How Does the World Protect Itself from Israel and the Scourge of Zionism?
By Guest Post • Sep 28th, 2009 at 21:27 • Category: Analysis, Hasbara Deconstruction Site, Internet and Communication, Israel, Middle East Issues, Newswire, Palestine, Zionism
WRITTEN BY ROGER TUCKER
There are many people, "progressive" Zionists included, who loudly object to the Occupation in the Palestinian territories, but see no problem with the continued existence of an Israel that privileges Jews over all others who happen to live there, particularly the Muslim, Christian and other non-Jewish "citizens." These people are referred to by Zionists as the "Arab-Israelis," but they are, of course, Palestinians. This population also includes a small number of Jews, people whose residence in Palestine pre-dated the Zionist immigration that started in the late 19th century. Those among them – and they may constitute the majority – who never bought into the Zionist ideology and are opposed to the State of Israel are treated pretty much the same as the other Palestinians, as less than human, untermenschen. This may come as a surprise to many, but it is perfectly understandable when one realizes that the Zionist project, although initially proposed and marketed by Western Europeans, became in due course an entirely Ashkenazi endeavor dominated by Eastern Europeans, the kind of people despised by the highly educated, cosmopolitan Viennese Jews like Theodor Herzl. These Ashkenazim (my ancestors) spoke Yiddish as their first language, no matter which country they happened to have been born in. The form of Zionism they promulgated has become known as "political Zionism," dominated by the followers of Vladimir Jabotinski, the father of 20th century Zionism, and the progenitor of the Likud Party. The opposition Labor Party stems from Ben Gurion, but the two parties are like the Republicrats in the U.S., two sides of the same coin.
Political Zionism is a far cry from the idealistic form that refined, cosmopolitan Jews like Herzl and his Western European (and North American) admirers thought that they had bought into. That is why the vast majority of them became disillusioned with the whole project long before Kristallnacht and then WWII. People like Einstein, Freud, Hannah Arendt, Judah Magnes and Martin Buber smelled a rat, and they made it clear that they had no interest in supporting the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine. This was, in fact, the prevailing sentiment among the vast majority of Western European and North American Jews. All of that began to change in the late 30's and by the time of the liberation of the camps in 1945 this vociferous opposition faded away among Jewish liberals, progressives, socialists and humanists. European fascism of the Italian and German varieties ensured the success of political Zionism, the mirror image of Nazism, but with "the Jewish People" now cast as being simultaneously "the victims" and the "Master Race," just like their role models, the Nazis, before them. History not only repeats itself – it plays practical jokes.
Being against the Occupation is easy. After all, it violates numerous international conventions, entails daily crimes against humanity and just plain stinks to heaven. With a modicum of imagination, one can see that the Israelis, with their Matrix of Control, have erected a number of open air prisons, virtual concentration camps, but with the guards outside. So convenient – prisons in which the prisoners have to fend for themselves for the necessities of life – food, water, electricity – all of it supplied or witheld at the whim of the wardens who watch from a distance, utilizing collaborators and the latest in high-tech surveillance gear. Occasionaly, usually prompted by some act of desperation by a powerless people (a suicide bombing or a stray Qassam rocket, the modern equivalent of sling-shots), or merely a rumor that something's going on, they make periodic forays inside to "send a message," arrest "troublemakers," usually using Palestinian children as human shields and to touch off whatever booby traps might have been placed along the way. Occasionally, "sending a message" takes the form of a full-fledged massacre, as happened recently in Gaza. It's utterly despicable, reeking of the most egregious racism imaginable without even the slightest regard for human rights. But from the Israeli point of view the Palestinians aren't really human – they are "them," "the other," "the enemy."
However, there are those perfectly aware of the facts who still cling to the doomed fantasy of a Jewish State. They are people like Benny Morris, the Israeli historian who scrupulously chronicled the Nakba, but continues to support the existence of the Jewish State, even if that entails the total ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Likewise the old warhorse Uri Avnery, one of the most decent and courageous human beings I know of, who has heroically spoken out for decades against the obscenities perpetrated by Israel, yet clings to the notion that Israel could and should somehow survive as a Jewish nation, no matter how truncated. And then there is the army of so-called "progressives," who think likewise, and avidly support an imagined, reformed Israel while protesting against the Occupation. These people have co-opted any possibility that the world could easily come together to put an end to apartheid Israel as it did white supremacist South Africa.
The "Separation Wall" introduces an additional level of surrealism. Its similarity to the ghetto walls that the European Jews were so familiar with, that in a curious way provided a sense of comfort, familiarity and security to their residents - whatever the intentions of the builders may have been - has been noted by many. The transparently silly notion that it would "keep out terrorists" is far less convincing than the realization that it was a familiar reflex of the ancient paranoia - a tangible, if pathetic, defense against the goyim of whichever land the Jews were trespassing in. Always the trespassers, always the strangers in a strange land, doomed to stave off, for as long as possible, the inevitable rage their presence sooner or later engendered, the restrictions, the pogroms, and then, like clockwork, the expulsions. Behind the bellicose, militaristic, macho aggression of the Israelis - the arrogance and the gratuitous cruelty - lie the old fears, the inescapable paranoia, the unvoiced fear that "the Chosen Ones" were really chosen to suffer, and that sooner or later the ax would fall – as it surely will, because even the Zionists can't repeal the law of cause and effect. Who was it, Einstein, who defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result?
