A few times a month, I get an e-mail soliciting my opinion on Israel or on Antisemitism. Often, these queries are in the context of a question about one facet of the ideological landscape. “Why do you think Jews support liberals, even though liberals hate Israel?” I have not tabulated the results, but my guess is I get more questions about Israel than any single topic, despite the fact I never write about Israel. I’d have to check, but I don’t think I have ever posted about Israel. If I have, it would most certainly be in the context of the Arab world.
My limited interest in the Jewish people is purely biological and cultural. By that I mean I find it interesting that the Ashkenazim have wildly out-performed their numbers in the United States. Jews are about 1% of the US population, but they dominate the law, academics, entertainment and finance. When 1% of the population is 30% of the richest people in the country, that’s phenomenal. There’s also the fact that you really cannot understand the world without understanding religion and that means understanding the role of Judaism and Christianity, particularity how the former made the latter.
The preceding is just a little background for the new readers who may not be as familiar with my work as others. That way I can talk a little about this segment on John Derbyshire’s latest broadcast.
I’m not an anti-Semite; I never have been; and I don’t have much time for anti-Semites. I’ve written a couple of million words of opinion commentary this past thirty years, all of it archived on my website, and I defy you to find any evidence of anti-Semitism in it anywhere.
However, I’ve turned against the word “philosemite,” for reasons I’ve explained elsewhere. Basically, it’s patronizing. If pressed on the issue, I call myself an anti-anti-Semite. I cherish my Jewish friends, and I have publicly—and again, I think, more than once—expressed gratitude in print for the positive contribution Jews have made to our civilization, way out of proportion to their numbers.
I have been reading and listening to John for decades and I think he captures his, as well as most people’s attitude, perfectly. I’m not fond of rank anti-Semitism, any more than I’m a fan of racism, but my definitions are more narrow and specific than they are today so maybe John is correct to say he is an anti-anti-Semite. I don’t know a word for being an anti-racist that does not imply lunacy, but maybe there is one. My view is people are tribal and they will have tribal prejudices. There’s no hectoring that away.
The whole segment is best listened to rather than read, as John’s intonations convey additional meaning to the words. The reason for my interest here is what he has to say at the bottom regarding the anti-Trump phenomenon.
All four debaters were Bigfoot American journalists. Both sides of the debate were anti-Trump; the debate was over whose fault it was that Trump had gotten the GOP nomination. For the motion, arguing that it was the fault of the elites, were Ben Domenech and Timothy Carney, both Gentiles. Against the motion, arguing that it was not the fault of the elites, wereJennifer Rubin [email her]and Bret Stephens both Jewish.
That tells you something by itself. That atavistic style of Jewish paranoia that I spoke about, when it hears the word “elites,” at once flies to the thought:They’re talking about US! … and the hoofbeats of the Cossacks are heard drumming in the distance.
At some mental level Rubin and Stephens read the title of the debate as: “Blame the Jews for the Trump Phenomenon.” That’s why they’re arguingagainst the motion. No, no, it’s not our fault—it’s those damn peasants!
As someone without much of an interest in Semitism or Antisemitism, this struck a nerve. I too have noticed that the people opposing Trump most viciously all have familiar last names. Lots of gold and silver in the #nevertrump clown car. This has always struck me as illogical. Trump is our most Jewish presidential candidate in my lifetime. He has always been a big supporter of Israel and he is more than a bit famous for socializing and doing business with the Jewish business community in America.
It is a good reminder that there is always a portion of every population that has a death wish. They agitate for things that are against the interests of their ethnic group and they are more concerned with strangers than their own family. Jews are no exception. Progressivism is increasingly anti-Semitic and anti-Israel. Trump and his voters are very much the opposite. Yet, that causes the Jennifer Rubins of the world to hate him even more intensely than one would consider rational. Self-loathing is a powerful drug.
There is a temptation to assume there is an anti-Christian vibe to what we are seeing from people like Brett Stephens and Jennifer Rubin. That’s not the case as they reserve special hatred for orthodox and ultra-orthodox Jews. This is where the self-loathing becomes more clear, These people sneer at the guys in the black hats and tzitzit hanging out. If there is any anti-Christian sense to this, it stems from the fact that American Christians are enthusiastic supporters of Israel and virulent anti-anti-Semites.
