CANDIDLY SPEAKING: THE DE-ZIONIZATION OF ANGLO JEWRY

by: Alan Hart

That was the headline over a story – wonderful news, I say, if it’s true – in Israel’s English language newspaper, the Jerusalem Post, on 25 November. On behalf of Zionism’s colonial project in Palestine, the writer, Isi Leibler, was verbally crucifying one of Britain’s most influential Jewish leaders for daring to go public with his criticism of Netanyahu and saying, among other things, that Israel’s policies and actions were harming the best interests of British Jews, and by implication non-Israeli Jews everywhere.

The target of Leibler’s attack was Mick Davis. For those who don’t know about him, he is b-i-g in business. He’s the CEO of Xstrata, a major global diversified mining group (alloys, coal, copper, nickel and zinc) which is listed on the London and Swiss stock exchanges and, in the words of the group’s mission statement, has “the single aim of delivering industry-leading returns for our shareholders”. But there’s much more to Mick Davis than that.

He is the chairman of Anglo Jewry’s United Jewish Israel Appeal (UJIA). That’s the principal fund-raising institution for Israel of the UK Jewish community. He also heads a body known as the Jewish Leadership Council (JLC). This was described by Leibler as essentially comprised of “a group of wealthy British Jews and their acolytes who, by virtue of their financial largesse, assume a dominant influence on many levels of communal life.” Leibler added (my emphasis): “The power represented by their collective wealth enables them not to be accountable to anyone and few would dare question their policies.”

Leibler acknowledged that many Jews are critical of Israeli governments but Davis, he wrote, “brazenly incites his fellow Jews to criticize Israel.” Leibler went on:

“While occupying the role of chairman of the UIJA resident in London, he had the chutzpa to berate the Israeli prime minister ‘for lacking the courage to take the steps’ to advance the peace process, arguing that ‘I don’t understand the lack of strategy in Israel.’ He also employed the terminology of our enemies, predicting an ‘apartheid state’ unless Israel was able to achieve a two-state solution – unashamedly blaming Israelis rather than Palestinians for being the obstacle to peace.

“His sheer arrogance was best demonstrated in his most outrageous remark: ‘I think the government of Israel has to recognize that their actions directly impact on me as a Jew living in London, UK When they do good things, it is good for me; when they do bad things, it is bad for me… I want them to recognize that.’”

Davis, Leibler added, was not only implying “that Israel is responsible for the anti-Semitism he is encountering,” He was also “effectively warning that when considering defense issues which may have life-or-death implications for Israelis, the government must be sure not to create problems for him in his non-Jewish social circles. From his London mansion, he blithely brushes aside suicide bombers, rockets launched against our children and the threat of nuclear annihilation because his gentile friends might complain about the behaviour of his Israeli friends.”

The notion that Israel faces the threat of nuclear annihilation is Zionist propaganda nonsense on stilts and there was more of it. “Emanating from a Jewish leader in the anti-Semitic UK environment in which campaigns to boycott and delegitimize Israel are at an all-time high, and at a time when Israel is under siege and fighting for its existence, it (Davis’ contribution to debate) surely represents a level of unprecedented vulgarity.”

Then I had to laugh. Davis’ latest outburst, Leibler wrote, “is neither intellectually challenging nor persuasive.” So why then, I asked myself, was Leibler bothering to address it and, by so doing, give it the oxygen of publicity?

The answer is that Leibler is right about one thing. In Palestine that became Israel mainly as a consequence of Zionist terrorism and ethnic cleansing, Zionism is under siege, but not from Arab or other Muslim hordes. Israel is under siege because of its racist policies and criminal actions. Put another way, more and more citizens of the world (if not their governments) are beginning to understand that Zionism’s in-Israel leaders are not interested in peace on terms the vast majority of Palestinians and most other Arabs and Muslims everywhere could just about accept.

Even more to the point is that a growing if still smallish number of the Jews of the world are beginning to understand two things. One, even if they cannot bring themselves to read it, is that there is substance to the title of my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews. The other is the danger (in my view extreme danger) of the rising tide of anti-Israelism being transformed at a point into violent anti-Semitism if they, the Jews of the world and American and European Jews in particular, are perceived as being complicit in Zionism’s crimes.

