International Hillel Society: Terrorism Supporter

My wife Karin and I have been taking part in a Facebook discussion entitled Imagine the reaction if Jesse Jackson wrote this article (How Jewish is Hollywood? by Joel Stein).

Karin made the following important points about Antisemitism and college Hillel organizations:

Don't worry about anti-Semitism, it's a myth. Of course AIPAC has to be brought down, but AIPAC is just icing on the cake. The real masterminds of Zionist infiltration of American governance and mass education are all working on the local level, but coordinated top down by the Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations. The most dangerous racist organizations are groups like Hillel and local JCRCs (Jewish Community Relations Councils -- the national organization is the Jewish Council for Public Affairs [JCPA], which used to be called the National Community Relations Advisory Council [NCRAC]) .

For very detailed information on the Jewish Lobby Visit http://www.eaazi.org/ThorsProvoni/JudoniaComplete/JudoniaCompleteA.htm

The usual Jewish Zionist thought-minder replied:

"Don't worry about anti-Semitism, it's a myth"

" The most dangerous racist organizations are groups like Hillel and the JCRC. "

Oh wow. That sounds like anti-Semitism itself to me.

My Hillel showed Edward Said's views on Israel and viewed documets pertaining to the Arab thougths ont he conflict and then we debated what was accurate and what's not...so racist!

Here is my comment:

On Hillel

There is no legitimate debate over the question of Palestine.

Racist E. Europeans invaders stole Palestine and genocided the native population -- a process that continues right before our eyes.

Jewish Zionists operate on the fundamental principle that Jews may plunder and kill non-Jews with impunity.

It is hard to think of a more racist idea (although it certainly is comparable to the German Nazi idea that Aryans may plunder and kill non-Aryans with impunity).

A Zionist is simply a Nazi with some obvious substitutions with regard to Unter- and Übermenschen.

No one should be surprised that Zionism is ethnic Ashkenazi Nazism. Zionism and German Nazism grew up in the same intellectual milieu, and there was a great deal of cross-polination of ideas as well as a certain amount of cross-over in the membership of the two groups.

To believe that ethnic Ashkenazim could not develop their own form of Nazism is itself racist because it represents a belief that Jews are somehow ethically superior to non-Jews.

Hillel is a Zionist organization that was created to replace the non-Zionist Menorah Society.

Having a Hillel on a college campus is like having a chapter of the KKK on a college campus.

The organization in my experience at Harvard routinely supports Zionist terrorism. Under US law it should be shut down, all of its assets should be seized, and its principles should be arrested.

I am on the organization's mailing list, and I have routinely received Hillel fund-raising letters that are signed by Bronfman and that defame good decent Americans like Huwaid Arraf, Hatem Bazian, and Mahdi Bray with accusations of support for terrorism in a typical Jewish Zionist attempt to silence them by intimidation.

Not only is the Hillel a criminal organization that violates the RICO statutes and that supports Zionist terrorism, but it is also engaging in conspiracy against the rights of non-Jewish Americans.

The organization and its supporters have no redeeming social value and together constitute a viper lurking to strike at the heart of America.

On Anti-Semitism

Late 19th and early 20th century anti-Semitism was invariably distinguished from so-called traditional Judeophobia by the inclusion of biological determinist or of social Darwinist ideas.

Depending on where in the Muslim world one researches the issue, one will find the equation of Zionism to French colonialism in Algeria, Indian oppression in Kashmir or Russian exansionism into the Caucasus and Central Asia. If one speaks with an Arab or Muslim educated in the USa, he or she may use Southern Slavery as the comparison point.

Arab and Muslim hatred toward Zionism, the State of Israel and non-Israeli supporters of Zionism or the State of Israel really has little or no similarity to the anti-Semitism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

As far as I can tell, merely stating the facts is a form of anti-Semitism in the minds of a certain class of Israel-supporters.

