I expect you need to be on Facebook to go to this link:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Gaza-Youth-Breaks-Out-GYBO/118914244840679
The Guardian published their manifesto yesterday. It may be superfluous but I nonetheless think it should be repeated as widely as possible:
GAZA YOUTH’S MANIFESTO FOR CHANGE: “We, the youth in Gaza, are so fed up with Israel, Hamas, the occupation, the violations of human rights and the indifference of the international community! We want to scream…” – read more below!
Contact us: [email protected]
Pls consider supporting us by taking one or more of the following actions:
1) Promoting our manifesto by sharing it on your profile on Facebook
2) Sending an email to your friends asking them to like our page FB
3) Translating the manifesto to your language and sending it to us (we have it in Arabic, Hebrew, French, Portuguese, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Danish, Greek, Chinese, Russian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish)
4) Sending the manifesto to journalists in your country
5) Making organizations in your countries that are concerned with the Palestinian issue and/or youth rights know about our existence
6) Posting links about violation of youth’s rights in Gaza on our wall
7) Suggesting us ideas for reaching out to a greater number of people
???|__
Steelback and co – pleased that the atmosphere has calmed down somewhat. This is a positive step towards engagement, imo.
I sense that your material would take a long time to discover and absorb, so a detailed discussion will have to wait. Sadly I have to work, and sleep, and eat… 🙂
That said, I pondered the other day of some quick questions that I could use to determine whether the above would be worthwhile. They are: do you believe anti-Jewish racism exists, and would you condemn it if you saw it?
Thanks.
Jon
From previous experience I guessed you and Suhayl would find the “cock-up” view of history you espouse too difficult to sustain.
I also just knew you would be along to bail him out again!
I can’t speak for others but the material we have provided here to defend our argument didn’t stop any of us working, sleeping or eating.
Why should this cock-up/multiple narrative theory of yours take so much longer for you guys to defend?
I think it’s because it’s unsustainable especially where Zionism is concerned.
So yet again we are asked to absolve you from defending your argument and move on to another topic.
Anti-Jewish racism: Yes, it exists. Equally there’s no doubt people distrust powerful Jews like they view all entrenched levels of wealth and power- with suspicion. This is bound to be the case where there is resource competition between different ethnic groups.
The anti-Jewish racism that exists is directed against elite sections of the Jewish community: the “Our Crowd” elite as Stephen Birmingham called them in his book on the NY Jewish sephardi elites or the “Jewish Establishment” as Joe Sobran has called them in an article here re-their influence in culture and media here:
http://sobran.com/establishment.shtml
I think these people are quite powerful enough to defend themselves don’t you?
Were anti-Jewish racism to manifest itself as wholesale hatred for the mass of World Jewry I personally would despise those who espoused it for the misanthropic aversion with which they want us to hold other of our fellow creatures in contempt.
This holding of one’s fellow man in contempt or the relegating some group of them to some lower position on the evolutionary scale is what I understand racism to be. On a simple human level I find it utterly obnoxious.
But I do not at all believe that anti-Jewish racism manifests itself in this way.
I believe the racism and bigotry practised against far less powerful groups such as muslims-which has been created in no small part by elite Jews and their sponsorship of “The War on Terror”-is far more pernicious than any grounded suspicions people might have about being dominated by this same elite group of Jewish ethno-supremacists.
In short anti-Jewish racism is far less of a problem than the elite Jewish ethno-supremacism represented by Zionism and its agenda.
But I would say that wouldn’t I?
Aren’t we all meant to be on the same side here?
It is meant to be us against them?
Not us against us?
The imperialists, racists and Zionists have all united like never before.
Now you see skinheaded Nazis of the BNP dancing hand in hand with Israeli Zionists. Both waving Zionists flags and giving Nazi salutes.
They have all united, isn’t it time we do?
OK, great – your acknowledgment that anti-Jewish racism exists is very useful. Thanks.
I wasn’t specifically trying to argue for a “cock-up view of history”, nor was I “bailing out” anyone. Be positive about your interlocutors 🙂
I am of the view that when people of significantly differing views reach a state of “positive engagement”, they don’t automatically ascribe negative motivations to the other side. I vote that we all should aim towards that in our discussions here.
I still maintain there’s a lot of reading to do to understand your perspective. There’s a lot of competing historical claims about the founding of Israel, for example, and how Zionism came about. I’d be willing to read one of Kevin MacDonald’s papers, but they’re each 25 pages long, and that could be considered just an introduction, and a polemic at that. There is a good meta-study on his work, which he hosts on his website also. I’ll read that too. I also have Tanya Reinhart’s “Road Map to Nowhere”, and it is about time I read it.
We are certainly agreed that the charge of anti-semitism is used to deflect legitimate criticism.
Finally, I wonder if I could offer you some advice? It is well meant, I assure you. We are probably agreed that people don’t listen to your message as much as you would like, and it seems reasonable to assume that you’re here to expose people to your ideas. As with all subjective topics, how an idea is presented is important – two proponents with the same world-view will have different ‘conversion rates’, just like two salespeople selling the same product will make different commissions.
To that end, you might be interested in the following leaflet, created by campaign group NO2ID (in particular, the Tips from page 5). Whilst it talks specifically about identity cards, there is some good general advice about finding out what the other person’s motivation is, avoiding judgmental language, and addressing the concerns of the other side. You may find it of use in presenting ideas that people don’t want to hear – it has certainly affected the way I approach discussions.
http://www.no2id.net/downloads/print/NO2ID_How_to_WIN_text.pdf
Thanks for the exchange, anyway. I’ve now got some reading to do!
Some sense on the Facebook manifesto from Karma Nabulsi who has been in the forefront of the movement for justice for the Palestinians.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2011/01/10/karma-nabulsi/facebook-in-gaza/
‘Gaza Youth Breaks Out’ manifesto does not belong to this tradition: it does not put forth any clear analysis of the current historical situation, or outline a response to it. It does not declare the existence of an organised group, or invite anyone to join anything. Its tone is denunciatory rather than analytical. Its language is apolitical: the terminology of resistance common to Palestinian manifestos is replaced here by use of the f-word. And it lacks any mobilisational dimension. It’s unsurprising, then, that it has received little attention in the Arab world. The most extensive report on it appeared in Al Akhbar in Lebanon, which more or less reprinted the piece from the Observer.’
