Pages

▼

Friday, December 02, 2022

12/02 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: Diaspora Jews keep making the same mistake; Trivializing antisemitism based on politics; Not just Kanye – it’s an online coalition of hate

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Diaspora Jews keep making the same mistake
A perverse feature of the Jewish people is that they make one particular mistake over and over again. They are persecuted. They frantically try to assimilate into their host community in the belief that this will avert future persecution. They are persecuted again. They frantically assimilate again.

This week saw the publication of the first collected works of Theodor Herzl, the founding father of modern Zionism. The set initiated the Library of the Jewish People, a new series of works by classic Jewish writers issued by the Koren publishing house.

Publishing this now is particularly fitting because of striking similarities between Herzl's time and today.

Gil Troy's masterful introduction to the collection draws attention to the complexities of Herzl's tortured life. This rings a loud contemporary bell, not just about the persistence of antisemitism but about the current attitudes of Diaspora Jews.

Assimilated and sophisticated, Herzl had an ambivalent attitude towards his Jewishness. Infatuated with the German high culture that was dominant in Europe, he refused to circumcise his son and lit Christmas tree candles for his children.

Jews had risen to the highest levels of German and Austrian political, professional and cultural society. Yet at the same time, Germany and Austria were becoming more and more pathologically hostile to the Jews.

Herzl was caught in a permanent identity crisis – a conflict between his "enlightened" Europeanized self and the Jewish culture whose fundamental importance he only gradually came to understand.

As he reeled from one antisemitic shock after another, he repeatedly tried to reconcile the high degree of assimilation achieved by European Jews with the fact that, for non-Jewish Europeans, the Jews were unassimilable.


Not just Kanye – it’s an online coalition of hate
Some dismiss TikTok as an innocuous forum for children who want to be creative. Yet TikTok’s pattern of catering to young, impressionable, naïve audiences, combined with the impact of bad-faith actors who post hateful content, must be taken more seriously. Despite claims that TikTok and other platforms are monitoring content, a new variety of antisemitism has emerged in which hatred is articulated through “dog whistles” or coded language used for a specific audience. Jews, for example, are referred to as Skypes (to rhyme with kikes). Black people are “Googles,” Latinos are “Yahoos,” and Muslims are “Skittles.”

Current concerns also extend to more mainstream platforms like Twitter, whose acquisition by Elon Musk casts doubts on whether the social media giant will engage in any form of content moderation – even when it comes to hate speech. Advertisement

But it is on the Dark Web where antisemitic content truly thrives and festers. Inaccessible via what’s known as the “Surface Web,” where you and I search for restaurants, order books and play Wordle, the Dark Web operates in the vast walled-off realm of the Deep Web. It’s a lawless and faceless environment where hateful groups find a comfortable home not only on their own but more concerningly together, as a coalition that amplifies their individual and collective impact.

While it may be tempting to shrug off Ye’s defenders as a hateful nuisance, it is crucial to remember that violent terrorist groups spew similar rhetoric and also have access to the Deep Web. ISIS had to use cloud storage when navigating mainstream platforms became impossible. Thousands of films from Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas, and Hezbollah are floating in internet archives.

In an ideal world, Ye’s words should not matter. However, they reflect the cesspool of online hate that translates to violence on the streets. The Anti-Defamation League has documented a rise in antisemitic incidents in the US from 927 in 2012 to a record-high 2,717 in 2021. That is no coincidence.

We are missing a vital opportunity to call out not just Ye the individual, but the chronic trend of Jew-hatred itself. And what starts with Jews never ends with them. It spreads to other groups and reflects a decay in the moral fiber of society.

Let’s not talk about Ye. Let’s redirect the conversation toward forming a new coalition that counters the fusion and coalition of hate. While the Dark Net presents a tough challenge and there is no way to regulate it, however, it can be studied. Because words — whether they are uttered by an anonymous source or a celebrity — can and do kill.
Trivializing antisemitism based on politics
After news broke that former President Donald Trump carelessly dined with both Ye and avowed holocaust denier Nick Fuentes at Mar-A-Lago, Ben Shapiro, who has been outspoken about his support for Ron DeSantis should the Florida governor run for president in 2024, was quick to voice his disgust. "A good way not to accidentally dine with a vile racist and antisemite you don't know is not to dine with a vile racist and antisemite you do know," Shapiro posted, setting off a back-and-forth Twitter squabble between the defamed rapper and Daily Wire executives that had me reaching for the popcorn.

