Monday, July 10, 2017

A Discussion between a Zionist and a Holocaust Denier

“As long as we’re playing with racism and stereotypes, where do Jews rank in the greed and power scale? Or the bad landlord scale? Or the cause of social inequality, war and exploitation of lesser people scale?” (Michael Santomauro)


In December, 2010, Marc Tracy wrote a review of Ruth Franklin’s novel Freedom which appeared in the on-line periodical, Tablet. The review inspired a lively exchange between readers, among whom was New York Holocaust Denier, Michael Santomauro. What follows is the unedited six-day exchange between the Denier and the Zionist.


What sort of TRUTH is it that crushes the freedom to seek the truth?

Folks,

The bottom line is that the Holocaust is claimed to be a historical event like the Civil War or the New Deal and therefore writing about it should be subject to the same standards of historiography.

When Franklin says of Primo Levi’s Auschwitz memoir that it ”underwent a process of fictionalization” she should have said that he decided to pack his rather mundane experience in the German concentration camp with a bunch of fantastic lies.

The same can be said about Elie Wiesel, who she says of his book ”Night” that its ”poetic austerity comes at the expense of literal truth”.

Not a single memoir of the Holocaust or as a matter of fact not a single historical study of the Holocaust by establishment historians can withstand the cross examinations of Revisionist historians.

If you doubt this remember what Wiesel said “some things that never happened are true and some things that happened are not true ”.

And one more thing:

I wish to express my outrage that the Holocaust, unlike any other historical event, is not subject to critical revisionist investigation. Furthermore, I deplore the fact that many so-called democratic states have laws that criminalize public doubting of the Holocaust. It is my position that the veracity of Holocaust assertions should be determined in the marketplace of scholarly discourse and not in our legislatures bodies and courthouses.

Let’s get rid of Holocaust denial laws in Israel and 16 other nations. That have been instituted in Israel in 1986 and for the other 16 nations since 1990. Decades after the event. Why?

What sort of Truth is it that crushes the freedom to seek the truth?


In defending the pursuit of historical veracity through what he describes as an unbiased inquiry into the Holocaust, Michael Santomauro fails to distinguish between Holocaust inquiry and Holocaust denial. The first is an effort to marshal available facts in service of creating as “objectively” as possible, a past event. The second is to select from the available facts and, where absent, to extrapolate “facts” in order to present a predetermined ideological outcome.
Holocaust Denial takes many forms, represents various purposes. Some use it as a form of schadenfreude, the joy of creating and seeing others suffer. Some use it as a defense of their religion from the obvious part that millennia of Christian anti-Judaism played as foundation and inspiration to the crime. But such representations are not “history,” are not valid historical enquiry. Their purpose is not to describe factually, but to promote or defend a political or social position. And this is polemic, not history.
There are many volumes relating the prehistory of the Holocaust, the event itself and its significance for the future with which I am in sharp disagreement. But I do not for that reason deny their authors the right to the study and presentation of their views. Nor are laws criminalizing Holocaust Denial or any other form of incitement against a minority directed at independent scholarship, even when the agenda is ideologically revisionist.
You reason well, Mike. But you confuse your facts with the Facts.


Dear David Turner,

The Holocaust narrative reads like a conspiracy not Holocaust Revisionism!

Preeminent Holocaust expert Raul Hilberg summarized his thesis in 1983 before an audience of nearly 2,700 at Avery Fischer Hall in New York City: the entire German policy for the physical destruction of the Jews was to be explained by mind reading! No document attesting to this criminal policy could be found, because no such document existed. For several years, the entire German bureaucratic machinery operated through a kind of telepathy. As Hilberg put it:
“But what began in 1941 was a process of destruction not planned in advance, not organized centrally by any agency. There was no blueprint and there was no budget for destructive measures. They [these measures] were taken step by step, one step at a time. Thus came about not so much a plan being carried out, but an incredible meeting of minds, a consensus — mind reading by a far-flung bureaucracy.”

Let us note again those final words: “an incredible meeting of minds, a consensus — mind reading by a far-flung bureaucracy.”

In his 1985 “revised and definitive” edition of his book, in it, the University of Vermont professor did not use the expression “consensus” or “mind reading.” And yet he wrote:

“In the final analysis, the destruction of the Jews was not so much a product of laws and commands as it was a matter of spirit, of shared comprehension, of consonance and synchronization.”

I refuse to believe that which is not believable. I refuse to believe in the incredible. I refuse to believe in what Hilberg himself calls “an incredible meeting of minds.” I refuse to believe in mind reading or telepathy, just as I refuse to believe in the intervention of the Holy Ghost or in spontaneous generation. I take exception to any historical thesis, any system of historical explanation, based on such hare-brained notions.



Well, Mike, whether or not there was a plan or blueprint, whether or not the bureaucrats from Himmler on down got the message via telepathy, the evidence of Buchenwald and Auschwitz remains; the roll of Jews previously resident of Germany and France and Holland and Romania and Poland who vanished during the course of the Holocaust is also evidence of the event. Your position is based on ideology, not fact. It’s a form of “wishful thinking,” perhaps not that the Jews whose fate you dismiss as fancy were indeed victims of the West’s “final,” if incomplete solution to their Jewish Problem, but perhaps the adolescent joy of discovery of a flaw, the missing blueprint, that can be exploited to demonstrate to self and other your own superior insight.