She concludes
‘If this manifesto does not belong to the Palestinian tradition of declarations, then what tradition does it belong to? Clearly it captures the despair and horror of life in Gaza today, and the young people behind it have every right to post their appeals and complaints on Facebook or wherever they like. But without being rooted in any particular or collective vision of change, the three demands articulated in the manifesto ?” ‘We want to be free. We want to be able to live a normal life. We want peace’ ?” are meaningless. Perhaps this is why it is so attractive to those who have read it on Facebook, and the European and American media who have taken it up. It caters to western tastes and desires, especially to the fantasy of a digitally connected youth emerging from cyberspace as agents of transformative change in the real world. In the case of Palestine, this fantasy does a number of things besides soothing guilty consciences. It reframes the issue of justice for Palestine in vacuous and unthreatening terms, casts the method by which change may occur into virtual space, and empties the Palestinian body politic of the thoughtfully articulated demands of its millions of citizens.’
Jon
I notice you have still chosen not to substantiate your views re-the complicated and unfinalizable nature of historical truth.
It would certainly be interesting to discover just what insights re-the history of Israel and Zionism this
model of enquiry might afford. I guess we will just have to wait till the intellectual fan-dancer in you and Suhayl chooses at last to reveal all!
I would tend to agree with tungsten that in the historical case of Israel and Zionism such a model possesses such limited explanatory power because it’s quite unsustainable.
Additionally while I acknowledged that anti-Jewish racism exists I made it categorically clear that I saw the phenomenon as one that pales into insignificance beside such forms of racism as Islamophobia and the Jewish ethno-supremacism that manifests itself in the form of Rothschild Zionism.
Again it would seem that you have chosen not to engage with this point.
Zionists targeted Christians for being “disloyal” within the Ottoman and later the Bolshevik Empire and the same people are targeting Muslims in the same way today.
Do you still believe anti-Jewish racism is more significant?
Speaking for myself again I would add that I am not here to convert anyone to my views at all.
On a gatekeeper site like this I would find it very odd to come across anyone at all of the same “conspiracy” persuasion as myself. The fact that there are two or three others here of a similar persuasion is great but I have no interest in convincing other people that my views are right and theirs are wrong.
Accusing me of making claims to some kind of papal infallibility is akin to accusing a Catholic who goes to Mass every week of the same crime.
On the other hand I do take exception to people making bland assertions on subjects they plainly know very little about. Such contributors have obviously been spoon-fed patently fallacious information by corporate/gatekeeper sources.
On this site this happens a lot and there is a clear need to put the record straight in this respect.
I would also class myself as someone who takes exception to the forms of sloppy thinking that pass for argument.Impressionistic perceptions of reality which are never supported by substantiating evidence are as thoroughly unhelpful on the topic of Israel and Zionism as they are on all others.
Jon
I notice you have chosen not to substantiate your view on the complicated and unfinalizable nature of historical truth.
I would tend to agree with tungsten that on the question of Zionism which has achieved its goals by operating according to a very precise overarching plan this model of enquiry is of very limited explanatory power.
I note also that you have not engaged with the proposition I put regarding Islamophobia and the forms of racism practised against other less powerful groups. I argued that these forms of racism were far more serious than anti-Jewish racism.
I advanced the view that Islamophobia had been fomented by Zionists with an ethno-supremacist agenda. The Zionists used the same tactic of claiming Christians in the Ottoman and Bolshevik empires were “disloyal” in order to supplant them.
Presumably you see such a view as contentious but again you have not engaged with it.
On the idea that I am here to try to convert other people to my views-I can’t speak for others-but I can assure you you are quite mistaken.
On a gatekeeper blog like this one I would find it odd that there were any others of a “conspiracy” persuasion at all. To find three or four others is great but it is not at all my motivation to convince others that my views are right and they’re wrong.
On the other hand I do take exception when people make bland assertions and pronounce on topics they obviously know very little about. This happens a lot here.
Nor do I think impressionistic perceptions of the world presented without substantiating evidence advance human understanding.
On topics like Zionism and Israel these forms of sloppy thinking masquerading as argument are as unhelpful as they are on all others.
“I notice you have chosen not to substantiate your view on the complicated and unfinalizable nature of historical truth.”
Well, I didn’t claim that – and neither did Suhayl, you’ll recall. But I was very clear in my post about responding to your world-view in general: to understand or critique it is going to take some reading! You’ll have to be patient, I am afraid, and I am still not persuaded that you want to have a civil and open conversation on the matter. I regret that you seem to have reverted to pejoratives: “gatekeeper”, “sloppy thinking”, “masquerading”.
“On the idea that I am here to try to convert other people to my views … but I can assure you you are quite mistaken.”
My assumption was honestly felt, but okay. Why are you here? I can’t think of any other reason why you’d expend so much effort.
Btw, Steelback – I should be pleased to hear what you think about the No2Id pamphlet I recommended.
“Additionally while I acknowledged that anti-Jewish racism exists I made it categorically clear that I saw the phenomenon as one that pales into insignificance beside such forms of racism as Islamophobia and the Jewish ethno-supremacism that manifests itself in the form of Rothschild Zionism.” steelback (or one of his avatars)
Today, perhaps, it seems difficult to imagine, but for almost 2,000 years, anti-Jewish racism was the main form of racism extant in Europe. Every time there was a Crusade against the Civilised World (i.e the Levant), there was a Crusade against Jews in Europe. It may be that the Zionists (and as Arsalan has demonstrated, Zionists and Jews are far from synonymous) have been very successful in the past 60 years and that capitalist bankers of all faiths and none et al have been very successful over the past 350 years or so. But for most of the past 2,000 years in Europe, Jews have been demonised, tortured, killed, forcibly converted and turned into folk-devils. To minimise this is simply inaccurate.