No doubt, Trump's meeting deserves public condemnation. But it's unfortunate that Shapiro can see the splinter in Trump's eye and not the log in his own. Shapiro coming down on Trump for associating with antisemites rings hypocritical in the face of his absence to do just that as his colleague, Candace Owens, continues to prattle on regularly about Ye being her "friend." Waving Owen's defense of an antisemite, presumably because of a shared, mutual interest says much more about Shapiro's character than Trump's dinner says about him.

According to a recent article by Dennis Prager, Owen's former boss, Owens is wrongly being smeared as an antisemite. Prager provides a laundry list of evidence that points to her allegiance with the Jewish people and her support of the Jewish state. But that woman who Prager stands behind has been nowhere to be found this past month. And after Ye's embrace of Fuentes, Dennis should ask himself some tough questions about her. That Shapiro and Prager refuse to publicly identify the brute that she has become on this issue not only has former supporters wondering if they are suffering from a mercenary conflict of interest but if they, like the ADL's Jonathan Greenblatt and other establishment Jewish leaders, have become so comfortable in their untouchable elite status, that they are now detached from the harsh realities of hatred their fellow Jews face every day on the streets of New York and Los Angeles.

If Shapiro and Prager honestly respected Ms. Owens, they would hold her to a higher standard, the standard that both the Daily Wire and Prager U profess to hold all people to. And certainly, the standard that Shapiro is currently holding Trump to. And no, this does not mean firing her, but it does mean straightening out their priorities by taking her to task for her concrete thinking and moral failings. What a fantastic exercise in free speech that would be, would it not?
Israel Advocacy Movement: Ben Shapiro is wrong about Kanye
In this video we examine the Ye effect


‘I like Hitler,' Kanye West says, denies Holocaust in Alex Jones interview
Responses
Israel's Ambassador to the US Michael Herzog said that he is "sickened by the conversation that Alex Jones had with avowed antisemites Kanye West and Nick Fuentes.

"They engaged in hateful incitement, which could lead to violence and the death of Jews in horrifying incidents. Free speech does not extend to incitement of violence and demonization of the Jewish community, which faces the highest levels of religious-based violence in the United States."

The interview with Jones comes on the heels of a turbulent appearance on journalist Tim Pool’s podcast.

West stormed out of the Timcast studio after Pool pushed back against West and Fuentes on their claims that Jews controlled the corporate press.

The show only lasted 20 minutes. According to Pool, he had intended to speak about the news about their dinner with former president Donald Trump when West immediately veered into a discussion of antisemitism.

Pool said in a subsequent podcast on Wednesday that he believed the incident has been planned by West and his entourage of alt-right activists Milo Yiannopoulos and Fuentes.

West's antisemitic tirades
After tweeting that he would go "Death con 3" on Jews in October, West has seemingly escalated his antisemitic diatribe and made it a central part of his identity.

West has also claimed that a "Jewish doctor" tried to have him killed and has repeated tropes about Jews controlling the media, banks and more.

Adidas, Balenciaga and other firms have severed ties with the performer since his discriminatory rants.

West also brought Fuentes and Yiannopoulos to Mar-A-Lago for a meeting with Trump in late November where he proposed that Trump become West's running mate for a 2024 campaign. West has teased a run at the US presidency in 2024 after his 2020 presidential campaign fell flat.


Kanye West's Twitter account suspended by Elon Musk for incitement to violence
US President Joe Biden appeared to hit out at antisemitic remarks made by Kanye West earlier this week, reaffirming in a Friday evening tweet that the Holocaust did, in fact, happen and that Adolf Hitler was "a demonic figure."

