Not “Self-”Hating Jews, but Jewish Scourges of Jews
Adam Levick of CiFWatch has a meditation on the problem of what I’ve called “hyper-self critical Jews.” Since I’m about to participate in a panel at the YIISA Conference on global anti-Semitism at Yale University later this month, I would like to encourage readers to comment so I can incorporate some of their ideas in my presentation.
The Guardian’s anti-Israel Jews, and a letter to my teenage nephew
August 11, 2010 in Uncategorized | Tags: Antisemitism, Antony Lerman, Comment is Free, Guardian, Hamas, Hezbollah, Nazi Analogies, Neve Gordon, Richard Silverstein, Seth Freedman, Theobald Jew | by Adam LevickCiF’s Jewish Israel defamers
When joining the team here at CiF Watch, and attempting to understand why Jewish writers for the Guardian are often among the most vociferous in expressing their contempt for Israel, and so willing to demonize the state’s Jewish supporters, I had to get up to speed on the term “Theobald Jew.”
I soon learned that:
According to the Benedictine monk Thomas of Monmouth in his The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich (1173), it was an apostate Jew, a certain Theobald, who, swore that Jews had killed twelve-year old William, a tanner’s apprentice, to fulfill their “Passover blood ritual” in the fateful year of 1144—the first recorded such episode in a long line of murderous defamations.
The CiF contributors I refer to include Naomi Klein, Neve Gordon, Richard Silverstein, Antony Lerman, Seth Freedman, Tony Greenstein, among others. These Jewish writers don’t merely critique Israeli policy, but routinely engage in hyperbole, vitriol, and gross distortions. Their rhetoric is often spewed with hate towards the Jewish state, all but ignoring the behavior of her enemies – the terrorist and reactionary movements who openly seek her annihilation. Such commentators often infer that the democratic Jewish state (the most progressive nation, by far, in the region) is almost always in the wrong, is usually motivated by a hideous malevolence, and represents a national movement which they, as Jews, are ashamed to be associated with.
Freedman, for instance, has suggested that Israel is a theocracy – one which is on moral par with Hamas, Hezbollah, and al-Qaeda. Gordon has on several occasions accused Israel of ethnic cleansing – once advancing such an ugly calumny in the radical anti-Zionist magazine, Counterpunch. Tony Greenstein has ardently defended the ugly comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany, typically advanced by extremists. Richard Silverstein has called the behavior of Israelis serving in the IDF “subhuman“, and has defended Hamas from “charges” that they are an extremist movement. Naomi Klein actually accused Israel of being so cruel and sadistic as to “bury children alive in their homes.”
While, for the Guardian, employing the services of Theobald Jews serves to inoculate them from charges of anti-Semitism, such Jewish writers, in return, receive the progressive and universalist credentials they so eagerly seek.
The Misnomer of the “Self-Hating Jew”
To be fair, I always found the term “self-hating Jew” to be at best misleading, at worst a complete misnomer. First, because we typically have no way of knowing these writers‘ inner-thoughts. But, more importantly, I never thought that it was an apt description of the anti-Zionist Jews I’ve met over the years. If anything, most seem to possess a belief that they are indeed “better Jews” for being hyper-critical of Israel, opposing their own community, and rejecting the very idea of a Jewish nation-state.Many seem singularly focused on being seen as a “progressive”. And, as the progressive movement has moved further and further away from identification with Israel – and, to some degree, further away from identification with Jews as such – the need to be seen as progressive (“righteous”) in the eyes of others, has taken precedence over the seemingly parochial desire to identify with, and defend, their own community.
I have thought long and hard about the phenomenon of Jews who oppose their own community, have read and written about it, and there appears to be four dynamics worth exploring:
1. Moral Vanity
I was particularly inspired by Anthony Julius’s long two-part essay published at the American Jewish Committee site, Z Word. The piece was called Jewish anti-Zionism Unravelled: The Morality of Vanity. (Pt. 1 & Pt. 2). Julius also rejects the notion of such Jews as being “self-hating”. Instead he refers to them as moralisers who continually desire affirmation from the non-Jewish world as to their righteousness.
The moraliser makes judgments on others, and profits by so doing; he puts himself on the right side of the fence. Moralising provides the moraliser with recognition of his own existence and confirmation of his own value. A moraliser has a good conscience and is satisfied by his own self-righteousness . He is not a self-hater; he is enfolded in self-admiration. He is in step with the best opinion.
In his book, Trials of the Diaspora, Julius calls them “scourges,” a term I prefer because it relates to their self-anointed role as prophets, whipping the wayward Jewish people into line.
2. The Temptation of Innocence
Ruth Wisse, in her book Jews and Power, identified the tendency of some Jews to vociferously oppose their own community as a dynamic which she, in part, attributes to a Jewish uneasiness with the projection political power and a tendency to almost fetishize the Jews’ history of powerlessness. Wisse concludes that Jews who endured, or know the history of, the powerlessness of exile are in danger of mistaking it for a requirement of Jewish life or, worse, for a Jewish ideal. This puerile desire not to be corrupted by the complexities, and occasional compromises, necessitated by possessing moral agency is described by Pascal Bruckner as “The Temptation of Innocence.”
3. Jewish Fear: Assimilation and Altruism as an Inoculation from Harm
More recently, Barry Rubin, director of the GLORIA Center (Global Research on International Affairs), in an illuminating and penetrating piece, entitled “Explaining Jewish Political Behavior“, said:
[historically] Jews were attacked for allegedly having too much power, even when they had little or none, the emphasis was on being eager to make concessions, not to gain victories through threat or pressure.
…How would this strategy try to succeed? By proving Jews were good citizens, by showing they were unselfish and sought nothing for themselves, by demonstrating their willingness to dissolve the bonds and customs of their own community…and by showing that being nice to them would benefit everyone or almost everyone. In other words, altruism was a central element in the strategy
“…A key element of the assimilationist doctrine has been to deny there was a [Jewish] collective communal interest, and to avoid making collective demands.
Rubin, who, it should be noted, fleshes out his argument more fully in his book, Assimilation and Its Discontents, continues:
large parts of the Jewish elite are proud to stand aloof from their own people and deem it virtuous to abandon it and reject any notion of communal interests (including Israel and religion). Indeed, they think they can best prove their credentials by championing the causes of other groups even–sometimes especially–those in conflict with Jewish interests.
…The elite Jew’s emphasis is often to escape identification with the community, proving he is a cosmopolitan with a universalist identity, being the first to demand the dissolution of any community loyalty and viewing the embodiment of Jewish peoplehood—Israel—as an impediment to those goals. While antisemites charge that all or almost all Jews in positions of power pursue a distinctively Jewish interest, the exact opposite is the truth. This explains how left-wing Jews extol multiculturalism and self-determination for other peoples even as they hold the exact opposite attitude toward their own people, whom they are determined to show are not their own people.
…many Jews, particularly in elite positions, are eager to prove their credentials by criticizing their own people or Israel.
4. The Adversarial Jew: Skepticism and relativism disguised as reasoned political thought
I think there’s one last dynamic at play – an insight I came upon as a result of an email exchange I had with my 16-year-old nephew recently.
He reached out to me to seek my advice on this phase he was going through. It seems that he’s going through an early “existential crisis” of sorts – a frame of mind (I warmly noted to him) that most don’t arrive at until college. He mentioned that, lately, he’s been questioning everything – every social convention, everything he’s ever been told, and wondering whether the wisdom, mores, and customs he‘s been brought up by his parents to believe in and abide by are indeed worthy. He said that, since this struggle, he wasn’t misbehaving, but had resigned himself to merely “going through the motions” – but wasn’t really buying into what he always believed to be true. He wanted to know what I thought.
In my reply, I assured him that what he’s going through is perfectly normal, and was a sign that he possessess a vibrant, active, and healthy mind – and, that, indeed, such existential crises were the inspiration for great works of poetry, literature, and philosophy through the ages. I said that I also went through a similar mental orientation – that I, during the first couple years of college, questioned everything ever taught to me by my parents and my community. I even looked down on the adults in my life, and their seemingly conventional thinking. In my arrogance, I said, I believed that I saw things they didn’t see…had arrived at answers to questions that had perplexed not only my a parents and relatives, but the most brilliant minds in my time and in generations past.
However, I also told him that I eventually learned to have a bit of humility about it all, and eventually realized that I didn’t know much about life, at that early stage in my life, at all. And, that my parents, the older I got (and as my adolescence receded) seemed to become wiser and wiser with each passing year – in what I increasingly identified as their decency, sobriety, and plain common sense.
So, I asked my nephew if he would at least try to avoid the audacity of imagining that he alone possessed the wisdom and insight that has eluded his community – the Rabbis, sages, political, and community leaders – in his generation and though the ages. I asked that he not assume that because his father claims that something is true, that the opposite must indeed be what’s actually correct. I asked that he be patient and assured him that, with time and experience, he’ll eventually not be so quick to question the intentions of those who guide him. I expressed confidence that he will come to see that a healthy skepticism about “conventional thinking” is indeed normal, but that he’ll eventually understand that such thoughts need not devolve into a knee-jerk rejection of all the traditions and values of those who have come before him and have guided generations of Jews through often dark and harrowing times.
Julius, in his Z Word essay, dissected the potential moral pathos of many such renegade Jews:
He holds that the truth is to be arrived at by inverting the “us = good” and “other = bad” binarism. He finds virtue in opposing his own community; he takes the other point of view. He writes counter-histories of his own people. It is not enough for him to disagree, or even refute; he must expose the worst bad faith, the most ignoble motives, the grossest crimes. He must discredit.
My nephew is a smart, decent, and level-headed young man. And, I have no doubt that he’ll maintain his bearings during this intellectual “crisis” and not allow himself to surrender to hubris, nor develop a malevolence towards the family and community that has supported, nurtured, and guided him through the complexities of everyday life – those who love him dearly and have tried with all their heart to provide a path to protect him from the maddeningly complicated world he lives in.
It’s a simple lesson perhaps, but a vital one. And, its wisdom that many of the Jews who write for the Guardian, quite shamefully, don’t even meagerly possess.
As Anthony Julius put it so pungently, “they’re proud to be ashamed to be Jewish.” Honor-Shame culture turned on its head. And when hooked up with Arab scapegoating gives us the toxic marriage of pre-modern sadism and post-modern masochism. World, beware Jews who bears the gifts of loathing their own people. Nothing good can come of it, for Jews or for the other nations.
In the process of reading the whole thing, but I want to say that I agree with his opinion of the “Self-hating Jew” as a misnomer.
Another term needs to be made.
It is too easily derided as absurd (of course they don’t actually hate THEMSELVES). Adam Levick includes the other reasons it is misleading in his post.
I think this is a point that is severely under-emphasized in today’s discourse about anti-Israel leftist-Jews.
If anything, most seem to possess a belief that they are indeed “better Jews” for being hyper-critical of Israel, opposing their own community, and rejecting the very idea of a Jewish nation-state.
This is key: it’s BECAUSE the insist on being “better jews” that they hate Israel so much. At some level they realize the moral superiority of Israel, warts and all, and they cannot accept that by not, as jews, living in Israel, they are inferior.
And, as the progressive movement has moved further and further away from identification with Israel – and, to some degree, further away from identification with Jews as such – the need to be seen as progressive (“righteous”) in the eyes of others
That’s #2: conformism with their progressive class, for fear of social excommunication.
I have thought long and hard about the phenomenon of Jews who oppose their own community
They are afraid for being lumped with “their community” so they must disassociate themselves, to stress that it is NOT their community.
moralisers who continually desire affirmation from the non-Jewish world as to their righteousness.
Converters to christianity thend to desire to be “more catholic than the pope” for similar reasons: to overcome the stigma of not being “native” to it, but coming from the “other”, the “enemy”.
Jewish uneasiness with the projection political power and a tendency to almost fetishize the Jews’ history of powerlessness.
The notion seems to be “if we just did not aspire to power, they would like us”. Fits very well in the hands of islam and its perception of dhimmis. Power is bad and the root of evil. It does not seem to occur to them that it’s precisely the lack of power and the power into the hands of their enemies that is a major factor in the jews’ fate in history.
By proving Jews were good citizens, by showing they were unselfish and sought nothing for themselves, by demonstrating their willingness to dissolve the bonds and customs of their own community…and by showing that being nice to them would benefit everyone or almost everyone. In other words, altruism was a central element in the strategy
It is actually self-protection promoted as altruism and is the main aspect of jewish behavior prior and during the holocaust.
The elite Jew’s emphasis is often to escape identification with the community, proving he is a cosmopolitan with a universalist identity, being the first to demand the dissolution of any community loyalty and viewing the embodiment of Jewish peoplehood—Israel—as an impediment to those goals.
See Judt and Wieselthier on Judt.
And when hooked up with Arab scapegoating gives us the toxic marriage of pre-modern sadism and post-modern masochism.
That’s why the encounter between the western left and Islam is so damn dangerous — and why the collapse of the west is so acute and fast.
Simply put: if they hate jews it must be their fault. So don’t treat us as jews, we are better.
“To be fair, I always found the term “self-hating Jew” to be at best misleading, at worst a complete misnomer.”
The term is accurate if one interprets it as meaning not a Jew who hates himself, but a Jew who hates other Jews, particularly those different from himself.
Accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing is another historical inversion. Israel did not do like the turks in Cyprus (1974) who ethnically cleansed northern cyprus from greeks, nor the ruddians that expelled the ethnic georgians from South Ossetia or the kosovars that cleansed Kososvo from serbs etc…
In 1967 Israel did not move the “palestinains” out of Judea and Samaria (we can note that the above mentioned cleanser do not have a problem with these minorities, as Isarel know does with the pals.
Israel had a moral and even (foolishly) generous attitude (Dayan giving up the keys of the temple mount in 67) and it is the one acused of immorality.
The jew hating jews are craving acceptance from anti-semites. They haven’t learned. The antisemites will use them until time comes to kill them.
I meant Russians.
There is some good news. Tony Judt died. May the Guardian of Israel judge him with more mercy than he judged his fellow Jews.
This issue is as old as the Haggadah. The evil son is one who stands aside from the rest of the community, and asks – “what has this to do with me?”
The most abhorrent case at the moment is that of Neve Gordon, a tenured professor at BGU, who calls for boycotts against Israel in articles in the LA Times, eagerly taken up by the Guardian. Of course, he assumes that the boycott will apply to all Israelis except himself and a reliable select few who will continue to call for boycotts against “all those other Israelis”, from who he excludes himself.
I think CiFWatch has had a somewhat ameliorating effect on some of the “as-a-Jews” that write – or wrote- for it – the ones who preface their remarks with “As a Jew … I am entitled to say the most horrendous things about those other, deficient, non-universalist, unempathetic, Zionist etc. etc. Jews”. For example, Seth Freedman regularly used Nazi analogies to describe Israelis – that is to say, all those other Israelis, not his pals – while some, like Rachel Shabi, has had her views revealed as totally absurd as she tries to reincarnate the dead horse of Mizrachi-Ashkenazi friction in Israel. Demonstrating additional factual errors, such as simple errors in geography has had a useful dampening effect as well.
I think it’s important to look at the extent to which these anti-Zionist Jews actually identify as Jewish, or whether they are using the cover of a Jewish sounding name to gain an insider’s advantage in the debate.
Unlike in Hitler’s day, being a Jew – especially in multicultural America – is something you can choose to take upon yourself or reject entirely. I would therefore argue that those who do not identify as Jews – even if it’s secular Workman’s Circle-style cultural Jewishness – are in no meaningful sense Jews.
In this sense, I think it’s a category mistake to call Norman Finkelstein or Noam Chomsky a Jew. They are hard leftists with Jewish-sounding surnames.
wow couldn’t of said it better myself.
even an atheist can see that to be anti israel is in actuality being against the jewish population….
so yes freedom for gaza…people who would be lead by a terrorist organization…without israel’s help….
and watch your people disappear just so you can fit in…..
i do not know if anyone has noticed but norman finklestein has a huge death anger stare wrinkles…. it must take a lot out of a person who hates to be free.
You forgot Glenn “the fag” Greenwald who is too scared to travel to an Arab country.
The willingness to criticize one’s own country, party, religion, faction, ethnos has been one of the strengths of western culture.
But as I have noted, it has evolved into an autoimmune disease.
It doesn’t just affect Jews. Look at the way white Americans grovel to “Indian nationalists”, or the endless British apologias for the sins of the Empire. Or the efforts to hammer both the U.S. and Britain for the air war against Nazi Germany and Japan.
But yeah. The Western. Enlightenment virtue of critical dissent has been fetishized – so being a dissenter and internal critic becomes a position of superlative virtue and prestige. We reward anyone who flogs us.
Diane: There have been many Jews with understandable motives for opposing Zionism.
The great struggle of the 19th century was to gain acceptance for Jews as equal citizens of the countries they lived in. Not just legal equality, but functional equality – not being considered “foreign”. To be considered “French”, or “German”, or “British”, or “American”, just as much as any Gentile.
This was in substantial part achieved. And then the Zionists declared that such assimilation was impossible and wrong – that Jews were a separate people. In some respects, Zionism tacitly agreed with the anti-semitic nativists. And thus it is not ridiculous for a Jew to to have opposed Zionism as a Jew.
At this time, wrong-headed and foolish, but not absurd.
I think it’s important to look at the extent to which these anti-Zionist Jews actually identify as Jewish, or whether they are using the cover of a Jewish sounding name to gain an insider’s advantage in the debate.
I would suspect jewishness (or for that matter ethicity, race or religion) means nothing to them (this does not stop them from being racist, of course). By this they seek to disaasociate themselves from jewishness so that their class won’t excommunicate them.
Unlike in Hitler’s day, being a Jew – especially in multicultural America – is something you can choose to take upon yourself or reject entirely.
