Italics are earlier JTR commentary. MATAN responded to it, and we respond in boldtype to his new commentary:

MATAN: Mazel Tov! I’m delighted that you’ve chosen to do so! Let me start by noting that in the past you’ve alluded critically to the “semiotics” employed by Jewish media in their marginalizing of nonconforming views. You should be aware that you, too, employ a system of verbal cues and signals which serve to deligitimize opposing arguments without (or at least prior to) actually confronting them. For example, you title the section here “the complaints” of “Jewish complainers.” You will find no complaining in any of the emails I’ve sent you, only observations which I’ve chosen to share with you and which you are free to heed, dismiss, or preemptively delete as you see fit.

RESPONSE: Not quite. You're already starting here with an esoteric game of semantics, trying to reinvent your complaint into something other than it is. Your last post to us was rooted in your "complaint" about the way we referred to the Islamic term "kafir, " as is your following commentary here too. We can go around and around about whether it was an actually an "objection," a "contention," your explication of "truth," or however else you'd care to frame it, but it was a "complaint" too. I don't want to get into the "go to dictionary to define the word" game. Yours was a complaint. Jody's was a complaint. Most Jewish commentary to this web site is of the "complaint" variety, overwhelmingly. You didn't drop in to garner this web site with wreaths and flowers.

And yet the repetition of the word “complain” in reference to arguments posed by Jewish people is no accident on your part,

RESPONSE: No accident. That's right. When people come to complain, we call them what they are: complainers. In the same way, we bluntly call Jews "Jews," which to many, is ITSELF a form of "anti-Semitism." (i.e., "Look. He's Jewish too.") We call people what they are. If you emailed us to laud the web site, singularly, it wouldn't be possible to call it a Jewish "complaint." If you email us to pass along a few compliments, but focus on disagreeing with our use of the term "kafir," that's a "complaint" and it qualifies for such a category. Sorry.

and it serves to indicate to your readers that any such arguments can and should be viewed as the mere whining of a chronically whiny group of people.

"Complaint" doesn't mean "mere whining." That's your closure here. Although, true, I think both you and I have a handle on the fact that the Jewish community IS notorious for "whining." But, again, the category posted is "complaint." If I deem that the feedback is actually more of the whining variety, maybe I'll change the category and call it "whining."

Should any arguments posed in this category discomfit some of your readers, or mitigate their sense of certainty that Jews are rotten and other cultures are wholesome, well, you’ve given them permission to dismiss those arguments as obnoxious whining rather than as considered thoughts that require a response.

I don't think anyone's interested in my "permission" about anything. A reasoned reader will recognize "obnoxious whining" as that. And they won't have any problem when a complaint is posted as a "complaint." And why do you categorically decree that JTR "readers" have an innate "certainty that Jews are rotten and other cultures are wholesome?" Again, for me, and I'd presume many of our readers, the central issue is POWER. There's plenty rotten in the Jewish barrel, too. Yes. It smells from across the room. But your position that we declare that all "other cultures are wholesome" is conjured out of air.

Do Jews have a very large disproportionate representation in white collar crime, the pornography world, the "Russian" mafia, and so on? Yes. Your fundamental (non?)complaint is about our direct focus on Jewish moral failings at this web site, and not posting the fact there is such a thing as a, say, Hindu, pornographer. We don't care about that Hindu pornographer, we're interested in the main current. That main current is heavily Jewish. Why is it heavily Jewish? And what's it's link to Jewish prominence in abortion rights, the mass media, and so on. It's a legitimate question. And it's a legitimate issue to make the public aware that Jews are so influential in, say, the pornography realm. We seek public discussion about it. Your basic position, however you elaborately spin it, is to champion a systematic muting of the above facts by appealing to a bogus PC notion of objective fairness (that if we're going to list Jewish pornographers, we'll have to list Amish pornographers, and everybody elses' pornographers, too).

It's not "discrimination" or "bias" to point out the truth. The discrimination and bias comes from guys like you who devise arguments appealing to the PC (politically correct) net wherein the Jewish community, as always, gets a free pass from unpleasant exposure. If an Israeli Gestapo barges into my home and shoots everything up, I'm not terribly interested in Palestinian suicide bombers, except to the degree that this Israeli Gestapo creates them. Want to get rid of Muslim suicide bombers? The answer is pretty simple. Afford the Palestinians an ounce of dignity and treat them like human beings.

Our focus at this web site is in direct antithesis to the notion that Jews are beyond criticism, which is evident (and militantly enforced) throughout popular culture.

Such are the techniques of those who control the forum.

You're already trying to frame this little web site as fascistic in tone. It isn't. Last I heard, "those who control this forum" was an editor. Does the editor have an editorial view? Yes. The same prerogative of any editor. You are demanding some PC spin on the category we've just posted alluding to "Jewish complainers." The people who appear under that heading will be 1) Jewish 2) and complainers. When Jews start coming in with pure laudatory gushing (I won't hold my breath), maybe then it's time to change the category heading. Or start a new category, say, Jewish "gushers," or something.

Already it seems your tactic is not to criticize fullforce the JTR house (which is formidable), but to weasel under the floorboards and try to melt its nails. That's fine, but I turn the spotlight on you, too.

You will, of course, point out that you are merely doing on a small scale what Jews do on a vastly larger scale in mainstream media. I won’t challenge that point, but only posit that your own website is no stronger for mimicking one of the deficiencies of those who you justly criticize. A bold challenge is one that overturns convention rather than coopt it for different ends.

Here you're trying to frame this web site as an echo of PC Judeocentrism. Neat trick. It's not. It's obviously, blatantly, its obverse. Is there a point of view here? Yes! The Jewish Tribal Review isn't seaweed.

Your consistent position is to "complain" that the foundation of JTR is intrinsically biased because it focuses on the great, great downside of Jewry and not other ethnic groups' (in your view, equivilant) dark corners. As I have already stated to you in other ways, the aim of this web site is to address Judeocentrism in popular culture. The issue, at root, is POWER. All cultures and peoples have moral failings. I do not doubt there is plenty to criticize among Cheyenne Native Americans. You or I could probably write a thesis on it. But Jewish moral failing is center stage, and it is enormously important because it influences so very, very much. And it is MORE important because this ENORMOUS moral failing is systematically veiled. You yourself appear to be diffusing it by claiming it to be a biased position to highlight it, and not post also the moral failings of every other ethnic group on the planet (but especially the Big Time current Jewish nemesis: Islam).

I do not think you'll concede this, but you are working in a roundabout way towards traditional Jewish veiling. Your tactic is to insist that critical leveling be implemented: i.e., Jews, as an ideological entity, are a reasonably exact echo of all other peoples. This is false. Different ethnic and religious groups -- whatever their intra-diversity -- have belief systems different than others, as I've outlined earlier to you. Example: Jews dominate the porn industry. Is every Jew in on it? I don't think so (I hope not). Are there Muslims in the upper eschelons of the porn business. I'd imagine you could find someone, but to try to presume a balance of Muslim and Jewish influence in the world of pornography would be ridiculous. There's NO comparison.

JTR: I'm happy to respond to Jewish critics as I have time. But if it develops into an avalanche of attack, I can't spend my whole life in a kind of Talmudic debate with them all, arguing the semantics of obscure issues and minutia.

MATAN: Fair enough.

OK.

JTR: My dear sir. Jewish identity itself is rife with contradictions, hypocrisies, and paradoxes. It's not my original idea. Jewish scholars have written about it.

MATAN: You’ll certainly get no argument on this point from me; when it comes to Jewish identity, contradictions, hypocrisies and paradoxes abound.

Good for you. It's not the norm for Jews to admit this, certainly not in a public forum available to a non-Jewish audience. Gold star for you here.

It’s to the credit and benefit of the Jewish community that it has produced scholars who are willing to elucidate such things.

Yes, but "elucidating" where? Behind closed doors. In obscure ethnic academic journals. Building this web site, intially, was a matter of going into the Jewish intellectual coal mines. One has to dig, deep. There's few gems lying on the surface. If the Jewish community notices that someone might pick a whopper up for critical purposes, they're pulled away and hidden (note, for example, the American Jewish Congress's recently pulled [censored] online article about traditional Jewish convention that Jews ACCEPTED responsibility for the death of Christ.)

