And what about Israel, the third locale for migration from the Pale?
The economic position of Jews in Germany was quite different from that of the average German. Professionals, business men, educators, engineers, scientists, literary figures, bankers, department store moguls, publishers, etc., while many Germans were farmers or factory workers. Not only were the Jews different, they were rich, earning about 2.5 RM for every mark earned by a gentile. And with the Great Depression, the gap between rich and poor, Jew and German seemed to widen. Could Jews “normalize”? Could they become Appollonians like the rest of society? The Nazis asserted that they could not and had to be driven from Germany, from Europe, and when they did not go, they were exterminated.
Soviet Russia also sought to “normalize” the Jews. There were discussions of giving them farm land in the Crimea, which had been forcibly vacated by Tartars who, fighting against the Bolsheviki, had been removed to Siberia. Opposition to the Crimean venture was strong, and nothing came of it. However, in 1928 the USSR provided an oblast (not a full province) to the Jews. Birobizhan was to be the Soviet Zion. There Jews would become farmers and day laborers; they would become Appollonians, like most people. Birobizhan was in Siberia north of Mongolia, and Slezkine mentions one family of Jews that resettled there. After one of them froze to death, they returned to the big cities of Russia. Soviet Jews remained Mercurians, but many were ensconced in the bureaucracy or the Cheka. Even today, after 85 years, most of the population of Birobizhan is not Jewish.
In America, Jews were successful, like their German cousins, and following WWII, they witnessed a sharp decline in anti-Semitism. Ivy League universities, which early in the 20th century only reluctantly admitted Jewish students, had so changed that by 1990 all of the presidents of the Ivy League universities were Jewish. The Irish-American sociologist and politician, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, assessed the public schools of New York City as having “transformed two generations of Jewish immigrants into the intellectual elite of the world’s most powerful nation.”(Graham, 310-11) In post-WWII America, Jews were probably as wealthy and as influential as their cousins had been in Weimar Germany, but in America, they faced diminishing hostility Indeed, one might speculate that the creation of “white male privilege” was an attempt to avoid the murderous consequences of the German experience, in which Jews were an elite class, but obvious, alone, and hence a target, the 1%. In America, no one speaks of Jewish privilege, but there are ever more denunciations of white male privilege. Anti-Semitism declines while poor whites experience ever more discrimination.
In Israel, Jews would become Appollonians, farmers, kibutzniks, and most importantly, warriors. In 1933 there was a strange concurrence of policies between Nazis and Zionists – both wanted the Jews out of Germany. In the mid-1930s, when the Nazis made the swastika the flag of the nation, Jews were not allowed to display it. They could, however, display a Zionist flag. More important, there was an agreement between the German govt. and the Zionists so that Jews departing for Palestine (the name for that land at the time) could take with them more property, and also get credit to purchase necessary items from the Reich. While other Jewish and Leftist organizations boycotted German-made products, the Zionists did not partake in the boycott. Several thousand Jews left Germany for Palestine and were able to take considerable sums with them.
Later in the 1930s the Nazis switched horses in the Middle East. When Arabs began to riot against Jewish immigrants, the Germans revised their policy. During WWII the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem rejected British policy which he deemed pro-Jewish. The Mufti went to Berlin, met with Hitler, and broadcast from German radio to the Middle East. His message was simple – kill the Jews. He even visited a concentration camp.
Following WWI, Britain controlled Trans-Jordan (Jordan, Palestine, Israel), but with the outbreak of WWII, one might wonder if the British could retain it. In nearby Iraq, a pro-Axis coup occurred (led by a relative of Saddam Hussein). The British suppressed it, but many Jews were killed by the rebels. Syria had been given to the French, but suddenly the French under Marshall Petain were collaborating with Germany. And when Gen. Rommel’s Afrika Korps rumbled past the border of Libya into Egypt, and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was preparing to greet the German conqueror, one could wonder about the future of Jews in Egypt and Palestine. Rommel was defeated at El Alamein 11 November 1942. Vichy France fell later. Jews no longer had to fear a Nazi conquest in the area, but they still had to fear the Arabs.
In May 1948 Israel declared independence, and was immediately attacked by all its Arab neighbors. With weapons from various sources, including eastern European Communist states, the Israelis won and extended their borders beyond the untenable UN suggested ones. But the existence of Israel has been denied by some of its neighbors ever since. It is a state in a constant state of war. The military, the soldier, the secret service, and the scientists are all necessary to the continuance of the state. Slezkine sums up the process: “Israel was the only postwar European state (‘European’ in both composition and inspiration) to have preserved the ethos of the great nationalist and socialist revolutions of the interwar period. Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy had been defeated and discredited; Franco’s Spain and Salazar’s Portugal had discarded whatever fascist fervor they had tolerated; Ataturk’s Turkey had routinized its triumph over both cosmopolitanism and popular religion…and Stalin’s Soviet Union had begun to represent itself as middle-aged, mature, a little weary, and perhaps ready for some material comforts and a bit of family happiness. Only Israel continued to live in the European 1930s;”(327) Slezkine notes the irony, for as Jews in Israel became Appollonian, much of the West became Mercurian.
