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Obama, Netanyahu & Esther

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GiladChavez

Gilad Atzmon Chavez gives Obama the manual on Jewish Identity Politics

The Biblical  Book of Esther that was given  to President Obama by Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday was  far from being a cryptic message.  The Book of Esther is  a genocidal recipe. It is there to educate Jews how to infiltrate into foreign administrations.  In my latest book The Wandering Who I explore the role of The Biblical text in shaping contemporary Jewish political Lobbying and its open attempt to dominate  American and British foreign policies.

In contemporary American politics we detect the following.  

  • Esther’s and Mordechai’s role is played by AIPAC and American Jewish Committee (AJC) – Both openly push for a war against Iran.
  • President Obama is the Persian king Ahasuerus. Like the Persian king, Obama is asked to kill the ‘enemies of the Jews’
  • Haman, the ‘murderous Antisemite’ is clearly Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Iranian people. In the Biblical tale, both Haman and his sons end up massacred.
  • And sadly enough repudiated queen Vashti, is played by the American people and  humanity. Our prayer  for peace and harmony  is clearly ignored.

The Book of Esther (The Wandering Who?, Chapter 19)

‘Haman said to King Achashvairosh, “There is a nation scattered and separated among the nations [the Jews] throughout your empire. Their laws are different than everyone else’s, they do not obey the king’s laws, and it does not pay for the king to tolerate their existence. If it pleases the king, let a law be written that they be destroyed, and I will pay to the executors ten thousand silver Kikar-coins for the king’s treasury.”’ (The Book Of Esther, Chapter 3)

The Book of Esther is a biblical story that forms the basis for the celebration of Purim, probably the most joyously celebrated Jewish festival. The book tells of an attempted Judeocide, but also of Jews who manage to change their fate. In the Book of Esther, the Jews rescue themselves, and even get to mete out revenge.

It is set in the third year of the reign of the Persian king Ahasuerus (commonly identified with Xerxes I). It is a story of a palace, a conspiracy, the aforementioned attempted Judeocide and a brave and beautiful Jewish queen – Esther – who manages to save her people at the very last minute.

Ahasuerus is married to Vashti, whom he repudiates after she rejects his command to show herself off to his assembled guests during a feast. Esther is selected from amongst many candidates to be Ahasuerus’s new bride. As the story progresses, Ahasuerus’s prime minister, Haman, plots to have all the Jews in the Persian empire killed in revenge for a refusal by Esther’s cousin Mordechai to bow to him in respect. Esther, now queen, plots with Mordechai to save the day for the Persian Jews. At the risk of endangering her own safety, Esther warns Ahasuerus of Haman’s murderous anti-Jewish plot. (As she had not disclosed her Jewish origins beforehand, the king had been unaware of them.) Haman and his sons are hanged on the fifty-cubit-high gallows he had originally built for Mordecai. As it happens, Mordecai takes Haman’s place as prime minister. Ahasuerus’s edict decreeing the murder of the Jews cannot be rescinded, so he issues another one allowing the Jews to take up arms and kill their enemies – which they do.

The moral of the story is clear. If Jews want to survive, they had better infiltrate the corridors of power. In light of The Book of Esther, Mordechai and Purim, AIPAC and the notion of ‘Jewish power’ appears to be an embodiment of a deep Biblical and cultural ideology.

However, here is the interesting twist. Though the story is presented as a record of actual events, the historical accuracy of the Book of Esther is in fact largely disputed by most modern Bible scholars. The lack of clear corroboration for any of the book’s details with what is known of Persian history from classical sources has led scholars to conclude that the story is mostly or even totally fictional. In other words, the moral notwithstanding, the attempted genocide is fictional. Seemingly, the Book of Esther encourages its (Jewish) followers into collective Pre-TSS, making a fantasy of ‘destruction’ into an ‘ideology of survival’.  Indeed, some read the story as an allegory of quintessentially assimilated Jews, who discover that they are targets of anti-Semitism, but who are also in a position to save themselves and their fellow Jews.

