Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: European antisemitism

Showing posts with label European antisemitism. Show all posts

Sunday, February 13, 2022

EoZ book, "Protocols: Exposing Modern Antisemitism," is now for sale!

I am pleased to announce that my book has been released.

Protocols: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (EoZPress, 2022) is based on my essays on the blog over the past several years, somewhat expanded and improved.

Today we have updated, and equally fictional, versions of the Tsarist forgery about the Elders of Zion. protocols. The new protocols might not take the same written form as the older forgery, but they are imprinted in the minds of modern antisemites. These protocols include ideas such as: the Jewish lobby controls the American government; Israel ethnically cleanses non-Jews from Israel; Zionism is racism; Israel violates international law in myriad ways; and Jews use the Holocaust to justify their own Nazi-like crimes.

In some circles these new protocols have practically become a religion, and the people who believe the new lies are as fanatic as the ones who believe the old ones.

This book defines and exposes modern antisemitism. It shows how the scourge of Jew-hatred is as virulent as it ever was and how modern antisemites hide their hate behind the pretexts of "human rights" and "international law." Protocols identifies and refutes the arguments of today's haters. It is indispensable to understand how the "world's oldest hatred" has returned and how it tries to disguise itself.

It is especially relevant today, as so called "human rights" and "progressive" organizations are twisting the definitions of "racism," "apartheid" and "genocide" specifically against Israel and only Israel - a perfect example of how the Jewish state has replaced the Jewish people as the stated target of the world's oldest hatred.

The book is divided into five parts.

After defining what antisemitism is, I describe different manifestations of the hate that comes from the Left, the Right, the Arab world and others.

Section 2 looks at what international law really says, not what Israel haters claim. I also show how international law itself has been hijacked by those who hate Israel. Topics include how the media gets basic human rights law wrong in various Gaza conflicts, how NGOs redefine "human shields" to exonerate Hamas, the "right of return" and who is a refugee under international law.

Section 3 looks at how supposed experts and pundits keep getting Israel wrong, and why. It also looks at how anti-Israel thinkers have been against the Abraham Accords, actually rooting for them to fail.

Section 4 includes my takedowns of the most articulate and clever demonizers of Israel, and how they use propaganda techniques to make their lies harder to recognize and counter. I take on Peter Beinart, Judith Butler, Noura Erakat and more.

Finally, Section 5 reviews how "human rights organizations" have been using their platforms to attack Israel. I show in detail how they use half-truths to give an overall false impression of Israel. It is very relevant today in the wake of Amnesty's and Human Rights Watch's accusations of Israel as guilty of apartheid. I could write an entire book twice as long as this one just taking apart their reports since 2009. (Maybe I should!)

The people I sent advanced copies to - all academics and prestigious authors - have enthusiastically endorsed Protocols. Examples:

Elder strikes again. Incisive, insightful, illuminating, and overall devastating essays on topics of deep concern to Jews and their allies today: antisemitism, anti-Zionism, the left's turn against the Jews, the abuse of "international law," the dishonesty of many Israel-haters, etc. Elder's work is truly substantive, not only displaying greater intellectual breadth and depth than so many of the "academics" who weaponize their work against the world's only Jewish state but decisively shredding their webs of dissimulations and lies. If only there were a committee of Elders of Zi(y)on running the world....

-Andrew Pessin, Professor of Philosophy at Connecticut College, editor, Anti-Zionism on Campus: The University, Free Speech, and BDS

This is a brilliant and forceful book about modern antisemitism—except that it is really an anti-propaganda weapon of war. Our venerable Elder of Zion has written a witty, pithy, and yet comprehensive work; his argumentation and documentation are superb, smart, and based on a knowledge of Judaism, history, warfare, and propaganda. He skewers Jew haters/anti-Zionists with such skill that the reader is prompted to laugh, cry, and/or fly into a rage—and all at the same time. Elder exposes all the “word games” with which journalists confuse legal reality, the Big Lies, about “racism” and “apartheid,” the quadruple standards by which Israel alone is judged by the “academic fraudsters,” and by the NGOs, the UN, the churches, the media, the Palestinian terrorists, and by all the many Masters of the zero sum game. Dare I say, that this work is a Bible of sorts and should immediately be translated into Arabic and distributed all over the Middle East—as well as read into the record, annually, at the United Nations.