In my blog entry Kovel Pulls No Punches I list some of the comments withn Kovel’s book Overcoming Zionism that occasioned charges of anti-Semitism especially from StandWithUs. These statements have no counterparts in the lore of modern anti-Semitism.

After reading The Resurgence of Anti-Semitism: Jews, Israel and Liberal Opinion by Bernard Harrison, I sent the author the email contained in Last Word on Anti-Semitism.

Because it was written in anger and haste, it does not fully reflect my position, which primarily criticizes Zionism for the damage that the Israel Lobby has inflicted on the American political system.

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Mazin Qumsiyeh Reports from Bethlehem

I have known Mazin Qumsiyeh for almost 10 years and have always considered him far too moderate with regard to the nature of Zionist crimes and the Zionist states. Like most Palestinians he lacks sufficient knowledge of the context of more than 150 years of ethnic Ashkenazi

• targeted assassinations (including the three defining murders of Russian history: Alexander II, Stolypin, and Nicholas II),
• sabotage,
• revolutionary violence, and
• mass murder, ethnic cleansing and genocide (in both E. Europe and the ME).
  

Until ethnic Ashkenazim and Jews in general acknowledge, regret and repent the crimes that grow out of Jewish politics just as Jews demand of non-Jews, no peace deal with Jewish Zionist hypocrites is possible because there is no reason to believe that Jewish Zionists will not commit exactly the same crimes in the future.

Decent Americans should be particularly incensed at Zionist crimes in Gaza because we have paid for all the weaponry, greenlighted the Israeli attacks, and even approved -- thanks to the manipulations of Jewish Neocon Zionist policy makers -- of the Gaza blockade that led most directly to this situation.

This attack has potential dire consequences for the US economy because the USA has formally requested at least $300 billion (and informally suggested at least $600 billion) in loans from Arab Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs).

In other words, because the US keeps Israel afloat and because money is by definition fungible, the USA is asking Arabs to support Israel as the Zionist state genocides the native Palestinian Arab population.

It is hard to see how the USA can legitimately expect much aid from Arab countries in fixing the US economy under such circumstances.

The request is even more laughable because the US economic disaster is wholly attributable to the US-Israeli alliance, which is responsible for more than half of the US national debt.

Non-Jewish and Jewish anti-Zionist Americans have to start asking Jewish Zionist Americans hard questions:

• Why do you believe that Jews have the right to plunder and to kill non-Jews?
• Why are supporting the continued existence of the murderous genocidal terrorist Zionist state when manipulating the US government into such a policy amounts to destroying US jobs and taking food from the mouths of American children in order to transfer wealth from the USA to Jewish Zionists (both in the USA and in Israel) so that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) can kill Arab children?
  

Sometimes the Dead are Envied

by Mazin Qumsiyeh

It was not possible to sleep here for two nights now. The events and the images of death and carnage of children, of policemen, of people that look like my mother and my son and my sister and my friends were simply too much. Gaza has run out of stretchers and many are now carried to hospitals (which are running out of supplies) and morgues on commercial street signs, in blankets or simply by their limp limbs. Three mosques were destroyed. I recalled the Israeli attacks on the Church of Nativity which was minor compared to this. I was watching Israel shell the University in Gaza city including its faculty of science and a residence dorm for female students and was thinking of my university and my lab and office at Bethlehem University. I was then shocked into more horrific scenes and news. In one house five young sisters killed. In another six family members including four children killed while eating breakfast. In a scene that haunted me where four children were killed with their mother, I saw rescue workers try frantically to pull the remaining surviving girl whose legs were crushed under a huge boulder from the roof. As some of them were calming her down and working hard, just next to them other workers pulled the dead body of her sister (looked like 3-4 year old). They quickly covered her but I think her sister noticed. Sometimes the dead are envied for their suffering has ended. Her suffering is just beginnig. I thought of all the thousands of relatives of all the victims and how they feel…..I thought of friends I lost and talks with people in Gaza...I thought of my mother who at 76 has seen so much suffering and still she cried at the new images of new atrocities…

