The Hitler Test

I think we read different accounts of what Mr. Brzezinski said Mr. Smith.

http://www.salon.com/2012/01/20/zbig_israelis_bought_influence_and_outmaneuvered_obama/

No Jules: it’s two words spoken in a particular order that is an anti-Semetic slur, but trust a jackass like you to be oblivious to that.

Mr. Smith–
Your reference to my piece on The Atlantic about the CAP affair [http://bit.ly/wxdZvY ]would leave the naive reader under the impression that in the piece I defended the use of the term ‘Israel firster’. That is in fact not the case. Should your conscience compel you to add a clarification to your piece, I wouldn’t object.
Thank you,
Robert Wright

“For Wright and so many others, anti-Semitism now seems to fall into a special category of prejudice.”

I have to say that I agree that anti-Semitism falls into a special category of prejudice. Unfortunately, it seems like anti-Semitism is tolerated in polite society in ways that other prejudices are not.

For some reason the commenters have forgotten the dual issue,which was so prevalent during the years of 30′s and 40′s!

These were the years, I was growing up. The current voices of hate for our President, has only brought this back! I can understand a less knowledgable person capitalizing! I would suggest that those so virulent, relative to our President temper their tone, as to eliminate the fuel, they are providing!

This doesn’t surprise me because BOTH LIBerals and LIBetarians are doing this!

And when I as a conservative Jew, point this out; I’m told to GET OVER IT!

I’m also told that I’m not a TRUE American. And that I am a RACE and not a RELIGION!

This is Antisemitism. And I will NOT get over it, or PUT UP WITH IT!

Jules, I read the same as Mr. Smith read via the link you so friendly provided. I’l give the quote more extensively here, in order for you to be able to tell us what the difference is between what Lee Smith and I read, and what you read.

“In a telephone interview from his office at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., Brzezinski has both praise and criticism for the president: “He was an improvement by a very large score over his predecessor, but he could have been better.” He thinks the Obama administration ‘should have stuck to its guns in promoting a fair settlement’ in the Middle East. A longtime foe of Israel’s partisans in the United States, he says the Obama team ‘fumbled by getting outmaneuvered by the Israelis.’ Then he gets blunter: ‘Domestic politics interceded: The Israelis have a lot of influence with Congress, and in some cases they are able to buy influence.’

I clearly read “Israelis” twice and there is no reason to assume that the earlier “Israel’s partisans in the United States” qualifies the former term. That would really stretch the limits of grammar and syntax.
Now we all assume that quotation marks denote an exact repetition of what was said. Even so, I keep an open mind to the possibility that Jordan Michael Smith, the Salon article’s author, used a very inauspicious shorthand for what Mr. Brzezinski actually said. It was, after all, a telephone interview and not every reporter uses ‘tape’.
Too often I have to witness (and protest!) this confounding of “Jew” and “Israeli.”
Or could it be that you, Jules, suffer from the confusion this causes, so that now you use the same inauspiciously confounded meaning so fitting your critique?

I must agree with David against Lee Smith.
I can see no anti-semitism in the terms “neocon warmongers” and “likudnik” in, of or by themselves.

Yours,
VHJM

Re: Zbig, scratch a Pole….

So what do we do? All of this talk about what is happening and no suggestions about action. I commend you and anyone else who brings this to light but we need to do something if the words “never again” are to ring true.

To understand Brzinski’s antisemitism you have to look at his track record of “dissent,” rather than just one incident. He’s had a long stream of actions and deeds that seem to show an obsession with Israel and Jewish control.

One comment of his that went largely ignored was after the wikileaks memos were dumped. One curious result of these frank memos coming to light was that Israel came off looking pretty good; namely, there were none of the smoking guns that Israel-critics assured us would be there, and instead much of the duplicity of Israel’s foes was exposed.

Once these documents came to light, Brzinski made a rather strange comment. He said something to the effect of “the release of the wikileaks documents may likely be controlled by a foreign government looking to promulgate self-serving propaganda.”

That comment blew me away at the time, and yet it was apparently never followed up on.

Combine Brzinski’s paranoia and mistrust of Jews with his lobbying for certain Eastern European groups (as mentioned by a commenter above) and a certain kind of picture emerges.