"I just want to make a few things clear," the US president wrote, "the Holocaust happened. Hitler was a demonic figure. Instead of giving it a platform, our political leaders should be calling out and rejecting antisemitism wherever it hides.

"Silence is complicity," Biden added.

Earlier on Friday morning, Kanye West's Twitter account was suspended on Friday morning after a tweet from Elon Musk explaining that the rapper again violated the rule against incitement to violence.

West tweeted out a photo late Thursday night promoting his 2024 presidential campaign with a photo of a star of David encasing a swastika. The post was removed from Twitter within a few hours. West also tweeted out an unflattering photo of Elon Musk, prompting Musk to clarify that "[West's] account is being suspended for incitement to violence, not an unflattering pic."

The incriminating photo was accompanied by the caption "YE24 LOVE EVERYONE #LOVESPEECH," to which Elon Musk replied, "This is not." A Twitter user then responded to Musk asking him to "FIX KANYE PLEASE." The Twitter CEO then wrote, "I tried my best. Despite that, he again violated our rule against incitement to violence. Account will be suspended."


Taking aim at Trump, Biden says leaders must call out antisemitism, not platform it
US President Joe Biden on Friday weighed in for the first time on his predecessor’s dinner with antisemites Nick Fuentes and Kanye West, tweeting that leaders should be rejecting antisemitism rather than giving it a platform.

“I just want to make a few things clear,” read a post from Biden’s account. “The Holocaust happened. Hitler was a demonic figure. And instead of giving it a platform, our political leaders should be calling out and rejecting antisemitism wherever it hides. Silence is complicity.”

The tweet came ten days after Trump hosted Holocaust denier Fuentes and the rapper embroiled in an ongoing antisemitism scandal, and the day after West, known as Ye, went on an unhinged rant on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s Infowars show in which he expressed his admiration for Hitler and the Nazis.

Biden’s White House did condemn the dinner shortly after it was reported, with a press secretary saying in a statement that “bigotry, hate and antisemitism have absolutely no place in America — including at Mar-a-Lago. Holocaust denial is repugnant and dangerous, and it must be forcefully condemned.”

A reporter shouted a question to Biden last weekend while he was traveling for the holiday and the president indicated his disgust over Trump but sufficed with responding, “You don’t wanna hear what I think.”

The White House ostensibly felt an additional comment from the president was necessary after Kanye’s Infowars appearance on Thursday.


12-Step Program for Anti-Israel Addicts (satire)
On Thursday evening The Mideast Beast sat down for an interview with Dr. Ye Rashida-Cortez, Director of the Anti-Israel Addicts Anonymous group, who has developed a 12-step program not just for “Israel = apartheid” addicts but specifically tailored for addicts who get every. fucking. thing. wrong. about Israel. Ye Rashida-Cortez noted, “At least drunks can be fun and a potential source of hook ups, whereas netizens who have become meme-educated historians are factually annoying. We believe that this carefully-designed 12-step program may help with their serious affliction.”

1 Admit you are an addict, and that “apartheid”, “Zio-Nazi”, and out-of-context map memes turn you on more than alcohol and porn. This is something that may cause you to feel shame…but you’ll eventually get over it. Probably. Possibly.
2 Admit that you’ve never stepped foot in Israel. (*Having an Israeli or Palestinian friend doesn’t count.)
3 Confess that you don’t really understand what Zionism means or the difference between the varying types of Zionism, and of course that you don’t understand the difference between the Arab-Israeli Conflict and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. It’s probably best to be totally honest and confess that you don’t understand the Middle East at all.
4 Admit that when you think of Israel you imagine white people. This is applicable for the far-right and far-left. (*Majority of Israelis are of Middle Eastern and Middle East-North Africa descent.)
5 Do not put your faith in a delusional and failing idea to remove your addiction. Speak to a doctor about the right pills for you. 6 Make amends with those whom you have pissed off. Take your time; we know the list is long.
7 Know that these ‘defects of character’ will never truly leave you, but with hard work, you can learn how to read books and dive into archival material; or you could always learn the art of ‘STFU’.
8 Learn to say, “I was wrong”. We’re actually ROTFF right now, but just go with it.
9 You will heal but not through prayer and meditation but rather medication.
10 Do not expect a spiritual awakening, but do expect a feeling of “wow, now that I’m less of an asshole, I have friends again!”
11 Do not ask a higher power to remove your weaknesses. If you’re trolling, you are weak. The best you can do is fight it, and the right meds will help.
12 Think about all the people you’ve annoyed the shit out of with your ‘newsfeed-education’. Other people’s welfare, not yours, comes first. Your welfare is way, way down the list.