Reading the Haman quotes above, while keeping Bowman in mind, the Book of Esther shapes an exilic identity. It sews existential stress and is a prelude to the Holocaust religion, setting the conditions that turn the Holocaust into reality.  Interestingly a very similar, threatening narrative is explored in the beginning of Exodus. Again, in order to set an atmosphere of a ‘Shoah to come’ and a liberation to follow, an existential fear is established:

‘Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who knew not Joseph. And he said unto his people, “Behold, the people of the children of Israel are too many and too mighty for us; come, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there befalleth us any war, they also join themselves unto our enemies, and fight against us, and get them up out of the land.” Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh store-cities, Pithom and Raamses.’ Exodus 8-11

Both in Exodus and The Book of Esther, the author of the text manages to predict the kind of accusations that would be leveled against Jews for centuries to come, such as power-seeking, tribalism and treachery.  Shockingly, the text in Exodus evokes a prophesy of the Nazi Holocaust. It depicts a reality of ethnic cleansing, economic oppressive measures that eventually lead to slave labour camps (Pithom and Raamses). Yet, in both Exodus and the Book of Esther it is the Jews who eventually kill.

Interestingly, the Book of Esther (in the Hebrew version of the Bible; six chapters were added to the Greek translation) is one of only two books of the Bible that do not directly mention God (the other is Song of Songs). As in the Holocaust religion, in the Book of Esther it is the Jews who believe in themselves, in their own power, in their uniqueness, sophistication, ability to conspire, ability to take over kingdoms, ability to save themselves. The Book of Esther is all about empowerment. It conveys the essence and metaphysics of Jewish power.

From Purim to Washington

In an article titled ‘A Purim Lesson: Lobbying Against Genocide, Then and Now’, Dr Rafael Medoff expounds on what he regards as the lesson bequeathed to the Jews by Esther and Mordechai: the art of lobbying. ‘The holiday of Purim,’ Medoff says, ‘celebrates the successful effort by prominent Jews in the capitol [sic] of ancient Persia to prevent genocide against the Jewish people.’[1] This specific exercise of what some call ‘Jewish power’ (though Medoff does not use this phrase) has been carried forward, and is performed by modern emancipated Jews: ‘What is not well known is that a comparable lobbying effort took place in modern times – in Washington, D.C., at the peak of the Holocaust.’[2]

Medoff explores the similarities between Esther’s lobbying in Persia and her modern counterparts lobbying inside FDR’s administration at the height of the Second World War: ‘The Esther in 1940s Washington was Henry Morgenthau Jr., a wealthy, assimilated Jew of German descent who (as his son later put it) was anxious to be regarded as ‘one hundred percent American.’ Downplaying his Jewish-ness, Morgenthau gradually rose from being FDR’s friend and adviser to his Treasury Secretary.’[3]

Clearly, Medoff also spotted a modern Mordechai: ‘a young Zionist emissary from Jerusalem, Peter Bergson (real name: Hillel Kook) who led a series of protest campaigns to bring about U.S. rescue of Jews from Hitler. The Bergson group’s newspaper ads and public rallies roused public awareness of the Holocaust – particularly when it organized over 400 rabbis to march to the front gate of the White House just before Yom Kippur in 1943.’[4]

Medoff’s reading of the Book of Esther provides a glaring insight into the internal codes of Jewish collective survival dynamics, in which the assimilated (Esther) and the observant (Mordechai) join forces with Jewish interests on their minds. According to Medoff, the parallels to modern times are striking: ‘Mordechai’s pressure finally convinced Esther to go to the king; the pressure of Morgenthau’s aides finally convinced him to go to the president, armed with a stinging 18-page report that they titled “Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of This Government in the Murder of the Jews.”  Esther’s lobbying succeeded. [Ahasuerus] cancelled the genocide decree and executed Haman and his henchmen. Morgenthau’s lobbying also succeeded. A Bergson-initiated Congressional resolution calling for U.S. rescue action quickly passed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee – enabling Morgenthau to tell FDR that “you have either got to move very fast, or the Congress of the United States will do it for you.” Ten months before election day, the last thing FDR wanted was an embarrassing public scandal over the refugee issue. Within days, Roosevelt did what the Congressional resolution sought – he issued an executive order creating the War Refugee Board, a U.S. government agency to rescue refugees from Hitler.’[5]

Doubtless Medoff sees the Book of Esther as a general guideline for a healthy Jewish conduct: ‘The claim that nothing could be done to help Europe’s Jews had been demolished by Jews who shook off their fears and spoke up for their people – in ancient Persia and in modern Washington.’ In other words, Jews can and should do for themselves. This is indeed the moral of the Book of Esther as well as of the Holocaust religion.

What Jews should do for themselves is indeed an open question. Different Jews have different ideas. The neoconservatives believe in dragging the US and the West into an endless war against Islam. Some Jews believe that Jews should actually position themselves at the forefront of the struggle against oppression and injustice. Indeed, Jewish empowerment is just one answer among many. Yet it is a very powerful one, and dangerous when the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and AIPAC act as modern-day Mordechais and publicly engage in an extensive lobbying efforts for war against Iran.