“As tungsten said last night any review of this thread shows that we have presented and supported the argument that the establishment of Israel was a product of Rothschild Zionism and the disproportionate influence this network enjoys through its control of money and its international power-bases in London and NY.
What evidence have you supplied to support your contention that this is false? Where is your evidence that it was NOT Rothschild Zionism that financed the earliest settlements in Palestine and has controlled migration into the territory ever since.
What evidence do you have that your “multiple narrative” theory has more explanatory power than the Rothschild Zionism theory?
These are basic questions and, notwithstanding your former smears against me of racism and the need for us all to be banned from the comment board, I put them to you with due civility.” steelback
Thank you, I appreciate your civility.
But you didn’t say that these interlocking nodes of power helped to create and support Israel – clearly, they did and continue to do so – but that a similar dynamic was operative in the deliberate facilitation of just about every major historical event in Europe since the time of Cromwell.
It is this attempt to string everything together beyond what is historically credible and to take it all back to the year dot and spread it out and make it comprehensive instead of specific that I think is far too simplistic and arguably “sloppy”. It’s like looking through the wrong end of a telescope.
The rise of capitalism is what we’re talking about, no? Now, in the time of Cromwell and onwards, most capitalists were not Jewish and even the Jewish ones were certainly not ‘Zionist’. Most of the time, Jewish traders were too busy trying to stay alive in a period when witch-burning, anti-Semitism etc. was the norm across both Protestant and Catholic Europe, to plot world domination.
That should’ve read:
“But you didn’t say *only* that these interlocking nodes of power helped to create and support Israel..”
Suhayl
The idea that Jews have been the ONLY victims of racism worth anyone’s consideration over the last 2000 years is a sweeping statement to make indeed!
I think the idea dovetails neatly with Zionist propaganda re-the absolute necessity for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. Whether you can support such a statement by showing that the racism suffered by ALL other ethnic groups was less significant than anti-Jewish racism over 2000 years is entirely another question.
Also your argument depends on your factoring out the equally pernicious phenomenon of Jewish ethno-supremacism from the equation entirely. I am sure you will find this phenomenon has a long and ancient pedigree. In fact if you look at Talmudic teaching you’ll find genocidal statements re-the need to wipe out the Amalek and other non-Jews in abundance.
That Jews throughout well OVER 2000 years of history have proved themselves just as capable of genocidal violence on racial grounds against other human beings as any other if not MORE than any other group is a FACT that doesn’t sit well with your argument but it is a fact just the same.
The perception that since the “Holocaust” the phenomenon of anti-Jewish racism is the only one that should concern us is the one peddled by Hollywood and the corporate media but this is a measure of the high concentration of Jewish media ownership rather than the real state of affairs.
The number of victims who died as a result of the role played by Zionist Jews in the Ottoman and Bolshevik empires dwarfs by several millions the 6m figure of Jews who supposedly died in the Holocaust.
In your last post you continue your theme of eternal Jewish victimhood asserting that Jews were only peripheral to the the development of capitalism because they were so busy trying to escape the flames that would engulf them in the next pogrom.
Er, I would not wish to be rude, but this is quite a spurious account of the real history of Jewish involvement in capitalism especially banking and slavery which goes back to Antiquity.
For the sake of the argument here I would draw your attention to the role of Jewish bankers in Venice which goes back as far as the 13th century. From here the Luzzato, Recanati and Jewish families from Aleppo for example dominated European finance.
By the time of Cromwell much of this financial network from which modern day Jewish families like the Warburgs are descended had moved to Amsterdam whence they used their money power to exercise controlling influence over Cromwell (to the point of even signing Charles I’s death warrant) and later the English Revolution and founding of the Bank of England.
By the eighteenth century the same Amsterdam bankers were in a position to exercise a controlling influence over the American Revolution (1776-83).
What these families understood was that control of the money supply was a means of controlling the state. Through intermarriage with indigenous elites they have been doing just that ever since.
http://www.alor.org/Library/EnemyWithintheEmpire.htm
The idea that Zionism is a purely modern phenomenon and could not have been around at the time of Cromwell is also quite wrong. The impact of Zionist ideas on English Puritanism is surely unmissable.
Indeed the idea of Jewish Chosenness had already taken firm root among Britain’s ruling class for centuries long before Queen Victoria Victoria and her family had come to see themselves as King David’s descendants. Many of the writers who subscribed to the Cabalistic prophecies in the Zohar re-Jewish Chosenness for World Rule were Englishmen like Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727).The ground for such beliefs had been laid among the English themselves in publications over centuries.
This history is neither simplistic or sloppy thinking on my part. I’m afraid your idea of eternal Jewish victimhood IS though.
I have substantiated the case for Zionism being a long-standing plot to enslave the rest of humanity. We are still waiting for you to provide one scrap of evidence that proves otherwise.
Finally I don’t wish to be rude but I do find your idea that post-structuralist reading strategies and “multiple narratives” have any relevance to the history of Zionism a little absurd.
Even in faddish academic circles post-structuralism went out with the Ark didn’t it. My black literature thesis eschewed post-structuralism for a cultural nationalist and historicist perspective with a little dialogics thrown in!
Well, you know the Scots also could be said to have ‘run the American Revolution’ and in fact most of the modern world. I did not say that no other groups had been persecuted, nor that jewish people did not ever engage in persecution and racism, tribalism, etc. too. All human groups have. I never suggested “eternal Jewish victimhood”, just that they were systematically demonised and persecuted for centuries, on and off, and often more on than off, in Europe. I mean, this happened.
The Kabbala – and much else that is Judaic culture – was written by Jewish scholars in Muslim countries, btw. these Jews spoke and wrote Arabic. Their culture was Arab. Much of what we consider ‘Jewish’ today emerged from Jews in Muslim countries and for good reason. While persecution did occur, it was far, far less than that in Europe. Spain threw out its Jews in 1492; they were welcomed by the Ottoman Empire and Morocco. far from dismantling the Ottoman Empire, they helped to fortify it.