In point of fact, Hitler wrote multiple times of his desire to murder the Jews, to erase the entire people (of course he used terms like parasite, vermin and bacillus) from the planet at least as far back as writing Mein Kampf in his jail cell. Interviewed in that cell by Josef Hell he said, “Once I really am in power, my first and foremost task will be the annihilation of the Jews. As soon as I have the power to do so, I will have gallows built in rows – at the Marienplatz in Munich, for example – as many as traffic allows. Then the Jews will be hanged indiscriminately, and they will remain hanging until they stink; they will hang there as long as the principles of hygiene permit. As soon as they have been untied, the next batch will be strung up, and so on down the line, until the last Jew in Munich has been exterminated. Other cities will follow suit, precisely in this fashion, until all Germany has been completely cleansed of Jews.” Of course this was 1922, before he was elected chancellor, before such primitive and time-consuming instruments of murder as the gallows was replaced by the efficient dispatch of life and remains through the application of Hitler’s idol Henry Ford’s assembly line at Auschwitz.

The evidence, the material evidence remains there, Mike.

The one piece of “evidence” you, and others of your thinking hang on is that we have not yet uncovered the “blueprint.” As if Germany would have admitted in writing that it was murdering the Jews! And who needed a roadmap or order; the Holocaust was quite content to progress “intuitively,” the blueprint already laid out by the fuehrer decades earlier. Are the battle plans for a war written in advance? The carnage proceeds at its own pace, advantages recognized and exploited or not. There is never a definitive “blueprint,” just the intention expressed by leadership to march. Why should the War Against the Jews be judged differently?

Speaking before SS officers a Poznan, Poland in 1943, Himmler stated that for which no blueprint existed: “…we have never conversed about it amongst ourselves, never spoken about it… I am talking about the “Jewish evacuation”: the extermination of the Jewish people. It is one of those things that is easily said. “The Jewish people is being exterminated,” every Party member will tell you, “perfectly clear, it’s part of our plans, we’re eliminating the Jews, exterminating them, ha!, a small matter.”



Dear David Turner,

At the end of the Second World War, the Allies confiscated a tremendous quantity of German documents dealing with Germany’s wartime Jewish policy, which was sometimes referred to as the “final solution.” But not a single German document has ever been found that orders or even refers to an extermination program. To the contrary, the documents clearly show that the German ‘final solution’ policy was one of emigration and deportation, not extermination.

Moreover, there is no documentary evidence that Adolf Hitler ever gave an order to exterminate the Jews, or that he knew of any extermination program. Instead, the record shows that the German leader wanted the Jews to leave Europe, by emigration if possible and by deportation if necessary.

Contrary to the popular propaganda image, the wartime German authorities were concerned about the high death rate in the concentration camps due to disease, and took measures to prevent deaths among the inmates. From a directive dated December 28, 1942, from the head of the SS camp administration office to all the German concentration camps, including Auschwitz. It sharply criticized the high death rate of inmates due to disease, and ordered that “camp physicians must use all means at their disposal to significantly reduce the death rate in the various camps.” Furthermore, it ordered: “The camp doctors must supervise more often than in the past the nutrition of the prisoners and, in cooperation with the administration, submit improvement recommendations to the camp commandants …” Finally, the directive stressed, “The ReichsfĂĽhrer SS [Himmler] has ordered that the death rate absolutely must be reduced.”

At one time, it was seriously claimed that the Germans exterminated Jews with electricity and steam, and that they manufactured soap from Jewish corpses. At Nuremberg, the United States charged that the Germans killed Jews at Treblinka, not in gas chambers, as is now claimed, but by steaming them to death.

These bizarre stories have also been quietly abandoned in recent years.

In April 1990, Israeli historians conceded that the Germans did not manufacture bars of soap from the bodies of murdered Jews — contrary to what had been alleged for years in countless periodicals and supposedly authoritative history texts. If this story is not true, one might reasonably ask, how then did it ever get started? Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer had a ready answer. He charged that the Nazis invented it. In fact, this particular fable was first widely circulated in 1942 by the World Jewish Congress, and especially by its president, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise.

Peace.



I have already suggested, Michael, that I do not read your comments as from the more typical Holocaust Denial lunatic fringe. Indeed, you sound reasonable and well-educated… in the documents that serve your pursuit. Nor do I attack your right to pursue your studies as they affirm your beliefs. Nor do I reject most of the facts you marshal in defense of your thesis. The facts are generally correct, if not viewed within the actual process of the Holocaust. While there were beastly atrocities occurring in most ghettos, several were administered by officers whose approach seems out of sync with an outcome such as extermination. In fact the record of these more “humane” commandants was more concerned for preserving their wards as filling a labor shortage serving German war aims. Not exactly a humanitarian gesture. Von Braun likewise made efforts to keep his Jewish slaves alive as long as possible in pursuit of developing the super weapons that, had the war lasted a bit longer, might have ended the war differently. And then there might not be a Jew around today to respond to Deniers and Revisionists.

As far as the legend of Jews turned into soap goes, again your facts are OK, but context is, again, everything. Rabbi Weiss was an ocean away, subject to rumor no less than any person a continent away. The rumor of people into soap was actually born during the First World War when, if memory serves, the British and French used the lie as a propaganda instrument against the Germans. Considering the barbarism of the Holocaust, it is no stretch to suspect that the Germans were cleaning the stench of burned Jews with soap manufactured from their ashes.

Have you read my earlier quotes by Hitler in 1922, and Himmler in 1943? Himmler openly referred to the “secret” operation to “exterminate” the Jews: “The Jewish people is being exterminated, every Party member will tell you ‘perfectly clear,’ it’s part of our plans, we’re eliminating the Jews, EXTERMINATING THEM, ha!, a small matter.”



Dear David Turner,

Link for the speech in question:

Excerpt from intro:

Reading Himmler’s speech in its entirety, rather than the usual out-of-context quotations, results in a new level of understanding. Brief, out-of-context quotations have been used to support the orthodox Holocaust story since the end of the Second World War. For example, Lucy Dawidowicz cited the Himmler speech in her book, The War Against the Jews 1933-1945. She reproduced however only 197 of the more than 24,000 words and these with a translation which directly supports her thesis. Dawidowicz is not alone in the misleading use of the Posen speech. Gerald Reitlinger, in his volume, The Final Solution also quotes from the Posen speech. Reitlinger reproduces 205 of the 24,000 words.

