forward by Joh Domingo Mahathir's speech to the OIC has been quite revealing. While he has been excoriated in the Western Press by every "spokesman" that wants to remain one, the reaction in the "unfree" world has been the opposite. Few Asian Leaders have bought the Zionists line and the only "Asian" leader to denounce him has been Australia's Prime Minister, John Howard. Colin Powell, after reading the full text has conceded that it makes very good arguments and reading the full text gives his speech an entirely different complexion. Like many people in Asia, Mahathir has had very little interaction with Jews. His baptism came when George Soros tried to play monopoly with his currency. He swiftly learnt a great deal; enough to protect Malaysia from being scoured by a "free" market. He placed his currency under tight controls. Those that were most affected by it, the Chinese community in Malaysia and the Diaspora, were heartened and gave him more than a little support. They were happy to undergo a little inconvenience, as they were well aware of the losses they had to endure during the Asian meltdown. Many Korean and Thai industries had become Jewish owned in the fallout of the Asian Crisis. They did not hate Jews, they simply liked their money more. The Jews of Asia are more circumspect, and have perfected the art of diplomacy over 10,000 years. They long ago learnt that you do not shit in your own nest. As a result, they have always had a policy of sustaining the societies they live in. Even going so far as to concede that their hegemony bestows on them an unfair advantage and submitting to handicaps in order to provide their host country a platform on which to achieve parity. I have learnt this in discussion with Singaporean and Malaysian Chinese when I questioned them about accepting discriminatory laws in Malaysia that prohibits Chinese ownership of Malaysian industry. They are limited to 49% and must have an indigenous partner. They explained that if this was not the case, they would control everything in Malaysia and it would endanger them as a people. This way, they are forced to make the pie bigger. As a result, the Malaysian economy is the envy of the East and is the 27th most industrialized country in the World. The idea that one group can dominate another in an Asian context is disastrous. Even the dominant recognize this. The Jews of the West would do well to take a few pointers from the Jews of the East. Mahathir's social experiment in Malaysia is not a complex one. He exhorts his people to be positive and apply themselves. He provides them with a few incentives. They do the rest by osmosis. His people are free, and freely submit themselves to his rule. He is voluntarily stepping down and has resisted any urge to create a dynasty. The law is universal and applicable to everyone. What more can anyone in the West want? The answer, is that they want Malaysia to disassociate themselves form the rest of the Muslim world. They don't want a beacon to rally Islamic people. They don't want a positive role model for Muslim countries. Hence the beat up. Mahathir does not have views about Jews that Muslim's in general do not have. A poll after the fracas found that 96% of Muslim's share his views. If there is a problem, it is not anti-Semitism, but a perspective that Muslim's have of Jewish hegemony and the consistent rabble rousing that Jews engage in. The result is that Muslim's are constantly being bombed in country after country. Is it that surprising that Mahathir and Muslim's in general see Jews as the enemy? If Jews don't like these characterizations, then they should work to change the perception with words and deeds. They cannot pretend a convenient outrage while continuing their Jihad against Islam. Just a reminder, Jews do not face any danger in speaking out against this mini-holocaust being perpetrated against the Palestinians by Jews. Quite unlike the brave and selfless Polish, Ukrainian and Catholic people that who assisted Jews during the Holocaust. They always found themselves in the ovens alongside Jews when they were caught. Mahathir's Speech:
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[JTR note: The Judeocentric Western world (i.e., media and governments, so profoundly influenced by activist Zionism) has condemned this speech by Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad because of his comments highlighted in red. The rest of the speech is ignored. Mohamad is an educated man. His observations about Jewish power are accurate. Vehement Western protest of ONLY the comments below about Jews underscore (as Mohamad himself has since underscored) how profoundly the West is subservient to the Jewish Lobby's defensive ideological beckoning.] PM's Opening Speech At The OIC Summit: Muslim nations must close ranks Speech by [Malaysian] Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad at the opening of the 10th session of the Islamic Summit Conference at the Putrajaya Convention Centre. ALHAMDULILLAH, All Praise be to Allah, by whose Grace and Blessings we, the leaders of the Organisation of Islamic Conference countries are gathered here today to confer and hopefully to plot a course for the future of Islam and the Muslim ummah worldwide. On behalf of the Government and the people of many races and religions of Malaysia, may I extend a warm welcome to all and everyone to this Tenth Session of the Islamic Summit Conference in Putrajaya, Malaysia's administrative capital. It is indeed a great honour for Malaysia to host this session and to assume the chairmanship of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC). I thank the members for their confidence in Malaysia's chairmanship. May I also