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Israel, Zionism, and the (((Jews)))

I didn’t want to write about this. I don’t want to write about this. But circumstances give me little choice. The ancient poison has been spreading, and the last major pogrom (this one industrialized) ended 73 years ago. The pogrom cycle is coming around again.

Most people, thankfully, are no longer susceptible to the poison. But others still are, and they are being openly encouraged. I can’t be sure how much this article will help, but neither can I watch in silence. I won’t.

First Points

Let me start by being very clear on a handful of basics:

Israel is a state, a violence-based hierarchy like every other state. It has done and will continue to do immoral things. That’s what all states do. To focus solely on Israel is to distort reality for a separate purpose.
Zionism had a reason… has a reason. To portray it as some kind of signature evil – to use the term as an all-purpose condemnation – is not based on reason or justice; it’s based on uglier things. And let me doubly clear: I am not a Zionist myself, but neither am I blind to the reasons for Zionism.
Jews come in all flavors: A few are saints, a few are sinners, and most are in between. Just like every other group you can point to.
Stories of Jewish conspiracies are vile fantasies. Do Jews sometimes do favors for other Jews? Sure, just like the Irish sometimes do favors for other Irishmen, Italians for other Italians, and so on. But no more than that. I’ve been in positions to know, and there was simply nothing there. But reality doesn’t matter in this area; those who crave such stories will grab them regardless.
Being anti-Jew is an obsessive disorder. Such people have a compulsion to accuse Jews. That’s why they cling to terms like Zionist, Zio, the Chosen, the Tribe, and now (((the triple parentheses))). They have a psychological need to say “Jews” – whether directly or through code words. Some of them troll the internet looking for opportunities.

Now I’ll get to some details.

Israel

Individual Israelis are no more responsible for the actions of the Israeli government than individual Americans are culpable for Abu Ghraib. Governments force people to pay for their crimes, and the government of Israel is no exception. And to pretend that Jews in general are somehow responsible for the actions of the Israeli government runs toward madness.

The actions of the Israeli government are front-page news everywhere and at all times. That is fully out of touch with reality. In truth, it’s the result of a propaganda war that the Israelis are losing badly.

Again, this is obsessive. Israel is less than 1% the size of Arab-held lands, and yet they are portrayed as the biggest, nastiest bully ever seen in the Middle East. And whatever the evils of the Israelis, I think they pale compared to large-scale honor killings, genital mutilations, and death sentences upon people who change religions. And yet, those stories are seen approximately never on CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, FOX, MSNBC, etc.

Consider also that the Israelis have made multiple and substantive peace overtures to the Palestinians, while the Hamas Charter openly calls for Israel’s destruction.

Israel is a barely visible spec on a world map and is projecting military power almost nowhere beyond its own tiny borders. And contrary to what you may have heard, Israel’s military budget is less than one-third of Saudi Arabia’s. Likewise, while Israel does get considerable US military financing, Egypt gets more.

These days, however, facts seldom get in the way of a flamboyant story.

And please remember that 1.6 million Arabs are legal citizens and legal voters in Israel. I encourage you to discover how many Jews are legal citizens and/or legal voters in Jordan, Arabia, and so on.

Zionism

The Jews were ejected from Judea, their long-time homeland, in stages, but mainly in 70 AD and 132 AD. Ever since, they’ve been repetitively beaten, robbed, killed, expelled in mass, shut up in ghettos, and denied recourse for their grievances. This has continued for almost 2,000 years. Can any sane person not understand their desire for a safe place?

That is what Zionism is about.

Jews tried all kinds of strategies to cope with their endless abuse. None of them worked long term. That’s how Israel became the solution.

And by the way, Zionists purchased their land from the Arabs, until they were attacked for it.

Jews

What confuses people about the Jews is that they are a religion and a people, even a nation, with or without the state of Israel. But that’s not unique. The Basques, for example, have been both a people and a nation for a long, long time, whether or not they had a state.

In any event, the Hebrews and the Jews (the same folks, though I draw a line between the two designations in the 6^th century BC) have been hated throughout history. They were hated at 2500 BC, they were hated at 500 BC and 500 AD and 1500 AD, and they’re sometimes hated now.

They’ve been hated for lots of reasons of course, but a major component of it was that they made other people, and especially sacrifice collectors, look bad. And making such people look bad is a dangerous line of work.