So how might all that tie-into your overarching unified theory of human civilisation?
Anyhow, do you have any thoughts on Jon’s question about the No2ID pamphlet?
Suhayl
The unified theory of human civilisation we might draw from this history is that if you find out who controls the money supply you will discover who actually controls the state.
This holds good for the Bank of England and Wall Street. The Rothschild Inter-Alpha Group constitutes 70% of all banking; the IMF and European Bank is controlled by Rothschild Zionists.
It is surely natural that people have become suspicious re-the way these players have entrenched themselves in a supranational network of banks, media and fringe masonic groups which are seemingly set on undermining and finally dominating the Christian West.
As Hannah Arendt noted in The Origins of Totalitarianism such conspiracy theories were absolutely rife between the wars and totalitarian movements like Nazism articulated the mass feeling at the time that the time had come to fight fire with fire and pay the Jewish secret societies the sincerest form of compliment by imitating their success and organizing a counter-conspiracy fight-back.
Arendt dismissed the idea that modern anti-semitism was just a secularized version of popular medieval superstitions that scapegoated Jews in previous centuries. For her modern antisemitism had to be seen within the framework of the development of the nation state and its source derived from mass perceptions re-the role the Jews performed as financiers and facilitators of state business.
Lest we forget, it worth noting here that state business in the previous centuries included capitalism, slavery and later imperialism. Jewish finance was central to all three.
Previous to these historical developments the Jewish role in Muslim Spain up to expulsion in 1492 clearly fits the pattern described here by Arendt. It is well known that cities across Spain such as Cordoba would usually have a synagogue
within the city gates at the heart of the settlement.
A Jewish writer who was close to the Frankfurt School Arendt concedes that “antisemitism” has a rational source in the majority’s fears re-the increasing ascendancy of the minority. However, as becomes one of this School-which depended on elite Jewish funding-she views the majority’s concerns re-the Jewish bankers’ agenda as unreasonable conspiracy paranoia.
This view corresponds to that of yourself and probably most other visitors to this comment board!
I would argue that Arendt’s attempt to absolve elite Jewish bankers of all the crimes against humanity of which they stand accused by conspiracy theorists fails so markedly in this book that she ultimately ends up confirming these very same suspicions.
She tries to sell us the idea that while the 17th and 18th century Court Jews (Hofjuden) and the 19th century Jewish state bankers played a prime role in war finance they then in subsequent years were usurped from their pre-eminence by a new breed of “imperialistically-minded businessmen”. Rhodes is her main exemplar of this new breed.
According to Arendt, by WW1 this now redundant Jewish elite stood out in mass perceptions as an aloof and parasitic social layer on the European body politic.
“This intra-European Jewish element became an object of universal hatred because of its useless wealth, and of contempt because of its lack of power (15).”
I would dispute the idea that the power of Jewish state bankers had at all been broken by the time of WW1. Did not the Warburgs hijack the Fed in 1913? Didn’t Rothschild NY agents J.P.Morgan proceed to bank-roll Britain’s war effort?
In both cases the answer is in the affirmative.
Arendt’s pretence that Rothschild finance had nothing to do with WW1 is reminiscent of Niall Ferguson’s pretence in more recent times in his history of the family that their influence had entirely waned by the time of the Great War. Really?
No not at all. Rothschild agents like Edward Mandel House had US President Woodrow Wilson in the palm of their hands and ensured that America too became involved in the conflict.
Accepting the accounts of mainstream historians like Arendt and Ferguson depends on a willing suspension of disbelief on our part. Both use arguments that proceed by the omission of episodes which are key to our understanding of the continued role of in state affairs of Jewish central bankers like the Rothschilds.
I should add that conspiracist suspicions re-Jewish state bankers are emphatically NOT the same as antisemitism as the Frankfurt School would have us believe.
I bear no animus towards the great mass of Jewish people at all. In fact I think the key word here is indeed “people”. Like the Arabs the Jews have since the dispersions intermarried over centuries to such an extent that the ethnicity of both is less important than the fact that they constitute first and foremost a “people” rather than an ethnicity.
As an anti-Zionist I would remind people that the word,”Jew”, is of relatively recent coinage anyway and that modern day Jews by and large share very little of the same blood as their supposed ancestors who lived in the Holy Land.
I had a great grandfather called Joseph Eli Daniels who hailed originally from Bristol where he worked in the silk trade. Am I Jewish?
He might even have been involved with Jewish central banking at some point.
Heaven forbid!
Jon
Many thanks for the no2id doc.
You may have noticed that I favour a more trenchant polemical approach in writing and find this comment board as good place as any to vent my spleen!
Additionally I like doi e great British public will empathize with this sentiment entirely!
Now that I’ve completed my required reading the most obvious question is have you done yours?
Remember you and Suhayl were going to demonstrate just how unidirectional, “Grand Narrative” approaches to history lack explanatory power in comparison to the your own multi-narrative approach?
Do you believe that the the fact that certain elites control central banking has had no significant overall impact on the Depressions,Revolutions and Wars that have occurred throughout history?
If you believe this then please tell us which aspects of the multi-narrative approach have more explanatory power?
Still waiting………………
Thanks for responding on that point.
I hate to press you on the other question, but I feel it is relevant in shaping our discussion. You say that you don’t intend to change people to your perspective, but haven’t clarified what your purpose is here. There’s nothing wrong with wanting more people to agree with a particular perspective – which is why I recommended the NO2ID approach.
Have I done the reading I set for myself? Still, no, I’m afraid – it is a great deal more than the two pages of a small pamphlet I recommended to you! I am, happily, a busy chap.
I still intend to do that, but the more I think about it, one would need to be an expert in Jewish history to understand the historical tides of antisemitism, their proponents and their effects, to critique your perspective. In the various items you’ve set forth above, there’s a lot of names and a lot of proposed connections, but understanding the relationship between Woodrow Wilson and the bankers of his time requires some very specific knowledge. One would need to do some substantial academic research – well outside of the Alex Jones realm – to come to a reasonable conclusion on these things.