Both AIPAC and the AJC are inherently in line with the Hebrew Biblical school of thought. They follow their Biblical mentor, Mordechai.  However, while the Mordechais are relatively easy to spot, the Esthers – those who act for Israel behind the scenes – are slightly more difficult to track.

Once we learn to consider Israeli lobbying within the parameters drawn by the Book of Esther and the Holocaust religion, we are then entitled to regard Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the current Haman/Hitler figure. In addition to the AJC and AIPAC, President Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Lord Levy are also Mordechais, Obama is obviously Ahasuerus, yet Esther can be almost anyone, from the last Neocon to Dick Cheney and beyond.

EstherWanderingWho

Gilad Atzmon’s Book: The Wandering Who? A Study Of Jewish  Identity Politics 
Amazon.com  or Amazon.co.uk.

[1] Medoff, Rafael, ‘A Purim Lesson: Lobbying Against Genocide, Then and Now’; see http://www.wymaninstitute.org/articles/2004-03-purim.php

[2] Ibid

[3] Ibid

[4] Ibid

[5] Ibid

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38 replies to this post

  3. The saving of the Jewish people in the Persian Empire in the wake of a planned pogrom.

    I know you’re fond of saying that it’s about Jewish plans for genocide, but it just isn’t the whole story, now is it?

        • Gilad, In my not so humble opinion, you’re analysis of Esther is all wrong.
          Esther is not the proto-lobbyist, she is the proto-zionist.
          Two facts about Esther are key:
          #1. Jews claim their life’s mission is to return to Zion — right hand and all that.
          Cyrus gave Jews leave to return to Jerusalem/zion.
          What was Esther doing in Babylon? She HAD a land of her own to return to; she even had Persian taxpayer’s financial support and Persian government political support to return to Jerusalem. She CHOSE to remain in Persia.
          In Persia, she demanded the rights of a sovereign.
          This is THE Jewish problem. (more on this, see Benzion Netanyahu, “Origins of the Inquisition,” chapter one, ‘The Jewish Question.’)

          #2. You concede that “the story is fiction.” In a footnote in “Origins of the Inquisition,” Benzion Netanyahu concedes that “details are sketchy;” ‘there may have been a dust-up between Jews and Persians’ by about the third monarch after Cyrus, but the events as told in Esther probably did not happen.

          In other words, Persians did NOT threaten Jews with genocide.

          Neither then, nor now. Nor ever.

          Furthermore, the fact that there are two versions of the Esther story — one in Hebrew, the other in Septuagint — suggests that Hellenizing Jews felt a need to soft-pedal the story to please Greaco-Romans with whom they sought to ally themselves. In the Septuagint, Ahasueras makes a declaration of his trust in Haman, and of the requirement that the monarch of Persia ensure that ALL the people in his realm are treated justly; if one group is making demands or refusing to comply with the rules that regulate this equitable commonwealth, then that group must be removed. No special privileges for anybody.
          Ahasueras’s letter sounds reasonable to me.

          Benzion Netanyahu locates the first instance of antisemitism in the world of Egypt/Greece immediately after the restoration to Jerusalem. Let me emphasize: that means that according to Benzion, antisemitism arose in Graeco-Egypt at a time when Jews were sovereigns in their land in Jerusalem. They were NOT ‘landless.’
          Benzion explains that Jews, as a minority in Egypt, demanded rights in Egypt “equal to the highest class of Egyptians.” Refusal to grant these rights, or resentment on the parts of, ie. other minorities who had neither elevated rights NOR the access to trade and other advantages that Jews had claimed in Egypt, was labeled by Benzion as “antisemitism;” “the first instance of Jew-hatred.”

          That is, just like Esther, Benzion argues that a. Jews wanted to be sovereigns over their own land, Jerusalem, AS WELL AS b. enjoy sovereign privileges in the lands of others. And c. denial of those demands amounted to “Jew hatred.” “Persecution.” d. To be “persecuted” gave Jews the right to kill their persecutors.
          At the opening of his Chapter 1, Benzion states that his purpose is to identify the “elements and patterns of antisemitism” that “affected all of history.” And so he did.

