Re: Zionism, supremacist doctrines and PNAC

Dear WSN,

        I cannot believe that the WSN community, after the passage of four
days, has not responded to this important post by Dr. Prugovecki.  As
analysts of the modern world-system, we cannot possibly ignore the fact
that the current thrust toward empire on the part of the United States
involves an intimate alliance with the state of Israel, bankrolled for
decades by billions of U.S. dollars.  We also cannot possibly ignore the
fact that Israel has deliberately colonized Arab lands with hundreds of
thousands of Jewish settlers, rendering the creation of a sovereign
state on formerly Palestinian soil almost impossible, even if a
Palestinian authority should relinquish the right of Arabs to return to
ancestral lands seized by Israeli invaders during the 1940s in what is
now Israel.

        It is also indisputable that many Israeli Jews regard Arabs as
indolent vermin who have no right to the sacred soil of the Holy Lands,
and should seek the hospitality of adjacent deserts.

        The triumphalism and claims to racial superiority of many Jews,
worldwide, are also well documented, as Dr. Prugovecki notes.  There is
absolutely no moral difference between such claims and the hideous
rhetoric of Nazi apologists.

        Of course one must distinguish between the "moral" and the
"factual."  I, for one, have no difficulty asserting the conviction that
in late modern times, since the second half of the 19th Century, persons
of Jewish heritage--albeit seldom observant Jews--have provided close to
one-half the artistic, intellectual, corporate, and scientific leadership
of Western civilization, a percentage absurdly out of proportion to their
numbers, and explicable only as the result of the cultural history of the
Jewish people and, yes, perhaps also of the Darwinian effects of pogroms
and holocausts, which may have thinned the ranks of the least wary and
resourceful.

        But by the same token, one might also build a case for the
superiority of the Germans in the 19th and early 20th Centuries.  I doubt
that an objective survey of the music, literature, philosophy, science,
technology, and military arts of that period--excluding every Jew--would
disclose any people in the world with a record equal to the German.  And
before that came the Chinese and the Arabs and the Romans and the Greeks,
and so forth and so on.  So what?  Various peoples have their times in the
sun, regardless of genes or skin color.  Such things happen, but they give
no license to imperial rampages or doctrines of righteous domination.  The
record, so far, of imperial Israel is a disgrace to Judaism, and for the
most part we can credit liberal, progressive, and enlightened Jews for
documenting and indicting it.  Bless them all.

        So this is not a taboo subject.  The collusion of reactionary
American Jews, Protestants, and others with Israeli imperialism is a dark
stain on the American conscience and a pressing concern for men and women
of good will everywhere.

        In the name of humankind,

        Warren


On Sun, 4 May 2003, E. Prugovecki wrote:

> In his May 2, 2003 post with the title "Re: A SECRET blueprint for US
> global domination - four issues  to discuss seriously about the
> historiography of world systems theorizations," Mark Douglas Whitaker
> <mrkdwhit@wallet.com> raises "the issue of religion, particularly in
> world systems" and "the Israel/Zionist question: unquestioning acceptance
> of 'whatever Israel does' because of the anti-Semite card being thrown.
> Academic fear guiding speaking up more than anything, or out of concern
> of fanning the flames of the world's very real anti-Semitism or fear of
> being associated with it by accident."
>
> Mark Douglas Whitaker ends his May 2, 2003 post by inviting comments.
>
> Here are mine on the "Israel/Zionist question" (NOTE: all the cited
> references can be easily traced on Amazon.com, or other online
> booksellers):
>
> I am one of those academics who had suffered covert, and sometimes even
> overt, persecution after attending in the 1970s the meetings of a society
> of Jewish-Palestinian friendship, consisting of progressive Jews and
> Palestinians who were trying to help resolve the Israeli-Palestinian
> issue in a peaceful and just way. When I approached, soon after attending
> some of those meetings, my Jewish friends and colleagues at the
> University of Toronto, and tried to convince them to join the society, or
> at least publicly express their disapproval of the unjust Israeli
> policies, I was either ignored, or, the issue of "anti-Semitism" was
> invoked
>         This issue has become since World War II an emotionally highly
> charged one, due to incessant Zionist propaganda, largely based on the
> exploitation of the memories of the holocaust of European Jews during
> World War II. The anti-Jewish attitude incorrectly labeled
> "anti-Semitism" (since he Arabs are as Semitic as the Jews) has become
> unlike any other social attitude directed against a political, religious,
> racial, national or sexual group - such as it is the case with
> "anti-communism," "anti-capitalism," "anti-Americanism,"
> "anti-Catholicism," "anti-lesbianism," etc. In a recent Amazon.com review
> of the book Zionist Connection: What Price Peace by the anti-Zionist
> Jewish writer Alfred M. Lilienthal it is pointed out that "[t]he fear of
> being labeled 'anti-Semite' is the main weapon used by Zionists to
> silence their critics." This carefully nurtured emotional connotation of
> the term "anti-Semitism" distinguishes it from terms describing the many
> socially harmful attitudes directed in North America against Hispanics
> (known also as "Latinos"), against African Americans (once addressed as
> "Negroes"), and against Native Americans (still called "Indians"). All
> this despite that fact these three last racist attitudes have resulted in
> great suffering for members of those "minorities," and in the almost
> complete extermination of the last "minority" (which once inhabited the
> entire North American continent), constituting in both numbers of
> murdered people as well as the number of destroyed cultural heritages the
> greatest of all holocausts in the history of humankind (cf. American
> Holocaust by D.E. Stannard).
>         In North America any explanation of the special status enjoyed by
> the term "anti-Semitism" that is provided by a Gentile scholar is bound
> to be dismissed by many Jews as being itself "anti-Semitic." It is
> therefore advisable to turn to reputable Jewish scholars who have had the
> courage to confront the basic facts, and state them publicly.
>         As a son of Holocaust survivors and a noted academic, Norman
> Finkelstein carries all the necessary credentials, although his
> courageous stand - which he shares with some other exceptional Jewish
> scholars, such as Noam Chomsky, Israel Shahak, Israel Shamir, Alfred
> Lilienthal, etc.- has apparently earned him in Zionist and elitist Jewish
> circles the title of a "self-hating Jew." Of course, if this peculiarly
> Zionist attitude were carried to its logical conclusion by other nations
> and religious groups, any German critic of the "master race" aspirations
> advocated by the Nazis would have to be labeled a "self-hating German,"
> any Catholic critic of the anti-abortion ideology of the Vatican would be
> declared a "self-hating Catholic," and so on, and so on.
>         One of the things that Finkelstein has done in his recent
> writings was to dispel the myth of the Jews being perpetual "victims." In
> particular, he states the following: "As the anti-Semitic barriers
> quickly fell after World War II, Jews rose to prominence in the United
> States. According to Lipset and Raab, per capita Jewish income is almost
> double that of non-Jews; sixteen of the forty wealthiest Americans are
> Jews; 40 percent of American Nobel Prize winners in science and economics
> are Jewish, as are 20 percent of professors at major universities; and 40
> percent of partners in leading law forms in New York and Washington. The
> list goes on [in the book Jews by Lipset and Raab]. Far from constituting
> an obstacle, Jewish identity has become a crown to that success."
> (Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry, pp. 32-33)
>         The above statistics appear even more remarkable once it is
> realized that the Jews constitute only a bit more than 2% of the American
