1.
INTRODUCTION
"All critics of Jews should not be tagged as
anti-Semites. We are not a nation of Christs, Spinozas,
and Einsteins; that the Nazis are brutes does not make us
angels ... Criticism is not the same as hatred, and critics
are not our enemies. The greatest friends of a people are
not those who praise but those who honestly find fault.
A people without criticism is either a dictatorship or a
community so deeply embedded in smug self-satisfaction as
to be on the road to decadence."
-- William Zuckerman, Jewish author [written before
World War II,
in Goldstein, D., p. 119]
"The far-reaching consequences of the [Jewish]
martyr complex go beyond any effect of the individual Jew
... and do not leave unmarked even the most sympathetically
inclined Gentiles. Since the Jew is hypersensitive on the
subject of his Judaism, Gentiles fear to offer constructive
criticism lest they be accused of prejudices. Thus the Jew
is denied the benefit of honest evaluation of the very real
differences and prejudices existing ... I believe we Jews
will never be normal individuals so long as we foster our
martyr complex, so long as we remain evasive of self-appraisal
and self-improvement, and so long as it is easier to blame
the other fellow for our own faults."
Maurice M. Feurlich, Jewish author
-- in "Children of the Martyr Race," The
Forum, NYC, September 1937; cited in Goldstein, D., p. 116
"By accusing western democracies of anti-Semitism,
the Jews put them on the defensive. As long as guilt feelings
can be profitably mined, advantages can be gained. But the
lode is not likely to last forever."
-- Moshe Leshem, former Israeli diplomat, p. 253-254]
"A popular government, without popular information,
or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce
or a tragedy; or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern
ignorance and a people who mean to be their own government
must arm themselves with the power which knowledge brings."
--
James Madison
It is a daunting task to write a book, knowing
full well that it swims counter to one of the strongest
contemporary currents, and that it will automatically and
categorically be rejected without investigation by the cultural,
educational, and political machinations of modern western
society, not for failings in its intellectual, scholarly,
or moral rigor, but because its subject matter is publicly
configured (by militantly enforced convention tended to
by a powerful "special interest" group) to be beyond the
pale of criticism. The subject matter in this volume is
individuals, by virtue of their identity within an extremely
politically active group, who are rendered completely free
from the responsibility of such group association. It is
further daunting, and disturbing, that such a volume is
-- by blanket dictate -- condemned, even in its mere conception,
to be an immoral, innately prejudicial, and even evil, enterprise.
We are all socialized in Western society to
resist judging any individual by his or her ethnic/group
association. It's a noble ideal: Why prejudge anyone
about anything? Let any individual be completely evaluated
upon his or her respective merits. America is educationally,
and legally, configured as a "tolerant" society, champion
of a variety of multicultural perspectives. As reasonable
as this may seem, however, there can be a profound double
standard subliminally at work here. What about when the
"individual we must not prejudge" is part of a subcommunity
that itself prejudges all who are not part of that
group's boundaries of identity, a group that consistently
acts by its self-protective, self-expansive biases? Is it
"prejudicial" to criticize individuals who maintain -- actively
or passively -- such group allegiance, within, and transcending,
the American matrix? And is it not morally reasonable, and
in fact morally necessary, to criticize any collectivity,
to the degree it deviates, at core, from the inter-ethnic
tolerant, and universalistic, ethic of the
American sociopolitical framework? And what about when such
a group can, alternately or collectively, self-configure
as a racial, ethnic, religious, nationalist, and political
organization? Does such a community merit categorical
immunity from criticism?
Herbert Spencer's
well-known quote about prejudicial intolerance seems especially
written for this volume:
"There is a principal which is a bar against
all information, which is proof against all arguments,
and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance
-- that principal is contempt prior to investigation."
Jewish scholar Samuel Dresnev, speaking about
academia's failings on another subject, wrote something
which also has application here:
"The hesitancy to speak out is understandable,
but it is not pardonable. Safety is no substitute for
honesty. History will ultimately judge those who failed
their responsibilities as scholars and human beings."
[DRESNEV, p. 221]
What you are about to read may be shaped by
some to be another Satanic Verses, another forbidden topic,
this one American-style -- guaranteed magnet to those
manning the censorial posts of free speech American democracy.
But, unlike Salmon Rushdie's work, this is not a fictionalized
attack on Islam that is assailed by narrow-minded Ayatollahs;
it is a real-life investigation of those of great strength,
and thereby guaranteed to incur emphatic condemnation
-- not by dictatorial regimes across the world, but here
at home.
