Bibi Netanyahu’s dad was obsessed with antisemitism, historically as an academic and personally as a “survivor of the Holocaust”, (because he moved to Palestine in 1920), as so many were. He was a fierce Zionist, among the wave of newreligion Jews who emigrated to Israel before the 1948 war that established it as a legitimate nation. A victorious one. Biblical promises and tanks provided by the Soviet Union from Czechoslovakia drove off Arab armies and claimed their ancient homeland for the New Jews. Warriors against antisemites, especially if they were Semites.
Joshua Cohen, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Netanyahus, describes the family as grindingly arrogant, rude and contemptuous of Americans in their wild visit to a second rate university for a job interview gone awry. That hasn’t changed.
Jewish Disapora History professor, Netanyahu senior traced Christian race hatred for Jews from medieval Spain through Nazi Germany. “Vast numbers of Jews” gratefully converted to Catholicism during the Reconquista “delivering them from violent Muslim rule”, and to take advantage of lower taxes and increased civil rights. Some were crypto-Jews, practicing Sabbath secretly, but most believed they were securely Spanish, as Catholic as the next person of that Faith.
“Their success caused the Church to redefine Judaism from a religion to a race”, before Queen Isabella, after freeing southern Spain from Muslim rule in 1492, banished all Jews, conversos, cryptos and continuing. They were forced to emigrate minus their property, the same year as Cristobal Colon, set sail over the horizon for far Cathay.
They sought refuge around the Mediterranean, mostly in Muslim Ottoman lands, or among less zealous Christian nations. Some slipped off to the New World, at least one with Colon, a rabbi retained as translator to the Chinese emperor, based on belief that ancient Hebrew was the universal tongue before Babylon fell. Evidently no Caribbean language retained it.
Naomi Klein foregrounds the Jewish pograms of the dying Russian Empire period in the 20th century, as seeding Zionism’s 20th century flowering in Doppelganger. Russian empire Jews were attempting to ally with Christians, Muslims, Atheists and progressives with class solidarity in the Here Movement, competing with Zionists for Jewish aspirations. After the 1905 Russian Revolution failed, ruling elites offered creation of a Parliament to check the powers of the Czar, along with a virulent campaign of anti-Semitic hate to divide workers. Class consciousness was all a plot by seditious Jews seeking to rule over Christians.
The Czar had appointed Jews as his tax collectors, with all the coercive power of the empire behind them. When that was withdrawn, revenge against Jewish oppressors followed. Another pogrom ensued without distinction of job title. Robert Weinberg reported Jewish women being publicly raped, kulaks cutting out the fetus of pregnant women, slaughtering infants in front of their parents in The Russian Review.
The mob hung a woman upside down over her six dead children with the star of David. WWI Hun propaganda and Hamas atrocity reports are eerily similar. Weinberg concluded that “ethnic divisiveness was the centrifugal force, which diminished the capacity of Odessa workers to act in a unified fashion.” So much for Hereness and class solidarity.
Klein notes this anti-Semitism solution was passed from the Tsar to future tyrants seeking to whip up populist support. She reviews Philip Roth’s novel, Operation Shylock, which told the tale of his doppelganger, a Philip Roth in Israel claiming to be the American author of Portnoy’s Complaint. Fake Roth was advocating for New Diasporism-to encourage Israeli Jews to emigrate to Eastern Europe. He met with Lech Walesa of Poland- who agreed to welcome Jews back to their “original European homelands” as good for the economy.
The Zionist experiment had failed, Israeli Roth preached. A Jewish state made them more unsafe, while diaspora works best for Jewish culture and ideas to thrive. His shiksa girlfriend is named Jinx. The fictional Real Roth impersonates his fictional doppelganger and travels to Israel to confront him- Hijinx ensues.
Nobel Prize winning Yiddish writer, Isaac Bashevis Singer considered Zionism another false Messianic movement with Theodor Herzl as its Sabbatai Zevi. “Jewish Messianism, associated since the days of the followers of Jesus with a rejection of the Law, found its final expression in the cosmopolitan person of the journalist Theodor Herzl. Zionism is a secularized Messianic movement.”
He was extremely critical of Israelis. “While Jewish people have achieved physical and material freedom in Israel, they have become psychological captives of the value systems of their former oppressors. His characters are possessed by the spirit of a Polish Jew, Zorach who epitomizes all those vices of transgression and excess which traditional Judaism resisted.” One was preeminently “a swindler and a fraud”. The “disturbing dishonesty in Israeli culture” is symbolized by another character.
Naomi Klein illustrated the gaslighting Israeli border guards subjected her to on returning from a permitted tour of Gaza with her Canadian politician husband, when that was possible. Her Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions advocacy comments were well known there. She’d gone with a human rights group into Gaza City and held a press conference.
The guards locked them outside the gates in Gaza as dark and military curfew arrived. They were informed that tanks were being prepared to rescue them, since it was too dangerous to simply open the gates. “Get your woman under control” one guard told her husband when they were finally passed through without escort.
These are Jewish writers, so only “self hating”, not antisemitic. Rabid Zionists grasp at Jewish solidarity and collective identity in America like a drowning victim, while ultra wealthy oligarchs demand obeisance from politicians or suffer banishment.
When Joe Biden visited Israel in 2010, he was subjected to a faux terrorist power outage while inside Yad Veshem, the Holocaust museum Bibi insisted he tour. In a televised speech welcoming his old buddy, Netanyahu pounded the podium, smashing his gift for the vice president of Israel’s powerful and benevolent ally. The glass framed autographed photograph of Biden’s dead mother dripped shards as he handed it over, without apologies. Only now does Genocid’n Biden dare call him an asshole- on a hot mic.
Interesting insights Stephen, This world certainly abounds with all types of people.
Some not so highly evolved, some who think they are highly evolved and we should
bow down to them and many in between. Years ago I did some family research on my
Polish Great Grandparents who migrated to New Zealand 1875.
Jews were invited into Poland with the assurance they could safely practice their faith.
They didn’t have surnames and were known as ‘son-of…’ It wasn’t long before they were
told to take on surnames, mainly for taxation reasons. Most were Ashkenazi Jewish and
emphasised education within their shtetls. They didn’t mix with the Poles.
One of the reasons for their invitation was because they were comparatively well educated
emphasising education within their communities. Work was easily found as rent collectors.
Hence the perception of wealth.