Do Most Israelis and Many Other Jews NEED to Feel Persecuted?

I have written and often say that very many if not most Jews do not want to know the truth of history as it relates to the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel. (An essential element of the truth being that Israel was created, mainly, by Zionist terrorism and ethnic cleansing).

Because I am a goy, a non-Jew, (actually a blonde, blue-eyed Englishman of advancing years), that may strike some readers as a very presumptuous statement for me to make. How can I possibly know for sure that at least some if not many Jews don’t want to know truth of history? It’s a fair question and my answer to it, quoted below, is in the now published Volume 3 of the American edition of my book, Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews.

After my dear wife, my best friend in the world, for more than 40 years, is my Jewish accountant. I’ll call him M. He is very orthodox in the practise of his religion and strictly kosher, but not a zealot. He lives in London and over the years he has travelled with me on a number of foreign assignments. Shortly before Golda Meir died, and as a way of saying thanks to M for his friendship, I invited him to travel with me and sit in on my last conversation with her. I imagined she would not object and she didn’t. Our conversation lasted nearly five hours. When it ended, I asked Mother Israel if I could take a photograph of her and M. In the tiny back garden of her small home in Tel Aviv, M put his arm around her shoulder (she didn’t object to that either) and I took several pictures. It was, as I knew it would be, one of the proudest moments in M’s life. One of the pictures was given pride of place in M’s home, and he subsequently told me that younger visitors would look at the photograph, point at the old lady, and ask, “Who’s that, your grandmother?”

Over time and privately M came to loathe what Israel has become but he won’t read my book. He doesn’t want to know the truth of history. Shortly before the publication of the original UK Volume One, I said to him the following. “Like most Jews everywhere, you believe that Israel went to war in 1967 either because the Arabs attacked first or were about to attack. What if I can prove to you, using only Israeli sources, that what you believe is Zionist propaganda nonsense and that it was a war of Israeli aggression?” After a long pause, M replied, “If what I believe about that war is not true, everything crumbles.”

I chose not to add to my friend’s agony by asking him what “everything crumbles” really meant or at least symbolizes; but over the several years since that conversation took place, and quietly in my own mind, I’ve been trying to work it out for myself.

What, actually, would “crumble” in those Jews, sadly most Jews, who don’t want to know the truth of history but by some miracle were confronted with it?

The short answer is their sense of victimhood, the impulse to see enemies everywhere who are committed to exterminating Jews.

Though constantly reinforced by Zionist propaganda since the creation of Israel, and currently by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, this impulse is, of course, the product of persecution and pogroms on and off down the centuries and which climaxed with the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust.

On 14 November 2009, in a comment on a Truthout post by Ira Cherna headlined “Israel’s Pathology”, Monty Renot wrote:

I have thought, for a while now, that in the aftermath of the Nazi extermination during World War II, many Jews (and I speak as a Jew) entered into a mass state of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from which they’ve never emerged or recovered – like a nightmare trance in which they are stuck. The symptoms are, and have been, so unmistakably evident, especially in right-wing religious groups such as Meir Kahana’s Kach, whose slogan was ‘Never Again’ and whose vow was to ‘hit ‘em back 10 times as hard as they hit us.’

What Renot called this “hypervigilant state, so typical of PTSD,” reveals that those who are still stuck in the nightmare trance believe that the threat to them (annihilation) is ever present and always will be; and any sign or omen that the worst was about to occur again “is magnified by the residual paranoia into ‘Uh-oh, here we go again!’, accompanied by a tightening of the emotional armoring and a heightened readiness to go into pre-emptive battle in order to forestall the worst from happening.”

In his analysis, Cherna asked how it can be that pathological feelings of fear, weakness and victimization “are comforting” to very many Israelis (and, I add, very many other Jews)

He answers: “For starters, they automatically put Jews on the side of innocence. Who can blame the weak victim for the violence? All the trouble, it seems, is started by the other side… And if all the trouble is started by the other side, then all the fault must lie with the other side. Weakness and victimization seem to prove that ‘We’re moral.’ Obviously, it’s our enemies who are immoral and thus to blame for all our problems. So Israelis have no reason even to consider changing any of their policies or behaviors.”

Cherna believes, as I do, that as long as this pathology dominates Israeli political life, it’s hard to see what Barack Obama or anyone else can do to move the Israelis toward a just peace, one that would be acceptable to the vast majority of Palestinians (“who need no special mental condition to feel victimized; all they have to do is look out the window at the Israeli military patrols passing by.”)

The answer to my headline question seems to be, “Yes, Jews (most of them) do need to feel persecuted. The question arising is what if anything can be done, and by whom, to cure the sickness of traumatized Israeli and other Jewish minds?In theory

I can think of two possible ingredients for a cure.

One would be a New Covenant, not between the Jews and their God but between the Jews and the Gentiles. For their part of the deal the Gentiles would commit to slaying the monster of anti-Semitism. An undertaking to let the monster die in its sleep would not be good enough. There would have to be evidence that the stake was being driven into its heart. For their part the Jews of the world would commit to making common cause with rational Israelis for the purpose of making a real and lasting peace on the basis of an acceptable amount of justice for the Palestinians and security for all (Arabs and Jews).

The other would be an explicit declaration by all Palestinian institutions, organizations and groups, endorsed by all Arab and other Muslim governments, to the effect that whether it be in a genuine and viable two-state or a one-state solution, the security and political and human rights of all Jews (in the one or two states) will be absolutely guaranteed.

Beyond that I have no answers to the question of what can be done and by whom to cure the sickness of traumatized and brainwashed Israeli and other Jewish minds. Do others have answers?

Alan Hart has been engaged with events in the Middle East and globally as a researcher, author, and a correspondent for ITN and the BBC. Read other articles by Alan, or visit Alan's website.

52 comments on this article so far ...

