More Jewish Bigotries at Interfaith Dialogue

I sent my blog entry entitled Jewish Bigotries at Interfaith Dialogue to Rabbi Sanford Seltzer, who is the executive director of the Interreligious Center on Public Life, which is the organization that organized the interfaith conference, at which one of the Jewish attendees made patently false and bigoted comments attacking Christians and Muslims.

I recommended to Rabbi Seltzer that the woman apologize. As I could have predicted, Rabbi Seltzer attacked me. As far as I can tell it is a common phenomenon. Some Jews are completely entrenched in delusions about non-Jews thirsting for Jewish blood, and in their minds the class of particularly egregious malefactors includes anyone that does not share the delusions.

Here is my response to his reply, which is embedded within my email.

In a message dated 03/23/09 19:05:07 Eastern Daylight Time, sseltzer@hebrewcollege.edu writes:

Dear Mr. Martillo, I was present when you made your comments on March 15th and was tempted to respond at that time, but chose not to do so as however disturbing your remarks were, I felt my comments would simply divert us from Jerome Maryon's break-out session. Needless to say, I find your statements totally unacceptable. It is ironic that you begin your Blog with the heading "Jewish Bigotries At Interfaith Dialogue." Ironic in that the very first two sentences that follow are unequivocally clear indications of what your real purpose is. To state as you have, "the organized Jewish community and network of Israel advocacy organizations subject Americans to a web of control that Orwell could not have conceived," is both so outlandish and exaggerated that it smacks of the Protocols of the Elders Of Zion.

Dear Rabbi Seltzer,

You are spinning vinyl in a digital age. Even Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic has embraced the Walt & Mearsheimer thesis on the Israel Lobby in a back-handed sort of way. He wrote in the NY Times:

So why won’t American leaders push Israel publicly? Or, more to the point, why do presidential candidates dance so delicately around this question? The answer is obvious: The leadership of the organized American Jewish community has allowed the partisans of settlement to conflate support for the colonization of the West Bank with support for Israel itself. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, in their polemical work “The Israel Lobby,” have it wrong: They argue, unpersuasively, that American support for Israel hurts America. It doesn’t. But unthinking American support does hurt Israel.

The people of Aipac and the Conference of Presidents are well meaning, and their work in strengthening the overall relationship between America and Israel has ensured them a place in the world to come. But what’s needed now is a radical rethinking of what it means to be pro-Israel. Barack Obama and John McCain, the likely presidential nominees, are smart, analytical men who understand the manifold threats Israel faces 60 years after its founding. They should be able to talk, in blunt terms, about the full range of dangers faced by Israel, including the danger Israel has brought upon itself.

I took a David Project course in Israel Advocacy. Among other things we were supposed to deal with public debates about Israeli policies by giving the appearance of acting as independent concerned pro-Israel citizens in order to show politicians that there was a "genuine" groundswell of support for Israel.

Four years before the Abu el-Haj controversy broke out at Columbia, I attended an Israel on Campus Coalition meeting that discussed the growing problem of pro-Palestinian academics on campus and how to prevent them from receiving tenure. The DP ended up paying academics to knock her scholarship.

In January 2003 I attended an AIPAC event to recruit Harvard KSG students, who would be serving as interns in Washington over the summer. The students were supposed to report back on any Israel-related AIPAC-disapproved opinions among congressmen or staffers.

Rachel Fish secretly worked for the DP to prevent a no-strings $2 million donation from Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan to the Harvard Divinity School.

I read through the discovery materials on the Roxbury Mosque case. The David Project was coordinating among Steven Emerson, Fox News (Jonathan Wells), the Boston Herald (Jonathan Wells), a bunch of Jewish real estate developers, and the NE Israeli Consulate. From the emails, Jeff Jacoby was initially unenthusiastic about the anti-Mosque effort, but by the end he was publishing DP talking points as op-ed columns.

After Cardinal Priest and Cologne Archbishop Joachim Meisner expressed sympathy for Palestinian suffering, he was subjected to an irrational but highly coordinated international defamation campaign. I had a report that Stefan Kramer of Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland actually came to Boston to consult with local Jewish leaders about how to proceed before the attack started. I do not know whether then DP President Jacobs was included in the meetings, but the attacks on Meisner were quite similar to those on Dr. Abu al-Laban and Dr. Fitaihi.

The JCRC Boston organized a $1.2 million campaign against Somerville Divestment that included a number of unique tactics including harassing signature gatherers by following them closely and preventing them explaining the Divestment Initiative to Somerville voters. The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs studied Somerville politics and issued several reports. In Seattle the Jewish Federation with the aid of StandWithUS ran a practically identical campaign against Seattle Divestment (I-97) with the same sort of signature gatherer harassment and other identical tactics while recently the DP and CAMERA have been fighting Emory Divestment with identical tactics.

