The Jewish diaspora didn’t always march lockstep behind Israel. My great-grandmother–who escaped pogroms and lost family in the Holocaust–was an anti-Zionist.
Rampant anti-Semitism drove my great-grandmother from Eastern Europe. There’d been pogroms; there were restrictions on the type of work Jews could do. My family made their way to New York City with little more than the clothes on their backs; the relatives they’d left behind disappeared during the Holocaust, never to be heard from again.
So when the United Nations voted in favor of the partition of Palestine in 1947, my great-grandmother’s son, my grandfather, rejoiced. He ran into the street and danced. He sang HaTikva. And when fighting broke out in Palestine, he decided that he would make the trip east and join the Haganah, which later became the Israeli army. Sure, he was only 16, but he would lie about his age and enlist.
It was my great-grandmother—an Orthodox Jew who’d fled anti-Semitism, who’d lost family and friends in the Holocaust—who stopped him.
“No way are you going to fight the Arabs,” she said. She was an anti-Zionist and, as such, there was a lot packed into those words.
Even though I never met her, I always find myself thinking about my great-grandmother a lot this time of year. This is the period in Israel when we enter the cycle of nationalist holidays that starts with Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Day). Never mind that Israel treats Holocaust survivors so poorly that they have protested the issue. Never mind that many Holocaust survivors are still struggling to survive in Israel and that, according to Ynet, that state is cutting their benefits by twenty percent. Never mind that Israel cynically uses the Holocaust as a political tool to defend indefensible policies of occupation and expansion and to beat the war drums against Iran.
After Yom HaShoah, the flag-waving continues with Yom HaZikaron (Remembrance Day) and culminates with Yom HaAtzmaut (Independence Day). Stacked one on top of the other, the three holidays maximize feelings of victimhood, self-righteousness, and unity. For many Israelis, that the sad Yom HaZikaron rolls straight into the joyful Yom HaAtzmaut gives a feeling of triumph, of exhilaration. It’s intoxicating. And it’s dangerous.
Maybe that’s why my great-grandmother didn’t want her son to fight in a war that wasn’t her own. I think she understood that Israel wasn’t the solution to the Jewish people’s problems. Today, I’m watching the bits of democracy that exist here tremble under the weight of the occupation. I watch the conversation about Israel grow increasingly divisive in the Diaspora. I consider the vibrant Jewish cultures and languages that were virtually wiped out for the sake of forging an Israeli identity. I see Jews turn away from Judaism because of Israel’s ill-doings. I wonder if my great-grandmother saw all this coming, if she knew the trouble that lay ahead.
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the other joe
Maybe the whole thing would be resolved if there was a legitimate third ancient owner of the land. Didn’t the Romans win it fair-and-square?
Joachim Martillo
Palestinian is completely correct. Zionist texts from the 1880s make it clear that Zionists intended to rob, to expel, and to murder right from the start.
It is worth noting that Zionist attitudes toward Palestinians evinced exactly the same bigotry that Jews expressed toward European “history-less” peoples that Lindemann describes in Esau’s Tears.
If Zionists were honest, they would have negotiated with Palestinians, but they chose to manipulate and to corrupt the political system in the UK as they do in the USA to this very day.
Until Jews acknowledge that Zionism is an irredeemable vile dishonest ideology and show awareness, remorse, contrition, penitence, and atonement for at least the last 2 centuries of Jewish crimes against non-Jews both in Europe and in the ME, Palestinians have to conclude that Jewish Zionists will only repeat the crimes in the future that they have already committed in colonizing Palestine since the 1880s.
All resistance to Zionism and to the State of Israel is completely legitimate as decent human beings whether Jewish or non-Jewish must admit.
Joachim Martillo
Other Joe, attempting to connect modern Jews with ancient Judeans is completely delusional.