But let's assume that, miraculus miraculorum, the Israelis decide to back off (or, much more likely, are pressured to by the Obama administration and/or other forces currently percolating just beneath the surface), and, having completed their Apartheid wall, agree to remain behind it, content in their air-conditioned ghetto. At this point in time such an action would involve an actual commitment to allowing the creation of at least some facsimile of a Palestinian State on the other side of the wall, to somehow overseeing the evacuation of some half million Israelis from the West Bank (which would entail the forcible eviction of tens of thousands of fanatical settlers), to giving up control of all of the major water sources, to allowing the Palestinians the freedom to come and go as they see fit, and so on and so forth. When looked at closely, ending the Occupation at this juncture would necessitate unimaginable difficulties, not the least of which would be giving up the Zionist fantasy of Greater Israel, from the river to the sea. I don't speak of the grander version, meaning from the Euphrates to the Nile, but merely from the Jordan River to the Med.
In fact, it would entail giving up on Zionism altogether, because ethnocentric tribal fascism has an internal logic to it, a compulsion to conquer and expand or die – perpetual war is a necessary precondition for maintaining the dominance of its ruling class, whose very existence is predicated on doing battle with and defeating "the enemy," over and over again. Such a process inevitably plays itself out in defeat, as Alexander and the Macedonians discovered, as did the Romans, and most recently the Nazis. The Israeli power elite may be very smart and knowledgeable, technologically and militarily superior, but they are clearly ignoring Santayana's maxim that those who don't know history are bound to repeat it. No people are guiltier of that mistake than the Jews, who after centuries of getting themselves expelled from country after country, are setting themselves up for something that will make even what happened to them under Hitler look like a cakewalk.
When we talk about Zionism we are discussing an ideology, a set of ideas, narratives and myths that together constitute the political world view of a those who self-identify as belonging to the group professing that ideology, in this instance "the Jewish people." Although ideologies may present themselves as being universally true, they are generally based on some sort of group identification: tribal, ethnic (racial), national, religious, caste, and most recently, economic status. There is always an "Us" vs. "Them."
What after all is Zionism, stripped of its racial romanticism and mythology? It's essentially the last gasp of the same old European colonialism that has characterized the "modern" period of history, during which various European powers came to dominate the political, technological and economic landscape of the planet. Zionism evolved as a political ideology and a strategy to solve the problem that European Jews found themselves in, stateless and dispersed following the predations of the Mongols under Genghis Khan and the subsequent collapse of the Khazarian Empire. Their status pretty much everywhere in Europe was that of a despised minority (for perfectly understandable reasons too complex to go into here). In response, they developed a tribal mythology, based mostly on some stories in the Hebrew bible, in which they played the role of "the Chosen People," heroes of an epic in which they were constantly set upon, persecuted and threatened with destruction, but somehow feisty enough to survive. In other words, one could say that they developed a collective case of paranoid schizophrenia, according to which they (simultaneously the Elect of God and His victims) were constantly under attack by superior forces, but could imagine a way to escape and secure for themselves the sense of security they so desperately sought, a ghetto with walls strong and durable enough to keep the wolf perpetually at bay.
All this came to a head in the 19th Century, when the idea occurred to Theodor Herzl that the way out of this depressingly familiar pattern would be for the Jews to have a nation state of their own. This happened, not coincidentally, at the height of European Colonialism. Based on this rather simple notion an entire ideology had to be constructed in order to sell the idea, not only to the major players themselves, but to the so-called Jewish people. In order to do that, and this is just one aspect of a very complicated and not very funny joke, the "Jewish People" had to be invented. This is the subject of the Israeli historian Shlomo Sand's book, The Invention of the Jewish People. The forthcoming English translation (it will be available on October 19th) is eagerly anticipated. We can leave aside the fact that the notion that a Jewish colony could and should be planted in Palestine was actually a hare-brained scheme concocted in the first decade of the 19th Century in the British Foreign Office, where the idea soon died a quiet and unlamented death. And nevermind that gathering the Jews together in a ghetto constructed in the very epicenter of a people understandably indisposed to being dispossessed might bring about precisely the fate that the Zionists were and are so terrified of.
If one roots around in the online repository called "Zionist Quotes" one can find the intellectual building blocks that created modern Israel.They reveal that very process of inventing the necessary ideology, as well as the development of an overall strategy for going about the creation of the colonialist-settler nation state. Contained therein are numerous reflections about the nature of "the Jewish People" and Jewish identity that would have "the Inquisition" (those who maintain the Zionist orthodoxy) in a characteristic uproar about "antisemitism" and "self-hating Jews." They largely saw themselves as outcasts, almost like lepers who have decided they themselves would build a leper colony wherein they could be quarantined and thus left alone. It becomes clear from these texts that the early Zionists almost reveled in guilt and self-hatred, something that is so characteristic of Jewish literature, and lies, shadow-like, at the root of modern, triumphalist Zionism. As Karin Friedemann points out, The Palestinians’ ancestors created the Hasmonean Kingdom, composed the Hebrew Bible, followed Jesus, wrote the New Testament, compiled the Mishnah, and redacted the Jerusalem Talmud. The Palestinian people constitute the living link to the earliest beginnings of the heritage from the Torah and Gospel. Zionists are almost pitiable, for they are so ashamed of their own history that they have usurped one belonging to another people."
