29 June, 2015

 

Many people accuse me of anti-Semitism. I am NOT anti-Semitic, by any stretch of the meaning of that concept that makes any sense at all to me, or to clearly reasoning people anywhere.

 

Isn't it interesting to note that the world’s 14.2 million Jewish people make up approximately two tenths of one percent of the world's population, yet have made themselves the crucial focal point of so many of the world's most intractable problems?

 

Is it anti-Semitic to notice this? 

 

It is very difficult to discuss the role that Jewish people play in our modern world, and/or have played throughout their history, because Jewish people themselves have invented a very clever device that protects them from scrutiny. Anyone who points out the actual facts about what Jewish people, as a group, do, are summarily branded as "anti-Semitic". Simply pointing out the actual facts and truth of what Jewish people do, as a collective group, is branded with an epithet.

 

This clever device has been VERY effective in stifling public discussion about what Jewish people, as an organized group, do, in actual fact, actually do. 

 

I regularly read a publication called 'The Jewish Daily Forward', (often just ‘The Forward’). This excellent publication's Editor-at-Large is J.J. Golberg, an excellent writer and reporter who has extensive knowledge of Israeli politics, and many other subjects pertaining to the world’s Jewish people.

 

The Forward is a general interest Internet magazine, (with articles ranging from the plots and intrigues among Netanyahu’s cabinet, to Bubbe’s (Grandma’s) recipe for latkes and/or matzo), whose primary target audience is Jewish people. Virtually 100% of the content of The Forward is about Jewish people and their interests and concerns.

 

Many writers whose work appears in The Forward often refer to worldwide Jewry as 'The Tribe'. This is a term very commonly and routinely used by them. This is really a very apt term, because Jewish culture is very much a strong and vibrant tribal culture.

 

Among the many extremely admirable things about Jewish culture is that the tribal bonds that connect Jewish people all over the world are so immediately and intensely real in the daily lives of so many individual Jewish people, all over the world.

 

All ethnic groups have such bonds to one extent or another, of course. What sets Jewish people, and their culture, apart is the sheer intensity of these tribal bonds, as well as the cultural ‘taboos’ that cause these bonds to endure.

 

What allows these bonds to endure, more so than in most ethnic groups, is that Jewish culture stringently enforces them with cultural attitudes that enjoin individuals from ‘assimilating’ into the larger cultures in which Jewish sub-culture exists, and has existed, for millennia.

 

These bonds seem to be weakening somewhat in younger American Jews, as more young Jews are marrying non-Jews, for example, and/or otherwise assimilating into the larger culture. But these extremely admirable cultural bonds are still remarkably strong between and among most of these 14.2 million Jewish people throughout the world. 

 

Among the many admirable traits that define Jewish culture is that Jewish people have a remarkable genius for organization. They use this genius to effectively analyze any organization that affects their own lives, as a tribal collective, and they act collectively, they organize themselves, to seek to attain control of the key levers of power that control the organization(s), (up to and including government itself), that affect them.

 

Their intense tribal bonds motivate any Jewish person who attains any degree of success, in any field of endeavor, to assist other Jewish people in also attaining success. When they attain the power that success brings, they are keen to use their power to advance the interests of other Jewish people, and, (obviously following from that), to advance the interests of 'The Tribe' as a whole.

 

Again, Jewish people are not unique in this. This is common to most any and every ethnic group. Again, what sets Jewish people apart is simply the sheer strength and intensity of their determination to accomplish collective goals, and their strong cultural mores that dictate against cultural assimilation, and encourage tribal insularity.

 

Other ethnic groups stick together to help each other, but seek opportunities to assimilate. The Jewish culture does everything it can to prevent assimilation, to keep Jewish people separate from other ethnic groups.

 

The sheer strength of these cultural factors has made Jewish people very successful in achieving their collective goals.

 

The ability to work together for collective goals is a VERY admirable cultural trait. What has been problematic for Jewish people, throughout History, is that they have been SO successful in achieving their collective tribal goals that some of the non-Jews among whom they have lived have greatly resented them.

 

The obvious extreme example is the Nazis’ deadly hatred of them, which was motivated by the power that Jewish bankers and industrialists wielded over other Germans.

 

It has been a combination of their own culturally enforced insularity, combined with their cultural mandate to strive to achieve their own collective tribal gains, and empowered by their absolutely consummate genius for organization, for gaining access and control over the levers of power in organizations that affect them, that have often caused many problems for them, throughout their history.