The internet is counting on you!


For More Than a Century, Cinema Has Portrayed Jewish Soldiers as Cowardly, or Worse
Created during World War II, Britain’s Special Air Service (SAS) is the rough equivalent of the American Delta Force or Navy Seals. A recent BBC miniseries, SAS: Rogue Heroes, offers a fictionalized version of its creation and operations in Africa in 1941. Benjamin Vos notes that the show follows a long line of war movies that depict Jews as unmartial and unmanly:
SAS Rogue Heroes features one Jewish character, the fictional French soldier Halévy. Unlike the rangy, fit SAS men, he is small and portly, can’t mount a truck without help, is bullied, and almost flunks a test of bravery. While his comrades seem inherently warlike, Halévy fights specifically to avenge his deported family. His graduation to bravery necessitates his own death, as he immolates the traitor Brückner, himself, and others in an explosion.

Halévy first appears when, among a group of soldiers standing to attention, he sneezes and is laughed at. Halévy’s humiliation, unsoldierly reticence, moral preoccupation, and self-sacrifice continue a grisly dramatic tradition of fictional Jewish soldiers being bumbling, cowardly, or otherwise unfit to fight. The lucky ones die quickly.

This comic-relief role for Jewish soldiers has been a constant for well over a century. In Cohen Saves the Flag (1912), two Jews at Gettysburg put romantic rivalry above the interests of the Union Army. The running joke about lascivious and cowardly Private Lipinsky in What Price Glory? (1926) is the size of his nose.

Vos traces these tropes in films over the decades, and also notes some even more insidious stereotypes—which persist into the 21st century—of Jews as treacherous or lecherous. In other movies, their deaths provide salvation for their Gentile comrades:
Stalag 17 (1953) is a tense tale of betrayal among angry, violent POWs, within which Harry Shapiro is unreliable, vulgar, and indebted—and lusts after female Russian prisoners. . . . Corporal Gabby Gordon in Objective, Burma! (1945) is a standard-issue daft Jewish soldier. In the film, a Lt. Jacobs is tortured by the Japanese but passes on a vital message before dying. Jews [tend to] die to impart benefit to other characters or even moral instruction to viewers. In The Deep Six (1958), Frenchy Shapiro dies after rescuing his Quaker friend from Japanese soldiers. More significantly, Anzio (1968) features licentious Corporal Rabinoff who dies while drawing German fire from his non-Jewish comrades. Rabinoff’s death inspires a moral epiphany in a cynical war journalist.


The sequel to the Holocaust novel ‘Boy in the Striped Pajamas’ is here. Its author has no regrets.
At one point in John Boyne’s new novel “All The Broken Places,” a 91-year-old German woman recalls, for the first time, her encounter with a young Jewish boy in the Auschwitz death camp 80 years prior.

“I found him in the warehouse one day. Where they kept all the striped pajamas,” she says.

The woman, Gretel, quickly realizes her mistake: that “this was a phrase peculiar to my brother and me.” She clarifies that she is referring to “the uniforms. … You know the ones I mean.”

Boyne’s readers are, in fact, likely to know what Gretel means, as “All The Broken Places” is a sequel to Boyne’s 2006 international bestseller “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.” At a time when other Holocaust books intended for young readers have been challenged or removed from some American schools, the enduring popularity of “Striped Pajamas” has conjured up love and loathing in equal measure for its depiction of Nazi and Jewish youths during the Holocaust. It has sold 11 million copies, appeared in 58 languages and in major motion picture form, and been the only assigned reading about Jews or the Holocaust for countless schoolchildren, mostly in Britain. Yet Holocaust scholars have warned against it, panning it as inaccurate and trafficking in dangerous stereotypes about Jewish weakness.

