 | AntiSemitic and Insane Jews |
| (http://up-yours.us/) AntiSemitic and Insane Jews >From the Pen of Hank Roth "I despise above all two kinds of people: Jews and journalists. Unfortunately, I am both." - Ferdinand Lassalle Someone wrote to me and said, "Isn't it pushing the envelope to call other Jews antiSemites?" And I asked him why can't a Jew also be self-destructive and insane just like anybody else? Yes, "insane" - because it is insane to question the existence of the State of Israel if you are a Jew --- although it is perfectly acceptable to be critical of Israeli policy -- and therein lies a problem because those I debate often times do not distinguish between Israeli policy and Israel's existence. They are just as critical of Israel being there and that is AntiSemitic just as much if a Jew says it, as it is if a non-Jew says it. Paul Reitter in Jewish Social Studies; 9/22/2003, writes: "Has anyone been accused of Jewish self-hatred more often and more emphatically than Karl Kraus? Otto Weininger, Kraus's fellow fin-de-siecle Viennese, appears to be the only real competition. In fact, studies of German-Jewish culture frequently make Kraus and Weininger stand by themselves, under headings like "Self-Rejection and Self-Hatred" and "Prophets of Doom." Kraus receives such treatment because he laced his satirical newspaper, The Torch (Die Fackel), which he founded in 1899 and wrote and edited by himself from 1911 until his death in 1936, with countless antisemitic imprecations. He condemned the "world-destroying power" of "Jewish capitalism." He bragged that the "aversion" most antisemites felt against "Jewish things" was "child's play" next to his. He castigated the "Jew boys" at the "Jewish press." And he demanded that Jews give up Judaism completely and seek "redemption through total assimilation," to cite a final example." * Paul Reitter teaches in the German Department at Ohio State University. He is completing a book manuscript entitled The Soul of Form: Journalism, Karl Kraus and the Dialectics of German-Jewish Identity, which will be published by the University of Wisconsin Press. * Karl Kraus published The Torch. The Torch appeared three times per month, at least in its early years. Over 37 years, Kraus published 922 "numbers," whose topics range from sex trials to preposition usage. The Torch had a circulation of about 34,000 copies. Many of Kraus's readers were cultural luminaries--for example, Arnold Schonberg, Sigmund Freud, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Thomas Mann, Alban Berg, and Bertolt Brecht. For a survey of The Torch's cultural impact, see Martina Bilke, Zeitgenossen Der Fackel (Munich, 1981). Hereafter, all references to The Torch will be abbreviated TT, and citations will be given parenthetically. There is that constant refrain from Israel's critics that Israelis are colonizers and they are on "stolen land." It is ironic that they can distinguish between Israel being on so-called stolen land and their parents or the parents of their parents coming to America and being on stolen, confiscated property because everyone at one time or another was on someone elses land and it was common in the history of this country - for land to be acquired by force of conquest. Every piece of sand on the American continent was acquired by force or it was purchased from a foreign power that acquired it by force. Title as Valid as It Gets An abstract of title in Florida shows a line of ownership all the way back to the Queen of Spain when it was given to someone as a grant for services performed for the crown. And how did the Queen of Spain acquire the land? By force of course. The deed to that land is just as valid as any other deed of conveyance. Whether you like it or not, it is as valid as it gets. And so is Israel's title to the land of Israel. And Jews are among the worse self-criticizers and most guilt ridden people I know. I don't believe we have anything to feel sorry or guilty about. The land of Israel belonged to Jews once and belongs to Jews again. Some have tried to take it away and some have been successful but a return to the land and possession of the land is in itself a valid title to the land. But that is just one of the many points of contention. Those arguments against the right of Jews to have a claim to Israel are built on myths. The right extends to the government of Israel to do everything within its power to insure the security of the people who live in Israel. One insane, self-destructive Jew is Israel Shamir. I don't find anything written by Israel Shamir that isn't seething with self-hatred and it isn't credible. Israel Shamir is a self-loathing insane Jew. So when I came across something he wrote attacking Jared Israel as a "mole" on the left, or at best confused I was not at all surprised. Jared and I have had our differences too but I consider them minor and they are merely degrees of difference about the same issues which we find ourselves on as progressive, Israel supporting Jews. Peace and Support for Israel Are Not Mutually Exclusive Jared is a left-wing activist from the 60s and so am I - and both of us are still very critical of the right wing governments of Britain and the U.S. and Israel - and both of us advocate for peace and also support Israel's right to exist. Like many others on the Israeli left we are both Zionists. Israel Shamir, who is an anti-Zionist, writes hate filled articles about Israel calling for it's destruction. It is insane for a Jew to question the existence of Israel. Israel is the last refuge and the only real refuge from AntiSemitism. Not America, not England, not anywhere, but Israel is the last hope and security for Jews. It is a haven from AntiSemitism where Muslims and Christians are the majority and security against pogroms and another