while the crime is still ongoing? Can you imagine atoning for slavery during the era of slavery? The fact that slavery was being practiced was an act of refusal to admit that it was wrong. First and foremost, the criminal has to stop the crime before atonement. Palestine is being raped and she had been mercilessly raped nonstop since the stampede of European Jewry to Palestine begun.
3. [how have we allowed ourselves to be maneuvered into this disastrous position?] I personally do not buy that the West bends backwards to please Jews because of the ‘holocaust’. Let’s not forget that Jews fleeing Europe did arrive on American soil but were refused admission. The most apparent reason is the power of the Jewish lobby. We have witnessed time and time again American candidates pledging their allegiance and total support for Jews but for no other group. The Jews in Palestine are now at about 2% of the entire Arab population. That also happens to be their percentage in the United States. Why would America alienate 98% of the people of the region and blindly support a murderous, evil, barbaric ‘state’? The answer is not because of the holocaust or sympathy. It is the power of the Jewish lobby.
4. [What I am opposing is the idea that this hatred was uncaused.]
I agree! A Jewish author by the name of Wistrich has written many books on ‘anti-Semitism’ and it is hard to keep reading his books due to the fact that he is so blinded by his emotional attachment to anything Jewish that he attributes bias towards Jews due to jealousy. He wrote that Jews had nice family values, that they don’t drink, excel in school, are determined to achieve and are driven which causes jealousy. He could have titled his book ‘Gentile joules of Jewry’.
5. [… They (Jews) are a group who identify much more strongly around the idea of Zionism than they do around their religion – which a majority do not practice.]
I beg to disagree. They may not be religious in that they do not perform all the religious rituals demanded by their religion, but on the other hand, they do practice it in their hearts and souls. Their feelings of supremacy comes form the Old Testament, their lust to kill gentiles comes from the Old Testament, their exclusive nature comes from the Old Testament. Sharon who was a non-believer but he would invoke the Old Testament to justify Jewry’s theft of Arab land.
6. [On the subject of slavery, by the way, it is interesting that while I am quite prepared to admit my collective complicity in slavery (from which, after all, my country benefited materially),]
Interesting that he seemed to remember a far away event -slavery- and not the most bestial colonization of people of color all over the globe by the British. Africa is in the state it is today because of British colonization. The Arab region was made to forever to remain a weakened people due to all the division the British created along tribal and religious lines. Most of the countries of the world today where the colonial masters used to control are still being controlled by the same colonial masters but this time around under facade of representative government. By placing a stooge in position they have managed to continue to sap the resources of people of color. The Arab regions’ ‘kings’ and ‘presidents’ are all courtesy of imperialism. The Prophet Mohammed did a miracle when he united the Arabs under a common language, custom and identity. But then came along the British and started all kinds of chaos.
…
My final statement: Nobody arrives on this planet with their mind already configured to do evil to others. It is all leant starting from infancy to adulthood. The extremely few Jews that I admire for their total lack of prejudice towards others always mention their parents for having been responsible for raising them to respect other human beings. The same goes with those who hold contemptuous supremacist attitudes; it was all learnt on the lap of the parent.
AL KHANSA – The answer to your questions lie in the Talmud, that huge body of writing produced by rabbis down the ages. The teachings in the Talmud about goyim (Gentiles) in general and about Christianity in particular are so disgustingly abhorrent that whenever they became known to Gentiles it caused a furious response, which in some cases led to pogroms and sometimes to the total expulsion of Jewish communities from the countries in which they lived. There have been some famous instances of Jews that left Judaism and exposed the Talmudic teachings, engaged in Disputations with rabbis, and the rabbis lost.
Unfortunately, these attitudes were not left behind in medieval times, they persist to this day. A good example can be found in a book published a few years ago (I think it was in 2004 or thereabouts) called “Romemut Yisrael Ufarashat Hagalut” or “Jewish Superiority and the Question of Exile” by Rabbi Saadya Grama, of the Beth Medrash Govoha (a yeshiva) in Lakewood, New Jersey. Some sample quotes from the book:
“The difference between the people of Israel and the nations of the world is an essential one. The Jew by his source and in his very essence is entirely good. The goy, by his source and in his very essence is completely evil. This is not simply a matter of religious distinction, but rather of two completely different species.”