USA had never had so many failures as it did during time when Mr. Brzezinski was “adviser” to President Carter. Iran, Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (and consequently Bin laden and Al-Qaida), Nicaragua, Angola, Ethiopia… just few of his “great” advises. So, if he is looking for people who do the most harm to USA he should at the mirror.

Ultimately, Jew-hatred is a refutation of Enlightenment ideals and, as such, is a refutation of Modernity.
Classic anti-semetic tropes, like all memes, are persistent, virulent and difficult to dislodge once introduced.

I see we have the usual troll patrol of bigoted no brainers. Incisive as always. Two dimensional thinking at its very peak best.

Of course, Lee Smith has refuted what is actually wrong about this statement:

“The Israelis have a lot of influence with Congress, and in some cases they are able to buy influence”?

Is he actually denying this is not true? What planet is he on?

Hank Essay, your point is direct, and what is more, useful and honest argument, unadorned and absent of baroque stutters and unthinking excuse, it is more directly to the point and appreciated.

Bill you have no evidence upon which to draw that wild and frivolous conclusion. None.

No one called Zbiggy out for what he said for one simple reason. Everyone in Washington, including you know that it’s true. Tom Friedman said the same thing in his NYT Column, ‘Congress is bought and sold by the Israel lobby.’

Does anyone in their right mind believe that Netanyahu received 29 standing ovations from Congress because they love him or Israel, although indeed some of them do, but I would suggest the majority are more akin to the behavior of what one “pro-Israel” member told Morton Kondracke at TNR in August, 1989, that it was not of love for Israel that there is no debate over US aid, but that you don’t want to wake up the next morning and find that your opponent has a $500,000 war chest to run against you.’

This debate, except at its fringes, has nothing to do with antisemitism so please leave Hitler images out of it or you’ll end up looking ridiculous.

AIPAC is the gadfly in the process and running of judicious, just, and even handed foreign policies that are good for all Americans.

Civility is fragile. 9/11 unleashed the dark animal fears and hatred toward “others”. Muslim terrorists are winning by reducing civilized society to their level, making latent, hidden anti-Semitism acceptable again. Liberals gladly support any totalitarian ideology. They loved Stalin and Mao, now they are happy to go along with Islamists. Bush helped Osama by pandering to Islam, “Religion of Peace”. Our current president made this animal hatred the cornerstone of his foreign policy, blaming Israel (and Jews, of course) for all the evil in the world.

pkb

Exactly, and in the absence of hard evidence and a thoroughgoing official or journalistic investigation into AIPAC lobbying (one which, for instance, compares AIPAC’s Washington’s activities with those of other lobbies, whether Arab, Armenian or Cuban to determine if there is anything unusual about AIPACs practices) all we have is rumour, insinuation and innuendo. I for one believe a charge as serious and potentially damaging to the reputation of Israel and American Jews as “they bought congress” (an expression that taps into centuries of anti-semitic fantasies about jewish money and jewish “cabals”) should be shored up by FACTS. What Friedman, Walt and Mearsheimer have done is put out a theory whose credibility rests almost entirely on the biases and prejudices of the ill-informed public. AIPAC/Likud must be guilty because Obama isn’t twisting Israel’s arms, goes the theory. A crass simplification of the complex set of relationships and calculations behind policy in Israel and the US. Just because standards of academic writing are so abysmally low today doesn’t mean we throw all norms of evidence out the window. I strongly suspect the popularity of this accusation is entirely due to the willingness of people to find whatever explanation fits their particular set of anti-Jewish or anti-Israel prejudices, not its empirical validity.

I watched a young American woman run down by an Israeli bulldozer. For just standing there, in protest, in front of it.

I like your Israel. I do not like your Zionists zealots. They are so unlike your Israel.

Look in the mirror. Closely.

PACs are the problem all over the place. They’re in political campaigns in how business works in government everywhere you turn there is a PAC sapping true democracy away and making it a mockery in every conceivable way each and every single day.

They’ve got to go.