Well, if indeed jewishness is defined by birth of a jewish woman, then you ARE a jew, whether you like it or not (that’s how nazis treated even those who converted to christianity). So you can refuse to consider yourself a jew, but others won’t accept that.
Which is precisely why they must curse Israel to kingdom come, as self identification usually is not enough.
This was in substantial part achieved. And then the Zionists declared that such assimilation was impossible and wrong
Well, I guess that after 6 million of those who achieved that “substantial emancipation” you refer to, the Zionists had to question it just a bit, don’t you think? Especially since that striving for emancipation started shortly after christianity hijacked jesus and we know how well it ended many times in history.
“And then the zionists declared…” indeed. Just out of the blue.
Why should we waste time on their motives?
There is probably more than one reason, in this post there are four different analysis, four different reasons. There are probably more reasons to add; some are anti-Semitic Jews, since there is no biological immunity from having a view, [an anti-Semite is someone who opposes the right of Jews for life, liberty and equality, and since Jews are a nation, that right is the state of Israel as a democratic Jewish state]. Others belong to competitive ideologies that lost to Zionism and refuse to accept defeat, others cannot tell the difference between liberal values and Palestinian propaganda. And some of the people in the last category are genuine Zionist.
Trying to sort out all their motives is a waste of time; it is much better to focus on their arguments. Debunk their interpretation of reality, debunk the morality of their reasoning, debunk their “facts,” and whatever else they bring along.
I truly believe that to try to understand these indiviudals is a waste of time. There can be any numbe of reasons that they turn on their own people. It can be as simple as their religous father spent time praying or making htem pray when tehy would hav preferred to go out and play football, to truly disagreeing with every precept of religon in general.
The reality is, that they are just a miniscule portion fo the Jewish community if they align themselves with the Jewish community at all. Remember most of the “self-hating” Jews have removed themselves in one way or another from the Jewish community as a whole, either by converting to another religion, not belonging to a synagogue and in fact joining their spouses church instead, to not giving to or having anything to do with Jewish cahrity organization, besides belonging to overtly antisemitic political parties.
The issue is what to do with them and how to marganilize them.It becomes difficult when the antisemites of the world hold those, like Goldstone, up as proof that theur antisemitic narrative is correct because they have a Jew on their side.
I wouldn’t regard Goldstone as an Anti-Semite. His particular case is more complex and thereby a good example why we should not put this entire group in the same box, when we try to explain their motives.
Sorry Dvar but I think you do give Goldstone too much credit. Personally I think that it is not complex at all. Here is an egocentric indiviudal who presided over an apartheid legal system, who wanted to rehabilitate his image by castigating his own people to show what an internationalist he was (that was after he was made to look foolish during his investigation of war crimes in Bosnia as well). Anyone with any intelligence knew what the outcome of the investigation into Gaza conflict was going to be and in fact that he did not even bother to truly investigate any of the allegations made against Israel shows that he also had an agenda before hand for what ever reason. Maybe the Israeis didn’t give his ego enough of a boost when he thought that he was entitled to it. Simple not complex at all.
Patriot,
There is nothing in what I said that gives him credit. I discussed his motives, not the quality of his work.
There is nothing about the motives you attributed to him, in your analysis that suggest anti-Semitism.
The greatest tribute to one’s professional status in modern times, regardless of one’s geography, is to be allowed to publish his/her opinion in the New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post and other mainstream news outlets. To be hailed by those hallowed institutions as progressive, constructive, visionary, or even ‘smart enough’, is to have been annointed with the oil of ‘civil redeemer’ and to allow one’s ego to sip from the nectar of ‘everlasting media life’ generally afforded only to great literary illuminatae or members of the ruling elite. Few are those who can withstand the attraction towards the black hole of leftist anti Israel rhetoric.
There is an old story of a Shabbos Goy who at the end of his life begged to be buried as a Jew. He explained to the incredulous community that when he originally applied for the job, he’d hoped it would be temporary. Times were tough, he needed work, years passed, he accepted his fait and even found merit in justification of his own actions. Economics and the security of belonging to a willing employer took precedence over religious scruples. Our modern world produces many who, after spending a lifetime in the halls of learning and the fortunes of their forebearers to obtain the highest academic degrees, will find it easier based on their biased education and far more financially rewarding to be accepted among the literary and philisophical Leftist majority than among the few remaining rational thinkers. If one’s own anti-semetism, (yes Jews can be Anti Semites) sells, so be it.
I just wanted to add an element that I think plays largely into Jewish hyper-criticism of Israel — that of real physical consequences of an ideology.
In other words, there is almost no immediate risk in the act of brutally (but verbally/ideologically) attacking a civilized society that innately respects diverse viewpoints and freedom of expression. Israel, Jews, the United States — all fall within the domain of safe targets for criticism. By comparison, truly evil crimes tend to be committed by truly evil people who lack the fundamental respect for criticism in the safe target realm. Hence, self-righteous Jews who might pursue Muslim fundamentalists or the Black Panthers or Sudanese militias would put themselves in real risk of physical/vital harm by the very act of their criticism.
Therefore, if the simple act of being critical produces intellectual/moral esteem, then clearly making Israel, the Jews, Americans, etc your target makes sense, as it results in so many benefits at such little risk.
Perhaps also there’s a celebrity angle to this. Rabid anti-Israel criticism from a Jew propels that person from a run-of-the-mill obscure status as a nobody to an expert, moralizing celebrity.
is to be allowed to publish his/her opinion in the New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post and other mainstream news outlets
Exactly right (although those hallowed pubs do publish the token non-leftist once in a blue moon just enough to deny what you just argued).
Hallowed they may be, but judging from their finances hollowed too.
to obtain the highest academic degrees
And so are those degrees too.
Hey, Rich, see what I mean?
One photograph is of Theodor Herzl, born 150 years ago. Dismayed by the eruption of anti-Semitism in France during the Dreyfus Affair at the end of the 19th century, Herzl became Zionism’s founding father. Long before the Holocaust, he concluded that Jews could find safety only in a national homeland.
George Will in Washinton Post.
Rich, the Jews were historically considered a separate nation or people in Europe –and had a separate legal status in the various Euro countries– into the 19th century, following the famous Clermont-Tonnerre speech leading to Jewish equality during the French revolution, and the subsequent “Sanhedrin” convened by Napoleon [who also toyed with Zionism while he was in the East]. Actually, even today Jews are not fully equal citizens in a number of Euro states, including members of the EU.
Incog and Rich, some of this apparent grovelling by several Western states towards formerly colonized countries and peoples is really done for political purposes; it is instrumental. Britain has been pro-Muslim and pro-Arab since about 1920, not only in Israel but in India, in the Ottoman Empire, in Egypt.
The UK has tacit or undiscussed, undisclosed political purposes that are served by a pro-Muslim, pro-Arab policy.
Some comments:
1) We should remember that the left has a *long* tradition of antisemitism (check Bauer and Marx´s invention of the “judenfrage” and the outstanding book “Revolutionary Antisemitism” by Paul Lawrence Rose) centered around jews=capitalists=bad, the role of court jews and the “particularism” issue.
2) The particularism issue is a central isssu for those who uncritically embraced the naive view of the Enlightenment and its abstract “universalism”, as if human existence could be *totally* independent of the many familial, cultural, social and political allegiances and influences. Even if the intentions are good, this in an amazingly naive view of human nature. In any case, this is behing the assimilation bargain: “you jews can join humanity only if you abandon your jewish indentity”. Nowadays thing are more muddled as the new universalism is…multiculturalism!
3)The toxic and corrupt influence of postmodernism in the humanities, from which many of these people come and from where they take their views (lit-crit, psychoanalysis, journalism, etc). In their frame of mind, there´s no truth to be searched after, only “unmasking” of “hegemonic narratives”, no analysis but only “deconstruction”. So, these people are prone to conspiratorial views. The resulting conceptual flatness, intellectual lazyness and sheer ignorance is a flagrant betrayal of the valuable insights from the Enlightenment.
4) Also, I think that one component of their vehemence is resentment of not being taken seriously, the lack of attention that intellectuals crave for, so the need of their bombast and stridence.
Regarding the “shame” thing, it reminds me of the case of Hanna Arendt, which thought herself a sophisticated central-european intellectual, ashamed of those easter european primitive jews. In a famous exchange of letters Gerson Scholem mentions that she lack “a love for the jewish people”.
Dvar,
There is nothing about the motives you attributed to him, in your analysis that suggest anti-Semitism.
No, he is an opportunist watching which way the wind blows to take advantage and better himself at the expense of others.
He is not courageous enough morally and ethically to go against the more powerful non-Jews in whose eyes he wishes to appear loyal and faithful.
He is in the figure of the obsequious Uriah Heep frightened of appearing part of the “collective” other so despised by the “masters” that would detract from the image he aspires to.
Well Cynic,
You have one possible explanation; another is that he simply trusts those types. And there are probably more possible explanations, which is why pondering at the motives is a waste of time.
Finally, Richard is back to his old self. Please, don’t disappear like that – there are people hear eagerly
awaiting intellectually stimulating posts like these!
On the topic, I think that what Dvar Dea noted about simply belonging to opposing ideological camps is being underrated here. Another thing is pure ignorance; of history for example. There is no doubt whatsoever that psychology plays a central role, however, others, more down to earth or personal reasons should not be negated as well.
Alas, much as Richard and others noted, Jews seem to be unique in the prominence and fervor of antipathy to their keen, unparalleled by any other nation, not even the relativistic Europeans, who while smearing the US and Israel or the sins of Colonialism, have rarely anything bad to say about their own culture, nation or values.
As is the case with most other things, Jews are in the vanguard of national masochism too.
I’ll second sshender’s request for more “intellectually stimulating posts like these”.
There is no doubt whatsoever that psychology plays a central role, however, others, more down to earth or personal reasons should not be negated as well.
What could be more down to earth (as primary cause) than psychology – the forces acting in the brain at the time a behavior is selected? As I was going to suggest to Dvar, what people say about their own motives is to make the behavior (that they are being challenged to justify) justifiable of course, and thereby preserve their honor (their rep as a worthy person).
People also do this for their ideological allies. Libs will describe Dem pols motives as saintlike, conservatives vice versa, etc.
The corollary; people will describe the motives of their enemies in the opposite way – to make them seem like the worst possible humans on earth.
My point; what people say about their own or their opponents motives seldom have any relationship to the psychology – the forces in their minds at the time the behavior was selected. And those forces are the only way to know their actual motives. It can be done but it’s difficult. It can almost never be done by allies or enemies in conflict attempting to describe their own or their enemies’ motives.
That said, some few people’s motivations are actually saintlike and many people’s motivations are actually the worst imaginable. For example, while I would not say the Israeli’s behavior is saintlike in the AI conflict – it comes as close as almost any people’s I have seen in the ugly history of war. I base that on the undeniably defensive nature and their forbearance under extreme provocation to the point of threatening their own existence. And it’s hard not to see the self-admitted and self-admired motives of their Arab enemies’ as the worst imaginable on almost any human scale. It’s interesting that they are so honest about attacking innocent civilians and such but that’s probably because they see the oppression of the weak (ruthless killing of women and children) as admirable in their culture. Mohammed did it, didn’t he? Not because they feel some extraordinary need for honesty about their motives.
It’s even more interesting to see how leftists in the west act as their allies and help them justify it like “what else can they do when facing the brutal IDF armed by the world’s greatest superpower, etc?”.
Good to see you back. I was afraid you gave up. ;-)
Another thing is pure ignorance; of history for example.
I have been arguing that consistently, with the proviso that it is mostly willful ignorance and gullibility to what the MSM and the propaganda sources disseminate. There is also much laziness and inability to think independently and critically.
Jews seem to be unique in the prominence and fervor of antipathy to their keen, unparalleled by any other nation
That is at least in part understandable for a nation persecuted to such degree. The survival — social and physical — instinct is bound to kick in via disassociation.
Ray,
There is a HUGE difference between Israeli and diaspora jews. The latter are much closer culturally to their native societies and much quicker to accept and assimilate than the former.
It’s even more interesting to see how leftists in the west act as their allies and help them justify it like “what else can they do when facing the brutal IDF armed by the world’s greatest superpower, etc?”.
It’s not that interesting to me, because the reason is obvious: an inferiority complex.
They deem themselves superior morally and cannot handle the realization, at some level, that Israel beats them at it. That’s the reason why they prefer willful ignorance, to avoid cognitive dissonance between dogma and reality.
Here’s a good article on “Effects of Motivated Reasoning on Political Decision Making”
http://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1067&context=polisci_pubs
willful ignorance kind of implies some conscious process of not knowing something – which I don’t think is possible. That’s like telling someone not to think of an elephant – like you just did. I think motivated ignorance might be a better term but I get your point.
@28
Are you using “diaspora” and “Israeli” to mean “not born in Israel” and “born in Israel”, respectively? Or do you mean something else?
willful ignorance kind of implies some conscious process of not knowing something – which I don’t think is possible.
The use of the term willful ignorance has a very specific meaning in this context. They of course are not conscious that they are ignorant. But they refuse to invest effort or pay attention to evidence that indeed they dk all they need to know to form an opinion.
For example: how many of the leftists that ally themselves with the pals acquire serious knowledge of pal culture, the history of the conflict, the details of the various negotiations, how they treat their own, the Hamas covenant? And what is their reaction when they are referred to all that?
I don’t see much difference using motivated. In such cases people say “it’s just semantics”, but they actually mean the very opposite: it’s just SYNTAX.
Are you using “diaspora” and “Israeli” to mean “not born in Israel” and “born in Israel”, respectively? Or do you mean something else?
I mean “born, raised and lived to maturity”, that is being formed by the respective culture.
Of course there can be cross-influences if they move between cultures, but they do have some core and the later they move the less is the core affected.
Ok people,
This is an important and insightful discussion on this issue.
Every person brought a unique angle or elaborated that angle. And I’m sure that many if not all are correct.
But after all that has been written here, is there anyone who can offer a simple phrase, or a sentence to explain such Jews, other then ‘self hating Jews?’
I too have always believed that ” self-hating Jew ” is a misnomer. They are self-loving Jews. Their hatred is directed at God because of the universal perception that God chose the Jewish people. Because of this perception Jews are always singled out for persecution, no matter what they do or don’t do. So these self-loving Jews, instead of accepting the fact that no matter how much they assimilate and spout venom at Israel, the non Jewish societies will ultmately spit them out, turn on their fellow Jews
like rabid psychopaths. They are the most pathetic losers. They still have the name Jew tagged on to them and to their virulent diatribes. They can never shake off the distinguishing Star of David.
Dvar Dea wrote,
“But after all that has been written here, is there anyone who can offer a simple phrase, or a sentence to explain such Jews, other then ‘self hating Jews?”
Maybe it would be beneficial to use – but maybe it would not be beneficial to use – I don’t know whether or not it would be beneficial to use – one or more of the following terms, which, I think, are accurate.
The following are terms that I think are accurate in all cases of the Jewish people who are the subject of this discussion.
(The following are terms that I think are accurate in describing Jewish people who are deluded, and who hold perverse wrong views, and who – because they are deluded and hold perverse wrong views – feel themselves to be in opposition to the community of the Jewish people, and oppose the community of the Jewish people, and do actions that harm Jewish people.)
O anti-Jewish Jewish people
O anti-Jewish Jews
The following are terms that I think are accurate in some of the cases of the Jewish people who are the subject of this discussion.
(The following are terms that I think are accurate in describing Jewish people who are deranged, and who hold very perverse wrong views, and who – because they are deranged and hold very perverse wrong views – hate the community of the Jewish people and intentionally do actions to harm the community of the Jewish people, which are actions that harm Jewish people.)
O Jewish haters of the Jewish people
O Jewish people who hate the Jewish poeple
O Jew-hating Jews
O Jewish Jew-Haters
I don’t know whether or not it is helpful to focus on such people who are Jewish. I think that it may not be helpful – I think that it may not be beneficial – to focus on such people who are Jewish.
I think that what needs to be done is for leaders of Israel to start telling the truth about the situation.
Israeli leaders need to start telling the factual history and current reality of the situation to world leaders and to the world.
In the following 6 minute and 32 second long audio-video clip, Melanie Phillips concisely articulates what the situation is, and involved in that, what the mindset and behavior of Israeli government officials is, and what Israeli government officials – Israeli leaders – need to do in order to make the situation better.
“Melanie Phillips： World Turned Upside Down [Q&A] (6／7)”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdqPDqtg7Po
I wrote,
“Israeli leaders need to start telling the factual history and current reality of the situation to world leaders and to the world.”
First, Israeli leaders need to realize, and even, to a large degree, learn, what the factual history and current reality of the situation is, and as part of that, Israeli leaders need to realize and understand why telling the factual history and current reality of the situation to world leaders and to the world is necessary to prevent the situation from becoming worse and to make the situation better.
They of course are not conscious that they are ignorant. But they refuse to invest effort or pay attention to evidence that indeed they dk all they need to know to form an opinion.
That clears it up for me. I agree. The paper I linked to explains this pretty well.
..the factual history of the situation being the factual history of the situation from 1917 (and even earlier) until the present time.