I also note to you that many of the "elucidators" you herein praise are ostracized as "self-haters" in the Jewish community. You know all about that too, I'm sure. The Jewish "self-hater" is the Jewish "anti-Semite." The best Jewish commentators in recent history (Norman Finkelstein, Israel Shahak, Israel Shamir, etc.) are toxified by the Jewish community. They are marginalized from mainstream Jewry (and, hence, popular culture) as much as possible. These guys air dirty laundry.

The greatest reason that I enjoy and recommend your site to other Jews is because I desperately want to see that tendency accelerate. I want to see more. More Jewish scholars analyzing the intellectual and moral failures in our tradition. More Jews confronting our own absurdities and anachronisms. More, more, more!

Praise for you here. Two Gold Stars.

JTR: For my part, I do not claim to be perfect. Far from it. I am not beyond mistakes, nor are you.

MATAN: Agreed. The foundation of any fruitful dialogue has now been established. We are free to engage in a discussion to be learned from, rather than a pissing contest to grow tired of.

OK.

JTR: But I think you'll be disappointed in discovering that I can defend my positions quite well.

MATAN: Hardly. If I thought you were unable to defend your positions then I wouldn’t have bothered initiating a correspondence. When I first found your website I was delighted precisely because it’s so clear that you CAN defend your positions. People who shout (or write) anti-Jewish slogans but are unable to defend their positions ultimately prove very dangerous to Jewish people because they allow Jews to imagine that anti-Jewish complaints have no merit. In that respect, purveyors of poorly articulated right wing claptrap have been devastating to the Jewish community (though not in the sense that they might wish) because they’ve reinforced Jewish complacency and undermined impulses toward communal self-examination. Neo-Nazi organizations like Stormfront, etc. are one of Big Jewry’s (AIPAC, ADL, etc.) favorite weapons in the battle for control of the Jewish community, not only because Stormfront-types play the convenient role of the omnipresent antisemite, but also because they allow Jews to think that investigation into the internal dynamics of the Jewish community is a fool’s errand rather than a legitimate enterprise.

There is wisdom here from you. But organizations like "Stormfront" are really just "White" echoes of today's Jewish ethnocentrism. They take root because of a sense of injustice, anger, and outrage. If Stormfront is demonstrably "neo-Nazi," then why isn't also the Anti-Defamation League, which -- via its uncritical support of Israel -- is in bed with apartheid, dual moral standards, racism, an increasingly fascistic Likud Party, an existing oppressive military, nuclear bombs hidden in Negev desert, etc.? Groups like Stormfront are categorically pathologized, as are tamer versions of Euro-centrism organizations. And Jewish versions of the same thing are popularly sanctioned. That's a form of fraud. It's a dual moral standard. And it is everywhere. How come "the American Jewish Congress" is kosher but, say, an "American White Congress" is automatically held to be the work of demons? How come Louis Farrakhan is cool until he starts talking about Jews and Judaism, wherein he becomes the mass media's quintessential Black "racist?" The Nation of Islam is in some ways founded on the Jewish model, especially with a hyper-emphasis on HELP YOUR OWN. I suspect that with the current course of events there will be more and more outcrops of ethnocentrism -- White, Black, Muslim, Latino, Christian, whatever. Beneath the "Jewish Onslaught" (as Black scholar Tony Martin has defined it) people obviously feel the increasing need to form their own ethnocentric organizations for collective defense. Or be trampled as hapless individuals in the face of rising ethnic and political tribalism. With the Judeocentric Flag in the fore.

And it is the leadership of the Jewish community that stands to lose most if critical self-examination becomes more prevalent in the Jewish community. You, on the other hand, have the ability to make Jews genuinely consider your positions rather than confidently dismiss them. And in that respect I’d like to see you become as effective as possible. So no, you badly misunderstand what would disappoint me.

More praise in your direction. But JTR is easily dismissed, without inspection, as "anti-Semitic," "racist," "Neo-Nazi," etc. Jews, generally speaking, prefer to wear bags over the heads when it comes to public examination of their community. And, worse, they tie these bags on EVERYBODY ELSE. The Jewish future is guys like you (unless this is all deceptive bullshit here you're spewing) who have the guts to confront what needs to be confronted. At the current pace, the Jewish Lobby, marching, marching, marching, is going to take us ALL down in some kind of horrible world Holocaust. Few Jews will listen to me. It's alot easier to condemn me as a kook. But maybe you've got the guts to take on your own community. (Or maybe you're just another con-man, who knows?) But, if you go too far with honesty, YOU run the risk of becoming the condemned Jewish "self-hater." And YOU run the risk of them looking to silence you too.

JTR: But I'm not interested in mere swordfight wordsmanship. I'm interested in content. Substance. So if these debates seem to be steered by my assaulters into quicksand games of one-upmanship, nitpicking, and insane sophistry, I'll turn to other tasks.

MATAN: Ditto. I’m interested in the same things. But be careful where you perceive nitpicking. I’m sure Stephen Douglass thought Lincoln was an incorrigible nitpicker.

OK.

JTR: True, words float in meaning, expanding or contracting over time and context. But would you really argue that the term "anti-Semite" meant something completely different in Marr's time for Jews than it does for Jews today?

MATAN: Not completely different…just different. As I said, words have a career: “career” suggests continuity and development, not complete reinvention. Marr’s version of the word forms the kernel of today’s dominant usage of it by Jews, but the scope of it has been vastly expanded to include people who Marr would never have considered antisemites. As you know.

Yes.

My point in raising the issue was only to demonstrate that you survey the spectrum of uses to which two similar words have been put, and then select the uses that you find most congenial to your ends, sinister in the case of antisemite, benign in the case of kafir.

You are really belaboring this to enormous degree. I say again to you: the main issue is that of power. All groups have ethnocentric terms for the other, some pejorative. I don't disagree. The question is: Who gets to put their ethnocentrism into serious play? Muslims are a threat to the American people only to the degree Americans march to the drum of Jewish racism. The real threat is a lot closer to home than Bin Laden. It's Jewish intransigence in bullying the Muslim/Arab world to its own liking. And, for that matter, everybody else.

I also add that, in principle, both Islam and Christianity (evolved too from the Torah/Old Testament) are universalistic faiths. I, or you, could join tomorrow. While its possible to "convert" to Judaism, as you know, there's not a, say, standing invitation. The word today's Jewry likes to use for Judaism is "particularistic." It's a euphemism for an ideology that IS NOT "universalistic." Describe what Judaism really represents, to your liking. But it is an intensive ancestral tribalism at the very least, and blatant racism at its worse.

My question was why would you (very appropriately) take Jews to task for their use of antisemite, but then refuse to acknowledge the sinister and dehumanizing employment of the word kafir?

I have already responded to this, and this is repeatedly the heart of your (non?)complaint. The Cheyenne may have had terrible words for the Arapaho. This is not a threat to me and modern culture. The issue is power. Who has the power to enact -- in profound ways -- upon its ethnocentrism? Do you, by the way, apply the term "dehumanizing" to the term "anti-Semite," the same way you do to the Muslim term "kafir?" The "anti-Semite" is a stick figure. A caricature. My man, it's a "stereotype."

I accept the idea of your focusing on Jews, but by complementing such a focus with crude apologetics on behalf of other communities’ ethnocentric tendencies you create a transparently distorted impression of just how bad Jewish culture is.

What "crude apologetics?" I said that "kafir," as an Islamic theological term, means disbeliever in God. That's a true statement. That social and historical forces influence its meaning, I don't deny. You've tried to fuse "kafir" somehow to the Jewish notion of "antisemite," and that's not accurate. You act as if there's an entire treatise here that portrays Arabs as saints and Jews as the Devil. I have no illusions about the failings of human nature. In ANY community. I am, however, deeply interested in the Jewish ideology's contributions to the relative public sanctioning of some of these failings -- in fact, being important forces in institutionalizing them. I don't need to champion your disdain for a Muslim word to do that.