So, how did they anger the sacrifice collectors? Well, that’s something the Jews have inadvertently specialized in. Here are the primary ways:

They developed belief in a god that dealt with individuals rather than collectives. (City-states being the primary collectives at the time.) That was contrary to the rationale of sacrifice for Sumerians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans.
Making matters worse, the Jews described a god who listened to and spoke to the humble and who turned his back to the mighty. Again, that disrupted the ruling rationale of the empires.
Making things still worse, the Jews placed justice above the ruler, another intolerable demotion of the big man, who demanded to be justice personified.
Because of these three offenses, the Hebrews and Jews were generally pushed out of polite company and forced to live on the peripheries. And from that they learned to think and operate as outsiders: separate from enforced hierarchies and collectives. That, to the sacrifice collectors, turned the Jews into a potentially deadly virus.
On top of that, Jews always majored on morality, which meant that they’d consistently show the world a humane outside, something that shouldn’t exist according to the legends of the nations.

Last Words

Rather than going on, I’ll close with a single line from Eric Hoffer’s The Passionate State of Mind. You can provide your own commentary:

There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement.

* * * * *

As it turns out, history was never too hard to understand; they just told you the wrong story.

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* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

A Lesson from Devon Avenue

While little appreciated and little studied, there is a gigantic difference between forced associations and free associations. But if you pay attention to the issue, you’ll find that the very act of forcing people together carries a poison in itself. And that poison inevitably bears bad fruit, whether in ethnic hatred, the formation of street gangs, or simply the evils of bullying. Whenever it is that forced associations are examined scientifically, they will be condemned as anti-human.

Free associations, on the other hand, have a magic to them. Leave people alone to do as they wish, in unforced conditions, and even ancient hatreds drain away. This has happened – quietly – in a hundred places and in a hundred times. Wherever free commerce (aka, free human interaction) isn’t forcibly opposed, strangers learn how to get along.

In ancient times, it happened in Rome and Alexandria and Athens and Corinth. In the Middle Ages, it happened in Paris and Hamburg and Lubek and Antwerp. And it will happen again, whenever and whenever people are free to trade and interact as they wish.

And this is what happened on one of the commercial streets of my youth, Devon Avenue. (Devon, by the way, was and still is pronounced da-VON, however incorrectly.)

Where Ancient Hatreds Faded

I have been told by those older than me that Devon was once a very German street. Then the Jews moved in as most of the Germans moved away. The Greeks came too, though mostly just to the south. Koreans as well, but a little to the southwest. And then, directly to Devon, came the Russians and Georgians and Croatians. And then came the Indians and the Pakistanis.

All of this happened in my lifetime, on a mile-or-so stretch of Devon Avenue. And here’s the thing: absolutely no one was ever forced to move into the hundreds of apartment buildings just off Devon Avenue, and no one was ever forced to rent a storefront there.

As a result, these people learned to get along.

The Russians who hated the Croatians (or Jews or whomever) didn’t have to live there or open a store there; they could choose another neighborhood or another commercial street.

None of the Pakistanis and Indians had to go there. They could have avoided the place altogether, and no doubt many have. And it’s important to remember that in the late 1940s, these two groups (Muslims and Hindus) hated each other so badly that a few million people – and overwhelmingly farmers and townspeople – were killed in thousands of small conflicts.

But given some space – one by one and two by two – people who were raised with anger and hate found ways to let it slip away. And now, you can see this on Devon Avenue:

A store catering to both Indians and Pakistanis:

A storefront mosque next to a Jewish bakery:

A Muslim market next to a Georgian bakery:

And the most promising thing I saw recently on Devon, a poster for a joint Hindu-Muslim concert, and at a major venue:

The Lesson

The lesson from Devon Avenue is this:

People tend to come together naturally, if you leave them alone long enough.

I’ll close with a short passage from my book, Entropy & Divinity:

When women and men are not forced together and are not forced to follow the will of others, they soon seek out their fellows and seek to cooperate. When left alone – in their natural, individual state – they begin to use their creative capacities and to cooperate with others.

Think of people scattered in a wild area: they naturally begin to observe the real world, to interact with it, to shape it, and they seek to work together.

Devon Avenue was a place where foreign peoples were not forced to come together. And yet – over time – that is exactly what they did.

Human beings generally get along, once you remove them from collectives and forced groupings. It seems otherwise only when we ignore the good and focus only on the bad.

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

Justice Without State

You always know you’re venturing into interesting territory when you arouse defenses like “Because!,” “You’re an idiot,” or “Everyone knows…”

Such are the defenses that pop up when touching the concept of justice separate from the state. It was, in my experience, something of a verboten subject, considered ridiculous and rude at the same time. It was – again in my personal experience – something that everyone just “knew” was impossible and which they also knew was dangerous.