take this opportunity to pay a special tribute to the state of Qatar, in particular His Highness Shaikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani, the Emir of the state of Qatar, for his outstanding stewardship of our organisation over the past three years. As host, Malaysia is gratified at the high level of participation from member countries. This clearly demonstrates our continued and abiding faith in, and commitment to our organisation and our collective wish and determination to strengthen our role for the dignity and benefit of the ummah. I would also like to welcome the leaders and representatives of the many countries who wish to become observers at this meeting because of their substantial Muslim population. Whether they are Muslims or not, their presence at this meeting will help towards greater understanding of Islam and the Muslims, thus helping to disprove the perception of Islam as a religion of backwardness and terror. The whole world is looking at us. Certainly 1.3 billion Muslims, one-sixth of the world's population are placing their hopes in us, in this meeting, even though they may be cynical about our will and capacity to even decide to restore the honour of Islam and the Muslims, much less to free their brothers and sisters from the oppression and humiliation from which they suffer today. I will not enumerate the instances of our humiliation and oppression, nor will I once again condemn our detractors and oppressors. It would be an exercise in futility because they are not going to change their attitudes just because we condemn them. If we are to recover our dignity and that of Islam, our religion, it is we who must decide, it is we who must act. To begin with, the Governments of all the Muslim countries can close ranks and have a common stand if not on all issues, at least on some major ones, such as on Palestine. We are all Muslims. We are all oppressed. We are all being humiliated. But we who have been raised by Allah above our fellow Muslims to rule our countries have never really tried to act in concert in order to exhibit at our level the brotherhood and unity that Islam enjoins upon us. But not only are our Governments divided, the Muslim ummah is also divided, and divided again and again. Over the last 1,400 years the interpreters of Islam, the learned ones, the ulama have interpreted and reinterpreted the single Islamic religion brought by Prophet Muhammad S.A.W, so differently that now we have a thousand religions which are often so much at odds with one another that we often fight and kill each other. From being a single ummah we have allowed ourselves to be divided into numerous sects, mazhabs and tarikats, each more concerned with claiming to be the true Islam than our oneness as the Islamic ummah. We fail to notice that our detractors and enemies do not care whether we are true Muslims or not. To them we are all Muslims, followers of a religion and a Prophet whom they declare promotes terrorism, and we are all their sworn enemies. They will attack and kill us, invade our lands, bring down our Governments whether we are Sunnis or Syiahs, Alawait or Druze or whatever. And we aid and abet them by attacking and weakening each other, and sometimes by doing their bidding, acting as their proxies to attack fellow Muslims. We try to bring down our Governments through violence, succeeding to weaken and impoverish our countries. We ignore entirely and we continue to ignore the Islamic injunction to unite and to be brothers to each other, we the Governments of the Islamic countries and the ummah. But this is not all that we ignore about the teachings of Islam. We are enjoined to read, Iqraq i.e. to acquire knowledge. The early Muslims took this to mean translating and studying the works of the Greeks and other scholars before Islam. And these Muslim scholars added to the body of knowledge through their own studies. The early Muslims produced great mathematicians and scientists, scholars, physicians and astronomers, etc, and they excelled in all the fields of knowledge of their times, besides studying and practising their own religion of Islam. As a result the Muslims were able to develop and extract wealth from their lands and through their world trade, able to strengthen their defences, protect their people and give them the Islamic way of life, Addin, as prescribed by Islam. At the time the Europeans of the Middle Ages were still superstitious and backward, the enlightened Muslims had already built a great Muslim civilisation, respected and powerful, more than able to compete with the rest of the world and able to protect the ummah from foreign aggression. The Europeans had to kneel at the feet of Muslim scholars in order to access their own scholastic heritage. The Muslims were led by great leaders like Abdul Rahman III, AI-Mansur, Salah El Din Al Ayubi and others who took to the battlefields at the head of their forces to protect Muslim land and the ummah. But halfway through the building of the great Islamic civilisation came new interpreters of Islam who taught that acquisition of knowledge by Muslims meant only the study of Islamic theology. The study of science, medicine, etc, was discouraged. Intellectually, the Muslims began to regress. With intellectual regression the great Muslim civilisation began to falter and wither. But for the emergence of the Ottoman warriors, Muslim civilisation would have disappeared with the fall of Granada in 1492. The early successes of the Ottomans were not accompanied by an intellectual renaissance. Instead they became more and more preoccupied with minor issues such as whether tight trousers and peak caps were Islamic, whether printing machines should be