Any Jew who might otherwise be open to your message will then have a reason to dismiss you as illogical.

Nonsense. Most Jews only need to see a fly in the room to dismiss this web site as illogical. There are probably hundreds of thousands of pieces of discrete, evidential bits of information at this web site. If someone would turn from all this because of a single sentence, then they are more allergic -- as a Judeocentric entity -- to the truth than I thought.

The more intellectually honest (and therefore more effective) answer would be to assert that “antisemite” is manipulated to ethnocentristic and self-congratulatory ends by the Jewish community, and acknowledge that analogous concepts exist for similar purposes in many cultures, but that you are focusing on this specific term and this specific community. But you didn’t do that.

You seem to me now to be turning into a little dog that has bitten my cuff and won't let go. I can shake my leg and walk into every room in the house, outside, to work, whatever, and you still want a donut. ALL CULTURES ARE ETHNOCENTRIC. ALL CULTURES PROBABLY HAVE PEJORATIVES. What do you want from me, to declare that I'm a hidden Islamocentric bigot, the way you probably are (judging by one of your later asides) for Israel? Your central aim, as I have noted before, seems to be making a fundamental moral equation between Muslims (for that is today's looming Jewish enemy) and Jews, as if they are exactly the same in the oppressor/oppressed scenario. That is a false proposition. If you're a bigot, and I'm a bigot, and I run over you with my tank, I'm the bigot for the next guy to worry about. The one who's now a tomato field isn't a problem for anybody. There won't be any web sites about him.

You volunteered to Jody that no such concept existed in Islam, and implied that a cynically employed term invoking a perpetually hostile out-group was somehow a Jewish innovation, and Judy (and others, probably) saw through that as nonsense.

Not a "Jewish innovation?" Ho! Which came first, Islamic bigotry or Jewish? Christian bigotry or Jewish? Which religion gives Torah sanction to the others' bigotry? Which religion invented genocide against the Canaanites? Which religion celebrates the extermination of the Amalekites? Which lays the foundation of religious bigotry for other (Ahl-e-ketab: "People of the Book") bigotries to follow, to emulate? The Old Testament/Torah is the bigoted root of BOTH Christianity and Islam. Please. You should know this. If you want to (non?)complain about something, look to its SOURCE.

JTR: If anything, I think the term, for the Jewish community, has picked up steam, no? The "anti-Semite" has become codified into Jewish identity quite clearly, don't you think? As some Jewish scholars have noted, for many atheist Jews who have lost their religious and ethnic Jewish roots, if you take away their self-heralded victim status vis-a-vis the antisemitic bogeyman that has come to define so much their identity, what is there left for them in being a "Jew?" Talk about contradictions!

MATAN: Yes to the first question. Yes to the second question. And yes regarding many atheist Jews and their reliance on the “antisemite,” provided you retain the qualifier “many.” Fantasies of victimhood definitely play a central role in many people’s Jewish identity, though even for most atheist Jews there are other perceived aspects of Jewish tradition that play a part in their Jewish identity as well: traditional love of language or love of justice (again, don’t bother arguing, I’m describing perceptions here, not necessarily realities), folklore, cuisine, emphasis on family or community life, preoccupation with Israel, etc. But a sense of past victimization and resentment of the out-group is certainly a biggie.

OK. Your honesty / openness here is appreciated.

Incidentally, in and of itself this is not really a contradiction so much as an unhealthy and empty means of establishing group identity. I would also point out again that it’s a central pillar of ethnocentristic identity in general and not particular to Jews. Fantasies about the inexhaustible hostility of the outside world are often pathetic to the point of being comical; unfortunately, they’re also very human.

Which other ethnic group roots its identity in victimhood, above all else? A victimhood that allegedly spans its entire historical, religious identity. An enormously-empowered group that STILL claims victim status this very minute. Please name it.

If you’d like I can give you a host of priceless examples of this sort of thing, but I know you’d rather keep the lens focused firmly on Jews. I won’t introduce other groups unless crucial.

Introduce the direct parallel: same longevity, same power, same conviction to the identity core. Rooted in religious identity and spread to the secular.

JTR: By the way, Wilhelm Marr (the German who coined the term "antisemitism"), your "hater of Jewry" and "racial ideologue," obviously couldn't have been as racially-minded as you'd like. As I recall, he had a series of 4 wives. One was a Jew, and two were "half-Jews." There's either a "contradiction" in his ideology as a "racial ideologue," or there's a contradiction (stereotype?) in your premise about him.

MATAN: I don’t know anything about Marr’s private life. As far as I know only one biography has been written on him, and I haven’t read it. However if it’s true that he had one Jewish wife and two “half-Jewish” wives then that is, in fact, a quite interesting contradiction between his personal life and his avowed political and racial beliefs. Because he most certainly was, as I said, a “racial ideologue”. He was heavily influenced by the new Darwinian thinking of his time and was a pioneer, so to speak, in the employment of biological science to create a hierarchy of human races.

So were Jews. The Italian Jewish social scientist Cesar Lombroso (spelling?) and a host of others. Now, you're the guy demanding critical balance: one tic for Jews, one tic for Muslims. If you're going to criticize this German, Marr, as a "racial ideologue," per your own game, where is your list of Jews in the same boat? There are even Zionists in Germany who agreed with the fundamental public premises of Hitler, albeit Judeocentric.

He regarded each race as characterized by certain fundamental, immutable and genetically transmitted characteristics. He regarded Jewry as a “slave race” that had escaped its proper position due to Europe’s misguided enthusiasm for universalistic (and, in his mind, unscientific) Enlightenment principles, but his hierarchy encompassed all races, not just Jews. So yes, he was very much the racial ideologue, and he is duly credited as such by modern racialists. I’d be interested in hearing more about his private life, especially after hearing the details you mention. Perhaps one day I’ll get around to reading that biography.

I don't recall hearing that about him. I'll sustain judgment about that till I know with certainty. (By the way, I wonder if the complete text of Marr's work is published in English. I doubt it). But, again, by your standards of critique, where are the parallel list of Jews that mirror Marr's "racial" ideology. They are legion. If I have to drag them out form our research to post them some of them here for you, I will.

JTR: As I recall, his original "antisemitic" book was based on a critique of the Jewish seizure of German culture, "The Victory of Jews Over Germany," or something like that. I don't think Marr advocated genocide. Read some German history and you'll find his basic complaint was legitimate. Even if you disagree that his complaint was well-founded, we live in an age where it's taboo to publicly discuss this.

MATAN: It shouldn’t be taboo to discuss the idea that Jews “seized German culture.” Nor, for that matter, should it be taboo to discuss the idea that “segregation was better,” or that “Islamic theology lends itself to violence against civilians,” or that Swedish chicks are the hottest, or any other such idea honestly considered.

It is NOT a taboo to discuss that "Islamic theology lends itself to violence against civilians." This attitude is published all the time, throughout the Western mass media, most prominently by Jews. It IS a very, very stringent taboo to discuss the notion that "Jews seized German culture." I don't know if "Swedish chicks are hottest," but I know that David Horowitz's Front Page online journal recently posted an article about an alleged rise of Swedish "anti-Semitism." Meanwhile, articles attacking critics of Jewry is the OPPOSITE of "taboo": it is a Judeocentric magnet.

JTR: And, yes, the term "antisemitism" surely meant something different to Marr than it does to Foxman. The main reason is that Marr wasn't Jewish, and Foxman IS a Jew whose JOB is to make sure Jews are always scared enough into coughing up more dough to fight "antisemitism": i.e., conjuring the eternal Hitler on the horizon.

MATAN: Yep.

OK.

JTR: The Jewish community, rife with so many identity conflictions, needs the concept of the irrationally malevolent "antisemite" to hold them all together. Without the "anti-Semitic" Palestinians, and the generic "anti-Semitic" everywhere, modern Israel would implode in conflicts between the Sephardim and Ashenazim, etc. The legend of the eternal "anti-Semite" is the glue to modern Jewish identity. It is the source of their lofty moral claim, don't you think?