Carlos Porter has also provided interesting insights in his translation of the various controversial terms used by Himmler: ausrotten, ausmerzen, umbringen and totschlagen. Besides his translation of these German terms, Porter shows that all of these terms are used multiple times during the speech and that each is used at least once in a figurative sense. The less suspicious phrases in which these terms are used are never quoted in the traditional literature.

Many of those who accept the orthodox version of the Holocaust story refuse to accept Porter’s translation of Ausrottung, and the other terms which are typically translated to mean extermination. Porter’s translation shows that there can be a benign interpretation of these words, especially when taken within the context of the entire speech.

In 1993, Robert Wolfe, supervisory archivist for captured German records at the National Archives admitted that a more precise translation of Ausrottung would be extirpation or tearing up by the roots. Wolfe also pointed out that in Himmler’s handwritten notes for the speech, that Himmler used the term, Judenevakuierung, or evacuation of the Jews, not killing.



Mike, as I said earlier, I recognize that, for whatever reason, you are a serious student of the mass murder of my people on the European sub-continent. Your observations are useful as a caution to myself regarding accepting one or another translation from a foreign language. I am certainly aware of the problem in discussing Christian scripture, although while the standard of precision we might prefer can never be achieved word for word, still intent can be approximated from context. In the case of Matthew, for example, “his blood on our heads, and those of our children (from memory, not from text)” may or not have translated exactly from the original Greek or Aramaic (we can only rely on multiple rewrites over the first fifteen hundred years even for the present texts, and you know how meaning changes the original from the whisper-circle experiments). But whether or not the words are accurate, the meaning in context is suggestive. And that, regarding the gospels and other “original” texts, has resulted in what one scholar estimates is the murder of one of every two Jews born in the past thousand years.

As regards the Himmler speech, I have read it in entirety and although some words may have multiple possible meanings, the context and intent none-the-less refers to the systematic elimination of all Jews whom his soldiers were able to get their hands on. Was this originally the plan, as his words imply or a progressive elimination of options leading to their disappearance? Does it matter? The fact is that between 1941 and 1945 roughly six million Jews ceased to exist.

You and I can quibble back and forth over ideas, something I find not without value. But we are not likely ever to agree. And the reason is that the Holocaust for you is a topic of interest, an intellectual challenge. For me the Holocaust is a stark reminder of how tenuous my existence is in Diaspora that has murdered Jews for two millennia.

The Holocaust was only the most recent attempt to solve the West’s Jewish Problem.



Dear David Turner,

Thank you for your input. In his 1988 book, Jewish Professor Arno Mayer calls for “excavations at the killing sites and in their immediate environs” to determine more about the gas chambers. In fact, such forensic studies have been made. The first was conducted in 1988 by American execution equipment consultant, Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. [note added July 10, 2017: a known Holocaust denier, Leuchter’s “evidence” was part of David Irving’s failed defense in the libel case, Irving V Lipstadt, 2000] He carried out an on-site forensic examination of the alleged gas chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek to determine if they could have been used to kill people as claimed. After a careful study of the alleged killing facilities, Leuchter concluded that the sites were not used, and could not have been used, as homicidal gas chambers. Furthermore, an analysis of samples taken by Leuchter from the walls and floors of the alleged gas chambers showed either no or minuscule traces of cyanide compound, from the active ingredient of Zyklon B, the pesticide allegedly used to murder Jews at Auschwitz.

A confidential forensic examination (and subsequent report) commissioned by the Auschwitz State Museum and conducted by Institute of Forensic Research in Krakow has confirmed Leuchter’s finding that minimal or no traces of cyanide compound can be found in the sites alleged to have been gas chambers.

The significance of this is evident when the results of the forensic examination of the alleged homicidal gas chambers are compared with the results of the examination of the Auschwitz disinfestation facilities, where Zyklon B was used to delouse mattresses and clothing. Whereas no or only trace amounts of cyanide were found in the alleged homicidal gas chambers, massive traces of cyanide were found in the walls and floor in the camp’s disinfestation gas chambers.



An aside to another responder:

David Turner says:

Thank you, Leucippe. What appears above is a debate between two persons with opposite expressions (I cannot speak for Mr. Santomauro’s motives) of an issue important, perhaps central to Jewish identity and future survival. I hope it helped clarify both sides of the issue for others not that familiar with the challenge to the reality of the Holocaust, the denial by some that the event ever occurred; or if it did, was greatly exaggerated, manipulated by the Jews for some purpose or other. Shades of the Protocols!

This is not the place to challenge Holocaust Denial; it takes many forms and reflects a range of motives from an effort to defend Christianity as inspiration and precedent, to the obvious provocation of the open antisemite. Neither is to be taken seriously as both, whether through subtlety born of self-deception, or willful polemic, fall well outside universally accepted norms of historical discussion. My debate with Santomauro above, his references to a missing “smoking gun,” the absence of a document by Hitler “ordering” or providing a “blueprint” for the Holocaust, while ignoring the existing record of writings, speeches and interviews precisely stating Hitler’s intentions, for example his 1922 jail cell interview, “Once I really am in power, my first and foremost task will be the annihilation of the Jews!”; or Himmler’s 1943 Poznan speech to his SS officers, “every Party member will tell you, we’re eliminating the Jews, exterminating them. Ha, a small matter!”