This book aims to methodically present a virtual
encyclopedic collection of facts towards decontructing the
many myths about Jewish history and identity, and to investigate
the ways in which these myths are used towards enormous
economic, cultural and political advantage, extremely detrimental
to non-Jews. The book also deconstructs the artifice behind
incessant Jewish accusations of the generic "anti-Semite,"
accusations that are ceaselessly wielded as a political
tool towards further Jewish empowerment. It also addresses
Jewish pre-eminence in American (and, hence, world) popular
culture, including the mass media (TV, film, radio, newspapers,
book publishing, music, et al), academia, the international
art world, and the profoundly disturbing hold of pro-Israel
Zionism within the American government. It explores the
reasons why who is identifiable as Jewish in the upper echelons
of power is important, why it is necessary
to have open public discussion about this subject, and why
such an investigation is not an immoral and
prejudicial enterprise, but rather its antithesis: an enterprise
of solid moral and rational worth. Knowing full well that
such assertions will be relentlessly assailed as recycled
"anti-Semitic canards," this work is meticulously footnoted
every inch of the way, overwhelmingly citing Jewish scholarship
itself as authoritative sources, as well as the popular
mass media (of whom most authors on Jewish subjects are
also Jewish). This book, representing over 2,000 book-form
pages, gleans evidence using approximately 10,000 citations
from about 4,000 bibliographic sources (books, magazines,
newspapers, government documents, and scholarly journals),
relying heavily upon what is commonly known in academic
jargon as "secondary sources" (i.e., not "first source"
archival documents and so forth). This is purposeful, for
a crucial concern of this volume is what the Jewish community
understands and says about itself, and how so much of these
beliefs are spread as popular opinion for all others.
The chapter about anti-Semitism in this volume
was the original section which led me to dig yet deeper
and deeper into all realms of Jewish identity, history,
economics, politics, and power. The more I dug at a range
of university libraries, the more disturbed, stunned, I
became at what I was finding. And why was this not part
of common public discourse? Again and again I shook my head
at what I found: the systematic historical revisionism and
successful Jewish lobbying efforts to canonize Jewish religious
myth (rooted in its cosmology of consummate victimhood)
in secular form, reshaping the complexion of everything
from the history of the world to the very premises of American
democracy itself.
While Jewish censorial dictate decrees that
no one should even begin to read such a volume as this,
let alone expose the issues herein to public forum, this
author suggests (however bizarre it may seem) an open, democratic
approach to the issue. Choose any ten currently popular
books about the Jewish community. Read them. And then read
this one. Think for yourself. Look deeper into the differences
between this volume and the others. What do these differences
mean? Is this a work of irrational bigotry? Have Jews always
been history's pre-eminent, and saintly, victims? Is noting
who is Jewish in the President Clinton administration a
manifestation of "prejudice?" There are few books that can
completely change a reader's opinion about its subject.
As I have been well advised, this is one of them.
The immunity from questioning and debate that
is afforded the modern Jewish community reflects a stupendously
lofty position of influence and privilege; one might notice
it holds a rank generally reserved for the likes of despotic
potentates and censorial political regimes. And, of course,
God. Who else is beyond criticism? Volumes weigh the shelves
in the world's libraries that impugn and defame beliefs
that were formerly beyond questioning. In "free societies,"
anyone who wants may write, and publish, works that attack
Christianity; assail the "historical revisionism" of Afro-centrism;
deconstruct the myths of Hinduism; defame the Pope; disdain
Republican, Democratic, communist, or any other ideology;
emblazon the whole of Islam as a hotbed for irrational mania
and terrorism; write entire volumes about the alleged worldwide
Japanese economic "conspiracy"; and vilify the entirety
of the nebulous entity known as the "white establishment"
and anyone dictated by skin color to be within it. But,
curiously, in the vast expanse of deconstructive engines
of all and everything, one cannot criticize the sacrosanct
domain of Jewish history, politics, and identity, unless
the critic is willing to be systematically marginalized
in all walks of life, prepared to be tarnished and branded
as a contemptible hate-filled "anti-Semite," risk losing
her or her job, and be categorically lumped into mainstream
society's moral and intellectual garbage dump reserved for
the likes of the Nazis and Ku Klux Klan.
"True opinion," wrote prominent Jewish
American journalist Walter Lippman (1889-1974), "can prevail
only if the facts to which they refer are known; if they
are not known, false ideas are just effective as true ones,
if not a little more effective." [LIPPMAN, W., LIBERTY AND
THE NEWS, 1920] Enforced ignorance of the full
Jewish story, mass censorship, and fear of reprisals for
its telling, are among the reasons why no substantial scholarly
volume critical of Jewry of this sort has ever been published
in America. Never could it be published by an American mainstream
publisher. Among many other things, this volume illustrates
why. (Professors Albert Lindemann of the University of California
and Kevin MacDonald of California State University, both
publicly charged by Jewish reviewers as anti-Semites for
recent scholarly volumes about Jewish history, have begun,
however cautiously, in roundabout ways, to knock on the
Iron Door).