- Phyllis Chesler, author, The New Anti-Semitism: The Current Crisis and What We Must Do About It

Antisemitism is both the oldest hatred and the newest, and in exposing the lies behind the modern embodiment of the infamous "Protocols", Elder of Ziyon has written the essential reference handbook. In tackling the broad range of hate campaigns, from manipulating the slogans of international law and human rights in the United Nation, to the fake media experts and the NGO anti-Zionist jihad, the New Protocols is a concise and fact-filled response.
-Professor Gerald Steinberg, NGO Monitor

Right now the book is available as paperback and e-book. In the near future I hope to have a hardcover edition as well as well as extended distribution beyond Amazon so it can be ordered from all major booksellers.

If you like this site, you will love this book!

Cairo Book Fair (again) features antisemitic books

The Cairo International Book Fair is starting. And as it has in the past, it is pushing antisemitic themes.

One of its featured books on the website is a translation of an 1889 work by Gustave Le Bon, his chapters on Jewish civilization in his "Les premières civilisations."

For the most part, Le Bon is not impressed with Jewish civilization, and his first paragraph is translated in this Arabic article:

The Jews possessed neither arts, nor sciences, nor industry, nor anything that constitutes a civilization. They have never made the smallest contribution to the building of human knowledge. They never went beyond this state of semi-barbarism of peoples who have no history. If they ended by possessing towns, it was because the conditions of existence, in the midst of neighbors arrived at a higher stage of evolution, made it a necessity for them; but their cities, their temples, their palaces, the Jews were profoundly incapable of raising them themselves; and, at the time of their greatest power, under the reign of Solomon, it was from abroad that they were obliged to bring in the architects, the workmen, the artists, of whom no emulator then existed within Israel.

The description of the book goes on to say that "the goal of the book is based in particular on explaining the failure of the Jews to share in the history of civilization. And on the ethnic disadvantages of the Jews, and on the fact that the Jews are an unfit people that came to Palestine."

Le Bon's chapters on the Jews are indeed very critical, only praising Jewish literature and poetry. He repeats a variant of that first sentence several times.

Clearly the only reason that this section of a large book was translated into Arabic is because it is one of the few works of history of the past 150 years outside Nazi Germany and the Arab world that is so critical of Jews. In other words, translating a racist 19th century French intellectual who is best known for his theories of crowd psychology and who believed that cranial size determines intelligence doesn't reveal anything about Jews. It reveals a lot about a culture that goes out of its way to find a history of Jewish civilization that hates Jews almost as much as the culture surrounding the Cairo Book Festival does.

Tu B’Shvat: Jewish in Israel if You Please (Judean Rose)

The almond trees are blooming in Israel, right in time for Tu B’Shvat, the new year of the trees. I like to bring a flowering branch into my home where my family can see this visible reminder of the holiday. Out of doors, it’s fascinating to watch the hillsides break out in spring-like blossoms in the dead of winter. It’s so cool to live in Israel and watch the way the seasons unfold according to the Jewish calendar.

I appreciate this blessing even more after having just returned from a trip to the States. It was lovely to see my hometown. I got a kick out of seeing this gold filigree reindeer on someone’s lawn:

But I thrilled at seeing the almond trees in bloom on my return. Here in Israel, the holidays, the seasons, are my own. They’re Jewish. And that’s why I live here. That’s precisely the reason. And there’s a special happiness, a kind of delight, to living a Jewish life in Israel.

Some of the goodies we had for Tu B'Shvat here in Israel.

The thing is, I can’t really get it through my head, can’t really understand why Jews want to live anywhere else. It’s one thing to pray for rain in your daily prayers. It’s another thing to actually understand the prayer and what it represents. You could be saying your prayers in Detroit, but you’re praying for rain in Israel. Why do that in Detroit?

You pray for something good to happen in your land, but you don’t live there??? What good is the land without inhabitants? Why pray for the place where you don't want to live?

By the same token, you can eat some carob on Tu B’Shvat in Pittsburgh. But it’s not the new year of the trees in Allegheny County. When you eat that carob you’re celebrating the new year of the trees in Israel. Why take pleasure in the fruits of Eretz Yisrael? Why mark the season while laying down ever stronger roots in Cincinnati or Lakewood?