There is a category of political ideologies that Zionism fits perfectly into. It is called fascism. Although the dictionaries define fascism as the particular ideology espoused by Hitler and Mussolini in the 20th century, the roots of fascism go back to the very first emergence in human history of what could be termed political thought . Those familiar with the great spiritual traditions are aware that the principal obstacle to human wisdom and happiness is considered to be our habit of putting our own interests before those of others, as opposed to some variation of the Golden Rule, the point where all wisdom traditions, even theistic religions, agree. The opposite, neurotic tendency derives from the mistaken belief that we are solid, continuous individuals, self-existing and autonomous. Hence the notions of "self," or "soul," as well as belief systems that inculcate the notion that God (a religious metaphorical term that solidifies and embodies all that is not "me") is at least on "our" side. All wisdom paths teach that dissolving this mistaken belief in the existence of "ego" is the only way of arriving at any sort of genuine sanity.
What is not talked about so much is the problem of "group ego," which is essentially the same psychological phenomenon, but applied to a collection of people with whom we closely identify rather than just our individual selves. This propensity manifests itself first in our close identification with our family and then extends out to include our felt bond with friends, neighbors, town or city, and so on, until it includes such collective concepts as our co-religionists, our gender, nation, race, class and so forth. This is the Us and Them duality that mirrors the basic duality of Self and Other. It is the underlying rationale for all wars and acts of officially sanctioned aggression against the "Other." Consequently, building a sane human society is not possible without conquering this tendency to elevate and privilege "our" group over others. Psychologically speaking, rooting for the Red Sox or the Yankees involves the same psycho-dynamics that lead to deadly riots in soccer stadiums, and on to wars of aggression. It is neither good nor bad, rather it is simply a stage to be experienced and then left behind on the path to maturity, a condition that is characterized by, among other things, the awareness that all beings are connected and interdependent.
The development of both individual and group egos are artifacts of a natural psychological process. Just as the butterfly is the final form following embryo, larva and pupa; and the lotus flower follows seed, root and stem, human beings undergo a similar metamorphosis. Conventional political views are characteristic of an adolescent stage of life that primarily concerns itself with one's perceived individual and group interests. Such views naturally clash with how others perceive their interests, and the results are obvious when we watch the news. The conditions created by invoking the "I" as opposed to "You," or the "We" as opposed to "Them," creates a battleground wherein the destructive emotions of passion, aggression, ignorance, arrogance and envy are given full play. Clearly, human society as a whole has not yet evolved beyond this stage of social development. But the possibility is there, just as the seed prefigures the flower. A number of people, those who have embodied wisdom from many places and traditions, have shown the way, though few follow. The path to a genuine "adulthood" is difficult, particularly from within the lunatic asylum where we find ourselves, but it is traversible.
What we have been talking about is fascism, the ideological underpinning of the Jewish State. There is also a religious underpinning (not Judaism – the Jewish Zionists, after all, are and always have been overwhelmingly secular), and that is the Holycause (not to say that Jewish religious fundamentalism doesn't play a part). The ideology and the religion are symbiotic, as has always been the case in human societies. Church and State reinforce and support one another. The Holycause is remarkably similar to the underlying myth of Christianity, that someone, after undergoing unimaginable agony, died for our sins. In the case of the Holycause, six million Jews died so that Israel could be born. Never mind that the six million number goes back to 1912 (a vague guess at the number of Jews in Europe at the time) and only later became attached to the Jewish victims of the Third Reich (one of many disputed or easily refutable "facts" enumerated by the "official" version of the Holocaust, but woe betide any truthseekers who dare to undertake a critical analysis of what actually happened – you will be hauled before the ever vigilant officers of the Holycause Inquisition, and betimes taken to the rack). We are talking about a religion and therefore facts are fungible, as their meaning is symbolic rather than historical. And never mind that the actual survivors of that catastrophe who now live in Israel are a despised underclass (one third of them living in dire poverty), treated with utter contempt by the native born Israelis who are so fiercely proud of their manly, heroic battle against the fearsome foe. It is not the real victims who matter (the Zionists willingly sacrificed hundreds of thousands of European Jews in pursuit of their goal), but the symbolism of their victimhood.
The Zionists remain in total denial. As Saree Makdisi points out, they are able to blithely build a "Museum of Tolerance" above the graves of a centuries old Palestinian cemetary, the people they have been assiduously trying to exterminate, without showing any signs of cognitive dissonance. He refers to it as a horizontal wall, to complement the vertical Separation Wall being constructed in Jerusalem. The whole process of creating an impregnable ghetto, bristling with overpowering firepower, only invites destruction. This is, indeed, the goal of Christian Zionism, the cult of the Rapture, which foresees the end of the world and the final elimination of the Jews. They are perhaps even more psychotic than the Jewish Zionists. One could say, in the poetic language of the Abrahamic tradition, that the State of Israel is the Devil's masterpiece.
