Before I reply to Mr. Shamir's recent commentary, I'd like to return briefly to his first offering in critique of When Victims Rule (WVR). I have been thinking about his commentary and I'm still somewhat miffed by it. I fail to understand his view of what he thinks the book represents. He began with the recitation of the old parable about the blind men who, each prisoner of their own (geographical) limitations in relating to an elephant, and prisoners of blindness, fail to fathom the totality of what really stands before them. One defines the elephant by feeling the tail, another by the trunk, another by a leg, and so forth.

Truly, we are all stuck in the perceptual limitations of our respective grounding -- whether Ariel Sharon, Israel Shamir or, yes, myself.

Mr. Shamir aimed the parable -- if I understand him correctly -- at Jewry as the "elephant' that is so misunderstood by a variety of partial knowledge perspectives. It has dawned on me that Shamir's parable of misinterpretation could just as well be self-referential to his own perception of When Victims Rule. Surely he has not read it all, nor would we expect him to. He touched a tail. Perhaps an ear. Maybe a toe or two. People may pick and choose from it as they like. But whatever the case, any given chapter, and any sliver of any given subject (like the proverbial elephant) is only a fragment of the whole. The full view is the most accurate view.

Of course, such a parable could be pointed in any direction: misunderstanding a strand of a book from its whole, misunderstanding Jewry by one of its common attributes, and so on. With due respect, I would humbly present the parable back to him for his own further reflection.


ISRAEL SHAMIR: It is good we agree on many points, and it is equally good we differ on others. Probably the greatest difference in our reading emerges from your words: "Being Jewish" manifests itself as primarily a defensive allegiance against the non-Jewish Other.' In my opinion, it is an OFFENSIVE allegiance, and it is not hair-splitting on my side.

RESPONSE: Again, I do not perceive a serious gap in our perspectives. At least here. I believe that we are both accurate in our observations. It is a matter of emphasis. The Jewish collective is not manifest entirely of one attribute -- defensive or offensive -- with the implicit negation of the other. Take the example of the Anti-Defamation League, as microcosm of modern Jewry's collective activism. The ADL's fundamental purpose has been to ward off virtually all criticism of the Jewish community. That is a defensive position. (One of the major projects of the early ADL was in fact the defense of accused murderer Leo Frank). Of course, the ADL has built a successful propaganda machine from its defensive base to mount a very powerful offensive campaign against anyone it views as an enemy to further Jewish aggrandizement. The very charge of "anti-Semitism" -- so crucial to modern Jewish identity -- has evolved into both a defensive shield AND offensive weapon to hurt and to harm. In popular culture the charge of "anti-Semitism" renders toxic any critic of the Jewish community as being -- at root -- evil, thereby muting any critical threat against Jewry - however legitimate. Jewish activism in attacking the established non-Jewish order -- whatever it is -- has been commented upon by many people (both Jewish and non-Jewish) in history. You have no disagreement here. Nor does WVR hint otherwise.

SHAMIR: The same error of confusing offensive with defensive repeats itself in the two chapters on anti-Semitism in WVR. The Author brings numerous examples of 'Jewish extreme sensitivity' to what they consider 'anti-Semitism', and it includes such unlikely culprits as vegetarianism and lack of reference to Jews. For the Author, it implies extreme defensiveness of the Jews.

RESPONSE: The chapter on anti-Semitism presents Jewish opinion about the subject, Jewish "anti-Gentilism," the usual Jewish moral double standard, and how the charge of anti-Semitism is used as a device to silence critics. The chapter also exposes the accusation of anti-Semitism as a form of political manipulation and/or fraud. I also do not understand that chapter to solely represent the "extreme defensiveness of the Jews." On the contrary. The chapter also examines massive Jewish denial (among other things), which is not quite the same essence as "defensiveness." Bridged with other chapters, the effort is to illustrate how this Jewish identity thread is used throughout culture in celebration of Jewish martyrology towards further collective aggrandizement in the "victim" king culture they were so instrumental in creating. There are many, many dimensions to this. "Defensiveness" is merely one ingredient in the Jewish psycho-social matrix.