          In “The Transfer Agreement,” with economy of words Edwin Black described the same “elements and pattern:” “zionists triumphed at Versailles: the acquired a homeland for the Jews in Palestine AND guarantee of equal rights for the Jewish minority in European nations.” Jews had been acting as sovereigns in Palestine since at least 1908 — Etan Bloom described the work of Arthur Ruppin in “producing Hebrew culture” and deliberately displacing Arabs, in his dissertation, “Arthur Ruppin and the Production of Hebrew Culture in Palestine.”

          And by the time the Versailles treaty — the negotiation that granted zionist “triumph” was signed, July 1919, Jews had already been a dominant force in the government of Weimar Germany for a year — see http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/microsoft%20word%20-%207794.pdf

          Today, zionists and Jews demand complete sovereignty over Israel; control of US Congressional activities concerning both foreign AND domestic affairs — only Jews have an office in the State Department specially tasked with monitoring ‘antisemitism.’ And Jews demand the right to dictate who and how Iran should be governed.

          In his speech at AIPAC on March 4, 2012, Benjamin Netanyahu (“Junior”) opened his comments with the declaration, “Jerusalem is the home of the Jewish people!” He closed his talk by referring to Esther. Television host Chris Hayes said that Netanyahu is said to have expressed to Obama that “Persians have been trying to annihilate us from the beginning.”

          Persians were NOT ‘trying to annihilate Jews’ in the time of King Ahasueras, but Jews ritually kill Persians, and celebrate the reenactment annually, to this day.

          If Benzion’s pattern pertains, then Jews provoked Germans, Germans retaliated/defended, and Germans died: it is more certain that millions of Germans died as a (combined) result of famine imposed by Allies in World War I AND maintained against Germans during Versailles negotiations, conducted by a majority of zionists such as Bernard Baruch and Max Warburg; and zionist-prejudiced actors, such as Lloyd George, who had been Theodor Herzl’s lawyer and who negotiated with Balfour for Chaim Weizmann; by subsequent famines during Weimar years; from firebombings in the second war (Jewish architect Erich Mendelsohn designed the mock-up ‘German village’ in the desert in Utah where the best method of causing a firestorm was devised); from rapes of German women; from starvation of German disarmed combatants and civilians for over two years AFTER the end of the second war.

          “They tried to kill us; we survived; let’s eat.”

          That is the pattern.

          The first part is a lie — Persians did NOT try to kill Jews.
          The second part is an understatement — the myth that is celebrated is the death of Persians — or of Egyptians, in the case of Passover.
          The third part is the ugliest of all.

          When Jews were suffering famine, Egyptians took them in, fed them, gave them land, supported them as they prospered. In return, Jews killed Egyptians, and celebrate the murders to this day, by eating at a table that is closed to ‘outsiders’.

          When Jews were captive in Babylon, Persians freed them; supported them both in the most cosmopolitan city in the world where Jews grew wealthy, and also supported Jews to return to Jerusalem. In return, Jews killed Persians, and celebrate the murders to this day, by eating at a table that is closed to outsiders.

          Jews lived and prospered in Germany for centuries. Germans aided Jews to colonize Palestine. In “The Transfer Agreement,” Black makes two key observations: First, Black explained that by the beginning of 1933, the zionist project in Palestine was close to failure. Without German Jewish wealth, the project would be bankrupt, and German Jews were unwilling to move to Palestine. Second, Black reported, “Within a fortnight of the appointment of Hitler (i.e. about mid-February 1933), Louis Brandeis said to Rabbi Stephen Wise, “Jews must leave Germany; I would have no Jew remain in Germany.”
          By early March Jews from around the world met to discuss ways to funnel money to Palestine and to get Jews out of Germany; on March 24, 1933, “Judea Declared War on Germany,” and the Jewish press began a propaganda blitz — “atrocity propaganda” — claiming that the German government was committing atrocities against Jews. The “atrocity propaganda” was as true as the story of Esther. But German Jews and their money flowed into Palestine, making Palestine the most prosperous place in the world in the midst of the Depression, and creating the backbone of what quickly became the prosperous Jewish state. Where the pattern plays out one more time: “They tried to kill us. We survived. Let’s eat.”

          Fill in the rest of the blanks. The pattern is clear.

          • Very persuasive, but I don’t see why Esther can’t be a rich multi-layered symbol of: at once the proto-lobbyist, the proto-zionist and the proto-hasbarist.
            The hasbara leit motive is seen in the equations:
            equal rights = special privileges
            persecution = lack of special privileges
            defense against the aggressor = elimination of those to be displaced

          • Good points, Ariadna. I chose to Boldly Disagree!! with Dr. Atzmon because conflict gets more attention than agreement.