There is really only one way to resolve the dilemma posed by the existence of the Jewish state in humanity's heartland, and that is to change the existing configuration, a Rube Goldberg political contraption designed to maintain a Jewish majority in a putative Western-style democracy. The obvious alternative is the gold standard of contemporary nation states, a secular, pluralistic democracy consisting of all those who have an obvious right to be there (this includes all of the Palestinians, wherever they happen to be currently residing, as is clearly enshrined in international law), but does not necessarily include recent immigrants, particularly the fanatics from Brooklyn who form the majority of the illegal settlers (well, they're all illegal, but what is meant here is illegal even according to Israeli law), nor would it include recently arrived terrorists like the Moldavian Avigdor Lieberman. Anyone not born there would be subject to deportation. To use a well known phrase, this would entail wiping Israel off the map. That would be a great boon to the mapmakers, as the Israelis have always refused to define their borders, pending the establishment of Greater Israel.
This can be brought about through a purely political process that doesn't require the spilling of one drop of blood. It would be like extinguishing a raging fire that has gotten totally out of control and is threatening to consume much of the world. Yes, they do have nuclear weapons, and they aren't shy about what they call "the Sampson option." There is no use in hoping that governments will solve this problem – the Zionists have managed to get their hands on all the levers of power in most of what is called the First World, particularly in the U.S., the heart of the Empire. Only ordinary people, and most particularly those Jews who haven't fallen under the hypnotic spell of Zionist hasbara - by fearlessly proclaiming truth to power – have any hope of waking up slumbering humanity and avoiding the seemingly inevitable. Zionists take heed – to quote a poetic metaphor from the bible, "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and I shall repay." Or, as it is expressed in post-modernist America, "what goes around comes around."
This article first appeared on the One Democratic State website < www.onestate.info > on this page:
Roger Tucker is a writer, a Shambhala Buddhist and One State advocate currently retired in Mexico. Email: rtucker41@earthlink.net
Roger Tucker is a writer, a Shambhala Buddhist and One State advocate currently retired in Mexico. Email: rtucker41@earthlink.net
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A question to the editors:
Is this an anti-semitic website?
because this article is surtenly is.
two quoats from the text above :
"No people are guiltier of that mistake than the Jews, who after centuries of getting themselves expelled from country after country…."
"their (meanning the Jews) status pretty much everywhere in Europe was that of a despised minority (for perfectly understandable reasons too complex to go into here)"
in other words- Jews were hated, dispised, and sometimes expelled, (long before Zionisim) because THEY DESERVED TO BE HATED, DISPISED AND EXPELLED. the Jews were bad, in some way, and they had it coming. if that's not anti-semtisim, than what is?
now, if you do not see yourself as the editor of an anti-semitic site (and I'm sure you don't)- why do you publish an anti-semitic article? mind you, i'm not talking about anything remotley connected to Zionisim. the two quoats above are about Jews long before Hertzel was born, long before the birth of modern-day Zionisim.
@Elijah:
An antisemitic writer who advocates a one state solution? Well… as we say in French: everything exists under the sun!
Zionism is THE plea that have to be wiped away…
Sorry, I wanted to say the PLAGUE, not the plea!
Elijah's got a point there, yet so does the author now and then. It sure does deserve open and non-biased study about the reasons of hate or zero tolerance towards Jewish communities in Europe.
I think the real question here is whether Israel is anti-semitic. I'm not being petty, but Arabs are a semitic race. So if the Israelis are violent against the Palestinians aren't they being anti-semitic?
There were Jewish communities in Palestine right through the Ottoman Empire. During the Crusades they fought the European invaders side by side their Muslim neighbours.
When European Jews started to return to Palestine in the early days of the 20th century, the Arab population were quite glad to have them. The problem came with the Zionist insistence on a Jewish-only state.
I live in Spain. In Majorca we have towns where the majority of the population is German. What do you think the reaction would be if someone came along and declared that Majorca should be a German state? And all the Spanish should be deported to the mainland? And destroyed their olive trees? Shooting old ladies holding white flags?
Who would be anti-who then?
Elijah,
The author Roger Tucker was born Jewish himself. Now he is Buddhist. Are you going to call him a self-hating Jew who became an anti-Semitic Buddhist?
http://one-state.net/about2.html
I would like to read more. Of course we all know that racial hatred is wrong, but when a group of people is targeted in this manner you can't just screech RACISM.
Hold on, let me explain. We all must strive as individuals to exemplify moral behavior not only for our own image, but for the image of those whose clan/race we belong to. Jews were historically relocated to certain professions, not ONLY because this was forced upon them, but because their religion allowed for certain professions which other religions did not. Chief amongst the professions for Jews was banking. Usury is accepted in Judaism and has been the leading charge against them. Think Federal Reserve here, this just didn't occur as a fluke, this has been going on for centuries. Please, I don't want to bring up a touchy subject because individuals cannot be held accountable for what others in their religion/race have done. OTOH there certainly IS the opportunity to change the system. My "system" by nationality is American. I know I certainly want to change it! My system by religion is "Catholic", there sure are alot of things I would like to change about that too! I'm an American Catholic, do I act in accordance with what the rigid system tells me I should? No Just think, Judaism allows for usury, does that mean anyone should engage in this behavior because a religion says it is ok?
PLEASE correct me if I am wrong here.
Obviously Roger Tucker has disavowed his birth faith. I'd be interested in hearing his own take on the faith he was BORN INTO just as I'm interested in hearing why anyone leaves their faith. Better be a good argument though (thinking of folks like Noni Darwish etal)
I appreciate that there have been some comments. A writer likes to know that there's somebody out there, something like an audience as it were. We can dismiss the first three comments out of hand as reflecting nothing other than belligerent ignorance, but Mart at least appears to have an open mind. Luis and Robin deserve a considered response.