Palestinian
@Shlomo,I “intentionally ” didnt say massacres but incidents ,because I didnt hear witnesses from the Palestinian side.But I read that Jews protested in Tel Aviv “the wall is ours” ,you dont provoke people then self-victimize yourself .I dont know how those “incidents” support the establishment of a national home for the Jews in Palestine ,who gave his “majesty” the right to donate our land to thieves ?Why those Jewish angels immigrated to Palestine ?to spread peace and love ?what nation would tolerate a bunch of thieves to invade their land planning to establish their exclusive state with the help of their occupier (England)?The thief is peacefully camping in your backyard preparing for the right time ….dont forget to feed him !Can you deny the Jewish money , media, lobbies and deception ?
AYLA
I’m back, despite myself.
@Annie–hi. I don’t think it sounds hysterical, but I think that others do, or maybe it’s more accurate to say they just tune us out because they think we’re being really hyperbolic in all our comparisons evoke. I personally find it counter-productive, and David G gave a really good response about that, though in relation to another label. I just think we need to talk about how to move forward, and that to motivate more people to believe that things have come to a head here, and must change for all of our sake, I don’t think your rhetorical tactic works. Better to site cases that make it human than to call it this or that. I think.
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@Palestinian–I posted my ‘signing off’ comment’ before reading your response. I dont’ feel in a corner here. I feel tired. My saying that I want to fight for your right to return even if it means that I have to leave isn’t enough for you; you want me to say that all Jews here have to leave. I don’t feel that way. More importantly: I feel that your sense of justice is self-defeatist and a conversation stopper in any serious policy rooms. Like I said before, I will continue to fight for your rights, even though I feel that what you want would hurt humans I care about and would be unjust.
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@Joachim–what documents from 1880 are you referring to? Link, please. should be interesting…
AYLA
@palestinian–also, per your most recent comment to shlomo, propaganda is free. It’s operating at *least* equally in the arab world. You yourself cited the Elders of Zion on another thread. You have yet to tell me that you know this is propaganda.
the other joe
@Joachim “…and atonement for at least the last 2 centuries of Jewish crimes against non-Jews both in Europe..”
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Oh really, which crimes would they be, exactly? And who is going to be atoning to the Jews for various injustices against them? Or are you saying that those are all made up?
Joachim Martillo
Vladimir Dubnow is one of the most bloodthirsty. As I remember, he discussed destroying Palestinians by military might in 1882. But he was hardly alone. I will look up references.
Most of the people that translate into English or Hebrew are fairly selective. One must go to the original texts at research libraries to find out what the Zionist leadership was really saying.
I could not find Juedischer Volkssozialismus online in German, Hebrew or English even though it is one of the fundamental texts of socialist Zionism.
Of course, Herzl’s somewhat later comments on removing Palestinians are available, and the Maccobean translates some of the material in Yiddish while di Frayhait sometimes includes such Zionist material in order to attack it.
Joachim Martillo
It was proverbial among Jewish intellectuals of the 19th century that Jews were out of control and that their behavior had to be reformed.
Here is some of the crap in which Jews were far too involved from the Napoleonic Wars through the 30s.
Profiteering, kidnapping, smuggling, cheating customers, exploiting peasants, financial fraud, economic manipulation leading to crashes, white slaving, drug dealing, sabotage, targeted assassination, mass murder, ethnic cleansing, subversion, sedition, revolutionary violence, war incitement, Dolschstoss of the German war effort during WW1 (new evidence suggests that the German rightwing accusation was not delusional).
Palestinian
Ayla,I dont care if your signed off before or after I posted my comment.You want justice fight for the return of the Palestinians to their homes and lands in every single spot in Palestine,so if Jewish settlers live in a Palestinian house in West Jerusalem ,they have to look for somewhere else to live unless they manage (somehow) to convince the rightful Palestinian owners to accept compensation.Your propaganda has cost you billions of dollars so far.In the Western world propaganda needs money ,even here you need money ,maybe less but you need it.
Shlomo Krol
Ayla, I see no reason to continue the argument with Palestinian and Joahim Martillo. You will not convince them in anything and if others watch this thread, for them their bigotry would be self explanatory. Shabbat shalom.