The point here is that John is correct that these people are haunted by the hoof beats, but they also wish they would return. The longing for death, the death of their people, is what makes them tick. There’s some element of this in all people. It’s just that Jews have been wildly successful in America so their death wish gets played out on TV, while the self-loathing Poles have to nurse their death wish in private. Luckily for all of us, most Jews are not crazy and the smart ones understand which way the wind is blowing.
As I age, I find myself more and more becoming what Joseph Sobran called a “counter-semite”. Much experience with the Ashkenazim has left me with a wish to have no further experience with them. Their hubris, arrogance, ill-disguised envy of the “old guard” northwestern Europeans they hold in contempt and mock, but nevertheless try to imitate, their relentless societal destructiveness… Gee, I sound like an anti-semite, except that I don’t wish them ill, I just wish they’d mind their own business, enjoy life in their ME enclave and not insist on attending my school, living nearby or joining my club unless they genuinely assimilate into my society; I wouldn’t dream of imposing upon them in theirs.
I’ve never understood anti-Semitism, but as this ludicrous election year drags on, I’ve found that I really don’t care anymore. It’s all ahistorical nonsense, but whatever. I’m all blacked out, Jewed out, gayed out, trannied out, insert whatever else here. The Left wants to make my life a Workers’ Paradise; I don’t much care what their motivation is. Pas d’ennemis a droit.
Let me help you out, Z. The reason why the Jewish are able to dominate is mainly because of unchecked ethnocentrism. They make sure they hire other Jews, with a smattering of blacks (shvartze) to use as blunt instruments against Whitey, should they get outta line. When they do business, spend money, do favors it is almost exclusively with/for other Jews. They have next to no issues with doing some real sleazebag sheisse to get what they want. And should you have the balls to point these facts out… well… you’re an antisemitewhitenationalistnatzi. There is nothing fascinating about how the Jews have become so successful. Some sects of Jews are smart, but when there’s this book floating around the world where our Creator calls you The Chosenites, you pretty much lose your collective minds and become obsessed with each other.
The Jews wouldn’t stand a chance if Christian Whites conducted themselves the way Jews do. And they know it.
To quote a hipster: “The reason Jews have become so powerful is explained by three reasons: 1. More ethnocentrism. 2. Ability to pass as white. 3. 20th century control of the broadcast media”
Our Creator also called His chosen people a “stiff necked” people. In other words, we become like what ever becomes our idol, what we worship when we turn from God. In this case, the Golden Calf. God’s wrath is real.
And it’s counter-semite, if anything! Because jews are the tip of the spear of leftism, pushing every degenerate progressive idea they can find, you can not oppose one without locking horns with the other.
Some things you may not know: Zionism came from the same late 19th-early 20th century German ideological tempest as National Socialism.
The Zionists were allied to National Socialist Germany until at least the start of WWII when the Soviet Union invaded Poland.
The first hundred thousand Jews in the British Mandate of Palestine were transported there by the National Socialist government.
The National Socialists literally mentored the Zionists in the art of statecraft.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that today Zionist Israel is the entity with the strongest “blood and soil” ideological force and a remarkably fashy government. “Right of return” DNA testing to get citizenship, the most well-kept walls of any country anywhere, and the best martial tradition in the world, bar none.
I wish we all could be Israel.
Building slums and filling them with a violent, overbreeding demographic that will keep the place in crisis (Palestinian ‘settlements’ outnumber Israeili 2 1/2 to 1)
Insisting on crossborder labor to keep costs down (avoid paying and compliance)
A Supreme Court that every member comes from one small, radical, pro-Palestinian town
A Labor Party like our FDR Democrats (70% of the American Jewish vote)
Plus 3 generals who get a cut of every weapons contract
I think we already are a lot like Israel
Maybe that’s why even the IDF are beginning to not show up at the behest of Ashkenazim overlords, the Livkin crowd
Don’t forget about the Best Friends Forever coins Hitler had made for Israel and her new Jews: one side had the star of David; the other the swastika. He wanted them out and they wanted to leave. Netanyahu almost had his matzo balls handed to him for stating these truths.