O The Balfour Declaration – 1917
O The Faisal-Weizmann Agreement – 1919 – signed by Emir Faisal (Faisal bin al-Hussein) and Haim Weizmann to create one Arab state and one Jewish state in what, in 1920, was named the British Mandate of Palestine
O The British Mandate of Palestine (Which included all of what is now Jordan, and included all of what is now Israel, and included all of what is now called “The West Bank”, and included all of what is now called “The Gaza Strip”) – named in 1920
O Jack Philby (St. John Philby; also known by his Arabic name, Sheikh Abdullah) – The manager, assigned in 1920, of the British Mandate of Palestine, British intelligence officer, self-professed Socialist, fluent speaker of Arabic, convert to Islam in 1930, funder, in the 1930′s, of the National Socialist (Nazi) regime of Germany with laundered Arab petroleum revenue money, profitter, in the 1930′s, from funding, the National Socialist (Nazi) regime of Germany in the 1930′, supplier, in the 1930′s, of Arab petroleum to the Nazi regime of Germany, praiser, in the 1940′s, of the Nazi regime and disparager, in the 1940′s, of the British war effort against the Nazi regime of Germany
O The creation of the state Transjordan by British officials, in 1922, in contravention to the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement of 1919 – British officials created the state Transjordan, which is now Jordan, in contravention to the Faisal- Weizman Agreement of 1919, and British officials, in contravention to the Faisal Weizmann Agreement, explicitly excluded Transjordan from the terms of the Faisal-Weizman Agreement in the official terms that those British officials created for the state of Transjordan
O Amin al-Husseini – the founder of the “Palestinian” movement, anti-Jewish racist, appointed to the position of Grand Mufti of Jerusalem by British Officials in 1920, member and leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, which he joined in 1928, and Nazi official, and leader, as the head of the Arab Higher COmmitee, of the Muslim Arab self-proclaimedly intendedly genocidal attack on Israel in 1948 by the armies of five Arab states, and mentor of, and uncle of, Egyptian-born Yasser Arafat, and founder, with Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, of Fatah in 1957
O Allan Dulles – friend of Jack Philby, business partner (crime partner) with Jack Philby, funder, with Jack Philby, of the nazi regime of Germany in the 1930′s, profitter, with jack Philby, of funding the nazi regime of Germany, head of the Central Intelligence Agency (the CIA) of the United States after World War II, recruiter of several thousand German former Nazi officials into the CIA (who formed the bulk and core of the CIA membership)
O The training, in the early 1950′s of the army of Arab Nationalist Egyptian general Gamal Abdel Nasser and the training of Arab Nationalist comandos, including Yasser Arafat, by former Nazi-official CIA members, which was training procured by Amin al-Husseini
O The creation, in 1964, of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (the PLO) by then-President of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and by members of the KGB
O The training of Yasser Arafat in the Balashikha Soviet KGB special-ops in Russia by members of the KGB in the 1960′s
O The campaign, from 1966 to 1967, by then-President of freshly Soviet-armed Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser, to militarily ally Arab states together to destroy Israel, and the simultaneous genocidally-themed anti-Israeli propaganda campaign, by Gamal Abdel Nasser, in Muslim Arab states
O the aligning of the armies of several Arab states along the borders of Israel in 1967 in preparation to attack Israel, and the attack on, and the defeat of, those armies by the army of Israel
O The occupation, by Jordan, from 1948 to 1967, of what is now called “The West bank”
O The occupation, by Egypt, from 1948 until 1967, of what is now called “The Gaza Strip”
O The 600,000 to 700,000 Arab refugees from the Muslim Arab intendedly genocidal attack on Israel, and the several million descendants of the 600,000 to 700,000 Arab refugees from the Muslim Arab intendedly genocidal attack on Israel – who are now called “Palestinians”, and who have been kept as refugees for over 60 years by Arab leaders and by the United Nations – who are only group of refugees who had a United Nations refugee organization made just for them, and who are not citizens of Israel
O Tee United Nations refugee organization whose sole officially assigned function is the management and aid of the Arab refugees, and the descendants of the Arab refugees from, the Muslim Arab attack on Israel in 1948, which is one of the two refugee organizations of the United Nations – the officially assigned function of the other refugee organization of the United Nations, UNHRC, is the management and aid of all of the other refugees in the world
O The prohibition, by law, in all Muslim Arab states, from the Arab refugees, and the descendents of the Arab refugees, from the Muslim Arab attack on Israel in 1948, from attaining citizenship in those Muslim Arab states, and from engaging in many profession in those Muslim Arab states
O The 800,000 to 1,000,000 Jewish refugees from Muslim countries in the Middle East to Israel who constitute approximately 50 percent of the Jewish population of Israel – Jewish citizenry of Israel
O The Arab Israeli people who constitute approximately 20 percent of the population of Israel – the citizenry of Israel – who, in most cases, are the still living members of, and the descendants of, the Arab people who did not flee from Israel immediately before, and during, and who were not expelled from Israel during, the 1948 intendedly genocidal attack on Israel by the armies of five Arab states in 1948, and of whom approximately 80 percent are Muslim, and of whom approximately 20 percent are, in some cases, Druze, and in otter cases Christian
O The equal rights and equal protection under the law of Israel of all citizens of Israel
O The ability of any person in the world to apply for citizenship of Israel in a way that is similar to the way that any person in the world can apply for citizenship of other democratic countries in the world
These facts are utterly unknown by almost all people in the world, and, in most cases, are persistently “forgotten”, out of bigotry, by the leaders of the governments of Western countries, and are facts that must be clearly, repeatedly, effectively, told to leaders of the governments of Western countries and to the whole world in order to prevent the situation from becoming worse and in order to make the situation better.
The way – the only way – to prevent the situation from becoming worse, and the way – the only way – to make the situation better, is for leaders of Israel to clearly, repeatedly, effectively, tell the factual history and current reality of the situation to the leaders of the governments of Western countries and to the whole world.
“But after all that has been written here, is there anyone who can offer a simple phrase, or a sentence to explain such Jews, other then ‘self hating Jews?
Yes. The “self” is not the same for Jews who support Israel and those who oppose it.
Identity is an extremely powerful force in the mind. If one’s identity does not encompass the idea of Israel as a state of refuge for Jews – then they will have no problem working to harm or destroy that idea – especially if for whatever psychological reasons, their identity encompasses other antagonistic ideas such as noble savage-ism, post-modernism, blind pacifism, Islamism, political-leftism, etc.
The forces of identity in the mind will always prevail. They are no match for reason.
Ooops, reason is no match for them.
The following are two things that Israeli leaders do that Israeli leaders need to stop doing.
O Accepting, and acquiescing to, the lies and wrong views of, and appeasing, the leaders of the governments of Western states and Arab states – which Israeli leaders have been, for over 60 years, doing out of emotional timidity, and, increasingly, out of delusion and ignorance
O Refraining, in passive-aggression, from telling the truth, that they know, about the situation to the leaders of Western countries – refraining, in passive-aggression, from verbally defending Israel, to leaders of Western countries, against lies that vilify Israel and that pervert the reality of the situation which Israeli leaders know are lies – which Israeli leaders do out of indignant anger and spite
Daniel,
“Jewish Jew-Haters” sounds good.
A missing answer to the question why such/so many Jews hate Jewishness:
Because they are allowed to do it.
How many Self Hating Taliban are there?
Another is zero-sum thinking:
The Arabs are poorer, therefore we must be thieves.
If one’s identity does not encompass the idea of Israel as a state of refuge for Jews – then they will have no problem working to harm or destroy that idea
That’s an important point, but I will put it slightly differently.
Diaspora jews, particularly in the west have, more or less consciously, a sense of guilt that instead of living in the jewish nation they do what their ancestors do and assimilate, to prefer materialism and convenience to, for luck of a better word, duty or principle — hence this is a moral issue and therefore, a strongly emotional one.
It is not surprising, then, that this translates into finding every possible fault with Israel to get rid of that guilt: look at what Israel does, is there any wonder that I won’t live there? It’s their justification.
This probably does not apply to those who are born in full assimilation and have no clue about jewish history. But is surely active in jews who know something about that.
Pls put #43 in the context of their considering themselves as being morally superior, which is clashes with their failing to live in the jewish nation.
I love how we’re psycho-analysing the phenomenon of self hating Jews like it’s a disorder (which it is). They have so many issues they don’t even realise and I’m finding everyone’s thoughts on them really fascinating. The thought of their reactions to being dissected like they’re schizo or something is hilarious!
So what it basically comes down to is finding a name for those people so insecure that they are frightened to death of being associated with the collective guilt imposed on a group of humans by the rest of humanity projecting their sins on and damning that group.
Too scared to stand up for themselves and the facts and make their case they succumb and resort to Quisling acts?
Good comments lately – #43 especially. What you say must be related somewhat to Stockholm syndrome; I believe that if one is constantly subject to strong emotional pressure over a long period of time – they will adjust their beliefs to reduce that pressure.
I have said previously that we adopt beliefs basically because it feels good. Of course that includes adopting beliefs if that helps us to not feel bad.
I agree with all your points as to the “types” of self-hating jews. But I feel like your rejection of the word is unnecessary. “self hating” does not mean they hate themselves, rather it means they hate being associated with being a jew. “Progressive” jews today often state that they feel more comfortable with their salsa dancing friends than their archaic religious brethren. They hate that by being born a jew, they are forever tied to the backwards thinking of talmudic jews. They, as you rightly expressed, want to be seen by society as progressive and morally pure and so reject their people to the point of ridiculousness.
The reason I feel the rejection is so extreme is that because they ARE jewish and are ultimately connected with the backward thinking they abhor the most, in order to distance oneself as far as possible from Jews, the only way to do so is by demonizing them. This demonization is further encouraged when they are ironically seen as accurate for saying radical statements because it is about their own people for which they are trying to distance themselves from. This puts these jews at a paradoxical state because on the one hand they want to be rid of their judaism but on the other it serves a useful purpose of acceptance by their peers whom they view as morally superior to the jewish race.
So self-hating jew is accurate and appropriate because it states what these people hate most about themselves–the fact that they were born a jew. They hate themselves that they are jewish. Plain and simple.
They hate themselves that they are jewish.
Not themselves; they hate being jewish, period.
Please see my comment which I posted in which I listed important facts that leaders of Israel need to tell world leaders and that leaders of Israel and defenders of Israel need to tell the world – and which is a comment that was not posted immediately by the automatic blog server after I submitted it, and which is a comment that was recently posted by the automatic blog server and which is currently comment #43.
Also, The following is a fact that I omitted in that comment.
UNRWA is the name of the United Nations organization that was created just for the management and aid of the Arab refugees from, and the descendants of the Arab refugees from, the 1948 Muslim Arab attack on Israel, and whose sole official function is the management and aid of the Arab refugees from, and the descendants of the Arab refugees from, the 1948 Muslim Arab attack on Israel.
Also, the following are also important facts that I omitted from my comment which is currently comment #43.
O The taking over of the position of the leadership of the PLO by Yasser Arafat as the leader of Fatah in around 1969.
O The Organization of the Islamic Conference (the OIC) – the largest, and controlling, voting bloc in the United Nations; the OIC is a coallition of 57 Muslim governments – 56 Muslim states and Fatah-PLO-PalestinianAuthority
O The proposal, in 1947, by the United Nations, to create one Arab state – consisting of more fertile land – and one Jewish state – consisting of less fertile land – in the part of the British Mandate of Palestine which had not become Transjordan – which was a proposal that Jewish leaders – the Jewish Zionist leadership – accepted, and which was a proposal that Arab leaders – the Arab leadership (constituted by the Arab Higher Commitee, headed by Amin al-Husseini, and constituted by the leaders of Arab states) – refused.
Clarification:
O The proposal, in 1947, by the newly-formed United Nations…
“Overcome the liar with the truth”
– The Buddha
Incognito wrote: Not themselves; they hate being jewish, period
Exactly my point. But the fact still stands that they are jewish and as much as they want to be separated from their hated jewishness they can’t. But being jewish is not just religion, its ethnically and hereditarily based so being jewish in essence DEFINES him whether he likes it or not.
And to Jews whose Jewishness defines their existence, a jew who hates his fellow jews is clearly self-hating because they are rejecting the most central and important part of themselves–their jewishness. So the term was created by jews who suffered at the hands of fellow jews who hated their race.
Perat,
I think that no living being hates himself or herself.
I think that living beings may hate the situation that they are in, and may hate aspects of the self-identity that they view themselves as having, but I think that no living being hates himself or herself. I think that every living being, at a deep, root, level, loves himself or herself.
I think that the term “self-hating Jew” is inaccurate, and I think that using the term “self-hating Jew” is unbeneficial.
I think that using the term “self-hating Jew” is harmful to Jewish people.
I think that one of the most unbeneficial things – harmful things – that is involved with using the term “self-hating Jew” is that, because anti-Jewish bigotry is a normal, normative, engrained part of culturally Christian-European Christian and Post-Christian culture (and Muslim Middle-Eastern culture), the term “self-hating Jew” may wrongly imply, by many people in Western societies, and to many people in Western societies, that Jewish poeple are bad and, in fact, “hateable”.
That is the first thing that I understood, and felt hurt by, when I first heard that term – which was when I was about twelve years old – and which I heard, at that time, being used by someone who was my teacher at my school – a Christian Protestant private school – and who was a (politically liberal) Christian Protestant cleric.
When I heard that person who was my teacher, and who was a politically liberal Christian Protestant cleric, and who was someone that I, at that time, loved, use that term I immediately felt that he felt sympathy for the hatred of Jewishness that I immediately felt was meant by the euphemism of “‘self’-hate” that was implied by the euphemistic term “self-hating Jew”.
He previously, or subsequently, said other things that I, later, understood showed that he held bigoted antipathetic wrong views about Jewish people.
One of the things that he said that I later understood showed that he held bigoted antipathetic wrong views about Jewish people is the following.
He said that “everyone is prejudiced”, and, as an example to support what he said, he said that “Jewish people are prejudiced against Nazis.”
At that time I eagerly swallowed what he said – but did so with some unease.
However, when I told my parents that thing that he said – which I said to my parents because I was trying to express to my parents that “everyone is prejudiced” to try to show them how beneficially “open-minded” that I thought that I was, and in trying to make my parents be what I thought was beneficially “open-minded”, they were horrified and shocked, and they argued to me that, or said things that made me, by myself, realize that, Jewish people were, in fact, not “prejudiced” against Nazis because Nazis were, by definition, people who held certain antipathetic wrong views about, and hated, Jewish people and who commited genocide against Jewish people.
Correction:
“…sympathy for the hatred of Jewishness…”
should be,
“…sympathy for the hatred toward Jewishness…”
Also (but not a correction),
That thing happened when I was about twelve years old.
That thing happened in around the year 1986.
I believe that incognito (#49) has a very good point in
emphasizing the sense of guilt. I also believe that this sense of guilt is, of necessity, stronger in societies, like E.U., where the media are so resolutely anti-Israeli (the term ”antizionist” is absurd: it would make a genuine hatred appear as simple ideology). This sense of guilt can have various simultaneous, while contradictory, directions: sense of guilt, as pointed out by incognito, at being a ”bad Jew”, together with (this should explain in part why so many academics lie in the category under discussion) sense of guilt at not having the same opinions as one’s colleagues. Who can tell up to which point some family relations can be destroyed when there
is disagreement on such important questions ? Could not
the extreme so-called ”antizionism” of ”bad Jews”
be in part a desperado’s attitude ?
But the fact still stands that they are jewish and as much as they want to be separated from their hated jewishness they can’t.
Which precisely explains the vehemence of the hatred: they are frustrated because they have no control over that and they must express as an intense disassociation as possible.
Instead of hating the anti-semites who are the root of the problem, they hate their own. This is exactly what Wieselthier meant when he said about Judt that he is REPLICATING anti-semitism.
And to Jews whose Jewishness defines their existence, a jew who hates his fellow jews is clearly self-hating because they are rejecting the most central and important part of themselves–their jewishness
My guess is that for the haters jewishness does NOT define their existence. Just the opposite: they hate it because it’s others who define them as jews, which they don’t want to be.
Andrew,
It goes like this: If Israel would just go away, we would not have to feel guilty anymore and all this anti-semitism will also go away.
Desperado delusion.
I feel badly because I think that my writing may have incited anger and despair or other harmful feelings. I hope that my writing did not cause anger or despair or other harmful feelings. I apologize.
By the way, I’m Jewish.
Things can be made better.
Israeli leaders just need to, first, become aware of the truth, and, then, tell the truth.
The situation is hard and difficult, and getting out of the situation is difficult – but it is possible to get out of the situation – it takes skillful action to get out of the situation. It requires skillful speech.
In any case, it is possible for everyone to do things that make their own situation better.
I hope that everyone is feeling okay.
14 incognito: after 6 million of those who achieved that “substantial emancipation” you refer to, the Zionists had to question it just a bit…
Zionism predated the Holocaust by over forty years.
23 incognito: Hey, Rich, see what I mean?
Of course I know about the Dreyfus Affair. Dreyfus was eventually exonerated and his accusers were discredited, because those who stood for the civil and social equality of Jews fought and won.
Herzl, on the other hand, thought it meant that European antisemitism was eternal and implacable. He was ready to give up the battle for Jewish acceptance.
Naturally, those Jews who were still fighting that battle opposed his doctrine as Jews, not merely as non-Jews using convenient inherited Jewish surnames.
24 Eliyahu: Rich, the Jews were historically considered a separate nation or people in Europe –and had a separate legal status in the various Euro countries– into the 19th century…
And by the end of the 19th century, in the most advanced countries, this separate legal status and associated handicaps hand been largely removed and Jews were recognized as full citizens. Those Jews who had fought for decades to gain this result objected to what they saw as revival of the contrary idea of Jewish separateness by Zionism. They did so as Jews.
I don’t share this objection, but I can see why a Jew would make it, as a Jew.
Zionism predated the Holocaust by over forty years…
Herzl, on the other hand, thought it meant that European antisemitism was eternal and implacable. He was ready to give up the battle for Jewish acceptance.
Yes, but I was careful to mention not just the holocaust, but the also the various cases of oppression of jews in history before the holocaust e.g. pogroms etc. The Dreyfus affair demonstrated that the systematic hatred of jews had was as intense as ever. The vindication of Dreyfuss did not eliminate it either.
You are quite cavalier in arguing that there was no longer any reason for a Jewish nation by the time zionism emerged.