Holocaust. Israel Shamir is insane just like Lenni Brenner is also insane and just as Norman Finklestein is insane. Ran HaCohen is also insane because all of them are self-destructive and that is insane. Uri Avneri writes valid criticism, which I do not always agree with, but Uri is a Zionist. He would be the first to tell you so and has mentioned it in his writing. So is Benny Morris. So are most Israeli leftists. There have been other self-hating Jews who betrayed themselves and their community. The Marx family were Jewish. Karl Marx was a Jew. His mother was a Jew. But Karl Marx rejected Judaism because his father converted the entire family because Christian identity was a necessary prerequisite for anyone to have a professional life. And Karl Marx was also an AntiSemite. Often a former Jew is the most extreme kind of AntiSemite. It is also becoming acceptable again to compare Israelis with Nazis on the InterNUT. While some do not also say these things in public where it may not yet be acceptable that is changing too and there has been an increase in AntiSemitism - even in Europe where AntiSemitism was once institutionalized public policy. AntiSemitism is appealing and it makes the most complex of things seem simple. Anthony Julius writes: "Certainly, Jews perplex beyond mere animosity; an ancient people in the vanguard of progress, they are perceived to be the wealthiest of plutocrats and the most menacing of radicals, dogmatically attached to their faith and the most subversive skeptics. It is anti-Semitism's versatility, and what gives it such resilience, that it can embrace such contradictory imaginings. It appeals to Left and Right; it offers solutions to every social ill; it knows the secret of human misery. When the world becomes too variously complex to grasp, simplifications are felt to be necessary. Anti-Semitism is the great simplifier. As the French ideologue Charles Maurras--much admired by Eliot--put it: "Everything seems impossible, or frightfully difficult, without the providential arrival of anti-Semitism, through which all things fall into place and are simplified" (qtd. in Bredin 28)." * Anthony Julius is a partner in the London law firm Mishcon de Reya and a part-time teacher at University College London. - 9/22/1998) "Such is anti-Semitism's power that it has beguiled not just demagogues and those other, ordinarily vicious enemies of the Jews, but also creative artists of the highest quality. The educated public, however, is liable to forget this, and so, every few years, it needs to be reminded of what many of its favorite authors were capable. We tend to sentimentalize our great writers and often think more of them than they deserve. Expecting our poets and novelists to be moral, we are blind to the amorality of their imaginations." (ibid) Anthony Julius began writing "Reflections on T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form" as a kind of exercise to prove Bernard Lewis wrong in "Semites and Anti-Semites where Lewis calls T.S. Eliot a "typical anti-Semite" but his conclusion after doing research on Eliot was that Bernard Lewis was wrong, but not about Eliot's antiSemitism. He was wrong not to consider T.S. Eliot an "extraordinary anti-Semite". Another words the only error Bernard Lewis made was to consider Eliot simply typical. Anthony Julius also wrote: "Eliot wrote some remarkable anti-Semitic poetry and some banal anti-Semitic prose. The evidence that he regretted this poetry and prose is weak, and the evidence of amends, weaker still." "Anti-Semitism was a muse for Eliot. It was on occasion his inspiration......It yielded remarkable, disturbing results: chiefly, the poetry collected in the volume entitled Ara Vos Prec (1920), the principal work of what I describe in my book as his anti-Semitic period. While this is hardly something to celebrate, it demands a certain guarded, qualified regard." "Anti-Semitic discourse comprises a stockroom of cliches about Jews, discovered and adopted anew by each generation of anti-Semites. Unlike most anti-Semites, however, Eliot didn't merely take over these fatigued commonplaces, he exploited them to fresh and disturbing effect. Critics who miss this underestimate him." "What kind of anti-Semite, then, was T. S. Eliot? Some anti-Semites break Jewish bones; others wound Jewish sensibilities. Eliot falls into the second category. He was civil to Jews he knew, offensive to those who knew him through his work. He wounded his Jewish readers, if not the Jews of his acquaintance. He had the imagination of an anti-Semite in the highest degree. He was alive to anti-Semitism's resources while being indifferent to Jewish pain." And many today who do not consider themselves AntiSemitic use Antisemitic stereotyping and cliches to effect, including some who are Jewish; and non-Jews feed on those words and use them to sting and attack Israel and Jews. Arabs have had time to study and immitate the AntiSemitic ways of the West and they have picked up on all the stereotyping and the myths and now have adopted them as their own - repeating them at every opportunity and with relish - as they point to Christians who also say these things and attack Jews - and they quote self-destructive Jews to back up their disdain and encourage it, which leads to more violence against the Jewish State and ironically everything that happens to them, a complaint often also heard in the West, is considered the fault of Jews. Bernard Lewis is a great historian and orientalist. He knows the Arabs better than many Arabs know themselves. He points out how the Arab attitude toward Israel is not simply a quarrel against the Israeli state or Zionism; it is about the Jews and their religion. He says they have a "seething hatred" which is "commonly expressed in Arabic books, newspapers, magazines and even