Joachim Martillo
Racist Jews do not permit the facts to interfere with their worldview.
the other joe
@Joachim, no, I won’t let racism go unchallenged. I am not a Jew and I am a friend of Palestine, but you are an anti-Semite.
the other joe
To pretend that Jews have more to apologise for the last two centuries than those who have led pogroms against the Jews is a grotesque mischaracterisation of 200 years of European history.
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Israel is undoubtedly bad for many Palestinians. But that is not an excuse for dragging up lies about Jews. Go feck yourself.
Joachim Martillo
There were a lot of reasons for non-Jews to be angry and afraid of Jews in the middle to late nineteenth century and in the 30s just as now.
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One found the equivalent of Sheldon Adelson in 19th century Germany and Austria.
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Adelson and his corrupt Zionist social network of hyperwealthy Jews have too much influence on our political process and routinely engage in criminal seditious conspiracy and criminal conspiracy against rights.
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I am a Harvard and Yale trained expert in modern Eastern European and Jewish historical political economics. I am not out of the mainstream as anyone that has read Stanislavski, Slezkine, Arno Mayer, Stern, Sand, Harshav, Lindemann, et al. would be aware.
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The facts simply do not correspond with common misconceptions and misperceptions of Jewish history.
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In the carefully cultivated pro-Semitic American cultural environment, one can be critical of the last 100 years of German, Polish, or Russian behavior, but one may not be critical of Jews.
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There is something seriously wrong with this situation. Because it has gotten to the point of posing a threat to the USA, pro-Semitic bigots have to be slapped down hard.
Joachim Martillo
BTW the scholarly consensus on Russian pogroms today treats most common American beliefs about the pogrom as a result of Jewish anti-Czarist propaganda and not as a result of the fact.
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Those of us that have carefully examined the record (like me) find that Jews made pogroms on Jews or on non-Jews at least as much as non-Jews made pogroms on Jews.
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One Jew on Jew pogrom was particularly bloody, and in all cases the Czarist government stopped pogroms as fast as it could and with overwhelming force if only because it considered such violence to be a threat.
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Lindemann and Stanislawski have both published extensively on Jewish pogrom propaganda.
the other joe
@Joachim:
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“There were a lot of blah blah non-Jews to be angry and blather blather blah blah. Adelson and blah hyperwealthy Jews blather blather blather blah. I am a Harvard and Yale trained tosspot blah blather blah blah. The facts simply blather blather blah blah. In the carefully cultivated yawn blah blah blather. There is something seriously wrong with this situation. Because it has gotten to the point of posing a threat to the USA, blahdiblahdiblah.”
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You know what I said before – well go and do it with a rusty farmyard implement.
the other joe
Yeah, whatever. Folks, please do not mistake this fool for anything that resembles someone on my team.
caden
I’ve seen plenty of people banned on this site. But Martillo, who is a neo-nazi, gets clear sailing and actually seems to be quite the fan of yours Mya
Adam
Herr Martillo– Not many anti-Semites admit to being one– but you are a classic example. I’m responding only because you are a useful case study. Your anti-Semitism is characterized less by the details of your posts– though the content of them is repellent– but by your absolute obsession with Jews. Jews are the metaphysical center of your universe. Your obsession with Jews is no different from the way American racists are obsessed with African Americans. You also provide a useful reminder that anti-Semitism and ant-Zionism are two sides of the same coin.
Cortez
Shlomo:
Zionism was a national liberation movement and it’s natural for a national liberation movements to emphasize the ethnic and cultural dimension of its struggle.
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Yes but from the perspective of Ashekenazi Jews who had customs, culture and language that developed from Eastern Europe. This not a bad thing…it is what I was familiar with growing up. But to go to Levant and to say that these ethnic and cultural dimension is the “Judaism” personified and to reject indigenous Israelites (modern day Palestinian Arab Muslims) and to kick them out without any hope of a return was incomprehensible. .
“The “Jewish state” concept of historical Zionism should be understood in this context. Which doesn’t necessarily mean that a state or a society established as a result of national liberation cannot be inclusive and egalitarian.”
