Lenin called those who work against their own people’s best interests in support of their enemies “helpful idiots,” and I am sure that many in the Arab world feel the same way about entities like J Street and Peter Beinart . Throughout history – both ancient and modern, there has never been a shortage of people or groups from within and without the Jewish community who harm Jews – and the most effective stick for beating Israel over the head is a Jewish or Israeli stick.
There are many terms that have been used to describe such people, including, self-hating Jews and sufferers of the “Jew flu” – and it is not a new phenomenon. From Nicholas Donin, who in 1240 helped establish a decree to publicly burn all available copies of the Talmud, to Karl Marx. Theodor Lessing authored the 1930 book Der Jüdische Selbsthass (“Jewish Self-hatred”), and Labor Zionist leader Berl Katznelson asked, “Is there another People on Earth so emotionally twisted that they consider everything their nation does despicable and hateful, while every murder, rape, robbery committed by their enemies fill their hearts with admiration and awe?”
Growing up in the ‘80’s & 90’s as a member of the Betar Movement of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, I remember in the cast as Michael Lerner, Shulamit Aloni, Abie Nathan and other fools. One wonders what these disproportionately loud critics of Israel and the Jewish communities think.
Jews who sympathize with our enemies represent a tiny portion of world Jewry – but the prominence they command in public discourse creates a tyranny of the minority. There is no shortage of Anti-Israel books, but media coverage of them soars when Jews are the authors. Newsweek hosts a far-left wing extremist blog by Peter Beinart providing a mainstream media dedicated platform for a viewpoint which is completely apart from the mainstream Jewish community’s way of thinking.
Journalist Uzi Silber coined the term “Jew Flu,” saying, “those infected with the virus wildly inflate Israeli sins real or imagined, while excusing or rationalizing Palestinian anti-Semitism and outrages against Jews.”
Kenneth Levin, a Harvard psychiatrist, says that Jewish self-hatred is in part a result of Stockholm syndrome, where “population segments under chronic siege commonly embrace the indictments of their besiegers however bigoted and outrageous.”
This was epitomized by Rosa Luxemburg, a prominent Bolshevik who said, “I have no room in my heart for Jewish suffering – Why do you pester me with Jewish troubles?”
Throughout history, Jewish self-haters have been influenced by a perversion of Judaism which says that universal social justice is the core Jewish mission. It’s simply not true that this is the central point of Judaism – and one wonders why these people ignore all of the other Jewish commandments. They seem to miss the point that if they and other Jewish enemies succeed in their collaboration, Israel won’t be a nation – and can’t be a “light unto the nations”.
In the year 2012, we must heed the words of Jabotinsky, “We were not created in order to teach morals and manners to our enemies.”
While Beinart and J-Street continue on with their self-hating and shameful behavior, they fail to note that the “Arab spring” hasn’t brought any Arab country closer to Israel – Arabs in Libya or Cairo haven’t been speaking up about the Jewish need to live in peace, or tweeting about the positive example of the Jewish democracy. These “helpful idiots” continue writing and issuing statements while there are no Arabs speaking up for Jewish causes. These liberal Jews speak out for the whole world – Tibet, Sudan – and of national rights for all people – except the Jews. They speak of a “humanity” that will divest the Jewish people of their humanity.
Harvard professor Ruth Wisse says, “the rapid demoralization of Jews in the face of anti-Zionism… shows the depth of the influence of the past, for many have yet to achieve the simple self-respect that has been eluding the Jews collectively since the dawn of modernity.”
As it says in the Talmud “Israel are the sons and daughters of Kings,” – We, the Jewish people, are sons and daughters of the first king and queen, Abraham and Sarah. These self-hating Jews have forgotten that Jews are the chosen people and descend from royalty – and we will continue to pray and work for the State of Israel and Jewish people.
Author of “For Immediate Release”, Ronn Torossian owns 5WPR, 1 of the largest US PR Firms, and is a Jewish philanthropist and board member of numerous Jewish organizations.
There is something wrong with SOME Jews and I had a go at explaining it because you can not cure pathology – or breakages – unless you find out what has gone wrong. We do have some donkeys but we also have some clumsy mule drivers. This sort of social malady only cures with the turn over of generations – unless you put in some clear, smpathetic and firm re-education.
@ Frank Adam:
One begins to wonder. Perhaps there is something wrong with the Jews and Judaism? There is an old Yiddish saying — “If one person calls you a donkey, ignore him; if two people call you a donkey, buy a saddle.”
Since the Revolutionary era – The Enlightenment – the World has become ever more meritocratic and technical, so woolly talk about royalty is not appropriate. Disentangling the motivational psychology and emotions is important. Those more expert can enlarge on the following sketches.