      • WRONG QUESTION, Paul — and Gilad: The Jews did NOT face a pogrom, they — Esther– fantasized a pogrom in order to ratiocinate Esther’s rejection of Ezra’s decree that Hebrews NOT marry outside the tribe.

        Benzion Netanyahu writes in “Origins of the Inquisition” that Jews were NOT under “existential threat” in Persia in that period. He concedes there was some tension, involving the shrine of Anahita, an important Persian goddess. Netanyahu does not elaborate: Did Jews destroy a shrine to Anahita? This is a Jewish MO from Abraham’s first ‘public works project’ — smashing icons. THAT is the essence of monotheism: we reserve the right to smash any god — or cultural system — other than our own. We also reserve the right to enforce upon all others the obligation to submit to our interpretation of ‘god,’ and will enforce this interpretation by smashing any attempted deviation from it: Jesus is the most notable target; Walther Grundmann is a more recent target — he sought to separate Jesus that could comport with German values from “Jewish Jesus.”

        • How strange Simorgh, I’ve learned something today.

          I always felt that smashing idols was the finest thing I could do but now I think: hang on, who do I think I am toppling everyone else’s gods? How very Jewish- supremacist of me!

          But on the other hand, just suppose there is only one God….

  4. Fascinating article Gilad. I was brought up a Christian but I was never very religious. I didn’t have much interest in my own religion (although I do enjoy the celebration of Christmas), much less someone else’s. But your articles are changing that. Anyone that doesn’t see the connection between the ancient Jews destroying their Persian enemies (supposedly) and their call for destroying their modern day Persian enemies has a mental block.

    In addition to Germany and Iran I think you can add Russia. Kept hidden for a long time was Lenin’s Jewish background, but its well known that Jews dominated the ranks of the communists and I only recently learned it was Jews that murdered the Czar and his family.

    Lenin’s speech on the Czar and Jews:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZzOgFY45s8

    I haven’t read your book yet, but you are obviously asking a good question. Why do the Jews continuously get into trouble wherever they live and are they the ones that cause their own misfortune (as well as everyone else’s).

    Maybe in a strange way some Jews enjoy the tragedies that have happened and are looking forward to more tragedies in the future? If there is one thing we have been continuously told throughout our lives, its that Jews will never lose (no matter what the odds) and they will always destroy their enemies.

  6. “but its well known that Jews dominated the ranks of the communists”

    Hmmm … “well known” among Nazis and Russian nationalists maybe.

    Fact is, you will find Jews in leadership roles in social democratic, liberal and conservative parties too. The difference is that many marxists with a Jewish background (e.g. Rosa Luxemburg, Abram Leon and Karl Marx himself) specifically rejected identity politics including their “jewishness”. They were the original self-hating Jews, long before Gilad Atzmon.

    “Lenin’s Jewish background”

    Had to laugh at that one. His maternal grandfather *might* have been Jewish or part-Jewish. That probably makes Lenin less Jewish than Hitler.

    I think we can lay the notion that the international working class movement was/is a Jewish conspiracy to rest.

    Of course, today’s “Marxist” parties especially the Trots have divorced themselves from class politics and embraced PC identity politics, including anti-zionist zionism.

    • My expression “well known” may not be appropriate, because although the facts are clear they have been covered up pretty well through censorship, accusations of “antisemitism” and other tactics.

      In this article originally from “The Jewish Chronicle” in 1995, the fact that Lenin’s grandfather was Jewish is discussed. There is no “might” regarding this issue. If you read the end of the article, Lenin also appears to be very proud of his Jewish background.

      http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/98/11/JConLenin210495.html

      This article from “Israel National News” also discusses that Lenin was of Jewish background from his grandfather.

      http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/144454

      There is no evidence showing that Hitler was Jewish. If you have any, the world would be interested in seeing it.

      The Nobel Prize recipient Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (whose wife was Jewish) wrote the book “200 Years Together” in 2002 about the relationship of Jews and non-Jews in Russian history. In the section on communism, the book discusses the large number of Jews in leadership positions, the large number of Jews in the security services and that these Jews were brutal in their treatment of their victims. But it should not be surprising that no publisher has published the book in English yet. Some individuals have started to translate it for English Speakers.

      I’m much more concerned about American nationalists, Jewish (zionist’s) and Israeli nationalists than I am about Russian nationalists. The Russians aren’t blowing up countries all over the middle east and they aren’t killing millions of people. Americans and Israelis are.

