Isi Leibler on Avram Burg and Other Self-Hating Jews
 | By Jonathan Hoffman
June 15, 2012 | Share |
Isi Leibler on Avram Burg and Other Self-Hating Jews
http://wordfromjerusalem.com/?p=4103
In a column appearing in The Independent, the fiercely anti-Israeli UK daily, Avram Burg, former Speaker of the Knesset, Chairman of the Jewish Agency and scion of one of Israel’s renowned religious Zionist families, commended the UK government for measures designed to boycott Israeli goods produced beyond the green line and urged the EU to do likewise “in Israel’s interest”.
Burg, who had the chutzpa to state that he was writing as a “Zionist”, described Israel “as the last colonial occupier in the Western world” and proclaimed that “the Israeli people’s eyes are blind and their ears are deaf” and the “real enemy of Israel’s future is Bibi Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel”.
In the past, Burg has called for the abrogation of “the law of return” which he defined as “a mirror image of Hitler”. He has described the Jewish state as “a ghetto of belligerent colonialism” and urged Israelis to obtain foreign passports. He also recommended the dismantlement of Yad Vashem and its substitution by new headquarters for the International Criminal Court.
Yet few would dare to describe this man, whose mother’s family was butchered in 1929 during the pogroms in Hebron, as a “self-hating Jew”.
That is because one of the most effective accomplishments chalked up by political far-left activists was their success in eliminating the term “self-hating Jews” from the Jewish political lexicon. They are abetted by those from the extreme right who indiscriminately label every Jewish critic of Israeli policy as a self-hating Jew.
By cynically employing inverse McCarthyist tactics to silence their critics, the far left succeeded in intimidating politicians and writers into adopting a form of political correctness which suppresses mention of one of the primary factors motivating the bizarre Jewish involvement in the campaign to demonize and delegitimize Israel.
Today, anyone employing the term “self-hating” in relation to Jews is summarily condemned and accused of being chauvinistic.
Yet any objective review of Jewish history demonstrates that “self-hatred” was always an important element motivating Jews who turned against their own people and far predates the existence of Israel.
The current situation was accurately summarized in a recent interview with Howard Jacobson, recipient of the highly coveted Man Booker Prize for the novel “The Finkler Question” which satirized British anti-Semitism and “self-hating Jews”.
http://www.haaretz.com/culture/arts-leisure/sorry-for-my-chutzpah-how-ho...
Ironically, his interview with Maya Sela appeared in the English internet edition of the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, which is probably the most important global media platform promoting the rantings of Jews demonizing Israel.
Jacobson nonchalantly abandons political correctness by ignoring the taboo on the term “self-hating Jews” when referring to Jews who demonize and delegitimize Israel.
He relates to “the need for Jews to be, one way or another, anti-Jewish. The need for so many Jews, particularly intellectual Jews, to express their hatred with embarrassment with Jewishness, and hating Israel is just the latest version of it. Jews were doing that long before there was a modern state of Israel… I suppose that if you belong to a minority that has been hated for so long, then you begin to sort of absorb some of that. It would be very surprising if you didn’t. In psychology they would tell you that an abused child will in the end come to take the view of himself that the abuser has. I don’t doubt that some Jews do that”.
Over the ages, anti-Semitism has inflicted such devastating suffering on the Jewish people that it inevitably spawned a small but highly vocal number of Jews obsessed with dissociating themselves.
If one analyses the behaviour of Jewish apostates during the Middle Ages, notorious for accusing their kinsman of satanic rites and churning out the vilest anti-Semitic tracts, there is little doubt that they were motivated by self-hatred as well as opportunism.
The era of Emancipation also witnessed Jewish Universalists engaged in campaigns defaming their fellow Jews. In the nineteenth century socialist revolutionary arena, self-hatred led to justifying pogroms as a lubricant to generate revolutions.
Karl Marx was a prime example of this. Although converted to Christianity, he was a descendant of a long line of rabbis. His noxious self-hatred was the basis for his vile anti-Semitic tract “Zur Judenfrage”, in which he stated that “money is a jealous God of Israel… The social emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of society from Judaism.”
The tradition of “self-hatred” was sustained by Jewish communists. In the Soviet Union, the Yevsektsia, the Jewish section of the Bolsheviks, were notorious for behaving more harshly and displaying a greater determination to destroy synagogues and Jewish cultural institutions than their non-Jewish counterparts.
Western Jewish communists applauded Stalin’s murder of Jews and crimes against the Jewish people and were amongst the staunchest defenders of the Evil Empire.
In Israel, the fellow traveling Mapam, the forerunner of Meretz, behaved as schizophrenics, seeking to combine their Zionism with love and allegiance to the Soviet Union, even when one of their leaders, Mordechai Oren, was arrested and tried on trumped up espionage charges in Czechoslovakia.