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But it can’t be…because historical Zionism did not and could not reconcile itself with the facts on the ground. You can’t have an egalitarian society where you’ve already determined that other people should have less rights or not the “chosen” ones from the outset because of their religious background.
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Zionists, by the way, when they declared their goal, the Jewish state, never meant that this state should be Jewish only. They always declared that non-Jews in Israel must have equal rights. The fact, that it didn’t fully succeed, is not the result of some flaws immanent to national liberation in general or to Zionism in particular, but rather of complex situation of conflict. Saying this, I’m not trying to find excuses or to defend what is indefensible, but just to put the things into perspective. Because what you are saying about racist disregard of Palestinians and denial of their rights by Zionists is simplistic and simply wrong.
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How is it wrong? For many years Zionists claimed that Palestinian Arabs came from neighboring countries (See the Jewish Virtual Library) and treated them as interlopers when DNA test , historical evidence and archaeological evidence definitely proved that Palestinian Arabs are native to the Levant (like much of the surrounding groups who were Arabized and turned Muslim). For me that is scary to see a movement propagate a lie and myth for so long and is still believed to this very day.
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Although Ben Gurion at one point admitted that he thought that the Arabs there would the descendants of a Jews and even sent Moshe to convert some Bedouins, the laws and system applied afterwards and statements from other Zionist show a disturbing level of open disgust for Palestinian Arabs.
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Its even more appalling when many Arab Jews, especially Yemeni Jews, were forced to abandoned their cultures while Ashekenazi Jews superimposed their culture over everyone else under the banner of Zionism when it simply was not factually. It took me a while to realize that latkes did not come from the Middle East.
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I wish the people who propagated Zionism were honest with its tenets and history. I would love to see a real Jewish-Semetic-Arab state in the Middle East that embraced all people in the southern Levant, instead of what we have now.
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My dialog here with Palestinian and comments of some other posters on this thread can serve a good example, that the things were and are more complex, than you present them: I explicitly recognize the rights of the Palestinians, while he rejects the rights of Jews, using distortion of history and inflammatory rhetorics. Since he represents the views and mindset of not insignificant part of the Palestinian and Arab society, it’s no wonder, that many Israelis believe (I don’t share this opinion) that national liberation did not fully achieve its goal of national self determination, that there is still an existential threat and therefore the concept of Jewish state is still important.
Palestinian,
The killings and robbings began with Palestinian anti-Jewish massacres of 1920, 1921, 1929 and then 1936-1938. If your goal is normal life and liberation of your people, your demagoguery, distortion of history, denial of rights of others, inflammatory rhetorics and self-righteousness work the opposite way.
caden
Adam, believe it or not his bitch of a wife is just as bad
Joachim Martillo
Jews have been lying for decades about Palestine and Palestinians. There is no reason to be so shocked or indignant when someone points out the growing scholarly consensus that Jews have been lying for decades about pogroms in the Czarist Empire.
Cortez
Joachim: I think it’s totally wrong to say Jews have been lying for decades when many have no clue about about the history and nuances of the Israel’s founding. The history of the programs has been proven to be true.
Adam
@martillo: I wasn’t educated at Harvard, but I did teach there for four years, and I’ve read the historians you refer to–Lindemann and Stanislawski. You’ve completely fabricated the claims you attribute to them. The notion that the pogroms were the “result of Jewish anti-czarist propaganda” is a figment of your demented anti-Semitic mind and can be found nowhere in the writings of the historians you cite.
AYLA
a quick google search turned up that Mondoweiss devoted an entire blog post in 2007 to why he wasn’t going to ban @Martillo from his site. His reasoning had only to do with free speech and that he felt that the Jewish People were in a strong enough position today not to make it dangerous to allow this speech. So apparently this is Martillo’s full-time role in life. Poor guy–that’s a lot of hate to carry around and engage in all the time based on a lot of hate propaganda. If @972 also chooses not to ban him (though others have been banned for less), the best thing to do is to ignore him. I’ll give him credit for one thing: At least he uses his real name.
caden
Ayla, Annie is also out of mondoweiss. But Martillo takes the cake. And your right, I’ve seen people banned here for a lot less. Usually right wing Zionists. So, evidently Mya is OK with Martillo which says something about her.
caden
For example if I said he was a total scumbag and his wife is a cunt I’d be threatened with banning.