I’ll have to think more about that.
At 11:50pm on 11/1/11, I alluded to three examples of approaches to multi-narratives of history:
1) The Scots Enlightenment.
2) The history – central to Judaism – of Jews in Muslim lands.
3) The history of the Ottoman Empire.
There are many more.
I could pick out any of these and construct a grand narrative of history based around them, to the exclusion of all other narratives. This would represent an important part of the ‘truth’ – or shall we use your term, ‘explanatory power’ – yet none would be sufficient. This is my basic critique of your ideas on this subject. I don’t disagree wholly with you on it; you’ve clearly undertaken an immense amount of research on the subject; but I think it requires proper historical contexualisation.
Of course economics in its broadest sense (i.e not just ‘banks’) is central to history, though again there are other factors.
“certain elites control[ling] central banking” is relatively recent (in terms of human history) and has grown in importance over the past 300 years. It is a natural consequence, and of course also a driver, of international capitalism.
Rothschild/ Goldman Sachs/ JP Morgan et al are hugely powerful and have been since the mid-C19th, so are an intrinsic part of much that has happened since that time, including the current financial fiasco/ rip-off. In an important sense, and scandalously, one might say that Goldman Sachs is the US government.
“I bear no animus towards the great mass of Jewish people at all. In fact I think the key word here is indeed “people”. Like the Arabs the Jews have since the dispersions intermarried over centuries to such an extent that the ethnicity of both is less important than the fact that they constitute first and foremost a “people” rather than an ethnicity.” steelback
I am glad we agree about some things. Thank you again for your engagement and civility in this discussion. Jon is right, you (and all of us) are likely to get more engagement from others if we are at the very least civil to one another.
That should have read:
“In an important sense, one might say that – scandalously – Goldman Sachs is the US government.”
Suhayl
Surely Jews in Christian countries can’t be omitted from your multi-narrative? The Jews ultimately suffered the same fate in Spain as the Moors. Both were expelled in 1492.
The conversos who had begun to convert to Christianity as the Reconquest of Spain got underway in 1391 rapidly became an elite social stratum while remaining a cohesive, endogamous community.
This donning of an outwardly new religious identity (“crypsis”) while remaining under suspicion from the host culture is a recurrent theme in the Diaspora. We see it replicated in the “dry” baptisms that took place in Germany in the early nineteenth century. Jews anxious to maintain their social position publicly converted but practised Judaism/Sabbateanism privately and remained by and large cohesive and separate groups within the majority culture.
In Ottoman Turkey the Donmeh Jews particularly in Salonica maintained this “crypsis” survival strategy. The Donmeh were outwardly Muslim but were actually Apostate Sabbatean Jews who adhered to the antinomian messianic teachings of the 17th century mystic, Sabbatai Tzvi.
In Eastern Europe these same Sabbatean Jews were called Frankists after Jacob Frank a latter day heir to the ministry of Tzvi.
It was the followers of this branch of Kabbalistic mysticism who were to become by far the most powerful force in Zionism. With the power bases they established in London and N.Y. particularly in the UN and CFR it is Sabbatean Jews who played defining roles in the Young Turk Revolution that overthrew the Sultan and the Bolshevik one that overthrew the Tsar.
“Crypsis” with its strategy of pretended conversion and tactical intermarriage into the Gentile elite gave Frankists decided advantages in the areas of politics and wealth accumulation over their brethren in the Reform and conservative branches of Judaism.
Israel’s first two Presidents, Ben Gurion and Ben Tzvi, had both been Ottoman citizens. Tzvi, as his name suggests, was almost certainly one of the Sabbatean apostates.
Some writers, such as Rabbi Marvin Antelman, maintain that Hitler himself was a Sabbatean Jew:
http://wideeyecinema.com/?p=5112
Certainly Hitler’s 1923 benefactor, Ignatius Trebitsch-Lincoln, the man who encouraged him to merge his small German nationalist party with the German Zionists, like others in the “permanent revolution” gang, such as Rudolph Sebottendorf, who helped Hitler to power, were both “Crypto-Jews” from Turkish backgrounds.
“Crypsis” facilitated the Sabbatean infiltration and violent overthrow of governments in order to create world revolution. Simultaneously with usurping the Christian and Muslim empires these Cabalists believed they could fulfil Messianic prophecies of the End Times by inaugurating an era of antinomian revanche against other Jews, Rabbinical culture and Judaism. They became persecutors and merciless baiters of their Jewish brethren.
Julius Streicher, (a.k.a. Abraham Goldberg) Der Sturmer editor, who was executed at Nuremberg is probably the most infamous of these Sabbatean baiters of other Jews.
Perhaps you should factor “crypsis” into your multi-narrative historical approach. It is a vital but little understood aspect of Jewish identity and adds a whole new meaning to the terms, “antisemitism” and “Holocaust”.
It’s understandable that cognitive dissonance re-the official account of WW2 will be kicking in by now. Once it abates there’s the whole of the rest of your life do your own research.
The official account that has it that the Allies were at war with a vicious regime intent on world domination and genocidal extermination of the Jews has been internalized by millions of people.
You are not alone and if you study only official sources you may well end up confirming this establishment narrative.
However there is plenty of other evidence that the “crypsis” survival mechanism, to which Steelback draws attention above had, by the end of the 19th century become a very effective means of discreetly subverting nations.
By the 1930s crypto-Jewish Zionists held the reins of power in the US, Ottoman Turkey, Bolshevik Russia and finally in 1933 Germany as well.
One cannot just dismiss the idea that Germany in 1933 was about to become another version of the same Zionist experiment as had been effected in the other three aforesaid states.