If you think that most anti-semitism today is due to Israel, you are wrong. The jews have been a traditional scapegoat in most of the crises, even when Israel did not exist. And they’ll probably continue to be even if Israel disappears.
That’s the precise reason why it should not.
Correction:
I wrote,
“O The 800,000 to 1,000,000 Jewish refugees from Muslim countries in the Middle East to Israel who constitute approximately 50 percent of the Jewish population of Israel – Jewish citizenry of Israel”
which should be,
O The 800,000 to 1,000,000 Jewish refugees from Muslim countries in the Middle East to Israel whose still living members, and whose descendants, constitute approximately 50 percent of the population of Israel – Jewish citizenry of Israel
Correction (to my previous correction):
…50 percent of the Jewish population of Israel – Jewish citizenry of Israel…
I call them “Uncle Tom Jews” after the famous American novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriett Beecher Stow about a black slave who had to appear “whiter than white”. Read the book – you’ll see what I mean.
incognito,
I think with your #67 and my #52 we basically come to a “Jewishness fearing Jew” JfJ person.
His dislike and animosity and eventually hatred is basically born of fear.
The fear of having their Jewish roots pinned on their donkey, in some manner or means, increases to the extent that they then become actively engaged in denigrating that disgusting tail.
Rich,
And by the end of the 19th century, in the most advanced countries, this separate legal status and associated handicaps hand been largely removed and Jews were recognized as full citizens. Those Jews who had fought for decades to gain this result objected to what they saw as revival of the contrary idea of Jewish separateness by Zionism. They did so as Jews.
Firstly, Herzl saw things in the contemporary setting of the 1800s with the German philosophers, Marx and the Russians as a counterpoint to the French world.
Secondly, the penultimate sentence beautifully personifies the British Jew.
Rich, in addition to Herzl, before him Leon Pinsker had written Autoemancipation which describes the real condition of the Jews in various countries in Europe and elsewhere. The recent re-edition of Autoemancipation in French has a note by the editor, Georges Bensoussan. He points out that Pinsker writes that the countries where the Jews were worst treated were the Russian Empire, Rumania [newly independent at that time from the Ottoman Empire], and the kingdom of Morocco. Bensoussan observes that Pinsker should have included Persia [Iran] in that category but did not do so, most likely out of ignorance. So Jews were treated better in France than in the Russian Empire or Morocco. Great! But in the Second Reich, Germany, and in the Oestreich [Austria] Jews were legally inferior up to the end of those Reichs after WW I, as far as I know. Rumania, cited by Pinsker, had given guarantees at the Congress of Berlin that they would make nice to the Jews in independent Rumania. But they didn’t keep their promises. So what were Pinsker, or Herzl later on, supposed to think of the value of promises made to international forums like the Congress of Berlin?? More or less dependable than promises made to the League of Nations or the UN? How would you rate those promises, Rich? Can we have a Fitch or Dow-Jones or Moody’s rating for international promises and commitments as we have ratings for sovereign debt???
Cynic,
Re #74: agreed. As far as I know there has always been a segment of such jews in history.
Eliyahu,
Rumania, cited by Pinsker, had given guarantees at the Congress of Berlin that they would make nice to the Jews in independent Rumania. But they didn’t keep their promises.
Romania has always been an anti-semitic country and is even today.
And Peres just went there and thanked them for saving jews, in defiance of the real history.
Cynic,
And here is a top specimen making it explicit:
The Hubris of Peter Beinart
by Ron Radosh
http://pajamasmedia.com/ronradosh/2010/08/17/the-hubris-of-peter-beinart/
What is interesting is how his arguments have absolutely nothing to do with the reality. It seems like their fear causes them to halluciante.
I stick to Alter-Jews. IMO this term is the most descriptively accurate.
Alter-Jews are self defined Jews — but of a different, Other, kind. They’re converted, though not like Theobald to Christianity, but to the religion of Peace (pun intended). Their knowledge of Judaism and Judaic thought is, at best, partial and distorted, as is their knowledge of history and in particular that of the Zionist movements, thinking, and actions.
Of course Alter-Jews love their own selves, and admire themselves even more, but I suspect that more than they hate their fellow-Jews who have not yet seen the Light, they despise them.
Alter-Jews are a different brand of Jews, that is not very Jewish. “Proud to be ashamed to be Jewish” is founded on stereotypical, shallow, perverted images of Judaism.
IOW, they’re not different than the vast majority of westerners, but they delude themselves they are.
For French-reading readers,
A very good paper on the subject:
”Enderlin, la haine soi, suite” on
http://www.aschkel.info/article-enderlin-la-haine-de-soi-suite-55578124.html
Andrew,
Thanks, I read both Alain Rubin’s and “Félix” texts.
As I see it, they both don’t realise that the phenomenon is not about hatred of either self or others, be they more or less similar. It’s much more about “otherness”: empathy with some worthy Other (person/cause), attribution of guilt to unworthy others, and positioning the self in some point between and mostly above the worthy and unworthy Other — neither as guilty as the last nor as oppressed hence rightfully revengeful as the first.
I suspect that what some of these post-1967 “Zionist” Olim have in mind is not what was actually happening in “little Israel” and around it just before they came. Furthermore, some of their Zionism was nourished by disgust of their diaspora environment (Capitalist, Colonial…) and high hopes and expectations about the “new Jews” (fighters, Egalitarians…) after the victory of the 6-days War.
I suppose they’re bitter because Israel and Israeli society never matched their idea(l)s.
How about: “(Self-Adoring) Crusader Jews”?
After all, they are Jews who fight side by side with warriors from other cultures against Israel.
What about: “Jewish Crusader Narcissists”?
That has an unpleasant sound to it.
Forget my suggestion.
Christians would get it wrong.
Must watch:
Israel Through Israeli Eyes
by Michael J. Totten
http://pajamasmedia.com/michaeltotten/2010/08/18/israel-through-israeli-eyes/
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=118&x_article=1908
An Alter-Jew’s (Avrum Burg) discourse:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3937574,00.html
Note the disdainful tone from the beginning. And then,
A society is not enough? Where does the model demand come from?
Frankly, I’m not sure where this trend can be found. Israel is already more modern and tolerant than many “Western movements” — especially those “enlightened” by post-modernism that barely tolerate parts of their own.
Of course, there is the inevitable recruitment of partial Jewish wisdom:
Quite a few prophets are missing, and although Justice is indeed a fundamental element in Judaism, what’s the point of bringing it up when one argues that
E.G.,
Good comments. I agree with what you wrote about Alter-Jews. Well spoken.
The Alter-Jews such as Avrum Burg are revolting. They are disgusting. The harm they cause is immense. They are imbecilic and deranged. Alter-Jews such as Avrum Burg have been the the scourge of Jewish people for millenia. They are egomanical imbeciles who have incorporated the obscene accusations of obscenely immoral surreally hypocritical non-Jewish attackers of the Jewish people against Jewish people with the chauvanistic, but hyper-self-critical self-flagellating elements of the traditional religion of the Jewish people.
Alter-Jews such as Avrum Burg have no self-awareness. The harm they cause is immense. They need to be shamed. They need to be put in their place, with truth, by people who are more dispassionate than me and who are more articulate than me.
I apologize for the angry rant that I did in my previous comment. I realize that it is not beneficial to speak angry anger-inciting passion-inciting words.
Daniel,
Burg does not deserve your anger: he’s irrelevant in Israel (except for his pension paid by the state of Israel), and is considered indeed as detached from reality.
His op-ed can be considered as “Isstra Bilgina Kish-Kish Karia” (that’s in the original Aramaic) – A single coin in a box makes lots of noise.
But it is an example of excessive concern for the “Noble Other” (Arabs) at the expense of those who are supposedly “similar others” (Jews, especially Israeli Jews), denying justice to the latter in the name of high moral principles anchored in Judaism. For his ilk, Justice for Jews means higher requirements and more duties for them.
I know that it was wrong of me to do that. I know that it was wrong of me to write those harmful angry words. I apologize. I hope that I did not cause too much harm. I apologize.
I especially apologize to E.G. I hope that I did not ruin the very beneficial things that E.G. said.
I admire E.G. for his well-spoken words, and I am grateful to E.G. for his well-spoken words. E.G. and everyone, please forgive me for my wrong actions. I have severe OCD and and I am in a difficult situation. I am distressed. I apologize. Please forgive me.
Daniel,
Your initial reaction is normal.
Please stop apologising.
Daniel & EG, I have met burg here in Jerusalem. He is really repulsive and I commend Daniel for calling him and his like: “egomanical imbeciles.” Yes, Daniel he is revolting. And you never met him, I assume. Yet you have made a fair and accurate, if generous description of burg. I met him here about 20 years ago or more. I told him the Talmudic story of the ancient Jewish king who told his wife on his deathbed: Don’t fear the Pharisees and don’t fear those who are not Pharisees. The ones to fear are the hypocrites.
Burg told me that he didn’t like the story. At that time, I did not yet understand just how corrupt he was. I now know a man who ran against Burg in the Labor party primary for Knesset. I am told of a whole series of dirty tricks that Burg played to win a higher place on the Labor party election list. By the way, burg was part of the Kfar haYarok group that aimed to take over the Labor Party and bring “peace.” A fellow member was Hayim Ramon, another human slug.
Recently I read that burg was going to set up a new party to bring “peace” and a “binational” state and what not. But since he is widely despised in Israel, who will follow him?? Daniel, don’t blame yourself for anything harsh that you said against burg. He is a swine.
And here is Robert Redeker’s piece on Taguieff’s book (in French):
http://www.primo-info.eu/selection.php?numdoc=Ed-528674233
Yes, the one that was refused by the Luxembourg “Tageblatt”.
burg chooses his prophets. He did not choose Joel who said:
Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears.
There are prophets and there are prophets.
E.G.,
Thank you for telling me that. Your telling me that makes me feel better.
Eliyahu,
Thank you too for forgiving me and for commmiserating with me.
I know that it’s not good to speak in anger, but it’s nice to have people – friends and friendly like-minded people – with whom one can get things off one’s chest with. It’s just that this is a public forum and I feel badly that I say things that I think may be unbeneficial to say in a public forum, but this forum is really the only outlet that I have for communicating with other people, so I hope that the angry harmful words that I sometimes say in this forum don’t cause too much harm. What I mean is that I hope that the harmful things that I sometimes say on this forum don’t any cause harm. I don’t want to cause any harm.
Thank you E.G. for your kind well-spoken words.
Thank you Eliyahu for your kind words.
Eliyahu, no I haven’t met Avrum Burg. Just those words of his that E.G. quoted are enough for me to know what his views are. What those words that Avrum Brug communicated said that E.G. quoted are what those words are.
I’ve heard enough of other people who are like him to understand and know the views of people like that. I have observed Jewish people around me. I have watched and heard people like that on television and on the internet. I know the situation. I know my own mind and I know how I could think that way, and how I kind of did think that way, in partial similar way, to a relatively small degree, in the past. I understand the the situation. I understand the minds of those Jewish people. I understand how those Jewish people think.
Guys,
Anybody who, in order to take position detaches himself from reality is not worth wasting time on.
The most obvious aspect of the detachment in Burg’s case is that there is only one side to the conflict: Israel.
For somebody so moral as he is, he pays no notice to the behavior and culture of the pals and arabs because, after all, they are SOOOOOOOO moral, right?
To laugh or cry?
incognito,
We are dealing with Alter-Jews who characteristically detach themselves from many things, reality included.
Daniel,
See the talkbacks ;-)
http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=183582
E.G.
The problem is that people like Avrum Burg cause harm because of how their actions harmfully affect Jewish poeple (and, eventually, indirectly, non-Jewish people) because of how they are seen by ignorant non-Jewish people and how they are used by malicious attackers of Jewish people.
They would not have such a large and harmful effect if leaders of Israel would (*act like normal human beings* and, in so doing) speak well – honestly, accurately, clearly – effectively – and defend their people and country from lies, and just generally act like normal human beings and beneficially protect themselves and their people and country from harm.
Jewish people are a very egalitarian and empathetic people. They govern themselves. They have survived and prospered without having leaders. The people of Israel has survived and prospered in spite of their leaders. However, in this world, people, group of people, need leaders who are wise and who will protect them from malicious antagonistic groups of other people who attack them.
It is possible, and it is beneficial, to protect oneself and one’s people non-violently.
Looks like we have alter-jews in Israel’s emabassies too:
Bungle at Israeli London Embassy
Posted by Isi Leibler
http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/Leibler/entry/bungle_at_israel_london_embassy
I hope they are just incompetent.
Daniel,
Alter-Jews are persuaded that their way is the most non-harmful and beneficial way to preserve and protect the Jewish people. First and foremost from itself.
E.G.,
“First and foremost from itself.”
That is exactly the problem.
The harm is coming from outside not from inside.
The alter-Jews are severely experiencing a particular form of Stockholm Syndrome.
Many Jewish people – diaspora Jewish people and, I think, Israeli Jewish people – including leaders of Israel are experiencing, to varying degrees, a particular form of Stockholm Syndrome.
That is why the truth about the situation – the factual history – needs to be communicated – especially first to Jewish people – and especially first to leaders of Israel.
incognito,
I wouldn’t discount the hypothesis of a Levy acolyte at the Embassy. Yes, there are at the MFA.
Please see my comments (currently listed as #43, #58, #59 and other correcting comments) in which I listed some important facts about the situation that need to be communicated to Israeli leaders and to leaders of other countries and to the whole world.
Those are just some of the facts that need to be communicated.
Israeli leaders and Jewish people need to gain confidence and need to tell the world the truth.
Israeli leaders need to tell Arab leaders and Arab people the truth.
Israeli leaders need to stand up for themselves and for their people and for their country. With the strength of knowing the truth and having peace of mind, and in peace. Then they can truly reach out to Arab leaders and Arab people – which they need to do – but they need to do so with self-confidence and with truth and with wisdom.
Daniel,
We’ve had this argument before – I don’t think Alter-Jews suffer from Stockholm Syndrome. They don’t identify with either Israel/the Zionist Jews or the Arabs/Palestinians: their empathy towards the latter should not be confused with identification – they feel superior to both.
I suspect they’re obsessed by power: both terrified by it (when it’s held by those whom they see as their opponents/enemies) and attracted to it (in order to exert it themselves).
For some (psycho-historic?) reason, the idea of Jews collectively exerting power seems repulsive for them, whereas powerful individuals, Jewish or not, seems OK with them. Especially when it’s themselves who are those individuals.
Their dissociation from their fellow-Jews is more vanity than anything else. They strive to lead (i.e., exert power, influence), open new roads and direct the people towards new destinies: the illuminated paths that they have discovered.
E.G.,
I think that you are right about Alter-Jews. I think that Alter-Jews are experiencing a deluded detrimental mental state from Stockholm Syndrome. I think that alter-Jews are experiencing a deluded detrimental mental state that is different from Stockholm Syndrome. I think that Alter-Jews are experiencing a deluded detrimental mental state in which there are prominent factors which are different from, and maybe which are in addition to, factors that are involved with Stockholm Syndrome.
But, I think that very many other Jewish people – at least very many diaspora Jewish people and at least some Israeli Jewish people, including leaders of Israel – are experiencing, to varying degrees, a deluded detrimental mental state that is a form of Stockholm Syndrome. A form of Stockholm Syndrome that is unique to the unique experiences that Jewish people have experienced (environmental psychological experiences).
Correction:
“I think that Alter-Jews are experiencing a deluded detrimental mental state from Stockholm Syndrome.”
should be,
“I think that Alter-Jews are experiencing a different deluded detrimental mental state from Stockholm Syndrome.”
E.G.,
I think that the two syndromes – Alter-Jew Syndrome and the form of Stockholm Syndrome that I think very many Jewish people experience – are related to each other. I think that there are factors that they share. Egocentric self-view and fear (fear of being disliked by non-Jewish people). I think that in Alter-Jew Syndrome the factor of egocentric self-view is much more prominent than in the form of Stockholm-Syndrome that I think very many Jewish people experience, and I think that in Alter-Jewish Syndrome egocentric self-view is extreme, and, I think, is the most prominent factor. I think that fear (of being disliked by non-Jewish people) is the most prominent factor in the form of Stockholm Syndrome that I think very many Jewish people experience.
The following is a link to, and an excerpt from, an article by Kenneth Levin about what I think is the form of Stockholm Syndrome that I think very many Jewish people experience.
“The Psychology of Populations under Chronic Siege”, by Kenneth Levin
http://www.jcpa.org/phas/phas-046-levin.htm
However, the situation is, in fact, not hopeless. One can free oneself from the situation by skillful action. To realize that the situation is not hopeless – to realize that one can free oneself from the situation – is the cure for the deluded detrimental mental state. To realize that the situation is not hopeless – to realize that one can free oneself from the situation with skillful action – requires knowledge and mindfulness and discernment and understanding, and, to free oneself from the situation with skillful action requires knowledge and mindfulness and discernment and understanding.
In the case of Israel and the Jewish people, Israeli Jewish people and diaspora Jewish people can free themselves with skillful speech – Israeli Jewish people and diaspora Jewish people can be freed from the situation that they are in by, most importantly, skillful speech by leaders of Israel.
Alter-Jews (Jewish people who are experiencing Alter-Jew Syndrome) do not blame themselves. Alter-Jews (Jewish people who are experiencing Alter-Jew Syndrome) blame other Jewish people.
Jewish people who are experiencing the form of Stockholm Syndrome that I think very many Jewish people are experiencing blame themselves. They include themselves in the people that they blame. They view themselves as belonging to the group of people that they blame.
That, I think, is the core difference.
Danial says, “In the case of Israel and the Jewish people, Israeli Jewish people and diaspora Jewish people can free themselves with skillful speech – Israeli Jewish people and diaspora Jewish people can be freed from the situation that they are in by, most importantly, skillful speech by leaders of Israel.”