“The differences between Jews and gentiles are not religious, historical, cultural or political. They are, rather, racial, genetic and scientifically unalterable. The one group is at its very root and by natural constitution ‘totally evil’ while the other is ‘totally good’.”
“Jewish successes in the world are completely contingent upon the failure of all other peoples. Only when the gentiles face total catastrophe do the Jews experience good fortune.”
And so it goes on, a litany of hate, bigotry, racism, religious supremacy and a desire to visit utter destruction on the Gentiles, which is instilled in the minds of youngsters at the yeshivas.
Fortunately there are many Jews who are as appalled by this kind of thing as anyone else, but their voices are as stifled by the mainstream media as everybody else’s voices are. Unfortunately, these are the attitudes than underpin Zionism, so you can see why it’s so easy for them to treat Palestinians like subhumans with no twinges of conscience.
@sophie – Hi Sophie, I’m sorry you didn’t like this one as much as the last. But thanks for taking so much trouble to list your problems with it. I’ll comment on what you’ve written using your method of brackets to mark the text I’m referring to.
[I often have a hard time understanding people who claim to be proud because they happen to have a certain sort of biologic make up or because of the place or origin or ancestry. I just do not understand racial pride or national pride. Most of us had no control on the destiny of where we were born.]
Don’t I say somewhere that people have not choice over their birth? If not, I should have done. I’m coming at this from a psycholgical point of view. I worked for many years as a counsellor, and am very aware of how much people feel the need to identify with groups. This is an extension of the feeing they had towards the first group they belonged to, their birth family. And when I look at myself, I cannot deny that I have these feelings myself, even if I feel a bit uncomfortable about them. When I come home (notice the expression) from abroad, I feel a sense of familiarity (again, notice the term), and warm sense of recognition etc. I don’t think we should leave such feelings out of account. My experience in the Middle East was that such feelings were equally strong there, though they expressed themselves in different ways because of the different culture.
[How can we even speak of atonement regarding the Palestinian case while the crime is still ongoing?]
Good point. My my thinking here was that if a majority of British people were to realise that what we did in Palestine was wrong, our national consciousness would shift to a position of thinking about putting it right. I think something of that sort happened in the 1930s and 40s over British imperialism. Writers like George Orwell began to convince an increasing number of thinking people that imperialism was morally indefensible, and though I don’t think this brought the empire down (near bankruptcy following the 2nd World War did), it helped to ease the abandonment of empire.
[I personally do not buy that the West bends backwards to please Jews because of the ‘holocaust’. … It is the power of the Jewish lobby.]
But where does the Jewish lobby draw that power from? No doubt partly from finance, and partly from intellectual dominance (the West is very much the product of Jewish thinking – Marx, Freud etc), but I don’t think the Jewish lobby would be anything like as powerful as it is without the weapon of saying: ‘You are an antisemite’. That is a career-busting accusation which, in its turn, draws its power from the distorted narrative of Nazi atrocities.
4. [What I am opposing is the idea that this hatred was uncaused.]
You agreed with this, and I agree with what you say about Wistrich. He, incidentally, wrote the introduction to my copy of that book by Bernard Lazare which I mentioned. You could feel what that was about. He was brought in to introduce the book because of an uneasy feeling among Jews today that Lazare, himself a Jew who hated prejudice against Jews, was also an ‘antisemite’. So Wistrich, in his urbane manner, provides us with a health warning, indicating that we should regard the earlier part of the book with care. I think Lazare is brilliant!
[They [most Jews] may not be religious in that they do not perform all the religious rituals demanded by their religion, but on the other hand, they do practice it in their hearts and souls. Their feelings of supremacy comes form the Old Testament, their lust to kill gentiles comes from the Old Testament, their exclusive nature comes from the Old Testament. Sharon who was a non-believer but he would invoke the Old Testament to justify Jewry’s theft of Arab land.]
You may well be right. I think Zionism, though originally a secular creed on the surface, does indeed incorporate a great deal that comes from Judaism, a Talmudic attitude to the world not least.
[Interesting that he seemed to remember a far away event -slavery- and not the most bestial colonization of people of color all over the globe by the British.]
You’re being a little unfair to me here. I did mention in my Iceberg article the genocides in Australia and New Zealand. Ok, I should have included Africa, but the list is long, and anyway slavery is to do with Africa! The attraction of the slavery example was the Tony Martin book, and the way this indicated the power Jewish organisations to control what people say and study.
