DEAR ABBY

by Joe Nichols

Dear Abby,

I belong to a tribe whose Rabbis and Rebbes seem never far from crime. Whether it’s due to their peddling drugs or laundering drug profits, trading in conflict diamonds, extortion or racketeering, I am tired of the need to get defensive and angry every time I run across someone outside the tribe who knows about this stuff.

Needled in New York


Dear Needled,

Have you considered simply leaving the tribe? In trying to do so, you would be participating in a Jewish tradition that began with Moses himself and is evidenced in the Torah and throughout Old Testament literature, where constant dissent was met by bloody recriminations that led to civil war and the eventual, pathetic collapse of a nation. Now, you merely have to put up with being designated as self-hating.

However, to gird yourself for genuine independence, I recommend that you make a complete study of your tribe’s perfidies and misdeeds so that you can withstand accusations of betrayal and not weaken in the end of your days, as so many of your tribe have done. Start by reading Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years by Israel Shahak to give you bearings on Jewish hypocrisy, bigotry and historic collusion with tyrannical powers. You might then ask: “Chosen” for what and at what price? Turn next to Kevin Macdonald’s Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements to acquaint yourself with just how sophisticated Jewish tribal duplicity has become, developing schemas advocating “universal values” for everyone but the Jewish tribe and promoting liberal principles within the body of their cultural and institutional opposition, while fueling and capitalizing on the consequent social fragmentation to their own benefit.

Round out your study with When Victims Rule, an online catalogue of Jewish criminality, perversion, subversion, greed and other bizarre cultural attributes, including over 10,000 citations from mostly Jewish references. You will notice that those New York Rabbis that fluster your equanimity will fit easily into a long history - both religious and secular - of comparable Jewish practices, and this might help you overcome any desire for affiliation with the tribe. It will require that you have a strong stomach to familiarize yourself with Jewish dominance of commercial pornography or the brutal “Russian” mafia, or the growing problem of pedophilia in Jewish society: see The Awareness Center for Jewish efforts to come to grips with this latter problem.

In When Victims Rule, you will also find abundance evidence for internal corruption within, and horrific conduct by, the state of Israel; along with clarifying Israel’s solid role in the facilitation of international crime, this material should fortify you against backsliding under the banner of Zionism, just in case this latest icon of Jewish identity at all tempts you. If Israel’s role as sanctuary for Jewish criminals on the run, as a hub for money laundering and trade in blood diamonds or its egregious record in human trafficking doesn’t disenchant you enough, focus on its historic role in the arms trade and its support of murderous dictatorships in such places as Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama, Argentina, Chile, or Columbia. Familiarizing yourself with these and many other equally charming qualities of the Jewish state should do the trick.

I should point out to you that as long as you think of yourself as a Jew, you are fated to contend with the longest running, most pronounced internal conflict in history –a conflict threaded through and woven into history as a whole to such a profound extent that only serious, deliberate and honest study can extricate you and deliver you to a position of independence. Take a look at Hemdat, an Israeli website that features stories of ultra-orthodox Rabbis and their yeshiva minions still hurling excrement at conservative synagogues. They tote Uzis and attack old Jewish women for using their electric wheelchairs on the Shabbat. This is one aspect of Jewish identity. Another aspect is billionaire Edgar Bronfman, peddling whiskey and Gangsta-rap and supporting Zionism; or Al Goldstein, porn merchant; or Lev Trotsky, internationalist revolutionary bankrolled by capitalists. It will be your task to survey the material I am recommending in search of a Jewish identity - beyond the contradictions and conflict - worth salvaging

Jewish “self-hatred” is an aspersion cast upon Jews by Jews, and it is indicative of the conflict that arose within and from a people fixed by the fact and the presumptuousness of having initiated a totalitarian worldview, i.e. under one governance - in the original case a god. This idée fixe has proved a burden of enormous weight to the people who have carried it forward and managed its mutation under a variety of guises, oftentimes against a general will. Indeed, Jews have a long history of oppressing themselves with this fixed vision of self-importance and also of seeking escape from themselves, in recent centuries directly and indirectly spinning radical and subversive elements continually out into the larger societies they inhabit, all the while maintaining a pathological sense of superiority and an indifference to the destructive affects in this pattern, except perhaps when it crashes down upon themselves. The real meaning of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ is not about Jewish/Christian conflict, but about internal Jewish conflict, an undiminished conflict that is a visible in Israel today as it was in the time of Jesus. The same radical progressives and frothing, fundamentalist fanatics embodied in the trial of Jesus are alive today in Israel and in the extended Jewish community, and they have drawn the world into their narrative and dilemma.

There is little that can be done to change this narrative now, as billions of people have bought into the megalomaniacal concept of the one God and see themselves as somewhat “chosen” by this view. For the Jews, a pattern is evident throughout history: As individuals or groups sought to escape the discipline of an arbitrary set of laws, the rule of a priestly class and the isolation they were obligated to impose upon themselves and endure, others have re-entrenched themselves in orthodoxy and fought to strengthen their hand, often conspiring with wealthy secular Jews to preserve an overall tribal solidarity and to reformulate and extend Jewish power and influence. Such a formula is strongly evident today, once again, as secular, atheistic Jews who have amassed great wealth through “profane” means support a broad array of programs to support both the Jewish state and to strengthen Jewish identity – the pendulum is now swinging back to orthodoxy.

