Chabad (Lubavitch), Putin, Russian Oligarchs

Understanding Jewish Politics in Russia
by Joachim Martillo (ThorsProvoni@aol.com)

While ordinary Chabadniks often describe Vladimir Putin as an evil thug, the Chabad leadership basks in its relationship with him. This contradiction has complex roots.

In the beginning the mainstream Jewish community in post-Soviet Russia was dominated by the Russian Jewish Oligarchs, who are a sort of mutant spinoff of Friedmanite Neoliberals (a gross simplification) and who for the most part became enemies of the Putin's policy of bringing privatized former Soviet state corporations back under governmental control.

The National Council for Soviet Jews, which is hostile to Russia, is Neocon-dominated. The Neocons themselves have been working with American Neoliberals in an attempt to wrest the oil and natural gas resources of former Soviet territories from domination by the Russian federation.

While the Lubavitcher leadership shares with the Zionist intelligentsia the basic drive for status, power, and wealth, Lubavitcher politics is relatively simple-minded and involves generic anti-goyism in combination with a desire to bring as many Jews as possible closer to the Lubavitcher way of thinking.

Not only are the Lubavitchers far less threatening from the standpoint of Putin because they lack the Neocon-Zionist-Neoliberal dreams of economic and strategic domination, but Lubavitcher mythology even glorifies the decision of the Alter Rebbe (Shneur Zalman) to seek close relations with the Russian government by supporting the Czar over Napoleon. Because the anti-Putin oligarchs tried to wage a propaganda war against Putin by flinging accusations of anti-Semitism, Putin probably found the Lubavitchers useful as a sort of PR shield.

In order to assure the choice of Lubavitcher Berel Lazar as Russian Chief Rabbi, Putin worked closely with wealthy Russian Jewish baal tshuvah Lev Leviev and with the Putin-friendly Russian Jewish oligarch Roman Abramovich, who was close to Georgian Jewish Oligarch Badri Patarkatsishvili, who until his death led the opposition to the Neocon-supported Saakashvili regime in Georgia.

Ordinary Lubavitcher scorn for Putin and Russians in general is probably a consequence of traditional anti-goyish and anti-Russian attitudes of both American Jews and also Russian baalei tshuvah, who often believe falsely that anti-Semitism is built into Russian genes and that Russian Jewish history is a never ending tale of pogroms and persecutions that result from Russian anti-Semitic genetic programming.

Such beliefs are quite dangerous. Not only do they often morph into fanatic anti-Islamism and Muslim-baiting because Jews often fail to distinguish one group of gentiles from another (see list of Obsession-related blog entries at the end of this article), but Lubavitchers like many Jewish groups are totally convinced of their moral superiority to non-Jews and rarely feel any remorse or connection to anti-Gentile crimes that arise out of Jewish politics and business practices, whether exploitation so severe that Ukrainian peasantry had no recourse but rebellion or the mass murder, ethnic cleansing and genocide that have characterized both Soviet Ashkenazi and Zionist Ashkenazi politics.

Vladimir Putin told me a personal story in the Kremlin

This video includes excerpts from the speeches of Russian Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar, Attorney Alan Dershowitz, and footage of the legendary Chabad Lubavitch "Roll Call" at the 2006 International Conference of Shluchim.

Get the full video: The Banquet 5767-2006

© 2008 YouTube, LLC

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Harvard: Jews Better Than Muslims

According to Professor Harry Lewis

Letter to the Editor of the Boston Globe

 

Dear Editor:

 

Harvard Professor Harry Lewis should probably spend more time in working on computer programs and less in writing op-ed columns like A separate and unequal exercise (Boston Globe, March 25, 2008, see below).

 

Setting aside six hours so that Muslim women can exercise without the presence of men is just a minor supplement to providing separate locker rooms for men and women.

 

Such minor accommodation has no similarity to the ROTC total exclusion of homosexuals.  If Lewis fails to understand the difference, perhaps he should find a less prestigious school where he can become a member of the faculty.

 

In any case, some religious Jewish female students as well as lesbians uncomfortable with male harassment will probably avail themselves of the women-only six hours at Harvard athletic facilities.

 

Lewis crossed the line into Jewish Islamophobic incitement by suggesting that Jews are somehow ethically superior to observant Muslims when he comments, "Everyone can enjoy Harvard's kosher food."

 

Lewis is wrong. Kosher wine that has not been "cooked" according to halakhah (Jewish law) becomes ritually unfit if a non-Jew touches or pours it. While Harvard Hillel is unlikely to provide such wine at services or meals, Chabad does use it at invitation-only gatherings that exclude non-Jews in order to increase the feeling among Jews that they are separate or "chosen."

 

With even more obnoxiousness both Harvard Hillel and Harvard Chabad sponsor Birthright Israel.