allowed or electricity used to light mosques. The Industrial Revolution was totally missed by the Muslims. And the regression continued until the British and French instigated rebellion against Turkish rule brought about the downfall of the Ottomans, the last Muslim world power and replaced it with European colonies and not independent states as promised. It was only after World War II that these colonies became independent. Apart from the new nation-states we also accepted the Western democratic system. This also divided us because of the political parties and groups that we form, some of which claim Islam for themselves, reject the Islam of other parties and refuse to accept the results of the practice of democracy if they fail to gain power for themselves. They resort to violence, thus destabilising and weakening Muslim countries. With all these developments over the centuries the ummah and the Muslim civilisation became so weak that at one time there was not a single Muslim country which was not colonised or hegemonised by the Europeans. But regaining independence did not help to strengthen the Muslims. Their states were weak and badly administered, constantly in a state of turmoil. The Europeans could do what they liked with Muslim territories. It is not surprising that they should excise Muslim land to create the state of Israel to solve their Jewish problem. Divided, the Muslims could do nothing effective to stop the Balfour and Zionist transgression. Some would have us believe that, despite all these, our life is better than that of our detractors. Some believe that poverty is Islamic, sufferings and being oppressed are Islamic. This world is not for us. Ours are the joys of heaven in the afterlife. All that we have to do is to perform certain rituals, wear certain garments and put up a certain appearance. Our weakness, our backwardness and our inability to help our brothers and sisters who are being oppressed are part of the Will of Allah, the sufferings that we must endure before enjoying heaven in the hereafter. We must accept this fate that befalls us. We need not do anything. We can do nothing against the Will of Allah. But is it true that it is the Will of Allah and that we can and should do nothing? Allah has said in Surah Ar-Ra'd verse 11 that He will not change the fate of a community until the community has tried to change its fate itself. The early Muslims were as oppressed as we are presently. But after their sincere and determined efforts to help themselves in accordance with the teachings of Islam, Allah had helped them to defeat their enemies and to create a great and powerful Muslim civilisation. But what effort have we made especially with the resources that He has endowed us with. We are now 1.3 billion strong. We have the biggest oil reserve in the world. We have great wealth. We are not as ignorant as the Jahilliah who embraced Islam. We are familiar with the workings of the world's economy and finances. We control 50 out of the 180 countries in the world. Our votes can make or break international organisations. Yet we seem more helpless than the small number of Jahilliah converts who accepted the Prophet as their leader. Why? Is it because of Allah's will or is it because we have interpreted our religion wrongly, or failed to abide by the correct teachings of our religion, or done the wrong things? We are enjoined by our religion to prepare for the defence of the ummah. Unfortunately we stress not defence but the weapons of the time of the Prophet. Those weapons and horses cannot help to defend us any more. We need guns and rockets, bombs and warplanes, tanks and warships for our defence. But because we discouraged the learning of science and mathematics, etc, as giving no merit for the akhirat, today we have no capacity to produce our own weapons for our defence. We have to buy our weapons from our detractors and enemies. This is what comes from the superficial interpretation of the Quran, stressing not the substance of the Prophet's sunnah and the Quran's injunctions but rather the form, the manner and the means used in the 1st Century of the Hijrah. And it is the same with the other teachings of Islam. We are more concerned with the forms rather than the substance of the words of Allah and adhering only to the literal interpretation of the traditions of the Prophet. We may want to recreate the first century of the Hijrah, the way of life in those times, in order to practise what we think to be the true Islamic way of life. But we will not be allowed to do so. Our detractors and enemies will take advantage of the resulting backwardness and weakness in order to dominate us. Islam is not just for the 7th Century A.D. Islam is for all times. And times have changed. Whether we like it or not we have to change, not by changing our religion but by applying its teachings in the context of a world that is radically different from that of the first century of the Hijrah. Islam is not wrong but the interpretations by our scholars, who are not prophets even though they may be very learned can be wrong. We have a need to go back to the fundamental teachings of Islam to find out whether we are indeed believing in and practising the Islam that the Prophet preached. It cannot be that we are all practising the correct and true Islam when our beliefs are so different from one another. Today we, the whole Muslim ummah are treated with contempt and dishonour. Our religion is denigrated. Our holy places desecrated. Our countries are occupied. Our people starved and killed. None of our countries are truly independent. We are under pressure to conform to our oppressors wishes about how we should behave, how we should govern our