Trump hate has a lot of angles to it but there especially seems to be a class issue to it; whats playing out is a lot of NYC politics that probably wouldn’t show up nationally otherwise. Uptown Manhattan elites (this includes the areas of Brooklyn that Manhattan has culturally annexed like Williamsburg and Park Slope) both Jewish and non-Jewish, hate the outer boroughs and all the ethnics there including the non-elite Jews like Hasids and Russians. Trump is rich but otherwise an outsider which is driving a lot of people in the elite up the wall. (Its largely down the memory hole but when the Crown Heights riots happened, the establishment Jews sided with the Blacks over the Hasids; if it had been up to them, Dinkins would have gotten a second term. Instead the word went out among the Hasids to vote in bloc for Giulliani. Its not much different today.)
The problem for that Jewish elite that is falling apart in real time on TV is that they are dying; low birthrate, high assimilation rate, and now everything they have been raised to believe is being rejected. Secular Jewish education after all boils down to immigration, the holocaust, and civil rights; I’ve never heard any Orthodox or Russian Jew or even anyone outside of the lecturing elite ever mention stuff like 1881 or anything like that but for the elite thats all there is. Its why the American countryside is crisscrossed with Holocaust museums and Yiddish language programs that won’t last more than a generation while the Orthodox who will never use them churn out more and more babies.
Not sure jewish folks have a death wish, but boy oh boy, it certainly appears that way much of the time (at least for american jew. I think Israeli jews are more grounded; dodging rockets and suicide bombers forces you to keep your common sense wits about you).
I think the high intellectual, educational and socio-economic levels many (most?) jewish folks have attained make it difficult for them to reconcile a belief in the existence of an other-worldly god with the logical, rational, scientific here on earth world.
This may explain somewhat the contempt many reform or “secular” jews have for their more devout brethren, (e.g., the Hasidim.)
I also think many jewish folks are still at war with the anti-semitic stereotype that jews are money grubbing, greedy, nasty characters that will sell their own mothers at the right price. Perhaps their “death wish” is an effort to lean so far in the other direction they cannot see the forest for the trees; so they embrace political ideologies totally inimical to their ( and frankly, that of the average citizen) interests.
May I direct you to a comment made at the bottom of “All Blacked Out”?
I just wrote it, it is more relevant to this article.
A year ago, I began to wonder, “why do so many complain about the Jooos?”
So I began to look- since my mother’s maiden name is Einstein, after all
Lost in the verbiage- please remember the most important point:
Criminals, not victors, write history- to hide their crimes.
The next generation cannot know that the ‘good’ used to be the ‘bad’- and so they fight on their side.
This applies to Jews or any identity group.
The 98% good sometimes cannot control their 2% of sociopaths. American Blacks have the same problem.
Without empathy means with without conscience-they don’t care about the future, their kids, neighbors, country, or own people.
Whites controlled the ‘paths by hanging them and hanging them til enough were culled.
Aztecs cut their hearts out, and the Africans sold them off.
But when they’re hiding amongst the herd, camoflauged by sheep’s clothing of credentials, authority, and stereotype…
The problem is not that these people are necessarily self loathing. They adhere to a globalist agenda. There is overlap between Jews who do this and gentiles. Siding with what appear to be anti-Semites in politics as opposed to backing their tribe in Israel is based on globalism. Israel was once a haven for socialist Jews back when it was primarily made up of kibutzes. Now it is a nationalist ethnostate. This is the apostasy. The Jew who is primarily globalist wants to be able to engage in transactions across borders that are weak enough to allow for huge deals and huge transfers, but are strong enough to protect him when the people on the other end of that transaction decide that something went amiss and desire recompense. They get their protection via bribery of local politicians. They like wars carried out by others because that is where the biggest fortunes are to be made. It is true that our own neocons were Trotskyites disenchanted with the growing nationalism of the states making up the Warsaw pact and the USSR itself. A book by Emil Lengyel titled Nationalism the Last Stage of Communism documents the rise of nationalism in the decline of Communism, the timing of the rise of neoconservatism is an inference of mine but correlates with the rise of the neocons. They learned to hate the very Russia that they had once loved and made ridiculous excuses for. Why? I think it had very little to do with these people doing a volte face politically. Adopting an alternative form of politics was merely a means of expressing and meeting their primary goal in an alternative context. They wanted a globalist world, and if allying themselves with conservatives for a time in order to achieve this was necessary, well that’s what had to be done. It isn’t the politics that matter to them, it is the tribe and creating a World in which that tribe can thrive that matters to them. Conservatism and Communism are simply means to an end, and that end has very little to do with abstractions. Rather than blood and soil, it is blood and moving feast of money changing.