As regards the Himmler speech Mr. Santomauro tried blurring it’s obvious meaning through the subterfuge of mistranslation. Of course the speech was a translation, and of course individual words can be translated slightly differently. But the meaning comes through not by the weight of its individual words, but by its context. And by context Himmler’s meaning is as clear in 1943 as was Hitler’s in 1922.



Sorry Mike, raising the Zyklon B issue demeans, not promotes your efforts. The means of murder are, at best, a side issue. In fact later studies demonstrated that the results you refer to were, to be generous, in error. But again, this is a bogus issue. You fail to convince based on arguing from texts, and fail also by this detour.

Where previously I reserved judgment on your motives, perhaps a misguided history buff who joyfully “discovered” what he felt a flaw in historical process, you now emerge from the closet fully regaled. What is it about provoking Jews that motivates you? Is it the effort at getting a rise from us, or just the reaching out of the lonely among others, striving for identity and affirmation?



Dear David Turner,  
As I stated before:

“I refuse to believe that which is not believable. I refuse to believe in the incredible. I refuse to believe in what Hilberg himself calls “an incredible meeting of minds.” I refuse to believe in mind reading or telepathy, just as I refuse to believe in the intervention of the Holy Ghost or in spontaneous generation. I take exception to any historical thesis, any system of historical explanation, based on such hare-brained notions.”

Peace.



So why is the Holocaust the object of your disbelief? Why are we Jews so important in your life?




Dear David Turner,

Thank you for asking the question.

Most of us are mentally trapped to think Jewish. Actually, it is safe to say that virtually every mainstream publication or or other type of media organ is “nothing more than a screen to present chosen views.” The great battle over the last century has been a battle for the mind of the Western peoples, i.e., non-Jewish Euros. The chosen won it by acquiring control over essentially the complete mainstream news, information, education and entertainment media of every type, and using that control to infuse and disseminate their message, agenda and worldview, their way of thinking, or rather the way they want us to think. Since at least the 1960s this campaign has been effectively complete. Since then they have shaped and controlled the minds of all but a seeming few of us in varying degree with almost no opposition or competition from any alternative worldview. So now most of us are mentally trapped in the box the chosen have made for us, which we have lived in all our lives. Only a few have managed to avoid it or escape it, or to even sometimes see outside of it, and so actually “think outside of the (Jewish) box.”

The Holocaust is often treated with reverence, and as a central event of world history. For many Jews, says Rabbi Michael Goldberg, a Jewish author and religious leader, the “veneration” of the Holocaust has become a new religion. “And as with any organized church,” he adds, “this Holocaust cult has its own tenets of faith, rites, and shrines.”

Two well-known Jewish writers, Seymour Lipset and Earl Raab, pointed out in their 1995 book, Jews and the New American Scene:

“During the last three decades Jews [in the United States] have made up 50 percent of the top two hundred intellectuals… 20 percent of professors at the leading universities … 40 percent of partners in the leading law firms in New York and Washington … 59 percent of the directors, writers and producers.

This intimidating power is not a new phenomenon but has long been an important factor in American life. In 1972, during a private White House meeting, President Richard Nixon and the Rev. Billy Graham spoke frankly about the Jewish grip on the media. “This stranglehold has got to be broken or the country’s going down the drain,” said Graham, the nation’s best-known Christian evangelist. “You believe that?,” Nixon responded. “Yes, sir,” said Graham. “Oh, boy,” replied Nixon. “So do I. I can’t ever say that, but I believe it.”

In 1978, Jewish American scholar Alfred M. Lilienthal wrote in his detailed study, The Zionist Connection:

“How has the Zionist will been imposed on the American people?… It is the Jewish connection, the tribal solidarity among themselves and the amazing pull on non-Jews, that has molded this unprecedented power … The Jewish connection covers all areas and reaches every level. Most Americans may not even sense this gigantic effort, but there is scarcely a Jew who is not touched by its tentacles.”

To sum up: Jews wield immense power and influence in the United States. The “Jewish lobby” is a decisive factor in US support for Israel. Jewish-Zionist interests are not identical to American interests. In fact, they often conflict.

As long as the “very powerful” Jewish lobby remains entrenched, there will be no end to the Jewish-Zionist domination of the US political system and the American media, the Zionist oppression of Palestinians, the Israeli threat to peace, and the bloody conflict between Jews and non-Jews in the Middle East.



Well, Mike, you’ve redeemed yourself in my mind. For a moment I thought you were quitting with that Zyklon B addendum. I appreciate you coming completely out of the closet, putting aside the non-issue of freedom of speech, since your repeated appearance in this vehicle of the (for real) Jewish media certainly provides even you a forum to air your decidedly from the start anti-Jewish point of view. You quote freely from Jewish sources to “prove” your point but, if you don’t mind my saying, you cherry pick and distort by your selections. Wiesel, who admitted the nightmare too unimaginable to present as anything than in a fictive form certainly was not saying, as you would have it, that the Holocaust was a creation of imagination. Likewise that since no specific order or blueprint has yet been discovered, that the process by which the Holocaust unfolded was as if by telepathy. Again, the closest document I, for one, am aware of was the Himmler Poznan speech, which you choose to nit-pick the translation to suit your purposes but, I suggest, any unbiased reader in the German or English translation, would have little difficulty understanding as a full admission that Germany from Hitler on down was fully aware of the program as full and systematic eradication of Jewish existence, if possible.

The one piece of evidence for a “Jewish Conspiracy” that you do point at, relating to Jewish achievement in the United States again, to the eyes of a dispassionate non-Jew might evoke envy but, since the majority of graduates from the universities are non-Jews, and the institutions themselves, and particularly the “ivy leagues” are or were originally Christian in origin; well, I agree, in the 200 years since our “emancipation” Jews have proportionately contributed more artists, scientists, professors, and overall Nobel laureates than the general public, in all lands of the Diaspora. In fact, it has been assumed that had Germany not destroyed their Jews they would have won the war.