lands, how we should think even. Today if they want to raid our country, kill our people, destroy our villages and towns, there is nothing substantial that we can do. Is it Islam which has caused all these? Or is it that we have failed to do our duty according to our religion? Our only reaction is to become more and more angry. Angry people cannot think properly. And so we find some of our people reacting irrationally. They launch their own attacks, killing just about anybody including fellow Muslims to vent their anger and frustration. Their Governments can do nothing to stop them. The enemy retaliates and puts more pressure on the Governments. And the Governments have no choice but to give in, to accept the directions of the enemy, literally to give up their independence of action. With this their people and the ummah become angrier and turn against their own Governments. Every attempt at a peaceful solution is sabotaged by more indiscriminate attacks calculated to anger the enemy and prevent any peaceful settlement. But the attacks solve nothing. The Muslims simply get more oppressed. There is a feeling of hopelessness among the Muslim countries and their people. They feel that they can do nothing right. They believe that things can only get worse. The Muslims will forever be oppressed and dominated by the Europeans and the Jews. They will forever be poor, backward and weak. Some believe, as I have said, this is the Will of Allah, that the proper state of the Muslims is to be poor and oppressed in this world. But is it true that we should do and can do nothing for ourselves? Is it true that 1.3 billion people can exert no power to save themselves from the humiliation and oppression inflicted upon them by a much smaller enemy? Can they only lash back blindly in anger? Is there no other way than to ask our young people to blow themselves up and kill people and invite the massacre of more of our own people? It cannot be that there is no other way. 1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews. There must be a way. And we can only find a way if we stop to think, to assess our weaknesses and our strength, to plan, to strategise and then to counter attack. As Muslims we must seek guidance from the Al-Quran and the Sunnah of the Prophet. Surely the 23 years struggle of the Prophet can provide us with some guidance as to what we can and should do. We know he and his early followers were oppressed by the Qhuraish. Did he launch retaliatory strikes? No. He was prepared to make strategic retreats. He sent his early followers to a Christian country and he himself later migrated to Madinah. There he gathered followers, built up his defence capability and ensured the security of his people. At Hudaibiyah he was prepared to accept an unfair treaty, against the wishes of his companions and followers. During the peace that followed he consolidated his strength and eventually he was able to enter Mecca and claim it for Islam. Even then he did not seek revenge. And the peoples of Mecca accepted Islam and many became his most powerful supporters, defending the Muslims against all their enemies. That briefly is the story of the struggle of the Prophet. We talk so much about following the sunnah of the Prophet. We quote the instances and the traditions profusely. But we actually ignore all of them. If we use the faculty to think that Allah has given us then we should know that we are acting irrationally. We fight without any objective, without any goal other than to hurt the enemy because they hurt us. Naively we expect them to surrender. We sacrifice lives unnecessarily, achieving nothing other than to attract more massive retaliation and humiliation. It is surely time that we pause to think. But will this be wasting time? For well over half a century we have fought over Palestine. What have we achieved? Nothing. We are worse off than before. If we had paused to think then we could have devised a plan, a strategy that can win us final victory. Pausing and thinking calmly is not a waste of time. We have a need to make a strategic retreat and to calmly assess our situation. We are actually very strong. 1.3 billion people cannot be simply wiped out. The Europeans killed six million Jews out of 12 million. But today the Jews rule this world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them. We may not be able to do that. We may not be able to unite all the 1.3 billion Muslims. We may not be able to get all the Muslim Governments to act in concert. But even if we can get a third of the ummah and a third of the Muslim states to act together, we can already do something. Remember that the Prophet did not have many followers when he went to Madinah. But he united the Ansars and the Muhajirins and eventually he became strong enough to defend Islam. Apart from the partial unity that we need, we must take stock of our assets. I have already mentioned our numbers and our oil wealth. In today's world we wield a lot of political, economic and financial clout, enough to make up for our weakness in military terms. We also know that not all non-Muslims are against us. Some are welldisposed towards us. Some even see our enemies as their enemies. Even among the Jews there are many who do not approve of what the Israelis are doing. We must not antagonise everyone. We must win their hearts and minds. We must win them to our side not by begging for help from them but by the honourable way that we struggle to help ourselves. We must not strengthen the enemy by pushing everyone into their camps through irresponsible and unIslamic acts. Remember Salah El Din and the way he fought against the so called Crusaders, King Richard of England in particular. Remember