    Interesting and daring essay by an Israeli English-language writer Yael
    Lotan contradicts the well-meaning (but meaningless) mantra of 'Judaism
    is not Zionism'. Yael was the editor of Arts in the socialist zionist
    newspaper Al Hamishmar I had a pleasure to write for, years ago. She
    lived for a long time in Jamaica, and now lives in Tel Aviv.

    ZIONISM - THE CONTINUATION OF JUDAISM BY OTHER MEANS

    by Yael Lotan

    Anyone who wishes to discuss the phenomenon of Zionism immediately runs
    into the problem of how to define it. Unlike the European colonization
    of the Americas, for example, or the British domination of Kenya or
    India, the Jewish settlement in Palestine has been given various and
    contradictory definitions. The two commonest, and conflicting,
    definitions are: 1. "Zionism is the national liberation movement of the
    Jewish people;" 2. "Zionism is one of the manifestations of European
    colonialism in the 20th century." I shall return to these definitions,
    their sources and limitations.

    I propose to show that Zionism is an essentially Jewish phenomenon, and
    cannot be separated from Judaism (in the religious-historical sense of
    the term), and therefore its resemblance to either national liberation
    or colonialist movements is morphological rather than taxonomic, and
    leaves various aspects of Zionism unexplained.

    What is Judaism?

    A prayer called Hamavdil (the Separator), said by observant Jews every
    Saturday evening as the Sabbath ends, praises God who "separates the
    sacred from the profane". Judaism is dominated by the idea of
    separation. What are the origins and rationale of this striking
    characteristic? - This question ought to be tackled with the tools of
    anthropology, psychology, history and sociology. There must be various
    reasons why Judaism has not been investigated with these tools, and why
    the few scholars who attempted to analyze the nature of Judaism tended
    to produce apologetics. One reason may be that some of the fathers of
    modern anthropology were themselves Jews (e.g., Franz Boas and Claude
    Levi-Strauss), and were unwilling or unable to tackle their ancestral
    culture with the same tools with which they tackled exotic ones. But
    then, neither did non-Jewish scholars apply to the religion which gave
    birth to Christianity the same analytical methods they applied
    unhesitatingly to alien cultures and religions. A rare and illuminating
    exception may be found in Mary Douglas' famous book Purity and Danger,
    in which she discusses the purity laws in the Book of Leviticus, placing
    them in a broad anthropological context.

    But this is a rare study, and it deals only with the primeval phase of
    Judaism. It can no more cover the subject of latter-day Judaism than a
    discussion of the early days of the American republic can cover the
    subject of the US today. It is time that someone applied the usual
    anthropological methods to the Shulhan Arukh - the all-embracing
    rule-book for observant Jews - in comparison with other old cultures,
    from the Hindu Brahmins to Papuan tribes. But even without all these, it
    is possible to outline some of the main features of Judaism.

    1. The Old Testament defines the Yahwist deity in terms of what he is
    not: Jehovah is not the god of other tribes; He does not share his
    dominion over his chosen tribe with any other deity; Being a deity of
    the upper air, the wind and the surface of the earth, he has no dealings
    with what lies under the earth, namely, the world of the dead and the
    chthonic powers - which accounts for such biblical assertions as "The
    dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence," and
    for the injunctions against the consumption of blood and necromancy;
    Jehovah requires from his followers to adopt signs to distinguish them
    from other people, e.g., circumcision, and the prohibition of work or
    lighting a fire one day a week. The Bible also lay down rules of
    separation between different kinds of field crops, a ban on yoking
    together an ass and an ox, on weaving fabrics with mixed animal and
    vegetable fibres, etc. In the course of time Judaism added more and more
    ritual separations, until it became totally dominated and obsessed by
    the business of keeping various categories of things apart - the pure
    and the impure, the sacred and the profane, kasher and taref (ritually
    clean and unclean meats), meat and dairy products, leavened and
    unleavened dough (during Passover), silk and cotton, men and women,
    adults and minors, and so on.