MATAN: Perceived external threats can mitigate tendencies towards fractiousness in any community. There are endless examples of this, from classical times to the present. But I strongly disagree that the Jewish community in any meaningful sense “needs” a manufactured threat. We would, in fact, be much better off addressing those sources of disagreement (religious, ethnic, economic, regional, etc.) than sublimating them in order to meet an imagined bogeyman on a nonexistent battlefield.

Well, on one hand, the thing that holds the atheist and the Lubavitcher together as "Jews" is the perceived threat of the "anti-Semite." Conversely, there seems to be a Jewish self-fulling tendency. When the "bogeyman on a nonexistent battlefield" doesn't exist (which is MOST of Jewish history), Jewry seems to be galling all towards the apocalyptic "End of Times" in soliciting the bogeyman into real form on many battlefield fronts. Like today. Jews in America have lived in frosting. It seems, though, they're Hell-bent these days to make enemies of everybody: Muslims, Christians, Blacks ...

Of course, those disagreements are not entirely sublimated even now, particularly the religious ones (if anything, battles between the Orthodox and non-Orthodox, as well as between Chabad and the other Chasids, are heating up), but they still need more air than they are presently getting.

Again, if the proposition of the looming "anti-Semite" didn't exist, Jewry would implode: recall the old adage, 2 Jews= 3 opinions. It means something. What does a Satmar Chassid and a Jewish atheist communist really have in common, a Falasha and a Russian Jew? Nothing. Not food, not religion, not any particular folk dance. Merely allegiance to an ancient tradition of martryology (and, yes, an alleged racial link to ancient Isralites). The "anti-Semite" defines them. (Note: I doubt if the Falasha had this ideology in Ethiopia, although I'm sure they were sufficiently alienated from surrounding non-Jews. In Israel, however, they're quickly socialized to the kosher core, especially via the IDF in killing Palestinians.]

I personally think that a community-wide elaboration on the sources of these disagreements would ultimately clarify Jewish identity and make it more meaningful, not destroy it. Also, this analysis only really applies to diaspora Jewry, particularly in the United States. Israeli society is another bag of tricks altogether.

Israel is another "bag of tricks" (good choice of words), but not in this regard. The threat of "anti-Semitism" (Holocaust, Arabs, etc.) also defines Jewish identity there. Israel has been molded as a military garrison against, potentially, ALL non-Jews with the stated aim of protecting Jews from "anti-Semites" EVERYWHERE. It is its very foundation. The conflict with the "anti-Semitic" Palestinians serves to keep secular and religious Jew from tearing each other apart. It serves to hold tight in mutal defense the intra-racist Jewish tier of Ashenazim - Sephardim (Mizrahim if you like) - Falasha.

Some of the same conflicts exist, and the Mizrakhi/Ashkenazi dichotomy (Sephardim isn’t really the right term), which for the most part doesn’t exist in the U.S., is especially present in Israel, but in general Israeli society has very different dynamics than American Jewish society and utilizes much different techniques to paper over differences. For example, while many American Jews are intensely interested in the way the Jewish community is perceived by outsiders, average Israelis tend to be relatively indifferent to how their society is perceived.

The Israeli press is a much more honest source for information about Israel than the West wherein Judeocentric apologists rule the media roost. This is very true. Israelis can be blunt about their racism and chauvinism because its a Jewish state, and most of this chat is in Hebrew. The irony, though, is that Israeli Arabs read Hebrew too. They can read what's the Jewish Israeli thinks.

Jewry’s European difficulties are also much less a pillar of Israeli self-image than American Jewish self-image. Find an Israeli who knows the names of all the death camps in Poland and I’ll give you a hundred bucks. Find a Jewish American who does and I’ll give you a quarter. That’s partly because most of Israel’s Jews trace their ancestry to the Middle East or North Africa (Mizrakhi Jews) rather than Europe,

It is the Eastern European Jews who founded Israel, and Zionism. They still dominate that country.

but there’s more to it than just that. American Jews tend to identify with Europe’s Jews, whereas Israelis, even Ashkenazi Israelis, tend to view events in Europe as something that happened to somebody else, a different group of Jews.

I don't think that's accurate. You'll recall that guys like Menachem Began constantly referenced his Eastern European past, in a negative light. Those that run Israeli society are largely, like him, a product of Eastern European heritage. Hence, the prevalence of Holocaustomania, too, in Israel. Yad Vashem, the yearly minute of silence for Holocaust victims, etc. etc. etc.

I mean, come on. Israelis reference Arafat as a form of "Hitler" pretty regularly.

Anyway, the point is that a social and sociological environment such as Israel’s generates different methods of cementing group unity.

No. Sorry. It's the same, maybe more so. Israel was founded in direct response to Herzl's allegations about "anti-Semitism," and the need to get away from it. Modern Israel, the very "sabra," was invented as a warrior state to defend against "anti-Semitism." It was socialist. For the Zionists, there wasn't an overtly religious link (initially) to Israeli soil. (It was latent, and started really blooming in more recent years).

For all the violence of their disposition towards the Palestinians and the Arab world in general, and all the contempt for Europe that sometimes surfaces in different quarters, Israeli’s don’t tend to be as psychologically dependent upon the specter of the antisemite as are many American Jews.

Wrong. Israelis cast themselves as alienated from the rest of the world. "A Nation Apart." It's quite literally rooted in a Judaic religious concept, as you should know. You've heard of the "Massada complex?" It's the Israeli notion that Israel is there as the last bastion against world anti-Semitism, like the Romans advancing upon the 900 Jewish "martyrs" at Massada. (Those people, by the way, were Jewish thieves and renegades who had murdered a bunch of Jews in Ein Gedi. An Israeli scholar wrote an entire volume about it. Read Josephus, closely).

So in their case an imagined foreign military threat plays an important role in maintaining social cohesion, but the notion of antisemitism has little role to play socially and even less in matters of personal self-definition.

Wrong again. Sorry. Way off base. See above. It is the modern Jewish essence. Even if you go back to the Torah (the source of Jewish identity), you'll find reference to Jews being punished by God (via the human vehicle of non-Jews) for their indiscretions against the Covenant. From just about Day One, Jews had framed the antithetical "goy" other. The technical term "anti-Semite" came into play in more modern times. All this comes with the Jewish package, in the kernel.

JTR: Frankly, I'm not too interested in the term "kafir." You are trying to position me into a corner where I'm defending Islamic ethnocentrism. I'm not interested in Islamic ethnocentrism.

MATAN: I’m not trying to get you to defend Islamic ethnocentrism, I’m trying to see whether you’ll acknowledge its depth.

Depth? ALL cultures have ethnocentrism. I've said that. That's not an issue to me. The issue is that of Jewry's fine-tuning of it, and Jewry's vast power to manifest its own version, wielding it like a battle ax against eveybody. The Jewish version is sort of like ethnocentrism on amphetamines.

JTR: If the Saudis ruled Hollywood, I would be. If Rupert Murdoch and Izzy Asper propagandized throughout their media empires as Muslim apologists, I would be.

MATAN: I’ll take your word for it.

Thanks?

JTR: I've never seen anybody called a "kafir" in America

MATAN: I have, many times. In Europe as well.

Sorry. Never saw it. Of course, I don't wear a yarmulke or carry an Israeli flag through Arab neighborhoods. One probably notices what one receives after throwing out the boomerang.

JTR: but I see people -- good, decent, moral people -- called "anti-Semite" all the time. I suspect the Amish have a pejorative term for the non-Amish. But who cares? So long as the Amish don't have a firm lock on the intellectual, educational, governmental, and cultural infrastructure, they can freely call me whatever they'd like as an outsider and I really don't care.

MATAN: That’s fine, I’m not suggesting you should care. But imagine there were two groups of Amish, Amish A and Amish B. Amish A and Amish B have very similar cultures, except that through a unique twist of fate Amish A strike gold and oil and diamonds and become powerful and influential, and Amish B do not. And let’s say you set up a website much like this one to decry the smothering influence of the Amish A culture. That would be fine and appropriate and certainly your prerogative, but what would be dishonest and manipulative would be to characterize, or at least ask your readers to infer that, Amish A culture, flawed and corrupt as it genuinely was, was somehow *uniquely bad*, far worse so than Amish B, which, because it lacked power, you absolved from all criticism.