The United States Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) was subverted by Jewish members and staff like Abigail Thernstrom and Kenneth Marcus to serve Jewish privilege instead of carrying out its civil rights mission. In 2005 the Commission was investigating anti-Semitism on campus, watching the defamatory movie Columbia Unbecoming produced and distributed by The David Project, and taking testimony from professional Israel advocate Sarah Stern all for the purpose of substantiating a non-existent problem of anti-Semitism on college campuses while the same Jewish members and staff went out of their way to suppress any investigation of Jewish Zionist efforts to craft an outbreak of Islamophobia modeled on late 19th and early 20th century anti-Semitism.

The distribution of Obsession: Radical Islam's War on the West during the presidential election involved a clandestine conspiracy among the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), Aish HaTorah/The Clarion Fund/HonestReporting/WordsCanHeal and one or more hyperwealthy Zionists. I suspect Irwin Katsof while others have seen the hand of Sheldon Adelson, but Roberto Tanenbaum is also a candidate because has close connections to the RJC. Of course, all three and others could have been involved.

No thought control activity is too small. When Susan Abulhawa came to Brooklyn to introduce her book entitled Scar of David at a local college and bookstores, the Brooklyn JCC coordinated harassment of the professor who invited her as well as any bookseller willing to host her.

I can trace this sort of conspiratorial Zionist activity throughout the country and back to the 50s particularly in the media and finance industries. Often serious SEC and FEC violations are involved along with intimidation via middle market restraint of trade.

When I was a student at Harvard, I was a concentrator in E. European history. Not only is conspiracy historically a normal part of Eastern European politics, but historians of Russia or Poland write about the politics of conspiracy all the time.

One can argue whether Eastern European Jews brought a political cultural propensity to conspiracy with them to the USA, but Bolshevik Ashkenazim were probably the most important group in the conspiracy to overthrow Czarism as both UC Berkeley Professor Yuri Slezkine and Yale Professor Benjamin Harshav have pointed out in books and articles.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is an obvious work of fiction, and I used to give a lecture about the reasons it might be believed or be published. Because of the dearth of materials available to non-Jews at the beginning of the 20th century about Eastern European Jewish history or culture, I am reluctant to accuse someone of anti-Semitism merely for resorting to the Protocols in order to understand E. European ethnic Ashkenazi politics. Anti-Semitism is more likely involved when there is a belief in a single overarching conspiracy among Jewish wealth, Jewish communists and Jewish Zionists. There simply was not one single Jewish conspiracy at the beginning of the 20th century. There were several often violently opposed to one another, and the vast majority of Jews were not involved in any conspiracy at all.

Further down when you denigrate Jewish efforts, which were really inter-religious efforts, in the context of Darfur, you again underscore the true purpose of your e-mail.

I sat about 10 feet from Ken Sweder in Kehillath Israel when he explained how he sold Darfur Activism to the Jewish Council for Public Affairs because it would be good for Jews. I had a fairly long talk with Ruth Messenger of the American Jewish World Service about her organization's Darfur Activism, which consisted entirely of a publicity campaign against the Sudanese government.

Unlike both of them I have actually been in Darfur, and I understand something of the politics of the region. I am fairly certain that the behavior of the Jewish community with regard to Darfur is extremely harmful and that the leadership is either seriously hypocritical or seriously misguided. There are a good number of Sudanese academics in the Boston area. Except for Omer Ismail, who has his own agenda, the SaveDarfur movement has consulted none of them. There are also Muslim charity organizations that have done work in Darfur. The SaveDarfur movement has consulted none of them. Don't these omissions bother you?

I certainly cannot trust any Jewish Darfur or anti-Genocide activism unless the Jews involved categorically condemn Zionism as a racist genocidal movement. If it was not clear before the Gaza rampage, it should be now that a good number of Israeli and American Zionists should have been indicted longer before there was any thought of issuing a warrant on Omar al-Bashir. Because it is close to Passover and relevant, [you can find the testimony] that I gave about Darfur before the Massachusetts legislature [as well as a small correction at 5th Question: Darfur and Eric Cohen vs. Eric Cohen].

You might find it worthwhile to attend

Thursday, April 2nd 7:00 PM @Harvard Book Store MAHMOOD MAMDANI re-evaluates Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror more details

before complaining about my opinions of Jewish SaveDarfur activism.

Let me therefore address myself specifically to your critique of the Talmudic statement found in Sanhedrin 37a: the statement, by the way, is also found in Mishneh Sanhedrin 4:5 where it explicitly says "whosoever preserves a single soul, it is as if he preserved a complete world." I find it curious that you chose not to recite the Mishnaic reference.

I did not cite the Mishnah because Cohen explicitly referred to Talmud Sanhedrin 37a. I have included a scan of the relevant page after my signature. The text certainly says "one soul from Israel." Many censored or self-censored editions leave out from Israel, but both Kohati and Neusner consider the version below to be the original and correct reading.

Yes, it is true that the Talmudic version does speak of the "soul of an Israelite," however, what you neglect to point out is that just because early Christian and contemporary Muslim commentators view this as an act of Jewish selfishness, it must be so.