Dzugashvilli (Stalin) means “Jewson”, (and he used Azeri Muslims to return him to Moscow) Beria, the original Politburo, the creator of the Gulag, the NKVD and Trotsky’s Cheka, Lenin, Trotsky (Leon Bronstein) as an agent of the banks in NY (Shropner, Kuhn-Loeb, Warburg) who funded the Bolsheviks, the owners of the NY Times hiring Walter Duranty to cover up the Holodomor of Ukrainian patriots; Mao’s advisors, not one a member of the Long March; odious survivors of the Purges who fled west and found new employment, such as Phillip Morrell who turned deportation camps into slave labor refueling coal for (((Soviet))) rail trains.
All one ethnicity. One happily killing their own since 712 B.C., one subverting traditional civilization since at least 1870 B.C.
One who had finally won an empire- a vast Slavic empire, slaves of the Mongols for 900 years- for their own.
I weep when I read Karl.
Yes, it went bad, very bad, but Hitler had predicted that the Jewish press would create a Lie so big no one would believe it a lie.
He couldn’t sort out the Red Front agitators from the patriots, so he tried to deport them all. Either they wouldn’t tell or someone was blocking them. There were , after all, 35,000 Jewish officers on the Nazionaliste army.
At first, he tried deportion to Palestine- !- but was blockaded by the Allies, dependent on British Arab military fuel.
Then deportation camps were built- with theaters and concert halls- but they were squalid, miserable, racked by disease. Even the Allies did not release the prisoners for 14 months after the end of the war due to quarantine and the threat to the surrounding towns.
Then, oh then, 7 months before the end-
The Allies began bombing the supply trains to the camps.
They ran out of food, medicine, and began to starve.
The Nazi officers, mostly good German Catholics, did everything possible to keep their prisoners alive, begging war-deprived Berlin for more aid.
The famous pictures of Belsen-Bergen showed the extent of the famine. The peisoners had gotten so desperate they tore the clothes off the dead, so we see mass graves of naked skeletons.
Jews visiting Auschwitz could find no traces of cyanide in the walls; no delivery system to turn a delousing pesticide, Zyklon-B, into a ‘gas’. Not enough room for the sheer daily volume of victims claimed.
Zyklon-B was for clothes lice. The showers were, showers. The Dachau ‘ovens’ were cremation pits for the casualties of disease (and abuse).
Red Cross records show 275,000 dead of typhoid, 475,000 total for the camps. As much as 2.4 million more were killed across Europe by ‘kill-teams’, often led by local ‘purged’ former Stalinists or Muslim allies. About the same number as non-Jews, such as Slavics, Roma Gypsies, homosexuals, and birth defects.
At Wannsee, Hussein of Palestine had promised Arabian oil and 400, 000 troops if Hitler would create a ‘Final Solution’ instead of sending the Jews to Palestine. He delivered 30,000 Bosnians, and there is no record anywhere of any order to exterminate.the Jews.
The 6 million number had been used since the start of the Bolshevik Revolution, before or by 1914.
It is a Kaballah poiphecy from Isaiah declaring that 6 million Jews must burn at the End Time for the nation of Israel to be reborn.
The Nuremberg records were contolled by one dodgy communist Jewish lawyer.