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  1. Rehmat said on August 27th, 2010 at 8:25am #

    The reason as concluded by a 2010 study done by two Israeli professors, Dr. Daniel Bar-Tal and Dr. Eran Halperin, from the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya – because the average Israeli doesn’t want to know the facts. He is chock-full of beliefs that would get in the way of achieving a negotiated solution. This could be said about the great majority of the Jews living outside occupied Palestine, who are bombarded with Israeli Hasbara (propaganda) lies on daily basis. The topics range from ‘anti-Semitism’ to ‘holocaust’; from ‘Jewish biblical right to occupy Palestine’ to ‘Arabs want to push Jews into the Sea’, etc. etc.

    French philosopher Roger Garaudy’s book The Founding Myth of Israeli Politics is one of the best source to find more about Zionists’ self-pity.

    http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2010/08/26/why-zionist-jews-need-self-pity/

  2. MichaelKenny said on August 27th, 2010 at 9:49am #

    For the “monster” to die in its sleep, we must first understand what gave birth to it. The whole history of Europe is one of peoples sweeping in from the east and integrating into the European society they found. The Jews refused to integrate into the European family. They insisted on being foreign “squatters” on the land of Europe. Europeans resented the foreigners in their countries just as much as Afghans do today in theirs. That refusal to integrate gave rise to anti-Semitism and was agravated by “assimilation”, i.e the Jewish practice of making themselves look and sound like Europeans, while maintaining their foreign identity. They became wolves in sheep’s clothing! And so they were clobbered at regular intervals. Thus, the process is no different than the Irish trying to drive the English out of their territory, or the Basques in regard to Spain, or the Slavs of the Austrian Empire or the Baltic peoples in regard to Russia. Anti-Semitism is not specifically “anti-Jewish”, it is merely the natural human anti-foreigner reaction applied to the Jews. Herzl was therefore right: Jews who wanted to maintain their identity had to leave Europe and go back where they came from. His mistake, of course, was to believe that the Jews COULD go back where they came from by simply chasing out those who had taken their place. That, oddly, was a quintessentially European (sic!)idea, current in that age of imagined European “superiority”.
    Mr Hart’s error is to attribute hostility to Israel to some irrational emotion called “anti-Semitism” which people can simply let die by a rational act of their wills. Anti-Semitism is caused by the conduct of the Jews, their unwillingness to play by the established rules of the human race. When that conduct changes, anti-Semitism will die of its own irrelevance.

  3. klaatu said on August 27th, 2010 at 2:21pm #

    ADD to this tragic situation the fact that Henry Morganthau, (Jewish/Zionist) Secretary of the Treasury under Roosevelt, was active in pursuing and promoting Jewish victimhood under the Nazis, and Zionists have perpetuated the stories since WWII for their own political benefit. It appears that only non-Western historians and forensic analysts will be able to unravel the Gordian knot of historical fact encased in ethnic myth.

  4. PatrickSMcNally said on August 27th, 2010 at 3:01pm #

    > it is merely the natural human anti-foreigner reaction applied to the Jews.

    I don’t see how that could ever seriously account for the pogroms carried out by Whites in Russia’s Civil War. Among the industrial working class the only party which stood as a serious political rival to the Bolsheviks was the Mensheviks. In pre-revolutionary history the Mensheviks had traditionally been much more the “Jewish” section of the Russian Social Democrats, even to the point where a joke had gone around among the Bolsheviks which Stalin repeated (though he didn’t start it) to the effect that the way for the Bolsheviks to defeat the Mensheviks was by a pogrom. When the Russian Civil War began, the Mensheviks should have been welcomed by the Whites as a party which was capable of attaching some popular support to an anti-Bolshevik cause. The Mensheviks clearly sought such an alliance. The White forces were also welcomed in many areas by small-business Jews who did not like the Bolshevik dicatatorship. But the Whites wasted all of this by both carrying on pogroms against Jews, as well as by completely alienating any workers who might have been willing to support a Menshevik-led government as an alternative to the Bolsheviks. The behavior of the Whites in the Civil War definitely can not be attributed to a mere nativist reponse to foreigners. The actions of the Whites showed above all how far out of touch they were with the majority of Russians. The Whites simply refused to recognize that any potentially popular alternative to the Bolsheviks would have to be a government led by Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries and nothing but that. The pogroms were part of this denial of reality by the Whites.

  5. hayate said on August 27th, 2010 at 5:51pm #

    Those who choose to live by bigotry have no right to complain when “Instant Karma” knocks them on the head for it.

  6. mary said on August 28th, 2010 at 1:24am #

    Happy 2nd Birthday Free Gaza

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAMFRkATYX0

    PS Wonder why they omit the ramming of the ‘Dignity’ in December 2008 by the Israeli Navy? Cynthia McKinney was on board with 15 others including three surgeons plus 3 tons of medical supplies for the Cast Lead casualties.

  7. Rehmat said on August 28th, 2010 at 2:30am #

    PatrickSMcNally – Are you saying that Russian Jews are not White?

    The Bolsheviks elites were Jewish mostly. Between Lenin and Stalin (both Jewish) – they carried out the greatest Holocaust of Christian history – between 60-100 million, but no one is allowed to build a Holocaust Museum for those victims of Communist/Jewish Mafia.

    Even now, European occupied Palestine (Israel) is considered ‘White’ and is member of most of European clubs, latest being the OECD….

    http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2010/08/28/oecd-report-israel-a-poor-divided-country/

  8. PatrickSMcNally said on August 28th, 2010 at 4:10am #

    > Are you saying that Russian Jews are not White?

    “White” was the term used in the Russian Civil War to reference the conservative military officers who were in command of one side. Anyone who is knowledgeable about the Civil War would recognize the usage of the term.

