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Tuesday, 11 August 2015

ON JUDAISM, ZIONISM, AND THE EVILS OF ANTI-SEMITICISM


                                                                The Temple of God


                                       


Inside God's Temple




God's Temple Rebuilt




A CONVERSATION DURING THE 2014 ISRAELI-GAZA CONFLICT


by Thomas Hoskyns Leonard

13th August 2014

We should always be very careful not to inadvertently say anything anti-semitic, since this may give grave offence to well-meaning Jewish people. With the exception of a relatively small number of die-hard Zionists, most Jewish people are of course extremely well meaning and many make invaluable contributions to Society in general.

My flatmate and I went for a drink in the Regent Bar on Abbey Mound last summer at a time when the Zionist leadership of the Israeli government were orchestrating the barbarically cruel destruction of large portions of Palestine. During the evening we were 'buttonholed' by Mr. John McCardle, the leader of Black Triangle, a local advocacy movement for the disabled, who I hadn't met before in my life. John agonised at length about how he was being treated other Jews for his support of the Palestinian people during the crisis. While I found it difficult to get a word in edgeways, I attempted to express my support for John's position with a series of nods and grunts.

Then, towards the end of the quite pressured conversation I suddenly blurted 'All Jews are wealthy'. John replied 'I'm not wealthy' in highly indignant terms, and stomped off never to be seen again.

While my remark was very clearly anti-semitic, I guess that I would have tempered it, with a small amount of prompting, by expressing my real opinion, namely that 'Many Jews are wealthy'. My flatmate has verbally chastised me ever since for not properly appreciating the severe potential impact of what I actually said.

Consequent to this unfortunate scenario, I have decided to review the literature about this and related issues. My discoveries so far include

(1) The immense political and social impact of the doubtlessly forged Protocols of Zion.

(2) That, according to a leading Christian scholar at New College, Edinburgh, 'Jahweh' may have been devised for political purposes when Judaism was first initiated.

(3) That President Harry Truman, who is credited with helping to create the State of Israel, was in fact highly anti-semitic.

(4) That the American Jewish lobby includes many Christian fundamentalists among their membership who wish to perpetrate the State of Israel for peculiarly religious reasons.

I however still find myself unable to answer the key question, 'Why have so many people been so outrageously anti-semitic during human history?'.

You might like to peruse the various items which I am adding to this blog post.

I will write further on these issues, in this same post, in a month or so. 














An antisemitic canard (evoking a French-derived English catchword for "hoax") is a false story inciting antisemitism. Despite being false by definition, antisemitic canards often form part of broader theories of Jewish conspiracies.[1]






"There is no Jewish conspiracy to control the banks. You know why? Because we can't agree on a place to go for dinner! We couldn't even get the meeting started! (in an authoritative voice) 'All right, the Jewish meeting to control the banks will now commence.' (in a grouchy voice) 'Hey, who died and made you king? Never mind me. I'm no one here. I have no opinions.'"
— Jon Stewart giving this trope a proper Deconstructive Parody


The Greedy Jew is a Dead Horse Trope about Jewish people being greedy and malicious. The stereotype exists for a number of reasons, but mainly derives from trade restrictions placed upon Jews in medieval and early modern Europe. Jews weren't allowed to join trade guilds or own land in most countries, which led most Jewish men to enter professions that didn't require guild membership such as banking. Since Jewish holy law doesn't forbid Jews to charge interest, at least to non-Jews, Jews became associated with usurious and often exploitative banking procedures, even though Christian bankers such as the de' Medicis did the same thing.




“Anti-Semitism is mounting in an unprecedented way in groups and circles which are very influential and were never touched by Anti-Semitism. Such a White Paper would do great harm to the Jews in this country, and once it is published, I am not sure that outstanding Jewish leaders who are helping you today would go along with you,” Lovett threatened Goldmann and the Zionist leadership.





"One finds a similar phenomenon with regard to several earlier presidents. A previously unknown diary by Harry Truman, discovered in 2003, revealed that he harbored harsh feelings about Jews. Incensed when former Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr. called him about the plight of the refugee ship Exodus in 1947, Truman wrote in his diary, “He [had] no business, whatever to call me. The Jews have no sense of proportion nor do they have any judgment on world affairs… The Jews, I find, are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as D[isplaced] P[erson]s as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the under dog.”




TO BE CONTINUED (OR NOT)




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