“Skillful speech” must be processed by the intellectual brain in order to have meaning. It enters consciousness first by way of reason and then must be interpreted according to one’s existing beliefs – which is how they may acquire emotional potency to affect behavior.
What this means is that since the AI conflict is a highly emotional situation, the words anyone uses on either side to justify their policies and actions will be interpreted as lies and ignorance by their enemies – no matter how objectively truthful those words may be. Brains in lethal conflict do not allow any other outcome.
Israel needs skillful actions, not skillful words. But what Israel also needs is skillful images. Those can provide immediate emotional potency. Israel’s enemies know this. That’s why they make such an effort at Pallywood and in the Reuter’s Photo-shop.
The Time magazine cover showing the Muslim girl missing her ear and nose probably did more good for Israel’s cause than a million words could have done. Even though the girl is not Palestinian she is a Muslim victim of fundamentalist Islam. That belief system was indelibly connected to the unspeakable horror and cruelty of its own way of life in the emotional consciousness of any Westerner who saw it.
The beliefs underlying Arab/Muslim irredentism and hatred of Jews and beliefs about Israel are equally as ugly and destructive of all that is innocent and worthwhile in the world. Israel is defending its people and existence while carefully avoiding unnecessary destruction and death on the Palestinian side. Finding the right images to convey that emotional truth should be job-one for Israel’s leaders and for those outside Israel who are hoping for Israel’s survival. If I may offer another perspective as a non-Jew it’s long past time for skillful words.
I wouldn’t discount the hypothesis of a Levy acolyte at the Embassy. Yes, there are at the MFA.
Reasonable guess.
incognito,
O/T, a propos a previous discussion (French Jews):
http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/1185384.html
In previous years, the tone of such articles used to be much more derisive.
What this means is that since the AI conflict is a highly emotional situation, the words anyone uses on either side to justify their policies and actions will be interpreted as lies and ignorance by their enemies – no matter how objectively truthful those words may be.
Does the fact that arabs/pals lie as a matter of culture and policy while this is not an Israeli cultural trait make any difference, given your framework?
In fact, the world take the pal lies as truth and Israel’s truth as lies. And the only way this can happen is under willful ignorance. That’s how emotions become salient in the first place and then they induce the willfulness.
If no critical thinking, logic, reasoning, reliance on evidence are instilled in people EARLY ON and THROUGHOUT their education (not schooling) process, the only tool they will have are emotions.
That’s why they make such an effort at Pallywood and in the Reuter’s Photo-shop.
These are faked images. Are you suggesting Israel should replicate this? Do you think the world will treat Israeli images the way they treat the pals?
Finding the right images to convey that emotional truth should be job-one for Israel’s leaders and for those outside Israel who are hoping for Israel’s survival.
But I thought that people are emotionally predisposed to disbelieve Israeli images, no?
Daniel,
I still don’t share your analysis on Alter-Jews.
One can find quite a few psychological explanations to such behaviour, among them distorted/fake memory of the past and past traumas, including vicarious experience of Shoah survivors and/or their children. But I’m not sure this can provide us with anything useful. OTOH, this psychologist’ semi-eulogy of Tony Judt may provide some interesting hints:
http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/strenger-than-fiction/strenger-than-fiction-tony-judt-s-jewish-identity-1.308414
In addition to incognito’s #118
http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=185381
I think this article by David Solway interesting in that provides some cogent argument for the human behavioral aspect we are trying to define.
Israel and the West
E.G.,
There are moments in which these values conflict, and no side should have a monopoly on claiming whether critical thought or unquestioned loyalty must prevail at any given point.
Especially when a “critical thought” can lead to bloodshed and mayhem?
incognito,
In fact, the world take the pal lies as truth and Israel’s truth as lies. And the only way this can happen is under willful ignorance. That’s how emotions become salient in the first place and then they induce the willfulness.
There is no willful ignorance so much as willful maliciousness. They want to see blood and gore.
Cynic,
I do not adhere to Stenger’s assertions. I find them interesting as indicators of logical sequences.
For example, his (mis)characterisation of Judaism as comprising some tension between a culture of debate and “tribal loyalty”. And the opposition of these to the values of Enlightenment.
Regarding the excerpt from Solway, indeed closure of the mind and withdrawal, preoccupation with the insignificant at the expense of the significant aspects of the situation (inversion of the importance scale) seem to characterise some alter-Jews’ behaviours. But the context is very different: are these persons “losing control, that its favored position atop the dominance hierarchy is no longer assured and that it is facing the prospect of imminent dispossession”?
To me it seems that the contrary is happening: the more they withdraw from the real situation (see above: detachment), the higher their position e.g., in Academic/ “intellectual” circles.
I think I’d better specify that, to my sense, Alter also stands (as shorthand) for alternative. Alter-Jews both choose alternative ways to be Jewish and offer their chosen fashion for others to follow, as an alternative to more mainstream manners of “the Jewish experience”.
incog asks, Does the fact that arabs/pals lie as a matter of culture and policy while this is not an Israeli cultural trait make any difference, given your framework?
We use different paradigms of how the brain works and so my explanations will not make sense to you. That said, it is the strongest emotional beliefs in one’s mind that guides their behavior. Lying is seen as minor (a low valence sin) since most people know that they often lie themselves if the cause is sufficient – such as avoiding a friend’s hurt feelings.
Pro-pals see Pal lying as one of the few means the “poor helpless Palestinians” have to counter the great advantage of their “brutal Israeli oppressors” – and so forgive them and even tacitly help them promote the lies – because it’s all for the best in their minds – ridding the Palestinians of the “brutal Israeli occupation”. The quoted phrases in that run-on sentence mark the high valence emotional beliefs in their minds. Those easily overpower any minor emotional qualms they might have with lying.
The hard part is to explain that this is all a non-conscious emotional process. Their brains do not allow them to detach from their emotional beliefs and objectively analyze what is actually going on because that would be uncomfortable. And so these are emotional conclusions, not intellectual conclusions that you can combat with reason and evidence.
If their emotional conclusions are challenged publicly they may use their intellect to concoct “reasonable sounding” justifications. Not in reaction to some “cognitive dissonance” but to seek social approval from their allies and avoid social humiliation from their enemies. But the usual justifications and apologetics for Palestinian genocidal ambitions are running thin these days (because of events like the Time mag cover and reports of poisoning of girls in Afghanistan, etc.) So, they are more likely to simply attack their detractors with insults – calling them bigots, warmongers and racists – keeping things firmly in the emotional zone where they have a chance.
Is it important to see the conflict through this window? Only if you want to discredit it for what it is and replace it with reality and support for Israel’s defensive cause on the world stage.
That requires understanding how human brains work and using that to your advantage. Pretending that the pro-Pal left are dumb, uneducated and lack critical thinking skills and trying to convince others of that will not get you very far. People sense that you are just applying your own emotional beliefs (hate for your enemy) in opposition to theirs – and using rather weak ammunition at that. People will always react far more strongly (emotionally) against those accused of brutality and racism against the downtrodden than they will against those accused of being not so smart.
E.G.,
Hope I didn’t imply that you adhere to those assertions.
Just asked an obvious (to me) question which needed to be inserted into a liberal’s assertions.
Obviously the person has no idea of a tribal culture and the loyalty it exacts. Maybe he should study the Mafia?
Then again what does he know about Judaism that he collectively assigns ‘tribal’ to a matter of life and death, mere existence and flourishing for a religion as opposed to a culture of debate. He by any chance stuck in the culture of the Oxford Debating Society?
I know I’m being sarcastic.
What does Enlightenment mean to him? The culture of Kant, Hegel …..Deconstruction?
I gave the Solway link because he provides just one more clue to the puzzle of what drives animals.
I suppose his description of Bloom’s “Endorphin Strategy” might describe that feely-goody sensation of talking the “cliché talk” used so liberally by the “Left”.
George Will had a good column in the WaPo
Skip the lecture on Israel’s ‘risks for peace’
Nothing here for any tension in the “tribe” debating its culture. Move along now. Nothing to see.
Incog asks, These are faked images. Are you suggesting Israel should replicate this? Do you think the world will treat Israeli images the way they treat the pals?
Israel doesn’t need to fake anything. Israel needs to convey the emotional truth of the situation through images and actions that get the point across – not intellectually but emotionally. War, death of innocents, right to defense against aggression, maiming of innocents in the name of religion, survival of one’s children – are some of the most potent (high valence) emotional forces in the human psyche.
This wellspring of powerful forces needs to be tapped skillfully at the emotional level to change any significant number of minds. No deception is necessary because the Israel’s position in the conflict is the one that conforms to the reality of enlightenment values. Marketing is not necessarily deception; at its best it is the effective communication of emotionally potent truths that can affect behavior.
But I thought that people are emotionally predisposed to disbelieve Israeli images, no?
Yes, because until now Israel’s enemies have been much more successful using even incompetent emotional mental imagery to convey a lie (the Pal narrative) than Israel has used reason and appeals to Western principles to convey the truth. That’s understandable. You are asking people to accept an important emotional truth. Why bring a pocket knife to a gunfight?
Cynic says, There is no willful ignorance so much as willful maliciousness. They want to see blood and gore.
Yes, they are in lethal combat with their enemy and their brains are emotionally charged for battle, not intellectual problem-solving. Maliciousness is how you treat an enemy – and you feel emotionally righteous about it because your brain knows that it is either you or your enemy who survives these things.
e.g.,
Re the piece on Judt: Can the guy’s “theory” about “noble liberal tradition” explain why Judt saw all other nationalism valid, but only Israel’s obsolete?
Had Judt been equally dismissive of ALL nationalism — including that of the pals, who purportedly are a nation and want their state — the theory might have been acceptable. But he had not been, so it isn’t.
Cynic,
It almost invariably contents itself by blanking out the menace or mugging its weaker partners and cohabitants.
If I am not mistaken, this has been at the root of scapegoating the jews in crises and/or by social losers all along.
One thing that amazed me on 7/7 was the total control of the media by the British authorities. During hours, the same distant, sanitized images were running in loop, and the jurnos had next to nothing to say, next to no one to interview… What was released later on was far from “hot” either.
All this was interpreted as “stiff upper lip”, British civility, dignity… by the jurnos and pundits that had been deprived from the “juicy” details.
A picture may be worth a thousand words but, in most cases it has to be a commented one to get that effect.
The Brits, and they’re not the only ones, know very well that gory images is one thing terrorists are after. It’s part of the terror they seek to induce.
It does seem that Western jurnos and esp. photographers understand that by publishing images of blood and body-parts they’re actively contributing to terror campaigns, as well as to desecrating Human decency.
At any rate, this has nothing to do with Alter-Jews.
e.g.,
There are moments in which these values conflict, and no side should have a monopoly on claiming whether critical thought or unquestioned loyalty must prevail at any given point.
Anything that is unquestioned is likely to lead to trouble at some point.
If all jews chose unquestioned loyalty to leftism over critical thought, they would not survive for long. Indeed, when they refused to question the belief that assimilation and keeping one’s head down would save them, they did not. And if Israel refuses to question the notion of “land for peace” and “the peace process”, it won’t either.
incognito,
(the filters seem hungry at this time; cutting my “digested” reply in 2)
So you too read Hazony’s “letter”? ;-)
Here’s my wild guess: in the beginning, Israel was a national entity with a Socialist regime.
Ten years after the 6-days war she became less Socialist.
It doesn’t work!
Ray,
Yes, because until now Israel’s enemies have been much more successful using even incompetent emotional mental imagery to convey a lie (the Pal narrative) than Israel has used reason and appeals to Western principles to convey the truth.
But if they are PREDISPOSED with such EMOTIONAL INTENSITY that, according to you, is impossible to alter, they will continue to believe the pals and disbelieve Israel, no matter what it does.
Israel has produced from time to time good emotional images — perhaps not enough — and it has not moved the west.
Are you now saying that identity beliefs can change just by counter-emotional images? If only it were that easy.
Cynic,
There is no willful ignorance so much as willful maliciousness.
I always considered malice a form of ignorance. At the very least it is difficult, though not impossible, to be malicious without some degree of ignorance. This is a statistical generalization.
e.g.
It does seem that Western jurnos and esp. photographers understand that by publishing images of blood and body-parts they’re actively contributing to terror campaigns, as well as to desecrating Human decency.
Those who are ideological — and there are more and more of those, who lack journo skills — yes. But I would suspect that mostly they operate based on career considerations: what reders want to hear, advertising effects, what editors want them to produce, etc.
OTOH, without the gore it would be more difficult for the rational public to comprehend the nature of the enemy.
Ray,
War, death of innocents, right to defense against aggression, maiming of innocents in the name of religion, survival of one’s children – are some of the most potent (high valence) emotional forces in the human psyche.
While Israel has not been very good at this, it’s not possible to say that such images have not been produced either by it, or by its supporters. It has very rarely made a dent.
It’s not just the propaganda of the arabs that has been responsible for this. There are a whole host of variables underlying anti-Israel/anti-semitic stands. Arab propaganda just feeds into them.
So you too read Hazony’s “letter”? ;-)
Which?
incognito,
Stenger’s piece is even more problematic than that.
“Tribal loyalty” has never been a Jewish feature, hardly even in the 12 tribes’ time. And an academic should be able to distinguish between some sense of (national or ethnic) solidarity and the specific meaning of ME tribal loyalty.
I wish he and his “Enlightened” colleagues (re-)learn about the culture of Jewish debate that does quite more than dismiss a whole argument by a few contemptuous words and/or a stigmatisation of the interlocutor.
I certainly agree with you on the permanent questioning. It’s both very Jewish and often proved to be a distinctive survival aid.
Yes, they are in lethal combat with their enemy and their brains are emotionally charged for battle, not intellectual problem-solving.
This may well mean that societal progress does not go linearly from primitive to advanced, but rather in conflicts between the two, the former has a critical advantage, the latter a disadvantage. Rationality is, viewed in this context, a collective good: it must be had by all to work.
One good example is Rome and the barbarians.
“Israel Through European Eyes”
http://via.readerimpact.com/v/1/792bc4b1ec4cad1ee531faa767415e58abbea5209e0fb1f0
Re Hazony: it seems vaguely familiar, but I DK if only because he expresses known thoughts.
Kuhn’s ideas are problematic, not the least reason of which is the vagueness of the concept of paradigm; he also was referring to the natural sciences, while Hazony is referring to social issues; extension from one to the other is also problematic.
More to the point: 1st, I have been on record for a long time that there is little Israel can do to change the hostility towards it. One does not need to invoke Kuhn to figure that out.
2nd, while some anti-nationalism underlies some of the so-called left’s anti-Israel stance, I very much doubt that it’s a significant factor in the average westerner’s stance. There are much more salient factors that can easily explain it, which are hardly pardigmatic in character.
Incognito,
Of course it’s not “paradigm” rather, it’s frame of mind. But it’s nice as an illustration. And I believe it’s useful to show how and why there are 2 mindsets that clash because they’re incompatible: the one that progressed looks down at the “retarded” one not only in contempt but also with guilt.
Hazony correctly reads the Eastern side of the pond, ex-W. Europe. But it’s true that he also omits other salient factors such as anti-religion.
e.g.,
The notion of incompatible frames of mind is, of course, useful. However, I see different 2 frames: one based on evidence, history and reasoning and one based on fear, guilt, denial and dogma.
As Judt’s selectivity demonstrates, to accept the frames that Hazony uses would require that there be no such selectivity. Plus, I do not see the anti-nationalism as having sifficient saliency.
Incidentally, it’s the vagueness of the Kuhn’s concept that induces its use in many contexts where it does not really belong.
He puts it quite well:
Europe’s Guilty Conscience
Self-hatred is paralyzing the Continent.
Pascal Bruckner
http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_3_european-conscience.html
Note that despite the Hazony argument, EU has not produced some homogenous, meaningful entity, but rather an anti-democratic, incompetent bureaucratic layer. And if that is the result in the relatively common culture european states, what’s the chance of this succeeding elsewhere, least of all in the previous dominion of USSR?
However, he puts too much faith in America, which seems to be inching towards Europe.
It’s not better in Israel:
Will the real McCarthy please stand up
Haaretz’s editors may be the only reputable people in the country who genuinely believe that there is no serious anti-Zionism bias in Israel’s sociology departments.
By Joel Golovensky
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/will-the-real-mccarthy-please-stand-up-1.309137
Higher Learning: McCarthy vs Voltaire in Beersheba
http://www.jpost.com/Features/FrontLines/Article.aspx?id=185351
More:
Israeli Professors Protest Calls for Increased Zionism in Teaching
By Matthew Kalman
http://chronicle.com/article/Israeli-Professors-Fight/124078/
It seems that profs have the freedom to demand boycott of Israel and their own universities, but when the latter is done by non-profs — who quite often produce better quality research than academic leftist crap — it’s McCarthyism.
Incognito,
to accept the frames that Hazony uses would require that there be no such selectivity.
Indeed. There is at least one generation born into the EU reality, and their parents indoctrinated/indoctrinating about it.
Bruckner points the common denominator that unifies the Union. There isn’t a common culture nor a common language, although there are quite a few shared values. But one doesn’t feel the same in each country. Our friend Sergio will probably feel well in Italy just as Obsy probably does in the Netherlands, and Michelle in Austria: but neither will feel at home.
Incognito,
Regarding the anti-Zionist bias in Israeli Soc.Sci faculties: it’s about time to expose the charade. Ben-Dror Yemini’s latest blog entry (Maariv/nrg in Hebrew) hits the nail on its head.
The charade was known for quite a while.
I just don’t think that exposing it will make a difference. These people are entrenched and have indoctrinated generations of students. It’s a mafia.
If at least they were competent at research — biased as it is, but at least competent. But they’re all ideologues and would not know research if it bit them on the ass.