    • I’ve never really thought “that the international working class movement was/is a Jewish conspiracy” though I do think it had a lot of Jewish input.

      However, when it comes to the Bolshevik revolution (or coup) then the phrase ‘Jewish conspiracy’ may be more appropriate

  8. @pgg804

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/7961211/Hitler-had-Jewish-and-African-roots-DNA-tests-show.html

    I don’t see why Lenin having a Jewish grandfather is such a big deal (and I am not sure that the evidence is conclusive anyhow). He was brought up in a Russian Orthodox family.

    What matters is his politics. Didn’t he attack the Jewish Bund because nationalism and marxism are incompatible?

    @gilad and @Paul Jews were prominent in a number of radical secular left-wing movements. Not just marxism but also anarchism which was strong in the Jewish East End around 1900. Does that make anarchism a Jewish conspiracy too?

    I will read the book recommended.

    I agree with Paul that the Bolshevik “revolution” was essentially a coup that ended with the dismantling of free soviets. But I don’t think you can characterize Bolshevism as a specifically Jewish (or for that matter specifically Russian) ideology.

  9. Paul, according to the 1922 party census Jews constituted 5.21% of the Bolshevik party and about 7% of the pre-1917 membership.

    What is the basis for your argument that Bolshevism was a Jewish conspiracy?

  10. Here’s the problem with this kind of “thinking”: It ignores the extent to which Jews were involved in all levels of anti-tsarists political parties. Here’s a list of active political parties before November 1917:

    *Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs)
    *Bolsheviks
    *Constitutional Democrats (Kadets)
    *Mensheviks
    Left SRs
    Jewish Labor Bund
    United Jewish Socialist Workers Party

    There were more, but let’s stick with these, and throw in that there were several Zionist parties also, including the aforementioned UJSWP. (Asterisks denote the four largest parties that made up

    Notably, nearly all of the non-Jewish parties above had more Jewish membership than the Bolsheviks. The SRs had very high Jewish membership, including the Prime Minister Aleskandr Kerensky. Of course, the Bund and Zionist parties were entirely Jewish; the Bund was anti-Zionist and socialist. The Mensheviks were also led by a Jew, Martov.

    If you address the question not by how many Jews were in the Bolshevik leadership but rather in what percentages did Jews join the memberships and upper echelons of all political parties, then the Bolsheviks come out rather near the bottom.

    Incidentally, there was a vote among the Bolshevik inner circle, among whom there were three Jews (Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev) on whether to seize power in November 1917. Only Trotsky voted for seizing power; Kamenev and Zinoviev famous voted against a coup.

    So was Bolshevism “Jewish”? Hardly. But does it matter? Only because some people here are willing to accept for communist mass murder far less evidence than they will accept for the Holocaust.

  12. Oh, and in case the main point missed you, here goes:

    There were some six million Jews in the USSR on the eve of WWII. If half of them were still religious, then they didn’t vote at all. The other half overwhelmingly voted for the Bund or for Zionist parties and were members of both. The remainder were split among the other parties, and between the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, and SRs, the Bolsheviks had the smallest Jewish membership.

    • Hi Professor,
      just a quick question, and I’d appreciate it if you don’t get all high and mighty on me, as I’m only qualified in bricklaying.
      You said;
      “There were some six million Jews in the USSR on the eve of WWII.”
      well, when I checked that out, the figures said there were 3.3 million jews in Poland. Then I checked to see if Poland was part of the USSR, and the info said it wasn’t (eastern block?!?)
      So what’s going on? Someones got their numbers jumbled. Like I say, you’re the Prof, so who’s right?

  13. I’m not sure what I’m asking but I’ll try to answer.

    There were three million Jews in Poland on the eve of WWII. There were six million in the USSR. Poland was independent between 1919 and 1939.

    The Nazis conducted a census of Jews under their control and presented these data at Wannsee in January 1942.

    See:

    http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/Holocaust/wansee-transcript.html

    Note that nearly a million Soviet Jews had already been killed by January 1942.

    • “I’m not sure what I’m asking but I’ll try to answer.”
      Thanks for for your reply, but I must say your opener is not filling me with confidence :)
      The site I looked at is this one, so you can see why the confusion arose;
      http://www.nationmaster.com/red/pie/mil_wwi_jew_pop_bef_war-wwii-jewish-population-before-war
      It says there was 975,000 jews in Russia pre WW2.
      Have you got any more evidence of the jewish population figures, other than a nazi document, which is so highly politically charged that it could be a little suspect, so to speak.
      With all due respect, you are aware that in war a lot of deceit and trickery goes on?
      Just to save time, could you please tell us why we (common people) were left to believe in all the macabre (jew soap etc) horror stories for so long. Would you please answer in your own words and not with links, because if people lie about jew soap etc, to children, how can they really ever be trusted?