SHAMIR: But let us apply some basics of psychology. If a person is dead certain that he is hated, he probably knows of a very good reason to be hated. Jews in Israel have no doubt the Palestinians hate them, for they would hate Palestinians if the situation would be reversed. If you steal, rob and kill you are sure you should be hated. If you install yourself as a Master Folk over subservient population, if you eradicate their culture, demean their traditions, make fun of their faith and emasculate them, you KNOW you should be hated. The Palestinians are not Jews and they do not hate the Jews, but many Jews do not understand it, as they extrapolate their own feelings to their enemies.

RESPONSE: I agree with what most of what you say here, except I'm afraid that, collectively, the Palestinians -- as a thoroughly suffocated and tortured people -- have come to that point of outrage that clouds carefully reasoned reflection. Taking some "basics of psychology," I don't think such people probably have the moral luxury -- nor suprahuman emotional strength -- in the heat of agony to sort out the proverbial "good Jew" from those many who are quick to drive a tank through their houses, crushing, perhaps, in the process, a grandmother or two. Such desperate Palestinian rage in the face of overwhelming odds is human nature. The protocols of "political correctness" mean little to those forced to the edge of the abyss. In other words, Israel reaps what it sows. As self-defined, this state acts in the name of international Jewry. Holding all Jews responsible is of course unjust, but so is just about everything over there. In the heat of battle, it is not easy to search out brothers in the ranks of a nemesis.

SHAMIR: The anti-Semitism fighters within the Jewish community are the Jews actively engaged in warfare against the host society. They consider themselves the Herrenvolk and the Gentile Americans are their flock to be controlled and shepherded. For them, all protestations of Gentile innocence are of no avail: the Jewish anti-Semitism-fighters KNOW the goyim have a very good reason to hate them.

RESPONSE: How often have you read such commentary like this by someone of Jewish descent? And look what you face in the Jewish community for daring to say so.

SHAMIR: Holocaust supplies an easy external explanation for their fears, but in 1920s it was supplied by 'Russian pogroms' and in the 19th century by 'Inquisition'. In case one runs out of reason there is a very good explanation of Elie Wiesel, that of totally irrational anti-Semitism. Still, these explanations are just a cover for the real reason: these people took over America's discourse, and they expect their successes to be met with hatred of the subjugated people. Search for anti-Semitism is an active offensive search for the remaining pockets of resistance within American psyche. It is akin to the search-and-destroy operation carried out by soldiers in the conquered city.

RESPONSE: I agree. I fail to understand what you have read that frames you in opposition to the material posted at WVR except, of course, to the degree it outlines Jewish convention and power, which you condemn. Again, as you know, you are virtually alone -- at least in the public arena -- with such commentary, as a person of Jewish descent. It is extraordinary. Even shocking. But, like it or not, your courage is considerably more important than any special insights you might shine in your articles. If you were a Russian Gentile, or French Gentile, or Desmund Tutu, your arguments would carry less weight in the public arena, whatever their respective wisdom. That is because you are of Jewish origin (despite whatever that does or does not mean to you) and your bold comments outrageously rip across the grain of Jewish convention. I suspect the flavor of your commentary here is goaded by your disgust for the Jewish convention detailed at WVR. In this sense, your reaction to it is highly unusual. Most Jews condemn WVR for its function as an unwanted expose. And I remind you that non-Jews, for the most part, haven't the slightest idea of what we are talking about here, per the intricacies of the Jewish side of "anti-Semitism." And like the blind men and the elephant, I suspect we all are limited in comprehending the world to some degree by the distinctive baggage that is our respective lives and experiences. You bring your world, your biases, your life, to WVR. I bring mine.

SHAMIR: In their eyes, palpable absence of anti-Semitism in the US is a clear proof of total surrender of the Americans to their new elite. While discussing 'anti-Semitism', the Author could consider the search for anti-Semitism as a sterling proof of the searchers' guilt. An innocent sane person has no reason to believe he is hated, and there is no reason to commit them to psychiatric asylum.

