Anti-semitism on the rise?
This article at PJ by Abraham H. Miller concludes that not only is anti-Semitism on the rise, but that it is pushing US Jews to the political right.
I’m not at all sure about the second, but I have observed the first. It’s been a long slow Gramscian march through our institutions for anti-Semitism: in academia, art, literature, the left, the press, and certain churches. It is now commonplace to assert the racism of Israel and to use the language of apartheid to describe it, to rail at the Jewish (or “Likud”) lobby, and to assert dual loyalties for Jews. The defense that being against Israel is not a form of anti-Semitism would be a more powerful one if not for the extreme double-standard to which Israel is held, and the magnitude of the lies that are told about it and that persist in the minds of so many (Jenin! Jenin!).
At some point these lies reached critical mass, and now it would take such a massive re-education project to reverse them that the task seems impossible.
Miller, however, seems to believe that at some point the majority of Jews will react to the rising tide of anti-Semitism and abandon leftist politics. And this despite the fact that he describes a phenomenon that I have noticed as well, and one that does not indicate that there is much hope:
I have an acquaintance who mouths almost every tired cliché created by George Soros’ J-Street. She belongs to a synagogue where the J-Street message is embraced. She mouths these talking points with a smug pseudo-sophistication as if they were the product of an erudite belief system, but she is incapable of understanding in any detail much of what she says. She never voted Republican. And even if the Almighty himself were placed on the ballot with an “R” before his name, she wouldn’t vote for him. She talks endlessly about Israel taking risks for peace, but would cringe with fear if she knew her grandchildren got on the Chicago L and went to the south side after dark. She raged against the invasion of Gaza and lamented each Palestinian casualty. I never once heard her show an ounce of compassion or concern for a Jewish victim of either a suicide attack or rocket launched from Gaza. They were beyond her realm of concern or the ability to get status affirmation from her liberal friends.
The paradoxes are powerful; the ironies abound.
When as not quite yet a young man I read of Eichman’s capture. The book had a couple dozen pictures of the horrors of the camps, the massive mounds and deep pits of the emaciated dead. I was for the first time in my life actually horrified. I understood immediately the urgency of ‘never again’.
To witness so many Jews associating with the Left and apologizing for Islam I am left to wonder – what is it about Jews and their willingness to go for a ride in a boxcar?
George Pal: Please see the addendum to this post of mine.
neo
Disagree. Miller’s friend is not a Gandhi-an pacifist, which is the subject of the discussion of your referenced post.
Miller’s friend has no problem with Arab violence against Israel.
Gandhi had a problem with German violence; but it was his response that was pacifistic.
Miller’s friend has no such squeamishness.
American Jewry: fat, happy, superficial, and subservient to cliches.
http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/2011/09/19/i-accuse-president-barack-obama-of-destroying-western-interests-in-the-middle-east-helping-destabilize-the-region-and-putting-millions-of-lives-in-jeopardy/?singlepage=true
I give you Barry Rubin.
http://1389blog.com/category/islam/jihad/muslim-brotherhood/mb-moles/
And just what creepy threats to People of the Book are circulating around DC. It’s scary stuff.
Neo,
I had in mind present day Jews who have too much the same credulity yet with the knowledge and example of the Holocaust to advise them. Imbecilic Jews partaking in inter-religious confabs with muslims as European officials suggest to Jewish communities they should leave (the Netherlands) for their own safety is an outrage
All of what you write in the addendum is true and hindsight makes everything brilliantly easy yet the first volume of Mein Kampf was published in 1925 and Kristallnacht took place a year before the war started. Even so, I don’t say the Jews of that time should have absolutely known better, just that the Jews of today absolutely should.
For 2009: Law enforcement agencies reported 1,376 hate crimes motivated by religious bias. A breakdown of biases for these offenses showed:
â– 70.1 percent were anti-Jewish.
â– 9.3 percent were anti-Islamic.
For 2008:
â– 65.7 percent were anti-Jewish.
â– 13.2 percent were anti-other religion.
For 2007:
â– 68.4 percent were anti-Jewish.
â– 9.5 percent were anti-other religion.
For 2006:
â– 64.3 percent were anti-Jewish.