    > Between Lenin and Stalin (both Jewish)

    Lenin was a quarter-Jew. Stalin was not Jewish at all as far as is known. Like I already said, it was the Mensheviks who were the predominantly Jewish faction on the Russian Left in the years before the revolution. Stalin was even known for repeating jokes about how a pogrom was the way for the Bolsheviks to fight the Mensheviks. Some Mensheviks joined with the Bolsheviks in 1917 but the main figures among the Mensheviks (e.g. Julius Martov) remained Bolshevik opponents. It was the Whites, who comnpletely lacked any popular support of their own, who ruined any possibility of an anti-Bolshevik alliance.

    > they carried out the greatest Holocaust of Christian history – between 60-100 million,

    That’s a stupid Cold War myth which was has been quietly destroyed by the opening of archives after 1991. It’s true that there were hundreds of thousands of unnecessary executions carried out during the purges of the 1930s. But even in 1937-8, when Stalin’s blood purges were at their height, the majority of Russians were living better than they had in the Czarist days. Nothing from either the Gulag records or the general demographic mortality data supports anything like these dumb “60-100 million” hoaxes. That’s just a Right-wing lie.

  9. Maien said on August 28th, 2010 at 7:39am #

    No, no answers Mr. Hart. But i do wonder, as the rest of the world helps to relieve this pathology, will there also be relief offered to the victims, of this very sick group of people??

  10. David Silver said on August 28th, 2010 at 8:11am #

    Once again Alan’s analysis is on the money

  11. mary said on August 28th, 2010 at 9:41am #

    This Israeli TV Channel 1 thought they could smear UNWRA, and get it away with it. I assume that this channel is the equivalent of BBC 1 and that IBA is the Israeli broadcasting service but someone will correct me if that is not the case.. Outrageous when one thinks of the UNWRA school being bombed with white phosphorus in Operation Cast Lead.

    http://www.unrwa.org/etemplate.php?id=784

    UNRWA response to “For the sake of the Nakba” film shown on Israel’s Channel 1

    27 August 2010

    On 7 August, IBA Channel One’s Royim Olam Programme broadcast a film made by David Bedein, titled “For the Sake of the Nakba”. The film contains many serious inaccuracies, which UNRWA drew to the attention of the host of Royim Olam Programme before it was shown. As a result, the programme showed in full the UNRWA Spokesperson’s rebuttal of the film’s allegations. Key elements of the rebuttal are outlined below for the record.

    The film states that an UNRWA school held a memorial for a female suicide bomber, Ayat al-Akhras, and commissioned paintings of her throughout the school. The film shows murals of her inside a school. In fact the school in question is not UNRWA’s, nor do we have any affiliation with it. UNRWA did not have a memorial for or commission paintings of Ayat al-Akhras.

    The film suggests that a mural of a suicide bomber is part of the entrance to an UNRWA school in Dheisheh camp, West Bank. In fact it is not part of the school and UNRWA has control over its own installations only. Like all UNRWA installations in the West Bank, the installation head and the US-funded international team of Operation Support Officers verify neutrality through strict rules and regular inspections.

    The film states that UNRWA schools “adhere to a curriculum that inculcates anti-Israel teachings at every level” and quotes a 12th grade textbook. In fact UNRWA does not teach 12th grade and this is not an UNRWA textbook. UNRWA uses the Palestinian Authority curriculum, which a 2003 independent report commissioned by the United States concluded is “peaceful”, and one in which “religious and political tolerance is emphasized”.

    “The film simply does not portray reality in UNRWA schools. Each day UNRWA teaches 500,000 Palestinian students and is committed to providing them with the tools and skills to expand their horizons and assist them towards self-reliance,” said UNRWA Spokesperson Sami Mshasha.

  12. Grace said on August 28th, 2010 at 11:48am #

    Excellent, timely article! Your solution seems reasonable to me. If you consider an action, then consider it’s opposite action, an alternate option becomes possible. Thanks! I posted a link to this article at dangerouscreation.com. I hope you don’t mind.

  13. Max Shields said on August 28th, 2010 at 11:51am #

    The average Amercian doesn’t want to know that their forebearers murdered 10 million natives. Why is that?

  14. teafoe2 said on August 28th, 2010 at 1:46pm #

    Rehmat, I have to wonder where you came up with information indicating Stalin was Jewish.

    Stalin was born Joseph Dzhugashvili on December 6 1878 Julian calendar, 12/18 Gregorian, or according to other accounts on Dec 21 1879, in Gori, Georgia, to Vissarion Dzhugashvili and his wife Yekaterina. He was his mother’s fourth child to be born in less than four years.

    The first three died and as Joseph was prone to bad health, his mother feared on several occasions that he would also die. Understandably, given this background, Joseph’s mother was very protective towards him as a child.

    Joseph’s father was a bootmaker and his mother took in washing. The father died at some point during Joseph’s childhood, leaving his mother to care for the family alone. As a child, Joseph experienced the poverty that most peasants had to endure in Russia at the end of the 19th century. At the age of seven he contacted smallpox. He survived but his face remained scarred for the rest of his life.
    Joseph’s mother was deeply religious and in 1888 she managed to obtain him a place at the local church school. Despite his health problems, he made good progress at school and eventually won a free scholarship to the Tiflis Theological Seminary.
    In May, 1899, Stalin was expelled from the Tiflis Theological Seminary.
    In 1901 Stalin joined the Social Democratic Labour Party . On 18th April, 1902, Stalin was arrested after coordinating a strike at the large Rothschild plant at Batum.

    Doesn’t sound very Jewish to me…??

  15. teafoe2 said on August 28th, 2010 at 2:28pm #

    Garaudy’s take is quite interesting. However I do believe most of his major points were made earlier by Lenni Brenner, cf. his 51 Instances of Nazi-Zionist Collaboration and other books, should be all still readable online. Of course Lenni is a lifelong Trotskyist, which is probably why so many choose to ignore his magnificent work.

    There are, IMO, certain elements of truth in Mr Kenny’s comment, but also some distortions and oversimplifications, especially of Jewish history in E. Europe. For a clearer view of those chapters of history, I’d recommend Joaquin Martillo’s long essay about “Judonia”, which may or may not be over the top in spots but which contains much much information about the subject.