RESPONSE: I just think that all you wish posted at WVR is, in fact, there. Perhaps it is not as overt as you'd like it. People must be nursed to understanding. Not clobbered with it.

SHAMIR: In the forthcoming struggle, it makes sense to know who your enemy is and what sort of victory you hope to achieve. In my opinion, the enemy is Jewish supremacy carried out by organised Jewry. Now, following Isaac Deutscher and other thinkers, I would distinguish between Jewry and Jews, i.e. people of Jewish origin. Jewry is a structure, a state without territory, an offensive ideological formation. Jews, people of Jewish origin could belong to Jewry or reject it completely and become ordinary Americans, French or Palestinians, like thousands and thousands of their predecessors, from the Apostles to St Teresa of Avila to Karl Marx. It is a question of personal choice, but we are not indifferent to the result. Isaac Deutscher put it neatly: let Jewry perish and Jews live.

RESPONSE: Yes, but there are some fundamental flaws in your analysis here. As is so popular in "Jewry's" bemoaning of itself these days, "Why be Jewish?" Devoid of the old religious base, it's a good question, and it includes both your concepts of a collective, politicized, transnational "Jewry" and the individual "Jew" who divorces himself from this totalitarian collective. What's the difference between "Jewry" and "Jew?" Why would a Jew still want to identify as a Jew -- and all the troubles for everyone it has historically represented -- in a truly honest, enlightened world? Perhaps Deutscher's statement might be better framed as: Let the ideology of Jewry perish and let people live. Otherwise, in the way that the renovated language of Hebrew cannot totally be swept clean of its religious base, you'll not be able to separate the self-defined "Jew" from the ideology of Jewry. Because the very term "Jew" is rooted in the ideology from which it was created.

When the French Jewish-born Cardinal Lustiger, for example ( possibly the next Pope), declared to Elie Wiesel that he remained loyal to the Jewish people, that he still remained a "Jew," herein lies the heart of the problem. What exactly is this allegiance he claims? To Israel? To Jewish suffering? To the Holocaust? To the Torah? To a folk dance? And why, in light of all this, should he not be suspect as a Catholic which, by definition, is NOT a Jew? It is, at root, an unreconcilable dichotomy. A Jew, by self-declared root definition, is antithetical to the rest of the world: goyim. Yet, the Jew, also by definition, is everywhere, anywhere, self-defined as Christian Jews, Buddhist Jews ("jubus") or anything else. And in this Lustiger story lies the essence of the common inability of the Jewish-born individual to fully clip the cord to Jewish chauvinism, whether he/she steps out of the formal chains of "Jewry" or not.

SHAMIR: There is always a problem how to distinguish Jews - members of Jewry and ordinary people of Jewish origin. In the days of old, religion provided sufficient indicator for a person's relationship to society. The Jew was in the state of declared warfare with the society, as Marx put it. If he would not like to be antisocial, he would accept Christ.

RESPONSE: I do not think Marx posited that a Jew should accept Christ. Per the "problem of how to distinguish Jews." In Europe, this was traditionally easy enough, at least per males: circumcision (traditionally, a ritual of marking absolute Jewish identity). In this regard, per Judeocentric domination of American culture, it's an interesting speculation to wonder if Jewish influence in the medical field was of any significance in the popularization of circumcision in a society (secular and/or Christian) which did not require it. Nor, in recent years, has circumcision proven to be medically sound. In other words, if circumcision became (which it has) a medical norm in Gentile American culture as well as the Jewish (which REQUIRED it) enormous Jewish male vulnerability to any "anti-Semitic" threat was physically diffused. In essence, Christian boys/men -- without their choice in the matter, with parents deferring to the judgment of the medical establishment -- bore mutilation on their procreative organ, emulating Jewish religious tradition. Hence, incredibly, in this regard non-Jewish culture in America effectively assimilated to Jewish culture, while Jewry to this day still resists full assimilation into the American milieu.