â– 12.0 percent were anti-Islamic.
http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2006/incidents.html
A LONG time ago I said we are maneuvering to Shoa II. maybe not overtly but the policies and such will result in the same over time rather than quickly.
Marx has such as foundational, you cant deny half of a prophet and accept the ideas whole
it all boils down to playing games with the things we use to make our conclusions, and then while denying their existence, acting upon the knowledge to remove the key biological (IQ) potential opponents
deny varying IQ, you deny merit, you deny earning places, you deny Jewish people (white males) achieved replacing it with cheated.
when they thought chinese were similar given their progressive views (unchanged), they tried to use them as they use other minorities. when they didn’t bite and for the most part worked hard and earned and did superior in school and didn’t abandon their culture as dictated… they became persona non grata and on the list of who to impinge
how did they get us to behave the same?
that was easy… they had to normalize the ‘modes of thought’ through other means one then thinks is ok so acclimation works.
once the mode is accepted and valid one can then proceed to the same conclusion and there is no defense
america showed it wasnt racist or would accept any outright argument for certain such things. few fell in line when it was presented, and quite the opposite happened. even MORE so after wwii, and socialisms attrocities on the jews and millions of others.
so it applied it a different way, but its the same… i dont know what the Germans called it when they used it, i do know we call it disparate impact here.. the idea that one can compute oppression through valid logic, false justification, all based on wrong or false but selected assumptions
men oppressed women and so on…
while in race communities that was used..
but in Jewish and smart college bound Caucasian families that idea took hard hold..
it was only a matter of time before someone noticed that the names of the white males would often show the source of their relations and smarts…
so it was our soviet concious raising liberating from life (not home) movements whose leaders all share one common idea… they are working for communism, even if their followers dont beleive it (no matter how many quotes and passages you give them. see how well that worked out for obama? well, it was how well it worked out for those groups that got everyone so accepting of it, it worked for obama)
a world without the Jewish people is a lesser world. you can argue that some of them have given us some evil thoughts and ideas… but we acted on them, rather than giggling. how about all the other great things in medicine, general science, physics, and more? and often at great sacrifice…
George Pal,
You ask why the knowledge and example of the Holocaust don’t stop left-wing American Jews’ stupidity. My answer is that, as with the Jewish religion itself, the lessons of the Holocaust too have been hijacked by Marxist ideologues and substituted with the wrong ones, not least of which is the equation of awareness of Islam’s imperialism to 1930s persecution of Jews.
As a right-wing Jew, I take “Never Again” to apply to all people, not just to Jews–contrary to what left-wingers would assume about me as a right-winger. However, I reject the proposition that “Never Again” is to be guaranteed by pacts, treaties, concessions, agreements, alliances, appeasement or any of the same that have failed over and over again, not just in the 1930s but in recent memory. “Never Again” means for each nation to do the utmost by itself in the effort of defense; or as I have seen it otherwise put, “Armed, people fly their colors; unarmed, they wear them.” (The latter refers to the Yellow Magen David.)
Of course, one might argue being armed and ready to defend yourself is no guarantee. I agree. However, it means if you’re destined to die then it’s with your boots on. The Marxist Left’s greatest hurt to Jewish people everywhere has consisted in robbing them of their sense of honor, the national pride that is the opposite of abject servitude to cosmopolitan ideals. The Holocaust has been hijacked by the Marxists for their purpose of delegitimizing nationalism.
a world without the Jewish people is a lesser world
a world without babies is a lesser world
a world without God is a lesser world
a world without mystery is a lesser world
a world without Islam is a better world
a world without Marx is a better world
a world without progressives is a better world
a world without multiculturalism is a better world
George Pal: I understand.
Are Young Rabbis Turning on Israel?, asks an essay in Commentary.
Richard Aubrey: You have misunderstood my reason for linking the Gandhi post. I linked it in order to respond to George Pal’s phrase, “willingness to go for a ride in a boxcar,” and called attention only to the post’s addendum, which had nothing whatsoever to do with Gandhi. The addendum was about whether the Jews of the Holocaust went willingly as lambs to slaughter, which was the historical analogy that I saw in George Pal’s use of the “wllingness to go for a ride in a boxcar” phrase. I simply wanted to correct the record on that one point.