In 1862 the Zionist, Moses Hess had coined the term “national socialism” which he intended to use gain support for Jewish nationalism. The term was later shortened to Nazism:
http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showthread.php?t=13562
In 1948 the Zionists officially took power in Israel. It was perhaps the first state they had “officially” taken over anywhere. More surreptitious forms of Zionist domination had already brought this situation about.
IN ISRAEL THEY SHACKLE (PALESTINIAN) CHILDREN
Posted on 11 January 2011.
Perhaps the most shocking of all things in Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is the way that children are treated. It is unimaginable that an Jewish Israeli child would be brought to court in shackles or even be placed in a court of law.
Beatings and abuse of children by the Israeli military is common and judges, such as the one below, don’t even blink an eye. Thus is legal racism established.
Below this is a paper circulated by Dr Derek Summerfield from Defence for Children International ?” Palestine Section, on the shooting of children working near the northern border of Gaza.
Tony Greenstein
a~
The Children’s Judge
True, in the military courtroom itself Palestinians are neither shot nor beaten. They are not ‘targeted for elimination’ nor even sentenced to death. At least not in the courtroom. But the military court is also the place where all illusions die. And hopes. Because that is where Palestinians learn that injury caused them, is no error, nor misunderstanding, but a matter of policy. That is where they learn that law regarding Palestinians is nothing short of another kind of weapon. One of many. Among the tanks and planes and cluster bombs and checkpoints and Separation Wall and white phosphorus and the IOF spokesman.
The military court is the end of ends. The last judgment. The final accusation, a-priori, of Palestinians only because they are Palestinians.
And courtroom number 2, where children are put on trial, is the place beyond that end. The place where all the words end.
Only two family members are allowed to come to the trial. This is usually the only time they can come and see their son, and they do. Time after time. They may bring cigarettes and money for the long day awaiting them. Nothing else. Not even medication, nor tissues, nor food, nor a book or a newspaper. We, visitors who are not Palestinian, are allowed to bring in a notebook and pen. But not tissues. We have no privileges concerning tissues.
/….
http://www.shoah.org.uk/2011/01/11/in-israel-they-shackle-palestinian-children/
Good point, somebody. It’s horrifying.
Steelback. You see, that’s what I meant. You take a little stream, going somewhere, connect it to an ocean and so create a storming river.
The hiding of one’s true religion is permissible in Islam, too and eg. was employed by some Spanish Muslims after the early C16th.
Jews were (generally) allowed freedom of worship in the Ottoman Empire, but it is certainly possible that some may have chosen to ‘convert’ for social advantage yet remained faithful to their original faith. It’s not that uncommon, you know. People are sometimes conflicted and so syncretic customs emerge. It’s been happening throughout human history. There are tribes in Afghanistan who wear Stars of David and celebrate the Sabbath on a Saturday rather than a Friday, but they are Muslim – perhaps one of the ‘Lost Tribes’, who knows?
The Ottoman Empire was a huge historical, military, geographical and cultural phenomenon. The trajectory of its rise and fall was not determined by a few Jews-who-pretended-they-were-Muslims.
The Ottoman Empire, at its height, consisted of all of southeastern, and much of central, Europe, most of north Africa, Egypt, much of the Arabian peninsula, Mesopotamia, all the lands surrounding the Black Sea, all of the Caucasus, Ukraine and of course Anatolia. Most ‘Sephardic/Mizrahi’ Jews (with the exception of the large communities in Morocco and Persia) lived in the Ottoman Empire. So it’s hardly surprising that two Israeli leaders were once citizens of the Ottoman Empire. So was the Saatchi family; the Saatchi brothers were born in Baghdad. So what does that prove? They were among millions of others. Baghdad was a half-Jewish city in 1940; around 40% of its population was Jewish.
Anti-Semitism in Turkey really took off with the rise of nationalism at the end of the Ottoman Empire. It reached its (relative) height during Ismet Inonu’s tenure (i.e. around the 1930s) and early 1940s. Nonetheless, its degree was far less than in Nazi-occupied Europe, so that hundreds of thousands of Jews escaped, and were helped by groups of Turks to escape, from the occupied Balkans. Moris Farhi (Jewish Turkish writer) wrote a novel about this:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moris_Farhi
So, you take a small historical stream and inject some Kabbalistical mysticism and allow it to bleed into macro-history and you ignore far larger, more important phenomena and thus do you bend every historical narrative to your preferred overarching novelistic narrative. Surely, this is the ‘Holy Blood and Holy Grail’ effect, in which the writers preconceive an hypothesis and then proceed to make countless assumptions (typically prefaced by the phrase, ‘But what if…’). Each supposition quickly becomes accepted truth and a springboard for the next ‘What if…’ That book was followed by scores of others. Umberto Eco poked fun at this in ‘Foucault’s Pendulum’:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umberto_Eco
As, to some extent, did Orhan Pamuk in ‘The Black Book:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_(1990_novel)
Now, some of the Nazi leaders did have part-Jewish ancestry, Heydrich being the best-known example. Ironically, he was the most ‘Nordic’-looking of them all. Perhaps this is a prime example of the terrible power of self-hate and transference.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabbateans#Sabbatai_Zevi.27s_conversion_to_Islam
All of this is fascinating – and this is why I term your approach, ‘novelistic’. It’s the type of approach used by a novelist, esp. in the postmodern style. But it ought not to be confused with genuine historical analysis.
And to call Hitler “a Sabbatean Jew” really takes the biscuit. The myth about Hitler’s supposedly part-Jewish parentage is just that, a myth.
Suhayl
How can you dismiss the idea that Donmeh Jews could possibly have overthrown the Ottoman Empire? Only by ignoring the abundant evidence that this is in fact exactly what happened during the Young Turk Revolution and Armenian Massacres. Both of these key events are strangely absent from your narrative.
I think you omit the events in question and skip to the 1930s and 1940s and the unrelated topic of anti-semitism because you actually need to do a bit of homework on the Young Turk Revolution and the Armenian Genocide.
The Zionists like to airbrush these events and concentrate on antisemitism
as well but I see no reason why you should try and do the same.
