rkzenrage

To me, one of the most mystifying aspects of the stubborn belief in Jewish influence and power is the notion that our fractious, deeply divided, largely disaffiliated people somehow manages to get together to exert that authority. I’m a Jewish radio talk show host, and so is the appalling (and unfunny) Al Franken of Air America. We agree on nothing, and we’ve both managed to survive several very angry, bitter, public confrontations. Do Jew-haters believe that behind the scenes we receive the same secret memos from Jewish Conspiracy Central, or else get together in dank, shadowy rooms to study the one-hundred-year-old hoax, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”? Less than half of the U.S. Jewish population (alas!) gives to any Jewish charity, or holds membership in any synagogue, Temple, pro-Israel lobbying group, B’nai B’rith lodge, or other Jewish organization.

In this context, the almost mystical, profoundly illogical belief in “Jewish power” based on our over-representation among accountants and dentists amounts to more than a delusion; it is, in fact, a sickness.

III: ISRAEL’S SUCCESS – AND ALLEGEDLY “EXPANSIONIST” AND “IMPERIALIST” NATURE

In order to credit Islamist denunciations of an “Israeli Empire,” or worry that the perennially embattled Jewish state might indeed count as uniquely aggressive and power hungry, one must remain incurably ignorant not only of contemporary history but of rudimentary geography. The merest glance at a map reveals the incontrovertible fact that Israel remains, in every sense, a tiny nation. Egypt alone – representing only one of Israel’s twenty hostile Arab neighbors—is more than 48 times the land area of Israel. Adding together only the various Arab nations (without including other vast Islamic homelands like Iran and Afghanistan and Pakistan), the Arabs control well over 300 times the area of the New Jersey-sized Jewish state. In other words, even before President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran succeeds (God forbid) in his plan to “wipe Israel from the map,” 99.7% of the Arab lands are already free of Jews.

Moreover, for nearly thirty years, Israel has been shrinking and retreating – not expanding – hardly the behavior of an aggressive empire bent on world domination. After capturing the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza and the West Bank in a defensive war in 1967, Israel returned the vast Sinai to Egypt in 1978, agreed to the establishment of a Palestinian State on most of the West Bank and Gaza in 1993, vacated its security zone in Lebanon in 2000, abandoned Gaza entirely in 2005 and, under the current Prime Minister, committed to moving out of nearly all territory in the West Bank in the near future. In retrospect, some of these moves look like horrible policy mistakes, but they unequivocally indicate that there is no basis at all to suggest that Israeli aggression accounts for contemporary anti-Semitism.

The establishment of the modern Jewish state wasn’t a cause of Jew hatred, but a response to Jew hatred—not only in Europe, but throughout the Islamic world where some 800,000 Middle Eastern and North African Jews were driven from their ancient communities and found new homes in Israel. None of Israel’s eight major wars has been about a Jewish lust for new territory. All of them have been about a beleaguered nation’s ceaseless attempts to make its citizens secure from murderous attack in the distinctly limited area of their ancestral homeland. Every Arab child in Lebanon, in Gaza, and in the West Bank could sleep sweet, undisturbed slumber as soon as tomorrow night if the adults once-and-for-all gave up their long-standing project of driving the Jews out of the Middle East.

Contrary to anti-Semitic presumptions, Israel has never demanded special privileges of any kind, but yearns (and bleeds) only for the same rights other nations enjoy: to live undisturbed beside its neighbors without unceasing attack by terrorists, militias and, occasionally, major armies. Montenegro, the newest member of the family of nations after a referendum this year, won independence and worldwide recognition despite the fact that more than 45% of the electorate opposed bringing the nation into existence, and only a bare majority claims Montenegran (as opposed to Serbian) nationality. More than 80% of the residents of Israel are Jewish, and they have fought tenaciously for their nationhood for nearly sixty years. The desire for peaceful borders and acceptance from fanatical neighbors hardly amounts to an Israeli demand of privileged status, but the refusal to grant that recognition reflects the classical attitude of the anti-Semite: that Jews indeed deserve different treatment from all other nations on earth but in a negative, hostile and, ultimately murderous sense.

In conclusion, none of the three obsessive fears of Jew haters—the “Chosen People” concept, Jewish prosperity in the Diaspora, and Israel’s success (so far) in nation-building and self-defense –demonstrates in any way a push for world conquest or superior standing for the children of Abraham. How, then, can we understand the imperishable belief that Jews function as an arrogant, imperious, overbearing people? In a few words, that resentment stems in truth from the age-old Jewish refusal to abandon our separate identity, our irreducible distinctiveness through the millennia. My friends Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin provide the most compelling exposition on this dynamic in their invaluable book, Why the Jews?, recently reissued.

In any event, the logic becomes most accessible when considered in personal, intimate terms. If a small group among your neighbors refuses invitations to worship in your churches and mosques, to eat the food you prepare in your homes, to marry your daughters, to embrace your nationalisms, or to share your enthusiasm for the ultimate, universally applicable perfection of your Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Catholic, Islamic, Nazi or Communist worldview, then it’s all but certain you will resent the members of that stubborn group – and assume that they exclude themselves from elements of your society due to an innate, obnoxious sense of superiority.

For Jews who try to remain faithful to the old covenant, there’s no choice about the unyielding refusal to assimilate and disappear—and no surprise at the angry reaction in much of the world. After all, the Bible repeatedly predicts that response. This realization doesn’t make it any easier to cope with anti-Semitism, but it does make the eternal hatred comprehensible. No matter how inconvenient or unpopular, we get our marching orders from the commandments--including the crucial and celebrated injunction to choose life, for ourselves and our people.

*End*

My response (specific to this article):

I don't hate anyone.
However, if someone lives in my nation, but refuses to integrate; and worse things everyone around them are "the flesh of an ass" but them.
It is perfectly reasonable, acceptable, and in your best interest to do what you can to get them to leave in the most humane way you can. Because, when war, famine, any tragedy comes, they are not going to have helped your nation/community prepare and, therefore, do not deserve to partake of what will help them survive along with everyone else. And they will not have the same sense of loyalty and priorities to the rest of the community as everyone else and cannot be trusted.
I could give a fuck if it is based on religion or their just being stuck-up assholes in general.
It is not hate, it is just smart.
That has nothing to do with killing or genocide or any other aspect of atrocity... laws must be obeyed. I am talking about do you do business with those who think of you as a thing or not?
The answer is no.
I have Jewish friends that are family to me.
I know Jewish people who believe that tenant and they are the same to me as a Klansman.

He said it best.