What "unique twist of fate?" If Amish group A strikes gold, invades another land across the world, and declares that all Amish everywhere of any sort owe allegiance to their new nation, and network with Amish in every corner towards collective tribal aggrandizement, commandeer U.S. foreign policy, dominate the mass media, and so forth, they DESERVE critical attention as an entity. Sorry. I see it as something like: 1+1=2.

But the real model, per the Jewish version, is more that Amish group A, B, C, D, E, F, scattered throughout the world, all happen to strike "gold" in a similar manner. Maybe Amish group G doesn't, but then group H, I, J and so on hit stride. In the Jewish world, look at relative Jewish affluence in the U.S., Great Britain, Canada, France, Brazil, Iran, Iraq, Hong Kong, and on and on and on and on. What do you find? The same pattern. Resources pooled, in a profound sense: easily seen via Israel.

You seem to be arguing that social entities are instrinsically fragmented, at odds with itself. They are not. They are, by definition, unified in some important way. Jewish power virtually everywhere (where they live in significant numbers) is not the result of a lucky accident. It's not a fluke of a band of Jews finding gold. Your subject of analogy is discovering "gold." And your Amish find gold by a fluke. How come there's so many Goldbergs, Goldsteins, Golds? Silverstein, Silvers? Hell, Dinero is a common enough Spanish Jewish surname. In bygone days, your name reflected your trade.

When Oppenheimer took over the South African diamond fields via De Beers, parallel things were happening with Jewry throughout the world. Disreali becoming Great Britain's great colonial prime minister, the Jewish guy who owned United Brands in its rape of Central America, these thing aren't an extraneous kind of lightening striking randomly throughout the world. People, cultures, societies make history. Not a pot of gold falling on someone's head.

In fact, you even a priori assumed that all perversions in the culture of Amish B were excusable because, hey, they don’t have power, and the flaws of the less powerful are probably somehow to be blamed on the powerful, anyway.

No. The "perversions" of Amish B with Amish A may be presumed to meld in the great unifying tank: Israel. And see above. A man with a surname of Gold, to use your own example, is going to be Jewish (The rare exception won't be the rule). It's not arbitrary. There's a reason. Wouldn't it be interesting in your example of Amish A and Amish B if there were families in each named Goldstein? In other words, social and historical factors inform Amish A's fortune.

This would be absurd and it would detract from the truly pressing task of evaluating the influence of Amish A. What I’m saying is that to criticize Jewish power is productive and good; to highlight those elements in Jewish culture that, because of the power Jewry wields, are particularly destructive, is productive and good; to argue or consistently imply that Jewish culture is uniquely bad, in some way constitutionally inferior to other cultures, is counterproductive and dishonest.

By your same argument, we may assail the entirety of Jewish culture for constanting attacking Christianity (and now Islam) as generically "anti-Semitic." Morally, Jewish culture IS -- to the idea of pan-human universality -- inferior. The Talmud instituted a two-tier moral system: one for Jews, and one for non-Jews. Do you dispute that? Yes, there are Reform rabbis all over the place absorbed with Talmudic damage control. But it ain't history. It's a REFORMulation of Jewish history and it is, at least in part, an attempt to veil it from non-Jewish absorption and recognition.

Your term is "uniquely bad." We've got an entire section that lists all the ways Jewish commentators list the Jewish people as "unique." Following both religious and secular Jewish Chosen People format, maybe "uniquely bad" might fit in that list. But I'd defer to some uniquely legitimate scholarship about that.

It is, come to think of it, the distilled essence of Political Correctness: to insist on attacks on the privileged but disallow criticism of victims.

YOU are disallowing "criticism of victims," wherein we both agree (to limited extent) that Jews self-define as victims. Here you've created a non-existent scenario using the Amish. The Amish are farmers. Jews have historically disdained farming, and largely made their money on the backs of laborers, as store owners, peddlers, usurers, bankers, etc. The Amish aren't Jews and the Jews aren't Amish. They are, quite literally, worlds apart. Jews are urban. Jews, as a culture, have always been money-centered. It's not an "anti-Semitic canard," but the truth. I even ran across a Jewish scholar who argued that, historically, money was the means for Jews (without an army) to get revenge.

Are black people in any sense complicit in their own communal disasters?

You would argue they were not, "in any way?" The slave trade had much to do with Arab slave trading, Jewish slave trading, European slave trading, and African inter-tribal quarrels -- even slave traders too. But you are, again, equating oppressed with oppressor. Jews are nothing like African-Americans. And they can't be compared to the Amish. Jews are the wealthiest ethnic group in America. You continue to do this, demanding equal attention to the crimes of Black slaves and Jewish slave owners, the crimes of the desperate Palestinian measured equally against his Israeli persecutor. Again, again, again. The issue is power. And how does one attain power? Not by being "Mr. Nice Guy." How does an entire "victim" community rise to forms of hegemonic power? There you have one of the reasons for this web site. We don't do PC charts that aim at critical balance of the guy standing on top of the Arab corpse, and the Arab corpse itself.

How could you even ASK such a question? Were Europeans culturally preordained to be anti-black racists because of the sickly confluence of classical aesthetics and renaissance taxonomy? NOW you’re talking.

It may be fairly argued that Europeans were "preordained to be anti-black racists" because of their Christian culture, which is rooted in the Jewish Old Testament and the "Hamitic" myth. Black scholar Tony Martin has written about this, and he is, of course, condemned by the Jewish Lobby as an "anti-Semite." Check old Ham out.

That’s how Political Correctness works: celebrate the perceived victims, but screw The Man. What YOU seek to do is not undermine the fabric of political correctness—indeed, I detect more than a hint of PC in your own struggle to avoid acknowledging any particular shortcomings in the Muslim worldview

Nope. Sorry. You're going off the deep end, man. It is not the Muslim who has such an ideological stranglehold in America. It is the Jew. As long as the Muslim doesn't have the power to dictate my life, I don't care about him. When the Muslim comes blowing up American buildings because he's pissed off at the Jewish fist in the Middle East, now we have a complex ball game.

—but rather to move the Jewish people out of the group of “protected victims” into the realm of the acknowledged powerful, who are fair game for the most slanderous and relentless of attacks.

ANY power elite, by definition, in a free, democratic society, is subject to critical attack. Morning to night. Night to morning. Then in the loop again. Indefinitely. It is the very EXPRESSION of a free society that the powerful may be subject to public scrutiny. Jewry is so incredibly powerful they have the force to FORBID this. You are doing it too, in a disguised manner.

Now, we both know that Jews are disproportionately powerful, and being protected by PC has harmed us in that it has left external criticism of Jews to the right wing crowd, who don’t have the tools to prompt internal self-examination among Jews, as I already mentioned. So I’m happy to see Jews gradually being moved back into the sunlight for genuine examination.

Good for you. Spread the word. Save your people and the world.

External criticism has prompted salutary reform movements in Judaism in the past and I believe it could do so again.

What? Does it means anything to a non-Jew? We need a Judaism that is universalistic. Period. But "Judaism" and "universalistic" is a contradiction in terms, whatever Michael Lerner says.

But be aware that you are actually attempting to harness the powers of Political Correctness rather than overthrow them, and your message is the weaker for it.

Sorry. I see your own "effort" here as an attempt to equate Jewish/Zionist hegemony to Muslim/Arab suffering. It's bogus. Even if Muslims believed that non-Jews were descended from toadstools, the issue at stake is power: Jewish Western hegemony and its Zionism. Muslim outrage and anger is legitimate. You seek to justify Jewish/Israeli oppression as an equal to Muslim/Arab suffering. I don't take that hokey jive in my back yard. Sorry.

JTR: Muslims are not complaining every minute over the Western airwaves about the terrible "kafirs" and how they must be censored, shut down and/or fined and jailed for, say, daring to criticize Muslims as a community.