In my first job out of college I worked for a self-made millionaire in Carrollton, Texas. He had been in one of those concentration camps that some think never existed. (He must have put that tattoo on his lower arm himself!)
His parents were killed in the Holocaust that today some preach never happened.
Someday, maybe we will be able to say that LIES don’t happen.
If Jews are so darn smart, how come so many of them vote Democratic?
According to my friends in France, Jews are once again the target of frustration with the status quo. As the economic and political stability weakens people look for scape goats. Jews are handy victims and anti-semitism apparently runs deep in France. Is the same true in the USA?
Here in Iowa, I know few Jews and there are very few Jews in Iowa, but all that I know are very ‘liberal’. I fail to understand how they can see the Arabs as victims and their own people as the oppressors when it seems plain as day to me the opposite is true.
Unfortunately mankind is half biological and half cerebral, only almost rational (more like rationalizing), while the biological side is pervasive and the final reality of the human condition; hence the autonomically repetitive, self-destructive behaviour which seems inexplicable, but is apparently more fate. However, the strong, perceptive and clever suffer the least…
“Even so, I don’t say the Jews of that time should have absolutely known better, just that the Jews of today absolutely should.”
Well said, perhaps until Jews as a predominate group learn that “lesson”, they (we) will not be able to be that “light unto the nations.” Denial is not a river in Egypt…
Jewish liberals are trapped by the solipsism that is the very soul of liberalism. Such solipsism allows one to certifying victims and thus validate one’s own moral superiority, by claiming some kind of responsibility for the victim’s situation. Since the Palestinians are the approved victims in the liberal mindset, American Jews are caught in a dilemma. Their usual response is denial, and to transfer their anguish over growing left-wing anti-semitism to increasingly obscure examples of right-wing anti-semitism.
Most American Jews are post-Jewish.
It would be more accurate to describe them as “Americans of Jewish descent” – or “cosmopolitans of Jewish descent” as the more extreme are anti-American as well.
This goes back to “the old country” – when crushing poverty and oppression caused many Jews to throw over covenantal Judaism for alternative identities.
– Some embraced the possibilities for equality offered by the Enlightenment.
– Some turned to the promise of universal fraternity mouthed by Communists.
In both cases, this involved jumping out of their Jewish skin and replacing that identity with a universalist, liberal one. That’s why I used the word “cosmopolitan” above.
It’s been said that left-wing political correctness has taken the place of religion. For most non-Orthodox Jews that is literally accurate.
These Jews – like Miller’s friend – will tell you that “Judaism means always sticking up for the underdog” or “Judaism means social justice” or other such PC nonsense – because that’s how they’ve rejiggered their identity.
More deeply: the attack on traditional Judeo-Christian values that is central to modern “progressive” thought dovetails with these apostate Jews’ own guilt and anger towards their own roots – think immigrant shame on steroids.
As an Orthodox Jew, I often receive the burning anger of “liberal” Jews towards those Members of the Tribe who refuse to get with the progressive program – who remain embarrassingly proud to be Jewish in the old, covenantal/historical sense.
(An illustrative anecdote:
When the comedian Jackie Mason had a hit show on Broadway, the Jews who came backstage would end their complements by saying his act was “too Jewish”…)
So: most Dem-til-I-die American “Jews” are deeply committed to a universalist identity that makes a virtue of preferring others to one’s own group – and have double antipathy to Israel, precisely because of its proud Jewishness.
Based on the history and evidence since the 1930s, it beggars the imagination that Jews have joined the anti-Israel camp. Just_does_not_compute.
Ben David’s ideas resonate as to the causes. It is still hard to understand.
A lot of these anti-Israel Jews are just imbecilic asses. They’re “smart” in the way New York Times readers are “smart,” i.e. ignorant and full of themselves.
They think that if they take the (so-called) underdog’s side, they’re automatically good people.
I used to try to reason with them, but after I reduced one foolish Jewish Pali supporter to tears after I said that I didn’t think there would be peace, I just gave up.
Actually, I gave up after a few more attempts. Now I just reconcile myself to the fact that these kind of people will just have to die out. These are the same people who think Obamacare is a good thing.