We live in a land where to state in summary
overview, in public forum, the perameters of America's "Jewish
issue," is to invite categorical dismissal as a prejudiced
bigot. Without evidence and information, few have entre
into the reasoned discussion that should be happening about
this in a truly "free" society. Hence, anyone open to exploring
the issue of Jewish-Zionist pre-eminence, even domination,
in popular culture, must be prepared to expend enormous
effort in examining the huge dimensions of the issue, breaking
past knee-jerk platitudes. The acquistion of knowledge is
no easy task. Nor is the search for truth. This giant book
was created for free-thinkers who are so inclined, to honestly
examine the facts of Jewish history, identity, and socio-political
control. To understand, too, the continuous turmoil in modern
Israel, one must start here, with the BIG picture.
It is also the conviction of this author that there is a
very small number of individuals in the Jewish community
who, critical of their own community, recognize clearly
the dimensions of the issues herein. These people are heroes
in this story -- the ones who know that, sooner or later,
the injustices perpetrated in the collective name of the
Jewish community must be frankly addressed. And changed.
These injustices, in the long term, are good for no one.
The author of this work argues that the issues in this work
are better raised here, in an academic context, towards
public discussion and debate, than any other. The increased
Balkanization of American society, certainly the divisions
in Israel, and the world at-large, are a danger to everybody.
And Jewish ethnocentrism -- coupled with an unusual transnational
power to assert it -- has few parallels.
The author of this work is against stereotypes,
prejudices, irrational biases, discrimination, racism, and
all the other buzzwords that signify ignorance, intolerance,
injustice and evil in our day. Yet when such buzzwords are
used so loosely as political ramrods and shields to ward
off legitimate criticism everywhere in the power struggles
of "cultural pluralism," they lose their moral and intellectual
moorings. Such systematic screening from criticism grossly
rewards -- and institutionalizes -- pure propaganda. The
world's Jews do not talk and act with one head. There are
many expressions of international Jewry. Yet such diversity
does not mean that their self-defining commonalities that
impact non-Jewish others are beyond reproach, immune from
critical commentary. Of course not all Blacks are stereotypically
"the same," but they are different, as a group -- in character,
history, and collective world view -- from Hispanics. Of
course not all Americans are equal, but they are certainly
different as a people (in all their diversity) than, say,
Indonesians. Likewise, there are many kinds of Muslims,
but they definitely have more in common with each other
than they do with Methodists. Not all Germans were Nazis,
but few question the enforcement of a collective German
responsibility for their Aryan fascist movement. (If more
Germans had stood up and taken active stands against those
that claimed to speak for them, history would have been
different).
As Rabbi Joseph Telushkin
has observed about "political correctness" in the "Jewish
joke" context:
"People who oppose telling
ethnic jokes would have us believe that
the whole genre is nonsense,
that alcoholics, neurotics, oversensitive
people and shady characters
are evenly distributed among all groups.
However, tolerant as it sounds,
this assumption makes no sense, for
it implies that history and
culture have no impact on human beings.
But of course, they do. What
makes Jews Jewish is a specific religious
culture and historical experience
that have shaped their values and
strongly influenced how they
view the world." [SILBIGER, S., 2000, p. 10]
Amitai Etzioni, a Jewish scholar and an escapee
from Nazi Germany, in discussing the German peoples' collective
responsibility for Hitler's fascism, has thoughts that also
have important relevance here. In the following quote he
is talking about Germans, but his argument can just as well
be applied to Jews (or any other people):
"Communal responsibility is based on the fact
that each of us is born into a community and shares
its history, memories, identities, achievements, and
failures. We are not simply human beings who can retreat
behind a Rawlsian 'veil of ignorance,' secure in our
universal rights and historical innocence. We are also
members of specific families and communities ... We
are all coresponsible for that which our community has
perpetrated or condoned, for both sins of commission
and omission." [ETZIONI, p. 13-14]
Fair enough. In this respect, the subject of
this volume is not Germans, but Jews. They will be held
here, of course, accountable to the same "communal responsibility"
as any other people. This simple premise, however, (daring
to hold Jews responsible for their collective actions
and inactions now and across history) is, of course, in
today's world, an extremely radical -- and even dangerous
-- position. Why this is so, and how it came to be that
simply to ask questions (and even to state unpleasant
facts) about the Jewish community -- a special interest
group in America of unparalleled power and influence --
is considered a virtual crime today, is part of the forthcoming
story.
Let us proceed
then.
|