I said nothing of the sort. I claimed that the accusation against early Christians was simply a calumny. I am not sure exactly how Cohen was defining "early" but let's say 9th century and earlier so that Christians would have had a century to analyze the completed Babylonian Talmud. I do not know of a single Christian writing on this verse from the Mishnah or the Talmud. There were some important Church fathers before the completion of the Mishnah, who had the skill set to read Hebrew and possibly one dialect of Jewish Aramaic, but by the time the Mishnah was completed, not only were such skills completely lost among Christians as far as I know, but there were no convenient translations of the Mishnah into Greek or Latin.

If I am not mistaken, there are less than five Muslim scholars of the Talmud or Mishnah. As far as I know, none of them have written anything on the passage.

I sometimes try to read Christian, Muslim, and Jewish scripture together in order to use each text to illuminate the others.

Even though I know no commentary to the following effect, it is possible that the Quran 5:32

مِنْ أَجْلِ ذَلِكَ كَتَبْنَا عَلَى بَنِي إِسْرَائِيلَ أَنَّهُ مَن قَتَلَ نَفْسًا بِغَيْرِ نَفْسٍ أَوْ فَسَادٍ فِي الأَرْضِ فَكَأَنَّمَا قَتَلَ النَّاسَ جَمِيعًا وَمَنْ أَحْيَاهَا فَكَأَنَّمَا أَحْيَا النَّاسَ جَمِيعًا وَلَقَدْ جَاء تْهُمْ رُسُلُنَا بِالبَيِّنَاتِ ثُمَّ إِنَّ كَثِيرًا مِّنْهُم بَعْدَ ذَلِكَ فِي الأَرْضِ لَمُسْرِفُونَ

[For that cause We decreed for the Children of Israel that whosoever killeth a human being for other than manslaughter or corruption in the earth, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind. Our messengers came unto them of old with clear proofs (of Allah's Sovereignty), but afterwards lo! many of them became prodigals in the earth. (32) ]

is directly commenting on Talmud Sanhedrin 37a according to the principle enunciated in Quran 3:78:

وَإِنَّ مِنْهُمْ لَفَرِيقًا يَلْوُونَ أَلْسِنَتَهُم بِالْكِتَابِ لِتَحْسَبُوهُ مِنَ الْكِتَابِ وَمَا هُوَ مِنَ الْكِتَابِ وَيَقُولُونَ هُوَ مِنْ عِندِ اللّهِ وَمَا هُوَ مِنْ عِندِ اللّهِ وَيَقُولُونَ عَلَى اللّهِ الْكَذِبَ وَهُمْ يَعْلَمُونَ

[And lo! there is a party of them who distort the Scripture with their tongues, that ye may think that what they say is from the Scripture, when it is not from the Scripture. And they say: It is from Allah, when it is not from Allah; and they speak a lie concerning Allah knowingly. (78) ]

The Quranic verse refers to a distortion of the Book (the Bible) with their tongues and not necessarily of the written text while Talmud 37a provides analysis of Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5. The Mishna is the first redaction of Oral traditions that compose the Oral Law or תּוֹרָה שֶׁבְּעַל פֶּה‎ -- in other words the Law which is not supposed to be written but which is spoken with tongues.

Thus the Quran specifically refers to the Children of Israel in 5:32 because the verse provides the correct non-distorted interpretation

• which the Mishnah was supposed to draw from the stories of Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel and
• which you apparently wish were the genuine Jewish tradition.

The Talmudic statement does not and I repeat, does not, make any pejorative reference to either Muslims or Christians since its concern and readership was the Jewish people. One finds in virtually all sacred texts, references that are both universal and parochial. Your failure to note that in both instances the interpretation is tendentious and biased on the part of the commentators, who seek to denigrate Judaism is most revealing of their goals, as well as your own.

I never claimed that the statement in Talmud Sanhedrin 37a made pejorative references to Muslims or Christians, and I was not addressing questions of the universal or parochial.

I could pursue this further, but it would serve little purpose. Suffice it to say, that you owe Louise Cohen, an apology for distorting her remarks and intentions for your own ends.

You are blame-shifting. Cohen came into the Mosque and effectively threw rocks at Muslims and Christians. It was rude behavior, and she should apologize.

What is so difficult to understand about the issue?

You should apologize to me for distorting what I wrote.

I have never heard of Ethnic Ashkenazim Against Zionist Israel. I would like to know who your membership is and what your organization stands for.

Here is the Mission Statement:

This website and the associated organization of the same name have the mission of providing Jews and non-Jews with the intellectual tools to stand up to Zionist intimidation and manipulation.

I am not so happy with the name but most of members are of E. European Jewish background and wish to make a statement that they object to the Zionist reinterpretation of the Ashkenazi ethnic group as the pan-Judaic ethnonational group because said reinterpretation represents an intellectually dishonest attempt to justify the theft of Palestine from the native population by means of false primordialism and essentialism.

Rabbi Sanford Seltzer

Sincerely yours,

Joachim Martillo

Sphere: Related Content