The only Jews who survive will those who know how to defend themselves and to beat the crap out of the enemy. Ditto for Christians. As Americans, we’ve been way too soft toward Islam.
As a non-Jew and pro-semite, I read, inter alia, “Commonwealth”, a monthly journal of politically conservative Jews, edited by Podhoretz, the son of its long-time prior editor. A recent issue centered on the leftism/political reality-denial of most American Jews. Despite lots of speculating, the take-home for me was “We don’t get it either.”
Well-known is the staunch pro-Israel position of American Evangelical Christians; perhaps a bit less well-known is the low esteem in which they are held by most Jews, as well as most other preening liberals.
It is pretty clear that most of the Nazi-era boxcar riders thought of themselves as Germans (or French) first, and as Jews second.
Until the mid-1930s, all serious young American MDs looked to Germany as the pinnacle of medical academia, and many did some of their studies there. A probable majority of German academic docs was then Jewish. The Nazis fixed that, and it took 40 years for German medicine to semi-recover. It still is not what it was or could be.
Germans founded organic chemistry, starting in the 1870s, which begat pharmaceuticals, e.g. Bayer. When’s the last time you heard of a hot new drug from Germany?
Don Carlos: I believe you mean Commentary, not Commonwealth.
Don Carlos: some of that traditional distrust of devout Christians by Jews comes from the traditional historical antipathy of a significant and vocal number of Christians towards the Jews as being Christ-killers. It is really only within the last fifty years or so that that attitude has dramatically faded among many very religious Christians.
neo-neocon Says:
…some of that traditional distrust of devout Christians by Jews comes from the traditional historical antipathy of a significant and vocal number of Christians towards the Jews as being Christ-killers.
1. Purely in terms of practical politics, it was more prudent for the early Christians to blame the Jews for Jesus’s death than to blame the Roman Empire. My unknowledgeable impression is that, especially after the Holocaust, Christians, especially the recent Catholic Church, stress the role of the Romans.
2. A separate issue from the crucifixion is the Jews’ rejection of Jesus as Messiah. My unknowledgeable impression is that John Paul II declared that it is a matter between the Jewish people and God, and not one for Christian involvement. Iirc JPII described the Jews with the term ‘our elder brothers’.
Yeah, it’s Commentary; a glitch born of pressure!
Neo: do you suggest it is understandable for the Jews to be stuck on stupid, instead of today ’embracing’ (ugh, that word) the Evangelicals in gratitude? Is it understandable that many US Jews wish to see Israel fail?
American Jews have for a very, very long time been blessed as nowhere else on the planet. I name Lehman and Goldman Sachs as two modest examples. Never mind Hollywood and academia, where they have been unimpeded in their shaping of public attitudes and thought.
While some (some!) Americans have deemed Jews Christ-killers in the past, and denied them country club memberships, it was Europe and Russia that killed them in the millions, just to state the obvious. Fifty years is two generations! They think a lot faster than that on Wall Street!
Don Carlos: I think most Jews should catch up with the times and realize that evangelicals are in their corner. But old habits (and attitudes) die hard.
What’s more, most American Jews (or at least a huge percentage) are secular, and have rejected Israel as a cause having anything to do with them. These tend to be the same people who don’t like evangelicals.
neo. ref. Christ killer. Been a Christian since 1945. Never heard it in any kind of religious venue. Always heard it was being said by some other clowns, usually bad actors.
I repeat: Is it understandable that many US Jews(if in name only) wish to see Israel fail?
Not understandable for me.
Don Carlos: I’m not sure so many wish to see Israel fail; perhaps most are merely indifferent as to whether Israel fails. It is also the case that for many secular Jews their liberalism trumps their Judaism, and as liberals they prove their liberal bona fides (and the fact that they are “good” Jews, not the bad kind) by not defending Israel. In fact, some of the most vociferous critics of Israel are Jews.
It’s sort of like the fact that Spanish inquisitor Torquemada is purported to have been from a converso family.
Don Carlos When’s the last time you heard of a hot new drug from Germany?
today… see: Bayer HealthCare’s oral anticoagulant / Rivaroxaban (Xarelto)
The chimps, i mean chmp recomended it today (sept 23, 2011)
A separate issue from the crucifixion is the Jews’ rejection of Jesus as Messiah.