My heart aches and struggles with my scientist brain. The latter wants to focus on facts and figures. The attack in its second day was in the words of Israeli leaders “the beginning” and is intended “to send Gaza back decades”. So far over 300 were killed and over 1000 injured (200 of those critically), 35% women, children and elderly. I examine numbers of homes, police stations, civil society building destroyed. I read the Al Mezan Center for human rights which rationally states that most Gaza victims are civilians [1]. But even my rational mind refuses to deal with these things. How could it handle just that one image of the young girl’s anguished pained look under the rubble of her house and so tears stream down again to to try to wash the image to no avail…..How could my mind examine rationally the statements of “leaders” saying this carnage is not the fault of the bombers and war criminals, but of Hamas!

Protests were organized around the world and more are being planned [2]. The demonstrations helped vent some frustration and we hope will herald a reawakening of the heart of humanity that has been sputtering. But we hope it will go much farther to changing the rotted system of elites in power ignoring people’s rights for political expediency and for profit.

In the Bethlehem demonstration, we pounded on the permanently closed gate of the apartheid wall with deafening sound and the soldiers in the tower started to through stun grenades and tear gas. Injuries were sustained for activists....Our lungs still ache but our hearts ache more for the criminality of the apartheid regime, and the collaboration of the world governments. The Israeli occupation army killed two protesters with live ammunition in other parts of the West Bank [3].

Can someone asks western media or the Western governments ruled by elite racists who keep spouting the nonsense about "Hamas" and "rockets" (projectiles that are militarily of little use and have no explosives, killed one person this year), why targeting civilian police stations, mosques, homes with children, ports, fishing vessels, streets, and more in one of the most densely populated areas on earth murdering hundreds of civilians would be an acceptable action (I don’t say response because Israel was killing people and massacring them for 60 years before)? And what would they expect from a starving 1.5 million people to do? Especially when one million of those are refugees or displaced people denied their rights to return to their homes and lands for 60 years while settlers live across the borders on their lands in areas like “Sderot” and “Netviot”? Would they not expect some resistance from some of those? Isn’t that codified in International law for the right of occupied people to resist including violently? (note that I personally support civil forms of resistance). Even if one buys the US/Israeli government propaganda, would it be acceptable to bomb cities in Europe and the US for any perceived or actual crime of a portion of their society or even their leaders (Bush and Blair in Iraq?)?

But again I think it is not best for me to try and reason things through in such times of calamities and little sleep. I got so many letters of support but please redirect your letters and energies elsewhere. Redirect them to challenge the injustice directly [4]. Jesus made a statement directly relevant for us today:

"You are the earth's salt. But if the salt should become tasteless, what can make it salt again? It is completely useless and can only be thrown out of doors and stamped under foot. You are the world's light - it is impossible to hide a town built on the top of a hill. Men do not light a lamp and put it under a bucket. They put it on a lamp-stand and it gives light for everybody in the house.”

It is thus the time when people who claim they want peace and justice to stop talking about it and actually work for it. Put your lamp higher. It is time for real change...It is time for a world Intifada (uprising against injustice). It is time to do something concrete (like throwing our shoes at someone?)

Below are a press release from human rights organizations in Palestine (please circulate to media and politicians) and a letter from a friend worth reading.

Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD

In Bethlehem, Occupied Palestine

http://qumsiyeh.org

Urgent Release
27 December 2008

Palestinian human rights community calls for international action

Palestinian human rights organizations strongly condemn the recent military attacks carried out by the Israeli occupying forces in the Gaza Strip on 27 December 2008. The attacks began at approximately 11:30 am and lasted for approximately three hours. These attacks have destroyed most of the Gaza security offices including police stations, resulting in the deaths of over 200 Palestinians. More than 350 have been injured with over 120 critically.