The exaggerated ‘Holy-Fire’- real, but wildly exaggerated- was a cover for the same tribal dictatorship that took Russia to extract revenge on the Germans for fighting back and steal the Sudenten. They then spread to the US, the UK (bankrupting it and giving Ghurka homeland to the “other sons” of Abraham.
A Cover. We live under the Narrative still.
I weep for Karl, as they are again using their Semitic cousins to take the rest of Europe.
They hate Russia now because Communism failed to take the wirld, and the Russians kucked out the Jewish Red Mafya. Beware Semitic revenge- look at the genocide of the most law abidng people in the world, the Germans.
self-loathing Poles
Is there such a thing?
I’ve been wondering the same thing. At least the Poles in Poland, to which I in Germany am a national neighbor, seem quite self-respecting, nationalist, even proud. While on occasion they may be going just a bit too far in it, out of provincialism, I generally admire them for their attitude and wish my people, in their current confused and deplorable state, would learn a little from them (as from the Hungarians, the Czechs, the Slovaks).
Maybe Poles in the U.S. (by which I actually mean Polish-Americans) have a different mentality though.
I rather liked the National Lampoon evolutionary tree that included a toaster in the Polish ancestral line.
I agree with Herzog’s statement. But allow me to expand on it a little. Historically, Poland has always been on the short end of the stick no thanks in part to their geographic location on the map. But they have certainly contributed their fair share to western culture and science with people like Chopin, Copernicus and Marie Curie.
A quarter century ago most of people in Poland (like everywhere else in the East bloc) had a similar income, engineer or a plumber, all were the same. Since there were no large scale private companies, most of the population was employed by state owned institutions.
During the Regan years, tens of thousands of Poles immigrated Europe and to the US under political asylum. After 1989 things changed very rapidly as the East bloc began to unravel and the USSR lost control of its satellite states. Poland was considered the success story of the post-communist transition. However that is starting to change as the ‘state of democracy’ is under threat as far the right-wing movement continues to grow in popularity.
Herzog – correct me if I am wrong – but Generally speaking, German’s see Poles in one of two ways; either as the Pole who stole my car, or the hard working Pole who painted my house, while being paid under the table (paid black), to avoid paying a German twice the rate.
UKer should have some first hand experience on this subject given the number of Poles who now reside in England.
“However that is starting to change as the ‘state of democracy’ is under threat as far the right-wing movement continues to grow in popularity.”
You mean as the Polish government steadfastly refuses to allow its nation to be overrun by sandgoogles.
@ KG III – Yes, exactly. AfD in Germany, FPÖ in Austria, National Front in France, KORWiN in Poland – it’s a long list. I’m not sure Americans understand how serious this can be if these parties actually polarize their respective populations. Our badly managed refugee problem could trigger a serious backlash that could effect us in serious ways. Imagine your Patriot Act on steroids.
In my view, Hungary responded correctly by simply saying “No” and erecting barriers. This is what the Hungarian people wanted and their government acted accordingly. As a result, the Jobbik has lost any traction they might have had to effect their government or gain popularity.
“Think of the Patriot Act on steroids.”
Oh damm. I didn’t get it before, now I do.
Agitation by any means necessary.
About time we sent some USAA Gladio teams like we did for Greece and the Ukraine.
Nuland, Kagan, (Ukraine)
Kahane, Soros, (Germany, Austria)
W. Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn- the good neighbors who groomed Obama;
Zuckerberg and the 11 Silicon Valley billionaires who met BO in Palo Alto in 2006 and told him “We’ll make you president (in return for surveillance infrastructure contracts)” and built a social media election machine;
The owners and financiers of the Hollywood studio system and much of the media;
A zillion advisors, intellectuals,and ‘thought-leaders’;
Along with darn near every cuktural marxist radical out there- Alinsky, Ginsberg, Hoffman, Freidan, Steinem, Rohm,
And Witzer’s Wurlitzer- the CIA creation of those 60’s radical groups
And don’t forget the Federal Reserve (all but Volker), or the designers of the UN and Bretton Woods!
Something… something so similar, so obvious… what could it be?
I just can’t take it anymore.