I don’t know how much financial support Obama is getting from Jewish voters these days, but it is public knowledge that Sheldon Adelson and his wife have given at least $10 million to the Super Pac supporting Newt Gingrich. One might conclude that Mr. Adelson will have more influence in a Gingrich administration than virtually any other voter in the country. If Gingrich doesn’t win on Tuesday, my guess is that Adelson will be sending millions Romney’s way. If you can’t be the King or the President, it is good to at least be a billionaire.

The goodwill that Israel enjoyed in years past in the US and some other countries is rapidly being eroded by the settler movement and by actions of hard right influential American Jews such as Adelson. Read the story about the Migron West Bank settlement here:

http://www.npr.org/2012/01/28/146024083/israeli-outpost-pits-courts-vs-government

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/27/10249298-gingrich-funder-isnt-trying-to-buy-the-presidency-aide-says Reading this article on Tablet followed by this article on MSNBC will make one’s head spin and will make many question whether we are all living on the same planet. We have a leading presidential candidate being given 10 million dollars by an American who said that he’s ashamed to have served in the US military and not the Israeli. And according to Mr. Smith quoting him accurately (even without interpreting the quote to its logical conclusion) is anti-Semitic. Hmmm

To be fair here.
If Soros and his family gave Obama $10 million that would be legal too. And nobody would say Soros was “buying” the Presidency. Let’s just keep it real here.

“Mr. Smith is an anti-Arab bigot and a garden variety neoconservative in my most humble opinion.”

The pro Hezbollah Jew hater Jules calls Lee
Smith a bigot; that’s rich.

Monk,
I forgot to say that this site is pretty good for researching the questions you ask about other groups as well. When the page loads, re-click on the interest groups tab and it will take you to the page where the groups are listed. Also at the bottom of that initial page is a link to opensecrets.org..another good site.

bpete 1969, I agree precisely with what you are saying.

how can you possibly deny the existence of the powerful jewish lobby in congress…just look at the foreign aid…one of the smallest countries in the world with one of the smallest populations in the world gets the most foreign aid…please how stupid do you think we are…

Now the article becomes disappointing: “How do the Jews who run this translation organization promote Islamophobia, according to CAP? By translating the opinions of those who want to persecute and kill Jews.”

You do understand they meant (of course I have no idea whether it’s true or false, but this is what they meant): …. “translating __ONLY THE___ opinions of those who want to persecute and kill…”

Simple intentional logic fails like this destroy credibility.

And stop bringing up Hitler, he’s dead and if you stopped mentioning him maybe everyone else would.

Robert…Have you been asleep for the past decade? Soros is, and has been, one of the great bogeymen of the right for a long time.

Yes, does try and influence the administration and congress, but so does “BigPharma”, the agribusiness lobbies, the NRA, the American Petroleum Institute, the Catholic Church, etc. That is what they do. Unfortunately, as a country, we have managed to evolve to the point that these “bribes” are now like the center of an onion, hidden behind so many layers of nice names, labyrinthium money paths, etc. that an American public that firmly believes in the dictum that if it can’t be put on a bumper sticker, it’s not worth the effort is not prone to follow the influence/money.

Robert,
As you have shown, there is no discussion on the subject. Your declarations while passionate show you don’t have a clue. I suggest you do some serious study yourself and I would suggest starting with the Black Book of Communism. It’s available on line for you to read. From there I suggest you read something based on fact compiled from the archives of various countries that were involved in the mass extermination of not only Jews, but Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Gypsies, Christians, Homosexuals, the disabled and handicapped (all groups that included Jews in their ranks). Verifiable numbers based on records and census data taken over the years during and immediately after WWII up until the time the Communist Empire fell.
In the meantime, refrain from the Pavlov response of hitting the red button marked anti-semite until you know who you’re talking to and what you’re talking about. Your knee jerk reaction is quite sickening.

Jules,
I’ll save you some time and give you the wiki description:
The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression is a book authored by several European academics and edited by Stéphane Courtois, which describes a history of repressions, both political and civilian, by Communist states, including genocides, extrajudicial executions, deportations, and artificial famines. The book was originally published in 1997 in France under the title Le Livre noir du communisme: Crimes, terreur, répression by Éditions Robert Laffont. In the United States it is published by Harvard University Press.