[those who hold contemptuous supremacist attitudes; it was all learnt on the lap of the parent]
As an ex-counselor I’m inclined to agree. And yet, I think we must never say that people’s attitudes are entirely determined. I do believe in free-will, and therefore in responsibility. My whole thinking about the Palestine situation has to do with people taking responsibility for what they are doing rather than blaming what they do on events on history. Jews are constantly saying they have to do what they are doing in Israel because of what happened to them under the Nazis. But they are free to look at the world differently, and to acknowledge that if you behave as a thief and murderer, you are likely to arouse murderous feelings in those you have stolen from and whose relations you have killed. And that is not to speak about a resistance devoid of hatred, but fired by a desire for justice.
Regards, Francis
@Carson – Hi Carson, Thanks for that. I agree that what you say makes a lot of sense. I still feel a bit tentative about the degree to which ancient teachings affect modern Jewish thinking, but I’m moving that way. I’m glad you added the last paragraph. Jews who oppose the kind of supremacist culture we both comment on have helped me to understand much that I otherwise probably wouldn’t have done. But as you say, they are drowned out. Regards, Francis
Dear Dr. Francis Clark-Lowes:
Thank you for addressing some of my issues that I addressed in my initial post. I was reading your article (“The outrage of the Guilty”) (btw a great title) late in the evening last night and my laptop was already turned off for the night. I had to get up and turn it on and started my message. There was nothing in what you wrote that was aggravating to me. But I had previously printed the majority of the articles posted at the Al-Ahram dot com website and I was reading them when I begun to feel the pain of despair. One article in particular dealt a mighty blow to my sense of security and justice and it was written by Hassan Nafaa titled “The Unity Imperative” [1]. I believe he is a professor of political science and I find myself always looking forward to his articles, because what he writes about resonates with me. On this article, he was sounding the alarm bells regarding the Arab predicament. He was describing how he traveled to Kuwait to interview Amr Moussa, the Arab League secretary. There seems to be no hope or even a shred of hope for the Arab people.
The kind of devastation that is being inflicted on the innocent Arabs by a very shrewd, calculating, merciless group of people who like to be referred as ‘Jews’ is horrific. European Jewry did not arrive on Arab soil like all ordinary colonizers in history. This one came to stay. This colonizer like the rest also found itself surrounded by an ocean of the indigenous people, but knowing that its existence was guaranteed by the major powers (past, present and future) had the means to erect weapons of mass destruction on Arab soil that they renamed with some biblical hocus-pocus of ‘Israel’. The Arabs are suffering, and so are we the people of the world who care about the well being of humanity and the earth itself. There is so much wanton mayhem, destruction that we are witnesses to and that causes headaches heartaches and stomachaches. It is such a bitter pill to swallow to watch the brazen assault on the people of Lebanon and Palestine, and to watch a little darling baby turned into a corpse in a matter of seconds.
Your first article (The Tip of the Iceberg) reminded me of an article written by Justin Keaton, which appeared on The Dubliner in November 2005. [2] The response to that article from Jews was fast and furious. [3] One of the Jews who responded to that article wrote:
“WE JEWS ARE THE ETERNAL PEOPLE,THE CHOSEN PEOPLE AND WE WILL STILL BE HERE WHEN YOU ARE LONG GONE…LARRY CRANE”
This comment is not an isolated one. I used to compile all the hate email sent to Norman Finkelstein that he posts at his website and this is very typical.
I do not believe that a new generation of people should be held accountable for the crimes of their ancestors but only as long as they are still beneficiaries of the crime and are still deriving benefits accrued from past crimes. The English lifestyle today would not be what it is without the stolen resources of people of color past and present (and future). But when we shift gear and we are dealing with the protestation by Jewry that they are unfairly being lumped together for the crimes of the few, that is easy to refute with so much statistical and other evidence. The ADL recently posted a survey where they concluded that American Jewry was solidly united with their own kind when their own kind was reducing Gaza to ruins, killing, wounding innocent children. As far as those Jews who go by “Israelis”, the study revealed that over 94% were glad to see the Arabs being shredded to pieces by bombs dropped from the sky. I have repeated this quote so many times that I have lost count. A Palestinian activist when asked what she thought of the ‘anti-Zionist’ Jews replied by saying that they were all wonderful and then she added ‘all fifteen of them’. Her observation was very accurate. The Jews that I know of to be genuinely and truly anti-Zionist are indeed great. But there are many famous Jews who falsely enjoy the title of ‘anti-Zionist’. Two come to mind: Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky. Neither is anti-Zionist.