Luis, not only are the Israelis "anti-semitic," for the reason that you cite, but anti-semitism is at the heart of Zionism, for the reasons that I cited in the essay. It is a curious, perhaps unique occurrence of a tribal guilt (and shame) complex transformed into a triumphalist group superiority complex. I think that Nazism arose in a similar fashion, but I wouldn't push that point too hard. It's a psychological reversal. Yeah, it's weird, but there you have it. The victim morphs into the victimizer; the abused becomes the abuser – territory that therapists are quite familiar with.
None of this madness would have occurred without considerable help from "coincidence." The fascist version of the Zionist project in Palestine got really going at about the same time that Nazi Germany started rounding up Jews and shipping them off to concentration camps. Simultaneously, powerful Zionists in the U.S. and Great Britain started twisting the arms of their respective governments to allow the Jewish State to come into being. They found that flexing their muscles (financial mostly) worked like a charm, and they have become even far more skilled at it since then.
Robin says "I'd be interested in hearing his own take on the faith he was BORN INTO just as I'm interested in hearing why anyone leaves their faith. Better be a good argument though…" Robin, the argument is simple – I'm left-handed and have blue eyes. Does that mean I have to support the left-handed, or blue-eyed "tribe" because I was born that way? Is a "faith" something that one is born into, or is it something that people arrive at through their own search for what is meaningful to them, what makes sense to them? Belief and faith are entirely different things. I have faith in fundamental human goodness and nothing but contempt for "belief systems," no matter what flag they fly, nor even less in who their parents happened to be.
Robin-
on one point I agree with Roger: the fact that he was born to a Jewish family means nothing. A racist is racist, no matter who his parents are. so I'm not going to call him "a self-hating Jew who became an anti-Semitic Buddhist". I don't know if he does hate himself or if he is a Buddhist, and frankly, I don't really care. I'm just going to call him what he obviously is- an anti-semite. (And Luis, if you are going to be petty simply read "A Jew-hater" or "anti-Jew racist" instead of anti-smite from now on).
You wrote- "Of course we all know that racial hatred is wrong, but when a group of people is targeted in this manner you can't just screech RACISM."
what about Africans-Americans, Robin? what about the slavery and the racial hatred against blacks in the US? we can't just "screech" RACISM? should we accept someone saying- "Well, maybe those people had it coming. Maybe they have done something that made all the good white folks in the US treat them so badly? Maybe the white folks had "perfectly understandable reasons" to enslave them? Maybe they had "perfectly understandable reasons" for not allowing them into restaurants (or the front seats of the bus, or good colleges, etc.) for years and years after slavery was terminated?
tell me Robin. what should we answer to such a man? should we say those claims "deserve open and non-biased study" (as mart suggested about the similar claims the author made about Jews) or should we just "screech" RACISM?
The point is clear and simple. someone who claims that the Jews in some way are to be blamed for anti-semitism in Europe in past centuries (or that anti-semitism is a natural response against Jews) is an anti-smite, in the same way that one who claims that African-Americans are to be blamed for slavery and racism against them in the US is an anti-black racist. Talking to those people about their own racism is pretty much useless, like roger demonstrated for us, because they do not see themselves as racists. In their own hateful mind, they are just telling the truth- that Jews are deserved to be hated, or at the very least that hating them is perfectly reasonable. Not because they were born Jews of course (after all, we are not racists here!), but because of the way they act.
So once again, I'm addressing the editors- why oh why do you contaminate the Palestinian struggle for freedom with racism? can't you see how wrong that is? can't you see this is EXACTLY the lie that zionist-speakers often tell- that an anti-zionist is really an anti-semite in disguise?
Thank you Roger for your response because from it I am reading we are on the same page although I wish to apologize for not expressing myself well.
I agree wholeheartedly on the issue of "faith we are born into". In my faith children are baptized without consent as babes. If the parents are "practicing" (whatever faith), then the child is brought up exposed, some may say indoctrinated into that faith.
Let me bring in something which may seem irrelevant, when in fact it is not. That is the fact that each individual goes through stages of development from birth to adulthood-Erikson and Piaget wrote of these extensively-although both researched from a Western point of view focusing on "independence" as opposed to "interdependence" which is the norm of many non-Western cultures (on the surface I say-because even Western cultures depend on interdependence-adhesion to the norms of that society in order to thrive as individuals in the larger group)
In the case of Zionism, it is often claimed that Zionism has co-opted Judaism.
I have a question concerning this claim: as a Christian myself, having read the Old Testament, I read the Jewish claim to the land thousands of years ago as ALSO politcalization of religion, placing "God's 'will'" upon the land belonging to the Jewish people. If politics was a part of the Jewish faith from the very beginning, then the claim that Ziionism has co-opted the Jewish faith recently goes out the window, because the Jewish faith has ALWAYS been political in nature.
I truly hope I am not stepping on anyone's toes with this theory, it's just something I am pondering as a theory of where the problem began, not recently, but LONG ago when a group of people labeled themselves as blessed by "God" which has been accepted by far too many over the centuries. When one is "chosen", by caveat, others are not.