The number of deaths resulting from these attacks indicates a willful targeting of the civilian police forces in these locations and a clear violation of the prohibition against willful killings. Willful killings are a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention under Article 147 and therefore, a War Crime. Both the time and location of these attacks also indicate a malicious intent to inflict as many casualties as possible with many of the police stations located in civilian population centres and the time of the attacks coinciding with the end of the school day resulting in the deaths of numerous children.

The ongoing siege of the Gaza Strip has left medical facilities in the Strip incapable of meeting the needs of the hundreds more who have been injured which will likely lead to an increase in the number of deaths. According to Israeli officials, these attacks are only the beginning of an open military campaign in Gaza. It is therefore imperative that the international community not stand in silence while Israel moves forward with impunity.

Despite repeated calls from the Palestinian human rights community with regard to Gaza, the international community has failed to act. We are now on the brink of an explosion of violence as result of this failure and are pushed once again to call for action.

In light of the above, Palestinian human rights organizations urge:

• The UN Security Council to call an emergency session and adopt concrete measures, including the imposition of sanctions, in order to ensure Israel’s fulfilment of its obligations under international humanitarian law.
• The High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions to fulfil their obligation under common Article 1 to ensure respect for the provisions of the Conventions, taking appropriate measures to compel Israel to abide by its obligations under international humanitarian law, in particular placing pivotal importance on the respect and protection of civilians from the effects of the hostilities.
• The High Contracting Parties to fulfil their legal obligation under Article 146 of the Fourth Geneva Convention to prosecute those responsible for grave breaches of the Convention.
• EU institutions and member states to make effective use of the European Union Guidelines on promoting compliance with international humanitarian law (2005/C 327/04) to ensure Israel complies with international humanitarian law under paragraph 16 (b), (c) and (d) of these guidelines, including the adoption of immediate restrictive measures and sanctions, as well as cessation of all upgrade dialogue with Israel.

Al-Haq
Addameer Prisoners' Support & Human Rights Association
Ad-Dameer Association for Human Rights
Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights
Defence for Children International
Ensan Center for Democracy & Human Rights
Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR)
Jerusalem Legal Aid & Human Rights Center (JLAC)
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR)
Palestinian Center for the Independence of the Judiciary and the Legal Profession - Musawa
Palestinian Center for Rapprochement Between People (PCR)
Ramallah Center for Human Rights Studies (RCHRS)
Women's Center for Legal Aid and Counseling (WCLAC)
Women's Studies Center
The Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations' Network - PNGO
======================
Letter From Jenka (US citizen married to a Palestinian who was paralyzed by an Israeli bullet in the back but continues to have hope and work for peace -- and also for our International Middle East Media Center) 12/27/08

I sit in front of the computer, editing the article, trying, as always, to maintain objectivity, "Israeli airstrikes kill 205 Palestinians in Gaza".....my eyes begin to blur .....images of bodies, of wailing mamas screaming for their sons, of children missing limbs, hospital crews running, rushing....bodies everywhere......I can no longer see the computer screen through the tears. I think of our friends in Gaza -"Are they ok?" .....I try to think of an appropriate response: a protest at the Israeli consulate? A petition? A boycott campaign? They all seem so trivial, so ineffective. Send ANOTHER letter to my congressman, only to be rebuffed again with a form letter stating that the Congressman is in full support of Israel and their War on Terror?

I'm thinking about an article I read yesterday, about Muntadhar al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at George Bush just last week. The article was by Ramzy Baroud, who said that the reality of the world outside the Green Zone had finally broken into the carefully-scripted press conferences of Bush lies and al-Maliki smiles....