MATAN: Yes, just such things are being vented over airways, though not mainstream airways in the West. “Every minute” western (and South Asian) infidel kafir are being berated in Muslim print media and radio. You are free not to focus on this, but not to deny it.

As I've stated to you. If my culture and people were under constant attack -- both literally and figuratively, I'd be calling my oppressors the equivilant of "kafir" too. In the Muslim world, people are justifiably outraged. Jewish hegemony in the U.S. has created a culture that has polarized, and poisoned, Western-Muslim relations.

JTR: And, as you surely know, more and more agitation about "kafirs" in the Islamic world may well be understood as reactions to Israeli racism and Western imperialism. If someone invaded wherever you lived, and took it over, worked to erode your culture and belief system, and jailed and murdered people, you'd be whispering your own version of "kafir" too. You'd shout it when you could.

MATAN: More self-defeating apologetics, and then, voila, the essence of PC: “anyway, they are not to blame for their flaws, rabid ethnocentrism on the part of the ‘victim’ is to be blamed on the ‘powerful’ group.”

The oppression of the Palestianians is verifiable. There is no oppression of Israelis. Again, you're the "PC" guy. You seek to homogenize oppressor and the oppressed. You seek the same lens for the King and the slave.

The officially-sanctioned “victim” is absolved of all responsibility for its cultural flaws. Your standard application of Politically Correct logic will undo you in the eyes of many.

Sorry. Here we go. The Jewish visitor who seeks to, as one Yiddish proverb goes, "throw me out of my own wagon." (To paraphrase: "Pick up a Jew and he'll throw you out of your own wagon.") Looks like you fit the bill.

The fact that you are trying to reposition Jews’ position within the PC framework doesn’t make your approach any less PC in its essence. And any campaign against Jewry's flaws would be far more effective (certainly with Jews, and with others, too) without being couched in this way.

Sorry. I disagree. You're pulling the usual Jewish Propaganda scheme. It's tried and true (i.e., it has always worked in creating smokescreens). Whenever there's an art exhibition, documentary film, etc. that is planned to be shown in support of the Palestinian cause, there's always a clog of vehement Jewish Lobbyists who demand "equal time." It's happened at the Smithsonian, a Boston art museum, etc. (Conversely, Judeocentrism has free reign to propagate its view throughout culture via its many, many organs of public dissemination). It's as if you demand that the Slave Master has cosmic right to equal time to argue his case after the slave has his five minutes. THAT is fair, because EQUAL stories must be told. Sorry. I don't buy it.

The "disbalance" you despise is that an ALTERNATIVE VIEW should be publicly forwarded WITHOUT the usual Judeocentric contextualizing and apologia. It is a sin in your eyes to shine the spotlight on the failings of Jewry. It's not a comfortable shine, I know. But it's time to do it. You seem to concede that, to some degree. So the spotlight's going on. Let's see some vaudeville. Something naked, with no distractions.

JTR: This is what I want: your honest concession. You introduce the term "goy" here in this discussion. Wonderful. In Jewish tradition, the goy is the generic non-Jew. Most Jews don't like to talk about this. To your credit, you bring it up. As you know, in Jewish contextual tradition, the goy is scum. (Lest you jump on me for technicalities, "scum" is my descriptive word. I'm flowering things up a bit, you know?) Again, you may charge whatever you'd like against me. If my concession to your notion about "kafir" is necessary to pry a public concession from you about the pejorative term goy for ALL NON-JEWS, then, pal, it's worth it.

MATAN: No problem, I have no interest in performing a PC whitewash on ethnocentristic terms, be they Jewish or anyone else’s. I’m not interested in your “concessions,” I’m interested in your acknowledgment of reality. As you said, we’re interested in substance, right?, and not in horse-trading or points scoring. Again, my only qualification regarding the word “goy” is the same qualification I would make for “kafir” or "barbar" or any other such word: that its usage is not homogenous. “Goy” has quite different nuances in the context of modern Israeli Hebrew than when used by someone who speaks no Hebrew but uses a few Yiddish expressions including “goy.” In general, though, “goy” is a demeaning term.

The further you go back in time, the closer you get to the Jewish shtetl, the more the term "goy" is absolute in its meaning. Today we live in a complex world. But tracing the word's most popular use is informative in understanding the traditional Jewish world view. Goy, shiksa ... there's a few of them. They're not -- however you might try to soften them -- ever terms of respect or endearment.

JTR: But I point out to you that the term "goy" in Jewish culture is much more parallel to "kafir" in Islamic society. In both cases they are of religious origin -- ethnocentric views of outsiders. The term "anti-Semite" is a term that has become largely a policing device, a tool. Sorry. "Anti-Semite" and "kafir" aren't parallel terms.

MATAN: I won’t belabor this much further, but, though it is true that “kafir” and “antisemite” are not *perfectly* analogous terms (no terms translate perfectly across cultures), there are indeed parallels, and kafir incorporates elements of both “goy” and “antisemite.”

Well, "pig" is loosely "parallel." So is "asshole," "scumbag," and a truckload of other pejoratives. You're stretching far to try and make a point. "Kafir" and "anti-Semite" are NOT "parallel" expressions of ethnocentrism. "Kafir" and "goy" is a better match. Why DO you belabor the "kafir" term, except for your hyper-focus on dragging Muslims down the Israeli level? As you've noted here, you have a special interest in the Jewish state. I think that's the crux of our discussion here.

Kafir includes, for example, the sense that all such outsiders are immutably and irrevocably hostile to the in-group, which is much more characteristic of “antisemite” than “goy.” But in other respects “kafir” more closely resembles “goy,” you are right. Again, my point is only to dissuade you from arguing or implying, as you did to Jody, that such ugly and ethnocentristic features of Jewish culture as the cynical employment of terms such as “antisemite” are somehow particular to Jewish culture. They are not, they are *obviously* not to anyone who comes to your website with non-sentimentalized knowledge of cultures other than their own, and those people will see through you and be less likely to look further into your points regarding Jewish culture.

Ah, so now we get contentious. Friend, you are the one to "see through." You are consistently framing an apologia for Jewish and Israeli racism, i.e., "Hey. Others are racist. Some guy in Zanzibar. So leave us alone." The way to look at Jewish culture is to realize that you must dart past the curtain, the veil, the wall, the checkpoint, the apologist, the propagandist, and all the other barriers. Once free to look, the viewer will finally see.

This is why someone like Jody, who you may otherwise have persuaded to more deeply examine the systemic shortcomings in the culture she’s already so ambivalent about, instead simply loses interest and offers to buy you a book on logic and critical thought.

Jody will either reject what I say, or think about it. It's her choice. I tell the truth and what she does therein is her own business.

Because she can see that your analysis is inconsistent,

Sorry. It's as straight as a polished arrow. You? You're trying to squeeze in through a key hole.

and whether that’s due to a cynical intention to distort the picture or due to thinking clouded by resentment, she’s not interested in delving more deeply into the analysis of someone who immediately broadcasts his inconsistencies. And an opportunity is lost.

Who are you to decide what she's thinking? Or are you in cahoots with her the same way you are with "Joey Kurtzner," who you cc'd in the same email to me, and who has emailed this web site earlier in heated and obnoxious "complaint?" The Jewish tag team has already begun, the Jewish inconsistencies are strewn like seeds all over the mat, and, lo!, is the "opportunity" lost?

JTR: I repeat to you: in Western culture, Muslims are not freely smearing people on TV and the newspapers with the term "kafir." If they had the power to do it, this web site would be about them. In Western culture, the Jewish Lobby that is empowered so heavily everywhere has free reign not only to use the term "anti-Semite" as a policing tool in all directions, they have the power to use it to punish people they don't like.

MATAN: Again, I’m not arguing questions of Jewish power. I’m arguing against your inability to place Jewish shortcomings in any sort of honest comparative context.

Sorry. Your inability is your failure to understand the righteous morality in investigating, fully, that Jewish power. Investigating Jewish power doesn't mean you have to drag in Islamic ethnocentrism, Polish hats, or the Egyptian pyramids. Investigating Jewish racism and power means investigating Jewish racism and power. And finding out where the story goes.