    2. Judaism as we know it began to evolve in the time of the Second
    Temple, i.e., the fifth century BC. Thereafter, the principal
    separation, namely, between Jews and "Gentiles", became entrenched, as
    the religious leaders Ezra and Nehemiah forbade inter-marriage between
    Jews and other people. Even the Samaritans, who were their brothers from
    the northern kingdom of Samaria, were rejected. Jews who adopted some of
    the ways of the world around them were reviled and shunned by the
    traditionalists (known in the New Testament as Pharisees). A Jew who
    assimilated culturally and socially with the Greeks and later with the
    Romans was regarded as an enemy. The Hellenistic civilization of the
    Mediterranean and the Middle East, which was largely extinguished by
    Christendom until the Renaissance, was utterly rejected by the Jews who
    remained faithful to their tribal religion. Christianity, with its
    ambivalent attitude towards Judaism, which gradually turned into vicious
    enmity, made the separation that much easier.

    (It is important to distinguish between earlier examples of Jewish
    hostility to strangers - e.g., the story of Moses' Ethiopian wife -
    which reflected ordinary xenophobia, and the later isolationism, which
    was anchored in religious law. The historical books of the Old Testament
    show that up until the time of the Second Temple there was constant
    inter-marriage between the Israelites and their neighbours.)

    3. After the fall of Judea and the destruction of the Temple, in the
    year 70 AD, separateness became the hallmark of Judaism. Some other
    nations circumcized their sons, or worshipped a single god, sometimes
    even an unseen god (according to Tacitus, so did some Germanic tribes),
    or prohibited the eating of pigs, but these features did not lead to a
    spiritual or social alliance with the Jews. In later times Islam adopted
    the main tenets of Judaism, but was nevertheless rejected. The biblical
    verse "The people shall dwell alone and shall not be reckoned among the
    nations" became the motto of the Jews. Judaism adopted the Roman
    principle of descent through the female, since mater semper certa est -
    the mother is always known - and with it the notion that Jews are not
    only set apart by their religion, but are actually made of a different,
    purer, substance, which must not be defiled by mixed marriage. In a
    curious way, the religion and its rituals became almost secondary,
    because "A Jew, even if he transgresses, remains a Jew" - meaning, that
    even if he ate pork or lit a fire on the Sabbath, he was still a member
    of the chosen people, and could always return to the fold. On the other
    hand, a Gentile can be circumcized and observe all the numerous rules,
    yet he remains a goy, and every effort is made to discourage goyim from
    trying to convert to Judaism. Thus Judaism does not really claim to be a
    universal religion, like Christianity and Islam, otherwise it would have
    sought to convert everyone. This is the great paradox: that the
    universal deity the Jews believe in is not interested in the rest of the
    human race, and maintains a separate arrangement with a particular
    tribe.

    4. The Hebrew word Yahadut, which denotes both Judaism and Jewry,
    demonstrates that there is no difference between the faith and the
    people. The familiar Jewish saying that "It is not Israel who kept the
    Sabbath, but the Sabbath that kept Israel", is perfectly true. The
    religion, with its endless prohibitions and rules of ritual purity,
    preserved the distinctive identity of its adherents. That was its
    function. At the same time, it held out an eschatological vision
    according to which at the End of Days the entire world will acknowledge
    the supremacy of Jehovah and recognize Jerusalem as his abode and the
    Jews as his priests - "a kingdom of priests and an holy nation." It does
    not suggest that all men will become Jews! The separation is therefore a
    cosmic phenomenon, and will continue even in the afterworld. In this it
    differs from the Brahmin caste - which resembles Jewry in having strict
    laws of purity and separation - since in the Hindu religion the
    individual"s caste-identity applies only to a single incarnation, and
    does not have a cosmic status.

    Modern Times and the Enlightenment

    In the 19th century the impact of the Enlightenment began to undermine
    Jewish isolationism. In Europe, where the majority of Jews lived,
    religious observance was visibly weakening and assimilation was
    increasing. As the surrounding society grew more secular and open,
    abandoning the identification of individuals by their religion, more and
    more Jews came to feel uncomfortable in their isolation. But for the
    violent crises which rocked European societies during that period, it is
    possible that most Jews would have assimilated, leaving only a few small
    Orthodox communities to cling to their traditional way of life. But the
    upheavals in Europe in the late 19th century exposed all the ethnic and
    religious minorities to existential dangers, and Jews were traditional
    targets of popular discontent and frustration. At this time, antisemism,
    whose origins were religious and whose roots went back to the Crusades,
    took on a secularized and racist quality. It has been argued that Jewish
    separateness provoked antisemitism, or at least exacerbated it. Even if
    so, it may not matter any longer. What is certain, however, is that the
    violent outbreaks of European antisemitism stimulated the mass
    emigration of Jews to America and other distant lands.