"What also confused the script is that al-Zaidi was not al-Qaeda, or an al-Qaeda sympathizer, not a foreign fighter, not a member of the dissolved Ba’ath Party, nor was he affiliated with it in any way, and not even an Iraqi Sunni, for any such affiliation would fit perfectly in the political and media scripts that would demonize the man as an enemy of the Iraqi people, stability, democracy, freedom, and the rest of the redundant clichés. Al-Zaidi is simply an Iraqi man who has, as a journalist, highlighted the suffering of his people as politely, ‘objectively’ and ‘professionally’ as he could, and when he could no longer tolerate the lies told in the Green Zone’s ever malicious drama, he scrapped the script altogether, chucking his shoes at the main actor: This is a farewell kiss, you dog! This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq.” His words, although uttered for the first time in the Green Zone theater, echoed the voices of millions of Iraqis outside, who have chanted these words, for six long, tragic years."

He was fed up! He tried to be objective, kept reporting the daily toll of deaths, the daily violence of the occupation, the never ending river of blood and bodies.....and finally, after nothing he reported changed anything, he risked his career, and his life, to break the script at the press conference and express the rage and fury of the millions of Iraqis suffering and dying in the daily brutality of Bush's war. He has been tortured and beaten senseless for his deed, by Iraqi security, who, Baroud says, "must’ve tried to impress their American security ‘counterparts’ by teaching the poor al-Zaidi a lesson in good manners, Abu Ghraib-style".

That article can be found here.

As I look again at the toll of today's Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, my eyes glance across a headline in one of the Israeli papers: "White House blames Hamas" .....and the fury and grief flow through me again. Israel drops 60 bombs on the Gaza Strip, killing hundreds of civilians, wounding and maiming many more, and the first thing the White House has to say is that it is Hamas' fault! For what? For having been elected as the Palestinian government in uncontested and fair elections? For taking the unprecedented step of engaging in a unilateral ceasefire against Israel for the last six months, which was never reciprocated or even recognized by the occupying Israeli army? For begging Israel for a ceasefire this last week, but being rebuffed at every turn? The truth is, it doesn't matter what Hamas does, it is their very existence that Israel is trying to eradicate, with full US support. The fact that there is an Islamic movement that stands in resistance to the Israeli occupation is something that Israel cannot stand, and it's clear from their targets in today's airstrikes: Hamas government buildings, police stations, municipal headquarters, offices of the bureaucrats of an elected government. And they struck during rush hour, when the streets were full, in one of the most crowded places on earth, so as to maximize casualties.

And the US blames Hamas.

What eventually becomes clear, to any Palestinian, or any Iraqi for that matter, is that their occupier can do anything they want, with impunity, and no matter what, they, the occupied, will be blamed.

And the other thing that becomes clear, after day after day of this violence, month after month, year after year, is that the world, or at least those with the power to change anything, do not care.

It's like Ward Churchill said in his post-9/11 speech that got him fired from the University of Colorado despite his tenure: if you are a person in the Arab world and you see Madeline Albright up there on 60 Minutes saying, "Yes, we know that 500,000 Iraqi children have died from the sanctions, but we think the price is worth it", well, what are you SUPPOSED to think??? There's no other conclusion that you can reach except that the piles and piles of corpses, the thousands of innocent children, do not matter to Madeline Albright, or to the American people! The American people DO NOT CARE!

And no amount of objective journalism on the subject can make people care.

And what now - Barack Obama is supposed to be some kind of savior and change everything? I don't think so. My email after his election was mainly just surprise that there was not another Supreme Court-decided debacle. But he's not going to change US policy toward Israel. He's never said that he would. I think maybe people just hoped that he would, with no evidence in his record that he would - just because people want someone to save them. But his appointment of Rahm Emmanuel as his Chief of Staff, as his FIRST cabinet appointment, set the tone for what the Palestinians can expect from Barack Obama. Emmanuel's dad told an Israeli paper, "Of course my son will have a big influence on Obama regarding Israel - what, do you think he's going to be sweeping the floors of the White House? He's not an Arab!"

This is the kind of outright racism that Obama's dear friend Rahm Israel Emmanuel was raised with.