And yet, they had no real reasons upholding their opinions. Certainly they struggled to assemble reasons once I said, “I don’t think so” (humans are really good at that), but it was very clear that the decision was made first and the facts assembled second.

I was thrust into this subject quite a few years ago, as cypherpunk projects ran into the reality that humans are unfinished creatures and sometimes end up in disputes with each other. Once cyberspace appeared, quite a few of us realized that it was a kind of terra nova, the first new continent opening since 1492. (1606 for Australia.) We wanted to do something good with it, something better than the territorial overlords were doing to humanity.

To give you some feel for the moment, here is a passage from J.P. Barlow’s A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, published in 1996:

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

So, with a separation imperative in mind, we were confronted with the fact that some kind of law or justice service was necessary. And so, I began digging into the subject.

What I Found

I learned that justice without state was common throughout history. And more than that, it seemed to have worked quite well over long periods of time. That seems utterly impossible to any mind that has gone through the modern school “curriculum,” but the facts remain, no matter how many knees may jerk at the thought.

Here, briefly, are some of the instances I found:

The Greek reset and the early Hebrews

At about 1200 B.C., nearly every civilization in the Eastern Mediterranean was plucked out by the roots. (Egypt just barely survived.) Then, for some 400 years, government was all but absent, and the cultures reset. This is commonly called the dark ages of the Greeks.

During this period, Greek law was nonexistent, and justice was handled almost on a family level. We haven’t a great deal of written matter from the Greeks, but we do from the early Hebrew civilization, which thrived during this window of time.

The early Hebrews – for some number of centuries – were a tribal anarchy, with no state at all. Aside from religious rules, their “laws” amounted to don’t lie, steal, or kill; don’t oppress the weak; don’t speak derogatorily of others; don’t take revenge; and don’t hold a grudge. And they were far more interested in justice than in law. For example, we find these passages in their earliest writings:

Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy.

Justice, justice shalt thou pursue.

Early medievals

After the fall of Rome, Europe had its reset period. And during this time, the many towns of Europe all developed and enforced their own justice. As historian R.H.C. Davis writes:

Even the law might change from village to village; a thirteenth-century judge pointed out that in the various counties, cities, boroughs, and townships of England he had always to ask what was the local customary law and how it was employed before he could successfully try a case.

Historian Chris Wickham explains what these people did, then provides a nice example from a French town:

When disputes were dealt with, it was the villagers who reached judgment; they also acted as oath-swearers for the disputing parties, as sureties to ensure that losers accepted defeat.

In one notable case of 858 in the plebs of Treal, [a man named] Anau had tried to kill Anauhoiarn, a priest of the monastery of Redon, and had to give a vineyard to Redon in compensations, as an alternative to losing his right hand; here, six sureties were named, and could kill him if he tried such a thing again… most judgment-finders and sureties were peasants; the villages around Redon policed themselves.

So, even the hard case of attempted murder was dealt with quite well by the locals of a “Dark Ages” town in rural France. There is absolutely no reason to believe that we couldn’t do as well.

The Vehm

By about 900 A.D., the people of Westphalia (now Germany) were operating their own justice system, even though there were (at least intermittently) princes in the area who wouldn’t like it. Running what they called “Vehm” courts, they issued warnings to troublemakers, issued warrants, and occasionally had to execute someone.

The Vehm did have secret trials but only as necessary. Their meeting places were always known to the locals, and they never used torture, even though the princes did.

The Vehm was taken over by the state in 1180 A.D.

Lex Mercatoria

The great medieval trade fairs had their own system of justice called the Lex Mercatoria or Law Merchant. Separate from state justice, it operated quite well over a long period of time. Eventually, however, the states took it over and more or less rolled it into their systems of law.

Jewish self-rule
As historian Paul Johnson writes in A History of the Jews:

The Jews always ran their own schools, courts, hospitals and social services. They appointed and paid for their own officials, rabbis, judges… Wherever they were, the Jews formed tiny states within states.

Under less-than-hospitable conditions, Jewish self-rule, including the provision of justice, thrived from the fall of Rome until just the past few centuries.

Arbitration

Right now, arbitration – more properly known as alternative dispute resolution or ADR – is thriving as an alternative to state justice, which has become so expensive and cumbersome as to be impractical. This is true for high-end commerce, for labor disagreements, and down to the level of disputes among construction contractors.

ADR works very well and is far less expensive than government justice. It is restricted only by governments, who enforce specific limits.

Internet

Right now there are quite a few Internet arbitration providers. They stand in a fairly murky area, but the states haven’t clamped down on them yet. I haven’t had any experience with them, but so far as I know, they provide good service.