    At the start of the 20th century, when assimilation was spreading from
    Western Europe to the more tradition-bound Jewish communities in Central
    and even Eastern Europe, there were three options for the preservation
    of Jewish identity. The first was the time-honoured Orthodox way -
    namely, the strict observance of the ritual laws, which amounted to a
    physical barrier to assimilation, since you cannot assimilate among
    people with whom you cannot share a meal or a drink, or pass your
    leisure time, let alone marry them. The second option was to preserve
    Jewish identity by means of "cultural autonomy", as promoted by the
    Yiddishist movement known as the Bund - namely, by encouraging the
    distinctive Jewish culture in Yiddish language and literature, in music
    and various traditions. This popular movement could join the progressive
    current, support radical ideologies, and even adopt an anti-religious
    stance, for if there was a distinctive Jewish culture, it could help
    preserve their separate identity, even if the walls it built around them
    were not as impregnable as those of Orthodoxy. Finally, there was the
    territorial option - namely, Zionism.

    Territorial Separation

    What Zionism offered was a way of maintaining Jewish separateness in the
    most natural way: by a physical separation from the rest of mankind. In
    a Jewish State it would be possible to preserve the tribe without having
    constantly to resist assimilation. Moreover, it would be possible to
    achieve a "normalization" of the Jewish people - while living apart, it
    would be "a nation among nations", and like the others it would consist
    of different classes - workers and capitalists, religious and secular
    people - who would all be Jews. Furthermore, if masses of Jews gathered
    from all over the world to live in one place, their existence would be
    more secure than as minority communities in alien and sometimes hostile
    societies. But for this plan to succeed it had to be located in a place
    which would not only be empty of "Gentiles", but would also have
    specific Jewish associations - namely, the "Land of Israel" (the
    traditional Jewish name for Palestine). All attempts to create a
    territorial solution in another location - e.g., in the Argentine
    pampas, in Uganda or Birobidjan - were not Jewish solutions and remained
    ideologically and numerically insignificant.

    During the first third of the century the Zionist option did not enjoy
    much success. The Orthodox option was still well entrenched, and
    progressive Jews were more attracted by the cultural, quasi-secular,
    option of the Bund. The rest were people who were not averse to
    assimilation, who regarded Judaism as a burden which any sensible person
    would prefer to drop. There is no doubt that but for the rise of Nazism
    and its consequences, Zionism would not have become in the latter half
    of the century the success story that it is.

    Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the two definitions of
    Zionism quoted at the beginning of this article have been prevalent, not
    only in Israel but wherever the subject is raised. Secular Jews describe
    Zionism as one of the national liberation movements which arose around
    the turn of the century, and therefore define every Jewish community the
    world over as part of the Jewish People, or the Jewish Nation; we shall
    come back to the problems of this definition. Jews and non-Jews of
    Marxist background usually describe Zionism as a colonial manifestation,
    but this definition is not quite satisfactory either, as we shall see.

    Zionism as a Movement of National Liberation

    Zionism, then, offered to solve the problem of Jewish separateness by
    territorial means. Unfortunately for it, it turned out that the
    autochthonous inhabitants of Palestine, which the Zionist leadership had
    described as a handful of Ishmaelite nomads who could be ignored or
    driven out, were in fact a nation. Ben Gurion recalled how, when he
    disembarked at the port of Jaffa in 1906, he looked around him and grew
    alarmed: "What are all these Arabs doing in my country?" - Did not
    Zionism promise to spare the Jews from having to build walls of
    separation?! This was the start of the Middle East conflict. And not
    only the conflict between Jews and Arabs. In the first decade of the
    century Zionist leaders bemoaned the fact that Jewish agriculturists in
    Palestine were employing "Ishmaelite men and women" in their orchards
    and homes. What was the point of immigrating to the Land of Israel, they
    said, if there too they had to mingle with goyim, and "Gentile" women
    worked in their kitchens and looked after their children? The solution
    proposed was to bring Jews from the Yemen - known from their communities
    in Jerusalem as deeply religious - and employ them instead of Arabs in
    the orchards and houses. This was in fact done in 1906 - the settlement
    called Sha'arayim was created near Rehovot, and populated with a Jewish
    community imported especially from Yemen. However, where the Ashkenazi
    families in Rehovot had received four acres each, the Yemenites received
    only one acre per family, thus ensuring that they would be unable to
    support their families by agriculture, and would have to go to work for
    their Ashkenazi neighbours.