> population, so that, for example, Jews are represented amongst
> "professors at major universities" in a proportion that is ten times
> greater then their proportion in the general American population.
>         The reasons for this unparalleled "success story" provided by
> some Jewish writers echoes the "master race" attitudes of their arch
> enemies, namely the Nazis. For example, Finkelstein points out the
> following disturbing attitude among some Jews: "Who could any longer
> dispute that Jews are the 'chosen' people? In A Certain People: American
> Jews and Their Lives Today, Charles Silberman - himself a born-again Jew
> - typically gushes: 'Jews would have been less human had they eschewed
> any notion of superiority altogether,' and 'it is extraordinarily
> difficult for American Jews to expunge the sense of superiority
> altogether, however much they may try to suppress it.' What an American
> Jewish child inherits, according to novelist Philip Roth, is 'no body of
> law, no body of learning and no language, and finally, no Lord ... but a
> kind of psychology; and the psychology can be translated in three words:
> 'Jews are better.'" (ibid., p. 33)
>         After having my own career as a scientist and academic severely
> affected by the tactics of this type of supremacist Jews, I eventually
> became curious about how widespread this self-aggrandizing phenomenon is
> amongst North American Jews. Hence, I searched the Internet under the
> topic "anti-Semitism" and its polar opposite "anti-Gentilism."
>         To my surprise, I found an enormous amount of evidence which,
> most regrettably, identifies a Jewish racism and anti-Gentilism reflected
> in supremacist attitudes as being a rather wide-spread phenomenon: in one
> publication after another certain Jewish American authors overtly claim
> that the Jews are "unique," "distinct" and "superior," and that
> anti-Semitism is not at all a natural reaction to such an incredibly
> racist and arrogant attitude, but that it is rather due exclusively (cf.
> Finkelstein's book, pp. 47-55) to the vile nature of Gentiles. "It's
> always the Gentiles' fault," states Finkelstein at one point (ibid., p.
> 61 - italics as in the original) as if wondering at the chutzpah of the
> "Jewish elites" that he criticizes.
>         The extremes to which this Jewish presumption that "Jews are
> unique and distinct," and therefore entitled to special privileges,
> unwittingly emerges from the following passage in the memoirs of the
> famous Russian physicist and dissenter Andrei Sakharov, which deals with
> his Jewish wife's experiences during their 1988 visit to Canada.
>         Academician Sakharov writes that in answering a question about
> Jewish émigrés from the USSR, Mrs. Sakharov (known to the public as Elena
> "Lusia" Bonner) stated the following: "There's a tendency to regard all
> Jews leaving the USSR as political refugees. That isn't right or fair.
> ... People can have other, fully legitimate reasons to leave the USSR - a
> desire to live well, to realize their potential. But why do such [Jewish]
> people have a better right to call themselves political refugees and to
> get special privileges than refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, or Armenia?"
> (Sakharov, Moskow and Beyond: 1986 to 1989, p. 104)
>         Sakharov then describes how, as a result of this statement, which
> dared to set Jewish émigrés on par with émigrés belonging to other ethnic
> groups, his Jewish wife "was accused of anti-Semitism and other mortal
> sins ... [and] warned that outraged Jews would picket [her and his]
> appearances in Winnipeg." (Ibid., p. 104)
>         In the face of such incredible chauvinistic Jewish arrogance, is
> it any wonder that many non-Jews react with disapproval? That most
> natural reaction is then self-servingly labeled by ethnocentric and
> supremacist Jews as "anti-Semitism"!
>         But what is the evidence presented by representatives of the
> "Jewish elites" in favor of the alleged Jewish "uniqueness" and
> "superiority"?
>         Norman F. Cantor, described by his publisher as an "eminent
> Jewish scholar, professor, and writer," has the following to say in his
> 1995 book The Sacred Chain: A History of the Jews: "The Jews, once
> emancipated and given opportunity for mobility, were genetically so
> superior that market capitalism could not accommodate some of this
> superior species." (The Sacred Chain, p. 277). Thus, according to
> Professor Cantor, the evidence of Jewish "uniqueness" and "superiority"
> is genetic: "The Jews are a superior people intellectually and as long as
> Jewish genes exist, the extraordinary impact Jews have had in the
> twentieth century will continue indefinitely." (Ibid., p. 423)
>         Does that sound familiar? I am sure that Hitler would have
> completely agreed with Cantor if the term "Jew" were replaced in the
> above quotations with the term "Arian."
>         However, the Jewish reviewers of Cantor's book find this
> supremacist Jewish claims totally reasonable and acceptable. One of them
> even states on its Amazon.com website the following:  "Th[is] book [by
> Cantor] is proudly Zionist, having many passages that make you feel very
> proud of being a Jew and of our value and achievement. ... Instead of