Even secular politics have emotional springs of “faith” in their clockwork and one of those in Zionism and the US Founding Fathers was – is – to build a model society. Ditto the French and Russian revolutionaries and the anti-colonialists of the 1918 to 1960 generations. Trespass on the Rights of Man in this context is self defeating and reduces the struggle to a snouts in the trough competition.
One of the problems of independence is how to cope with the human failures of imposed situations such as the long term Arab agggression. In Galuth, Jews could only check that they were not putting a foot wrong – indeed the hostility of host societies insisted as much. Now when we have the openings and security to lambast our opponents and do so, some still can not change either for intellectual inertia or from the incomprehension of the rougher parts of the World resulting from an excessively sheltered [early?] life.
There is also a profound fear in the foundations of the Jewish psyche. If we come out of a family that still remembers being on the wrong end of social prejudices and is grateful that they have largely evaporated then it is embarrassing and frightening when the liberalism on which one depends for a peaceful and prosperous life can be compromised by finger pointing at the actions of the unique Jewish State’s behaviour even if justified in hostile circumstances. In this there is immoral security in numbers. On this point Sir Lewis Namier , once Weizmann’s secretary, had the problem zeroed when he dubbed these “tender consciences” OTI’s – Order of the Trembling Israelites whose political moderation is a function of their fears. American Jews should not laugh too easily as till Pearl harbour and even after, they were justifiable quiet so that the antisemites could not point to Goebbels mudslinging the war as a Jewish plot.
@ Sam Stuart Snyder PhD:
The silence is killing Pollard
My feeling is that most American Jews including Adm Shapiro were more concerned with themselves, their own carreers and fear of gentile antisemitic backlash than Pollard, Israel and even the concept of justice. If Pollard were a non Jew based on the merits of the case there would have been tens of thousands of Jews clamoring for his release. Not because he was not a spy but because his trial sentencing and severity were unjust. A miscarriage of the American ethos and Justice system. If he were a black American the charge of racism would have been raised and pursued.
Remember Lettuce? How many Jews supported exploitation of migrant farm workers? Save the wales? Global warming? Jews will fight for any cause not specifically Jewish.
American Jews are a bunch of pathetic scared rabbits but in the end it won’t help you. It didn’t help the Spanish Jews, the German Jews or the Russian Bolsheviks? It won’t help American Jews either, the only question is when not if.
I find most American Jews despicable and even pathetic.
@ yamit82:
Is commentary necessary?
American to serve 17 years on terror-related charges
Massachusetts man sought terrorist training in Yemen, aimed to fight US troops in Iraq
@ Sam Stuart Snyder PhD:
my reply was botted by the spam filter.
@ Sam Stuart Snyder PhD:
In American and most western legal systems it is a postulate the the punishment must or should fit the crime. This of course is not always the case and when there are obvious and blatant anomalies to that principle, redress should be sought by all those who value the concept of justice and right from wrong. Societal miscarriages of justice and it’s redress should concern everyone.
The ONLY spies executed in the 20th Century were the Rosenbergs. (Although the Solviet Archives later confirmed that the Rosenbergs had been spies for Russia, it did not confirm that the nuclear secrets had been shared by the Rosenbergs.)
Now Pollard rots in prison, with the longest conviction for spying–life in prison.
Coincidence that they are Jews? Coincidence they were both spying for “friendly” countries (Russia was a US alli during WWI and WWII). Hmmmm.
If Pollard was a spy, he was a spy lite in the pantheon of spy’s caught spying against America and except for the Rosenberg’s no one except pollard has received and suffered such a severe punishment.
Ethel Rosenberg was framed and executed unjustly.