It might be too late save Israelis brainwashed by Zionist propaganda from themselves, but it’s not yet too late for the Jews of the world to save themselves from Zionism’s colonial enterprise and all the evils that came and are still with it.

If the de-Zionization of Anglo Jewry and possibly even Western Jewry in general is underway, I think the following question should be asked. What, if anything, can the Gentiles among whom most Jews live do to encourage the process?

In the original UK two-volume edition of my book I called for a New Covenant, not between the Jews and their God but between the Jews and the Gentiles. In the three-volume American edition of the book, I dropped the call because I thought on reflection that it was somewhat naive.

I’ve changed my mind again and now think the idea for a New Covenant should be back on the agenda.

For their part of the deal the Jews of the world would commit to making common cause with rational Israelis for the purpose of de-Zionizing Israel/Palestine. The Gentiles for their part would commit to slaying the monster of anti-Semitism. As I noted in my original text: “An undertaking to let the monster die in its sleep would not be good enough. There would have to be evidence that a stake was being driven into its heart.”

Why, really, do I believe that such a covenant – in spirit at least – is a good and necessary idea?

The main reason for the silence of the Jews of the world is the unspeakable fear – the product of persecution through the centuries and, after the Nazi holocaust, Zionism’s manipulation of the fear – that another great turning against them is inevitable. That being so, if only in their sub-consciousness, they perceive the need for Israel as their refuge of last resort. So say nothing and do nothing that could assist Israel’s enemies and put that insurance policy at risk.

It follows that if the Jews of the world are to play their necessary part in de-Zionizing Israel/Palestine, they need to be reassured about their security and wellbeing in the lands in which they live. For most Jews these are the nations of the mainly Gentile world. (Most of the Arabs and other Muslims who also live in these lands have always known the difference between Judaism and Zionism. Most Gentiles don’t know).

Footnote

I have just viewed a 15-minute trailer for Mustafa Barghouti’s documentary Our Story. It contains some details which I think invite the conclusion that Israel’s occupation is not only illegal but wicked. The whole documentary should be essential viewing for all Jews everywhere. And I hope that Jews who do see it will be enraged enough to make common cause with Mick Davis and others with integrity and courage who are speaking out.

To order the film on DVD, send requests to palestineourstory@gmail.com Or call on +972 599 9 400 73
http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2010/11/candidly-speaking-the-de-zionization-of-anglo-jewry/

M. Shahid Alam – Zionism: Two Deficits

We do not fit the general pattern of humanity…”

David Ben-Gurion

“…only God could have created a people so special as the Jewish people.”

Gideon Levy

The fecundity of the Zionist project in producing claims of exceptionalism is not in doubt. Anyone who scans the voluminous Zionist literature will be suitably impressed by its repeated resort to claims of Jewish and Israeli exceptionalism. There is scarcely any aspect of Israeli or Jewish history that has not been embellished with some claim to uniqueness.

Israeli exceptionalism has many uses. It defends, obscures, explains away the ‘abnormal’ character of the Zionist nationalist project. When the Irish sought national liberation, their goal was straightforward. They wanted to regain national control over their lives and their country from a foreign power. No one had to convince the Irish that they are descended from the gods; that they possessed a unique essence which set them apart from all other peoples; or that their history, religion, race, language, morality or culture set them above their colonial masters. Occasionally, driven by exuberance or hubris, nationalists have advanced exceptionalist claims, but the success of their movement has not depended on their acceptance. The Irish claimed sovereignty because they knew that they are a nation with their own territory. In order to create their own state, they did not have to establish that they are exceptional.

The Zionists confronted two handicaps that Irish nationalists did not face. The diverse and scattered Jewish communities of Europe – and even more so, the world – did not constitute a single people. Instead, the Jews of the world were loosely united by their religious heritage, but they shared their languages, cultures and genes with their neighboring communities. Moreover, no Jewish community had its own country, a substantial and contiguous territory where it formed a majority of the population. Despite these twin Jewish deficits – the absence of a nation and a national territory – the Zionists were determined to ‘liberate’ the Jews of Europe and endow them with their own state.