the considerateness of the Prophet to the enemies of Islam. We must do the same. It is winning the struggle that is important, not angry retaliation, not revenge. We must build up our strength in every field, not just in armed might. Our countries must be stable and well administered, must be economically and financially strong, industrially competent and technologically advanced. This will take time, but it can be done and it will be time well spent. We are enjoined by our religion to be patient. Innallahamaasabirin. Obviously there is virtue in being patient. But the defence of the ummah, the counter attack need not start only after we have put our houses in order. Even today we have sufficient assets to deploy against our detractors. It remains for us to identify them and to work out how to make use of them to stop the carnage caused by the enemy. This is entirely possible if we stop to think, to plan, to strategise and to take the first few critical steps. Even these few steps can yield positive results. We know that the Jahilliah Arabs were given to feuding, to killing each other simply because they were from different tribes. The Prophet preached the brotherhood of Islam to them and they were able to overcome their hatred for each other, become united and helped towards the establishment of the great Muslim civilisation. Can we say that what the Jahilliah (the ignorant) could do we, the modern Muslims cannot do? If not all at least some of us can do. If not the renaissance of our great civilisation, at least ensuring the security of the ummah. To do the things that are suggested will not even require all of us to give up our differences with each other. We need only to call a truce so we can act together in tackling only certain problems of common interests, the Palestine problem for example. In any struggle, in any war, nothing is more important than concerted and co-ordinated action. A degree of discipline is all that is needed. The Prophet lost in Jabal Uhud because his forces broke rank. We know that, yet we are unwilling to discipline ourselves and to give up our irregular and uncoordinated actions. We need to be brave but not foolhardy. We need to think not just of our reward in the afterlife but also of the worldly results of our mission. The Quran tells us that when the enemy sues for peace we must react positively. True the treaty offered is not favourable to us. But we can negotiate. The Prophet did, at Hudaibiyah. And in the end he triumphed. I am aware that all these ideas will not be popular. Those who are angry would want to reject it out of hand. They would even want to silence anyone who makes or supports this line of action. They would want to send more young men and women to make the supreme sacrifice. But where will all these lead to? Certainly not victory. Over the past 50 years of fighting in Palestine we have not achieved any result. We have in fact worsened our situation. The enemy will probably welcome these proposals and we will conclude that the promoters are working for the enemy. But think. We are up against a people who think. They survived 2,000 years of pogroms not by hitting back, but by thinking. They invented and successfully promoted Socialism, Communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong, so they may enjoy equal rights with others. With these they have now gained control of the most powerful countries and they, this tiny community, have become a world power. We cannot fight them through brawn alone. We must use our brains also. Of late because of their power and their apparent success they have become arrogant. And arrogant people, like angry people will make mistakes, will forget to think. They are already beginning to make mistakes. And they will make more mistakes. There may be windows of opportunity for us now and in the future. We must seize these opportunities. But to do so we must get our acts right. Rhetoric is good. It helps us to expose the wrongs perpetrated against us, perhaps win us some sympathy and support. It may strengthen our spirit, our will and resolve, to face the enemy. We can and we should pray to Allah S.W.T. for in the end it is He who will determine whether we succeed or fail. We need His blessings and His help in our endeavours. But it is how we act and what we do which will determine whether He would help us and give us victory or not. He has already said so in the Quran. Again Surah Ar-Ra'd verse 11. As I said at the beginning, the whole world is looking at us, the whole Muslim ummah is placing their hopes in this conference of the leaders of Islamic nations. They expect us not just to vent our frustrations and anger, through words and gestures; not just to pray for Allah's blessings. They expect us to do something, to act. We cannot say we cannot do anything, we the leaders of the Muslim nations. We cannot say we cannot unite even when faced with the destruction of our religion and the ummah. We know we can. There are many things that we can do. There are many resources that we have at our disposal. What is needed is merely the will to do it. As Muslims, we must be grateful for the guidance of our religion, we must do what needs to be done, willingly and with determination. Allah has not raised us, the leaders, above the others so we may enjoy power for ourselves only. The power we wield is for our people, for the ummah, for Islam. We must have the will to make use of this power judiciously, prudently, concertedly. Insyaallah we will triumph in the end. I pray to Allah that this 10th Conference of the OIC in Putrajaya, Malaysia, will give a new and positive direction to us, will be blessed with success by Him, Almighty Allah, Arahman, Arahim.