It’s not your country there. It’s a land of filigreed reindeer.

Here in Israel, where the almonds blossom on Tu B’Shvat, is where you are supposed to be.

Dried fruit on sale at a local health food store in honor of Tu B'Shvat this week (photo credit: Chava Hyman)

But the cognitive dissonance I experience regarding Jews in America is kind of minor when compared to what I feel about Jews living in Europe.

Take, for instance, the comments by Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, on antisemitism in Germany, “The very first step is the simple, though painful, acknowledgment that Germany, in the year 2018, is still facing a massive problem with hatred toward Jews,” said Schuster.

I found this statement difficult to understand. Germany rounded up, gassed, and burned over 6 million Jews. Why should it be painful to acknowledge Germany’s problem regarding the Jews? Why would anyone think that the antisemitism expressed through the Holocaust is gone from Germany? Why would Jews attempt to reestablish a Jewish community in Germany? The very name of Schuster’s organization is an oxymoron, from my purview.

But it gets worse. Schuster cites polls that show some 20-25 percent of Germans have antisemitic attitudes. He says, “It’s high time to combat this irrational hatred.”

I read Schuster’s words and thought: it’s high time you, Josef Schuster, realized that Germany is no place for Jews!

Combat hatred? What is the point of combatting Jew-hatred in Germany? I don’t see this as a noble purpose. A noble purpose is picking up and moving to Israel and strengthening the Jewish State. A Jew living in Germany, on the other hand, is the definition of insanity so often misattributed to Einstein.

But I don’t mean to pin all this on Schuster. Jews like Schuster are in no short supply in Europe or in other parts of the world. Commenting on a report showing that antisemitic incidents in Germany had increased three-fold in 2015, Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, president of the Conference of European Rabbis said, “We are in a new era of antisemitism globally. There is a rejection of mainstream politics and we need to be aware of the waves of antisemitism sweeping across Europe. As a society we must take measures to reject antisemitism and ensure that it does not become a new norm.”

Um, how can antisemitism in Germany become a “new norm”? Is that because it was the “old norm” in 1938? I really cannot wrap my head around this statement.

He seems to think something changed in Germany after the Holocaust. Actually, something did change. They stopped shoving us into gas chambers. And the sentiment was driven underground just a bit. Because the world was appalled. Germany had to improve its rep.

But why would anyone delude themselves into thinking that Germans stopped hating Jews? Tuvia Tenenbom and NGO Monitor’s Gerald Steinberg have done an excellent job exposing German state funding of antisemitic and anti-Israel organizations. German antisemitism cannot only be pinned on Muslim immigrants, but must be recognized as part and parcel of the German culture and ethos, no matter how many official denials are issued. No matter how many big machers speak of “new norms” and “painful acknowledgements.”

It may be that European antisemitism is a kind of industry. Otherwise, how is one to understand the words of Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, regarding a court-ruling on the attempted arson of a synagogue in Wuppertal in 2014 as “criticism of Israel” rather than “antisemitism”? “It sets a legal cover to extremists and terrorists to ‘express’ their hatred the way that Hitler and company expressed their hatred of Jews. Left unchallenged, this outrage could signal open season on German Jewry and their institutions by those who hate the Jewish state and everything it and the Jewish people stand for.”

No, no, no. It’s the other way around. Hitler “and company” offered the precedent the court wished to adopt as law. The Muslim arsonists knew they could get away with this sort of behavior in Germany precisely because of German history, in particular with regard to Hitler and the Holocaust.

Open season on German Jewry?? That too, is a holdover from the Holocaust, which brings us back to the question: Why the heck did the Jews reestablish the German Jewish community? Why would Jews come back there to live?

It’s just mindboggling.

And we didn’t even get past Germany. Antisemitism in Europe is now so rampant that 51 percent of Jews in Europe say they feel unsafe wearing visibly Jewish symbols.

So I read the stories of antisemitic incidents. The protestations by the local Jewish councils. And I just shake my head. I don’t get it.

I don’t know why Jews insist on living in these places or what it will take to make them leave, what the cost will be.

All I know is that tonight my family made a Tu B’Shvat seder at a table decorated with the blooming branch of an almond tree.

It was so sweet.

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