The Zionists would remedy the first deficit by denying its existence. They knew that the Jews were not a nation, but it would be unwise to begin their ‘nationalist’ movement with the admission that a Jewish nation did not yet exist. They also did not think that this deficit was a serious hindrance to their movement. With help from anti-Semites, whose attacks had been growing in recent decades, the Zionists were convinced that they could quickly convince enough frightened Jews that they are a nation. Instead of constructing a nationalism based on a common religion, however, the Zionists chose to cultivate a racial basis for Jewish nationalism. They embraced the anti-Semitic accusation that Jews of Europe are an alien race, not Germans or Russians, descended from the ancient Hebrews.

A racial identity offered the best hope of inculcating nationalism in culturally diverse Jewish communities. Only an identity, based on the myth of a common descent, could unite peoples who were as different ethnically and culturally as the Jews of Portugal, Britain, Germany, Greece and Russia. Only the myth of racial unity, only the conviction that they are a single family, descended from Abraham and Jacob, could unite orthodox, conservative and reform Jews into a nation. Once the Jews were convinced of their racial identity, preserved over hundreds of generations in exile, this would also endow them with pride in their ancient pedigree and their unique ability to survive and preserve their racial purity through difficult conditions. This was sure to engender a strong sense of their distinctiveness, superiority and destiny, rooted in Jewish traditions and the Jewish Bible. With confidence, the Jews could see themselves as a unique nation, both ancient and divinely blessed.

The Zionists were more candid about their ‘land deficit;’ this was not something they could fudge. Indeed, their land deficit defined the ‘abnormal’ condition of Jews; they were an abnormal people because they did not have a country they could call their own. Conceptually, the land deficit was easier to fix. The Jews only had to stake a claim to Palestine as their country: there were two ways of doing this. Jews of secular persuasion could claim that they had a historical right to Palestine, since they were descended from the ancient Israelites. In addition, it would be easy to reclaim this land because – according to early Zionist rhetoric – ‘this was a land without a people.’ No one had claimed Palestine during their absence. The religious Jews had a simpler and – for them – more irrefutable claim. Their God had promised the land to their ancestors for keeps. All they had to do was invoke their divine right to this Promised Land.

It turns out, after all, that the Jews are a people with their own land. Once the Zionists had made their case, there would be nothing abnormal about their national project. This was the official rhetoric of the Zionist project of national liberation for the Jewish people. On the back of this rhetoric, the Zionists would succeed in convincing the Western world to support their exclusionary colonial project in the Middle East.

excerpted from the author’s Israeli Exceptionalism (Palgrave, 2009).

M. Shahid Alam is professor of economics at Northeastern University. You may contact him at alqalam02760@yahoo.com.
http://palestinethinktank.com/2010/10/26/m-shahid-alam-zionism-two-deficits/

Zionism unmasked

Many well-informed Jews opposed Israel’s founding in 1948.

By Jeff Gates

While Zionism is clearly a nationalist ideology, that narrow framing does the term an injustice as it is so much more.

Zionism is more accurately described as a strategy for targeting thought and emotion as a means to influence behavior. Naïve Jews were its first victims when induced to identify with an enclave in the Middle East that President Harry Truman, a Christian Zionist, was induced to recognize as a “state.”

Zionism is first and foremost a mental state that manifests as a dispersed form of internalized nationalism—a Diaspora—that binds to an extremist enclave those who may never set foot there. After 1967, this “state” became the “Land of Israel” based on a more expansive area seized by Israel Defense Forces along with other occupied lands that Zionists claim a god gave them.

Zionism recruits by sustaining a shared sense of insecurity within the broader Jewish community. It progresses by marketing its perceived vulnerability and victimhood among those on whom it relies for financial, military and diplomatic support.

When, as now, policies of the Zionist state come under attack, media campaigns herald an outbreak of anti-Semitism and hatred—not for Zionism but for Jews, enhancing recruitment.