And this difference between Israel with its “warrior culture”(327) and the liberal, multicultural West of today has led to an obvious dichotomy on the part of Western Jews. In the West, Jews generally support open borders, large-scale immigration of very different peoples to the Western nations. But Israel seeks to deport the “infiltrators.” And it does so despite nonsensical denunciations from the UN. Jews in the West, going back to Franz Boas and his school of social science, dismissed the importance of race, and some later social scientists even deny that race exists. Jared Diamond condemned The Bell Curve’s conclusions of differences among the races in IQ as “notorious.” He wrote Guns, Germs and Steel to demonstrate that in human development race was unimportant compared to geography. Yet, Prof. Diamond was delighted when DNA might be used to detect who is a Jew and who therefore who should be allowed into Israel, - and who should not. If America, of France, or Sweden were to act as does Israel, American Jews, French Jews, and Swedish Jews, all anchored with the Left, would be organizing massive protests against their governments. Yet, they support Israel.
If certain policies are so good for Israel, why are they bad when a Western nation does the same? Why does the Jewish community praise one and denounce the other? Is it hypocrisy? Or, as Kevin McDonald suggests, is it an attempt by a very smart people to weaken its possible competitors by turning the West into 3rdWorld disaster nations, and transform all American cities into Detroit, Newark, East St. Louis?
Slezkine has written a most important book, and one that won the National Jewish Book Award. It is provocative in the best sense of the word.
Though Slezkine’s book preceded the election to the American Presidency of Barrack Hussein Obama, it may be appropriate to discuss Slezkine’s book in view of Obama’s policies. Slezkine’s book, though much of it describes the Russian experience, concludes that the Jewish migration to Moscow and Petersburg was a failure. Communism betrayed the Jews long before the Soviet system collapsed. So the two successful Jewish migrations were to the US and to Israel.
Obama may have been a Muslim as a child, and he appears to view the West as a colonial power, exploiting nations who have become impoverished through capitalist policies. When the “Arab Spring” erupted in Egypt, Obama praised the movement. America’s long-time ally, Mubarak was overthrown, and Obama was pleased that his military government would now be replaced by democracy. True, an attractive, blond, CBS reporter may have been raped in the Egyptian celebrations for democracy, and Jewish tourists were quickly exiting the land of pyramids, and Coptic Christians were uneasy, but Obama was delighted as democracy swept through Egypt. In the elections, the Muslim Brotherhood, awaiting power since Rommel’s panzers approached, now had their day. In the democratic Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood, the Christian minority was persecuted, some murdered, and ancient churches torched. To show that they were equal opportunity bigots, the religious leader of the Brotherhood announced that Jews were descendants of pigs and monkeys and promised to destroy Israel and the Jews.
When the Arab Spring spread to neighboring Libya, the American Ambassador and 3 special agents were murdered. Whom did Hillary Clinton, American Sec. of State, and Pres. Obama blame for the murder? Not the Muslim extremists. They blamed an Egyptian Christian living in the US who had made a film mocking Mohammad.
In recent years Muslim terrorists killed innocents in China, Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Indonesia, Thailand, India, Pakistan, Russia, the US, Nigeria. Muslim intolerance and murder has already wiped the Jews out of most of the Middle East, now they seek to destroy the ancient Christian communities in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, etc. In Afghanistan, some time ago, the Muslims destroyed huge statues of Buddha carved from a mountain over a millennium ago. A Muslim Brotherhood cleric in Egypt spoke of destroying the pagan pyramids. Recently, one Muslim sect in the new ISIS realm physically destroyed the old tomb of Jonah.
And yet President Obama urges Israel to return to its 1948 borders! Why not have the US return to ours of 1800? One must admire Israel’s determination NOT to be fooled by the liberals into concluding a suicidal peace. One hopes that in the future, Western leaders will ignore the liberal Jewish establishment and do what is necessary to protect American borders from massive immigration invasion, American cultural from the multicultural anarchy, and restore order rather than excusiology in the courts. Israel has a sane policy. But in the West, Jewish influence often prevents the developed nations from adopting sane policies, like the ones followed in Israel.
Slezkine notes that when Jews were a main bulwark (if not the bulwark) for the Soviet state, not only were they “Stalin’s willing executioners,” but they “were never quite sure why they were executing some people and not others.”(103) In Israel, they know. There are those who clearly want to destroy Israel and kill all the Jews. It is kill or be killed. Sadly, in American cities today, people are beginning to confront the same horrible choice.
Slezkine has written a most important book, and one that won the National Jewish Book Award. It is provocative in the best sense of the word.
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