Once you see it, you can’t stop seeing it.
The Akkadian slavers, the Habiru raiders, the ‘sons of heaven’, the Sea Peoples, the Hyksos, have not, cannot change. They have brought this cycle of subversion, slavetrade (“communism” and the dole), foreign war, war loan inflation, and collapse for 4000 years. Formed by their terrible origins, they will not stop.
@Karl: as far as most Brits are concerned, Poles tend to represent the work ethic that Brits increasingly lack. They are white and christian which makes them invisible on the street. I am always puzzled whenever people say they don’t want to employ a Polish plumber or builder, especially as our more visible muslim friends don’t do plumbing or building to a standard we might find acceptable. Generally the Poles try to learn English and fit in, and while they still send money home so too do people from places like Pakistan (In fact, sterling transfers to the Indian subcontinent probably keeps a lot of that part of the world going.)
I don’t have a problem with Poles as such, and I used to live next door to a Polish guy who worked very hard both in a factory and turning his large garden into a highly productive ‘farm’ to help feed his family. Incidentally he told me that as young man he was sent to officer training in 1939 Poland and when the Russians marched in from the east he and his fellow trainee officers were lined up in front of a Soviet tank and all those with smooth hands were made to lie down as the tank was driven over them. This man, having been raised on a farm, had rough hands and thus was spared. He was still sent to a PoW camp. He escaped, was captured by the German army, put to working on a farm, escaped again and was eventually wounded fighting with the Belgian resistance of all people, from where he ended up in hospital in the UK. He made a living here, raised a family but admitted if he could have done he would have gone to Canada had the opportunity arisen in the immediate post war years.
His wife, who was Italian, as a child had sheltered in some Roman ruins when the allies invaded Italy in the latter stages of WWII. How she got to England I have no idea, but she did, married this Pole and like all good people tried to avoid any arguments when Poland played Italy in international soccer matches.
Maybe because of this man I generally have a good feeling about Poles.
@ UKer – Agreed. The Poles I work with are outstanding engineers, well educated, smart and hard working. If given the choice of an immigrant next door neighbor, I’d prefer someone with a last name that ends in -ski, -czyk, -stein or -berg. That way at least I’d know the local farmers goats would be safe.
No, only the Jewish “Polish” feel self-loathing.
“Haunted by the hoofbeats”,well said,Zman.I used to be an avid reader of Bret Stephens,and unable to understand his antipathy to Trump.Your perspective makes sense.Interesting,if scary,how smart guys like Stephens and Michael Hayden draw such different assessments of America’s plight than most of your readers here.The one good thing about the mess this country’s in,is that the masks are off,everyone is revealed.Good.It’s glaringly obvious that the Clinton Crime Cabal and her supporters really and truly hate us irredeemable Dirt People,and want us dead.Good to know. Next.
Nicely said. I agree. Let’s have it all out in the open. Let’s let the turd sit and fester in the middle of the dinning table. Let’s have the truth laid bare for all to see. The empire has no clothes. Starting with the truth is the only to fix it.
I understand the inconsistencies and contradictions of of the left, but somebody explain Stephens to me. I’ve read him because the parts are often good but the whole is less than the parts, and other than the parts.
“There is a temptation to assume there is an anti-Christian vibe to what we are seeing from people like Brett Stephens and Jennifer Rubin. That’s not the case as they reserve special hatred for orthodox and ultra-orthodox Jews”
This is where your analysis falls a little flat. It is an anti-Christian “vibe”. Orthodox Jews follow the Holy Writ and so do Christians. The “vibe” is anti bible, anti natural law, anti God. Modern Jews don’t adhere to the Holy Bible as the orthodox and Christians do. They lump us together. Many Jews hate the success of Christians and the once and former Christian nation of America because they hate God’s people. Remember, a Christian is Jew by faith who recognized Him and is called by the Christ of the Jews to be his people.
And I would add, that if you are a mainline church going Christian in America you may have been mislead about the Jews. There is no Jew or gentile, the only way to get to the father is through Christ Jesus regardless of race, nationality, station, or intellect. You, Christians, are NOT second class citizens in the Kingdom of Heaven. Stop letting you church “leaders” tell you that anybody is chosen before you. YOU ARE HIS CHOSEN PEOPLE.