By choosing to identify their interests with those of Zionism, Jews choose to make themselves feel insecure. Zionism relies for its success not only on deception but also on self-deceit.

Many well-informed Jews opposed Israel’s founding in 1948. By 1967, Jewish-Americans were active in the civil rights movement. With the Six-Day War, that activism became problematic. How could Jews back civil rights for Blacks while Zionism denied those rights to Palestinians?

That era marked a turning point both for Zionism and legitimate Judaism as many Jews abandoned civil rights activism when they could no longer reconcile their activism with Israeli oppression. Thus the present mental state of Barack Obama’s many Jewish Zionist advisers.

The Six-Day War induced more Jews to identify with Zionism as a defender of Jews. Yet now we know that war was a long-planned land grab destined to outrage Arabs and Muslims. When combined with a murderous occupation, decades of Israeli provocations were guaranteed to evoke the violent reactions required to rationalize a “war on terrorism.”

In terms of game theory war planning, today’s results were perfectly predictable—mathematically model-able within an acceptable range of probabilities. Once again Zionism targeted thought and emotion to manipulate behaviour by provoking antagonism and evoking extremism—the two key ingredients required to plausibly proclaim their insecurity.

When your numbers are few and your ambitions vast, what choice did Zionists have but to seduce and deceive a super power so that our military would wage their wars for Greater Israel?

* Peace is the opponent

Peace is a perilous ‘state’ to be avoided at any cost by a nationalist ideology that thrives on serial crises wed to a perpetual state of conflict and fear. To realize the Zionist goal of hegemony over the Middle East requires a series of plausible Evil Doers and a persuasive narrative. Could Zionism be the reason we segued so seamlessly from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism?

Instead of the anticipated post-Cold War “peace dividend, the U.S. finds itself waging what Nobel economist Joe Stiglitz calls The $3 Trillion War—all of it borrowed, including $700 billion in interest expense.

In hindsight, the phony intelligence that induced us to war in the Middle East was traceable to Israelis, pro-Israelis or assets developed for that purpose such as Iraqi liar Ahmad Chalabi.

Other than those sharing a Zionist mental state, who had the means, motive, opportunity and, importantly, the stable nation-state intelligence to conduct such operations inside the U.S. ?

Yet even now those responsible elude accountability and even scrutiny as cries of “anti-Semitism” are deployed to intimidate and misdirect—by manipulating thought and emotion.

At the end of World War II, the U.S. claimed 50% of the world’s productive power, ensuring we would have the world’s top-rated government bonds for at least two generations. When the Cold War drew to a costly close in 1989, the U.S. had spent $15.9 trillion on defense since 1948 (in 2010 dollars). Now a potential war without end has taken its place.

Americans have been induced to believe that the Zionist state is an ally. We are not alone in viewing Israel as a legitimate nation and a noble experiment to provide a “homeland” for a victimized people. That alluring storyline victimized the broader Jewish community while also laying waste to the nation that was first deceived to extend to Zionists the hand of friendship.

To escape the ravages of Zionism requires that we concede its duplicitous nature and make its operations transparent so that its perpetrators become apparent. As a long-deceived global public grasps its costs in blood and treasure, this mental state will be seen for what it is: a criminal state.

* The psychopath within

In the clinical psychiatric literature, this “state” features interpersonal traits such as superficial charm, pathological lying, egocentricity, lack of remorse, and callousness that are regarded as characteristic of psychopaths. In order to betray, psychopaths first befriend. In order to defraud, they first establish a relationship of trust. Sound familiar?

Those who share such a mental state will happily incite hatred to catalyze a reaction and then claim they are the victims of hate. For those inhabiting this mental state, it appears rational and even desirable to provoke a response and then claim to be a target of anti-Semites. Inside this internal state, self-absorption is all-encompassing with arrogance its most visible trait.

Law is irrelevant to those who consider themselves above the law. Morality and conscience are of no concern to those who consider themselves The Chosen—by a god of their own choosing. Such a nationalist ideology has no place in a system nation states dedicated to the rule of law.