So, Needled, I see no alternative for you except to drop the defensive anger routine and open yourself up to honest inquiry and self-criticism, lest you remain twisted and handicapped by the hypocrisies of your tribe. Keep the matzo balls but don’t trim your child’s penis; sing Hava Nagila and treat any neighbor as you would have them treat you. As an atheist, myself, I remind you of the admonitions of your fellow Jew, Yeshua: “I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one's foes will be members of one's own household.” You can either inherit this tradition, or you can overcome yourself. If you want to eliminate all tribal distinctions and group prejudices, then you have to abandon your own.

Sincerely,
Abby

Posted December 12, 2004

JTR editor's historical note: Talk about hidden monopolies. Not only was "Dear Abby" (Abigal Van Buren) Jewish, her real name was Pauline Esther Friedman Philips and she was Ann Landers' twin sister. Landers real name was Esther Pauline Friedman Lederer.

The sisters' father, Abraham, began a successful theater business as a co-owner of a burlesque house in a seedy part of Sioux City, Iowa. [POTTER / SPEZIALE, p. 15, 312] Ann (Esther] once admitted that she "learned the facts of life from the girls in the chorus line." [POTTKER / SPEZIALE, p. 65] Both women took separate routes to advice column stardom, although "neither twin has had formal training in social service work or journalism." [POTTKER / SPEZIALE, p. 4-5] A non-speaking, competitive feud between them lasted eight years.

Sister "Abigail Von Buren" eventually married Morton Phillips, Jewish heir to a Midwestern liquor fortune. In Eau Claire, the Phillips family also owned a factory, Presto Industry (which gained national fame as a maker of pressure cookers), which alienated some in the town. "Many of the town's blue-collar workers, resentful of their dependence on the Jewish-owned Presto Industry, openly made anti-Semitic remarks ... [P/S, p. 65] ... Despite the profits Presto reported in 1953, including an astounding 48 percent return on net worth the year before, Presto managers shocked union employees with a proposal for wage cuts." [P/S, p. 89]

"Dear Abby" sits on her husband's $70 million philanthropic foundation. A millionaire many, many times over, she has done advertising commercials for English muffins and a milk lobbying organization. Telling the world with assurance how to solve its problems, her own daughter spent five years in therapy with Jewish therapist Judd Marmor. [P/S, p. 178-179]

Sister "Ann Landers" was married to Jules Lederer, founder of the Budget-Rent-a-Car company. In her columns she was "ever mindful of maintaining the facade of a happy marriage ... presenting her readers with the image of a devoted wife and loving husband." [P/S, p. 216] In 1975, her husband of 36 years dumped her for a younger woman. "Gossip about the affair," note her biographers, "hand an extra zing to it. Jules was cheating on the woman who had set herself up as America's moral conscience ... [P/S, p. 222] ... Perhaps her public statements, years before her divorce, reflected her fears and insecurities over an empty marriage." [P/S, p. 216] A friend of the Lederer family, therapist Abe Franzblau, who knew Ann Landers well, noted that "All it took was a short time in the Lederer company to realize that [Ann] exhibited the classic, textbook traits of a cold, rejecting woman." [P/S, p. 217]

Landers also lives a life of extreme ostentation:

"The ornate showplace at 209 East Lake Shore Drive is still [Anne's] home. Wall panels and sconces imported from a British castle complemented the mullioned windows and intricately sculpted ceilings. Recasts of fifteenth-century statuary in the living room, including a covey of kneeling angels ..., provide a stunning counterpoint to Louis XV sofas and mother-of-pearl inlaid chairs. Works by Picasso, Renoir, and Dali cover the walls ... [Her husband] was offended by the extraordinary amount of money [she] was lavishing on their apartment." [P/S, p. 219]

In 1995, Landers got into hot water with some comments she made in New Yorker magazine about the Pope and Polish people. "He has a sweet sense of humor," she said, "Of course, he's a Polack. They're very anti-women." Polish-Americans responded with outrage to the slur, wondering how and why she had singled them out as being "anti-women." Landers issued a formal apology, but refused to comment further. [O'CROWLEY, P., 12-1-95, p. A1]

The woman who tells the little people of the world how to handle their lives, also had a chauffeur and housekeeper. [P/S, p. 229] The values she champions also reflect her behind-the-scenes "facelift" and "extensive body surgery." Her sister, Abby, has also had cosmetic surgery. [P/S., p. 255] Both women, but especially Ann Landers, survived scandals in the 1980s when it was discovered that the two millionaires were sometimes doing nothing for their pay -- merely recycling advice columns (not identified as reprints) from two decades earlier. [P/S, p. 277-283]

Concerning Jewish identity, notes Landers' daughter Margo, "[My mother] made the rule when I went to college that I could only date Jewish boys ... Mother was simply ethnocentric. She made a point to tell everyone she was Jewish and often mentioned it in her column." [HOWARD, p. 142-143]

(In 1987, there was much-publicized search to create a new "Ann Landers" when Esther Lederer left the Chicago Sun-Times to work at the Chicago Tribune. 12,000 people applied to become the new syndicated advice columnist. Jeffrey Zaslow, male, and also Jewish, was selected as one of two people to replace Landers. Zaslow's column was called "All That Zazz"; his wife is also in the media business, a "TV news anchor." [ZASLOW, J., 1990; MOMENT, 12-31-96]

Other prominent advice columnists including "Miss Manners" Judith Miller, sex-therapist Ruth Westheimer, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, Dr. Joyce Brothers, etc. are also Jewish. Among the most famous advice columnists in Great Britain are Marjorie Proops, Irma Kurtz, Anna Raeburn, and Claire Rayner. All too are Jewish.

[From When Victims Rule. A Critique of Jewish Pre-eminence in America, Mass Media chapter, part 3]



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