Your Roy Cohn analogy is crap. So to answer your question, no, I don’t think you’ve grown up.

Shalom, I agree on your first point but your conclusion stinks of tar and feathers and a narrowness of field vision almost to the point of self parody and pompous self derision.

As I said, it is my belief that all moneyed lobbies should be stricken and banned from participating in the governance of this country. That’s my line and I am NOT changing it.

Well you’re at liberty to support Israel and I’m at liberty not to.

Maybe there lions and tigers and bears oh my…maybe the wizard of OZ will be made into a sequel…how many angels can sit on the end of a pin..who is black who is white who scores the big win and when does Israeli settlement construction ever cease to dispossess with a big wide grin?

Ask Bibi baby…

Here’s a question:

Can you please give a list (perhaps we can trot out Abe Foxman to give his heksher for them) of terms that aren’t anti-semitic dogwhistles that allow me to express my disapproval for the settlers who attacked the IDF, for the Charedim who spit on children, and for the counterproductive nonsense of Avigdor Lieberman?

We’ll call that “Non-Dogwhistle No. 1″ as a placeholder.

Next, can you give me a term for being an observant Jew who is Pro-Israel, skeptical of the PLO, hates Hamas, can’t stand the world’s double-standards with respect to Israel, doubts seriously that a peace deal with the Palestinians will improve their lot or make the Muslim world suddenly like Israel, thinks despite all of its problems (which are no worse and often much less worse than the vast majority of other nations on Earth), Israel is doing a great job, and who doesn’t have all the answers.

We’ll call that “Non-Dogwhistle No. 2″ as a placeholder.

Now, I’m a [No. 2] that wants to express [No. 1]. Can you please give me a list of terms that won’t cause me to be compared to Hitler?

Please remember these comments reflect MY opinion so don’t take this to extremes. In my opinion, a republican Jew is no better then a collaborator. How can you sacrifice your faith, your people, and your own self respect to support a philosophical belief designed to relegate Jews as well as blacks, hispanics…well practically everyone but the wealthy white anglo-saxen protestants and celebrated Nazi sympathizers, the catholics. There is no such thing as a good republican just as there is no such thing as a good Nazi.

Some of you need to stop thinking that there is a Nazi under every bed. As I have stated before, one of the biggest threats facing Israel is the growth of intolerance and the religious right. Here is a link to a story on rabbinical influence in the Israeli military from Monday’s Haaretz:

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/the-army-needs-to-fight-back-1.409740in Israel

There was also a story about Jews moving to Germany, the country with the fastest growing Jewish population in the world these days.

A third story was about an 8 year old Jewish American immigrant boy who was attacked by Haredi teenage boys on his way home from school. One reader compared it to a gang turf fight.

Israel firster is an accurate description of Americans and organizations who put the interests of Israel before those of the U.S.A. What’s more it’s a generic term, since Israel firsters come in various religious, ethnic and political persuasions. Matter of fact there are more Christian (evangelical) Israel firsters than Jewish. Characteristic of Israel firsters is that they think nothing of pushing our government into fighting wars on Israel’s behalf. Their current push for an Iran war, even though Iran is no threat to America, and despite the liklihood that such a war could lead to a wider conflagration,and ultimately to WWIII en route to doomsday. Calling out Israel firsters for the anti-Americans that they are is a legitimate way to shame and cow them into backing off in their attempts to draw america into Israel’s wars. Now is the time for all Americans to stand up to the threat posed by these Israel firsters.

Don’t you all see the writing on the wall? Hatred of Jews is at levels worldwide far exceeding anything in the past, even in the Nazi era.

There is a deep undercurrent of Anti-Semitism in the USA simmering just under the surface.

No Jewish organization is going to be able to keep the lid on. Liberal Jews are fanning the flames with their meddling into the affairs of everything that does not concern them.

Whoever thinks that they are protected and somehow beyond the coming violence is delusional.

I am an American and if I see and think any individual or group is pushing my country in the wrong direction I am going to say so.
Anyone paying attention right now to the Iran issue sees we have some very public Israel-firsters that are promoting an attack on Iran for Israel’s benefit. We even had Netanyahu touring the US to rally Jews support on Iran.
Sorry, but Israel-first Jews aren’t going to get pass because they are Jewish any more then the pubic is going give any Gentile neos pushing a war a pass.