    Here’s the link: http://www.eaazi.org/ThorsProvoni/JudoniaComplete/JudoniaCompleteA.htm

    I’m in general agreement with what Hart tries to explicate, but I do have a couple of problems with his approach to a “solution”:
    “…whether it be in a genuine and viable two-state or a one-state solution, the security and political and human rights of all Jews (in the one or two states) will be absolutely guaranteed.”

    First, I think all discourse couched in the language of “solutions” tends to perpetuate the illusion that negotiating with Zionists makes any sense at all. When they find themselves bereft of the overwhelming military balance of power, they may become willing to negotiate seriously but not before. And I wouldn’t guarantee even that much: they might instead choose the Samson Option.

    Second, I have a problem with his language about “(in a) viable two-state or a one-state solution, the security and political and human rights of all Jews… will be absolutely guaranteed.”

    I have no problem with guaranteeing everybody’s Human Rights. But I wonder what Mr Hart has in mind when he says “Security rights”,and “political rights”.

    Does this mean that Isrealis get to keep all the real estate and personal property they’ve stolen? That they get to use their economic advantages to manipulate the media and the political processes in the nascent polity Hart projects?

    I think these points could stand further clarification. ??

  16. Mulga Mumblebrain said on August 29th, 2010 at 8:41am #

    I’m certain that a diagnosis of PTSD is not out of the question, and its continuing strength (what Atzmon calls a ‘pre-traumatic stress disorder’)is understandable given the hideous atrocity of the Judeocide.But note that the Roma, the Serbs,the Soviets let alone the indigenous victims of Western colonial genocides, have not been nor were ever granted Israel and Jewry’s right to stand outside of international law, above judgment no matter how vile their crimes. That impunity devolves from Jewish money power and its consequent political control.
    There is another contributing factor that worsens Israeli arrogance and intransigence. After all the idea that the imprisoned,dispossessed and thoroughly brutalised Palestinians offer any threat to Israel is the purest bulldust. That complicating factor is the belief of Jews that they comprise a Master Race, a Chosen People who are set up above the rest of humanity. This doctrine reaches its vilest expression in the oft expressed (but thoroughly suppressed) expressions by religious fanatics amongst Jewry (many hugely powerful in Israeli politics)that state, inter alia, that Jews are religiously called upon to kill civilians, even children,and that international humanitarian law can go to hell. That hideous doctrine, and the various other expressions of absolute Judaic supremacy over all others, together with Jewish shock from the horrors of the past, in my opinion explain much of Israeli behaviour.

  17. mary said on August 29th, 2010 at 10:04am #

    And as for this piece of excrement jetting round the world picking up medals, prizes and mega bucks and here feeding their national neurosis and their persecution complex….

    http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m69284&hd=&size=1&l=e
    Israel’s Shameless Mouthpiece – Dr. Hanan Chehata

  18. mary said on August 29th, 2010 at 10:45pm #

    What a nice man, a very very nice man.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11127409

    How vile amd how low can they go?

  19. Jonas Rand said on August 30th, 2010 at 2:42am #

    Rehmat also made the false claim that Eva Braun was a Jew. That isn’t true. Hitler was more Jewish than Eva Braun. And yes, Stalin was Georgian not Jewish. Why must this be 6 degrees of Judaism amongst the world’s infamous and evil people?

    While Jews are a minority, they aren’t persecuted very much; a claim that such persecution happens today on a large scale should be put into context. Claims of modern anti-Jewish hatred are backed up by evidence from many anti-hate groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, which often monitors militia/racist groups that produce propaganda against Jews. Too often, however, are claims of a “new Anti-Semitism” used for racist propaganda purposes themselves; namely, to make pro-Palestinian activists and Palestinians themselves look like neo-Nazis and/or imply that they hate Jews. This is the kind of political underhandedness that the ADL engages in, and has a purpose similar to the “Holocaust Industry” which exploits the Jewish victims of the Holocaust to provide a pretext for Israeli atrocities and create a non-existent link between holocaust deniers and Palestinian hate groups.

    That said, there was a time when Jews were persecuted all over Europe because of a belief that they were all usurers and thieves; many of them were expelled and persecuted for their religion alone. This was not deserved and was a form of religious discrimination and intolerance. Most Jews are not bad people, it is just that some of this history, as well as the terror of the Nazis, still haunts them today and it appears to be (and sometimes is) a persecution complex. Some people take it too far, using it as a way to defend butchery by Jews of Palestinians and such, and that I agree is unjustified. So no, they don’t need to feel persecuted, it is just that some of the more prominent Jews (I wouldn’t say many of them) use their historical persecution as a way to gain sympathy. That is rather disturbing, but blame Israel or Zionism rather than the Jews.

  20. hayate said on August 30th, 2010 at 3:28am #

    I love this:

    Jonas Rand said on August 30th, 2010 at 2:42am

    “And yes, Stalin was Georgian not Jewish.”

    😀

    That reminds me of the time when someone, a regular at the guardian site, explained that a particular woman we were discussing couldn’t be Jewish because she was black. 😀

    jr

    It was already pointed out that stalin was a not Jewish, not because he was Georgian, but because he was Christian. 😀

  21. Deadbeat said on August 30th, 2010 at 3:58am #

    Beyond that I have no answers to the question of what can be done and by whom to cure the sickness of traumatized and brainwashed Israeli and other Jewish minds. Do others have answers?

    Sure. CONFRONT ZIONISM. Stop dancing around the damn problem.

  22. 3bancan said on August 30th, 2010 at 4:19am #

    Jonas Rand said on August 30th, 2010 at 2:42am:
    “(…) blame Israel or Zionism rather than the Jews.”