In Daniel Greenfield’s blog post
It’s Not the Hasbara, It’s the Reality
the point he makes describes the almost hysterical insistence in wiping out, out damned spot, the constant reminder to the Jewishness they, the Asa.. Types, wish to flee from.
@155, His last sentence:
The only way to win at PR against a pro-terrorist left and its Islamist allies, is to take the war off the table by winning it. Because an indefinite crisis will bring enemies out of the woodwork, and give bigots plenty to feed on. That’s the cold hard reality of it. The only way Israel can win the PR war, is by defeating the terrorists. Trying to win the PR war in order to be able to fight the terrorists, has been a common mistake in the Israeli paradigm. Dispensing with that paradigm as quickly as possible and winning the fight, is the only way to get the monkey of hate off Israel’s back.
Yes, despite my last comment. It’s probably too late for any non-violent mental imagery to have the needed effect. The only mental image that will change the world’s perceptions (emotional beliefs) regarding Israel’s legitimacy and right to defend itself – is Israel’s total commitment victory in its defense.
I wish Netanyahu would take advantage of the current situation and declare that in the interest of self preservation Israel can no longer afford to hold back on their defensive actions and worry about what a world that doesn’t care about Israel’s survival – or is hostile to the idea, thinks.
He should recommend that all non-combatants get as far away as possible from any Hisb’allah or Hamas military or any other units or military emplacements belonging to any of Israel’s enemies – because the next time Israel is attacked those units and stockpiles and all buildings in the vicinity are likely to be completely destroyed. Further, that no leaflets or telephone warnings will be issued to civilians in the area before-hand. And then the IDF should be prepared wage the next war until the job is completely done.
Israel should have dropped several 500 lb bombs on the positions from which the LAF fired and killed the Lt Colonel at the Leb-border tree-trimming operation. There should be nothing left of the Lebanon border in the vicinity from where the shots were fired.
When the world complains tell them that Israel withdrew from Lebanon with the assurance that the UN was there to prevent future attacks on Israel. The UN knew that an attack was likely if not imminent that day. If they didn’t they screwed up because that was their job. When the UN does its job Israel won’t have to.
As long as Israel pulls its punches the world will see Israel as weaker than its enemies and will see Iran and its proxy armies surrounding Israel as the strong horse to bet on or at least not unduly anger it – and will not support the weak horse. The West is not immune or better than honor-shame responses. We just express it in different ways and through different channels – that to us seem civilized. It’s not a West/East thing. It’s a human nature thing.
The terrorists are scoring points because their core audience in Europe and in some cases America, agrees with their message.
As I always argued, there is little Israel can do to change minds. The world has decided, for various reasons, that Israel is an inconvenient nation and that things will be better without it.
The world deserves to be without Israel and with the terrorists. That’ll teach them.
Ray,
Yes, despite the serious difficulties that this will produce.
But, of course, since Oslo the Israeli elite has grown accustomed with concessions and appeasement of the west, fat and corrupt (look at all the scandals; could the choice of a army chief be the way it was 30, 20 years ago, part. given the dangers Israel is in?). It is largely incompetent and obsessed with its own place in the power structure. IOW, it has become just like a western elite and it brings Israel down much worse and faster than the western elite brooght down the west.
Somehow relevant:
Sayings of Chairman Jim (Mosque edition)
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/08/027051.php
Frank Luntz is an expert in framing. Framing is the practice of skillfully using words and phrases (that are charged with the necessary emotional imagery) to enter the listener’s mind and change their mental landscape without them realizing it – opening their mind to the beliefs of the speaker.
In this sense skillful words (that invoke emotional mental imagery) can be helpful when you want to persuade someone in a non-violent society. But that only works before the mind enters the conflict zone and takes a side that is committed to the destruction of the other using whatever level of verbal or physical violence is required. The mind does this not with reason but by the release of a cocktail of neural transmitters against which reason has no effect.
At this point the sides are well drawn in the AI war and at least Israel’s enemies have that commitment. IMO it’s time for Israel to stop talking and start fighting. Until now Israel has done everything possible to prevent Israeli’s from entering that zone and allowing those neural juices of total conflict to flow.
Otherwise, if Israel doesn’t care enough about it’s own survival to defend itself with whatever force is necessary, and then some for good measure. Why should others even care?
Yes, despite the serious difficulties that this will produce.
They may be serious as you say. Or, when the world sees the destruction that Israel can cause in its justified defense – the emotional imagery could lead them to ask, “What else can Israel do?”.
Remember, that’s what the world has reflexively said in response to the powerfully emotional imagery of Palestinians blowing themselves up in TA pizza parlors.
I think Israel needs to tell the world that Israel may be facing its destruction but it is not going to die before many millions of its enemies are dead. If the world doesn’t want to see millions of dead Islamists then the world can make it unnecessary for Israel to have to defend itself – as it first should have in 1947.
The corruption in Israel’s gov and their military is the direct result of 60 years of failure (with a couple of notable exceptions) to demand and exercise their full right of self-defense – hoping to show the world how civil Israelis can be in their self defense so that Israelis will be liked and so the world will take Israel’s side against her Islamist enemies. We can see how successful that’s been.
I believe this has led to emotional despair and internal dissent and corruption in the defense establishment as Israel’s legitimacy is questioned even by her stanchest allies. Such unprincipled behavior (the unwillingness to sufficiently defend its people against attack) exacts a price among a principled people. This corruption and internal dissent is the price Israel is paying. Israel needs to start killing its enemies in large numbers when justified and providing the usual penalties for treason against its own that all democratic nations provide during wartime.
Obama is weak before even two years of his administration. That’s because he has no principles and is paying the price. We do know he’ll do what’s necessary to protect himself politically. Israel has done what he has asked. If Israel suffers another attack from Hizb’allah or Hamas and responds very violently it’s likely this will be blamed on Obama for making it likely by supporting Goldstone, Erdogan, et al. (Netanyahu does need to set the stage as I suggested in my previous post by stating that Israel is no longer Mr. Nice Guy when it comes to defending its people.)
With large numbers of liberals in the US still supporting Israel Obama already knows that he will have to take Israel’s side against its enemies when the next attack on Israel comes – or he he will not be a two term president. I hope Netanyahu understands this and is ready to transform Israel’s image in the world by showing that Israel is ready to defend the lives of its people by doing whatever is necessary to succeed completely and despite whatever the rest of world thinks about it.
The way things are going with Iran and its proxies Israel may not get another chance to do this.
This article about Galant is encouraging,
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3941582,00.html
But the photo of him paddling a kayak in the surf shows a flabby body that is not fit. Notice the sagging flesh under his right bicep. From what I’ve read he is mentally fit. I hope his leadership on the political side is equally so.
Frank Luntz is an expert in framing.
Marketing is not the same as attitudes towards Israel.
Let’s see him change minds on Israel and then we’ll talk.
Marketing is not the same as attitudes towards Israel.
Yes, but the same neural processes are going on whether you change your attitudes about Israel or your favorite beer. You are replacing one set of identity beliefs with another. Your views on the AI conflict and your favorite beer are both parts of their identity – views that you will not change without some emotional force being applied. How much force depends on how strongly one holds each belief.
Let’s see him change minds on Israel and then we’ll talk.
Right. I think framing tactics might work for a few uninformed observers but most people by now have pretty entrenched beliefs on the conflict, have chosen sides and would be immune to all but highly emotional events. The US armed forces for example allows some journos to embed in units in the field. That’s the kind of emotional exposure that changes minds. I don’t think many of them came back cheering for the Taliban.
Yes, but the same neural processes are going on whether you change your attitudes about Israel or your favorite beer.
Really?
I think framing tactics might work for a few uninformed observers but most people by now have pretty entrenched beliefs on the conflict
I would suspect most people just want the conflict to go away and the only way they think it will is if Israel would just give up.
Really?
Sure. Some people could care less about the AI conflict but could get in quite a row over the qualities of their favorite beer. And that could change as they mature, switching in importance and/or direction. From what I’ve read I think it’s unlikely that some place along that transition the brain takes the decision away from one kind of neural activity and assigns to different circuits where decisions are computed in a different way.
As I see it, beliefs are functionally like instincts. They both provide emotional forces to guide behavior, although beliefs are the result of learning rather than genetics. So beliefs can change according to conditions in an animal’s environment, what the animal learns. Even the simplest animals seem to be able to do it and the process seems functionally similar in all animals.
Back to the subject: Alter-Jews.
Here’s a notorious one, coupling denial of the Jewish peoplehood feature with demopathy:
You can’t be a Jewish Muslim
Note: IMO, one can be Jewish and non-Zionist without qualifying as alter-Jew.
A propos framing and reframing:
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2010/08/hungry-or-not-mainstream-medias.html
Robert Wistrich: A cautionary tale
The points been made before, but I think it needs to be said again – these people aren’t Jews.
Their parents were Jews.
But Neve Gordon, Tony Greenstein etc, have converted to anti-imperialism. They are no more Jewish than Theobald was still Jewish after he converted to Christianity.
By continuing to talk about these people as if they were Jews, we’re playing their game. They trade on their nominal Jewish identity to score propaganda points. Over at Harry’s Place, they call them “as-a-Jews,” because of their habit of prefacing denunciations of Israelis with the phrase, “As a Jew…”
I think the word we want to describe such people is “ex-Jews” or “Jews who have converted to a far left ideology.”
Most Trotskyists today, like most of the rest of the “Left”, are a body of manipulated opinion, a pack of Pavlovian dogs who respond to signals as they were trained. Most Trots today serve powerful Judeophobic interests. Otherwise, why would they overlook the blatant exploitation of labor in oil rich Arab sheikdoms??
Eliyahu,
The problem is less about Trots being manipulated than about them manipulating too many others.
Besides, the point I wanted to make by signaling this article is about the near-sightedness of alter-Jews. Would you count Lev Davidovitch as one?
I want to note that the vehemence of ex-Jews who have converted to the far left gives the lie to the claim that Israel-hatred isn’t antisemitic.
Ex-Jews feel a special need to prove their allegiance to the anti-Israel cause because they feel that their Jewish background singles them out and makes them suspect in the eyes of their peers.
I would like to mention my sadness at the passing of a regular contributor to these pages. Michelle Shatzman brought us her unique perspective as a citizen of France and professional mathematician. Her words and thoughts here will be missed.
May Michelle’s memory be blessed.
יהי זכרה ברוך
I very much appreciated and was also very fond of her.
Am terribly sorry to hear this.
It was always a pleasure read her comments and analysis.
I will miss her interaction here.
May Michelle’s memory be blessed.
Indeed.
I replied to the message that notified me of her passing away by offering my condolensces to her children.
I am terribly sorry to learn of Michelle’s passing.
I commented earlier but it seems that the filters have withheld it.
Here comes the beautiful people in the US:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mj-rosenberg/the-israel-lobby-helped-s_b_691211.html
The ultimate alter-jew:
DNA tests reveal ‘Hitler was descended from the Jews and Africans he hated’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1305414/Hitler-descended-Jews-Africans-hated-claim-DNA-tests-relatives.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
I wish he found this out while alive and then impose the Nurnberg laws on himself.
Michelle was spared this:
Agressé parce qu’il n’a pas respecté le ramadan
Moslems aggress first a man who was eating at a restaurant in Lyon during Ramadan, then a Jewish woman shopping for food in a supermarket in Toulouse. In the latter case, the guard did not bother to intervene while the “youths” were beating the woman, explaining that he respects the Ramadan and was just about to go off for his fast-breaking.
Get used to this: the new reality of Europe. It’ll get worse.
Alter israelis:
http://www.viciousbabushka.com/2010/08/human-rights-activist-israel-is-a-scum-state.html
Glick on the pathetic academic left:
http://www.carolineglick.com/e/2010/08/israel-fights-the-demagogues.php
Getting used to it?
We are already used to it from the other side of the wire:
Ramadan special: Hezbollah, Sunnis clash in Beirut, at least 3 killed
Wait until the Shia enter the European market to sell their version and clash with the Saudi one.
Cynic, ironically both Hizbullah and al-Ahbash are described in various reports as pro-Syrian. Further, I read a different version of what happened, of how it started. I read that a quarrel started over a parking place between a Hizbullah honcho and a Sunni, a member of al-Ahbash, as I recall. Then the situation escalated into rpgs and machine guns, as situations tend to do in Lebanon.
You raise an interesting point. What would happen if the Sunni-Shi`a dispute overflowed into Europe?? How would the rule of the Mahdi and the ayatollahs be reconciled with the caliphate?
Eliyahu,
Given what’s going on with Iran setting up a base with the latest technological offerings in Eritrea at the mouth to the Red Sea, its garnering of supporters like Turkey, the possibility of taking over Iraq “religiously” it seems a foregone conclusion that they are going to clash with the Saudis and that part of the clash could possibly be on European soil to wrest away Saudi cultural gains there as they strive for regional dominance.
Why not?
With the power they will project they will want to increase their “missionary” work. Their Dawa has a different flavour to the Wahabbi’s taste.
It won’t be enough to lord it only over the kafirs, but also all the other Islamic sects.
Given their hubris it seems a strong possibility that they won’t just sit back when they have the bomb.
Wait until the Shia enter the European market to sell their version and clash with the Saudi one.
What takes them so long, dammit? I want them to start asap. Let’s see how democratic and proportional the euros are in that situation.
In Lee Smith’s THE STRONG HORSE he argues that the arabs don’t fight with the west, but rather fight among themselves on the back of the west.
How would the rule of the Mahdi and the ayatollahs be reconciled with the caliphate?
It won’t matter, they’ll kill each other and their hosts in mass much before they settle the issue. I can’t wait.
I mean, if they resort to RPG’s and grenades for parking, can you imagine what they’ll do to settle religious arguments?
part of the clash could possibly be on European soil to wrest away Saudi cultural gains there as they strive for regional dominance.
Lee Smith has argued this for quite a while.
It won’t be enough to lord it only over the kafirs, but also all the other Islamic sects.
See my #190. That’s about the only positive thing I see in the world today. Then the similarity with Rome will be complete, a repetition of the barbarians at the gates.
they won’t just sit back when they have the bomb
This was obvious years ago. But Washington didn’t care, not under George Bush II nor under Obambi. Recall that under Bush II Iran was given several last chances. I believe that the first “last chance” was given in late 2003, almost seven years ago. Add that to the fact that the USA under the Carter/bzrzezzinksi foreign policy helped Khomeini to take over Iran and you have to ask whether Washington actually wants Iran to have the Bomb.
http://ziontruth.blogspot.com/2010/01/western-great-powers-give-iran-one-last.html
What is also curious is that the “Left,” which back in the Sixties used to spend a lot of time talking and demonstrating against the Bomb and against nuclear proliferation, now seems to favor Iran getting the Bomb, as Iran is now considered “anti-imperialist” or “opposed to US hegemony.” I remember that in those days the British CND [campaign for nuclear disarmament?] used to demonstrate against all the atomic installations in Britain. Sometimes vandalizing property as some now do against stores selling Israeli products. Where does the Brit “Left” stand now? Are they still agin nuke proliferation? Is an Iranian bomb or a Paki bomb a Good Bomb contrasted with the bad Indian or Israeli bombs?
Re Rome, Spengler had apparently similar thoughts:
A 1600th Anniversary Question: Why Did Rome Fall?
David P. Goldman
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/spengler/2010/08/25/a-1600th-anniversary-question-why-did-rome-fall/
But he is glad christianity survived, while I am not.
Once it became a state religion it did what every other religion does. So much for the morality it supposedly is based on.
Israel should beware the demographic religious to secular ratio, the large haredi sector which neither works nor serves in the army, its electoral system and its govt supported religion. Therein lie dangers.
Eliyahu,
Evolution has shown us that those who are dumb or ignorant or weak do not survive. And the state of EU and the US validate this.
If the euros behave this way now:
Germany Learns to Tolerate Radical Islamic Intolerance
Further tolerance mongering.
BY Benjamin Weinthal
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/germany-learns-tolerate-radical-islamic-intolerance
Can you imagine how they will behave under internal threats?
Bye bye civilization.
And here’s Lee Smith himself on the nuke issue:
Prolific
If Saudi Arabia gets the bomb, the rest of the Middle East is likely to go nuclear
By Lee Smith
http://www.tabletmag.com/news-and-politics/43491/prolific/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=prolific
8.O/T, but relevant in the context of collapse of western civilization:
http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/news/international/teacher-assigns-students-to-plan-terror-attack-20100825-newscore
Here’s another post by Sultan Knish which is worth the read
The Media’s Anti-Semitic Hate Machine
incognito #194,
Christianity: not sure whether Spengler is means it or tongue-in-cheek. At any rate, it’s formulated as a side remark.
Haredim: There is a small trend of their greater participation in Israeli life. Even doing army service.
addendum: Rome was not built in a day ;-) and neither Israel…
Rome was not built in a day ;-) and neither Israel…
Rome was huge and a superpower drawing ample resources from its colonies. Israel is small and has limited resources.
Christianity: not sure whether Spengler is means it or tongue-in-cheek. At any rate, it’s formulated as a side remark.
Given that he writes for a christian website, I doubt he was not serious. He regularly praises the pope. Religion is his blind spot since he became religious.
Haredim: There is a small trend of their greater participation in Israeli life. Even doing army service.
With emphasis on small. The reality is that demographically their weight increases relative to the secular and they are becoming increasingly aggressive.
incognito,
I’d put the emphasis on “trend”. It’s a start.
incognito,
As you read a lot of Lee Smith’s articles please put the following into perspective cause it surely, in my experience, detracts from his punditry.
Lee Smith in Tablet: Is ‘Sharia’ An Abstract Concept?
So the intimidation and incitement in its verses are hopelessly abstract in conception?
sharia as such does not exist except as interpreted deconstruction to the nth degree?
Does coherent observation not exist in punditry?
Brian from Toronto,
Could you please clarify: in your opinion, is being a Zionist a necessary qualifier for Jewishness? Is such an opinion anchored in Judaic thought and/or practice?