> seeing us as a holy race set apart, Cantor has to ground his Zionism in
> the superiority of the Jewish race, using the fact of the superior Jewish
> Intelligence. This is clearly liberal Zionism and not orthodox."
> (Emphasis added.)
>         Thus, the only criticism raised against Cantor's "powerful and
> deeply learned voice" is that it is not sufficiently "orthodox," since
> Cantor regards the Jews "merely" as being "genetically superior" to all
> non-Jews, but not as being also a "holy race."
>         Well, not even Hitler had gone as far as to assert that the
> Arians were a "holy race." But only one Jewish reviewer finds the
> advocated thesis of Jewish supremacy at all objectionable, as he states:
> "The only criticism I have of this important work is when [Cantor] uses
> the phrase 'genetic intellectual superiority' (p. 424) which I found
> disturbing in a work that includes a discussion of the holocaust."
>         So, there we have it: Jews are "genetically superior," and
> therefore, by implication, deserve special consideration. Of course, this
> attitude lies at the bottom of not only how the Palestinians are being
> treated in the territories occupied by Israel, but also of how Gentiles
> like myself are treated in North America by supremacist Jews when they
> point out the injustices suffered by the Palestinians. And, of course, it
> surfaces very clearly when Jews and Gentiles compete in the academic job
> market.
>         I find the claims of genetic Jewish intellectual superiority as
> morally objectionable as I do find similar claims by Nazi scholars in
> favor of Arian intellectual superiority, or those of white supremacists
> in USA, who assert the superiority of Caucasians over other races.
>         In fact, the parallels between such claims were unwittingly
> underlined by Jewish scholar Raphael Patai, who, according to the Book
> News review of his 1996 book The Jewish Mind, "[e]xamines the Jewish mind
> and personality through three millennia, looking at the ways six
> historical encounters between the Jews and other cultures have left their
> mark on Jewish consciousness. Explores Jewish intelligence and the
> phenomenology of special Jewish talents ..." In the course of this
> "exploration of Jewish intelligence" Patai tries to substantiate on
> genetic grounds his thesis of Jewish intellectual superiority over all
> non-Jews by quoting the race theory of a Nazi named Hans Gunther. Thus,
> in the "survival of the fittest" scenario postulated by him natural
> selection has favored over many centuries only the smartest Jews (ibid.,
> pp. 304-305), and the allegedly self-evident Jewish superiority is a
> natural consequence of this "fact."
>         It is interesting to point out that the conviction of the Puritan
> colonists of North America that they were "God's Chosen People" and
> "superior" to the many native North American nations (J. Wilson,  The
> Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America , p. 92) has led during the
> nineteenth century to a policy of virtual extermination of the latter.
> For example, Stannard states on p. 120 of his American Holocaust:
> "[Thomas] Jefferson's writings on Indians are filled with the
> straightforward assertion that the natives are to be given a simple
> choice - to be 'extirpate[d] from the earth' or to remove themselves out
> of the American way. Had the same words been enunciated by a German
> leader in 1939, and directed at European Jews, they would be engraved in
> modern history."
>         I have already written about the nineteenth century genocide of
> the Native North Americans by white Americans in my WSN post of April 15,
> 2002, and I do not wish to repeat myself. I would, however, like to point
> out that the present-day principles of PNAC have their roots in
> supremacist American and supremacist Jewish attitudes, which represent a
> great threat to the rest of humankind. I believe that it is no accident
> that supremacist Protestant Americans and supremacist Jewish Americans
> are predominant in PNAC. As Mark Douglas Whitaker implies, certain types
> of religious attitudes condition political behavior - and, as it is
> well-known, Bush Jr. provides a prime example of that. The sorry present
> state of many Native North Americans and many Palestinians should be a
> warning to us all. And, of course, the invasion of Iraq provides the
> prototype of how the PNAC blueprint for a US world domination is going to
> be implemented in practice.
>         The website "Project for the First People's Century"
>
>                 http://www.rrojasdatabank.org/pfpc0000.htm
>
> set up on May 1, 2003 by Dr. Robinson Rojas, contains links to PNAC
> online publications, and also provides a number of articles dealing with
> various aspects of PNAC. I believe that they are all worth reading before
> CIA, Mossad, or some other similar organizations begin enacting the part
> of the PNAC plan which  "calls for the total control of cyberspace to
> prevent 'enemies' using the Internet against the US" - which, in plain
> language, means against the neo-cons in power in US, and their close
> allies, the Zionists in power in Israel.
>
> Eduard Prugovecki
> Professor Emeritus
> University of Toronto
> http://individual.utoronto.ca/prugovecki/
>
>