    But the definition of Jews as a nation is extraordinarily problematic.
    It"s perfectly obvious that the only common denominator between European
    and Yemenite Jews, or between, say, a Jew from Cochin and a Jew from
    Romania, is religion. (It is true that after two or three generations of
    living together in Israel something resembling an Israeli nation has
    come into being, just as an American nation and an Australian nation
    emerged in their time. However, the periodic flooding of Israel with
    masses of new immigrants hinders the crystallization of an Israeli
    nation; but this lies outside the present discussion.) And indeed, in
    Israel, after a century of local history, religion remains the framework
    of society. Israel cannot cease to be a "Jewish State", or a "State of
    the Jews". An editorial in the secular Israeli daily Haaretz expressed
    it thus: "The State was established to provide a national home for the
    Jewish people, and so it remains on the threshold of the 21st century.
    The Jewish people is a unique ethnic-national entity, combining religion
    and nationality... The rules governing the political scene in Israel are
    derived from the axiom that this is a Jewish State... This position is
    anchored in Supreme Court rulings and in the laws concerning the
    Knesset, which determine that "a party may not compete in the general
    elections for the Knesset if its aims or its acts oppose, openly or
    implicitly, the existence of the State of Israel as the state of the
    Jewish people" (12 February 1996). The formula "The Jewish people is a
    unique ethnic-national entity, combining religion and nationality,"
    rests on premises which cannot be rationally sustained. What kind of
    "ethnic entity" can contain both Russian and Iraqi Jews? Can the term
    "nationality" do so? - Clearly not. The one and only common denominator
    is the religion, and with it the tradition, or myth, of a shared origin
    thousands of years ago. Where religion fails, Zionism sustains the myth
    of ethnic continuity by various other means - archaeology, the swearing
    of soldiers in Massada or at the Wailing Wall, and so on.

    Zionism as a European Colonial Movement

    People with a Marxist background apply to Zionism the terms they regard
    as universal, i.e., those of materialism, economics and class. And
    indeed, Zionist history as a whole resembles that of European
    colonialism. The early Zionist leadership was predominantly bourgeois
    European, and had strong links with the bourgeois European governments
    of the time. Moreover, it enjoyed the crucial support of powerful
    capitalist elements, such as the Baron Rothschild and others. Looking at
    the history of Zionism, from the imperialist "Balfour Declaration" of
    1917 to the present Western support for aggressive Israel, it is easy to
    draw parallels between it and, say, the French colonization of Algeria
    or Indochina. All the same, it is a different story. Between the 1920s
    and 1940s there was a popular Zionist slogan that often drew fire from
    the progressive wing: it was a call for "Hebrew Labour" - i.e., "Employ
    Jews, not Arabs!" But though it expressed indifference to the needs of
    the Arab labour force, it could not be defined as racism in the usual
    sense of the term, for we have seen that Yemenite Jewish labourers, who
    were not "European", and did not differ "racially" or culturally from
    their Moslem neighbours in Yemen, were actually imported to replace
    local Arab labourers. (The Jewish credentials of the Yemenite community
    were never in doubt. On the contrary - rabbis, cantors and radio
    announcers of Yemenite background were highly prized for their vast
    knowledge of Hebrew and its heritage.) But if not racism, what did the
    call for "Hebrew labour" signify? - Quite simply, the traditional Jewish
    separation from the goyim, an application of the same principles Jews
    have lived by throughout the world for centuries.