Lastly, I would like to thank you for writing both articles. I would also like to say that the more the vile that is sent in your direction because of what you wrote, the more irrefutable is what is contained in that article. Otherwise, they would simply use their well-practiced art of expression and convince the readers as to all the falsehoods contained in the article. But they can’t, and therefore they must resort to all kinds of insults and accusations. I recently posted a message about Jewry’s solidarity with one another and sited the ADL survey. The person who responded to my post was accusing me of lumping all Jews together. Hello! The study by Jews did confirm that Jews walk in unison. The person did not address the study; he attempted to disregard it, mainly because the study was done by one of his own, which denied him the opportunity to cry anti-Semitic motivations for such a study.
I certainly wish you the best.
[1] http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/933/op14.htm
[2] http://www.honestreporting.com/a/dublinerarticle2.htm
[3] http://www.thedubliner.ie/the_dubliner_magazine/2007/04/justin_keating.html
Thank you Carson,
In my head i am trying to quantify the behaviours , between those who come from the pureblood line and those who later reverted to judaism , like the khanzars.Perhapsin the ned its all to difficult to work out,,,
I left out something that I had meant to address in the last post: Pride for one’s heritage and nation. I must admit that I may have been wrong on that one. Millions of people around the globe do express pride for their ancestry, race and heritage. I think that should be viewed as a positive sign, and your attachment to your own land is very palpable. As long as that pride in one’s heritage does not go to the next step of declaring it to be the best one above them all.
‘until a majority [of Jews] turn against the supremacist culture which supports Israel’s actions I will continue to hold Jews collectively responsible for what is happening in the Middle East.’
This is exactly, word by word, the same crap blaming us muslims all over the world for Al Qaeda’s crimes and executions in Iran.
grate article should be read by every jew
Judaism, and Zionism are definitely suitable cases for treatment. as a jew you are constantly bombarded by cognitive dissonances, in high school, my best friend’s nick name was jimmy, he looked a spitting image of Hendrix, his grandparents were yamanit jews, brought to Palestine around the turn of the 20th cent. to be the under class of the new zionist colonies, now i am polish, and look the part. yet we were indoctrinated to believe that we were both of the seed of Abraham. Jews who lose their faith are left with a huge identity problem. Zionism is a confused attempt to deal with that problem, it would have faded away naturally if it wasn’t for the Holocaust and all that. now the neurosis is so deeply ingrained into the jewish / israeli / zionist identity that it is hard to imagine a successful treatment. jews / israelis / zionist should be confronted with the results of their neurosis . Jews do suffer from the “Thou have chosen us” syndrome, Jews do believe thy can do no wrong. it is time they start regarding themselves as ordinary human beings and prosecute the criminals among them. just one thing, the Holocaust was hijacked by the zionists and the american jewish community, motivated by guilt for not doing enough during the war to help their kin in Europe.
In response to #9 above:
[quote]This is exactly, word by word, the same crap blaming us muslims all over the world for Al Qaeda’s crimes and executions in Iran. [unquote]
…
You hit so many birds with one stone! Abe Foxman aught to be so proud of you!
1. [us muslims]: Let’s not get carried away with ‘us muslims’. You cannot be that stupid to expect the rest of us to be that stupid. Here Abe did not do his job well in training you.
2. [Al-Qaeda’s crimes]: You mean 9-11? The same 9-11 that demolished for the benefit of Jewry one of the most advanced Arab countries? Do you not believe what I am stating here? Then I will direct you to type in ‘the Zionist plan for the middle east’ on your search engine and read that document carefully. Therein you will find the blueprint for the war in Iraq.
3. [executions in Iran]: I laughed! I read daily what your cousins at AIPAC have to say about Iran, and frankly they sound like you. It is insane that these people on American soil can get away with so much deliberate lies. But they can get away ONLY by first turning the American public into bleating sheep! It is horrifying to notice how gullible and ignorant the American public (to a large extent) is. How did the American public get to be so ignorant? Answer: TV.