Did Zionism co-opt Judaism? Or is the nature of Judaism itself the problem vis a vis humanistic thought which benefits all human beings. This is a QUESTION.
On a personal level, being a former government teacher myself, it is rather clear to me that when politics and "faith" intertwine a problem exists. On the American level this was done with the adoption of "Manifest Destiny"-yet another "blessing by God" of a savage venture. To say that "God" is on YOUR side when you are engaging in ultimate political/land grabbing NATIONALISTIC goals is the politilization of "God".
We in the "West" may like to think our belief system stresses the individual, when in fact, we also are interdependent. (IOW it's a crock that Westerners stress independent thought because if it did, our whole system would fall apart if more people INDEPENDENTLY questioned it- perhaps on a micro level independence is allowed, but on the macro level, it certainly is not)
OK, I may have just written a "jumble", I apologize if I am not succinct in what I am attempting to convey and question.
I suppose I should first say a few words in response to the cacophany coming from Elijah, and then I will move on to some rational discourse with Robin, a person who is at least honestly aware of being somewhat confused (aren't we all?) and is striving to make some sense of it all.
Elijah's posts are instructive in that they are symptomatic of what is called political correctness, the flagship of what has been labeled post-modernism. Post-modernism, the system of thought that provides the foundation for current left-wing fascism, is the anti-philosophy that starts from the premise that there is only relative truth and that, therefore, words mean whatever one wants them to mean. Discourse then becomes indistinguishable from marketing, and the notion of sacredness (that sentient beings and everything else have intrinsic value) becomes merely quaint. It is no accident that the evolution of post-modernism, which succeeded Existentialism, coincided with the increasingly sophisticated and highly successful campaign to promote the Zionist view.
Enough said – I'm not going to respond to any further screeches from our friend Elijah; it would just be beating a dead horse. Turning to Robin's post, it's interesting that you brough up Ericksen (I could never understand Piaget – he seemed to over-intellectualize his theories to the point of being incomprehensible). If post-modernists were to read Ericksen's meticulous studies of childhood behavior they might begin to rethink their views.
Your comments about "independence" vs. "interdependence" are spot on. There was a German philosopher (whose name I can never remember) who talked about the difference between the notions of "society" and "community." (Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft in German) This distinction is fundamental, as you suggest, and provides an excellent way to understand the polarity between the political Left and Right (allegiance to community as opposed to the rights and interests of the individual) . Another way of seeing it is in terms of masculine principle vs. feminine principle – essentially the same idea but from a more universal, one might even say cosmic, point of view.
"Did Zionism co-opt Judaism? Or is the nature of Judaism itself the problem vis a vis humanistic thought which benefits all human beings. This is a QUESTION." Well, there you have it. As my teacher used to say, the question is the answer.
Elijah opined: "The point is clear and simple. someone who claims that the Jews in some way are to be blamed for anti-semitism in Europe in past centuries is an anti-smite,"
Then he neglected to use the most relevant example:
"what about Palestinians, Robin? what about the occupation and the racial hatred against Palestinians in Palestine? we can't just "screech" RACISM? should we accept someone saying- "Well, maybe those people had it coming. Maybe they have done something that made all the good zionists in Israel treat them so badly? Maybe the zionists had "perfectly understandable reasons" to enslave them? Maybe they had "perfectly understandable reasons" for not allowing them back into their homes (or out of their houses, or to college, school, work, etc.) for over 6 decades?
tell me Robin. what should we answer to such a man? should we say those claims "deserve open and non-biased study" (as mart suggested about the similar claims the author made about Jews) or should we just "screech" RACISM?"
I wonder why that was…….
“Our people will not say: ‘Hello, I am from the hasbara department of the Israeli foreign ministry … They will speak as net-surfers and as citizens, and will write responses that will look personal but will be based on a prepared list of messages that the foreign ministry developed.”
– Ilan Shturman, Israel’s deputy director of strategic lying
I forgot to mention that they generally give themselves away by a seemingly uncontrollable tendency to screech.
Well, ftp, wonder no more. I thought about the example you gave but the truth is that it is not to my opinion the "most relevant example". The reason is that in palestine we have a conflict between two groups who are fighting for the same piece of land. The jews in europe never fought against any european nation (or ethnic group) for a piece of land. That being said, I don't have any real problem with your alternation of my text. I fully accept it, and I do believe it hits the target right in the eye. It might even make some people realize that the two quotes from the Roger are nothing more than ugly racism.
The thing however, is that just like racist-zionist speakers can't begin to grasp (and let alone admit) their own racism toward Arabs and Palestinians, so does Roger here can't even seem to understand his own racism toward Jews.
Unfortunately, as we all know, there is no shortage in racists in our world. there are plenty to go around. My problem is not that one Roger Tucker is an anti-semite, but that he is given a stage at a pro-Palestinian site that's suppose to be a non-racist site. That is just sad.
And a few words to our friend roger-
it's sure is nice of you to inform us all that you're "not going to respond to any further screeches from our friend Elijah" (alas, it took you no more then 24 hours to break your own promise… why can't you simply stay true to your own words? do you think that perhaps the similar inability of one of your ancestors in europe is one of the "perfectly understandable reasons" that Jews were a despised minority? if so, do tell). However, you didn't even wrote a single word in response to my screeches yet. You've just put together some mumbo jumbo about PC and post-modernism that has nothing to do with a single word I wrote.
