He begins: “When a large number of foreign-policy experts—both Republicans and Democrats—falsely attribute many of the world’s ills to the Jewish state, they are channeling an ancient hatred. The time has come to say so.”
Wow! That’s telling them! That’s courage! Imagine the risks he must face in speaking up for Israel!
“Schizophrenia is a much-abused metaphor.”
Uh oh, he’s not about to attribute anti-Jewish views to mental illness, is he?
Well, maybe he’s a psychiatrist like Charles Krauthammer and thus has qualifications for diagnosing mental illness.
Uh no.
Hazony continues:
Those of us who have ever cared about someone who suffers from the illness have a hard time with all those pundits who get it wrong, confusing it with split-personality disorder, and then applying it metaphorically to anybody who carries two contradictory thoughts.
But knowing about the disease can still be helpful in talking about politics—giving us a much better metaphor to describe the conversation about Israel taking place in Washington today.
Were Esau’s tears the result of schizophrenia or the result of a rational reaction to a real harm done to him?
My bias is that I view Esau’s tears and Jacob’s fears as equally rational and equally related to reality. I see the world as largely knowable and I see people pursuing their own interests more than they pursue their delusions. Different groups have different interests and hence Jews, like all groups, hurt others and are hurt by them. As Jews rose in power over the past 300 years, other groups, at times, were diminished in power. One hundred years ago, for instance, WASPs ruled the world. Now they lack group spirit.
What is called “anti-Semitism” is just one aspect of clashing group interests. There are times when it is in the Jewish interest to restrict the rise of Gentiles (such as in Israel or in Jewish-run businesses such as department stores) and there are times when it is in the Gentile interest to restrict the rise of Jews.
For me and for most traditional Jews, Israel is of vital concern. I wake up in the morning thinking about the welfare of Jews, when I walk to shul to study Talmud and pray, I think about the welfare of Jews, when I eat breakfast I think about the welfare of Jews, and when I go about my day I think about what is best for the Jews. There’s nothing dual about my loyalties. I am obsessed with Jews and as a result, all other loyalties, at times, suffer. In some ways and at some times, I feel more loyalty to my fellow Jews around the world than I do to my fellow non-Jewish Americans.
I constantly think about what is good for Israel. I have such an attachment to Israel that it challenges my loyalty to America. What is good for Israel and what is good for America frequently conflict. Is it in America’s interests to send 80% of their foreign aid to Israel? I think not. Is it good for America to be so entwined with the Jewish state? I think not. As a Jew, however, I feel gratitude that America supports Israel. As an American, I am skeptical, at times, of America support for Israel. Most of the time, I see America as being better off if it pulls back from Israel. Some of the time, I see Israel as being better off if America pulls back. Then Israel will have more freedom to deal with its enemies.
For more than a year, I have worn a yarmulke that reads “FIDF.” That stands for the group Friends of the IDF. I selected this yarmulke purely because it fit so well, not because I wanted to send any message.
I was walking around for a year publicly identifying with the military of a foreign power before I thought about what I was doing (a white nationalist pointed out to me that my kipa might not go down well at the John Birch Society meeting we were to attend, and that got me thinking).
In a strong Gentile nation, publicly identifying with the military of foreign power (except for a fellow WASP nation such as England) would be unacceptable. How do I feel when I see Mexican-Americans showing greater support for Mexico than for America? I feel like America would be better off without them. So how should a rational goy feel about people like me publicly identifying with the military of a foreign power? The goy might think that America would be better off without us.
No tribesman, including myself, should be trusted in anything he proclaims about his tribal loyalties vs his loyalties to his host nation because the tribesman has every incentive to understate his tribal loyalties and to overstate his loyalties to his host nation. Most of my friends are Orthodox Jews. My community is Orthodox Jews. I spend my spare time with Orthodox Jews. I may speak Australian but I think Yiddish. In the years ahead, I plan to become more Orthodox and to be more loyal to Jews. That’s how tribal life works.
When the Australia First movement of the 1930s opposed more Eastern Jewish immigration (they were fine with Anglo-Jews), were they acting irrationally?