Dear David Turner,

Remember the New York magazine cover story: “The Jewish Brain: Are Jew’s smarter?”


Oct. 19, 2005

Re: Are Jews Smarter?

Dear Ms. Senior:

Why is it okay for white Jews (Ashkenazim) to sub-divide themselves from the Sephardic lower IQ? (Forty-five percent of Israel’s population has the Sephardic IQ of 88.)

And it is not okay for other White ethnics to be able to do the same when reporting IQ scores? For example, at the very minimum, it would show Northern and Western Europeans to be comparable if not slightly higher than the Jewish-white IQ, when you eliminate the Eastern European IQ. In some categories the European-White IQ is way higher, such as in spatial reasoning, even for all White ethnics including the Eastern European. This is rarely reported in the mass media. I wonder why? It reminds me of a joke from the Jewish comedian David Steinberg, who is married to an Italian-Catholic: “Whenever I go to family gatherings, the Jewish side breaks things, and the Italian side fixes them!”

In folk psychology and folk sociology, when it comes to E. Q., even my Jewish supremacist acquaintances and friends will think they have been culturally short changed, thinking of themselves as an unhappy lot.

In aesthetics Jews “seem” to have an inferiority complex when it comes to physical aptitude, which I have argued with my Jewish friends, is absolutely uncalled for! For instance, in “folk talk,” my Jewish girlfriends believe what is often said (even by Bobby Fischer) about Jewish men in the “below the belt” department, that they have been short-changed from all that inbreeding.

And what about Jewish women? Again, referring to David Steinberg’s promulgation of the joke: “What moves more Jell-O or Jewish women in bed”. The rate of Jewish men running away to marry “shiksa’s” for the under 35 age category is as high as 35-50%, depending on which data you want to embrace.

Are we to make a correlation from any of this?

The point being, it is hard to define what is a “Jewish brain” in the secular world. You mention the high percentage of Jewish Nobel Prize winners since its inception in 1901, yet about two-thirds of the Jewish winners come from inter-faith/inter-ethnic backgrounds. For centuries before 1901, the portion of Jewish contributions to the high sciences is almost void.

To refer to chess master Bobby Fischer (another one of those 1/2 Jews), is slanderous to Jews. Your readers should be aware that he hates Jews with a fervent passion, and blames virtually any bad that is happening in the world on organized Jewry.

You wrote: “Of course, there’s another side to this shining coin. Jewish cleverness has also been an enduring feature of anti-Semitic paranoia.”

The implication here for your readers misunderstanding is that anti-Semitism is the result of Jewish intellect. Historically it has been as a result of resource competition, belief in a moral and intellectual superiority and a fierce policy of non assimilation with the host countries which initially offered you admittance with friendliness. Anti-Semitism is not in any way a mental illness.

Western Civilization is a European-white accomplishment and Judaism has always been an appendage. Not the other way around.

We are a better world today because Western Civilization took the road to Athens over the road to Jerusalem.

If we had a proper scientific study involving IQ tests that are not skewed to fit one group in particular (by, for example, including musical intelligence tests that are currently excluded because some people “don’t believe in” musical intelligence) then all this Jewish intellectual narcissism would disappear up its own arsehole. Which is precisely why we will never see such a thing, for it would be truly “anti-Semitic”.

As long as we’re playing with racism and stereotypes, where do Jews rank in the greed and power scale? Or the bad landlord scale? Or the cause of social inequality, war and exploitation of lesser people scale?

One last thing, it’s too much of a reach to think that Charlemagne “lured” Jews there to lend money. Give me a break!
Peace.



Apparently you sent me this latest in response to my observation regarding the contribution of Jews to Western society over the past century or so. I did not mean to offend or threaten; in fact mine was only an observation in response to your earlier comments. But again your facts appear, as earlier, strongly colored by your ideology. I am not aware that the skew towards Jewish recipients of the Nobel were progeny of mixed marriages. And what if they were, that still would not explain why the far superior Aryan genes contributing to their talents would not be even more powerfully expressed in marriages between two Aryans?

You ask, “Why is it okay for white Jews (Ashkenazim) to sub-divide themselves from the Sephardic lower IQ? (Forty-five percent of Israel’s population has the Sephardic IQ of 88.)”

While I agree that among the ultraorthodox in Israel there is a tendency for the two groups to maintain separate communities, this is a cultural artifact reflecting their unique histories, not the superiority or bigotry you assert. And as to that reference to “the Sephardic IQ of 88,” once again, Mike, either you, or your source, is confabulating. And don’t take this wrong, I don’t mean to provoke yet another response regarding Aryan intellectual superiority, but Israelis are a world leader in technological innovation from health care to computers. And I suspect that does not result from a population where “Forty-five percent of Israel’s population has the Sephardic IQ of 88.´Unless, of course, you mean that the other 55% of Israelis are so intelligent as to… But I suspect that is not your conclusion.

And finally, Mike, you truly achieved a new low in referring to Jewish women. “What moves more Jell-O or Jewish women in bed”. Of course, as always, you are quoting a Jew, this time a comedian. And, as usual, out of context (we Jews are known to use ourselves as the butt of our jokes). But even here your biases confuse your conclusions. If Jewish women are such active partners, why would “[the] rate of Jewish men running away to marry “shiksa’s” for the under 35 age category [be] as high as 35-50%”? Again, I question your statistics. But your conclusions…


Mike, this all began as you protesting that somehow the “Jewish press” controls the freedom of you and others to explore and express your beliefs. That Tablet, a Jewish journal, has provided you a forum to express yourself from your historical opinions on such anti-Jewish issues as Holocaust Denial, Aryan superiority, and defamation of Jewish womanhood is clear evidence that paranoia, while sometimes justified, fails this particular test.