JTR: Of all the tens of thousands of things at the Jewish Tribal Review, why is it that you fixate on armwrestling with me over a Muslim term? I suspect it echos your very special interest and world Jewry's war with the Palestinians. AND Jewry's need to equate itself as victims with the REAL victims in the Middle East: Arabs and Muslims.

MATAN: I have a special and vested interest in Israel, yes. The same way Arab-Americans do with the Arab world, Irish-Americans do with Ireland, Italian-Americans do with Italy, Cuban-Americans do with Cuba, and so forth.

"Special interest in Israel?" I take this as a euphemism. What Jew doesn't have a "special interest in Israel?" I could count them on one hand (I exaggerate only a little). But yours is also another false comparison. There is not parallel between American Jewry's allegiance to the tribal military garrison state of Israel and someone's yearly interest in a St. Patrick's Day Parade. There is no multi-billion dollar lobby affording tanks and nuclear bombs to the Irish Republican Army. Most Americans of European descent have completely lost their identity linked to Europe. They think they're Americans, from toe to cap. Not so Jews. For most, Israel is the core of their Jewish being. Your consistent effort here is to homogenize Jewry as exactly equal to all others, in all social, economic, political, and ethnocentic respects. This is not so. It is a typical Jewish ploy. Sorry for the verifible "stereotype."

I’m very comfortable with this and have no difficulty acknowledging it nor desire to apologize for it.

Sorry. You should be ashamed of Israel. Here is the greatest gap, perhaps, between us. And what is unspoken here by you is the heart of our differences. Your harping on "kafir" is a non-issue. The meat lies here. Our exchange really begins here, with your stated allegiance to apartheid Israel.

However the debate over ethnocentrist terms serves a larger purpose, and that is to flush out the deficiencies in your analysis so that they can be corrected.

You say this to me after you just acknowledge a "comfortable" allegiance to apartheid Israel? Shame, hypocrite. My "analysis" is "deficient?" This coming from someone who declares himself "comfortable" with the monster Jewish state. Oh, please!

Deficiencies that ultimately compromise your own mission, a mission in which I also have an interest because it plays into my idea of the interests for the Jewish community and human communities generally.

This is gross hypocrisy. You cannot truly have interest in "human communities" if you have no "discomfort" with your allegiance to Jewish ethno-state of Israel. It's a contradiction in terms. It's one of the paradoxes of Jewish identity. You said earlier you agreed that Jewry was rife (my word) with paradox and hypocrisy. Here you expose yourself as not really grasping the dimensions of this issue. The Great Monster is asleep in your own driveway.

Call it a Shahak-ian vision.

You place your position in company with Israel Shahak? Sorry. I don't think so.

And because you seem to have some sort of emotional attachment to the Arab and possibly Muslim worlds (don’t bother denying it, unless you are willing to at least declare the background into which you were socialized I’m not interested in hearing declarations of a generalized and indiscriminate love of all humanity),

Frankly, I don't care what you're interested in hearing. I tell you what needs to be said to you. In turn, "don't bother telling me" you're not a sycophant for Israel, for that matter. I believe in justice. But my "emotional attachment" to the Palestinian cause is probably a thousandth of yours to racist Israel.

it’s most important for you to be able to identify the shortcomings in those specific cultures, and most telling if you can’t.

This web site is about Jews, Jewish history, Jewish power, and Jewish influence. If you're so interested in Islamic ethnocentrism to justify Israeli atrocities, you should start your own web site. If, at root, you also want to champion racist Israel, this isn't the right forum: you'll lose. Quickly.

JTR: The Jewish community doesn't like to see itself in the mirror as ruthless oppressor. So, yeah. Muslims got bad words too. You and I both know that anyone called "kafir" today is probably an object of bitterness: the Israelis and, increasingly, Americans bombing their lands in the Zionist shadow. Or, for that matter, any member of the noble "coalition" who comes to harnass today the people of Afghanistan and Iraq. Ain't nobody sitting on the heads of Jews and their nuclear bombs in the Middle East, sorry.

MATAN: I’ve spoken my piece on kafir, and you’ve made clear your tolerance and sympathy for Muslim ethnocentrism.

Hey, you've virtually admitted above that you're an Israeli apologist. (You said "comfortable" but I suspect you meant proud). Why am I not surprised? Oops! My unsubstantiated "bias" again! No generalizations permitted about Jews? The tie between Jewry and Israel is like a slab of poisoned plastic to superglue.

Once Jewry can start realistically extracting itself from all its Israel-centered myths, the entire spectre of the "anti-Semite" will be on its way to extinction.

JTR: Muslims are trapped beneath Jewish and Western imperialism and are fighting a war of Islamic liberation and their invaders are understood as "kafirs."

MATAN: Muslim ethnocentrism predates 20th and 21st century interactions with the West and, when Islam was militarily empowered, spurred a nearly millennium long series of invasion and depredations of Western (and non-Western) lands. You spend a great deal of time appropriately berating Jews for their victim mentality. I respectfully challenge you to escape your own.

I respectfully note to you that the entirety of your correspondence with me is to veil Jewish supremacy, declaring that bigoted Slave Master and bigoted Slave must be scrutinized on equal terms. If we are to bring in extraneous military campaigns to this exchange, let's drag in Jewish dominance of Soviet communism, the attendant murder of millions and so on.

Turkish military power and Saladan are not the subject of this web site. The Turks and Bedouin armies don't threaten me and the world's future with Muslim ethnocentrism. Jewish ethnocentric dogma does.

JTR: If the Israeli army comes to my home and shits and pees all over everything (as they've done during the Intifada), I'd call them "kafirs" (and a lot else) too.

MATAN: Of course you would, because you’d have a ready-made conceptual framework within which barbaric non-Muslims nicely fit.

"Conceptual framework?" You mean something like the Chosen People?

JTR: Jews are a central force in the apparatus of Islamic and Arab oppression, and anyone who dares to say this in our Judeocentric society is decreed to be an "anti-Semite."

MATAN: Right, because Jews are still protected by PC speech codes. Let’s change it, present an alternative view of them as oppressors, and they’ll be subject to the same level of analysis that today only Western and European cultures are subject to.

Is this sarcasm? Can't tell.

JTR: Um, and, please ... What is the benevolent use of the term "anti-Semite?"

MATAN: I didn’t say benevolent (ie, good) I said “benign” (ie not very harmful). A benign use of the word antisemite would be one with a nice, PC-sounding little meaning like the one you gave kafir. Say, if Jews only used “antisemite” to mean “person with whom we have disagreements, but in whom we recognize a shared humanity and who we would like to get to know better” that would be a benign usage.

Nonsense. To say "anti-Semite" is an accusation of bigotry. Period. At the very least. There is no "benign" usage. It is a tool to stifle dissent against Jewish power and influence. It is loaded with insult and censorial impact.

I’m flowering things up a bit, as you say, but you get the point. In reality an actual benign usage of it is to use the word, as I do, to refer to people who declare themselves ideological antisemites a la Marr. A tight, circumscribed meaning, not liable to manipulation or wild shifting of boundaries. More preferably I’d be happy to forego the word altogether, or perhaps replace it with the old German term “Judenhass,” or something. That might be misapplied, too, but at least it wouldn’t be as awkward and sloppy a term as antisemite.

You'd make a good Orwellian bureaucrat. Antisemite means love. Peace means war.

JTR: Your "critical set of analytical tools" treat oppressed and oppressor alike, and this is a false proposition. My criteria for criticism is who deserves it. I could criticize the ethnocentrism of every culture in the world, BUT THESE CULTURES DON'T NEGATIVELY IMPACT ME (AND SO MANY OTHERS) IN THE MANNER OF TRIBAL JUDEOCENTRISM.