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DO JEWS REALLY RULE THE WORLD?
by John Spritzler
December 6, 2003
At the October meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad declared that, "...today the Jews rule this world by proxy..." Not unexpectedly, the Prime Minister was charged with "blatant anti-Semitism" by the governments of the United States, Israel, the European Union and Australia.
[http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s969056.htm] More unexpectedly, some Jews came to the defense of the Prime Minister's remarks. The Israeli, Israel Shamir, an outspoken foe of Zionism and a prolific writer about the Israel/Palestine conflict, reported shortly after the Malaysian Prime Minister's speech that his good friend, Elias Davidsson, of Jerusalem, wrote:As a Jew myself (but opposed to Zionism) I need no encouragement from Malaysian PM Mahathir Mohamad to observe what should be obvious to the blatant eye: Namely that Jews effectively rule US foreign policy and thus determine to a great extent the conduct of most countries.
1) Is there any truth to the Malaysian Prime Minister's claim that Jews rule the world by proxy? 2) Even if all Jews stood against us, would it help our efforts to categorize "the Jews" as our enemy?
I believe the answer to both of these questions is "No."
Since Israel Shamir articulates the contrary position so clearly, I want to
examine what he says closely and respond.
DO JEWS DETERMINE U.S. FOREIGN POLICY?
Let us start with the first question: Do Jews rule the world by proxy? The actual question, to be precise, is Do Jews determine U.S. foreign policy? Shamir weighs in on this question by criticizing Nat Weinstein's assertion that, "[
Former U.S. Senator Patrick J.] Buchanan's insinuations of a Jewish conspiracy in the service of Israel echo a similar claim that lay at the heart of Adolph Hitler's brand of fascism." [http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/sum_03/sum_03_08.html] Shamir responds:However, an open Jewish 'conspiracy' of supporting Israel is a hard fact, and it is expressed by almost every Jewish newspaper by slogan 'Jews stand steadfast behind Israel'. This slogan is not an empty word: recent survey shows 86% of the US Jews support Israel. In a recent discussion on the Web, Jeff Blankfort, a consistent antizionist, made a sober conclusion: "the distinction that we are always careful to make between being Jewish and being Zionist is essentially deceptive and that while all Jews are not Zionists, the organized Jewish communities throughout the world, despite whatever differences they may have, are totally behind the Zionist project. To pretend that these organizations do not speak for the overall Jewish community, one, that without any doubt, supports Israel as a Jewish state, is illusory."
Shamir acknowledges that "all Jews are not Zionists" but he chooses to emphasize that the Zionists not only have the backing of most Jews, but that they also "rule the world" or at least the part of the world necessary to control the U.S. government's foreign policy. Shamir writes:
[T]he Jewish Lobby is not a 'small group of pro-Zionist Jews' but an extremely powerful group of billionaires, media lords, and their supporters in the left and the right, from the New York Times to the Nation, from Wolfowitz of Pentagon to Rabbi Lerner of Tikkun.
To refute Weinstein's claim that it is absurd to believe that a small group of pro-Zionist Jews could dictate foreign or domestic policy to the hard-nosed, quintessentially-pragmatic American capitalist class, Shamir argues that:
'Hard-nosed American capitalists' are indeed 'quintessentially-pragmatic', and they understand what is good for them personally. That is why even the dedicated antisemite Henry Ford preferred to scrap his book when he had met with the irresistible force of Jewish boycott. That is why the American parliamentarians are united in their support of Israel, as it was recently confirmed by the Senate vote 89 to 4 against Syria. The Iraqi war was a disaster from the point of view of American capitalism: as it was predicted, it brought them no oil, no weaponry orders, no new friends; but the capitalists are not idealists Weinstein presupposes: they know that their stand against Israel would ruin them personally, and they disregard 'the general interest of capitalist class'.
Like many people trying to understand why the U.S. government so consistently backs Israel, Shamir has concluded that the explanation lies in the power of the "Jewish Lobby" in the United States and specifically in its ability to put pressure on powerful individuals in government and business to force them to carry out pro-Israel policies which they would otherwise reject. But the premise of this reasoning is false. The pro-Israeli policies of the U.S. government are in fact highly beneficial to U.S. corporate interests in the Middle East, and American politicians beholden to these corporate interests would carry out these policies even absent any pressure from the "Jewish Lobby."