 

This program gives Jewish students a free trip to Israel as their birthright even though the vast majority of modern Jews have no ancestral connection to Palestine whatsoever as the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has recently pointed out in Shattering a National Mythology (Ofri Ilani, March 21, 2008) and in An invention called 'the Jewish people' (Tom Segev, February 29, 2008).

 

Birthright Israel excludes descendants of the native Palestinian population that Eastern European Jewish invaders ethnically cleansed in 1947-8.

 

The program is a racist slap in the face to all Palestinian members of the Harvard community.

 

Jewish faculty and staff should engage in some self-examination before dumping on Harvard Muslims, and the University administration should carefully consider whether Jewish bigots have enmeshed Harvard in a pattern of racist practices jeopardizing the University's status as a 501 (c) (3) organization to which contributions are tax deductible.

 

Harry Lewis should apologize to Harvard Muslims forthwith, and the University should discipline him for the moral turpitude associated with public expression of prejudice.

 

Joachim Martillo HC '78

Boston, MA

ThorsProvoni@aol.com

 

 

HARRY LEWIS A separate and unequal exercise By Harry Lewis  |  March 25, 2008 PERHAPS it is simple politeness for Harvard University to close its secondary gym to men for six hours a week so conservative Muslim women can exercise without men seeing their skin. Religious accommodations are usually uncontroversial, but this is different. Everyone can enjoy Harvard's kosher food; half the students are excluded from the gym, however briefly. Surely only those with the most mean-spirited interpretation of gender equality could object - yet complain they did. "Today I was forced to wait outside in the cold until 5," wrote one man. "The policy seems sexist and discriminatory." "These hours have been put in place for equality reasons," read Harvard's announcement. The decision apparently resulted from a paradoxical collaboration between the Women's Center, which greets visitors with a sign reading "All Genders Welcome," and adherents to a religion that imposes unequal social strictures on men and women. Harvard didn't explain its thinking, but it seems to have adopted a postmodern version of equality: Equality might be achieved only by imposing unequal access, if those seeking equality do not share the consensus view. Freedom is useless without comfort, so liberation of some might require exclusion of others. Whatever the logic, the university failed in its educational responsibility. It missed an opportunity to model for its students the kind of moral reasoning it expects of them. The resulting standards are inconsistent, and the muddle has a history. This conflict is rooted in Harvard's uncompromising interpretation of equality since 1977, which was a response to its decidedly unequal treatment of women for most of its past. When Harvard assumed full responsibility for women's education from Radcliffe, it adopted an absolute nondiscrimination standard. Everything is open to men and women on an equal basis - nothing is "separate but equal" except some athletic teams and choral singing groups. Most student organizations desegregated voluntarily. The venerable all-male Final Clubs, which the dean's office used to coordinate, refused to admit women and were severed from the university. Harvard's nondiscrimination policies now cover "race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, age," and a few other things, and the same absolutism applies to all categories. Harvard has no ethnic or single-sex housing. Women's groups have to allow male members. The Black Students' Association can't close white students out of its meetings. And, until now, the athletic department didn't bar the doors of the gym against male students. Absolutism is not the only ethical approach to discrimination issues. Fraternities and sororities fall afoul of Harvard's equal-access policy, but most colleges find them unproblematic in principle. Perhaps Harvard has just been out of step with that "real world" in which constructive segregation and special interests sometimes trump integrationist principles. The new stance seems generous and tolerant: Be nice to people, even if it means excluding others, as long as the benefit is significant and the injury is minor. Which brings us to ROTC. Harvard bans ROTC because the military violates the "sexual orientation" part of Harvard's nondiscrimination policy. Harvard students can participate in ROTC at MIT, but Harvard will not provide them meeting space or any other support - even bus fare down Massachusetts Avenue. If there were ever a special case, this is it. ROTC's discriminatory policy is US law. Until Congress repeals that law, Harvard should accommodate ROTC anyway, in the interests of the nation and of Harvard students wishing to serve it. The counterargument goes, however, that if ROTC were accommodated, the benefit to cadets would be far less significant than the injury to gays and lesbians. Indeed, some claim that no price would be too high for Harvard to pay for uncompromising adherence to its nondiscrimination policy, even the loss of all government funding, if it came to that. Is the gym exception merely a reasonable kindness to conservative Muslim women? Then Harvard's failure of courtesy to its cadets suggests that politics determine what forms of discrimination are inoffensive. That is not what Harvard should be teaching. Tolerance is good, but absolute nondiscrimination is preferable to such politicized tolerance. Harry Lewis is professor of computer science at Harvard and former dean of Harvard College. He is the author of "Excellence Without a Soul: Does Liberal Education Have a Future?" and coauthor of "Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion," which will be published in June.

© Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
 

 

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