There's no chance whatsoever that he'll change US policy toward Israel. He's said so himself, many times.

What can we do?

Every day I edit articles coming out of the occupied Palestinian Territories, on the website http://www.imemc.org .....will that really change anything? I don't know.

But at least it's a record, documenting the daily Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people.

Every week the Palestinian Center for Human Rights publishes a detailed record documenting the Israeli crimes for that week.

The record of Israeli crimes is all there, verifiable and well-documented. But the US government does not, and will not, care. As far as I can tell, the State Dept. bureaucrat directing policy toward Israel is: Director of the Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs Thomas Goldberger 202-647-3672

Maybe the least we can do is to flood his office with calls, demanding that the US stop supporting an illegal occupation that engages in daily violations of international human rights law and completely disregards the internationally-recognized rights of the Palestinian people.

Right now, though, I kind of feel like throwing my shoes.

================

[1] http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10063.shtml

[2] http://www.endtheoccupation.org/article.php?id=1773)

[3] see example here

http://www.bilin-ffj.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=109&Itemid=1 )

[4] Gaza Massacre must spur us to action (See article written even before three families were targeted killing 10 children)

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10055.shtml

[5] Videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kk5ZTy7sERY

http://www.aljazeera.net/Channel/KServices/SupportPages/ShowMedia/showMedia.aspx?fileURL=/mritems/streams/2008/12/28/1_881090_1_12.wmv

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Urgent call for Action on upgrade of the EU- Israel Association Agreement

Marcy Newman's call for action is of utmost importance.

Please read it here!

Simple decency requires the abolition of the Zionist state and the eradication of Zionism.

Make it your Christmas or Hanukkah good deed to write.

Here is the contact information.

Please write urgently to your MEPs urging them to make your objections to the Action Plan known to the External Relations Commissioner, Benita Ferrero-Waldner (benita.ferrero-waldner@ec.europa.eu), and/or write to her yourself copying your letters to your MEPs.

You will find a briefing document attached that explains more about the process of the upgrading and its significance and a sample letter. Below is a list of additional points you may want to include.

To find your MP and MEPs, go to www.writetothem.com

Please do let the Palestine Solidarity Campaign know the details of any replies you receive.

Because Zionists are not only the enemies of Palestinians but also of all Arabs, all Muslims and the entire human race, Muslims have a religious obligation to write under the rules and requirements of a legitimate defensive jihad.

I discuss the threat of Zionists to America in The Israel Lobby and American Society. The analysis of the threat applies as much to the whole world as it does to the USA.

See Cartoon Summarizes Zionist Christmas Wishes for a succinct depiction of the Zionist mentality.

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Roman Mayor Alemanno Racist Scum

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) reported the following story.

Rome’s mayor favors giving Shalit citizenship

December 23, 2008

ROME (JTA) -- Rome's mayor favors granting honorary citizenship to the eternal city to captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

During a public menorah-lighting ceremony Sunday, Mayor Gianni Alemanno said the proposal, put forward by Rome Jewish Community President Riccardo Pacifici, seemed like "an excellent idea."

Alemanno added that he wanted to extend the honor "to give a sign of solidarity to the Jewish community."

What about all the Palestinians (including women and children) unjustly imprisoned by the Zionist state?

Mayor Gianni Alemanno

Don't they deserve honorary Roman citizenship far more than any IDF soldier, who is presumptively a war criminal and probably a genocidaire?

What about all the Palestinian refugees unjustly deprived of citizenship, residence and property rights by murderous genocidal Eastern European invaders, interlopers and thieves?

Don't Palestinian refugees deserve honorary Roman citizenship far more than any IDF soldier, who is presumptively a war criminal and probably a genocidaire?

To stand in solidarity with any Jewish community is a complete offense to all human decency unless the members categorically reject Zionism, unequivocally advocate the dismantlement of the Zionist state, and demand without reservation that all Zionist criminals be arrested and tried for their crimes.