SHAMIR: Nowadays, it is not that clear: Christianity in America isn't posited as the only alternative, nor a religion is considered necessary. Fortunately, we have three criteria. They are 1. Support for Jewish supremacy in Palestine, 2. Preference of Jews over non-Jews, and 3. Support of anti-Semitism fighters. These three parameters allow us to separate goats from lambs by non-ethnic criteria. Conrad Black, a friend of Sharon and of Foxman, neatly falls into Jewry, while my friend Michael Neumann finds himself on the side of angels. Now, what sort of victory should one wish for?

RESPONSE: By this argument you position yourself and Michael Neumann, both of Jewish origin, as non-Jews and the likes of Conrad Black, George Bush, and every American who is ignorant enough to support Israel as Jews. In its extreme, if "being Jewish" is that loose, then all the Jews in New York could leave the "Jewish" fold tomorrow and, say, all Native Americans alternatively enter it. Something is missing in this analysis, don't you think? Something like the Jewish root itself. Your position negates the very essence of Jewish origin, which is ancestral, and tribal. Conrad Black doesn't ancestrally qualify. Again, people's allegiance can be bought for anything. Black may even believe that Jews are humanity's consummate sufferers and Israel is entitled to express any brutality it wants to defend against "anti-Semitism." But being brainwashed and "being Jewish" aren't necessarily the same things.

SHAMIR: In my opinion, the first goal is liberation of discourse, removal of means of mass communication from the clutches of Jewish supremacists, democratisation of access to media. In the longer run, cutting Jewry to its natural size. Let the religious Jews pray in their synagogues, but in case they take their synagogue with them to a bank or to a newspaper office, the affirmative action anti-discrimination law should be enforced. The Jews constitute two per cent of the US population, and that is exactly the maximum share they should have in the resources and administration. It is very generous approach: nowadays, in the Jewish state, non-Jews constitute 50 per cent of population but occupy no important positions at all.

RESPONSE: I agree with most of what you say here. But if you are going to include the likes of Conrad Black, and Rupert Murdoch, and the many, many non-Jews who are beholding to Jewish power throughout culture as "Jews," your percentages for anti-discrimination laws are going to get very slippery.

SHAMIR: But Christian approach is not a mirror copy of the Jewish one. Eventually, Jews will leave Jewry and join all-American population. Our three criteria would allow us to see whether we deal with sincere conversion, or a trick.

RESPONSE: You echo history here. There is precedent for the Jewish "trick" -- on massive scale. Spain's conversos and so forth. This has always been part of the problems Jews have had and it is self-created: Gentile distrust of Jews no matter to what they proclaim allegiance. This is a task people like you must overcome. The challenge to you on all sides -- both Jewish and non-Jewish -- is colossal.

SHAMIR: If a person sends his money to Jews, instead of general population, if he calls to support Israel, if he alleges Christian customs make him feel uncomfortable, he belongs to Jewry and should be treated as such. If he freely intermarries and communicates with the others, if he cares for all and not for Jews only, if he values the spirit of America, he is just an American.

RESPONSE: There is more to this. Such a person must be able to transcend the complex neuroses of self-love and self-hate that inform the "Jewish" character. He
must likewise transcend the notion that he is a victim and that all the world owes him reparations of any and all sorts. And on and on. It's more a root system than the single trunk of a tree.

SHAMIR: I regret that you misunderstood Michael Neumann's opus (Blame Yourself: American Power and Jewish Power) you described as Defence of Jews. Yes, Neumann tried to make light of the Jewish power and to magnify the power still in Gentile hands. On my list I run Jeff Blankfort's response. Jeff refuted him, in brief but poignant description of the vast powers of the Jewish lobby. (I would recommend you to link or display Blankfort's piece). You, in your response, perceived Neumann's essay as a usual Jewish dissimulation. But actually Neumann tried to encourage you, the Gentile America, to cheer you up, to remind you that you still have the immense strength of your sinews and your mind.

RESPONSE: Sorry. I still don't see it that way. Mr. Neumann, in classical form, attempts to deflect the justifiable criticism that comes Jewry's way. And he blames non-Jews for Jewish exploitation. This, as you know, is quite the norm in the Jewish community. It is the same paradigm as the ADL, isn't it? The accusation of "anti-Semitism" (ENTIRELY blaming non-Jews for the Jewish share of human failing) is the same thing. Likewise, per Neumann, I don't think "Gentile America" will take solace in being "cheered up" by a man of Jewish heritage denying the enormous influence of Jewry in American culture. Whether intended or by default, it is a form of dissimulation.