You’re going to have to get use to it…that IS the real way the world works.
You want to be in the ring as an agenda group?… then you’re gonna get knocked around like everyone else.

I like the term. These Zionist Yank, Prod zombies need to make up they’re minds; America or some out-of-place bloody European
suicidal-homicidal up start in SW Asia.

I find in a survey that I am currently fielding that the Holocaust is a declining topic of interest to Jews. The corollary may be that as the touchstone of the Holocaust becomes blurred, the taboo of Antisemitism is being eroded. The receding Holocaust may be accompanied by the recession of the senses sensitized by the Holocaust. Case in point: The Hitler title and graphic of this article is akin to the proverbial to-by-four piece of lumber used to get the attention of the mule which is being used to pull the concept of what terminology can be used in polite company.

http://www.jewishjournal.com/demographic_duo/item/a_blessing_for_hitler_may_his_memory_be_eradicated_20120125/

Churchill’s support for exporting Jewish predators to the ME was nothing less than despicable.

ILLUSTRATED SUNDAY HERALD, February 8, 1920
Zionism versus Bolshevism.
A Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People
By the Rt. Hon. Winston S. Churchill.

Terrorist Jews

There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution, by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews, it is certainly a very great one; it probably outweighs all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews. Moreover, the principal inspiration and driving power comes from the Jewish leaders. Thus Tchitcherin, a pure Russian, is eclipsed by his nominal subordinate Litvinoff, and the influence of Russians like Bukharin or Lunacharski cannot be compared with the power of Trotsky, or of Zinovieff, the Dictator of the Red Citadel (Petrograd) or of Krassin or Radek all Jews. In the Soviet institutions the predominance of Jews is even more astonishing. And the prominent, if not indeed the principal, part in the system of terrorism applied by the Extraordinary Commissions for Combating Counter-Revolution has been taken by Jews, and in some notable cases by Jewesses. The same evil prominence was obtained by Jews in the brief period of terror during which Bela Kun ruled in Hungary. The same phenomenon has been presented in Germany (especially in Bavaria), so far as this madness has been allowed to prey upon the temporary prostration of the German people. Although in all these countries there are many non-Jews every whit as bad as the worst of the Jewish revolutionaries, the part played by the latter in proportion to their numbers in the population is astonishing.

In the past a few decent Jews used to discuss abominable Jewish behavior honestly.

Jews and non-Jews used to talk about Jewish history and activities honestly.

From Esau’s Tears by Lindemann (a prominent Jewish studies scholar), p. 195.

“The Famous Viennese journalist Karl Kraus saw in Benedikt’s Neue Freie Presse the embodiment of unprincipled commercialism, the unscrupulous efforts to manipulate popular opinion, that so troubled many public-spirited observers. It says much about the Austrian scene that Kraus, himself Jewish, was one of the most persistent critics of Jews in Austria. Revealingly, his own style — intransigent, mocking, sophisticated, and supremely witty — was precisely the kind of style that anti-Semites considered typically Jewish. He would at any rate have considered the charge that hostility to Jews was based entirely on Gentile fantasy either ludicrous or incomprehensible. As far as he was concerned, Viennese anti-Semitism was without a doubt the result of justified resentment by Gentiles concerning the outrageous antics of Jewish journalists.

“He was by no means alone in that opinion. Friedrich Austerlitz [Jewish socialist writer] further asserted that the Jewish-owned liberal press was concerned to serve Jewish interests, to cover up misdeeds by Jewish capitalists, and to shower with abuse anyone who criticized Jews. Jewish press supremacy, he later observed, ‘was a conspiracy in favor of the Jews; the legend of the solidarity of all members of the people of Israel was at that time a reality.’ Austerlitz granted that in the earlier part of the century, when Jews had been oppressed, criticism of their ‘eccentricities’ was inappropirate, but by the latter half of the nineteenth century, when they dominated so much of public life in Austria and when their activities were so often corrupt, criticism was not only appropriate but the duty of all honest observers, Jews and non-Jews.”

Today honesty is rare and Lindemann whitewashes to an extent.