Did you think we wouldn’t notice?
http://www.realzionistnews.com/?p=77
http://www.jewishracism.com/Jewish_Genocide_Enlarged.pdf
Once you’ve rediscovered or perhaps discovered the Young Turk Revolution and the Armenian Genocide for the first time perhaps you could tell us who you think orchestrated both these operations?
All the main players on The Committee of Union and Progress were Donmeh Jews and Zionists. Between 1890-1914 all three US ambassadors to Turkey,including Henry Morgenthau, were B’nai B’rith Freemasons. The Sultan was so indebted to Western banking interests he became putty in their hands. Herzl was able to cruelly manipulate him into doing the Zionists’ bidding.
In geostrategic terms the Young Turks were proxies for the Rothschild banking and Baku oil interests.
The Donmeh-who you seem to caricature as merely “Kabbalistic” mystics-were in fact an eclectic, cosmopolitan yet endogamous group who had transformed Salonika into one of the largest cities in the Ottoman Empire and W.Europe. It was in Salonika where the CUP was formed in 1900.
Other Donmeh communities thrived across Ottoman SE Europe in Macedonia, Greece, Bulgaria, and in major Ottoman cities including Istanbul and Izmir. The Donmeh
diaspora included W.and Central Europe icluding London, Brussels, Paris and Berlin. As bureaucrats, traders, administrators and military throughout the empire they networked with this diaspora and were well placed to shape and channel transregional flows of capital, technology and knowledge.
Far from being the “Kabbalistic mystics” you caricature them as-they were early globalizers! The vanguard of the CUP were drawn from this community. The CUP led by Ataturk, who himself was a Salonikan himself, overthrew the Sultan.
What more proof do you need?
Rather than skip the entire event so you can dismiss it can you cite evidence that these people were not prime movers or that some other group like the Kurds was involved more?
Your version of what happened during the Armenian Genocide would also be of interest.
Presumably you dismiss the idea that Zionists had anything to do with the Bolshevik Revolution as well. I don’t know because you appear to be in the business of airbrushing whole historical episodes so you can dismiss the idea that Zionists or Crypto-Jews were involved.
The question of how far the Nazis were forwarding the Zionist agenda does not come down to one of whether Hitler and other members of the Nazi leadership had Jewish ancestry alone which is undoubtedly the case. It is clear that there existed an identity of interests between the Nazis and Zionists and that there was a high degree of collusion between the two.
Edwin Black has argued that the Transfer Agreement between the Zionists and Nazis saw the migration into cities like Haifa of German Jews who were to lay the foundations for the economic infrastructure of modern Israel.
You have not begun to address this key to the whole story of WW2 either.
I’m not sure your literary digressions compensate for the glaring historical lacunae in your account either.
1) I did not “caricature” Jews who converted to Islam. I said that you inserted a dose of ‘Kabbalistical mysticism’ into your historical narratives. You avoid dealing with this key point; it goes to the heart of your interaction with history and reality.
2) The Armenian Genocide is a whole other subject, massive in itself. The xenophobic militaristic Turkish nationalism of the Young Turks was the main cause. The Armenian Genocide was NOT a ‘Jewish plot’.
3) The Ottoman Empire had been “the sick man of Europe” through C19th and had really been propped-up by France and Britain – and later Germany – as a bulwark against Russia. It’s no surprise that the Sublime Porte was indebted to Western bankers.
4) Salonica was indeed a wonderful metropolis, until xenophobic nationalism destroyed it.
5) The people who converted to Islam left for Anatolia in the 1920s when the ‘exchange of [Greek and Turkish] populations’ occurred and were mostly assimilated into Turkish society.
6) The presence of Jewish people in revolutionary movements of the late C19th/early C20th century is hardly surprising, nor is their presence in important positions in society. They were often from a highly-literate stratum to whom modern political concepts would naturally appeal. Furthermore, some movements which promised some kind of ‘level playing field’ and the absence of religion as a deciding factor in people’s lives and careers in society probably also appealed. I think that may be why there were many Jewish people in the various communist parties in many countries.
The problem is, you then turn this into some kind of quasi-mystical Jewish plot to overthrow empires. And I’m sorry, but I repeat, the Armenian Genocide was NOT a ‘Jewish plot’.
Actually, although Marx may have been said to have had ‘a rabbinical approach’, in reality communism and other revolutionary movement ideologies have/ had far less connection with Judaism than, say, the Labour Party has (or rather, once had) with the Dissenters/Methodism, or the Tory Party with High Anglicanism (“The Tory Party at prayer”, remember?). The obsession with such connections is really reflective of a fabrication by the Right, an attempt to discredit both Leftist ideology and also arguably represents a cynical modern instrumentalisation of historical European anti-Semitism: “Jews and Communists!”
Suhayl
(1) I can assure you that “Kabbalistic mysticism” is not just an attempt on my part to embroider my account of the wars and revolutions we are discussing!
I think you are again confusing literary theory and aspects of novelistic technique with historical argument. They are clearly not the same thing.
If I were making Kabbalistic mysticism central to my argument I would certainly be in good company. After all the Zionist religious historian, Gershom Scholem, made it his life’s work to demonstrate how Sabbatean antinomianism laid the basis for Jewish modernity and Zionism.
I notice your account of the wars and revolutions we are discussing omits any reference to Zionism whatever. Naturally the Rothschild brand of Zionism is airbrushed as well!
Without some conception of how Lurianic Kabbalah with its intense focus on creation as rupture and catastrophe lies at the heart of Sabbatean antinomianism you cannot begin to get into the mindset of those who plotted the genocides, revolutions and wars of which we speak.
Maybe this account of Scholem’s work will help:
http://www.illc.uva.nl/~seop/entries/scholem/
As Scholem shows Lurianism arose as a response to the expulsions and at a time when Jews were ready to embrace a new theology to deal with this latest catastrophic rupture in their history.
Adding to Lurianism’s growing appeal was the undermining of Rabinical authority in the aftermath of the expulsions. Also in 1516 the Sultan had also invited Jews to settle in Eretz Israel thus initiating the first systematic albeit slow resettlement of Jews there since the Middle Ages.