Let Mayor Alemanno know that he is a miserable and contemptible excuse for a human being!

[The Independent article entitled Neo-fascist sweeps in as Rome's mayor gives background information on Alemanno.]

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Roy Belmont on Bernie Madoff

I am always impressed how effectively Roy Belmont penetrates to the heart of an issue.

Here is his comment on Philip Weiss's blog entry entitled The banality of Madoff:

Richard-
"The biggest issue with Madoff is to determine who were the beneficiaries.
[...]
So, who benefited? "

Who are the beneficiaries?
Who is benefiting?
50 billion dollar Madoff is now the face of the 8 trillion dollar bailout.
A bailout that in the great silence outside the chattering chauvinist-run media was becoming steadily more fixed on "the Jews".
The anti-Semitism consequent to that blame was increasing dangerously.
To the point it would have been impossible to throw a beard like Christian Science Paulson under the bus.
So Madoff, whose scammy-jammy chicanery needs to be multiplied 1400 times to stand next to the real money transfer, becomes the scapegoat, the man everyone now carries to blame.
1400 - one thousand and four hundred - Bernie Madoffs can fit inside the bailout and still have room to breathe.
But now he's who did it.
Yes, it was a Jew, but we got him!
And he was ripping off other Jews!
A complex situation!

An additional benefit is that the drying up of Jewish philanthropy, caused by Madoff's larceny and deception - more accurately the diversion of those funds - can be seen as and blamed on the victimization of charitable but naively innocent wealthy Jews, who can now no longer afford to give away their money.

I tried to make a similar point in Every Israel Advocate a Madoff, but Belmont's summary is so much more pithy, and as the article Nineteenth Century Madoff: Bethel Strousberg indicates, the Jewish community appears to have similarly tried to use Strousberg as a means of forestalling scrutiny of other often more important and more culpable corrupt Jewish financiers and social networks. Sphere: Related Content

Nineteenth Century Madoff: Bethel Strousberg

Ecclesiastes 1:

 

ט  מַה-שֶּׁהָיָה, הוּא שֶׁיִּהְיֶה, וּמַה-שֶּׁנַּעֲשָׂה, הוּא שֶׁיֵּעָשֶׂה; וְאֵין כָּל-חָדָשׁ, תַּחַת הַשָּׁמֶשׁ. 9

That which hath been is that which shall be, and that which hath been done is that which shall be done; and there is nothing new under the sun.

 

 

On pp. 211-212 of The Pity of It All, Amos Elon  discusses a major financial collapse that preceded the October 1873 stock market crash, which sent the world into the Long Depression:

In October 1873, a stock market crash changed this state of affairs in one blow. The economy had heated to the boiling point, a result of billions in French war reparation payments. The crash affected the entire Continent and came in the wake of feverish speculation in several European countries by reckless promoters with close political connections. Although the various governments had been warned of these machinations, they had done little to restrain them. The bubble burst first in Austria. F rom there the panic spread to Germany and the rest of Europe. In Germany alone, tens of thousands of middle-class and aristocratic families lost everything. The crash provoked a wave of anti-Semitic agitation unlike anything Germany -- or France-had seen since the Crusades or the Black Death. Jews were said to be "inferior" and "immoral"; their successes over the preceding two or three decades were due entirely to devious, even criminal manipulations. It was not an accident that so many stockbrokers happened to be Jews. At whose expense had they been enriching themselves?