Tuesday, July 4, 2017

Whose Israel? Zionism, anti-Zionism and the struggle for the state


“This cabinet minister [Tourism Minister Levin: Jewry should have no role in internal Israeli affairs] has no understanding of historical Zionism. Zionism brought about a Jewish state for the larger Jewish people [and the] government represents more than just Israelis, especially in matters like this.” 

Introduction 

In 1947 David Ben-Gurion sought to shore up support in the Yishuv in order to provide a unified front in advance of the United Nations partition vote. Whether or not the two more moderate Orthodox groups would have actively opposed the emergence of Israel minus messianic intervention, B-G apparently chose to take no chances. In exchange for their support he agreed that the Ottoman era institution, the Chief Rabbinate, would be preserved following independence. He also invited two Orthodox parties to participate in the First Knesset, to convene following statehood. Both acts have had a profound impact, both positive and negative, on the evolution of Israel ever since.

Political Orthodoxy, whether “moderate” and “Zionist” or Haredi and anti-Zionist have been dedicated to creating a legal system for Israel based on Halacha. As Orthodoxy increasingly became the “go-to” alternative to compromise between the dominant secular political parties, so also increased their influence over the secular character of the state. Increasingly over the decades Israel has drifted from a liberal democratic model to one increasingly chauvinistic and intolerant of the non-orthodox, contemptuous of the Diaspora. As Orthodoxy grows more secure in its role in Israeli politics, Israel’s Zionist identity grows increasingly weaker.
This Introduction provides a framework for understanding this week’s government decision in favor of Haredi demands, and the government’s readiness to capitulate to those demands.

          The Kotel is the remaining retainer wall to the temple destroyed by Rome in 70 CE. As such it is a powerful symbol both religious and national. In late July 2017 that symbol underscored the growing rift between Israeli politics dependent on Haredi support, and Israel’s relationship with the Diaspora. A headline appearing in JPost in which ultraorthodox politicians warn against Diaspora “meddling”: Haredi Leaders: Don’t sit in U.S. and interfere with religion in Israel describes well the shift. And when the prime minister sought to patch together a “compromise” the Rabbinate’s representatives in the Knesset, Shas and UTJ, bolted. The degree to which Israeli politics has grown dependent on the tiny and anti-Zionist Haredim appears as a plea for understanding in the prime minister’s explanation to a delegation from AIPAC. JPost reports that Netanyahu was “presented with threats from Litzman, Gafni and Deri who came to him and said they would topple his coalition if he didn’t cancel the Kotel deal. Without them, he has no government.”

In face of the crisis, several Israeli observers concluded that the reaction of American Jewish leaders to Israel was excessive. As they see it, it is the Americans who created the issue. Caroline Glick, as one example, allows that while the government had reneged on its agreement with the Diaspora regarding the Wall, that in the end “it didn’t change the status quo. It just chose not to change it.” And, she concedes, while that might be wrong, “it doesn’t justify the vitriol being leveled at the government by American Jewish leaders threatening to rethink their support for Israel.” And while I agree that representatives of Diaspora Jewry be more circumspect in considering the consequences of their words, still is Caroline’s argument wrong on two points:

          1. Their reaction was not regarding the prior “status quo” but about the promise by the prime minister to change the status quo, and;

          2. July 2017 was not the first protest against Israel Orthodoxy’s effort to delegitimize the status of Diaspora Jewry. Every effort by Orthodoxy over the decades to make Who is a Jew basis for civil law in Israel was met with strong protest!

Where I do agree with Caroline is that the issue of the Kotel is more smoke than substance compared to the second decision of the prime minister that day. At his behest the coalition passed legislation expanding the authority of the Rabbinate over conversion: “ a bill granting the Chief Rabbinate a total monopoly on conversion.” Should this legislation achieve final approval by the Knesset the Chief Rabbinate would have total control over Jewish identity for Israel and the underlying irritant since Orthodoxy first attempted to pass Who is a Jew will have finally have been enacted.

In 2009 then Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman promised an audience, composed of Orthodox legal scholars and the Chief Rabbis, that, “We will bestow upon the citizens of Israel the laws of the Torah and we will turn Halacha into the binding law of the nation… Soon, in the near future, amen.” Not even the optimistic Justice Minister could have imagined such would be achieved just eight years later, and by a secular nationalist government kowtowing to minority religious parties threatening to bolt the coalition!

Who is a Jew, whenever raised for a vote in the Knesset, would spark immediate protest from American Jewish leaders. Should the move provide the Rabbinate the authority it seeks over conversion the debate over Who is a Jew will have been decided and Israel’s appeal in the eyes of the Diaspora and, more importantly, that when that need arises Israel’s image as inhospitable will cause potentially fatal hesitation deciding on Israel as refuge

          Israel stands at a crossroads regarding its Zionist trust. Will the state of the Jewish People renew its obligations to our Diaspora or, on the crucible of political expediency, abandon Zionism and its obligations to the Jewish People? It is ironic, tragic, that David Ben Gurion, secularist “father of the country” failed to appreciate the danger to the new state by his compromises with Orthodoxy. But the dream of Zionism remains its need far greater today in the wake of the Holocaust than when Pinsker and Herzl recognized the need as response to continuing antisemitism following Emancipation.

It comes down to Israeli politicians and their parties’ willingness to compromise ideological purity for the good of the state and the Nation who will need refuge. And that need is not if, but when; whether or not today’s Diaspora is willing, or even able to appreciate the threat.