Absolutely shocking.
UK Troops Use ‘War Crime Drones’ In Israel Share Comments (34)
12:51am UK, Friday January 14, 2011
Niall Paterson, defence correspondent
Israel’s military has been training British troops to fly drones similar to those used in alleged war crimes against Palestinians, Sky News has learned.
Britain’s Watchkeeper drone is based on the Israeli Hermes 450 unmanned aircraft
(photo)
Britain is buying 30 Watchtower WK450 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) which are based on the Israeli Elbit Hermes 450 system, in a deal worth close to a £1bn.
But some accuse the Government of purchasing technology that was “field-tested on Palestinians” during the three-week Gaza conflict in 2008-9.
And the revelation that Royal Artillery soldiers undertake drone training in Israel has reignited the debate over Watchkeeper’s purchase – particularly given that their Israeli trainers may have been involved in the Gaza conflict.
Amnesty International UK Campaigns Director Tim Hancock said: “Amnesty International has documented the role of drones in serious human rights violations by the Israel Defence Forces in Gaza.”
/….
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/British-Troops-Train-In-Israel-To-Use-Drones-As-Critics-Claim-Equipment-Is-Tested-On-Palestinians/Article/201101215894470?f=rss
Suhayl
Rothschild Zionism embraced the antinomian model of inverting and usurping Judaism. It became a plot to achieve Redemption Through Sin as Scholem termed it. Rothschild Zionism sought not just to create international revolutions and overthrow the Muslim and Christian empires in Turkey and Russia it also targeted assimilationist and Orthodox Jewry who saw the return to the Holy Land as a blasphemous affront to rabbinical authority which taught no return was possible until God himself returned to Earth to bring it about.
I’m afraid any account of the Young Turk Revolution and the Armenian Genocide that omits reference to the geostrategic machinations of Rothschild Zionism that brought them about is wholly sanitized and inaccurate.
I don’t wish to be facetious but have you considered a career as a Rothschild historian. You certainly seem to want to cover their tracks for them!
I have cited evidence to show that the Young Turks were led by Donmeh with international financial links to the Rothschild banking interests and B’nai B’rith. You have not provided evidence that any other group e.g. Turk/Kurdish played a more significant role.
Primary sources like the London Times were in no doubt as to the Judaeo-Masonic provenance of the Young Turk organization. Their Vienna correspondent told the paper in July 1911 that every government in Europe was aware of this provenance.
Similarly Sir Gerald Lowther, British ambassador to Turkey,1908-13, exposed the layers of the plot which centred in Salonika in exquisite detail noting how when the Sultan Abdul Hamid II was deposed by Carruso (CUP) he was taken to a house belonging to several Italian bankers who sat on the Committee and detained there!
I ask again, how much more proof do you need?
(2)On the Genocide, which you finally admit took place, you blame “xenophobic, militaristic Turkish nationalism” without any attempt to explain where this came from. Without wishing to be facetious this explanation seems to be the one I was taught at ‘O’ level. Some forty years later I now see how utterly superficial it was.
Christopher John Bjerknes provides overwhelming evidence that not only were the Armenians the ancient (Amalek) enemies of the Jews but that the planners for a separate ethnic state in Palestine thought their agenda would not get past first base without their being eradicated. They would be supplanted on their demise by Donmeh who had long coveted their commercial and economic role and their membership of the elite Ottoman intelligentsia.
http://www.jewishracism.com/Jewish_Genocide_Enlarged.pdf
Several massacres in which Jews participated enthusiastically with the Kurds against their Armenian neighbours had taken place prior to the main Holocaust in 1915. These previous outbreaks saw the Armenian Ottoman elite targeted as the economy was run into the ground by the debt trap in which the Rothschilds had ensnared the Sultan.
The idea that militant Turkish nationalists instigated the Armenian genocide bears very little scrutiny. It was probably made easy to sell because the main Holocaust took place under cover of WW1 in 1915. In the siege mentality created by the Galipoli campaign and the advent of the Western intervention-the Zionists had gone out of their way to elicit such an intervention for centuries-it became even easier to scapegoat the Christian Armenians as internal enemies.
(6) Your attempt to explain Jewish involvement in revolutionary movements draws heavily on the self-conception of intellectuals like Hannah Arendt and others who saw themselves part of an altruistic and moral group with a redemptive humanistic mission to the Gentile world.
Contrary to what these intellectuals believe re-their divine mission and power to change the world only the Money Power can do that!
I would argue that in practice communism and Zionism were in fact run as twin-track projects. Zionist financiers bank-rolled the Young Turks, the Bolsheviks and when the whole of Eastern Europe fell under the Soviet yoke in 1945 it was largely due to the machinations of Soviet agents in the US who were in key positions to direct the military campaign and post-war settlement in the desired direction.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone to learn that these Soviet agents were Zionists or people we refer to euphemistically today as “dual citizen” Israelis.
Many people seem to have forgotten that when Israel was created in 1948 it was not part of the non-aligned bloc but aligned like India with the Soviet one. Israel also received its weapons from the Soviets via Czechoslovakia.
Who do you think Karl Marx was? The last Old Testament prophet?
No, he worked for the Zionist bankers as well!
All those “isms” that followed on the back of the French Revolution were not the result of the Divine sponsorship which intellectuals think they enjoy.
They were sponsored to create the revolutions and wars of which we speak.
Steelback, yes, I’d read of Scholem’s work, but the website link is excellent and comprehensive, okay, thanks.
Somebody, many of us – you, I’m sure – said that at the time, that the psycho-state of Israel was testing weapons on the people of Gaza. The USA/UK openly tested weapons on Iraqis during 1990; many weapons systems were sold as a result. It is indeed utterly shameful, yet not surprising, that the UK is deeply involved. As you know, it has been from the beginning, of course.
And of course, if truth were told (which it never is) deep down, for these lords of war, Arabs are not regarded as human.