Gs, this depends on which group your referring to…
jews for jesus do not reject jesus as A messiah
however, Chabad-Lubavitchand some others believe that there is a messiah for each generation, and Schneerson who just dies a few years back was theirs (according to some)
“A Hasid is he who surrenders himself for the benefit of another”
so it was Schneerson who kind of got on the same kind of coming of the messiah and acceleration of it…
this is why they tend to bother me when its sukka season… i have been told that i ‘look’ jewish in some ways (large nose), and so the Schneerson tend to see me in a crowd, and come to bring me back into the fold.
when its a kid, and i am a gentile, they just stare, blink, and dont kow what to say
when its a younger but more open person, they tend to be ok… not angry at me (because they are angry at themselves)…
but the others get real peeved… and say something nasty to me… to which i said, i was not racist to you Schneerson would be saddened by you… (that tends to get them)
(acceleration of prophecy is invalid, as the time is the time, not the time is the condition)
oh.. forgot to say why…
Ufaratzta – “you shall spread out”
his idea was that if the jews accelerated the return to the fold, then they accelerated the comming of the messiah…
so before you go off and say that they reject jesus.. one should learn about them, the different groups, what they believe in, what their customs are, their history and THEN be humble when pretending to know them. as i am not jewish.. i dont have it all down..
but note that my knowing judaism this well, often has many thinking i AM jewish… for their experience is that gentiles tend to be ignoramuses… (Even about their own religion – its tenets, and that personal versions arent valid)
i have more than once rescued one of their women on the palisades… and once in jersey… it is my opinion that a respectful gentile who will make sure she gets to the community safely without violating their culture is better than most others who may come to help or pretend to.
but i have experienced their bigotry and behavior up close and personal. i once brought the lady to the family. they gave me a coke… and praised me..
(made me think of shlomo… “I have found two things in every city I have visited, Coca-Cola and Lubavitcher Hasidim” – Rabbi Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman)
then when they found out i was christian… well that was interesting… they didnt know waht to do with me… i was an incongruent impossibility… they asked how? why? and such…
it was then i realized that the problem was more from their side than the christians side… ie. they belive more in the hatred from christians than here actually is, and so they behave from that and so do not welcome the niceness that would enter in fear of the history that is long gone.
i said to them..
why would i not like him or do his people well?
the rebbi though was cool.. he came out, heard what i say, smiled nodded and thanked me. no we did not shake hands… 🙂
and he was very happy that the lady was safe, UNTOUCHED, and i went on my merry way afer finishing the coke… (they even offered me a chance for a job, which i didnt need. ah well)
🙂
lets just say that since i dont belong anywhere, i actually belong in more places than people who DO belong someplace.
my experiences floating through different social groups has been quite remarkable.
for instance… my favorite place to relax and NOT be bothered used to be the toughest bike bars. i am 6′ 3″, and they knew, and i knew, that bothering is more trouble than its worth… and the owners knew that a 230 lb pissed off person causes damage… so they ran interference on the wanna bees…
i could mouth off (rightly) to the biggest baddest ass, and we all knew better than to go forward…
but in a regular bar… all i got was trouble from napoleons thinking that i was an easy way to get them laid from some other chick. my friend used to watch me play with them every week… he would laugh as they would want a fight or me to back down, and i would end up with free beer. 🙂
he saw me mouth off to a cop once in a cop bar i used to also hang out in… he thought that cop would have it out for me… but no… i was right… didnt say nothing other than the point…
so get to know these groups, and the people.
not much different anywhere you go…
not if you dont pay attention to the gilding
I should also point out that jesus was accepted by the jews of his day despite being essene (kind of like branch davidians of the day)… the key parts of his childhood before the blank spot talk of him out reasoning the rabbi and their readings of the old testament.
you might not be aware of it, but as far as i have been taught and personally experienced, was that anyone has the ability to comment on torah and what they think i means. so the rabbi are open, but its doubtful your going to come up with a better angle than what they have decided upon after debating for over 1000 years..
i did attend a jewish religion school for a while as a kid as my parents wanted me to be very well rounded. it taught me to get my answers from the horses mouth himself… (its a term having to do with knowing a horses age. never trust the seller, you look in the horses mouth yourself)