Mediocrates
09-08-2006, 03:56 AM
http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/?p=1318
August 31, 2006
Jews who hate other Jews
Paul Bogdanor (http://www.paulbogdanor.com/jewishstate.html) has written an important and powerful piece about the appalling phenomenon of Jews who are in the forefront of demonising Israel. It’s a taster for his new book, with co-editor Edward Alexander, ‘The Jewish Divide Over Israel: Accusers and Defenders’ (Transaction, 2006). Here’s a sample:
Ever since the Israeli theologian Yeshayahu Leibowitz branded his country “Judeo-Nazi,†the equation of the victims and the perpetrators of the Holocaust has evolved into a malignant orthodoxy in opinion pieces, editorial cartoons, effete dinner discussions and Jew-baiting websites. The reason for its appeal – and for the popularity of alienated Jews who espouse it – is transparent: anyone who convinces himself that the horrors of Nazism have been reborn in its victims can invoke the fate of the dead Jews to justify his hatred of living Jews. Anti-Zionists – always quick to provide an alibi for anti-Semites – are well aware of that fact. So it is that Noam Chomsky can compare Israel’s wars of self-defense with “Hitler’s moves to bunt the Czech dagger pointed at the heart of Germany Hitler’s conceptions have struck a responsive chord in current Zionist commentary.†And so it is that Norman Finkelstein can avow that Jewish supporters of Israel are actually worse than the perpetrators of the Holocaust: “the Germans,†he writes, “could point in extenuation to the severity of penalties for speaking out against the crimes of state. What excuse do we have?â€
Perhaps he aspires to compete with the late Israel Shahak – for years a fixture on the PLO lecture circuit – who revealed to the world that “there are Nazi-like tendencies in Judaism.†But even these worthies would find it hard to outdo the London-based Gilad Atzmon, who recently imparted this insight: “To regard Hitler as the ultimate evil is nothing but surrendering to the Ziocentric discourse [Israel’s] vulgar biblical barbarism on the verge of cannibalism is wickedness with no comparison.†Atzmon is heavily promoted by radical leftists on both sides of the Atlantic.
Although they lose no opportunity to equate their fellow Jews with Nazis, anti-Zionists readily lend a helping hand to actual Nazis. At one time the ne plus ultra of Jewish collaboration with anti-Semites was the infamous Alfred Lilienthal, who insisted that the Diary of Anne Frank was a fake. Then the baton passed to Noam Chomsky, who explicitly praised Holocaust deniers, allowed them to publish his books and essays, collaborated in their propaganda campaigns, and defended his performance with the memorable observation that he saw “no anti-Semitic implications in denial of the existence of gas chambers.â€
Nowadays the committed neo-Nazi will find anti-Zionist Jews falling over themselves to assist him. Paul Eisen, of the PLO front group Deir Yassin Remembered, has openly defended Ernst Zundel, now on trial in Germany for his neo-Nazi activities. Neve Gordon, the Israeli professor who sued his critic Steven Plaut in a blatant attempt to silence him, has not called in the lawyers to remove his own articles from Zundel’s website. And the anti-Zionist journalist Shraga Elam went to the trouble of writing to David Irving in order to share his belief that “Hitler was no part of the project Auschwitz.â€
Jewish history has always given rise to Jews who, for a variety of inglorious reasons, have been in the forefront of demonising and persecuting the Jewish people to which they belong. It is a pathology as tragic as it is lethal. In its contemporary guise, its target now is the collective Jew in the form of the State of Israel, and its impact is no less devastating than when a Jewish convert dreamed up the first blood libel in the Middle Ages and unleashed mass murder on the basis of a terrible lie. So what’s new.
August 31, 2006
Jews who hate other Jews
Paul Bogdanor (http://www.paulbogdanor.com/jewishstate.html) has written an important and powerful piece about the appalling phenomenon of Jews who are in the forefront of demonising Israel. It’s a taster for his new book, with co-editor Edward Alexander, ‘The Jewish Divide Over Israel: Accusers and Defenders’ (Transaction, 2006). Here’s a sample:
Ever since the Israeli theologian Yeshayahu Leibowitz branded his country “Judeo-Nazi,†the equation of the victims and the perpetrators of the Holocaust has evolved into a malignant orthodoxy in opinion pieces, editorial cartoons, effete dinner discussions and Jew-baiting websites. The reason for its appeal – and for the popularity of alienated Jews who espouse it – is transparent: anyone who convinces himself that the horrors of Nazism have been reborn in its victims can invoke the fate of the dead Jews to justify his hatred of living Jews. Anti-Zionists – always quick to provide an alibi for anti-Semites – are well aware of that fact. So it is that Noam Chomsky can compare Israel’s wars of self-defense with “Hitler’s moves to bunt the Czech dagger pointed at the heart of Germany Hitler’s conceptions have struck a responsive chord in current Zionist commentary.†And so it is that Norman Finkelstein can avow that Jewish supporters of Israel are actually worse than the perpetrators of the Holocaust: “the Germans,†he writes, “could point in extenuation to the severity of penalties for speaking out against the crimes of state. What excuse do we have?â€
Perhaps he aspires to compete with the late Israel Shahak – for years a fixture on the PLO lecture circuit – who revealed to the world that “there are Nazi-like tendencies in Judaism.†But even these worthies would find it hard to outdo the London-based Gilad Atzmon, who recently imparted this insight: “To regard Hitler as the ultimate evil is nothing but surrendering to the Ziocentric discourse [Israel’s] vulgar biblical barbarism on the verge of cannibalism is wickedness with no comparison.†Atzmon is heavily promoted by radical leftists on both sides of the Atlantic.
Although they lose no opportunity to equate their fellow Jews with Nazis, anti-Zionists readily lend a helping hand to actual Nazis. At one time the ne plus ultra of Jewish collaboration with anti-Semites was the infamous Alfred Lilienthal, who insisted that the Diary of Anne Frank was a fake. Then the baton passed to Noam Chomsky, who explicitly praised Holocaust deniers, allowed them to publish his books and essays, collaborated in their propaganda campaigns, and defended his performance with the memorable observation that he saw “no anti-Semitic implications in denial of the existence of gas chambers.â€
Nowadays the committed neo-Nazi will find anti-Zionist Jews falling over themselves to assist him. Paul Eisen, of the PLO front group Deir Yassin Remembered, has openly defended Ernst Zundel, now on trial in Germany for his neo-Nazi activities. Neve Gordon, the Israeli professor who sued his critic Steven Plaut in a blatant attempt to silence him, has not called in the lawyers to remove his own articles from Zundel’s website. And the anti-Zionist journalist Shraga Elam went to the trouble of writing to David Irving in order to share his belief that “Hitler was no part of the project Auschwitz.â€
Jewish history has always given rise to Jews who, for a variety of inglorious reasons, have been in the forefront of demonising and persecuting the Jewish people to which they belong. It is a pathology as tragic as it is lethal. In its contemporary guise, its target now is the collective Jew in the form of the State of Israel, and its impact is no less devastating than when a Jewish convert dreamed up the first blood libel in the Middle Ages and unleashed mass murder on the basis of a terrible lie. So what’s new.