Rosenberg Grand Jury Files Released
Ruth Greenglass Testimony Directly Contradicts Central Trial Charge against Ethel Rosenberg
Grand Jury Records Describe Greenglass Handwriting, not Ethel Typing,
But Prosecutors Said Ethel “struck the keys, blow by blow, against her own country”
@ flex:
Pollard is a traitor and as a Jew that makes it worse:
Admiral Shapiro, himself Jewish, stated that he was troubled by the support of Jewish organizations for Pollard: “We work so hard to establish ourselves and to get where we are, and to have somebody screw it up… and then to have Jewish organizations line up behind this guy and try to make him out a hero of the Jewish people, it bothers the hell out of me”.[16]
Eric Margolis alleges that Pollard’s spying may have led to the capture and execution of CIA spies in the Eastern Bloc after Israel sold or bartered Pollard’s information to the Soviet Union.[80] According to one theory, Israeli businessman and convicted Soviet spy Shabattai Kalmanovich may have been made a scapegoat for information from Pollard that had been willingly shared by Israel with the Soviets in order to secure the release of certain Jewish scientists in the USSR.[81]
Ron Olive, retired Naval Criminal Investigative Service, led the Pollard investigation. In 2006 his book, Capturing Jonathan Pollard – How One of the Most Notorious Spies in American History Was Brought to Justice, was published. Olive wrote that Pollard did not serve Israel solely, and that Pollard confessed to passing secrets to South Africa and to his financial advisers, shopping his access to Pakistan and recruiting others for money.[83]
New Republic editor (and vocal supporter of Israel) Martin Peretz has argued against freeing Pollard, writing that “Jonathan Pollard is not a Jewish martyr. He is a convicted espionage agent who spied on his country for both Israel and Pakistan (!) — a spy, moreover, who got paid for his work. His professional career, then, reeks of infamy and is suffused with depravity.” Peretz called Pollard’s supporters “professional victims, mostly brutal themselves, who originate in the ultra-nationalist and religious right. They are insatiable. And they want America to be Israel’s patsy.”[84]
Former FBI and navy lawyer M.E. “Spike” Bowman, top legal adviser to navy intelligence at the time, and with intimate knowledge, of the Pollard case, has issued a detailed critique of the case for clemency, asserting “Because the case never went to trial, it is difficult for outside observers to understand the potential impact and complexity of the Pollard betrayal. There is no doubt that Pollard was devoted to Israel. However, the extent of the theft and the damage was far broader and more complex than evidenced by the single charge and sentence.”[85] Bowman wrote that Pollard “was neither a U.S. nor an Israeli patriot. He was a self-serving, gluttonous character seeking financial reward and personal gratification.”[85]
In September 2011, Vice President Joe Biden was reported by the New York Times to have told a group of rabbis that, “President Obama was considering clemency, but I told him, ‘Over my dead body are we going to let him out before his time. If it were up to me, he would stay in jail for life.’”[86] A few days later, Biden denied having used those words although he acknowledged that the sentiment attributed to him was, in fact, his position on the issue.[87]
@ Sam Stuart Snyder PhD:
Sam,
maybe you should have kept reading yoyr article to the end:
@ Shari:
http://www.jonathanpollard.org/2003/060003.htm
Sam Stuart Snyder PHD
Pollard sold information to the Russians? Do you have any evicence to back up that claim?
Brilliant commentary by Ronn Torossian – I really enjoyed this article and couldnt agree more. Thank you Mr. Torrosian.
@ yamit82:
Pollard is a spy, and a Quisling. He not only sold Intelligence to the Israelis but to the Russians. I have no pity for him. If anything he is as bad as those other Jews….The Rosenbergs!
@ yamit82:
Well said. The problem with leftist so-called Jews who at 78% vote for any Demoncrat politician, they have no perspective. They would vote for Hitler if he ran as a Demoncrat and make excuses for his Jew hatred rhetoric! Again, it is the lemming gene!
Jew hating Jews intentionally provoke negative reactions by normative Jews. They welcome the criticism, they thrive on it, profit from it financially and professionally. They either are oblivious or don’t mind that they lend themselves as useful idiots to Gentile antisemites. They want the rebuttals because it endears them to the Jew haters and Israel bashers and they believe they are loved by the Gentiles more by what we say than they say and wite themselves.
My way would be to let them know we know where they live, where they park their cars and where their kids go to school.
Send them a dead stinking chicken.
@ Vic Rosenthal:
Good stuff in both cases.
I will add my 2 cents with a timely piece by Zvi Fishman
The silence is killing Pollard
Read More
@ Linda Cohn:
All part of the need to be a victim and the hatred of anything other than progressivism! Let us hope that none of us imitate the “snool” Jew!
I made up my own name for them: snool jews. A snool jew has assumed the forward bending position with his or her naked ass in the air, saying rape me, rape me, don’t kill me, I just want you to like me. Needles to say, I do not respect their position and will not be imitating it.
There are Jews and then there are progressives who given up on the Talmud in favor self-hatred, and communism. These useful idiots were there during pogroms, concentation camps, the Inquistion, the Russian Revolution, the giving of land for peace to Arabs, and much more. They have a Lemming gene and as always think of themselves as victims. They collectively no longer have a right to call themselves Jews for they have given up their Jew cards in favor of evil!
@ david frankel:
Bravo!!
Nothing so bad that it is good for nothing. In many years garbigde was burning in the vally under Jaffa gate
@ david frankel:
Many writers, including myself, have attacked Beinart. But nobody has ever done a better job on him then Danny Gordis, in this recent piece:
http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Opinion/Article.aspx?id=265690
The general phenomenon of Jewish antisemitism is explained very well by Kenneth Levin, in his book “The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege.” I reviewed it here:
http://fresnozionism.org/2011/02/jews-on-the-dark-side/
yes we have a lot of self hating jews like kadima party laber party shemon perez yetzac rabin may they rot in hell for ever