Joachim Martillo
Here is Lindemann’s discussion of the Kishinev pogrom.
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http://books.google.com/books?id=NagdhSUgB9oC&pg=PA291&lpg=PA291&dq=pogroms+esau's+tears+lindemann&source=bl&ots=BOK1S-NIPB&sig=CY8hdHuHdoHyZxnOoo1oreGc6v4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=4x2ST5O6I4Se6AHJgtyYBA&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
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He is telling us that there is a tremendous amount of dishonesty in Jewish claims about the pogroms.
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We had a saying at Harvard in Jewish studies back in the 70s.
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Many the lie that Jews live by.
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As I remember, Jabotinsky was in the area of the Kishinev pogrom when it happened. It does not seem to have merited any mention in his journal.
max
Jabotinsky joined the Zionist movement and established the Jewish Self-Defense Organization as a result of the Kishinev pogrom.
There’s no known cure for antisemitism, but why would 972 provide a platform to spread this hatred ?
Joachim Martillo
Jabotinsky was an opportunist. Even if he did not find the Kishinev pogrom significant at the time, he would certainly have used it later if the propaganda chased out the truth.
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Anyway, I have not researched Jabotinsky and the Kishenev pogrom. Columbia Professor Stanislawski did.
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The discussion can be found in Zionism and the Fin de Siecle.
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I have to add that Max, Cortez, Adam, and Ayla are precisely the sort of bigots that get freaked when someone carefully researches what really happened in 47-8 and publishes evidence of carefully planned ethnic cleansing by the Zionists.
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Such bigots assume that Jews are ethically superior to the rest of us..
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These 4 should be banned from this site because they wish to suppress the discussion of Jewish propaganda over the last 200 years.
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Historic and current Jewish propaganda plays a major role in the conflict over Palestine.
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It is ridiculous that I can have a rational discussion of the subject with Simcha Epstein, the eminent historian for French Jewry and director of the Sasson Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism, but it is not possible in this forum.
caden
Joachim, we’re not superior to anybody except you. But then again that cock roach I see on the window sill is superior to you, not to mention your cunt of a wife.
Joachim Martillo
I should have added Caden to the list of people that should be banned.
I have to note that unlike the Zioapologists, who have neither facts nor rational arguments to back their positions, I am never rude.
Adam
This thread began with an editorial accusing Israeli leaders of manipulating the Holocaust for the purposes of political propaganda, of whipping up a “self-righteous” nationalism by exploiting feelings of “victimhood.” So don’t be so surprised when a certifiable anti-Semite makes similar claims. Martillo, like May G, is also arguing that Jews have exploited their victimhood for propagandistic purposes. I would hope–though I know it won’t happen– that May G. and her fellow travelers will use Martillo’s posts as on occasion to examine why her arguments share a core similarity with Martillo’s classic anti-Semitic discourse.
annie
ayla, i’m not into hyperbolic speech in general no matter who does it, yet i’m driven to be honest about my observations. i’m a tad confused about your ptv. initially i interpreted your reluctance or warning or advice or however one might charactarize your positioning wrt my use of the term ethnic cleansing to a uncomfortableness which you claimed was condescending. then you said you didn’t agree with the term because you thought it was inaccurate. now you’re back to saying you “find it counter-productive” and we should move forward. i am just curious, do you or do you not think there’s still a process of ethnic cleansing going on? based on the common definition of ethnic cleansing which i have already quoted from wiki? either you think it is inaccurate or not. this was not really a topic i came here to discuss yet your aversion to the term seems a tad odd unless you do not believe there is a process to remove palestinians from certain territories and replace them with jewish settlers. it’s not like the documentation of demolitions of palestinian homes is not ongoing. it happenes all the time yet certain outposts which have been deeemed illegal even by the goi seem to avoid the same fate. this is not really controversial. i fail to see how we an ‘move forward’ without acknowledging the overall agenda here. or are you just more comfortable with zionist framing. there’s no reason to allow any side to own the words we use. let truth be the deciding/guiding factor. peace/justice/truth, this is the way forward if you are truly sincere when you say “we need to talk about how to move forward”. the truth will set you free.
caden
I understand Adolph Eichmann was a polite guy. Relative of yours?