    Imho the vast majority of Jews today are zionists, ie the nazis of today. But now that Jonas Rand has taught me the true truth, ie that the Jews have no connection with zionism and Isra(h)el(l), I’m a bit confused…

  23. Max Shields said on August 30th, 2010 at 6:13am #

    To teafoe2 from Malcolm X thread (since that was shutdown for comments – and why?) and my apologies to this topic I’m using:

    Teafoe2: “Now it is YOU, Max, who is starting to play games. I said above that you seemed to have your chronology a little mixed up, since you seemed to be saying that it was after the Union victory over the slaveholder’s “Confederation” that the triumphant Union commenced to “go to war with Mexico” etc. I mentioned Grant’s service as a junior officer in the Mexican War to illustrate the fact that you had the sequence of events reversed. ”

    I NEVER said that Lincoln was President when the US annexed parts of Mexico. I was trying to show the legacy of what this nation was founded on, expansionism.

    Teafoe2 before you start declaring some kind of hallow “victory” at least read carefully what is being said. Sometime there is unintended ambiguity, but my point was never to mistate a historical occurrence. Again, I never mentioned Grant and had no intention of discussing the use of Manifest Destiny by each President of the US.

    (And I’d really like to know what editor of DV is shutting down comments.)

  24. Max Shields said on August 30th, 2010 at 6:24am #

    One other item on that topic toefoe2: You seem to have a very narrow view of the Civil War as a bunch of white guys deciding to kill one another to free black slaves. Come on…you know better than that.

    Southerners were European extracts, just like Northerners. The North had the advantage of establishing industrialization and the power to enforce it in the political body. Slavery was first and formost an economic tool that was already, during the 1860s and before, losing its prominance. The immoral use of humans as slave workers did not begin in the US. It is primarily the hypocracy of the US’s founding principles that makes it even more glaring; along with its genocide of millions of indigenous people. Again, the Civil War was a war to ensure that the US mission was sustained. It was not fought by the South so they could keep “slavery” nor by the North so they could “eliminate slavery”. You seem too bright teafoe2 to buy that those were the reasons.

  25. PatrickSMcNally said on August 30th, 2010 at 7:27am #

    > Slavery was first and formost an economic tool that was already, during the 1860s and before, losing its prominance.

    While that is certainly true, you seem to be underestimating the significance of the attack on Fort Sumter. If the South Carolina Confederates had been more far-sighted they could have waited out the years until a new President of the Union replaced Lincoln and Union voters tired of maintaining the Fort in Union hands. Supposedly Jefferson Davis himself felt cautious about attacking the Fort, but South Carolina hotheads went ahead and did it anyway.

  26. Max Shields said on August 30th, 2010 at 7:34am #

    I don’t think Jonas Rand is “dancing around the problem”. I think he’s provided his perspective as best he understands history.

    Is Naomi Klein, who is a Jew, a Zionist? I would like to hear teafoe2 respond. She has signed on to BSD, but she thinks that the US is an empire that invaded Iraq for oil (though she doesn’t deny, Israeli connections).

    Is Norman Finkelstein, who is a Jew, a Zionist? How about Dick Cheney?

  27. PatrickSMcNally said on August 30th, 2010 at 7:53am #

    > she thinks that the US is an empire that invaded Iraq for oil

    My sense of her has been a bit different. She seems to rather blame the Iraq war on Milton Friedman and an alleged “Shock Doctrine” (although Friedman himself was on record as having opposed the Iraqi invasion of 2003). But most of Klein’s ramblings center on the idea that the invasion of Iraq was a move in a big privatization scheme mapped out by Friedman. The matter of oil only seems to come up, as far as I can tell, in an incidental way since Iraq does oil and so if we privatize everything then that will relate to the oil industry and so on. Klein’s big bugaboo seems to be more Friedmanite economic theory rather than oil per se. Not that I liked anything about Friedman’s theories, but Klein does seem to have it in for him much more than she does for oil.

  28. Max Shields said on August 30th, 2010 at 8:18am #

    Klein’s thesis, and it includes not only Friedman and the Chicago school of economics, but also Jeffrey Sachs, which is an interventionist approach to global economics. The “shock doctrine” is a metaphor for jump starting a developing nation’s economy. Sachs prescribed it for Russia with the collapse of the Soviet Union. I’m not arguing her case, and certainly not the details of every page of her book; but the general theme, I would argue, has merits.

    I’m not sure what besides oil Iraq offers from a direct economic perspective; and she does make references to oil and oil companies as part of the invasion scheme. I think there is more to it that oil, but given the propensity for oil by the West and others, it would seem foolish to ignore its importance in terms of “who controls the flow”. Depending whose chess board of US dominance you are looking at Iraq plays an important regional role in the entire ME. The US, having left much of the country in shambles, has secured major military bases. The US was looking to establish 58 bases there. Not sure of the exact number.

    But again, she has supposedly “signed” onto BDS. She’s a Jew. Is she a zionist? Is Dick Cheney, a nonJew, a zionist?

    I see no reason to assume that someone who claims to be a Jew is also a zionist.

  29. PatrickSMcNally said on August 30th, 2010 at 8:32am #

    > I’m not sure what besides oil Iraq offers from a direct economic perspective

    But that is the only context in which Klein raises the matter of oil. She doesn’t so much portray it as a war for oil barons as she does a war for Friedmanite ideology. The fact that Friedman was against the war appears to have escaped her notice.

    > given the propensity for oil by the West and others, it would seem foolish to ignore its importance

    That’s a bit like saying that whether Rommel or Montgomery came out ahead in the Mideast, the oil would still be very important, ergo it was a war for oil. Obviously oil is important enough that anyone planning a war in the region will have to sit down and think seriously about what to do with the oil resources down the road. But the war-for-oil thesis claims much more than just that.

  30. PatrickSMcNally said on August 30th, 2010 at 9:54am #

    > but also Jeffrey Sachs

    I should probably have mentioned that Sachs was also opposed to the Iraq war, along with Friedman. While I don’t care for Sachs’s brand of ideology, it makes no sense to falsely imply that he was behind the Iraq war.