And Compared to What?

Whenever something new comes along – like providing justice outside of state power – people instinctively look for flaws in it. Then, finding even one, they leap to the conclusion that “it won’t work.”

The truth, of course, is that the current systems of law are full of flaws from end to end. They are corruptly applied; laws are bought and sold; they are insanely expensive; and they are unforgivably slow. And perhaps worse, they change with every new session of the legislature.

So, if we are to take perfection as a standard, state-provided justice fails, and very, very badly.

Why All the Hate?

Having given you a quick overview of non-state justice, the question remains as to why modern people are so biased against the very concept. To answer that question, at least partly, I leave you with a short passage from Carl Jung’s The Undiscovered Self:

[I]n order to turn the individual into a function of the state, his dependence on anything beside the state must be taken from him.

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

The Forgotten Holocaust

The Armenian Genocide was a systematic extermination that occurred during World War One, mostly in 1915. The killers were Ottoman Turks: agents and soldiers of that government, as well as eager civilians.

The slaughter took place in two phases. First was the wholesale killing of able-bodied Armenian males through massacre and forced labor. Afterward came the deportation of women, children, the elderly and the infirm, on death marches into the Syrian Desert.

All told, perhaps 1.5 million people were killed. The vast majority of these were Armenians, but the Turks also killed large numbers of Assyrian Christians, Greeks, and other minority groups. In many ways – including that of medical experiments on victims – the Armenian Genocide was the direct forerunner of the Nazi Genocide against the Jews.

Here is one miniscule part of the slaughter – a photo taken by an American diplomat, to which he added a commentary:

Source: Wikipedia

“Scenes like this were common all over the Armenian provinces, in the spring and summer months of 1915. Death in its several forms—massacre, starvation, exhaustion—destroyed the larger part of the refugees. The Turkish policy was that of extermination under the guise of deportation.”

The Test

The test, believe it or not, is whether people will acknowledge this as a genocide or not.

We live, as I have complained many times, in an age where institutions not only reign over money and lands, but also over men’s minds. And, as it turns out, Armenia is not big enough or threatening enough to matter. And so, the institutional line – world-over and even in some shocking places – has been that “we don’t talk about it.”

The Turkish government, desperate to protect its image, has battled long and hard to explain it all away, and to prevent the word “genocide” from being used. Many, many institutions – tossing aside truth for political expediency – have parroted the Turkish line.

A Turkish official, tormenting starving Armenian children with a piece of bread. (Wikipedia)

The Two Biggest Flunkees

Not everyone has flunked the test. Several European nations have made official statements on the Armenian Genocide, as have a few nations on every continent. Wikipedia lists 22 nations in all (out of 200).

What I want to focus on here, however, are the two big failures… places that are supposedly dedicated to an ancient philosophy that would instantly and irrevocably condemn the Armenian Genocide as a top-tier evil.

The first failure is the United States.

In an article I wrote earlier this year, I told how my editor (I was then writing for a major publisher) was made to change history textbooks to cut coverage of this story down to just a couple of paragraphs. The US State Department told him to do so because “we need to keep the Turks happy.” My editor’s bosses sided with the government – as people with government contracts nearly always do. Thus the truth, again, became a casualty to institutions.

The one US President to use the word “genocide” was Ronald Reagan, in a speech he made on April 22, 1981. The current US President, Barack Obama, used the word while a candidate for the presidency, but has repetitively refused to use it since. Again, truth dies where institutions reign.

It is of some interest that Reagan, who was a plebeian – not of the elite – was the one exception. Whatever the man’s virtues or vices, he was far less an institution man than presidents of more recent years.

The second flunkee is Israel. That the victims of the signature genocide would fail to recognize the one just before theirs is nothing short of tragic.

Certainly many Israeli and Jewish groups do acknowledge the Armenian Genocide (such as the Union for Reform Judaism), but the Knesset (the Israeli legislature) decided that recognition of this as a genocide would jeopardize relations with the Turks and the Azerbaijanis.

The reason I call this “tragic” is that by refusing to say “genocide,” the ruling Israeli institution turned its back on the great principle that the Hebrews gifted to the world several millennia ago: The enthroning of justice above rulership.

While many individual Israelis are good and decent people, the rulership of the Israeli state has turned away from the original Jewish principle.

Never Forget

As Adolf Hitler was starting his aggression against the Poles, the London Times quoted him as saying this:

Go, kill without mercy. After all, who remembers the Armenians?

For the sake of decency and for the sake of the future, remember the Armenians.

Also remember that justice stands above institutions and rulers.

Paul Rosenberg
FreemansPerspective.com