I really did liked the part where you accused me of being PC, though. what has happened to this world, right Roger? you can't even be a good old fashioned racist nowadays without stepping on someone's tows. Damn you, political correctness!! those are some mad times we're living in….
And once again, Roger words are just a sad mirror to the words of racist-zionist speakers. Tell one them that he's a racist toward Arabs and he'll say that you're a terrorist and an anti-semite. Tell Roger that he's a racist toward Jews and he'll accuse you of being on the payroll of the zionist regime.
Did i mention already it is just sad?
Concerning the Jews, by Mark Twain (a.k.a. Samuel Clemens)
…Yet in all countries, from the dawn of history, the Jew has been persistently and implacably hated, and with frequency persecuted.
"Can fanaticism alone account for this?"
Years ago I used to think that it was responsible for nearly all of it, but latterly I have come to think that this was an error. Indeed, it is now my conviction that it is responsible for hardly any of it…
http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/mtwain/bl-mtwain-concerningjews.htm
OK, kiddies, what's this from?
…The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Elijah opined: " The reason is that in palestine we have a conflict between two groups who are fighting for the same piece of land."
In the same way that a mugging is two people fighting over a piece of property…… I think it would be more accurate to say that there is some reistance from the indigenous people, as more of their land is stolen every day, by a mighty military power.
Zionists continually present that resistance as the raison d'être for their miltary bullying, whilst ciontinuing to annexe more land. I am delighted that Elijah agrees that it is pure racism that is at the centre of this.
Answer to Roger:
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming_(poem)
Robin, I was just teasing the kids with those last two posts, but I do suggest that you take a look at the Twain piece. Not only is he always worth reading but it's an interesting insight into a late-19th American view of "the Jews." He has a lot of admiration for them, with some reservations, but the gem in the piece is his attempt to understand how only 25,000 people could be so predominant in American life, so he comes up with a hilarious theory. Twain never fails to entertain.
Hey, Roger Tucker
You're Jewish, ain't you! So tell us what is wrong with you, and we'll be wise enough to apply it to all Jews. Man, you're an insider, tell us the hidden secrets. Gilad Atzmon, Mary Rizzo and others are not willing to admit what is fucked-up with them!
You're too vain, arrogant retard who not only have a solution but also drew a flag for the new state. And gosh, what an ugly flag. Please, your domain is that of words. Stay there, you little twat.
I like what is publish in this web site. It is a Zionist web site !
Hey Roger,
See why we hate Muslims:
Avdat National Park vandalized
Hundreds of ancient artifacts found smashed; walls smeared with paint in ancient Nabataean city. 'A World Heritage Site received a grave blow' says chairman of Parks Authority; 2 Bedouins arrested
The Negev hills site of the southern ancient Nabataean city of Avdat, which was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2005, was found vandalized Monday.
Hundreds of archeological artifacts were found smashed, walls smeared with yellow and brown paint, and oil paint was smeared on the ancient wine press. Items hundreds and thousands of years old were severely damaged.
Dimona Police arrested two Bedouins, aged 41 and 57, for their alleged involvement in the act.
In addition to the vandalizing of the National Park, "Sfat Midbar" farm near Mitzpe Ramon was also damaged. Dimona Police forces launched an investigation, saying they will look into all possible leads, including the recent destruction of 23 Bedouin structures nearby, and will examine a possible connection between the two incidents.
Hi, Mary. In case you haven't noticed, the ZioNazis have invaded and are in the process of colonizing your website. Seems like I must have a hit a nerve.
Hey, Roger,
See what your Arab brothers are capable of doing. They did it in Afghanistan and they'll do that everywhere.
Avdat National Park vandalized
Hundreds of ancient artifacts found smashed; walls smeared with paint in ancient Nabataean city. 'A World Heritage Site received a grave blow' says chairman of Parks Authority; 2 Bedouins arrested
The Negev hills site of the southern ancient Nabataean city of Avdat, which was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2005, was found vandalized Monday.
Hundreds of archeological artifacts were found smashed, walls smeared with yellow and brown paint, and oil paint was smeared on the ancient wine press. Items hundreds and thousands of years old were severely damaged.
Dimona Police arrested two Bedouins, aged 41 and 57, for their alleged involvement in the act.
In addition to the vandalizing of the National Park, "Sfat Midbar" farm near Mitzpe Ramon was also damaged. Dimona Police forces launched an investigation, saying they will look into all possible leads, including the recent destruction of 23 Bedouin structures nearby, and will examine a possible connection between the two incidents.
If anyone else is still reading these comments they might want to peruse an article by Greg Felton, "Israel's propagandists shoot themselves in the foot as they shoot off their mouths." It's at
http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/66779.
Hey, Roger
Read and die
Israeli scientist Ada Yonath wins Nobel Prize for chemistry
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1254861887112&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
I do not think that planners [christo-talmudic cultists; nazism and zionism are cults] of the conquest of palestina did not know that winnig is everything.
They came to palestina to win! But haven't as yet won; thus, they are merely winnig; yet, so desperate to end it all. "Winning is everything" is an ancient dogma and is applied even today by all lands.
Christo-judaic crowd, i educe, knew that a win-win solution in palestina is not available. In short, a crime must be commited in order to obtain whatever the crowd had in mind to obtain.