 

One could say they are too good at what they do for their own good.

 

One could also observe that some of the cultural mores that have affected their enduring insularity involve racial disparagement of non-Jews. The Jewish religion, to mention one obvious example, holds that Jews are God’s own “chosen people”. Non-Jews have never taken especially kindly to that notion that God favors Jews more than them.

 

Jewish people also routinely use various disparaging terms, such as “goy”, and “shiksa”, to refer to non-Jews, with the former (goy) carrying roughly the same pejorative meaning as ‘the N word’ does in relation to people of African descent, and the latter (shiksa) carrying the heavily implied connotation of a woman of ill repute, analogous to ‘slut’.

 

Can it possibly be a surprise, that other people have resented being considered as inferiors by Jews? Surely it is no surprise that an ethnic group claiming to be God’s own “chosen people’ would be resented by other groups.

 

Yet Jewish people talk about other people’s historic hatred of them as if it has had nothing at all to do with Jewish people’s own behavior toward others. For all their obvious genius, Jewish people clearly share this foible so basic to human nature, the propensity to be completely blind to one’s own behavior, (and its consequences).   

 

We see two diverging trends in relation to Jewish people in America today. On the one hand many younger people are moving away from the insularity of Jewish culture, assimilating themselves into the larger culture, (and identifying themselves as Americans first and foremost, and as Jews second).

 

On the other hand we see resentment growing among many Americans as more people become more aware of the degree of control that Jewish people have gained over the entire nation.

 

More and more people have become aware that Jewish people have used their genius to organize among themselves to gain control over the levers of power in American society, government, and in the American nation as a whole.

 

It is only human nature that as people become aware of the fact that a small group has garnered a disproportionate degree of social and political power, and is using it to advance their own interests at the expense of others, they would resent this.

 

To look at just one very clear example, the mass media are clearly a major lever of social and political power. The means of communication in any society are the means of political power.

 

It is widely and often reported that Jewish people have gained positions of controlling power in American mass media that is so far out of proportion to their percentage of the population that mere statistical happenstance cannot possibly even begin to explain it.

 

It is reported that fully 90% of US mass media outlets are owned and controlled by just 6 very large and powerful corporations, (http://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-90-of-the-media-in-america-2012-6 ), and that fully 75% of the senior executives of these 6 corporations are Jewish people.

 

Since Jewish people are slightly less than 2% of the US population, it stretches credulity to suppose that statistical happenstance could account for the fact that 75% of the people who control 90% of our mass media, the most crucial lever of power in the society, are Jewish.

 

For our purposes here, I will not delve into the many other major levers of power that have been commandeered by Jewish people, by means of their consummate genius for organization, but only the most ill-informed people are not aware of the immense control that AIPAC, and other groups which collectively comprise what is often called the Jewish Lobby, have over our government, including nearly complete effective control over the US Congress, and over many other spheres of social influence and power.

 

With the exception of those who simply are not paying attention, as well as those who willfully refuse to acknowledge reality, we can all see this.

 

The Jewish people are a truly remarkable ethnic group. I personally like Jewish people a great deal. I mean that I like Jewish people as individuals, precisely because of so many of the cultural traits they have inherited. And I greatly admire the Jewish culture in so MANY ways.

 

I certainly recognize the admirable cultural means through which Jewish people have striven so fiercely, so heroically, over thousands of years, for the collective success of ‘The Tribe’.

 

But c’mon, folks. Can’t we talk?

 

Can Jewish people not understand that as I, (and millions of my fellow Americans), now see that Jewish people have used their genius for organization to gain control of so many crucial levers of power over our nation, and as I see that this power is being applied to hold the interests of the tiny foreign country of Israel ahead of those of our own nation, that like so many of my fellow Americans, I am GREATLY alarmed?

 

Is this anti-Semitism? Really?? Or is it not just plain common sense?

 

Is it wise for ANY nation to allow itself to be controlled by a highly organized group that is made up from less than 2% of its population, especially when this small group advocates for policies that benefit a tiny foreign country at the great expense of our own nation?

 

If people’s genuine concern tragically grows to hatred, (human nature being subject to what it can so tragically become), will the Jewish people then pretend that there was no reason behind the hatred?

 

Let’s hope that such hatred will be forestalled. Let’s hope that Jewish people will realize that their very success in garnering a disproportionate share of power is likely to bring unwelcome consequences down on them.

 

If History should follow this tragic course, would it not then be repeating itself?

 

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