AYLA
@Caden–I’m not anti-Mondoweiss, nor am I anti-@Annie. I’m just saying that if Mondoweiss devoted a blog to his consideration about why not to ban Martillo, we know we’ve got a hot one.
Joachim Martillo
Phil Weiss has problems in coming to terms with the fact that practically everything he “knows” about Eastern European ethnic Ashkenazi history is false.
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Here is a particularly big lie from Jewish historiography evidenced by two conflicting Jewish sources on the Chmielnicki Rebellion.
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Lucy S. Dawidowicz describes the Chmielnicki Rebellion in The Golden Tradition, Jewish Life and Thought in Eastern Europe on p. 10.
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>>The Ukraine had come under Polish rule in 1569 and had been subjected to a harsh policy of Polonization and Catholicization: the Eastern Orthodox Church was suppressed and the Ukrainian peasants enserfed to the Polish nobility. The rise of towns on the steppe where Cossack horsemen once rode wild horses and the increasingly powerful economic role of urban Jews mediating between the Polish nobility and the Ukrainian peasants compounded the political and religiocultural tensions. Bogdan Chmielnitsky (1593-1657), hetman of Zaporogian Cossacks, led a Cossak uprising to liberate the Ukraine from Poland. Chmielnitsky agitated against Poles and Jews: “You know the wrongs done us by the Poles and Yids, their leaseholders and beloved factors, the oppressions, the evil deeds and the impoverishment, you know and you remember.”
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>>Chmielnitsky did not succeed in liberating the Ukraine, but in the subsequent decade of war and violence, interrupted only by brief intervals of negotiations among the Poles, Russians, Swedes, and Turks, the Cossacks with their murderous bands of peasants, called Haidamaks, slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Jews, sacking and destroying hundreds of Jewish communities. That was the beginning of a series of blood-drenched encounters between Jews and Ukrainians that were to endure in Jewish historic memory. About one-tenth of the Jewish population remained in the Polish Ukraine, Volhynia, and Podolia. The other survivors emigrated into Lithuania, Poland proper, and to the Western European countries. In 1654, Chmielnitsky accepted Moscow’s protection, and finally in 1667, the Truce of Andrusovo split the Ukraine, with Kiev, its cultural center, and the left bank of the Dnieper going to Russia, and the right bank remaining with Poland.<>This Yiddish takeover of the wild and lawless Ukraine’s economy could be expected to have involved much exploitation and corrupt abuse of monopoly. Jews tried hard to keep such businesses as the collection of customs dues and taxes to themselves. Surviving customs records from the 1580s are written in a mixture of Yiddish and Hebrew. The historian Shimon Dubnow quotes a resolution passed by the Jewish Lithuanian Council, the Vaad Medina Litoh, ruling body of the Jewish estate: “We have openly seen the great danger deriving from the operation of customs in Gentile hands; for the customs to be in Jewish hands is a pivot on which everything turns, since thereby Jews may exert control.”
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>>…
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>>The alliance between ruthless Polish nobles and insecure Yiddish frontiersmen proved dangerous and destructive. The Jews now held a position that nothing in their background or religious law had properly prepared them for. They had been placed in authority over another people, of another social order, another culture and another religion, a people whom the magnates, the Jews’ masters, regarded as racially inferior and fair game for callous exploitation. Tragically, shaking off the restraining influence of wiser counsels of the West, the repeated warnings of the rabbis of metropolitan Cracow, Posen and Lublin, the Yiddish businessmen who flocked to the colony came to regard the peasantry in a similar light.<<
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In some histories of the Chmielnicki Rebellion, Chmielnicki offered ordinary Jews safe passage out of cities about to be attacked, but they rejected it under the influence of a religious elite co-opted by the wealthy merchants allied with the Polish gentry. In any case, Dawidowicz makes ridiculous claims about Jewish casualties, which in the soundest estimates probably number between 10-20,000. (Some scholars – usually Ukrainian – put the number as low as 4,000.)