The answer to Semitism is anti-Semitism; and when Jews gain too many advantages for themselves, by their practice of self-segregation, they invariably find (and surely should expect to find!) that the majority of non-Jews will resent, and eventually will curb, the privileges which the Jews have won for themselves by concerted sectional action. That is what will inevitably occur in Australia sooner or later, if a large colony of self-segregating Jews is allowed now to establish itself in our community…
It is well known that there are many Jews who are good citizens, honest and cultured, despite the reputation of the generality of their kind of being financially “tricky”, unscrupulous, and parasitical. That there are intellectual and sensitive Jews is also as well-known as that there are many “Flash Yids” who degrade and debase public culture. No case can be made against Jews generally, except … that their insistence on racial self-segregation is anti-social, considered from the point of view of the community as a whole. We cannot concede to them in Australia a right which, if conceded in perpetuity to other types of immigrant … would lead to the sectionalizing of the community and its disunification. … The remedy is that the Jewish Race should abolish itself, by becoming absorbed in the common stream of mankind. [Otherwise] we others, who are so strictly excluded from the Jewish community, have at least a reciprocal right to exclude them from ours
It seems rational to me for a homogeneous nation such as Australia to want to stay that way. Why would it want to import division? Or does every nation benefit from the import of any Jews? Is one allowed any qualms about Jews at all or are all forms of distaste for Jews a sign of mental illness?
Hazony writes: “Schizophrenics suffer not from multiple personalities, but from an inability to tell the difference between things they encounter or imagine on the one hand and reality on the other.”
It sounds like he’s about to argue that having negative views of Jews is incompatible with reality and a symptom of mental illness.
Is it a departure from reality to describe Israel as an apartheid state? Apartheid means a system of racial segregation enforced by law. I don’t see Israel in that light, but Israel is the Jewish state, and hence non-Jews, by definition are second-class citizens. Imagine if America proclaimed it was a Christian state and conducted its affairs in favor of its majority as Israel does? America would certainly change if it became an ethno-state like Israel (I think this change would be a wonderful thing).
“…Israelis remain the only sovereign people whose very existence continues to be a delicate question, the greatest target of enlightened venom in polite Western circles…”
Plenty of Africans and Middle Easterners (such as Syrians and Iraqis) very existence continues to be a delicate question. When Hutus massacred Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994, it seems like the very existence of hundreds of thousands of sovereign Rwandans was under threat. The existence of the Ukraine as a sovereign nation seems to be under threat. Didn’t Russia just annex the Crimea? Seems to me that Crimeans sovereignty has recently been extinguished.
American General Wesley Clark said: “Let’s not forget what the origin of the problem is. There is no place in modern Europe for ethnically pure states. That’s a 19th century idea and we are trying to transition into the 21st century, and we are going to do it with multi-ethnic states.”
That sounds to me like he means there is no room for the historic European nations to retain their sovereignty.
Every major Jewish organization supports immigration amnesty. Jews as a group in the United States have been influential in opening up immigration, often rendering the historic American nation strangers in their own land. Diversity means whites must be hunted down. They are no longer allowed voluntary association. If they only want to marry their own kind, this is considered vile racism.
If I were an American goy, I might not like Jews because of their organizations pushing the multiculti agenda. According to Hazony, however, such hatred is a symptom of mental illness and refers to nothing in reality that Jews do.
Israel is the big dog in the Middle East. It has the most formidable armed forces and a close alliance with America. Israel is not the underdog here. There is a gulf between Israel and its neighbors just as there is a cognitive gulf between Ashkenazi Jews (average IQ between 104-115) and Arabs and Muslims (average IQ around 85). Israel is a manifestation of the genetic capabilities of the Jewish people just as Egypt is largely the result of the genetic capabilities of Egyptians and Syria is largely the result of the genetic capabilities of Syrians. With their low average IQ, Arabs and Muslims are simply not capable at present of assembling a first world nation.
Hazony: “In recent years, two major lines of attack on Israel have been revealed to be essentially anti-Semitic tropes, repackaged for a modern audience.”
This sounds bad. Hazony is arguing that the following two criticisms of Israel have no basis in fact and are symptoms of mental illness.
“One was the claim, preposterous to anyone with an honest heart and a historical eye, that the vicious anti-Israel protest movement (of which the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement is only a part) had nothing to do with anti-Semitism.”