    > Is Dick Cheney, a nonJew, a zionist?

    More accurately, Dick Cheney is a prostitute. Even the war-for-oil thesis requires that we assume this. Halliburton does not play any role in seeking ownership rights for oilfields. Halliburton simply sells equipment. Ahmadinejad and the Iranian government can pay for equipment just as well as the Rockefellers and Exxon-Mobil can. The war-for-oil thesis requires that we assume that Cheney was secretly as a frontman for British Petroleum or some such when he talked about Iraqi oil resources which Halliburton did not need to possess directly in order to do business. But given Cheney’s background with JINSA it makes more sense to see him as whoring himself in that direction rather than making up some hidden connection to Exxon-Mobil.

  31. Max Shields said on August 30th, 2010 at 10:01am #

    The war over Friedman/Sachs/Chicago School of Economics and “shock doctrine” wasn’t my real question although I can continue to go there. But my question was how does one determine that ALL Jews are Zionists? And how is it that there are those who believe in what we call Zionism and the unquestionable right of Israel to pound the hell out of innocent Palestinians, who are NOT Jews?

  32. teafoe2 said on August 30th, 2010 at 10:12am #

    Max you got one thing right: it happens that I AM a pretty bright guy:) At least in some respects. If I was REALLY smart I’d be rich, right?

    You said, and the usually erudite P.McN. agreed:
    “Slavery was first and formost an economic tool that was already, during the 1860s and before, losing its prominance.”

    I beg to differ with both propositions. Southern slavery had become, in the eyes of the slaveholders and those unable to escape inundation with pro-slavery PR, a way of life, a culture, a sacred tradition, a sacred ideal.

    The reason the slaveholders backed Secession was as much or more ideological as it was out of a concern about the economic future of the slavery system.

    To me, “prominance” (sic) is an inappropriate adjective to apply in this case. Slavery remained a prominent issue, north, south, and west; it was in the headlines constantly everywhere throughout the Fifties.

    If you meant to say that King Cotton was a diminishing fraction of the US economy as a whole, I would of course agree with that. But during the Fifties, the cotton trade and cotton production was flourishing as never before, due to increased English and Continental demand giving rise to the highest prices on record.

  33. teafoe2 said on August 30th, 2010 at 10:47am #

    Max’s “real” question: “…my question was how does one determine that ALL Jews are Zionists?”

    Who said here on DV that “all Jews are Zionists”?

    Such a question is nothing but a red-herring, trying to divert attention from other posters’ utter demolition of Mr Shields’ illusions, and the shallowness of his acquaintance with US history.

    But one thing he does very well: wasting my time.

  34. hayate said on August 30th, 2010 at 11:03am #

    So max is a defender of chomsky style concealment of zionist influences, and a defender of the neo-confederate racist distortions of american history.

    IE: fake progressive meets paleo-neo-con.

    The one thing about zionists, is that they are consistent. 😀 They’ll prostitute any view or movement, no matter how vile and repulsive, as long as they think it will further zionist/israeli interests.

  35. bozh said on August 30th, 2010 at 11:26am #

    Let’s not waste time what naomi klein IS. I would just ask her three questions.
    1) is she for prosecution of euroasian war criminals who committed crimes against palestinians since ’46?
    2) is she for one state solution?
    3) does she call self a jew or feels a sense of ‘jewishness’; i. e., a cultishness?

    If she would answer yes to any of the three question, then, she’s, to me, an impediment to solidarity, truth: peace-justice-egalitarianism-knowledge.

    We know that chomsky, finkelstein and so many of the ‘jews’ would answer yes to all three questions.
    Who, in her/his sane mind would read anything i would say while proclaiming myself a catholic, protestant, muslim.
    I say, first of all start evaluating life situations as a human being. Even then one’s writing may be biased to some degree.
    But, people who are christians, muslims, and jews are by far more untruthful and intentionally so.
    I don’t often read any pieces written by such people. I do not read anything what 99% of internet and MSM columnists write.
    Every last one of them defends selfinterest and the interests of the people that pay them megabucks. tnx

  36. PatrickSMcNally said on August 30th, 2010 at 11:44am #

    > I can continue to go there.

    That shouldn’t really necessary. But let’s just make a not of Jeffrey Sachs’ opinion on the Iraq war for further reference:

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/22/obama-military-spending-development

    “Some opponents of the Iraq war, including me, believe that a fundamental – and deeply misguided – objective of the war from the outset has been to create a long-term military base (or bases) in Iraq, ostensibly to protect oil routes and oil concessions. As the examples of Iran and Saudi Arabia show, however, such a long-term ­presence sooner or later creates an explosive backlash.”

  37. Max Shields said on August 30th, 2010 at 12:51pm #

    teafoe2 by the looks of things you’ve got nothing but time to waste.

    You ought to read hayate if you really want to read some fiction.

  38. Max Shields said on August 30th, 2010 at 1:16pm #

    teafoe2 “Max’s “real” question: “…my question was how does one determine that ALL Jews are Zionists?”
    Who said here on DV that “all Jews are Zionists”? Such a question is nothing but a red-herring, trying to divert attention from other posters’ utter demolition of Mr Shields’ illusions, and the shallowness of his acquaintance with US history.”

    How is such a question a red herring?

    Such an attitude sounds like the hatemongers like the super right zionists and tea party clan. Just because the word “Jew” was mentioned umpteen times in this thread why would anyone think about Zionism? Afterall it was not used everytime Jew was mentioned. That’s right out of a racist playbook. Why is this article talking about “Jews”? What’s it’s affiliation?

    Whose red herring are we talking about, teafoe2?

    By the way, teafoe2 the sign of a deeply insecure blogger is his need to think “he’s” smart. Like a two year old you think you know more than you do.