I’d put the emphasis on “trend”. It’s a start.
Ah, faith!
Cynic,
I see what bothered you.
However, Smith is 100% correct in that Sharia means different things to different people, because there is no islamic Vatican or pope and each imam, sheik or self-appointed scholar interprets it whichever way but lose. They all disagree with each other and use their interpretations to compete for popularity, power and control.
Where I think he has failed in the article is to realize that most of the interpretations that count — those of the radicals — are bad for the west and, therefore, Sharia is a critical test of candidates.
Westerners who focus on the ME can be at best good at knowing and understanding the culture, but it is rare that they have sufficient comprehension of the religion, which is a monster to figure out. Smith is not different.
Important piece by Hazony on the issue of Kuhn paradigms and the applicability to social theory, exactly what I questioned here:
[MUST READ!!!!!!!!!!!]
More on Kuhn, Kant and the Nation-State
http://via.readerimpact.com/v/1/0c867f285de81bb6bccbde8442f0c7316b7210346658c26c
While I agree that there is something to it when it comes to anti-Israel stance of the west, I seriously doubt that it is as importat as he sees it.
A much more powerful factor is the classical conflict between freedom and order. Elites, including the academia, despite their syntactic commitment to the former, have an instinct for the latter. That’s how they end up, like Munkler, with an imperial framework, despite his own criticism of imperial nazism. They want harmony which, because it is an utopia and impossible to achieve in practice, has to be somehow enforced against people’s will. This is what the EU ended up as and what any kind of imperial government, including a world govt, will end up as.
Utopias have never been achieved which is why they continue to drive some desperate for it to the point of dumping freedoms.
The west cannot achieve order with the arabs, so they try to force Israel into it. Which is a somewhat different perspective than Hazony’s.
Another view on Hazony which has some parallels to mine:
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/a-shifting-paradigm-pendulum-1.310467
Unger’s conclusion:
The paradigm pendulum is shifting backward more rapidly than Hazony and others expected, and this bodes well for Israel.
Yes, but it may well take more time, because the islamists want an utopia of their own in the west and the west has not yet collapsed enough from its own utopia.
But utopias always collapse after impossing huge costs until another one comes along. Whether Israel can withstand it it’s a tossup.
Hey, e.g.,
http://www.viciousbabushka.com/2010/08/zomg11-it-teh-israeli-taliban.html
Could you please clarify: in your opinion, is being a Zionist a necessary qualifier for Jewishness? Is such an opinion anchored in Judaic thought and/or practice?
That depends on the definition of a jew: if it is religious (like you imply), then I guess the Temple and therefore Israel and therefore Zionism is part of it.
If it is racial — being born to a jewish woman — then it is not (although that poses the problem of how the 1st jewish woman was defined).
Since apparently the decision who is a jew has been left pending…
BTW, uncle tom jews is not a bad term.
Incognito,
Why not let Brian clarify/specify?
Faith, maybe. Hope may do well too. And even credence.
Yes, it’s not totally baseless though it’s not exactly rational.
How about post-Jews?
Shabbat Shalom! :-)
Why not let Brian clarify/specify?
Who stops him?
Faith, maybe. Hope may do well too. And even credence.
Hope is falsifiable by reality, faith is not.
Yes, it’s not totally baseless though it’s not exactly rational.
Finessing, aren’t you?
How about post-Jews?
Also works, but uncle tom is more expressive of the social dimension.
Shabbat Shalom! :-)
To you too.
Hope is falsifiable by reality, faith is not.
Point taken.
Could you please clarify that “uncle Tom” social dimension?
“Post” as in post-modern, post-Zionist etc. is a bit less (local)culturally-bound.
Ungar (link in #208) makes quite a few interesting and necessary points.
IMO, the situation is different between Europe/EU and the US and, in the former, the more national orientation is only beginning to form (elites, committed to the post-national “paradigm” but nonetheless operating within a national one, would not admit it; at most, they’d concede that the European Utopia is not yet clearly enough defined…or understood). Hard to share either optimism or pessimism.
Could you please clarify that “uncle Tom” social dimension?
Uncle Tom blacks were those subservient/satisfying whites. Similarly, uncle Tom jews are subservient/satisfying gentiles/their social/ideological class.
Post-jews does not have this flavor.
the situation is different between Europe/EU and the US
The US is striving to be like Europe when there are currents in EU striving for nationalism. It’s not clear whether these trends will succeed and where they will lead.
The elites hope that national companies taking over all-EU segments of the economy will advance their undemocratic objectives. Whether nationalist forces can overcome the entrenched EU bureaucracy and these monopolies to revert to national sovereignty is a tossup.
It is easier for a leftist elite in the US to make americans dependent on the govt in a crisis that cannot go to waste and once that happens, it’s over.
Apropos Spengler’s perspective: how religion drives intelligent people astray.
Reason to pause
The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis by Robert R Reilly
Reviewed by Spengler
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LH24Ak01.html
Cynic,
A correct and excellent answer to Lee Smith’s piece on sharia:
[MUST READ]
Is Newt Gingrich Wrong to Talk About Sharia?
by Raymond Ibrahim
http://www.meforum.org/2730/is-newt-gingrich-wrong-to-talk-about-sharia
Cynic,
And here is empirical evidence for Ibrahim’s argument about the weakness of Smith’s argument:
[MUST WATCH]
Is Hamas a terrorist organization?
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/08/027105.php
incognito,
I do not find (from unsystematic observations of a questionably representative sample) the subservience dimension either as strongly characteristic or as a very common one. Being or wanting to be fashionable in order to gain a higher status is similar but not the same: there is a difference between conformity/compliance and conversion, and while some alter/post-Jews are characterized by the first, others are by the second.
Hazony usually has something interesting to say. However, I strongly disagree with his attribution to Kant’s universalism of the reason for current EU Israelophobia. He leaves out Kant’s own strong Judeophobia. So Kant wasn’t really so universal. And the Euros who read him ought to be aware of that. Hazony also exonerates the EU and its intellectual believers of crass Judeophobia.
I think that it is more appropriate and convincing to see today’s Euro Judeophobia as a more hypocritical, mutated form of traditional Judeophobia, than that before WW2. Further, some Euro intellos need to absolve themselves and Europe of guilt for the Holocaust by finding the Jews guilty of crimes equal or worse. That is, they need for their own psychological absolution to find the Jews/Zionists guilty of persecuting poor “palestinians”, of treating Arabs the way that the Nazis treated Jews. Catherine Ney was just one example. Moreover, in order to continue Judeophobia post-Holocaust, Israel must be guilty. Now, since Judeophobia/Israelophobia is state policy in various Western countries, the UK and others [I am ready to argue this], Israel must be seen as persecuting those Arabs now cleverly renamed “palestinians.” For both these reasons, the Palestinian Arabs are viewed as somehow separate from other Arabs which allows deployment of the notion that these Arabs are a collective Jesus, with all the many implications and connotations that the traditional, historical Christian view of Jewish guilt towards the innocent, innocuous figure of Jesus entails.
I also think Hazony missed an important aspect of how anti-Zionism got established in Israeli academic life in his book. He ascribes it all to Buber and Buber’s followers. He totally forgets about the roles of the Communists in the Israeli universities and of Western funding for various Israeli academic projects and personalities.
Eliyahu,
If you read my comment, I argued that universalism is not a very salient factor for anti-zionism and there are more mundane factors at work. Anti-semitism is certainly one of them.
It is quite possible that universalism is used as a rationalization for what is essentially anti-semitism.
Hazony does leave out the confluence of European old habit of singling out the Jews and the elevation of the post-nation idea into dominating ideology. If Jews are seen as Europeans, they’re a special kind of Europeans. They’re viewed as late-comers to the “continent of Enlightenment” who have benefited from the interaction with the grand “lights” (i.e., philosophers), which is both historically and intellectually wrong.
Such “foreign implant” views seem to be at the root (!) of the conception of the “colonialist” view of Jews returning to their homeland, though the article from which I quote above doesn’t make this argument. But it does show how different trends of European thought/philosophy have distanced themselves from Judaism, and the European “natives” from the Jewish aliens.
It expands on what Hazony states as a BTW comment (last paragraph, 2nd point), and shows that the multi-form anti-Semitism played and is still playing a more central role in current vilification of the Jewish state.
Come to think of it, Hazony also leaves out the ironic return of ideas: Jews have been accused of being “cosmopolitans”, of transcending national borders and loyalties, of proceeding within and through inter-national networks. But that was in pre-modern and modern times. Now, in post-modern times, when being cosmopolitan is the right thing, defending a local haven from which cosmopolitan views and acts can (and are) freely cast, is verboten.
#224 universalism is used as a rationalization for what is essentially anti-semitism.
Incog, I agree that universalism is often hypocritical. In this vein, here it is a veneer over the old Judeophobia. Our modern and post-modern world has a lot of old wine in new “modern” bottles.
EG, yes, when nationalism was fashionable, Jews were derided as cosmopolitans. When cosmopolitanism is not only fashionable but the official creed of an aspiring empire, the EU, now the Jews are too nationalistic, too particularistic. And that goes for perceptions of Jews in a racial sense, and of their racial/historical/geographic origin. Around 1900 Jews were seen in the West, not only Germany but Britain, as aliens, as Orientals, Asiatics. For instance, the British novel Trilby by George DuMaurier depicts the swarthy Polish Jew as evil, alien, non-Nordic, etc. See DuMaurier’s illustration for the book.
http://ziontruth.blogspot.com/2008/07/new-anti-zionism-and-old.html
DuMaurier worked as an illustrator for Punch. That humor magazine used to ridicule one of the Sassoon family who excelled at the sports that the British regarded highly, hunting, riding, etc. He was also a friend of the Prince of Wales. But Sassoon was swarthy, Oriental, Jewish and thus undeserving to be rich, skilled in British sports, and the Prince’s friend, according to Punch.
Starting in the 1960s, Israelis were depicted, especially in “leftist” “revolutionary” publications as white Euro colonialists in a “non-white” country. At one time, the Euro Judeophobes were telling the Jews to get out of Europe, to go back to the East, to the Orient. Now, abracadabra, the Jews are superwhite Western colonialists, etc. This was said at a time [the 1960s] when half or more of the Israelis were Jews whose families came from Arab and other Middle Eastern countries. Actually, the “leftist revolutionary” rags did not call the Jews “white” explicitly but insinuated it by writing that Zionism had brought the Jews to seek refuge in a “non-white” country. So by insinuation the Jews were “white,” a quality denied them by earlier Euro Judeophobes. Further, the Arabs liked to consider themselves white and indeed the Nazis welcomed Arab nationalists to Germany to help in the Nazi war effort. Most notable among these Arabs was Haj Amin el-Husseini, the British-appointed mufti of Jerusalem. The Germans may have seen Husseini as “Aryan” since he had blue eyes and reddish hair.
Anyway, we see how “ultra-left” groups helped promote insidious Judeophobic propaganda.
Eliyahu,
You should find this bit of black humour interesting as John R. Miller prognosticates:
How the U.S. Solved the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict
The only thing the author forgets to include is the reaction of the “minority” Muslim community, whose constitutional rights have to be respected, to the Offensive ‘settlement’ of Jews on “American” soil.
re #219
Reilly as reviewed by Spengler doesn’t go far enough. He points out that al-Ghazzali’s anti-rationalism held back science in Muslim lands. But he doesn’t mention that Al-Ghazzali’s great rival Ibn Rushd [Averroes] was executed and his books were burnt.
Be that as it may, I know of no Muslim contributions to civilization since the 13th century, except those of Ibn Khaldun in the 14th.
After the 13th century it was downhill.
Yet, the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, which was set up on some of the most expensive real estate in Paris, so that the Arabs could narcissistically bask in their own “glory,” held
A previous exhibition at the Institute, very much in the Arab aggrandizement and self-flattery mode, was the Golden Age of Arab Science [L'Age d'Or des Sciences Arabes] in 2005.
http://ziontruth.blogspot.com/2007/09/arab-nationalist-megalomania-endorsed.html
Why did that Golden Age end, never to return??
Here is part of the reason as explained by an “apologist” for the Arabs.
http://ziontruth.blogspot.com/2005/12/why-arab-intellectual-decadence-lack.html
I do not find (from unsystematic observations of a questionably representative sample) the subservience dimension either as strongly characteristic or as a very common one.
Perhaps subservience is not the right term — I tried to come up with a better one but the muse did not visit (ah, well, that’s what happens when the brain is preoccupied by existential issues).
Jews have been accused of being “cosmopolitans”, of transcending national borders and loyalties, of proceeding within and through inter-national networks.
My dentist — otherwise a very nice man, just did that the other day. But I would not consider him a smart person and he is extremely ignorant. Very rich and very Obama. Typical.
Which is precisely why jews care about what non-jews think about them, hence the desire to be accepted.
So it not as much subservience but perhaps trying to avoid criticism or social excommunication. Of course, those who deem thhemselves morally superior want it to be socially recognize but, in fact, it is itself a source of criticism.
They’re viewed as late-comers to the “continent of Enlightenment” who have benefited from the interaction with the grand “lights” (i.e., philosophers), which is both historically and intellectually wrong.
But I thought that the enlightenment is rooted in the judeo-christian tradition. And given that christianity is a hijacked religion — Jesus had nothing to do with what Paul’s (an alter-jew if there ever was one) seizure invented, bastardizing a lot of morality in the process, then euros were enlightened by the jews, no? Perhaps THAT’s what’s bothering them and drive them to reverse causality?
Now, in post-modern times, when being cosmopolitan is the right thing, defending a local haven from which cosmopolitan views and acts can (and are) freely cast, is verboten.
See what I mean?
A previous exhibition at the Institute, very much in the Arab aggrandizement and self-flattery mode, was the Golden Age of Arab Science [L’Age d’Or des Sciences Arabes] in 2005.
What do you expect those without any achievements and with a very intense complex of inferiority will do? They will inflate the importance of whatever little they have and overclaim it. Pretty classic.
By the way, it is not concidence that such an institute exists in France. After all, the French are similar with respect to their modern history and contributions, even though their historical achievements cannot be touched by the islamic world.
[MUST READ]
Who’re You Calling a ‘Bigot’?
By Brendan Goldman
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/08/whore_you_calling_a_bigot.html
This sort of thing explains the jews’ instinct to “not be different” and multiculturalism.
[MUST READ]
Response to Lauren Booth
http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/2010/08/response-to-lauren-booth.html
incognito,
.. with a very intense complex of inferiority will do?
They don’t have an inferiority complex but consider themselves to be superior. They are superior so it is incomprehensible that kafirs and dhimmis outperform them.
But I thought that the enlightenment is rooted in the judeo-christian tradition….then euros were enlightened by the jews, no?
The processes of distancing (quite some mental/rhetoric gymnastics) are well described in the paper I linked to in #225. Quite a few more “juicy” quotes in there too.
re-subservience, absent muse ;-)
IMO, the more relevant phenomenon is dissidence.
On the intelligentsia part, there is an incentive for originality – which always means breaking some rules/norms. If it works (i.e., the original, dissenting person gains something, like wider notoriety or higher status), s/he’s got both more means and opportunities to assemble followers who either conform to their original platform or convert – and some of those may wish to outdo the original dissenter, and dissent even farther.
Crossing, blurring and erasing frontiers seems to me a more common denominator for alter/post-Jews than social acceptance and desirability. The latter are widespread among us all, humans. Alter/post-Jews have some knack with unicity, excellence, creativity, chosedness/exemplarity… and purity. I’m not sure they want to be liked. There is some halo about being a spearhead, a pride in leading a non-consensual movement, and satisfaction derived from disturbing the existing order, moving the frontier or crossing it…
Maybe they’re more after respect or reliance.
At any rate, dissenters’ objective is to replace the existing order by another one – of their own making.
p.s. I’m having Judith Butler in mind while writing this comment.
p.p.s. Conforming consists in adopting a set of behaviours that are compatible/desirable within the group one adheres to.
Converting implies not only adopting the external “signs” (behaviours) but also the internal modification: commitment to a new set of beliefs (like in a religious or secular religion).
They don’t have an inferiority complex but consider themselves to be superior. They are superior so it is incomprehensible that kafirs and dhimmis outperform them.
It is the Quran and Islam which indoctrinates them with the notion that they are superior, while at the same time guarantees inferiority.
It logically follows that if the kafir succeeds and they fail, the carpet is pulled from under their feet — because that means the Quran and thus Allah is wrong. Since this cannot be allowed to be the case, it must be that theymore are superior, but because they have nothing to show for it, they emphasize that past period.
The more they emphasize their superiority the more it exposes their inferiority.
The processes of distancing (quite some mental/rhetoric gymnastics) are well described in the paper I linked to in #225. Quite a few more “juicy” quotes in there too.
That’s exactly what I argued without reading the source, I was just being tongue-in-cheek with respect to the causality direction.
IMO, the more relevant phenomenon is dissidence.
Applies to leftists and academics, not to jews per-se.
And, in fact, most of the stance by those is conformism, not dissidence. Indeed, it’s the implications of the latter that they want to avoid.
Think Beinart, Judt, etc.
Crossing, blurring and erasing frontiers seems to me a more common denominator for alter/post-Jews than social acceptance and desirability.
I would respond by paraphrasing Ray, but here it applies: the same brain structure is responsible for both and it’s terribly difficult even for them to separate between the two. They SAY the former but my guess is that it’s the latter that drives them. And, of course, that’s the last thing they want to accept or admit.
p.p.s. Conforming consists in adopting a set of behaviours that are compatible/desirable within the group one adheres to.
Converting implies not only adopting the external “signs” (behaviours) but also the internal modification: commitment to a new set of beliefs (like in a religious or secular religion).
Weeeelllll, in theory. In practice things are much more muddled. That’s psychology.
