REPLY TO A JEWISH QUERY

The Jewish Tribal Review recently received the following email:

Sir,
I have read your web site with interest. I am Jewish myself, and although I was raised with a certain amount of Zionist "propanganda" and Holocaust dogma, I find as an adult I am beginning to question these issues. I agree with much of what your site claims about Jewish power, but I do have one question for you. What do you have to say about the average, middle-class Jew who like most people is just trying to live a good life, raise their kids in a proper way and make enought money to pay the mortgage? Are these people guilty of a crime in your eyes, or is the problem 'power" Jews specifically, ie Michael Eisner and the like. I am sure I loathe these people as much as any anti-semite, what say you? Is it racial or individual?
- B

Dear B.

Thank you for your email.Your questions are important ones, they are reasonable, and their answers draw from the paradoxes at the very heart of modern Jewish identity. And modern "politically correct" doubletalk culture. Your acceptance of some of the foundations of our web site is a big step. But it is very unusual. Unfortunately, not many people who call themselves "Jews" are able to make such self-reflective progress. Modern Jewish identity is rooted in a fundamental denial of very serious problems of self-deception and corruption in the Jewish community that need to be faced. There are a few Jews (and they are powerless) who are willing to face the ugliest aspects of modern Zionism. But very, very few have the fortitude to face some of the most troubling aspects of Jewish ethnocentric identity itself, which CREATED Zionism.

It is important to underscore that modern "Jewish" identity is framed in neurosis. Jewish identity is rooted in the notion that everyone else is out to get them. For no reason. The "Jew," whatever his understanding of this term, thereby defines himself in antithesis to the non-Jew; most typically this is understood as the "antisemite." In Jewish self-conception, this irrational "antisemitic" nemesis nourishes the Jewish sense of intrinsic self-worth. It isn't new. It wasn't born of the "Holocaust"; it has biblical origins. Jewish identity, throughout history, has always been at war with this non-Jewish boogeyman, who is the quintessential stereotype of irrational Evil. To Jewish convention, the reasonless "antisemite" "hates" Jews simply because they are Jews. Not for what Jews think, do, or say as expressions of a tribal ideology.

This essence of your concern in writing us, of course, is that the growing critical net against Jewish power and hypocrisy throughout popular culture sweeps across even you, someone who declares himself to be innocent of wrong-doing and completely divorced from high profile "Jewish" social and political players. You're caught in the critical net simply because you're a "Jew." But you self-define as a "Jew." Since you have not defined what exactly the term "Jew" means to you, I will have to make some presumptions, based upon what we know to be "Jewish" convention.

This web site doesn't focus on Jews as a "race" (although many Jews find their identity rests there). It focuses on "being Jewish" as an self-promotive ideology. Whatever else it is or is not, it is a distinct world view, self-created for the advancement of a small part of the world's humanity. It is an ideology of -- among other things -- materialist advancement, and is in no small part the reason why so many high-profile hustlers clawing up the social and economic ladder are Jewish. (We will not ignore their major self-defining identity attribute of "being Jewish" in deference to you who may live in a patched tent under a freeway overpass).

Now, for Jews, Jewish identity entails a range of roots and expressions, from the racial to the nationalist, from the ethnic to the religious, to the tribal. People who call themselves "Jews" emphasize different aspects of this varied identity. But for all the disparity and divergence within the Jewish community, there are certain common denominators. What is it that ties them together as "Jew?" What, sir, is your allegiance to the term? You don't say. Most typically, modern Jewish solidarity revolves around Jewry's traditional persecution complex and the invention of a brutal, relentless, modern military garrison (Israel) to "defend Jews" from the eternal "antisemite" everywhere.

If you declare that being "Jewish" only means to you a particular folk dance, lighting candles, matza balls, your grandpa's beard, or the mournful refrains of an old cantor, you are being evasive. These things are not devoid of broader historical and ideological context. The "Jewish" allegiance is never trivial.

An important part of modern "Jewish" identity today is also to erase the shameful dimensions of its past. And punish those who bring it to the fore. This includes, as sampling, the racist premises of Talmudic Judaism and its collective disdain for the non-Jewish Other.

You ask if we hold generic "Jews" responsible for a pan-"Jewish" "crime." If we use the "crime" very loosely to simply allude to collective moral failing, I'd say yes. This accusation includes the Jewish community's hidden racist pro-Israel activism or its opposite: silence to this Great Force that ACTS IN THE NAME OF COLLECTIVE JEWRY.

I shine your implicit criticism upon us for assumed generalizations back upon you. You, defining yourself as a "Jew," should have the responsibility to reform your "Jewish" community: again, the Jewish Collective that speaks -- by its OWN definition -- in your name. The Jewish community is not being reformed. Jewry -- in many of its social, economic, and political permutations -- is corrupt. This corruption surfaces everywhere: just read the daily newspapers. (Check out this web site for such documentation).

Jewish convention has always been to self-protect against the generic "antisemite" (i.e., those who object to Jewish power, ethnocentrism, hypocrisy, and exploitation) at any cost. This cost includes -- for most Jews -- the acceptance of corruption, even on large scale. Its origin can be found in the roots of Jewish identity itself. The Jewish world view has always held this war against the "antisemite" to be a priority: a perpetual battle against the surrounding non-Jewish nemesis. And it is not just the "Zionist" community that is so very corrupt. It is also the broader Jewish community which informs the Zionist one.

As you should understand, Zionism has coopted the Jewish world to the point where the term "Jew" and "Zionist" have become synonymous terms, whether you like it or not. For all the politically progressive "Jewish" dissimulation, "Israel" is synonymous with the word "Jew."

Organized Jewry acts in your name as a "Jew," whether it murders a 7-year old Palestinian child in the Occupied Territiories or another corrupt rabbi or Jewish secular leader is caught in yet another scam. These people represent you. Again and again, such crooks are often found to have deep roots in expressly JEWISH organizations, from synagogues to AIPAC.

I always wonder why would any universalist, non-religious (of which "Jews" number so many) moral person would want to adhere to the "Jewish" nomer, except for the attendant identity clutch to its martyrological tradition, a tradition that is in so many ways bogus? (i.e., Jews have reaped what they've always sown, and that's a fact -- the same as now occurs in Palestine).

As the world gets uglier from the consequences of both Zionism and Judeo-American ethnocentrism in imperial campaigns across the world, those who define themselves as "Jews" are increasingly going to have to come to terms with what the term "Jewish" represents to them. They are center stage. They are center stage in the mass media, in propaganda campaigns of all sorts, in U.S. foreign policy, in many of the very consumerist premises of modern civilization.

In 2003, "Jewish" means affluent. "Jewish" means power. "Jewish" means Israel. "Jewish" means, for more and more people, oppressor.

If Jews call themselves "Jews," and Israel calls themselves "Jews," that's good enough for us. We'll criticize what Jews call themselves: Jews. We criticize Jews who act as Jews, call themselves Jews, and are interwoven everywhere on behalf of Jewish welfare -- in spite of absurd totalitarian PC Thought Control campaigns that forbid criticizing people by the terms they call themselves.

So don't complain to us. Do something to steer the "Jewish" community off the immoral course it calls home. The Jewish Fate is being shaped by the Jewish Corrupt who speak for you. Whether you like it or not. If you accept this vehemently ethnocentric state of affairs -- like most "Jews" -- as part of your protection package from the "antisemite," then this web site is about you.

If you resist these truths, you are part of the pack. And, alas. You are therefore part of the problem.

If you agree with us, DO something.