SHAMIR: He was worried that your spirit is crushed by comprehension of the Jewish power. He behaved like Jesus in the Sufi poem by Jalal ad-Din ar-Rumi, who whipped a sufferer around town, until he vomited a huge snake. Why did you beat me? Asked the healed sufferer and Jesus replied: if I would tell you the truth about the snake you would die of fear. It is necessary to make people aware or the great unjust and discriminative concentration of power and wealth in hands of a small group. But it is also tactically reasonable to play this power down, like Mao Zedong did when he called the nuclear might of the US, 'a papier-mâché tiger'.

RESPONSE: I'm sorry. This sound like Orwellian doublethink. Freedom is slavery. Power is weakness. Light is dark. If we play Jewish power "down" it will be more vulnerable to criticism? If we ignore it, it will go away? If we don't mention the giant snake, and have someone sadistically whip us (!), the snake will take wings and fly off? I do not think Rumi wrote his poems as political treatises and ideological strategies. Rumi probably wandered off into the desert or forest to stare into the wings of a gnat to find God. He probably twirled himself dizzy. No thank you. I'll take my chances with naming the snake, so people have the primary information that the snake exists in the world. As I have stated to Mr. Neumann: dissimulation feeds dissimulation. Lie feeds lie. Illusion begets further illusion. And not the opposite. I'll read Rumi to transcend the materialist follies of this world (for that is the Sufi aim), but not as remedy to negotiate them.

SHAMIR: Neumann's call for more civil courage was timely: unless you will speak up nobody will do it for you. Your response to him was a bit too suspicious. There are many guys with Jewish names who prefer equality to Jewish supremacy, because they know: Jewish supremacy is not rule by Einstein or Freud, it is rule by Mort Zuckerman, Ariel Sharon, Richard Pearle et al. Together we can win the game. Though I am flattered by being described as 'anomaly', but as a matter of fact, I receive many letters to the contrary. Just today I received a letter from an anti-Zionist (or should I say 'pro-equality') activist of Jewish origin in California:

RESPONSE: So, what? A handful of "guys with Jewish names" contacted you in solidarity? A dozen? Fifty? For every Israel Shamir, there is -- what? A thousand, ten thousand "Jews"? -- condemning you. I'm also sorry to disappoint you, but Sigmund Freud is part of the "Jewish supremacy" paradigm too. No question. It is another expression of the authoritarian Thought Police. That's discussed at length at WVR.

SHAMIR: When speaking at an event last year on the subject of "Washington as Israel's Most Important Occupied Territory," I began my speech by describing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as "funny papers" compared to the reality not only in Washington but in most of the cities of the United States including San Francisco and Berkeley where I was speaking. Most people who refer to the Protocols have not read them - and I am convinced, given the times and language in which they are written and the terms used, that it is indeed, a forgery, but a forgery that, ironically, presaged what we see today in the US and to a lesser extent in other Western countries, albeit today's version is much more sophisticated and solidly based in reality.

RESPONSE: My understanding is that the supposed source of the Protocols was a French novel. I can't read French. Scholarly convention declares the Protocols to be a forgery. All materials I've read about the Protocols were written by Jews. The more relevant issue for me is the sociopolitical context in which this notorious text surfaced in Russia, with Jewish American capitalists like Jacob Schiff attempting (successfully) to overthrow the Tsar, etc. and the looming communist revolution -- of which Jews played such an important part). The point should be to understand the social-political origin of the Protocols, in all respects, towards understanding why they were given such credibility by those upset with Jewish power.

SHAMIR: In short, life imitating bad art. And no sector of our society is immune. There are hundreds of similar letters written by people who explicitly reject any claim of organised Jewry on their soul. That is why I believe in possibility to undo the Jewish hegemony in full partnership with 'Jews'.