BTW: I agree with what the author had to say in regards to Al-Q in his other article [the tipe of the iceberg]. Here it is:
[There is little evidence that Al-Qaeda really exists in a corporate sense. It is probably more the notion of resistance to Western imperialism in the Muslim world than an identifiable organisation. And yet it is constantly held responsible for ‘terrorist’ actions]
@sophie – Thanks for this Sophie and for your previous nice reply. In so far as Al Qaeda is what I described – the notion of resistence to Western imperialism – then my guess would be that it represents a very large number, if not a majority of Muslims, regardless of whether they support particularly actions or not.
Dresden comes to my mind. I think the British have to take responsiblity for that bombing which even Churchill disapproved of. I suppose one way to see 9/11 is as Muslims’ Dresden? This leaves open the question as to whether Dresden was justified, of course. My father though it was at the time.
When it comes to Zionism and Jews, I don’t have any doubts that the vast majority of Jews support the idea of a Jewish state, and, moreover, that for a majority it is this which actually largely defines their identity. This is not at all the same with Muslims, whose identity is largely determined by their religion.
There really is quite a big moral difference between a resistance movement against Western imperialism and a movement which by its very nature involves the oppression and genocide of another people. There is surely no moral eqivalence here.
Hope this makes some sense. This is a difficult area, but I think we urgently need to think about it, even if we sometimes get it wrong.
Francis
@Small Blue Thing – See my reply to Sophie, comment number 12. I hope this helps to clarify my position. Cheers, Francis
@amos zukerman – Thanks again Amos. We really seem to be on the same track. I very much appreciate you saying what you do. I imagine it could be uncomfortable for you. Best wishes, Francis
Interesting that when you are given an article to post that reveals how dangerously off track the likes of Lowes and Paul Eisen , (who Lowes parrots), suddenly it can’t come up on your site….
Balanced?
I don’t think so.
A shame that you wish to promote anti-semitic, racist and ill informed literature. Not helpful to any form of peace, but then again I getb the feeling this site is simply about egos.
“given an article”.. hey dude, if you look, i posted the long screed, which i had no time or interest to read. You could have left a link like normal people do!
why do i need to be balanced anyway? where is it stated that it is a requirement? And as Sami remarked to the comments on his post, those who are the aggressors always ask for “balance”…
I don’t care what you think the site’s about. Your material was there, so quit complaining.
Mary
I do not wish to get into an argument with you, I also do not wish to throw personal insults as I do not know you and you do not know me. I have noticed whilst reading your mails you are very keen in becoming personally offensive… My comments have been about your site and the comments displayed not about the people behind them.
Three times I tried to place on your site the article by Joel Finkel on why Eisen’s theory which Lowes has parroted on your site is dangerously off track. Three times the article did not come up though you maintain it is there . .. What should I a visitor to your site conclude after reading all the articles that are up but am unable to see an article that challenges such ideas?
Re being balanced, if you wish to remain unbalanced, as you yourself state, ‘Why do I need to be balanced anyway’ that is naturally your prerogative. However, sound conclusions can only ever be made when all facts have been discussed and reasoned. If your site is one that does not wish to uphold reason then fair enough, if that is the conclusion you wish the outside world to make. However, do not then think that the outside world should take your views and that of your site seriously, even though the topic your site is supposedly about, is very serious indeed.
For those who would like to read the counter argument to Eisen’s Jewish power theory written by Joel R Finkel already in 2005, (so Lowes work isn’t exactly original) the link is: http://www.nimn.org/Perspectives/american_jews/000308.php
anonanon, i saw the extremely long thing three times, and posted it up once. It is up on Tip of the Iceberg, and it need not be spammed across multiple posts, no matter how important you think it is. Or, just leave a link and do not expect people are willing to read a long post that is a reprint of some other article. This is a general internet practice and I haven’t introduced anything novel here.
What do you mean by balanced, then? That both sides of every issue are supposed to be given equal time? I would like you to know that on many sites, I am attacked and then banned from participating. So, I would take more issue with that kind of thing than just not getting a long and not original article up three times.