      • (1) The numbers you’re writing are ones I’ve not seen before. The only thing I can guess — and I’m guessing — is that those numbers don’t include Ukraine, Belarus, and other western republics of the USSR, where the Jewish population was far more dense. Wikipedia, e.g., puts the number at 4.885 million. Close enough for gov’t work:

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Russia#Soviet_Union_before_World_War_II

        (2) What makes you think people lied about Jewish soap? What makes you think they didn’t actually believe it?

        • (1) “The numbers you’re writing …”
          I’m not taking responsibility for those numbers, I just copied them down from the link I evidenced them from, they seemed to contradict your 6 million comment. Do you reckon the “nationmaster” link is dodgy?
          (2) When you read the accounts of human soap, well come on, seriously. They are written in the style of a Brother’s Grim, with a Vincent Price voice over, check this;
          “In another section of the Belzec camp was an enormous soap factory. The Germans picked out the fattest people, murdered them, and boiled them down for soap.”
          and…
          “According to Werth it had been run by “a German professor called Spanner” and “was a nightmarish sight, with its vats full of human heads and torsoes pickled in some liquid, and its pails full of a flakey substance – human soap”(sic). Ref;
          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_made_from_human_corpses
          Alot of hear say, to freak out the peasants, first in the east, then in the west. Can you imagine getting rid of all the evidence near the end of the war?
          Elie Weisel recounting how “…bubbles from the “enormous soap factory” could be seen from miles around. As each bubble burst, a “jewish” voice could be heard calling out…”
          Hey, I do agree people believed it, so did I, very much so. What tools were available to me to question it?
          What I’m saying is, the soap story is exactly that, a story. It frothed everyone up for years and after the iron shower curtain was pulled back, somehow disolved down the plug hole with all the hair and dead skin. The Allied forces must have known it was propaganda, so why did it live on so long? With respect, will you answer all of my questions, there are 4 in total.

      • the holocaust started to look suspicious after I viewed a DVD/documentary, <a href = "http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379158/&quot; Imaginary Witness: Hollywood & the Holocaust. The film narrates that Eisenhower asked 5 Jewish studio heads to film conditions at the camps, post liberation but “before Red Cross got there.” “The sight made me sick to my stomach,” one of the guys said. There was footage of all these corpses — apparently not long dead — they were not decomposed, and of other emaciated prisoners.
        My question: how are we to know that a naked corpse is Jewish?
        After watching the DVD, I wondered if the 6 million story was advanced as a cover up for Allied war crimes. Combined with the 800,000 Germans starved in WWI, the 600,000 German civilians firebombed in WWII, the 1-3 million German POWs and civilians starved or killed AFTER armistice in 1945, Allies had a lot of innocent German blood on their hands.
        _________
        Another major question: 150 German cities were firebombed. Est. 600,000 German civilians were killed; millions were left homeless. Hitler gave orders to have shelter arranged for the homeless, WHEREVER — possibly in concentration camps? Could some of those bodies filmed by Hollywood have been German civilians sent there to keep them safe & sheltered? (Most deaths were from typhus — firebombing had destroyed transport & medical supplies manufactures — and starvation.)

        re the Firebombing — Erich Mendelsohn, ‘the Jewish architect,’ helped the US Air Force devise the most efficient means of causing a firestorm to kill the max. number of working class Germans. Mendelsohn went on to design Weizmann Institute for his friend Chaim, and is also responsible for the “International style” that dominates Israeli architecture. Recall from http://www.deliberation.info/shawa-family-plight-of-palestinian-families-in-exile/ Ms. Shawa’s about the arrogance of Israeli architecture that dominates the landscape.

        Again, the firebombing — How many Jews died as a result of firebombing by Allies? Did Nazis move Jews out of cities to protect them from firebombing? Why doesn’t Weisenthal center or USHMM have a count of the number of Jews killed in firebombings?

  15. This is a great site. Where else would you find such a wide-ranging debate?

    The left would censor comments according to their guess as to the ethnicity of the commenter.

    But the truth of a statement cannot be derived from the race, gender, or motivation, of the speaker.