Speaking to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency from his Dublin home on Tuesday, the day “All the Broken Places” hit US shelves, Boyne said he hoped readers would take his new book on its own terms — as a more sophisticated meditation on guilt, culpability and evil, for an adult audience rather than children this time. But he also wants to defend the original work that made him famous.

“I do feel it’s a positive contribution to the world and to Holocaust studies,” said Boyne, who estimates that he has personally spoken to between 500 and 600 schools about “Striped Pajamas.”

Not everyone agrees. A 2016 study published by the Centre for Holocaust Education, a British organization housed at University College London, found that 35% of British teachers used his book in their Holocaust lesson plans, and that 85% of students who had consumed any kind of media related to the Holocaust had either read the book or seen its movie adaptation.


Is Israel an apartheid state? A narrative's origins in South Africa
The question arises: Can Israel really be regarded as an apartheid state in the way that South Africa was when it was ruled by the Afrikaner Nationalist Party?

In answering this question, one turns to the views of black South African parliamentarian Kenneth Meshoe, president of the African Christian Democratic Party who, on regular visits to Israel, expressed his admiration for the Jewish state and explained why it was inaccurate to call it an apartheid state. Meshoe and his daughter, Olga Meshoe-Washington. are well-known and eloquent advocates for Israel, battling the narrative supported by the BDS movement that the Jewish state is an apartheid regime. Meshoe asserts that such a view is wrong, inaccurate and malicious.

Having lived through the apartheid years in South Africa, Meshoe, who is now 68, said: “Those who know what real apartheid is, as I do, know that there is nothing in Israel that looks like apartheid. Calling it such is an empty political statement that does not hold any truth. In Israel, you see people of different colors, backgrounds and religions interacting with each other every day. The BDS movement is a real pain. It is not a democratic movement but a movement of intimidation.”

Humpty Dumpty was right. We are the masters of our language – language is not our master. Those who seek to be masters use the word “apartheid” in a way that suits their malicious and underhand purposes. They have decided that the word means what they choose it to mean – neither more nor less.

It is their way of trying to undermine the State of Israel, a pernicious form of modern antisemitism, and it is time to combat their disingenuous, immoral and intellectually dishonest campaign.

How to best accomplish this is, however, another question.
Israel commemorates South African Jews who fought apartheid
A groundbreaking ceremony took place on November 7 in Tel Mond to launch a memorial garden that commemorates a remarkable group of South African Jews who contributed to the struggle against apartheid, as well as gave support to the State of Israel. The garden has been named Gan Siyabonga (Gan means “park” in Hebrew; Siyabonga is “We thank you” in Zulu).

The 5,000-square meter garden, surrounded by trees, in located in the lush Tel Mond Park. Tel Mond, which is home to a sizable English-speaking community including many former South Africans, is a 15-minute drive from Ra’anana and 10 minutes from Netanya.

The Jewish National Fund South Africa and South African Zionist Federation (SAZF) said in a media release that a South African artist will be commissioned to create a sculpture to recognize the Jewish contribution to South Africa’s struggle for freedom. It is due to be unveiled in early 2023. Some 36 trees will be planted in the garden (according to Jewish tradition, each generation is saved by 36 righteous people). Stones will be placed for each activist with QR bar codes, which can be scanned to reveal their history.

A living testament to the struggle for freedom and the bond between Israel and South Africa
“At a time when some are trying to divide South Africa and Israel for their own sectarian interests, this garden will be a living testament to the bond between the two peoples in the struggle for freedom,” said Michael Kransdorff, chairman of JNF South Africa, who championed the idea of a memorial garden. “There were many South African Jews who contributed to South Africa’s liberation and who were supportive of Israel’s establishment and development. These heroes have never been recognized and many are not well known, yet they were instrumental in helping to build better societies in South Africa and Israel.”




Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!
 

 

at