Yet it was only after the Oslo Accords, when Labor (Mapai) was desperately trying to convince Israelis that peace with the fork-tongued Arafat was feasible, that the self -haters emerged en mass from the closet. They assumed prominent roles at universities and attained political respectability by infiltrating the Labor Party and obtaining excessive media coverage in the Israeli daily Ha’aretz and its English language website, which prior to becoming dominated by post Zionists, was considered the leading intellectual newspaper of the land. Today it vigorously promotes journalists who demonize the state with the same vigor as their communist antecedents.
The Israeli self-haters range from outright political psychopaths like former Israeli musician Gilad Atzmon who justifies the Nazi murder of the Jews, to failed politician Avram Burg who delegitimizes his country. They include journalists who paved the way for the Goldstone report and charges of war crimes against Israel by demonizing the IDF, whilst defending the intransigent and duplicitous Palestinians.
In addition, there are some diaspora Jews, ugly blemishes on the fringes of Jewish communities throughout the world, who stand at the vanguard of the anti-Israeli pack. Most of those engaged in these activities, unlike Avram Burg, stem from assimilated or delusionary leftist backgrounds and have no genuine involvement in Jewish life.
But occasional despicable behavior by groups on the extreme right may also qualify as a manifestation of self-hatred. Ironically, I clearly recollect the late National Religious Party leader Dr. Josef Burg, father of Avram, confessing to me that he was having sleepless nights out of concern that some Jews residing in isolated settlements would absorb and transform the fierce animosity radiated by Palestinians surrounding them into a form of “self-hatred” which could manifest itself by anti-social behavior.
In summary, “self-hating Jews” is unquestionably a term which should be employed to identify those small pockets of Jews who demonize their own people. But it should be employed in a highly selective manner and not utilized indiscriminately against naïve well-meaning “bleeding hearts” or legitimate critics of Israeli policies with whom we may disagree.
COMMENTS
Chris Tucker (not verified) Mon, 06/18/2012 - 11:02 Rate this: 6 points | JOE MILLIS HAPPY GOLDFISH CHRIS TUCKER JOE MILLIS |
Mon, 06/18/2012 - 12:54 Rate this: 0 points | hello chris! yes, jonathan has done it again well done for reinstating them but there's a quick way of doing it, and preserving the original layout … click "view source" on the menu bar (on a mac it's command-alt-u), select everything from "THE JEWISH CHRONICLE ONLINE" onward, and paste … here's a randomly-selected blog to show the result … (i don't have a copy of jonathan's original blog, and it's not cached on google): THE JEWISH CHRONICLE ONLINE
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… reposted the same blog so as to remove all the comments from it!
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By MatthewHarris
June 6, 2012 |
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On Thursday, I did a Voice of Russia radio discussion on Israel, the Palestinians and Iran: http://youtube.com/watch?gl=US&hl=en-GB&client=mv-google&v=wdPkxKIEGwA
Among the questions that I raised are: if there was a viable Palestinian state living in peace alongside a secure State of Israel, then would Iran be willing to live in peace with Israel, or would they continue to view Israel with unremitting hostility? Could the West Bank (and, by extension, Gaza) exist for an interim period under international-community rule (not Israeli rule), as Bosnia once did, prior to the creation of an independent state, a la East Timor and South Sudan? As Israel says "We will talk now to the Palestinian Authority (PA)without pre-conditions" and the PA says "We will talk now to Israel if Israel meets our pre-condition of freezing settlements", then is it really beyond the wit of the international community to bridge that gap and bring the two sides into a room to talk?
These somewhat optimistic questions obviously omit the ultimate question, which is: will the Arab world ever fully accept the right of a Jewish state to flourish in peace in the Middle East? A democratic state with a Jewish majority, with full rights for non-Jewish minorities, including Arab citizens, as at present. That is the ultimate question.