U.S. rulers, acting on behalf of big corporations, back Israel because it is the key to their strategy for controlling the oil of the Middle East. To control the oil these corporations need to ensure that the rulers of the oil-producing nations in the Middle East are corporate-friendly regimes able to prevent ordinary Arabs from taking control of the oil and other resources and using it to benefit ordinary people instead of enriching foreign and domestic elites. The Middle East is a powder-keg of class struggle. The U.S. and the anti-democratic regimes in nations like Saudi-Arabia fear any popular revolutionary movement directed against Arab elite rule getting started anywhere in the region. To prevent such a movement developing, U.S. and Middle East rulers have all relied on the key strategy of directing the anger of the Arab masses against Israel. The strategy is for Israel to serve as a "lightning rod" of class struggle for the whole region. In order for the strategy to work Israel must provoke Arab hatred by doing exactly what it presently does -- carry out brutal and naked ethnic cleansing against Palestinians. The strategy also requires that the U.S. arm Israel to the teeth so that Arab rulers can pretend to champion "their people's" hostility to Israel while at the same time pointing to Israel's overwhelming military superiority as an excuse for not actually "driving the Jews into the sea."
The "Jewish Lobby" in the U.S. and the Zionists in Israel, of course, have their own reasons for supporting the U.S. ruler's pro-Israel strategy of social control in the Middle East. The Zionists in Israel benefit by receiving enormous military and economic aid from the United States and by setting themselves up as the ruling elite in Israel. The Arab hatred of Israel only helps the Zionist elite stay in power, as every suicide bombing of Israeli Jews at a bus stop only makes Jews more fearful of Arabs and more convinced that, no matter how anti-working class the Zionist rulers are (massive strikes of working class Jews against the Zionist government are frequent), the Zionist rulers are the only ones who can protect Jews from Arabs. Were it not for their strategic value to U.S. corporate interests, the Zionists would no doubt have remained today what they were from their modern beginnings at the turn of the century until World War II B a rather small cult, with followers from only a very small minority of Jews, whose leaders sought an audience with one imperialist power after another begging for a plot of land to call a Jewish state.
Like their Zionist counterparts in Israel, powerful business and religious Jewish leaders in the United States also have their reasons for backing the U.S. rulers' Middle East policy. Chief among them is the fact that Zionism helps these Jewish leaders to maintain their position in society as powerful and privileged elites. Zionism is Jewish nationalism, and nationalism -- be it American, Chinese, Jewish or whatever -- is an ideology that tells ordinary people to defend those of the same nationality or ethnic group (and obey them when they are heads of government) because national identity is more important than "secondary" issues like class inequality and exploitation. Jews who hold positions high up in American society want very much to be seen by working class Jews as "defenders of the Jewish state of Israel" and not as upper class individuals who happen to be Jewish but who benefit from class inequality and hardships that hurt all working class people whether they are Jewish or not. Additionally, American Jewish leaders cannot fail to appreciate that their admission into the top tiers of American society is made far more secure if they advocate rather than oppose the Middle East foreign policy pursued by the most powerful American families who, like the Rockefellers and Mellons and Gettys and Fords, are not Jewish.
There is no evidence that the U.S. government has been "taken over" by Jews. That many of the government officials advocating a "pro-Israel" foreign policy are Jewish merely reflects the fact that the policy has the support of many Jews, not that it exists because of Jews. These facts give the lie to the notion that "the Jews" rule the world by proxy.
HOW COMMITTED TO ZIONISM ARE ORDINARY JEWS?
But even if Jews do not "rule the world," it is undeniable that many Jews are indeed pro-Zionist to one degree or another and most of the large organizations that speak for Jews are today pro-Zionist. By "pro-Zionist" I mean they support the existence of a Jewish state, of Israel. And they go along, to varying degrees, with the logic of a Jewish state -- in other words they accept the notion that only Jews should be the sovereign authority in the land of Israel even though non-Jews make up a substantial proportion of the population. Thus the great debate in Israel and among diaspora Jews is (after being stripped of euphemisms) whether Israel should continue to occupy the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which requires ruling over Arabs without any pretense of being democratic; or whether Israel should end the occupation and withdraw to the pre-1967 "green line" inside of which Arabs form a minority of only 20%, thus enabling exclusive Jewish sovereignty to more easily masquerade as a "democracy." The dominant institutions in Israel exclude from the public arena any debate or expressions of doubt among Jews regarding the more fundamental question: Should there be a Jewish state? Should Israel exist, as it is now defined?