I don’t regard the term “anti-Semitism” as referring to a valid moral category. It has no basis in Torah, for instance, and no basis in logic as there is no such term for Jewish hatred for non-Jews. So whether or not a movement is anti-Semitic is a foolish question. All groups are in conflict and disliking a group for hurting your group is rational and to your group’s evolutionary advantage.
“The second was the ancient trope of dual loyalty—that the Jew is never fully committed to his countrymen…”
This is a ridiculous definition of the dual loyalty argument. Nobody claims that “the Jew is never fully committed to his countrymen.” The argument is that tribes tend to have a different relationship to the nation state from the majority population.
As I wrote April 7, 2014:
Jews take great care with potential converts and continue to scrutinize them after conversion. According to Jewish law, a convert cannot take many positions of leadership in Jewish life. It might make sense for a nation state to limit its leaders similarly and to take greater care clearing members of tribes for access to state power and secrets.
Prior to becoming Jewish, my primary national identity was American. After becoming Jewish, my primary national identity was at first evenly split between being American and Jewish. I still loved America, but now I also loved Israel and I felt a particularly intense connection to other Jews. At the time, I felt no tension between these loyalties but I noticed some things shifting in me regarding America that I didn’t want to articulate.
As soon as I started converting to Judaism, I began worrying about what if there was a holocaust in America. I had never had this worry before. I became suspicious of America, an attitude entirely new to me.
If you identify as a Jew, you are likely to have, at times, more loyalty to fellow Jews around the world than to your host Gentile nation. That’s not unique to Jews, that’s a basic fact of life for all of the major tribes.
In this 2009 lecture, Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff talks about how a Jew should never kill another Jew. His wish for Jewish loyalty uber alles means that if followed, Jews can never be loyal citizens of non-Jewish countries.
The rabbi also proudly relates a story about his childhood practice of using ethnic solidarity to steal from the New York Yankees.
Most non-Jews would rationally regard these attitudes and behaviors as disloyal.
Hazony writes that “the pro-Israel lobby is actually only a fraction of the size of the anti-Israel lobby…”
That must be why American politicians line up to criticize Israel and to distance America from Israel because of the potent anti-Israel lobby.
Osama Bin Laden named American support for Israel as a major reason for his 9/11 attack. An American goy would have rational reason for disliking the entanglement between the two countries when there is nothing in the Middle East that is in America’s vital national interests.
As Jared Taylor noted soon after 9/11:
But the main reason they hate us and want to kill us is that we support Israel. Can anyone deny that if we were not Israel’s enthusiastic backer those thousands of Americans would still be alive? It is no coincidence that the two nations against which suicide attacks are now launched are the two nations out of 160 that walked out together from the Durban racism conference in defense of Israel. To Muslim fundamentalists we and Israel are one and the same, and we have given them ample reason to think so.
My favorite essay on foreign policy in the past year was by John J. Mearsheimer in the January/February 2014 issue of The National Interest:
America’s national-security elites act on the assumption that every nook and cranny of the globe is of great strategic significance and that there are threats to U.S. interests everywhere. Not surprisingly, they live in a constant state of fear…
Given these significant costs, and given that the United States has no vital interests at stake in Egypt and Syria, let alone the capacity for fixing the problems afflicting those countries, it should adopt a hands-off policy toward them.
I would extend his analysis to the entire Middle East.
The bulk of Hazony’s essay is on the third and most pernicious of the anti-Semitic tropes: “…the classic anti-Semitic myth of the conspiracy—that Jews hold the keys to a very large part of what ails the world…”
Wow, that sounds like basic Torah to me. According to the Sh’ma, a prayer the observant Jew recites twice a day, God sends the rain depending on whether or not Jews observe the commandments. In other words, the behavior of the Jews determines how the universe works. I guess the Bible is leading edge of this “classic anti-Semitic myth.”
The second paragraph of the Sh’ma (Deut. 11: 13-14) reads: “So if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today—to love the Lord your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul— 14 then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine and olive oil.”
I remember listening to lectures by Rabbi Avigdor Miller and he would often emphasize that everything that happens in the world is a message to the people Israel and much in turn is shaped by Israel. This is the traditional Jewish approach.
Hazony writes:
In the 1920s, the great industrialist and vicious anti-Semite Henry Ford had no qualms about laying out the map and methods of Jewish domination as he saw it.