An apropos piece:
[MUST READ]
Radical Islam’s Fellow-Travellers
NICK COHEN
http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/3287/full
To those who delude themselves that the US has changed its ways about Israel:
Martin Kramer: You-couldn’t-make-it-up department: “Washington is funding an ad campaign in Israel that features billboards of Palestinian officials asking: ‘We are partners—what about you?’ The campaign launched Sunday includes the faces of senior PA officials Saeb Erekat, Jibril Rajoub, Yasser Abed Rabo and Riad Malki.… USAID invested close to $250,000 toward the creation of the billboards.” More: http://bit.ly/bKhG9M
Washington funds Palestinian campaign | UPI
http://www.upi.com
The aim of the campaign is to persuade Israelis that peace partners on the Palestinian side truly exist, and calls to support a two-state solution, the report said. The US government was approached to fund the campaign by the Geneva Initiative founders.
Applies to leftists and academics, not to jews per-se.
Yes, dissidence is the general zeitgeist. I pointed the Jewish specificities further on.
Gee, how novel. Did it take you long to come to this groundbreaking insight?
It’s me who analyses what they say/confess and what I make of it. I think that this distinction is the point where the Jewish specificity separates alter/post-Jews from the rest of the “Lefties and academics”. IOW, theirs is a need to distinguish (in both senses) themselves, rather than to “sink” into some comfortable homogenous and (worst of all?) anonymous mass. Their voice has a distinctive built-in note (Jewish – see: as-a-Jew…) and yet another distinction brought by their personal contribution to the Alter Jewish message.
Now, if you want to contradict or challenge my assessment – go ahead, I don’t claim to have come up with the ultimate truth.
I specified the theoretical differences between conformity and conversion in order to clarify my statement for those unfamiliar with these notions. “Professional deformation” in Michelle’s terms.
If I plead guilty, will you judge me as indulgently as you should?
incognito,
Regarding dissidence/conformity: the question is which frame of reference one adheres to, and which one is the left-behind one.
I think we agree about alter/post-Jews’ adherence to the PoMo frame, and that dissidence is about the “conventional” Jewish one. The latter is very (too) much “of reference” to be considered as discarded. As if it were haunting them.
Would they be experiencing the same phenomenon that so many Christians have? That is, the inexorable reference to something (Jewish roots, thought) they ardently wish to detach themselves from?
Gee, how novel. Did it take you long to come to this groundbreaking insight?
I quoted Ray — how noveel could that be? You seemed to refer to mental separations that were not sufficiently sensitive to this.
It’s me who analyses what they say/confess and what I make of it.
I guess this is novel, huh?
I think that this distinction is the point where the Jewish specificity separates alter/post-Jews from the rest of the “Lefties and academics”.
I suspect that lefties/academics want to conform to the dogma in their dissidence, while the alter-jews’ dissidence is from the jews/zionists to be accepted by the lefties/academics/gentiles.
It does seem we’re in some agreement, but that’s only because we make sense. :)
incognito,
The campaign launched Sunday includes the faces of senior PA officials Saeb Erekat, Jibril Rajoub, Yasser Abed Rabo and Riad Malki.…
baaahoowaah! The smallest liars around for their campaign they found?
If the majority of Israelis believe this stuff then they deserve what they get.
cynic, I’m sure that you don’t believe that more than a small fraction of Israelis could take this stupidity seriously. I don’t think that the USAID was improving the US image among Israelis by funding this garbage.
Eliyahu,
I was just being sarcastic.
USAID has been involved before in PLO propaganda.
Do you remember this?
Your Taxes for PLO Propaganda
Nothing much has changed.
If the majority of Israelis believe this stuff then they deserve what they get.
The point is not that israelis will believe that, but that the americans believe they are and therefore invest money in it.
Apparently, Obama thinks that they are as stupid as americans and therefore can be fooled as easily as they.
In any case, what reliance can you put in the US now that it has come to them funding the pal propaganda? Would you buy a used car from them?
When an american administration is as stupid as to believe that pal propaganda will be effective, they’ll believe anything and the arabs will play them like a violin, which they do.
Nothing much has changed.
Not exactly. If they have done this shit in the past they should have learned hw stupid it is. But they have not.
This means that they are incapable of learning from experience, which reinforces the reality that the west has completely collapsed and Israel is on its own.
If Israel continues to appease the west it’s a gonner.
Re american stupidity and collapse:
[MUST READ]
Japan-Style Stagnation? You Should Be So Lucky
David P. Goldman
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/spengler/2010/08/30/cross-posted-from-asia-times-you-should-be-so-lucky/
See what I mean?
incognito,
Until the stuff being shown on Palestinian TV, printed in their papers and said on their radio broadcasts becomes common knowledge in the US the great majority of Americans will continue believing in the propaganda given the cognitive egocentrism that has been inculcated through the PC (politically correct) approach to animal life on planet earth.
And more:
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC06.php?CID=1504
e.g.,
Re alter-jews and the liberal utopia which does not exist:
Tony Judt and Israel
by Benjamin Kerstein
http://newledger.com/2010/08/tony-judt-and-israel/
It is hard for me to believe that such violence of tone could be generated by universalism illusion. So there must have been more to Judt’s anti-Israel position than that.
Given that his expertise was on Europe it could be precisely the gap between his paradigm on europe and reality that made him look for a scapegoat. And we know who people turn to for that.
Cynic,
Turns out things HAVE changed:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/08/027113.php
And more:
Obama uses tax dollars to rebuild Mosques?
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/page/223437_Obama_uses_tax_dollars_to_rebu
THE WEAK HORSE
Steyn on the World
http://www.steynonline.com/content/view/3463/
yes, Incog, this story is pretty gross, helping MB orgs to apply for US govt grants, apparently.
But don’t forget that Prez George Bush II invited some Islamists to come see me at the White House. I think one of them was Sami al-Arian. George II had a soft spot for Saudis, for instance. Even Michael Moore said so until, apparently, it became politically incorrect to acknowledge that any Muslim Arab had more than 57 cents to his name. It is necessary to see them all as poor folk exploited by them Zionist Jews. Obama is a continuation of Bush –but worse.
By the way, do you guys know that Prez George B I, Dubya’s Daddy, was in Saudi Arabia in the summer of 1982 during the First Lebanon War?? The WSJ reported circa 1985 that Good Ole George met yasser a. there at the funeral of the King of the Kingdom of SA. Yasser was taking a break from the war to pay his respects to one of his moneybags. George I told yasser that he should keep on fighting the Israelis and not accept a cease-fire with them. A Good Ole Peaceable Down Home Boy, that George I.
[...] Excerpt below from Not ‘self’-hating Jews, but Jewish scourges of Jews [...]
Obama is a continuation of Bush –but worse.
Much worse.
Bush may have had some sympathy for saudis, but he was not an anti-semite. Alibama is, courtesy of Jeremiah Wright, Khalidi, Ayers and others.
A Good Ole Peaceable Down Home Boy, that George I.
No US president was a jew lover. They tolerated and helped Israel for their own interests: Cold War, keeping arabs in line, electoral advantage.
Now the US is finished so everybody screws it and, as is usually the case, the jews are scapegoated.
But hey, let the americans fund islam in the US — they’ll get what they deserve.
incognito,
If they were only wishing to conform, they’d be token Jews.
But they wish to stand out, vis-a-vis the adopted frame of reference, and with regard to the innate one.
This attitude is very Jewish — but only in non-Jewish and alter/post-Jewish eyes, who misinterpret the need/drive for excellence.
But they wish to stand out, vis-a-vis the adopted frame of reference, and with regard to the innate one.
They want to outconform. That’s what those who want to conform but are concerned that just conforming is not enough.
This attitude is very Jewish
No, for example religious converts try to outconform too.
Be more catholic than the pope, as the saying goes.
incognito,
The zealotry (non specific) is one thing. The exceptional status/standing sought is another (mistakenly attributed to some Jewish spirit).
O/T – I told you so:
http://tv.themarker.com/index.jhtml?ElementId=/ibo/repositories/stories/m1_2000/tmc100831_958473.xml&from=haaretz
My preliminary point is:
Zionism is essentially a national liberation struggle and movement. It is this first and foremost. It does have religious aspects: Some make that the whole but I do not think so, because it is at bottom a struggle of man to gain the wherewithall for life on earth. Religion does enter but religion also entered the struggle of the Celts to survive in Ireland from about 2000 years ago.
The difference of Zionism to other national movements is the intense hostility to the Jews, in other words antisemitism. In most cases I would say that this antisemitism is what has created these Jewish antisemites to whom you refer. There are gradations, so there is the Jewish Homeland hater Gilad Atzmon, who proposes “one democratic state”, thus a liar, because that means the elimination of the Jewish State and Jewish Homeland. Atzmon is fairly easy to deal with because you cannot miss him. But I have experience of other Jews who keep their heads down and do not defend Israel when it is LIED against. Those types are harder to deal with and to fight against.
The situation is explosive. Look at the list of people at the conference which EG attended. That is one extensive list, is it not.
I have no idea what they talked about. Will it be published?
But I doubt if they provided a way forward, as indeed this very extensive discussion has not provided any way forward either.
No matter how well meaning you are, and the effort put in, you have not provided a way forward.
I am sad about this, because I respect the people here, but difficult things must be said face to face.
As I see it the issue revolved down to the following:
1. Are you going to accept the continued existence of antisemitism in human society and therefore find some way for Jews to defend themselves against that antisemitism. Just that.
OR
2. Are you going to do all of that above in (1), work in a realistic fashion in the real world in which we live, thus creating ways to defend Jews, which includes defending at all costs Israel, but do all of that in the context of having a strategy of creating “a new man on earth” thus to end antisemitism and all other forms of cruelty to man and animal.
It is in the latter part of the second (2) that I feel you fail; rather you do not even reach to there in order to fail! Arguably even worse!
We need to have a perspective for the future: a new man, a new form of human being.
We need to have that perspective.
Now I will begin to tell you how this can be done and how the socialist revolution can be carried out.
But the first step in the socialist revolution is actually for Netanyahu to step up to the plate and to either pulverize totally the Iranian nuclear bomb, or to delay it in such a way that there is time, and Israel will continue to exist as an entity in this human affair, having been given time by necessary Netanyahu and IDF action, then for Jews to proceed to use this time in the great human drama.
Think of Iran…think also of Nazi Germany in 1933.
If Israel is destroyed then that is surely a big victory for the forces of Fascism in the world.
The socialist revolutionary forces in the world must surely oppose that.
It is actually the test today of who is a real socialist revolutionary and it will become the test more and more as events unfold.
By the way these issues were all very much latent, some even explicit, in the famous debate between Leon Trotsky and Herzl at the Sixth Zionist Congress.
You cannot get much more fundamental than that!
Here, not mentioned once! Tells its own story re the preconceptions of people in this threat (prejudices may be a better but more bitter word)
I wish to be constructive not bitter, because jews again are in great peril.
E.G.,
But they wish to stand out, vis-a-vis the adopted frame of reference, and with regard to the innate one.
This attitude is very Jewish
“Look mummy, look how good I am”. “Ah, my son the doctor”.
:-)
But have you noticed that when they, these Alter/Post/As-a/ex Jews, are displaying their conformism with their gentile “overlords” how they transmogrify into Uriah Heap, but on encountering their own kind they become arrogantly assertive?
Be more catholic than the pope, as the saying goes.
Is to prove one’s sincerity, loyalty and integrity with regard to the cause.
And then they cause envy amongst the “natives” and push up the hate index even more.
Eliyahu,
George the Elder gave Reagan very bad advice in 1983 and along with Baker and Weinberger was responsible for Iran getting their real foothold in Lebanon.
It wasn’t bad enough Carter getting the extremists into power in Iran, so the next lot, in their ignorance and personal money making schemes, had to “help” with the creation of a satellite state controlled by the Iranian Foreign Legion.
Eliyahu,
No doubt you’ve read this by Avi Trengo. What he says and the way he says it just shows how stupid the USAID propaganda is.
Obama, we’re not suckers
Cynic,
Yes, it’s stereotypically Jewish. And, like all stereotypes, not profoundly.
But have you noticed….. how they transmogrify into Uriah Heap,
Sort of. I have no relevant example(s) popping into my working memory right now. Could you spare one for poor-me, Sir?
but on encountering their own kind they become arrogantly assertive?
Oh YES.
Do you think this double attitude is why they appear so tormented?
oops,
And, like all stereotypes, not profoundly anchored in Judaism.
But have you noticed that when they, these Alter/Post/As-a/ex Jews, are displaying their conformism with their gentile “overlords” how they transmogrify into Uriah Heap, but on encountering their own kind they become arrogantly assertive?
Which is what induces me to believe there is at least some desire to conform/be accepted as a “good jew”.
Is to prove one’s sincerity, loyalty and integrity with regard to the cause.
And then they cause envy amongst the “natives” and push up the hate index even more.
That was my drift.
[MUST READ]
Washington’s Israeli allies
http://www.carolineglick.com/e/2010/08/washingtons-israeli-allies.php
[MUST READ]
Blame game on the horizon
Abbas is no Arafat; once this becomes apparent to all, the finger-pointing-fest will begin.
By Moshe Arens
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/blame-game-on-the-horizon-1.311184
E.G.,
I cannot give examples you would recognize cause they were people I unfortunately ran across in my life.
And, like all stereotypes, not profoundly anchored in Judaism.
Well their “Jewishness” amounted to chicken soup for a bout of flu and a liking for chopped herring or liver.
But griben on fresh bread and a schnaps was discarded in favour of crackling.
They had to make the point.
The counter point was made by those witnessing the behaviour in asking: “So what does a pig know about lokshen?”
US funds left-wing, anti-Netanyahu ad campaign
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2010/08/us-funds-left-wing-anti-netanyahu-ad.html
Cynic,
All Uriah Heap-like attitudes I can think of is some court-Jews. And that’s not very relevant. Alter/post-Jews are a different story. Indeed, pigs thinking they know something about lokshen (or lockshen?).
And (attn. incognito too), I argue there is more than just a desire to conform (more precisely, to convert), not that this desire is absent. As-a-Jew they want to eat the cake and have it in its entirety: retain their misconception of Jewish identity while
shatteringdeconstructing it.e.g.,
I tend to assume more mundane reasons.
e.g.,
http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-spine/77355/ive-touched-raw-spot-among-my-jewish-readers-and-thats-exactly-what-i-intended-
Still hopeful?
E.G.,
about lokshen (or lockshen?).
Multiculti or Diversity? :-)
If it looks like lo***n, Tastes like lo***n then who gives a fig how it is spelled.
One must take into account the diverse forms of Yiddish and also the myriad of accents.
There were a couple of people I came across who demeaned their roots using that very noun in the adjectival sense and then when the high holy hove in sight did they genuflect.
One of them literally went out of his way to mock the cooking I found so tasty. As a kid I was completely confused at the time and nagged my mother to try and discover what was so much better in taste.
I should have added that As-a-Jew they demean the kugel in favour of the cake.
incognito,
Yes, I’m still hopeful, despite the few Ayatollas/Ulemas et Co. They’re far from being the sole authority.
BTW, Peretz is wrong about Goldstein’s attack: it did not occur 60 years ago.
Cynic,
As-a-Jew they demean the kugel in favour of the cake.
Sure. And Lokshen in favor of Yakisoba. But they still want to bite into it while having it all intact. Must be this recycling thing on their minds…
At any rate, in conformity (!) with incognito’s “mundane reasons” assumption, whatever the motivation, I think it’s important to note that there is a problematic relation in associating (in several possible ways) two distinct frames of reference.
From that link to smarty Marty
And when a “saint” says “May God smite the Palestinians with the plague” that saint is sanctioning all sorts of evil against what to be sure are also many many innocent people.
Now maybe that’s what he thinks and would be incited to do so he projects his thinking on to those Israelis. Just so cognitively egocentric.
Those Israelis described here
Still, the former Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel is an influential man to the people of the street. Some even think of him as a sainted person.
are not very likely to assume a “godlike” stature to impose the Saint’s wish.
If anything they would be praying that their God fulfill the Saint’s wishes and leave it at that.
And as for those who don’t see Ovadia as a saint, they will just ignore him.
The media of course come Sunday morning will make the most of Ovadia’s post Sabbath sayings as they have done for the past decade and it has become almost ritual.
If they were only wishing to conform, they’d be token Jews.
They ARE token jews. They are the good jews. They wish to be accepted by some reference group other than jews.
(I never said it’s JUST the wish to conform, but that’s a large part).
Yes, I’m still hopeful, despite the few Ayatollas/Ulemas et Co. They’re far from being the sole authority.
They don’t have to be.
Are you sure it’s hope and not faith? Is there any kind of evidence that would kill the hope?
Now maybe that’s what he thinks and would be incited to do so he projects his thinking on to those Israelis. Just so cognitively egocentric.
To be honest, as an atheist I don’t much care about the curse. But I do care about the flogging and all the rest of the crap of religion. And I find it inconsistent to deplore the christian and muslim radicals but not the jewish ones. I don’t compare them in terms of how murderous they are, but aside from that, yuckh.
Israel braces for difficult month
Political calendar filled with snags
By Eli Lake
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/aug/30/israel-braces-for-difficult-month/
For some reason the current “leadership” in Israel does not inspire confidence. It has the kiss-ass instinct and that is lethal in this context.
Is there any kind of evidence that would kill the hope?
-Statistics about a significant %tage ( more than 50) of Israelis adhering to the most of the Ayatolla’s prescriptions.
-the Ayatolla’s party winning the elections (getting more than 49 mandates).
-Massive, violent riots by followers claiming a theocracy or similar.
Rather a high threshold.
Things can be real ugly much before that.
incognito,
Your question was about killing hope, not reducing it. And yes, the threshold is high.
And I don’t think we’re likely to witness an Iranian-like revolution in Israel.