This is a site that is not interested in Israeli hasbara nor is the predominance of the focus on anti-semitism as the most important element in the campaigning, while at the same time there is little to no respect for Muslims and Christians, and labelling of others as such something that really matters to us. If you want to discuss an issue, come in with your own argument, not some gigantic article someone wrote and then claim we are not serious persons because we aren’t arguing it, then sorry.
if that looks personally offensive, then take into account being accused of something that I have not done. do not waste my time, and that is not meant as offensive, but as a request.
ps.. very keen on becoming personally offensive, come up with the examples, before just accusing.
actually, i left it up twice anonanon, as you can see by the traces next to your name, and i see it on the management page. Evidently, the system will not allow the long post to appear as a post itself because the system might be reading it as spam given the enormous word count.
Thank you for putting the article up
Have a nice day
So how much does the ministry of propaganda pay for you to work this scene anonanon or is it on a volunteer basis…???
Dr francs you write “In so far as Al Qaeda is what I described – the notion of resistence to Western imperialism – then my guess would be that it represents a very large number, if not a majority of Muslims, regardless of whether they support particularly actions or not. ”
Your better to quote hard facts guessing is not a good idea in this situation…..in my opinion….
When one considers the western zionist hysterical propaganda that surrounds Al Queda…
Dont you think that your statment would feed on this idea to the hysterical….????????????????
there is no ministry of propaganda Alkhansa just simple historical facts that the likes of Lowes and Eisen distort .
Peace
i procede from a conclusion that all ‘jews’ are guilty of their separate existence as well as all wrongs they have done.
and then ponder over the punishment for guilt. for many jews there shld not be any penalties save a verbal plaint against their crimes.
dayan, sharon, meir, et al shld be postumously tried for war crimes. perhaps another mn or so shld also be tried for following orders.
as to what pal’ns might do to ?all israelis once they become more powerful than ‘jews’, is another story.
actually, ashk’m are not connected in any way to- save by sharing a cult- shemites; they are a khazaro-slavic peoples mostly.
and most of all, ashk’m shld never ever be rewarded for their crimes which is what we do when we recognize israel. i recognize only palestine and ashk’m can go back to where they came from or accept palestine.
tx
sophie, yes
i’ve been calling chomsky a minizionist for a long time now. a mini zionist, to me, is a person who is for a twostate ‘solution’ and favors some ‘minor’ adjustments of borders.
i haven’t read that much of finkelstein to say that he too is a mini zionist. but both talk about socalled zionism with which as far as i know neither he nor noam nor any ashkenazi has any connection.
only hebrews, now utterly vanished, may speak of zion which they selves have conquered and may have slain many people to obtain it.
even judeans are no more; most of them fled to arab lands after ad 70. they may be mostly arabs.
thus if my analyses are correct or correct to a degree, finkelstein, chomsky, et al are dissemblers. tx
This has been one of the most interesting articles I have read (including the comments). I completely agree with you– that groups should be held responsible for their crimes against other groups, and that there is a need for people to find some form of justice for these crimes. I also agree with Sophie– that although it does not seem fair to hold an entire group of people accountable for the actions of a only a few of its members, these groups of people should take responsibility for these types of actions when they are benefiting from them. In most cases, “white” groups of people have colonized and oppressed “colored” groups of people, and although the “white” groups of people are still benefiting from these actions, the “colored” groups of people are still suffering as a result of these actions.
Although I was born in the United States, I am also appalled by the ignorance of the majority of American people (in reference to comment 11). I completely disagree with the way 9-11 is used as an excuse for the government to start foreign wars (with countries that have nothing to do with it) and to strip citizens (as well as immigrants and foreigners) of their human rights and civil liberties.
At the beginning of Bush’s first term, I could see that the reason why the government was pushing for a war with Iraq had more to do with destabilizing and controlling the Middle East, protecting and strengthening Israel, and obtaining oil and resources, and when I tried to discuss this with others, all they would say is that they agree with Bush because he is a “Republican” or because he is “Christian” (which I think is a complete lie pushed by neoconservatives to gain Christian votes– it baffles me that Christians in this country support Israel and protect Jews so much despite the fact that Jews do not believe that Jesus was the Messiah).
Perhaps the reason why I saw it differently was because my parents are immigrants from the Middle East. It is difficult for me to believe these sort of lies when I know what America wants to take from the Middle East for its own benefit. Americans occupying the Middle East is just an other method of imperialism.
Also, I wanted to point out that I also think the slave trade is indeed important to mention. It has definitely had extremely negative repercussions in this country. Despite the new president, racism is still an enormous problem here (in my opinion).