Thus, it had to be a war. What else?! And with much more and better arms than what pal'ns had.
The war had been well-done but the planners forgot one thing [or dinn't, but ignored it] that the crime they wld commit wld remain forever a crime in body-minds of bns. Wishing it away won't help. Doing what they do to pal'ns won't help.
The rejection of israeli crimes merely increases.
So, a conclusion arises: israelis must forever live as pariahs and which wld undoubtedly lead to their total eradication or ask ALL palestinians what they want.
And what wld that be? Probably a shemitic land, called palestina, but with the people of the three major cults from which one or three religions may arise.
A religion, to earn that label, must be henotheisitc and welcome all pious people but perhaps not the entire idology of any cult.
Let us be clear: piousness is thinking, ideating, guessing, wishing, etc., and so is any other ism. And no ideating, guessing, thinking shld be considered to be true just because it exists but evaluated as such on some other grounds or critearia such as common senses like that of child with tabula rasa. tnx
A superb article, Roger. I urge you to ignore the venom spewed out by Zionist trolls. It's essential that such an informed voice as yours not be silenced.
Thanks, traducteur. I can use all the encouragement I can get. We buddhists call this time we're living in the Dark Age (Kali yuga), in fact the very end of the Dark Age, when ignorance has almost totally obscured wisdom. On the other hand, we know that eventually the clouds recede and the sun shines again. Right now, however, this requires a great deal of faith.
I wasn't going to say anything, but this is just insane:
"Elijah's posts are instructive in that they are symptomatic of what is called political correctness, the flagship of what has been labeled post-modernism. Post-modernism, the system of thought that provides the foundation for current left-wing fascism, is the anti-philosophy that starts from the premise that there is only relative truth and that, therefore, words mean whatever one wants them to mean. Discourse then becomes indistinguishable from marketing, and the notion of sacredness (that sentient beings and everything else have intrinsic value) becomes merely quaint. It is no accident that the evolution of post-modernism, which succeeded Existentialism, coincided with the increasingly sophisticated and highly successful campaign to promote the Zionist view."
Okay, so let me get this straight. This is what happened:
1- Elijah said that your argument that Jews were deserving of racism in Europe (pre-1948) is an offensive, racist argument.
2- As a racist argument (and thus a 'bad thing'), he wanted your article removed
3- You and Robin responded with elaborate conflations of Jews, nazis, zionoholonazis, etc., and brought the topic back to later, irrelevant actions for this argument.
4- Elijah explained this.
5- You responded with this completely nonsensical statement.
Let's walk through your quote up there step by step.
1- Elijah's posts show political correctness, which is the "flagship" of postmodernism.
2- Postmodernism provides the (philosophical?) foundation for "left-wing fascism" and its central principles are
a) there is only relative truth
b) therefore (?) words mean whatever one wants them to mean
No, words only mean what people agree that they mean (they’re constructed)
c) no sacredness, etc., language as marketing
Postmodernism is only very tenuously related to political correctness, and that connection is usually only elaborated on by hard-right ideologues who see it as either an attack on a rational view of reality or force for dangerous moral relativism. This, strangely, seems to be the point you're making about sacredness. Try learning more about postmodernism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism
If anything, postmodernists would oppose imposing any sort of words or language on anyone or anything, oppose the imposition of state power over language and meaning, and acknowledge the subjective and constructed nature of all identities and truths.
Now “left-wing fascism”- what could that possibly mean? You’re sounding like Glenn Beck now. That is oxymoronic. Usually that term connotes anti-semitism, so I know that's not what you're getting at.
Hmm.. the horrors of moral relativism and "left-wing fascism." What is this, Fox News? How do the right-wingers whose talking points you've co-opted feel about Palestine?
3- Postmodernism succeeded existentialism
There is a significant overlap between the postmodernist and existentialist movements
4- This succession coincided with growth in zionism, campaigns for a zionist viewpoint.
Okay, this makes the least sense out of all of your claims. What possible support can a radical deconstructionist and subjectivist philosophical field offer for what is in many ways an old fashioned nationalist project built out of a colonial project? Zionism and Israel's reasons to exist are based in Jewish identity mythology. Since this identity is constructed (like all others), there would be no basis for a Jewish state, and there would similarly be no differences between Jews and Palestinians. Labels are subjective and constructed.
Postmodernism is a fundamentally anti-zionist and anti-nationalist philosophical movement.
Nice article.
Zionism must be stopped. They are destroying the world.
Honest jews must speak out against zionism.
I would like to add that I stopped believing in the holocaust when I saw the video of jewish historian "David Cole In Auschwitz". The interview to the Musem director Piper where he explain that the so-called gas chamber was a german raid shelter was extremely convincing against the big lie.
I would reply to the post from "anonymous," except that I don't reply to posts signed in that fashion. If he or she would have the courtesy to sign their name, I would be happy to respond. In the meantime, they might want to look up the meaning of the word "philosophy."
[...] Originally Posted by phxcon Why would Britain and France be interested in a cover up if anything illegal really happened in Gaza? Truth is, the only massacre in Gaza was in the heads of the muzzies and those that support their "cause". Like you! Zionist criminals are the media. Two Zionist buffoons "head" France and England. http://palestinethinktank.com/2009/0…ge-of-zionism/ [...]