    By contrast, the European colonists in the Americas, Africa and Asia
    were attracted by the availability of a cheap labour force. People
    migrated from Europe to various parts of the world in order to enrich
    themselves by exploiting the natural resources of those countries by
    means of the local labour force. The Zionist settlement in Palestine
    from the late 19th to the mid-20th century was a different enterprise.
    Before World War II, most of the Zionist settlers came to Palestine of
    their own will, not so much driven by circumstances as impelled by
    ideological fervour, often leaving behind them far better conditions
    than those they encountered in the "Promised Land". Those Jews who
    wished to better their condition materially emigrated to the Americas,
    to Australia and South Africa. As for the money that Jewish capitalists
    invested in the Zionist settlement - this was characteristic Jewish
    philanthropy (i.e., dedicated to Jewish causes), enlivened with sympathy
    for the new ideology. When these capitalists looked for profits, they
    invested in far more promising enterprises than the Jewish settlement in
    Palestine; (though they probably did hope that eventually there would be
    a self-supporting Jewish community in Palestine, that might in the
    fullness of time even become profitable.)

    It is hardly surprising that the Zionist movement conducted itself in
    some ways like other European colonial movements, since the political
    thinking of its central leadership stemmed from the European worldview
    of its time. Even when these leaders proclaimed progressive views, they
    continued to identify with Western colonialism. (We must not forget that
    in those days even progressive people in the West believed in the
    superiority of European civilization.) Certainly, as far as the Zionists
    could see, colonialism was the only viable scenario, and all other
    strategies must have seemed totally unrealistic. Zionism rode on the
    skirts of European imperialism, and cooperated with it in order to win
    its support. When Britain was the dominant power in the Middle East,
    Zionism collaborated with it. Nowadays, when the dominant power is the
    United States, Israel serves American interests because they serve her
    own. Yet the aim of Zionism has been to serve not the interests of
    Britain or the United States, but the age-old Jewish goal of a separate
    existence.

    Israeli Zionism

    It is natural that the Zionist movement could contain various currents,
    because they all flowed to the same destination - namely, a Jewish
    state, in which separateness would be automatic. (Today even secular
    Zionists are capable of describing the process of Jewish assimilation
    and inter-marriage in the Western world as "a demographic Holocaust"!)
    Many people believe that in a few generations the only Jews in the
    world, other than a handful of ultra-Orthodox communities who maintain
    their identity in the old, well-tried way, will be the citizens of the
    Jewish State. The rest will assimilate and disappear among the
    "Gentiles". That is why Zionism remains the common programme of nearly
    all of the political parties in Israel, from Moledet on the extreme
    Right to Meretz on the Left. Its principal tenet is that there must be a
    separate Jewish political entity, and the only question left is by what
    means this may be achieved. Right-wingers believe that it is possible to
    suppress and perhaps expel the non-Jews living in Palestine, either
    gradually by driving them to emigrate, or by more violent means; at the
    very least they seek to confine the Palestinians to some scattered,
    closed, supervised reservations. At the other end of the scale, the most
    committed members of the peace camp voice a preference for a very small
    Israel, within the pre-1967 borders or even smaller, provided it is "all
    ours" - meaning, without any Arabs, or only a tiny minority as a
    testimony to Israeli democracy. In this they closely resemble the white
    Afrikaner movement in South Africa, which, since the fall of Apartheid,
    has been clamouring for a separate white state in Natal Province.

    The realization that Zionism is a continuation of Judaism by other means
    helps to explain how it can resemble European colonialism and at the
    same time differ from it in important ways, and also resemble national
    liberation movements in some aspects and be quite unlike them in others.
    The Holocaust provided Jewish isolationism with a retroactive, if
    paranoid, vindication, and is therefore never absent from Zionist
    propaganda and apologetics. (I say "paranoid", because there is no
    reason to regard the Nazi extermination policy as an ongoing threat, any
    more than African-Americans are threatened with a return to slavery.)
    And, as stated before, today there is little point in arguing whether or
    not Jewish separateness itself provoked antisemitism. Even if it did,
    then - as in cases of rape - the victim is not to be blamed.