Those sharing such a “state” pose too great a peril to be an object of pity or compassion. Accountability is the only appropriate response along with an initiative—deploying force as required—to secure any weapons of mass destruction that may be in their possession.

Such a state cannot be delegitimized because any legitimacy attained was integral to the fraud it inflicted on the community of nations. The issue at hand is how best to protect a peace-seeking world from a psychopathic ideology that assumed the appearance of legitimacy so that a Christian Zionist president could be deceived to recognize as a nation a criminal state.
http://aljazeera.com/news/articles/39/Zionism-unmasked.html

Paul J. Balles – Zionism Unmasked: "Anti-Semitic" – the label that stops criticism

By Paul J. Balles*

If you indulge in ad hominem attacks (attacking the person rather than the issue), you can expect the same in return. The issues related to the anti-Semitic label are many.

First, the expression "anti-Semitic" is a misnomer. It's defined as "hating Jews or Judeophobia." The label "anti-Semitism" is wrong because not all Jews are Semites, and many Arabs are.

In 2004, the US Congress passed the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act. The Act defines a person as being anti-Semitic for holding any of a number of beliefs. My comments follow each of the 14 items supposedly revealing anti-Semitism.

1) Any assertion, "that the Jewish community controls government, the media, international business and the financial world."

According to this, it doesn't matter whether the assertion is true or not. Truth is not an issue. Simply making such a statement violates the Act. In itself, that fact provides strong evidence of control of the US government.

2) The expression of "Strong anti-Israel sentiment."

Any criticism of Israel can thus be considered anti-Semitic. Israel can mangle Gaza and get away with it.

3) Expressing "Virulent criticism" of Israel's leaders, past or present.

Menachem Begin may have led the Irgun in the slaughter and dispossession of thousands of Palestinians, but it's anti-Semitic to say so.

4) Any criticism of the Jewish religion or its religious leaders with its emphasis on the Talmud and Kabbala.

It's perfectly acceptable, as free speech, to vilify Islam, but any criticism of Judaism violates the Act.

5) Any criticism of the United States Government and Congress for being under the undue influence by the Jewish-Zionist community, which would include Jewish organizations such as AIPAC.

Truth matters not to the ridiculous legislators who passed this ludicrous act.

6) Any criticism of the Jewish-Zionist community for promoting globalism or what some call the "New World Order."

When you can't criticise a propaganda machine for its promotions, both free speech and democracy are dead.

7) Placing any blame on Jewish leaders and their followers for inciting the Roman crucifixion of Christ.

In order to accommodate the anti-Semitism label, simply rewrite history.

8) Citing any facts that could in any way diminish the "six million" figure of Jewish holocaust victims.

I violate the act simply by citing the fact that five million non-Jews died at the hands of the Nazis. This goes beyond stifling free speech.

9) Claiming that Israel is a racist state.

That's not a claim. It's a fact. Israel is full of racist laws. It insists on preserving its racist character and its right to impose apartheid in the West Bank and Gaza.

10) Making any claim that there is a "Zionist Conspiracy."

A rational provision for such a claim would insist on evidence as proof of its validity. To disallow making such a claim is existentially (Israelis love that word) dictatorial.

11) Offering proof that Jews and their leaders created Communism and the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.

It just became illegal to offer proof. Minds are made up. Don't confuse them with the facts.

12) Making derogatory statements about Jewish persons.

Why limit it to Jewish persons?

13) Asserting that spiritually disobedient Jews do not have the Biblical right to re-occupy Palestine.

Why limit it to the spiritually disobedient?

14) Making any allegations of Mossad involvement in the 9/11 attack.

I just did in a column published a week ago.

The Act passed by the US Congress makes me anti-Semitic. It's an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution. I'm a critic of Israel when they commit wrongs and a critic of America when it does wrong. Despite Congress, that's not anti-Semitic.

* Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. For more information, see http://www.pballes.com.
http://palestinethinktank.com/2010/02/13/paul-j-balles-zionism-unmasked-anti-semitic-the-label-that-stops-criticism/