school textbooks in many parts of the Arab world." Quoting an Arab Spokesman: "The Jews and Zionism are like an evil tree. Its root is in New York, its branches all over the world, its leaves the Jews--all of them, old and young, male and female, without exception, are its thorny leaves and poisoned thorns, and the poison is swift and deadly." (Abd al-Rahman) This is grist for ignorance but many antiSemites have not been ignorant people. T.S. Eliot, Shakespeare, Wagner, Nietzsche, et al, were not ignorant. Those who engineered out the "Final Solution" were not ignorant. Hitler was not the ignoramus some have labeled him. "In any event, anti-Semitism is not, and never has been, an unavoidable, universal pathology. No one says you have to be an anti-Semite. And indeed, hostility to Jews has often been countered by vigorous, sometimes heroic interventions by others on their behalf. One cannot assert of any period in history that it was unqualifiedly anti-Semitic. When Jews have been attacked, there have been others willing to defend them; when they have been defamed, others have challenged their slanderers. Anti-Semitism has rarely enjoyed an entirely free run: Jews have fought back, numerous non-Jews by their side. And they have often won." (Julius) But nevertheless AntiSemitism did win when it became the ideology of the Third Reich. The result of which, we have seen, was the Holocaust. "Kershaw and Hamann dispose of many myths regarding the young Hitler- -the claim that he was partly of Jewish origin, and the claim that in Vienna he endured extreme poverty. The latter myth was created by Hitler himself in Mein Kampf, a book written in 1924 and replete with other fictions regarding his origins and his youth. Kershaw and Hamann also dispose of Hitler's later claim that he had become an anti-Semite in Vienna. There is no evidence, from friend or foe, that in those days Hitler disliked the Jews. In his endless political monologues he rarely referred to the Jews; and when he did, it was in a favorable vein. Young Hitler had several close Jewish acquaintances, one might even say friends. As Hamann shows, Hitler spent most of his time in the men's shelter with educated Jews, and he dismissed the then-popular blood libel charge against the Jew Leopold Hilsner, calling it "absolute nonsense, a groundless slander." Those who commissioned his watercolors, and thereby provided him with a livelihood, were Jews; he also owed his escape from a brief stint in the depths of lice-ridden misery and homelessness to Jewish benefactors." (Deak) "Hitler especially admired Dr. Eduard Bloch, a Jewish physician from Linz, who had treated his mother for breast cancer. Treatment at that time consisted of the use of iodine, which must have added to her sufferings. Some historians argue that Hitler's hatred of Jews and his desire to gas them or to poison them stem from this incident. Yet both Kershaw and Hamann make clear that Hitler, who adored his mother (he hated his father, a lower civil servant who was a ruthless martinet), was grateful to the Jewish doctor, despite his mother's agonizing death in 1907. He readily paid the doctor's fees, and wrote letters to Bloch expressing his gratitude; and in 1938, following the Anschluss in Austria, he made sure that the doctor and his family were able to emigrate under the most favorable conditions. In return, the doctor commented positively on the young Hitler in memoirs written in the United States." (ibid) "When did Hitler become an anti-Semite? Apparently not during the war, when this Austrian draft dodger served bravely in the Bavarian army. No fellow-soldier remembered his having made anti-Semitic statements, and he received the Iron Cross First Class, his most cherished possession for the rest of his life, at the recommendation of a Jewish lieutenant. Many historians believe Hitler when he writes in Mein Kampf that it was the collapse of Germany in the fall of 1918 that taught him to truly hate the Jews. Temporarily blinded by gas, Hitler experienced, as he claimed later, the most profound disappointment of his life at the news of the German collapse; and he, like other desperate Germans, concluded that the Jews had stabbed Germany in the back. But even this assertion is hard to prove." (ibid) * Ian Kershaw in "Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris" and Brigitte Hamann in "Hitler's Vienna: A Dictator's Apprenticeship" (Norton) shatter some myths about Hitler, both of which were reviewed by Istvan Deak in an article called, "The Making of a Monster" (4/12/99) in The New Republic. Hitler, also was not a typical anti-Semite. He certainly was extraordinary. The more we know about this man, the more enigmatic he becomes and the more we know about people who appear insane the more enigmatic that condition appears also. Perhaps we should not try to define it or explain it? Perhaps we should just treat it?? But, it should not be a surprise when it happens. It should not be surprising to us when we hear Arabs repeating old canards and libels because how do you erase thousands of years of myths and libels against Jews and it should not come as a great surprise that Jews can be concentration camp guards to obtain favors or become self-hating Jews when they can find some relief by joining the enemy. We are not the problem, they are. We can only treat the symptoms of their disease. Hank Roth, LL.B Recommended * Bernard Lewis, "Semites and Anti-Semites", Norton, 1999 Quotes are Fair Use for educational purposes per Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, of the Copyright Law. PERMALINK: This page on the WEB: http://pnews.org/ArT/AiS/SeL.shtml More at http://pnews.org/archives/ |
Monday, December 19, 2005
Jew_Concious: AntiSemitic and Insane Jews
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