  39. Deadbeat said on August 30th, 2010 at 1:38pm #

    I agree with Bozh’s bright lights (however I’m confused with question #2) but what he is minimizing is the influence and prominence of Left-wing Jews like Klein, Goodman, Chomsky, Finkelstein, Bennis, etc. and their connection to funding sources, academia, and media access from which they derive their celebrity status and power.

    These prominent Jewish voices dominate what is considered as the “far Left” of American politics for over 40 years. They are who activists look to for intellectual leadership and direction and formulate the basis of American Left-wing perspectives, views and thinking and the development of activists ideas, strategies and ideology.

    I agree with PatrickSMcNally analysis of Naomi Klein. The importance of Klein’s book is that it was timely in that the “War for Oil” canard was under a great deal of stress. It was under heavy challenge by people like James Petras and Walt and Mearsheimer who was bring Zionist influence into focus.

    Klein use of the “War for NeoLiberalism” canard provided another tool to deflect attention away from the War on Iraq being influenced by Zionism. She has the good fortune of her book being released a year prior to the Wall Street meltdown so these was able to parry her towards that. However if you view her C-Span interview with Brian Lamb she clearly states that she wrote the book after her visited to Iraq.

    Now the obvious question that not getting asked is how did Naomi Klein, a supposed “leftist” get clearance from the “right-wing” Bush State Department to travel to Iraq? I mean we has people like Teddy Kennedy on the “no fly” list. So why would the Bush Administration want to have an ideological rival travel to Iraq? However if we look at this from a ZPC perspective then the question quite answers itself.

    It’s obvious that their is a phony Left that is dominated by Zionist interests who goal it is to use the horrors of “U.S. Imperialism” to deflect from the horrors of Jewish Supremacy.

    IMO the key to strengthening Jewish Supremacy has been by keeping the Left weak and discombobulated. Yet the side effect of this scheme is that now the Left is also too weak to confront Capitalism crisis. Listening to Ms. Klein recently on Fora TV talk about the need to confront power when she herself has become a star by bowing before the ZPC is nothing but a joke. It’s all about form and presentation with nuanced substance but without radicalism.

    This is again why I return to Glen Ford. He is between a goddamn rock and a hard place if he believes he can work with this crew that defined the American Left.

    The “rock” are the Black Militants who direct confront Zionism. The hard place is the Jewish Zionist poseurs that control much of “Left” ideology. I wish him luck but I can’t help but believe that the outcome will end in betrayal.

  40. PatrickSMcNally said on August 30th, 2010 at 1:43pm #

    > Just because the word “Jew” was mentioned umpteen times in this thread

    Check the thread title again. That was where the word “Jew” was first introduced. You make it sound as if the thread title was about air pollution and somehow the word “Jew” came up.

  41. bozh said on August 30th, 2010 at 2:06pm #

    Deadbeat,
    I did say that some ‘jewish’ dissidents impede truth. The word “truth’ in my usage stand undefined and is undefiable. It means to each person diff things, tho.
    Thus, there is no truth sans justice-peace-understanding-honesty-facts!
    And that’s what chomsky et al are preventing to come out!

    Am i minimizing their how they use their money? I think that’s what you meant. Sorry, deadbeat i know next to nothing on what academia and other sources
    they spend their money; so, i did not write about that.
    But i am glad that you filled this void in my mind.

    The second question i would ask chomsky or naomi klein has to do, what appears the best solution, are they for one state for all residents of palestine; including expelled palsetinians.
    I hope i have made myself clear!

    Chomsky is– or had been reported– that he is self-declared anarchist. This alone impedes equal pay for equal needs. let’s get tht first and then the hell with any order one wants to mention: fascist, socialist, communist, theocratic, or anarchical. tnx

  42. Max Shields said on August 30th, 2010 at 2:37pm #

    PatrickSMcNally you make it sound like I thought this was about air pollution. Well not really…

  43. Max Shields said on August 30th, 2010 at 2:38pm #

    PatrickSMcNally You may want to read some of Deadbeat’s eloquence on the subject…

  44. Deadbeat said on August 30th, 2010 at 2:47pm #

    bozh,

    I responded to your starting premise …

    Let’s not waste time what naomi klein IS.

    As I said I agree with your bright lights. I disagree with your suggestion of “wast[ing] time”.

  45. Deadbeat said on August 30th, 2010 at 2:49pm #

    Max Shields writes …

    PatrickSMcNally You may want to read some of Deadbeat’s eloquence on the subject…

    Thank you Max. I appreciate the reference. Actually T42 is much more eloquent than I on the topic of the ZPC.

  46. Max Shields said on August 30th, 2010 at 2:49pm #

    And the only “facts” you have Deadbeat is that there was no Big Oil meeting that told Bush to invade Iraq. Talk about naive. Canards, canards, canards…where art thou?

  47. Deadbeat said on August 30th, 2010 at 3:06pm #

    The latest Leftist to skewer the War for Oil(tm) canard …

    http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn08272010.html

    Some excerpts …

    The Left and Iraq: Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

    The bottom line, as drawn by [Seumas Milne of The (UK) Guardian ] and [Tariq Ali] is oil . Milne gestures to the “dozen 20-year contracts to run Iraq’s biggest oil fields that were handed out last year to foreign companies”.

    If this really was a “war for oil,” it scarcely went well for the United States.

    Run your eye down the list of contracts the Iraqi government awarded in June and December 2009. … Russia’s Lukoil … Norway’s Statoil, won the rights to West Qurna Phase Two, a 12.9 billion–barrel supergiant oilfield. Other successful bidders for fixed-term contracts included Russia’s Gazprom and Malaysia’s Petronas. Only two US-based oil companies came away with contracts: ExxonMobil … and Occidental. The huge Rumaila field (17 billion barrels) yielded a contract for BP and the China National Petroleum Company, and Royal Dutch Shell split the 12.6 billion–barrel Majnoon field with Petronas, 60-40.