Religion does have a role in promoting Jewish identity. And the Zionist state was always intended for all Jews, even those who oppose on religious grounds the founding of the state not based on divine intervention. Zionism is tolerant and accepting even of such as the Neturei Karta who support Israel’s enemies against the state of the Jews. Israel was intended and created as refuge to all Jews, regardless of religious affiliation or not. The Law of Return in response to the Holocaust explicitly extends refuge also to non-Jews and their families threatened as “Jews” under the definition of the Nazi race laws.

The Haredim, favored in Israel's political circles, are unashamedly anti-Zionist. By action and word Israel-as-refuge for the Diaspora is both anathema and threat.
The aim of Zionism is not realized by the creation of its state. Its intent was to ensure the survival of a people who typically fail to appreciate their own state of danger (Germany following Hitler's election victory) until it’s too late. For centuries before the Holocaust, we had no means or destination of escape. Today there we have Israel. Whether appreciated or not, the Diaspora needs Israel. But when the time comes, the state of the Jews must appear welcoming, not ambivalent or, as at this moment, rejecting.

Who is a Jew is no less than the abnegation of the Jewish People and Zionism. It is, in the eyes of the Diaspora, rejection, a declaration of intent.


Tuesday, June 6, 2017

Donald Trump and Corporate America’s failed coup d'etat

“We will provide massive tax relief for the middle class.” 
(Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech)

          Few today remember or are even aware that leading members of America’s elite, Corporate America, were busily engaged in planning to overthrow the United States government in 1933. Among the plotters were DuPont, Goodyear, Bethlehem Steel, JP Morgan, DuPont, US Steel, General Motors, Chase Manhattan Bank, Standard Oil and Goodyear. The plotters also included high-ranking members of the Democratic and Republican parties. “[As] the plans for a fascist plot developed, its organizers hoped to draw upon both the [American] Legion and the VFW [Veterans of Foreign Wars to a form of people’s militia, modeled on Mussolini’s fascisti...” (Charles Higham, Trading with the Enemy) Chosen to lead the ill-fated coup was Marine Corp General Smedley Butler who, instead, informed the House Un-American Affairs Committee of the plot.  

“In the last few weeks of the committee’s official life it received evidence showing that certain persons had made an attempt to establish a fascist organization in this country…There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient.” (Report of the McCormack-Dickstein Committee, 1934) 

          The continuing intentions of the plotters apparently did not die in the Congress: In 1936 ambassador to Germany William Dodd warned the president that,  

“a clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government and is working closely with the fascist regime in Germany and Italy. I have had plenty of opportunity in my post in Berlin to witness how close some of our American ruling families are to the Nazi regime.”

           For a more complete discussion of the history of relations between US interests and Nazi Germany before and during the war see Chapter 10: Corporate America and Hitler: a Love Story in my book, The Jewish Problem and its Final Solution: Modernity and Destiny.

          That which Corporate America failed to achieve for America's elite in 1933 by military force it achieved at the ballot box in 2016 by the election of one of its own. 
          In fulfilling his campaign promise to “Make America Great Again” President Trump filled his cabinet posts with millionaires and billionaires, some representing the same corporations implicated in the 1933 coup. The billionaires include Secretary of Education Besty DeVos, $5.2 Billion and Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ros, $2.9 Billion. The remainder of the cabinet, beginning with Treaury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, $40 Million and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at $150 Million are all millionaires. The only non-millionaires represented are Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke: and Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin. Trailing behind is Vice President Mike Pence who, for all intents and purposes represents outsider Trump’s bridge to the Republican Party. 

          Not exactly a selection representative, or likely to represent the interests of the president’s wildly enthusiastic core constituents, the struggling Middle Class. In fact the two signal efforts at passing legislation in Congress to-date, Paul Ryan’s American Health Care Act and Trump’s budget plan for 2018 not only fail to promote the interests of the president’s core constituents, the middle class and working class, they seem intended to achieve the very opposite, to significantly harm his core constituents. As all are likely well-aware by now, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office headed by a very conservative Republican conclude that Trump(Ryan)care will result in 24-million people being eliminated from health insurance; the pre-existing conditions clause will become discretionary dependent on state funding. Costs of insurance premiums are projected to increase, and coverage for elder Americans would be reduced, cost increased. With projected cuts to Medicaid, even once-middle-class residents would be unable to pay for nursing home care. 

          If the American Health Care Act intended to replace the existing Affordable Care Act does significant harm to the middle and working classes, what impact would the budget sent to Congress have on Trumps core constituents? 

“While the proposal will reportedly leave Medicare and most of Social Security untouched—ostensibly keeping with Trump’s campaign promises—it is expected to slash some $1.7 trillion from other programs over the next decade, with the bulk of the savings taken from Medicaid, food stamps, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the Social Security Disability program, among others.” 
          Recall that quote by the president before Congress: “We will provide massive tax relief for the middle class.” And what of that promise? The title to an article appearing in Forbes, not exactly a “liberal” magazine, cuts to its heart: 


“The large reductions in ordinary tax rates and those imposed upon business income, when coupled with the elimination of the estate tax (no benefit to the middle-to-working class)-- results in truly massive cuts for the richest taxpayers in America: with annual savings of over $18,000 going to the top 5%... while the middle class will experience a 1-2% increase in after-tax income, the richest 20% will see a 6.6% rise, while the top 1% will have 14.2% more after-tax income under the Trump plan as compared to current law.” 

          And for those hoping the GOP Senate will moderate Trump’s tax relief to benefit the Middle Class, again according to Forbes, 

“In their 2016 "Blueprint for Tax Reform," Ryan and Brady did indeed propose sweeping tax cuts of their own, amounting to $3.1 trillion over the next ten years… Under the GOP plan… the middle class will experience an increase in after-tax income of less than 1%, while the richest 1% will see their after-tax income rise by 13.4%. 

Which raises the question, from where will the money necessary to support “tax relief” come from? 