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7 June, 2012 - 12:41 Rate this: 0 points |
'flourish in peace in the Middle East? A democratic state with a Jewish majority, with full rights for non-Jewish minorities, including Arab citizens, as at present'. Matthew, do you think black people in Israel would agree with the above? - 'as at present'. Do you think Palestinians in the West Bank would agree? - 'as at present'. |
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7 June, 2012 - 14:35 Rate this: 1 point |
Thanks, Suzanna, those are good questions. That is an extremely good point about the treatment of black people, given the recent outbreaks of racist violence in Israel. Despite that, Israel is still a Parliamentary democracy in which all citizens have the vote and equality before the law. That does not mean that Israel is not (like Britain) a society in which racism and discrimination do sometimes exist, including against those migrants who have entered the country illegally and so sometimes find themselves in a situation in which they cannot access the legal rights to which they are entitled: http://www.acri.org.il/en/2012/05/25/seeking-solutions-not-incitement/ As for the West Bank - I was talking about 'Israel proper', within its 1967 borders, so I didn't actually mean the West Bank. Although, even on the West Bank, Palestinians have more rights (and more recourse to the law) under Israeli rule than do Palestinians who live, for example, in Jordan. |
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7 June, 2012 - 14:53 Rate this: 0 points |
Thanks Matthew, It doesn’t matter what rights Palestinians have in Jordan. The issue is the occupied West Bank. The status of any other country - be it Syria, the UK, Tunisia does not deflect from the occupation and the injustices (continued) committed against an occupied population. Regarding the issue of migrants, I have yet to hear a senior politician in the UK refer to migrants as 'infiltrators' a 'cancer' or suggesting, as Aryeh Eldad did, that migrants approaching the border should be shot. |
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7 June, 2012 - 15:08 Rate this: 0 points |
suzanna (what's your real name and adress)"Politicians in Democracies tend not to use that kind of language" They obviously don't believe that in the USA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migrant_deaths_along_the_Mexico%E2%80%93Uni... See you try and judge Israel by a standard that no other country in the world is judged - that is anti-Semitism. The issue is not the West bank the issue is the repeated Arab refusal to accord to the Jews the same rights as the Arabs wish to accord to themselves - the right of self determination in their own land. |
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12 June, 2012 - 15:40 Rate this: 1 point |
Matthew |
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12 June, 2012 - 16:40 Rate this: 0 points |
Thanks, Yehuda, I agree with large parts of what you write. Exactly - even if there was a Palestinian state, there is sadly no reason to believe that Iran's current regime would cease to threaten Israel. Iran's hostility to Israel is based on a hostility to Israel's very existence as an open democracy in the Middle East, especially when that open democracy also happens to be Jewish. Nuclear proliferation did come up during this broadcast, and see also: http://matthewfharris.blogspot.com/2012/05/wmd-free-middle-east.html |
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- Chris Tucker RE: Isi Leibler on Avram Burg and Other Self-Hating Jews
- Jon. RE: Isi Leibler on Avram Burg and Other Self-Hating Jews
- Mary in Brighton RE: Isi Leibler on Avram Burg and Other Self-Hating Jews
- Real Real Zionist RE: Howard Jacobson the antisemite
- happygoldfish RE: Andrew Dismore and Ken Livingstone
Tue, 06/19/2012 - 10:00 Rate this: 0 points | £5 Jon ? You put a couple of quid on. At odds of 1/50 on I make it that you are due £2.04. Cheque is in the post. |
Tue, 06/19/2012 - 10:30 Rate this: 0 points | Donate it to someone worthy. I can afford to be magnanimous with my winnings... |
Tue, 06/19/2012 - 10:53 Rate this: -1 points | I bet you could buy Jonathan a really nice woolly hat with that kind of money. His old one is looking a bit tatty. |
Tue, 06/19/2012 - 12:10 Rate this: 1 point | Amazing! Thousands being killed in Syria, Spain and Greece about to go down the tubes and what exercises the tiny minds of the trolls - Jonathan Hoffman deleted and re-posted a blog entry presumably doing what the moderator would do any way given the content of some of the comments posted. It's Jonathan Hoffman's blog he can do with it what he wants - get over it. When you were given the dubious privilege of blogging your "Israel can do no right" baloney nothing stopped you deleting a blog and some of you exercised that right too so stop being babies and maybe address the issue. |
Tue, 06/19/2012 - 12:15 Rate this: 1 point | I know the answer of course and it doesn't trouble me, I have copies of everything I might need. RRZ - or should I say rich - you need psychiatric help. |
Tue, 06/19/2012 - 12:43 Rate this: 1 point | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18404621 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18408457 http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/06/12/defamation-bill-moves-to-unma... Advis3r - The trolls will soon be flushed down the pan - where they belong. |
Tue, 06/19/2012 - 13:04 Rate this: 0 points | Jonathan I'm not a troll in the slightest. How is it trolling to point out the way you try to close down debate? |
Tue, 06/19/2012 - 13:17 Rate this: 0 points | "All that is lawful is not edifying." Paul's 2nd letter to the Corinthians. |
Tue, 06/19/2012 - 13:52 Rate this: 1 point | Jon are you saying:
represents "debate" |
Tue, 06/19/2012 - 14:34 Rate this: 0 points | (Advis3r, that was rrz, not jon.)
no, paul's 1st letter, chapter 6:12, repeated with slight difference at 10:23 your point is?? |
Tue, 06/19/2012 - 17:52 Rate this: -1 points | Oops ok 1st letter. You must forgive me I am a little " lapsed". My point is that Advsr is correct. It is Jonathan' s blog and he CAN do with it whatever he likes. But while his behaviour may be "lawful " it remains childish and completely lacking in integrity. |
Wed, 06/20/2012 - 11:29 Rate this: 0 points | Jon I didn't claim you typed it I was giving it as an example of the "debate" you feel is being curbed. |
MORE FROM THIS AUTHOR
Mary in Brighton
Mon, 06/18/2012 - 10:00
Rate this:
Jonathan, you are 57 years old, a deputy and co vc chair of the ZIonist Federation Are you really happy to be behaving so childishly and seemingly without any semblance of integrity ?