RESPONSE: The problem, as you surely must recognize, is the implicit subtext to your argument: To loosely paraphrase: "Jews created the problem. No, per Michael Neumann, they did not actually create the problem. Gentiles let them create the problem. And Jews will be instrumental in liberating Gentiles from Jewry, after oppressing them." Herein lies the age-old problem: the incessant Jewish "mission" to the world, killing for communism, killing for Zionism, or simply being so central in the development of oppressive capitalism. Whatever. Jews everywhere rush to clutch the steering wheel, as Republicans, Democrats, Communists, post-communist Russian money moguls, and everything else -- heading the boat north, then heading the boat south, then heading it in circles till it (in your view) backtracks and picks back up a few folks that were tossed overboard."

It's suffocating. Do you understand that? If we soon have a Jewish president (Lieberman), a Jewish pope (Lustiger), and even if George Bush is a "Jew" in your eyes, why does anyone need a few more Jews to seize control to show the way out of this mess? This is the historic problem. Fair share is not domination. Assimilation is not seizing control. As you surely know, the Jewish "partnership" in so many realms has typically led to co-optation to Judeocentric interests, even in marriage (see below). Is all of life merely a "Jewish" merry-go-round in your eyes? This omnipresence -- in all spheres -- is part of the troubles of history. "Partnership" is one thing. Co-optation and subversion -- which is more typically Jewish history, from the American civil rights movement to the communist revolution -- is another. These are the realms that need public discussion. Jews are entitled to their fair share of influence. Beyond that, there will always be problems. Sooner or later.

SHAMIR: Again, it is not an ethnic divide: goys Black or Murdoch are as pro-Jewry as Zuckerman. You write: "The key to Black joining the powerful "tribe" of course, in any sense, rests upon his Jewish connections -- in this case his wife, Barbara Amiel." I think this is an error of judgement. Black is not a weakling managed by his wife. A lot of people have Jewish wives (or Jewish husbands). It means nothing.

RESPONSE: Oh, Jewish wives and husbands mean a great deal. Most are influences towards a spouse's Holocaust martyrological sensitivity training (at the very least) and -- by association -- defense of the Jewish collective and its victimology tradition. There are many Jews who subscribe to this and "being Jewish" becomes a form of defiance ("I can't give up my Jewish heritage after all we've been through over the centuries," etc.), even in partnership with a non-Jew. How many people of Jewish heritage out there are writing that "being Jewish" is the wrong direction?

SHAMIR: Probably every family in the US elite has a member of Jewish origin (probably your family as well). It is quite normal way of assimilating minorities. In such a way, other successful and powerful minorities were integrated and dismantled in the course of human history. The Jewish leadership hopes to perpetuate its control over these descendents of Jews, but Jews can be assimilated and dejewified like everybody else, if America is alive. That is the challenge for America: to dejewify Jews before Jews will jewify them.

RESPONSE: The further we go back in history, the more all are interrelated. That's not news. But there are cutoff dates that separate people (per, for example, the birth of Jewish self-conception). But I point out to you that even Benjamin Netanyahu was married to a woman whose mother wasn't Jewish and Max Nordeau, one of the early Zionist pioneers, was married to a Christian. Herzl, Weizmann, and Ben Gurion all had children who married non-Jews. So? Does this evidence cultural and ideological homogeneity: a blending?

Calvin Goldscheider notes that "usually the Jewish partner remains attached to the Jewish community and in many cases the partner not born Jewish becomes attached to the Jewish community through friends, family, neighbors, organizations, secular and religious. Most of the friends of the intermarried are Jewish; most support the state of Israel; most identify themselves as Jews." [GOLDSCHEIDER, p. 139] "In my experience," says social worker Edwin Freedman, "it is far more likely that when Jews and non-Jews marry it will generally be the non-Jewish partner who is influenced away from his or her origins. When the focus is confined to those marriages in which the Jewish partner is female, then I have to add that I have almost never seen such a union where the non-Jewish male will be the less adaptive partner in family matters." [FREEDLAND, E., 1982, p. 503]

Jewish identity is quite complex, and innately contradictory. As you well know.