MATAN: Yes, that’s exactly right. I don’t adulterate the level of my analysis for “oppressed” cultures out of some sense of misguided PC charity. If the oppression is genuine I will acknowledge it and the manner in which it has or hasn’t impacted them, but I will not paint a rosy picture of them by attempting to rationalize away their human failures. To do so is ultimately condescending and racist. When Rousseau waxed eloquent about the “Noble Savages” in Africa and North America who lived in perpetual, blissful ignorance was he doing them any favors? No, he was presenting a silly and degrading image to which they could never live up and which, to the extent that it actually influenced attitudes towards or among those groups, served as a wet blanket to any self-generated effort to genuinely ameliorate their circumstances.

I rip away all flowers that decorate the Israeli Frankenstein. And I pose no "silly and degrading" myth-rooted image of the Jewish people. I lift the curtain, where you still struggle to veil.

Of course, in the case of the Native Americans and, somewhat later on, the Africans, those people WERE oppressed, and anyone who lived at that time certainly had better things to focus on than those groups’ cultural shortcomings.

Contradiction. Big Time. Insofar as the Palestinian people ARE oppressed, there is no need, as you admit here in a general sense, to focus on their "cultural shortcomings." Conversly, insofar as the Jewish Lobby and modern Israel ARE the oppressors, it is necessary to focus on their "cultural shortcomings." Just following your "logical" line of thought. Thanks.

But to minimize and explain away the flaws of those groups in order to accentuate the flaws in the culture of the oppressors and thereby demonize that group rather than honestly and accurately assess their flaws and the damage of their actions, well it’s pointless. Worse, it’s counterproductive, because intelligent people who don’t subjugate their reason to their emotions and their desires for vengeance won’t buy it. And, what’s of particular importance to me in wanting to spread ideas similar to yours in the Jewish community, Jews who possess the faculties for self-examination won’t buy it from you because they’ll see the slanted framework in which you’re steeped, and have an excuse to disregard your writings because of it. And people don’t need any more excuses to disregard analyses of their culture’s shortcomings. Ethnocentrism and misperceived self-interest provide enough such reasons without people such as yourself packaging their critical messages with ready-made reasons to reject those messages.

Hey. After bothering to sit here this long to tediously respond to your commentary, I realize, as always, arguing with a typical Jew (oh, God! Another generalization!) is like planting flowers in concrete. Your mind is made up: Jews are beyond serious criticism. Sure, you frame it differently than that. You can't say that blatantly. So you go for subterfuge: You demand "balance," yakaty yak. Yes! Let's have a critical web site on the "cultural shortcomings" of the Jenin ghetto dwellers as well as the Israeli military who routinely invades, and kills, them.

The Jewish attack is almost always Israel-centered. "Special interest," indeed.

Look. Those Jews who dare to face their community in the mirror are welcome here. But is there really such a thing? All those who are frozen with tap roots into racist Israel can bang their empty garbage cans somewhere else.

JTR: Yours is false reasoning at the very least, and intentional fraud and dissimulation at the worst. But you are trying to be reasonable in your condemnation of my perspective, and that -- from the Jewish community -- is progress, I assure you.

MATAN: Intentional fraud? In what manner have I “defrauded” you?

You frame yourself as an open seeker of truth. But, at root, you demonstrate yourself to be a Judeocentric apologist. Another form, a bit more nebulous, but nailed to the same steel plank.

JTR: You have the audacity to accuse me of "racial discrimination" when that is the foundation/origin of Jewish identity?

MATAN: Yes, I have that audacity. Even if “racial discrimination” were the very totality of Jewish identity, if no other elements at all played even a minor part, your use of a very potent and well-honed microscope to assess Jewish flaws matched with a penchant for looking at other cultures (or at least the Arab and Muslims ones) as though they’re some sort of living Monet painting is irrational, illogical and “discriminatory.”

Sorry. I don't see the Muslim and Arab murdered, and Israeli and "Coalition" tanks and cluster bombs, as a "Monet painting." Your own incessant "discriminatory" base forbids criticism of Jews and Israel unless it is counterbalanced by equal condemnation of those they oppress and exploit. You appeal for an objective balance, of which there is no such thing, least of all in Jewish tradition and modern Israel. The Western world is stuffed with Jewish and Israeli propaganda, some like yours. You ride into this web site on your Great White Horse, proclaiming acceptance of a few criticisms of Jewish identity, and then spend most of your time looking to attack the Muslim and Arab community, charging that I'm a bigot for daring to break the smothering chains of Judeocentrism.

When I say “discriminatory” I mean that you “discriminate” not just in who you chose to focus on, which would be perfectly acceptable, but in your basic disposition towards cultural prejudices of various groups. And you’ve acknowledged as much. An attitude is more or less acceptable in your view depending on who holds it. Muslim with racist attitude: okay. Jew with racist attitude: sick! and perverse!

Sorry. Never said that. I DO say that, almost as reliable as the sun rising, the Jewish visitor proclaims himself in some form to be above criticism, with the only permissible exception (in your case) being that the Jew is only allowed onto the stage of critical examination with his Muslim (and Christian) echo. Conversely, no one demands "equal time" when Jewry launches into another attack upon "anti-Semitic" Christianity. No one demands "equal time" when our Judeocentric press shits again on generic Islam.

I say to you again: the issue is power and for you to demand inspection of Muslim ethnocentrism, New Guinean ethnocentrism, Amish ethnocentrism, and all the rest, in the examination of Jewish cultural and political hegemony in the West, is a grotesque form of dissimulation. You thereby categorically EXCUSE the exertion of Jewish ethnocentrism in its vast assertion of power, unless such criticism be sufficiently diffused with an examination of, say, the Turks in the 16th century or whatever Darwinian is going on with Galapagos turtles.

The man that oppresses me, exploits me, is the focus of my concern. Was, is, and will be. That is the repeated mantra of history.

JTR: Are you one of those guys who claims that the "Chosen People" and "seed of Abraham" concepts are really about passing out candies to the dirty, drunken goyim?

MATAN: You mean Chaim and Mendel Lipschitz?

No. Both Rabbis Kook, aptly named.

JTR: Are you one of those guys who can pass this accusation so casually when Israel, the nation built in the name of Jews everywhere, is an apartheid state?

MATAN: The territories are in a state comparable to South African apartheid. Israel proper is not. Distinctions are important.

Israel proper IS an apartheid state. The heart of your ideology is beginning to leak, like polluted oil, onto the floor. Modern Israel's strata system today: 1) Ashkenazim. 2) Sephardim/Mizrahim 3) Falasha 4) Sub-tier, off the Jewish charts: Arabs. There are many studies, plenty by Israelis, that outline the systematic discrimination (jobs, housing, benefits, rights, etc.) Arabs face in "Israel proper." The Occupied Territories is merely the drop off into Hell.

JTR: Concessions are helpful. But you spill them as asides and not center stage. But I give you points for conceding ANYTHING. Most Jews veil. You've got a couple windows open.

MATAN: Thanks for your kind words. I’m happy with the rest of what you write. The points I raise are where I think you’re flawed.

The points I raise are where I KNOW you're flawed.

JTR: Hey, my pesky friend. I have no doubt there will be virtual Jewish tag-teams trying to tear this web site down, figuratively and literally. But, so long as they can only squeeze through the Internet one by one to argue, and not cloud up like mosquitos on me, they're only going to accentuate and underscore the fundamental truths at this web site. With all due respect, like you.

MATAN: Good. Then you have everything to gain by pursuing these conversations.

I'm not interested in hearing anything more about "kafir." Too much smoke on your part. Over and over again, it's a waste of my time. You've made your points, and I've rebutted them. Please proceed to the next level, or bail out.

Listen. I haven't got all the time in the world to respond at length to every bitcher and moaner (polite or not) who glides in out of cyberspace. But I'm interested in responding/debating/arguing, whatever, as time allows. Guaranteed, folks who come in with insults and a flaming chip on their shoulder, I'll ignore. If they frame themselves as somewhat reasonable (I give you credit here) I'm game for some play.

MATAN: Great, I genuinely appreciate the time, and look forward to continuing this discussion as time allows for both of us. Until then, take care. Shalom, Matan

If you hang around, the discussion will get more and more heated. Obviously. I see it coming. But it's really your choice. Same as the Jewish community generally, you will harvest what you sow.

To Matan Ariel, 3