“The president’s budget plan calls for more than $1 trillion in cuts to a wide range of social programs with millions of beneficiaries, from farm subsidies to federal student aid. That includes a $600 billion cut to Medicaid over 10 years, despite Trump’s repeated promises on the campaign trail not to cut the program. The budget also takes an ax to the federal food stamp program and Social Security Disability Insurance.” 

          And then there are such known effective programs as meals-on-wheels, school lunches, day care… According to White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, “There’s a certain philosophy wrapped up in the budget and that is — we are no longer going to measure compassion by the number of programs or the number of people on those programs… but by how many people we actually help.” Which translates to, “how many people we consider are worthy of help.” 

          During the first two-thirds of the 20th century eugenics was how America measured human value. The “fit” were white and preferably of northern European extraction. The “unfit” were pretty much everybody else: non-white, poor, mentally or physically sick. Government programs promoted childbearing among the Fit, while sterilization and reservations was the “humane” solution for America’s “unfit.” America was unashamedly striving for nationally pure gene pool. 

          It is clear that with the Trump presidency the United States has returned to an earlier time in its history, a time that, for the Fit, America was indeed Great! For the remainder, including Trumps “enthusiastic constituents” the new Unfit, not so great. The institutionalization of upward distribution of wealth sought by Corporate America’s failed 1933 coup d’ etat was finally achieved bloodlessly by selling snake oil to the new Unfit facing the abyss.


Saturday, November 28, 2015

America’s “Gospel of Democracy” meets Putin’s Realpolitik: Russia’s return in force to the Middle East



“Russian media reported earlier that Russia may sign a deal with Egypt for the delivery of Kamov Ka-52K helicopters. Last week the two countries signed a deal to build four third-generation nuclear reactors in Egypt.”


For more than a decade I have described on JPost and other Israeli web-based forums the retreat of the United States from the Middle East and the world. Since Bush invaded Iraq and sued for peace in 2007 America has desperately sought a graceful exit from the region. America, I concluded, would soon be replaced by a more determined and aggressive Russia, with dire consequences for the US and the EU. 

With 70% of the world’s oil reserves; with the Suez Canal as transit point for global commerce; with the surrender of the region as military crossroad between north/south, east/west: it seems beyond the ability of American politicians and their academic advisers to see the implications of abandoning the region to Russia. Apparently overlooked in the rush to vacate is that along with control of the ground, Russia would also achieve its likely principal goal, control also of the Mediterranean Sea. And, lest American policy-makers need reminding Europe, already dependent on Russia for natural gas to heat its homes and fuel its factories will find itself sandwiched between the Russian Navy to the south and The Russian Army to the north. Does it really require deep strategic imagination to appreciate that the loss of NATO will leave the United States naked and alone, with but two oceans as buffer in a world of nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles? Is Isolationism a viable option in a world which views the United States with equal measures of envy and hate?


In an op-ed piece appearing recently in JPost, Defeating Islamic State, Amitai Etzioni describes a counter-script to the general impression of the US Government and its military. America, he insists, did not lose the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Just the opposite, it
“won both wars easily and quickly, suffering few casualties and low costs, and causing little collateral damage. Both campaigns ended up badly once the US decided to make out of these nations stable, democratic, US-friendly regime." (emphasis added)
I agree. It was the politicians: the White House backed by Bush’s "yes-sir" appointees, including his defense secretary and chairman of the Joint Chiefs who decided that the two war’s outcomes be determined not on the field of combat but by the democratization of the invaded countries. Etzioni is correct in describing both recent US presidents as committed to nation-building after “America’s image.” It is this which for a decade I have described as America’s Gospel of Democracy. Blind-sided by Ideology successive US administrations failed to learn the lessons of serial failures of US diplomacy at least back to Carter and Iran.

Whatever Bush’s true motivation for deposing Sadam Hussein, in the end he fell back on, "providing the Iraqi people the gift of democracy.” And the outcome was Iraq as failed state and hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis. Obama, determined to be “Not-Bush” wound up pursuing the same Bush agenda with identical results: the failed states of Libya and Syria and hundreds of thousands more dead Arabs. And while Obama did his best to add Egypt to that list by ousting America’s loyal and secular ally Hosni Mubarak in favor of an Islamist for president intent on imposing Sharia law on Egypt, in the end it took another general to oust the Islamists and restore Egypt to secular governance. Adding insult to injury Obama then refused to recognize the new Egyptian president with the result that Egypt has now turned to Russia for military materiel needed in fighting MB-inspired terrorists. Egypt is also purchasing several nuclear reactors, a response to Obama welcoming the terror-state Iran into the nuclear community. 



It is likely that an Arab Spring and its revolutionary anti-West Islamism was an event waiting for an opportunity. That it emerged when it did is clearly the result America’s faith-based “diplomacy,” its stubbornly-held Gospel of Democracy.

 

The single, most obvious lesson of United States-imposed regime change in the Middle East is that not only does the American model of “liberal democracy” fail as an option for ill-prepared states (recall it took two centuries for the West to arrive at its present approximation of that political ideal), but most of the world today is only recently emerging from a century and more of western-imposed colonialism. And how many states born of that oppressive regime even approximate the basic social stability fundamental for an “educated” electorate? Imperialism created “states” without recognition or regard for religious and traditional tribal distinctions. While a strong colonial military with superior weaponry provided the appearance of “native” social tranquility, rivalries simmered for centuries beneath that apparent tranquil surface. And so the much heralded by the West Arab Spring; and al-Qaeda in Iraq have metastasized into today’s “Daesh.” Amitai Etzioni' article, Defeating Islamic State, describes the hoped for end to the terror empire. But Daesh as seething memory of defeats past will continue to survive and evolve, to metastasize likely into something even more brutal. 

Cultural grudges are not soon forgotten.