I could go along with anti-Bible as a label. People like Jennifer Rubin seem to despise faithful Jews as much as they hate faithful Christians. But that feeds into the self-loathing issue. If you are a devout Christian or Jew, you naturally love life as it is God’s gift to you. The self-loathing hate that idea.
@ theZman – In your view, is there a significant difference between Jews and Zionists? I’m trying to understand where the delta exists in the Jewish community as it would between Catholics and Protestants, Sunnis and Shia since all religions have polar opposites in their common base religions.
@karl – I’ve always thought of Zionists as Israeli patriots, whether in Israel or elsewhere. Their first loyalty is to Israel the ethnic state. In the US, they are a minority and largely looked down upon by the secular Jews, who have become strongly anti-nationalist. Then there are the ultra-Orthodox communities that are people at the fringes. Like the Amish, they involve themselves in politics only when necessary. I live not too far from a Lubavitcher community. My guess is most of them could not name the president.
It gets more complicated with the secular Jews as there is the German-Russian/Eastern Europe thing. The German Jews who came over in the 19th century have always thought of the Jews that immigrated in the 20th century as their low-class relatives. Many of the German Jews assimilated to the point where they no longer adhere to any of the tenets of the faith. The Sulzberger family that owns the NYTimes is a good example.
As is always the case, there are loads of divisions within what looks like a homogeneous group to outsiders.
Zionists started out as a group that specifically wanted to create a Jewish state in the Holy Land which is what differentiated them from the Territorialists who were interested in creating a Jewish state anywhere they could get a territory. (The most famous clash between the two was over Uganda.) Part of Zionist theory was also that most Jews on earth should live in the Jewish state that Zionism would create. After Israel was established and it became obvious that most Jews in America weren’t going to immigrate, the compromise Israel and American Jewish leaders came to was that the Israelis would stop making such a big deal in public about American Jews not moving and American Jewry would define Zionism as being generally pro-Israel, a feeling instead of a concrete political action. But no Jewish group in America defines Zionism the way Israel sees it; for Israel Zionism is about Jews living in Israel while in America its about feeling good about a Jewish society they don’t really want to live in. Most authentic Zionists usually end up moving to Israel. For the rest its supposed to be pleasant feelings about the “old” country, something that isn’t holding up as well these days.
The ultra-Orthodox are more involved in local politics that it might look. But it is mainly in a pragmatic manner that is focused on advancing the interests of the community. They are a bit more informed that you would imagine; I wouldn’t go as far as to say they don’t know who the President is but they probably don’t know any of the details.
As for the German/Russian divide, there are still traces of it on the edges but mostly the old German Jewish community is gone. And even though the bulk of American Jewry can trace its ancestry to the Russian empire, they aren’t Russian; put them in a room with real Russian Jews (or if you prefer Soviet Jewish immigrants) and you can see the difference.
Original Zionism waz Herzl’s idea in 1870 to “save your pennies to buy back Jersalem”.
It worked, even at extortionate cost by the six Arab legacy landowners. (Later, said owners began riots when their debt-bondage slaves began leaving for Jewish farms where they were treated humanely.)
Emir Faisal of Mecca was best friends with Herzl and encouraged Jewish settlement of a nearly deserted “Palestine”.
In the 1930s, a new Zionism came to town.
The same bolsheviks who took over Slavic Russia and repeatedly attacked Germany, also lusted over Israel.
Takeover is what they do- even of, no, especially of, their own.
The Labor Zionism is not your old Zionism.
And so it is.
I find the entire middle east tedious and uninteresting (except in the archaeological sense). all involved peoples are odious to me. the one saving grace is that the hebrew women are not shaving their muffs off (at least not as frequently) as their goyim sisters. if tumblr is anything to go by.
I agree, but, curiously, I’m the only one. I’ve lived in the ME, so I have no delusions about those dusty people. And I have not seen a Hebrew muff to say whether it’s disco bush or shorn like a sheep.