    Today it is difficult to digest the paradoxes of the Israeli situation
    unless one considers the aim of Zionism. It is difficult to understand
    why in South Africa the reverse process is taking place - from Apartheid
    to unification, despite all the problems and obstacles - whereas in
    Israel even the popular peace-camp slogan, "Two States for Two Nations",
    whose motives are ostensibly enlightened, strives towards the same goal
    as the Orthodoxy. There is, of course, a basic difference between the
    two main Zionist camps, but it may be illustrated by the following
    metaphor: the hawkish Right wants Israel to remain a thorn in the flesh
    of the Middle East, and prefers a state of hostility over a peaceable
    solution, whereas the dovish Left seeks to heal the inflamed wound and
    turn Israel into a kind of implant in the Middle East, something like a
    cardiac pacemaker or plastic hip-replacement - an essentially benign,
    non-infective foreign body.

    There is no point in giving good and bad marks to history. The question
    is not whether the aim of separateness is good or bad, but what it
    signifies and where it must lead. Because the supra-national empires of
    Europe fell apart in the early years of this century, people often speak
    of our time as being the "era of the nation state"; but in reality we
    are living in an era of non-nation states. The dominant power in the
    world today, the United States of America, is not a nation state, nor is
    there such a state anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, from pole to
    pole. Similarly, Australia, Great Britain, India, China, Russia and
    Indonesia, are not nation states, and the same holds true for most of
    the African states. As time goes on, there are fewer and fewer countries
    whose inhabitants predominantly belong to a single ethnic-cultural
    group. The mass migrations of the past century have greatly eroded the
    national pattern, which was never as static as some people imagine.

    In reality Zionism, though based on the concept of a "Jewish nation",
    gave birth to a state based on religion, while at the same time trying
    to maintain a modern, quasi-secular, quasi-democratic guise. Yet though
    there are today some vigorous theocracies and semi-theocracies - chiefly
    in the Moslem world - they do have ethnic-cultural foundations to
    sustain them, which cannot be said about Israel, as any visitor soon
    perceives. People who believe that it will be possible in future to
    maintain a "Jewish State" in Israel are deluding themselves. Not only
    the Palestinian Arabs, but all of human reality will prevent this dream
    from materializing. The question remains, how dearly will the
    inhabitants of this land still have to pay before a solution is found.

    ------------------------------------------------------------

    The essay "ZIONISM - THE CONTINUATION OF JUDAISM BY OTHER MEANS by Yael
    Lotan caused a few responses, including my own. Our readers found weak
    points in the otherwise excellent essay. :

    From Ken Freeland, Texas

      Dear Yael,

      Thank you very much for your effort to apply anthopological analysis to
      the problem of Zionism. I peronally have benefited very much from the
      insight you have offered about the importance of the concept of
      "separation" as it relates to the political efforts of the various
      Zionist factions, as well as from the contradistinction you draw between
      Zionism and both national liberation and colonial efforts. I find your
      presentation on the whole very cogent.

      There are a couple of comments you make in passing, however, that I find
      somewhat disturbing, or at least off-putting. In any case, this
      editorializing seems to me to detract from the scientific tenor of the
      rest of your piece:

      1) "It has been argued that Jewish separateness provoked antisemitism,
      or at least exacerbated it. Even if so, it may not matter any longer. "

      2)". . .today there is little point in arguing whether or not Jewish
      separateness itself provoked antisemitism. Even if it did, then - as in
      cases of rape - the victim is not to be blamed."

      The question of the relationship between Jewish separatism and
      "antisemitism" cannot and should not be so easily dismissed. While it
      may not be fair to expect that your short essay would treat of the
      subject, I believe it is likewise unfair to opine so dismissively on the
      relevance of the question. Indeed, I personally consider this question
      to be at the heart of the "Jewish problem," of which Zionism is but a
      modern manifestation.

      I consider the analogy to the rape victim far-fetched, and therefore
      posit a more appropriate comparison: anthropologists should not be
      comparing apples to oranges, but apples to apples. Let us then consider
      an example of another social group which has separated itself from the
      mainstream to see whether it has succeeded or whether it too has met
      with an antagonistic social response equivalent to "antisemitism." Let's
      look at the Amish:

      The Amish are certainly a "peculiar people." Like the Hassidim, they
      wear anachronistic clothing and exist, de facto, as a people apart.
      Their separation is based on a common religious belief. Thus much for
      similarities. Two differences are to be noted: the Amish do not assert
      any supremacy over others. Naturally, they consider their spiritual
      pathway to be morally advanced, but they do not regard themselves as in
      any way inherently superior to others, and they inculcate the Christian
      values of humility and, oh yes, another vital distinction --
      nonresistance (referred to in the vernacular as nonviolence). The most
      definitely do not look forward to a day when they shall rule the world
      and other nations will pay them tribute, etc. The other difference of
      note is in the sphere of economic activity. While Jews have
      traditionally used their isolation as a kind of base for what were
      regarded as exploitive relationships to the surrounding goy community,
      focusing almost entirely on endeavors such as usurious money-lending,
      the legal profession, political intrigues, insurance, mercantile
      investment, tax farming and various other speculative and
      finance-related activity, the Amish are unexceptionably farmers whose
      natural methods make the quality of their product highly valued (almost
      eponymous), and who therefore, arguable, contribute much of positive
      value to the surrounding community, though they do not consider
      themselves part of its political structure, and are careful to see the
      well-being of their own, so as not to become wards or dependents of the
      State. It would be wrong to paint too idyllic a picture of Amish life --
      there have been some controversies connected with certain Amish
      communities, and there have been individual members of Amish communities
      who have had brushes with members of the surrounding community. But on
      the whole, the surrounding communities are accepting of the Amish,
      recognize the positive value they contribute, and nothing analogous to
      antisemitism can be said to infest the general regard for this people
      apart. Whereas, given the traditional role of Jews in serving as
      middle-men between the landed nobility and the common people, and the
      characterization of their professions as essentially parasitic (Marx
      preferred "unproductive"), antisemitism served to express the
      resentiment that festered among those who considered themselves
      victimized by this separated (but relatively privileged) segment of
      society.

      Clearly, then, it is not separation itself or the peculiarity of the
      separated that incurs the animus of the surrounding community, but much
      more simply and common-sensically, it is how such separation is used by
      the separated group in order to determine its attitude towards and
      interaction with that larger community, that determines the response of
      the latter. While it may not be fair to draw major conclusions from a
      single counter-example, there are other intentional communities that
      could be adduced to make the case. The Amish are more salient and better
      known, so have been used to illustrate the point.

      I would be interested in your response to this constructive criticism.

      Respectfully,

      Ken Freeland

    ---------------------

    From Yousef Salem:

      A clearer definition of zionism is "If it is good for the Jews, then
      screw everyone else". That mentality, in my opinion, makes zionism a far
      worse threat to the continuation of world peace and security, and if
      allowed to advance it will inevitably usher in a larger wave of hatred
      for Jews that may result in catastrophic physical disater to Jews
      worldwide. It is a more dangerous ideology than communism, fascism, or
      perhaps even nazism. The world populace is slowly becoming quite weary
      of the increasing level of zionist Jewish control, manipulation,
      intimation, threats, and whining demands without regard or concern for
      its effect on others. Last year the EU declared that among the five
      nations that impose the greatest threat to world freedom and security,
      so-called israel is the Number One threat, and a French official openly
      declared that it would be a shame if the world entered into WWIII, in
      effect, over a "shitty little country like israel". The quote is very
      close to his words.

    ---------------------------------

    After I forwarded Ken's and Yousef's response, Yael wrote to me:

      Your political views are not mine, indeed I find many of them
      highly distasteful, not to say dangerous, and I do not wish to be
      associated with your website. I criticise Israel and I criticise
      the Jewish leadership in the West for supporting it blindly, and I'm
      concerned that the result could be a bad anti-Semitic backlash,
      especially in America. Such an outcome may please you - it worries and
      frightens me.

    I replied to Yael:

      I am worried and frightened by what happens with Palestine, Iraq, Middle
      East and its peoples. You are worried about it, but only as long as it
      does not threaten your side. Objectively, you are just providing alibi
      for the Jews. You do not want to win; you want to beweep the losing
      Palestinians. I want to win this war; and the fate of Wolfowitz and
      Foxman does not cause me insomnia, while the fate of Gaza and Baghdad
      does. "The Jews" (led by the Jewish leadership) are a side in the war,
      and I am on the other side.

    ---------------------------------------------------------

    Actually, even mainstream Jews became aware of their religious problem:

      It Is Time to Confront the Exclusionary Ethnocentrism in Jewish Sacred Literature

      by Allan C. Brownfeld
      Issue / Winter 2000

      http://www.acjna.org/article_view.asp?article_id=34