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Anyway, note that the Kriwaczek quote refers to a political economic conspiracy to keep Jews in control of customs.
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In other words Jewish conspiracy in politics and business are nothing new, but the observation must be qualified.
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Politics and business in Eastern Europe and the territory of the former Czarist Empire are very conspiratorial in general. Such conspiracies are not specifically Jewish, but as Lenin noted, ethnic Ashkenazim are very good at them.
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The Polish Socialist Party has been called the 70 year conspiracy to create an independent Polish state.
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Ethnic Ashkenazim brought this conspiracy culture to the USA from historic Poland.
caden
Mya, is Martillo your kind of guy, or isn’t he.
BTW, The fact that Phil Weiss didn’t ban this asshole isn’t a good indication. Phil is somebody who would take the side of Stella Golsschlag, ” The Jew Hunter”
caden
Probably the only guy who has the Horst Wessel song has his ring tone
Y.
The Other Joe writes:
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“Yeah, whatever. Folks, please do not mistake this fool for anything that resembles someone on my team.”
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Of course Joachim is someone on your team! His arguments, for what it’s worth, are based on far-Left ‘sources’, aired on far-Left blogs and are merely a step or two removed from those used by Mya and co.
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It’s not such a far stretch from deriding Holocaust Day as ‘victimhood’ to thinking the same way about the Czarist pogroms (Lindermann doesn’t go as far as Joachim, but he does spend an inordinate amount of pages on how it was supposedly exaggerated ignoring all the more likely reasons and explanations, and of course, his reasons are exactly to remove the ‘victimhood feeling’), and not so far to go from ‘Israeli Lobby’ style thinking to ‘earlier Jewish conspiracies’. Sand’s ‘argument’ (which is laughable to anyone who can read) immediately translates to Joachim’s “attempting to connect modern Jews with ancient Judeans is completely delusional” and so on.
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Enjoy looking in the mirror, guys (and gals).
Joachim Martillo
The Book of Esther refers to massive adoption of Judaic ritual and practice in imperial Persian Mesopotamia long before the Greco-Roman period.
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There is more than enough evidence that such assimilation and acculturation continued and increased throughout the Hellenistic and Roman Imperial.
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In the face of such data it is hard to see how any rational person can call Sand’s argument laughable..
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Seth Schwartz of the JTS puts the situation in perspective when he points out
1) that Judaism was shattered in Palestine after the Bar Kochba Rebellion and
2) that Judaism was reconstructed among Judaic Diaspora population that had no ancestral connection to Palestine.
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The Judean population itself seems to have transitioned to paganism, or to forms of Judaic Christianity, and finally to Islam.
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A reasonable person must conclude that Zionist ideology, basing itself on a connection, which is supposed to exist between modern Jews and Palestine but which is purely mythological, is so extreme that it is psychotic.
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Until we Americans start treating Zionism as dangerously radical and begin to put Zionists into jail for material support of Zionist terrorism, we Americans have no right to call any political ideology extreme, and people outside the USA can reasonably conclude that our political system is enthralled by Zionist overlords.
Y.
Joachim, I’m not interested in debating with you. I could explain why you’re talking nonsense, but first it’s useless with your type, and secondly, for all your fury, you are being objectively ‘pro-Jewish’ by taking the far Left’s arguments to their logical conclusion.
caden
Y, What’s actually more interesting is that Mya and the rest of the 972 crew thinks that this guy is OK. Otherwise they would have deleted his mein kamph comments and banned him. That’s actually more disturbing then a single scumbag.
Joachim Martillo
If the Ziobigots that infest this blog entry had actually seriously paid attention to what I wrote, they would realize that I actually attacked the first two paragraphs of this blog entry and implicitly am suggesting that Guarnieri at least take a look at some of the writings of Stanislawski and Lindemann before babbling about rampant anti-Semitism in E. Europe.