Nine months earlier, in a sensational speech in the Reichstag, the Jewish liberal Eduard Lasker had sounded a first dire warning.'' Lasker exposed the ruthless activities of Bethel Henry Strousberg, a Prussian railroad tycoon and converted Jew, revealing Strousberg's notorious system, of winning government concessions by lining the pockets of parliamentarians and high officials. Strousberg had played a major role in the German economy for years. 'That fellow will one day soon be emperor of Germany," Engels had written Marx in September 1869. "Wherever you go, everybody speaks only of Strousberg." His enormous i ndustrial and railroad holdings collapsed even before the general crash. For the sake of his aristocratic partners-who included the Silesian dukes of Ujest a nd Ratibor, the Prussian count Lehndorff-Steinort, and a Prince Wilhelm zu Putbus (soon dubbed Kaputbus) -- Bismarck, with Bleichroder's assistance, made a last-minute effort to stave off their bankruptcy with state funds. In his characteristic style, Bismarck told the French ambassador:

2 dukes, I general, half a dozen ladies in waiting, twice that many chamberlains, 100 owners of coffeehouses and all the cabmen of Berlin found themselves totally ruined. The emperor took pity on the dukes, the aide de camp, the ladies in waiting and charged me with pulling them out of trouble. I appealed to Bleichroder, who on condition of getting a title of nobility, which as a Jew he very much valued, agreed to rescue the duke of Ujest and General Count Lehndorff. Two dukes & an aide de camp saved-frankly this is worth the "von" we bestowed on the good Bleichroder,"?

In the event, they were not really "saved." Beyond the monetary losses, several Reichstag deputies and dignitaries of the royal court were seriously compromised by Lasker's revelations. As for Lasker himself, his disclosures of the swindl es and corruption catapulted him overnight into the first rank of public figures. The Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums wrote that the name of Eduard Lasker should be added to that of Moses Mendelssohn and other great Jews in history." But little was done to put an end to the c orruption Lasker exposed. His warning of an impending general crisis went unheeded, leading only to the appointment of a commission of inquiry into Strousberg's alleged system. It did not lead to concrete monetary and legal reform. In the absence of a clear political will it could not. The Reichstag had no power to subpoena generals, noblemen, and high government official. who would not in any case have been held accountable by a commission of mere middle-class parliamentarians. A feverish rush for scapegoats ensued.

For all intents and purposes both the financial structures forming the backbone of the Zionist Virtual Colonial Motherland and also the links from Jewish and non-Jewish power brokers and power centers were fully in place in the 1870s before the 1881 pogroms, from which the beginning of the Zionist movement is usually dated. 

Not only did Strousberg then like Madoff today prey on corrupt Jewish networking and non-denominational greed, but the 19th century financier probably hastened the initiation of Zionist colonialism.

[Note that The Pity of It All is fun to read, but it is bad as a history of German Jews.

The book starts with Moses Mendelsohn's entry into Berlin (1743). Why? 1648 would have made more sense. Then Elon could have explained the economic mess of the German countryside during the 18th century and its relationship to a reformulation of Jewish-Gentile relations within German-speaking territories.

One would never have know that the Kulturkampf took place from reading the book. It had immense effects on German Protestant-Catholic-Jewish relations.

Elon never discusses how the Prussian government effectively created a Jewish economic elite by its policy of only allowing the most entrepreneurial of Polish Jews to immigrate into Prussia or non-Polish Prussian-ruled territories, and practically all Elon's claims about Czarist anti-Semitism are tendentious or flat-out wrong.

Elon leaves out all discussion of the development of Modern Orthodoxy and its relationship with Zionism. Shimshon Rafael Hirsch and Isaac Breuer definitely deserved some mention. Breuer is very much a Tariq Ramadan-like figure in terms of reconciling Western philosophy and religion.

Breuer became an important political figure in the Zionist settlement of Palestine and created the groundwork that made it possible for non- and anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews to participate in Israeli governments that have relentlessly pursued policies of ethnic cleansing and the murder of unarmed women and children.

Modern Orthodoxy should have been an important subtopic within Elon's book, for it was as much a result of acculturation and assimilation as secularization and conversion. By compromising with Zionism it was drained of any ethical or moral content that could have been salvaged from pre-modern Judaism.]

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