The Origins of the Zionist Lobby

It's not the Talmud!
by Joachim Martillo (ThorsProvoni@aol.com)

During the period after the collapse of Poland, ethnic Ashkenazim within the Russian Empire (and to a lesser extent within the Prussian/German and Austrian Empires) began to develop communal political mechanisms to overcome the obstacles to achieving the political economic power to which members of the Ashkenazi elite believed they were entitled.

The Jews of Odessa, A Cultural History, 1794-1881 by Steven J. Zipperstein p. 115, provides some interesting information difficult to find in English.

The faith of Russian Jewish intellectuals in the prospect of improvement in the political and civic standing of the Jews had already been challenged in the first part of Alexander II's reign, when in 1863 Polish rebellion led to increased hostility toward all non-Russian nationalities. To the surprise of his Jewish admirers, even the eminent liberal journalist, M. N. Katkov now began to air chauvinist sentiments. Suspicions of the patriotism of Russia's Jews grew common in this tense atmosphere. Therefore, when in 1868 the Christian convert Jacob Brafman charged that Jews constituted a distinct state within a state, he struck a particularly sensitive nerve in Jews and non-Jews alike.

Basing his observations on the minutes of the Kehillah of Minsk, Brafman argued that the Kehillot, though officially disbanded by the Russian authorities in 1844, still functioned as an invisible Jewish government. This invisible yet pervasive body affiliated with the ORPME [The Society for the Promotion of Enlightenment among Jews, Russian acronym] based in St. Petersburg, the English Brotherhood for the Assistance of Jewish Emigrants, and the Alliance Israelite Universelle -- collected taxes, imposed its own court system, and through seemingly innocuous fraternal organizations, made its powerful will known in the everyday lives of Jews. Even rules about clothing and food were determined by the ubiquitous and omnipotent organization. Brafman argued that Jewish isolationism arose from the "Talmudic municipal republic," or the Kehillah, rather than from the teachings of the Talmud, as Russian antisemites had previously assumed. Brafman thereby redirected Russian concerns about the integration of the Jews from the religious to the political sphere. The book's impact was profound. Within two years of its publication, the governor-general of Kiev warned in his annual report to St. Petersburg that the "cause of every last Jew is also the cause of the worldwide Jewish Kahal ... that powerful yet elusive association."

Gessen, Istoriia, 2:200-201; John D. Klier, "Iakov Brafman's Book of the Kahal and Its Enemies," paper presented at the Midwest Slavic Conference, May 4, 1980; Hans Rogger, "Government, Jews, Peasants," p. 17.

Brafman seems in part to have been motivated by sour grapes that he had not been as successful at using the Kehillah-sytem as other better connected ethnic Ashkenazi businessmen and merchants had been. At this time period, the political goals of the Kehillot (Kehillahs) were mostly Jewish emancipation and making corrupt business deals with Russian government officials (something like what Jack Abramoff used to do). The kehillah organizations also strove to demonize anyone (Jewish or non-Jewish) identified by the kehillah leaders as a threat to the ethnic Ashkenazi community.

Economically the kehillahs functioned as vehicles for horizontal collusion between Jewish businesses, which was not illegal and generally very common in the Russian Empire at this time period, and as mechanisms for vertical collusion (also known as middle market restraint of trade), which was also not illegal but also not very common because only the ethnic Ashkenazi community had a structure to undertake this business practice. In the 19th century Russian Empire middle market restraint of trade often drove Greek merchants wild and was probably a common cause of pogroms along with rage at ethnic Ashkenazi white slavers, whose excesses often provoked collective revenge against the whole ethnic Ashkenazi community as seemed to happen in 1891.

From the historical sociological standpoint the abusive and manipulative undertakings of AIPAC, the ADL, the International Hillel Society, CAMERA, The David Project, and other ethnic Ashkenazi "fraternal organizations" shows the evolution of the Kehillah among Ethnic Ashkenazim from a local religious community into an organized system for internal ethnic control and external ethnic advancement (as discussed by Zipperstein) and finally into a highly organized ethnic conspiracy against American Arabs, American Muslims and any group or individual that has problems with the State of Israel or with the actions of racist ethnic Ashkenazim in America. The kehillah functioned somewhat differently among German Jews and remained an innocuous purely religious organization among Jewish Arabs and Persians. Eastern European Karaite Jewish Tatars had an entirely different communal organization.

In the Russian Empire, where on the whole ethnic Ashkenazim have relatively more income and more education than any other class of imperial subjects with the exception of Russian nobles and Russian Germans, radical ethnic Ashkenazim developed a form of political organizing, which made the Bolshevik seizure of power possible with ethnic Ashkenazim in leading roles. While Arab American academics fear to analyze the sort of substate ethnic politics that the pro-Zionist lobby and the organized Ashkenazi American community represents today, Russian and American Sovietologists openly discuss whether the Soviet Union could even have been consolidated without Russian Ashkenazi revolutionaries and the mass of non-revolutionary Russian Ashkenazim that were willing to take advantage of the opportunity that the Bolshevik seizure of power presented. The more scholars analyze the data available since the fall of the Soviet Union, the more important the role that ethnic Ashkenazim appear to have played in the creation of the Soviet Union, in its murderous genocidal policies and in international subversion.

The neo-kehillah system that constitutes the Lobby in America benefits from independent social economic developments that made Hollywood essentially an Ashkenazi American business activity. As Melani McAlister points out in Epic Encounters, foreign policy is strongly influenced by perception of interest, and perception of interest often develops out of popular culture. Hollywood manufactures popular culture, and the Lobby makes very effective use of the movie industry while acting as a gatekeeper to prevent films that represent a Palestinian, Arab or Muslim point of view from reaching the American audience.

While the Lobby looks strong and invincible, some basic trends and technological advances have created an unprecedented opportunity to take it down. The ethnic Ashkenazi American community, while wealthy and politcally powerful, is in permanent decline through attrition and assimilation. The political power that ethnic Ashkenazi political, academic, and media leaders exert on behalf of the State of Israel and ethnic Ashkenazi racist tribalism to the detriment of the USA is creating a growing reaction while the standard Lobby tactic of accusing critics of anti-Semitism is losing efficacy.

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