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The false memories of Jews both right and left, Zionist and anti-Zionist, simply don’t correspond to the facts.
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In fact, there have been some careful demographic studies that show that E. European ethnic Ashkenazi immigrants to the US were least likely to come from areas where anti-Semitism was supposed to be most prevalent.
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If people like Guarnieri seriously studied Eastern European ethnic Ashkenazi history and did not depend so much on their knowledge of pop false Jewish history, their analysis might be enriched.
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Lately I have been intrigued how much Zionist defamation of Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims looks like the Yiddish Jewish defamation of Poles and Russians.
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Jews developed a lot of the techniques used so effectively by Zionists long before Zionism was an issue.
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http://www.amazon.com/Bieganski-Stereotype-Polish-Jewish-Relations-American/dp/1936235153/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335028606&sr=1-1
Aaron the Fascist Troll
My two cents: I haven’t seen anything posted by Joachim Martillo that should be banned from this thread. The article was about self-righteous Zionist propaganda. A discussion of self-righteous (non-Zionist) Jewish propaganda is completely relevant to the topic.
Anti-Semitism per se isn’t a good reason to ban someone. An anti-Semite may make valid, relevant, interesting arguments just like anyone else. Since I don’t know anything about Jewish history, my main question is whether JM’s comments are factually correct.
I admit that I tend more towards free speech here because one +972 contributor has threatened to ban me as well, for being, in his words, a racist, a fascist, and a troll. So I have a personal interest in free speech. “First they came for the anti-Semites….”
Y.
Aaron,
Now, I don’t want that guy banned either – for one thing, he’s a very useful mirror to some.
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You are too nice. If this continues, I’ll have to revoke your troll certificate!
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I (and AFAICT, others here) just don’t take him seriously enough to bother. If you OTOH have any questions, just ask them directly and I’m sure people will be happy to answer you.
Aaron the Fascist Troll
Re the “Bieganski” stereotype cited by JM above, some have seen the movie “Borat” as another in the long line of Jewish “dumb Pollack” jokes. I’m probably the only person here who hasn’t seen the movie, so I can’t say.
I don’t see much similarity between Jewish images of Arabs and of Poles/Russians, though. Is there really such an Israeli image of Arabs? That’s not the image I’ve come across. I also wonder how specific that process is to Jews: Wouldn’t we expect to see the same kinds of images and stereotypes among any of the “Mercurian” peoples looking at their “Apollonian” neighbors? For instance, how did Armenians view Turks in the 19th century?
Joachim Martillo
The brutish animalistic descriptions of Poles seems to transfer directly to Palestinians and Arabs.
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Zionist colonists often don’t seem to have distinguished much between muzhiks and fellahs.
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Yet there does seem to be another source for Zionist anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and anti-Muslim.
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Many Zionists like A.D. Gordon were steeped in Russian literature and Russian thinking about Czarist expansion into Muslim territories.
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Many Zionists seem to absorbed Czarist anti-Turkic, anti-Tatar, and anti-Muslim ideology.
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Many Jews or former Jews like Chwolson seem to have been involved in the creation of Czarist imperialist academic literature, but to tell the truth Chwolson’s work looks more like work for hire than as anything based in genuine conviction.
Aaron the Fascist Troll
JM, Are you distinguishing between Israeli Ashkenazi and Mizrahi images of Arabs, or are you lumping both together? How do the Ashkenazi and Mizrahi images of Arabs differ? You’re apparently predicting that Ashkenazi images Arabs would have more resemblance to Jewish images of Poles and Russians than would Mizrahi images of Arabs. Do they?
My impression is that Mizrahim are far more anti-Arab than are Ashkenazim, and that they’ve been anti-Arab (at least mildly so) even before coming to Israel. On the other hand, I don’t think I’ve come across any anti-Persian sentiment from Iranian Jews. I could suggest one explanation, but it would be “racist”: that negative stereotypes partly reflect objective reality (including negative stereotypes of Jews, of course).