    So either the all powerful US government was unable to fix the auctions to its liking, or the all powerful US-based oil companies mostly decided the profit margins weren’t sufficiently tempting. Either way, “the war for oil” doesn’t look in very good shape.

  48. PatrickSMcNally said on August 30th, 2010 at 3:06pm #

    > there was no Big Oil meeting that told Bush to invade Iraq.

    Whereas there were meetings in Israel which mapped out the strategy of “A Clean Break.”

  49. Max Shields said on August 30th, 2010 at 3:51pm #

    Hey, Deadbeat have you ever been on Facebook? You know that new “technology” where you can collect “friends”? If you do you’ll get a kick out of it. “Work is pissy, and the people I work with are idiots”, or “let’s do some partying tonight….can’t wait, it’s our 25 graduation anniversy…party party party..” or “I’m groving on the last Xcratch CD…take a listen.” They only allow you thumbs up/and no one dislikes anything. It’s all good. This is just hillarious…and much of the dribble here is becoming more and more like that. Only the banality is about Zionism this and Zionism that…and all the Jews make the non-Jews do crazy things…

    You ought to join Facebook. You can find some friends. There must be The Zionists Have Invaded FB page someone started. Or maybe you can. You’ve already got a few friends right here.

  50. Deadbeat said on August 30th, 2010 at 4:26pm #

    Max Shields writes …
    Only the banality is about Zionism this and Zionism that…and all the Jews make the non-Jews do crazy things…

    The facts are insurmountable Max and you’re running out of retorts. Apparently ridicule is all you’ve got.

  51. Deadbeat said on August 30th, 2010 at 4:34pm #

    Here’s again why analysis of the American Left is crucial…

    Max Shields writes …

    That is what makes all this crap about “Chomskyite” so….much crap. It’s baseless fabrication. People can read history and come to conclusions without ever having read either Chomsky or Zinn.

    That’s true. Members of the Left can come to Chomskyite conclusions without ever reading a single page Chomsky and Zinn because the Left has immersed and enmeshed itself in Chomskyism. For example, you could read the plethora of POWERFUL Left-wing writers (as mentioned above) that repeat similar axioms, bromides and cliches. Chomskyism DESCRIBES the IDEAS. perspectives, and mode of thought. It’s an IDEOLOGY that define the “Left” for the past 40 years.

    Just because an activist or two didn’t read Chomsky does mean that he or she cannot embrace Chomskyite perspectives. Chomskyism is THE prevailing ideology of the Left.

    We are now seeing some cracks in Chomskyism these past few years due to the Mershiemer and Walt expose and now with the growing BDS campaign. But IMO the jury is still out as I fear that eventually the Chomskyites will find a way to corrupt that as well.

  52. teafoe2 said on August 30th, 2010 at 5:20pm #

    DB thanks for mentioning Glen Ford, reminded me of something I want to take up with him, about how BDS could be used as a lever, no more like a jimmy, a crowbar to break the attachment of Black activists from Obummer & the Dumbocrats.

    But first wanna thank you, hayate, & Patrick for your solid work exposing Max S’s utter vacuity. Sorry Max, but you’re not contributing anything to the discussion. Even thirteen year old Jonas makes more sense.

    So henceforth I bequeath Farmer Max to you-all. He’s gotten too boring.

    Confession: my recent attempt to re-engage with Max came about mainly because of some feedback I got from Coeditor Kim, who worried that the constant back & forth would tend to turn readers off, and discouraged me from refuting Max and that other creep point by point, on the grounds that most readers would miss the point, ignore the logic or facts presented, and focus on the fact that multiple comments were being posted by the same people.

    I’ve also had Josie in mind. I’ve formed the impression that she’s a nice and well-intentioned person so it was very disturbing to me when she weighed in to lend support to a poster whose words I found particularly despicable, outrageous and offensive, far beyond anything Max has ever said. (so far, anyway:)

    But back to Black Liberation and BDS. I believe there exists a substantial substrate of Black opinion, both at the grassroots/on the corner/in the Yard level, and among activists & “ghetto intellectuals”, which takes a dim view of many Isreali policies, such as the attack on the Mavi Marmara, the Siege of Gaza, the aggression vs Lebanon, the Apartheid Wall and other segregationist policies, and the demand that the US execute or support a First Strike on Iran.

    But, it seems to me, (?) few Blacks holding such a view connect these Isreali crimes with Obama, or with their local Democrat politicians, or with national-level “Black Leadership” like Bill Fletcher, Donna Brazile, or the NAACP.

    To make this work, it will be very helpful if already consciously-antiZionist prominent Black figures can be mobilized to co-present petitions, resolutions, lists of demands for appropriate action, to the Boards, Exec Committees, Directors, Elders, Deacons and Pastors of Black Community institutions and organizations, as well as bodies in which Black members play a significant role, such as certain labor unions.

    Could the NAACP leadership refuse to consider a Resolution presented by Desmond Tutu, without even granting the Nobel Laureate an opportunity to present his case? I submit, that if Tutu could be persuaded to approach the NAACP with such a request, it would put the org’s leaders between a rock and a hardplace, damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

    If they refuse, they will stand exposed as the ZPC flunkies some have for a long time known they are.

    If they agree to let Tutu and allies present facts and arguments in support of the course of action they’re recommending, it will result in massive exposure of ZPC/Fifth Column machinations both in the US State Apparatus in general, and in the Black Community (sic) in particular.

    Either way, if actions like this can be intelligently planned and organized in dozens of major arenas and hundreds of local ones, it looks to me that such a Black America-wide campaign could result in a divorce between Obama and the keystone of his mass political support.

    And without Obama, the “Left Liberal”, Democrat Party prong of the ZioImperialst “good cop/bad cop” pincers movement will stand revealed as just more of the same old crap, not much different in substance from what the Rethuglicans & T-baggers are peddling.

    Okay, there is is, have at it? I’m sure what I’ve adumbrated needs a lot of tweaking to make it viable.

    “Be my guest”:)