“The motion picture industry; the sugar industry; the tobacco industry; fifty per cent or more of the meat packing industry; over sixty per cent of the shoemaking industry; most of the musical purveying done in the country; jewelry; grain; cotton; oil; steel; magazine authorship; news distribution; the liquor business; the loan business; these, to name only the industries with national and international sweep, are in control of the Jews of the United States, either alone or in association with Jews overseas…. [People say] “The British did this,” “The Germans did this,” when it was the International Jew who did it, the nations being but the marked spaces on his checker board.”
Because it is so difficult to disprove—Jews are indeed influential far beyond their numbers, and conspiratorial claims are all about suggested implications of outsized influence and “connecting the dots”—the Myth of Jewish Centrality has been one of the most harmful features of anti-Semitism, and not just over the ages but especially in the tortuous 20th century.
My primary question is whether Ford’s assertions above are true. For Hazony, the primary question is how do we disprove allegations of Jewish influence.
One does not need to suffer from a mental illness to note parts of life where Jews have influence.
Like most people, Jews tend to boast about their power when they feel that is to their advantage, and they tend to complain about their victimhood when they feel that is to their advantage.
From The Jew Accused: Three Anti-Semitic Affairs (Dreyfus, Beilis, Frank) 1894-1915 by academic Albert S. Lindemann:
Observers as different as Winston Churchill and Theodore Herzl firmly believed that international Jewry exercised enormous power in international relations. Even figures who passed as defenders of the Jews at this time made statements about Jewish power that appear today to be both extravagant and tinged with anti-Semitism. Arnold White, who praised Russia’s Jews as the “most virtuous and prolific race” in the tsar’s empire, wrote that the European press and international finance were in Jewish hands, that Jews “garnered most of the harvest that came from the blood shed by Boer and Briton”, and that “the Prime Minister and the Cabinet of England alter their policy and abandon an important bill in parliament at the frown of the Rothschilds.” He concluded that Jews were making “monotonous progress toward the mastery of the world.”
…Of perhaps even more pressing concern to [Czar] Nicholas and his high officials was their belief that a number of powerful Jewish financiers outside of Russia were working ever more openly, diligently, and effectively to deny the country the financial aid it sought. These were not entirely fantasies: A most tenacious and effective enemy of tsarist Russia was Jacob H. Schiff, the American financier. Schiff played a crucial role not only in denying the Russians the bonds they sought in the international market to finance the war, but even more decisively in providing financial support for Japan, which then so humiliatingly defeated Russia. In Great Britain Lucien Wolf, joined by the English Rothschilds, and in central Europe Paul Nathan led the efforts to isolate Russia both economically and diplomatically.
By this time American Jews, especially Schiff, had begun to claim the leading role in international Jewish affairs that would become so important as the century progressed… Schiff delighted in the way that he and other Jews had been able to humble the great Russian Empire. He boasted that after its humiliation in the Russo-Japanese War Russian had come to understand that “international Jewry is a power after all.” (Pg. 168-169)
Steve Sailer wrote in 2008: “[Jonathan] Pollard was a cokehead who stole some of the crown jewels of our national security secrets — information relating to the our nuclear missile submarine deterrent — in return for money from the Israelis. (The Israeli government is widely believed to have then bartered the American secrets to the Soviets. I wouldn’t know, but that’s what I hear.)”
It seems to me that an American would have rational reasons for hating Israel given the behavior of the Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard.
I can’t recall any former American intelligence officers saying good things about Israel. Whether it is Ray McGovern, Phil Giraldi, Robert Baer or Michael Scheuer, they all say that American foreign policy has been hijacked by the Israel lobby to the detriment of long term American interests. Intelligence officers can’t forget the 1967 attack on the USS Liberty, the Jonathan Pollard espionage, and the continual industrial and political espionage conducted by the Israelis. They don’t see this as the type of behavior you expect from an ally. They got angry having their advice ignored as the U.S. made decisions based on internal politics rather than national self-interest, so now that they are free to write what they want, their hatred for Israel jumps off the page.
A few months ago, I reviewed the 2009 Alan Dershowitz documentary The Case For Israel: Democracy’s Outpost and explained that Israel receives disproportionate criticism because it is disproportionately important. If Israelis were more like Mexicans, Israel would not arouse such passion.