    Here, people who agree with David Irving can debate with ‘trad left’ types, and with ‘aemathisphd’, who is ‘scholar enough on the Holocaust to teach the topic’ – in an American university liberal arts department, no less.

    I don’t think the Bolshevik revolution was Jewish. Of the top three guys, the only Jew got axed. However, the secret police may have had more than its share, according to serious research, not just the comments of boneheads. During and after world war two, many Jews, unsurprisingly, often regarded the Red Army as their liberators. But equally, many gentiles regarded the SS as their liberators: they tried to save lives. That’s why some Latvians want to commemorate the SS, not because Latvians (and Hungarians, and Romanians, and Palestinians…) are inherently evil. I was always dismissive of the USSR’s dismissal of the 1956 uprising in Hungary as ‘fascist’, but there was anti-semitism mixed in with hatred of the secret police. It wasn’t completely irrational, like we are always led to believe.

    Ethnically-motivated Germans acted against humanity, the working class, etc.. The same is true of ethnically-motivated Jews. The point is, we know all about the first story. We never hear about the second.

  16. I think it’s a little more complicated than that.

    Enmity between Jews and Gentiles in Eastern Europe goes back a long way. I think you can probably identify the initial spark to the Khmelnytsky Uprising of Ukrainian peasants against Polish rule in 1648. A Jewish population that had been living in Poland and Ukraine for perhaps 150 years was badly persecuted for the suspicion by both sides of aiding the other. (Neither charge has even been borne out.) Large numbers of Jews fled east into Russia and the Baltic States and west into Germany. The remainder who remained religious became ultra-Orthodox and highly insular.

    I know our Mr. Eisen and other among you are fond of asking what these Jews might have done to earn this enmity by Poles and Ukrainians. But, as stated, the charge of double-dealing has never been proved. If anything, what happened in 1648 was anti-Semitism in its classic form — religiously based and politically expressed. All during this time, enmity between the peasantry in the Russian Empire and the Jews was stoked by the tsarist regime as a buffer against popular anger being expressed toward itself.

    But I digress: Successive tsarist regimes continued to oppress the Jews in the area under their control, even as Central and Western Europe liberated their Jewish populations. This process ultimately led many Jews to embrace leftist secularist ideologies as expressions of anti-tsarism. This includes both Zionism and Bolshevism, as well as Bundism.

    The person to first really capitalize on this enmity, which still existed following 1917, was Stalin, who used Jewish apparatchiks to subdue Ukraine in the 1920s and 1930s, knowing they’d be more than happy to crush the peasants they hated. Hitler relied heavily on this hatred as well, and when the tide turned in the peasants’ favor, they struck out against the mostly innocent Jews in their midst, who weren’t Kaganoviches by any stretch of the imagination.

    So it’s not surprising that Jews and, e.g., Latvians viewed the Red Army and Wehrmacht, respectively, as their liberators.

    Nor should it be surprising that they were both wrong.

  17. This is a fascinating discussion.

    I agree with aemathisphd. The characterization of the bolshevik revolution as “Jewish” began with White Russian propaganda designed to turn the peasantry against the new regime during the Civil War.

    This propaganda was enthusiastically taken up by other anti-communist movements in central and eastern Europe, notably the Nazi party.

    Anti-semitism only really gained traction in Germany after the economic depression when the Nazis and other right-wing movements succeeded in drawing a link between communism and Jewry to gain support among hard-hit “aryan” farmers and the rural middle classes, who provided the bedrock of their support. This brand of anti-semitism was not the medieval kind, it drew directly on the White Russian, Polish and Ukrainian anti-communist stereotypes. And it was used to smash the world’s most powerful working class movement (which was coveniently divided between rival political blocs, the KPD and the SPD, both of which were characterized by the Nazis as “Jewish”).

    Five percent of Russia’s population was Jewish and bolshevik membership in 1922 was roughly equivalent. In 1917 it was slightly more. Paul Eisen makes the point that Jews were disproportionately represented in the leadership. True, but they were still a small minority – less than a quarter of the Commissars. And the top Jew got expelled and then murdered.

    Bolshevism was overwhelmingly an urban movement so it is perhaps to be expected that city-dwelling Jewish intellectuals would be over-represented in the leadership.

    I understand that the main motivation of Gilad Atzmon, Paul Eisen and co. is to expose the evils of Jewish “chosenness” and identity politics but I was rather hoping that this would be extended to all forms of nationalism and identity politics. That should, I hope, include an unequivocal condemnation of the worst form of “identity politics” that Europe has ever seen, Nazism.

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