I grant that there is much support for Zionism among Jews. I recall my (Jewish) great-aunt, a secretary barely making ends meet who, on the occasion of the 1967 war, sent her entire week's paycheck to the government of Israel. Only the blinders of Zionism can explain why so many Jews perceive themselves as staunch foes of racism and champions of the universal values of equality and democracy and at the same time see nothing racist or anti-democratic about the fact that the Israeli government bulldozes down the homes of Palestinians just because they are Palestinians, that it builds super-highways for Jews only, that it destroyed, depopulated and occupied at least 418 Palestinian villages in 1948 [http://www.columbia.edu/cu/museo/6/jacir/], or that it provides each Jewish settler four times as much water as a Palestinian so that Palestinians sicken and die of thirst while the settlers enjoy lush lawns and swimming pools, to cite just a few of the crimes that Zionism routinely justifies in the name of defending the Jewish state against its Arab enemies. I do not deny the seriousness of the problem of Zionism's hold over Jews. Nonetheless, ordinary Jews are not unalterably pro-Zionist and their present loyalty to Zionism does not run as deep as one might suppose. From the perspective of Yoram Hazony, a passionately pro-Zionist Israeli historian and author of The Jewish State, it is nothing short of alarming how rapidly Israeli Jews are abandoning their Zionism. Here is how Hazony describes his generation of Israelis in contrast to the founding fathers' generation:
This generation of the sons certainly paid its dues in military service, but its members' failure to ignite like their fathers had for the cause of the Jewish state was gradually to become an open scandal, perhaps the [his emphasis] open scandal of the years after Ben-Gurion had been expunged from public life. [The Jewish State, pg. xvi]
Hazony was most alarmed by his experience when serving in the Israeli Defense Force in the late 1980's:
Perched atop a rooftop in Hebron with a Netanya businessman for a twelve-hour watch; or guarding a communications relay on a mountain peak for days on end with a newly immigrated Russian poet; or on patrol in an Arab village with a kibbutznik officer in command of the jeep -- during one stint or the next, you gradually get to see and hear everything. And the "everything" was something rather shocking, but also unambiguous: The Jews of Israel are an exhausted people, confused and without direction. This is not to say that they are unwilling to fight. Israelis still agree that they will carry on their struggle if they must. But in no end of discussions, it was made clear to me that there was a vast gulf between their willingness [his emphasis] to fight and sacrifice and their ability to understand why [his emphasis] they should do so. Certainly, they all knew that we were at war -- including those who believed we could and should get out of it -- but as soon as the discussion skidded close to the reasons that it might be worth being in this fight, the screen went blank. Of what value is the Jewish people? What can it contribute to mankind? What is to be gained by joining in its struggle? Why should one sacrifice on its behalf? Why should the Jewish state exist at all?...And then there was the pudgy young officer, days before finishing out his four-year tour of duty, who objected when I inadvertently referred to him as a Jew. "Don't say that to me," he said huskily, putting his hand up like a traffic cop. "If you want, you can talk to me as a human being. But don't talk to me as Jew. That doesn't speak to me." From him I understood that one had to be careful whom one implicated in being a Jew in the Jewish state. [The Jewish State, pp xvii=xviii]
Ordinary Jews, an "exhausted people, confused and without direction," far from being "rulers of the world" are like working class people of any other nationality. They are manipulated and controlled by their elite rulers with an avalanche of nationalist propaganda which is made particularly effective by the suicide bombings orchestrated by Hamas (with the tacit if not covert encouragement of Israel's rulers.) They are confused because all of the alternatives they hear in what passes for public discourse are confined within the parameters of nationalism which frames everything as a conflict between national (or racial/ethnic/religious) groups, such as "the Arabs/Palestinians" versus "the Jews." They are demoralized about breaking out of the trap of nationalism because the last great attempt to do this -- the Communist movement with its call for international working class solidarity -- created anti-democratic regimes that offered absolutely no hope for a better world. Every natural inclination they have to look for a solution based on the working class values that ordinary people share and which elites attack -- equality and solidarity and democracy -- is branded as disloyalty to their nation. Working class Jews seeking to make common cause with Arabs like themselves are accused of advocating the destruction of the Jewish state.
Jews drafted into the Israeli Defense Forces are not that different from American soldiers drafted to fight in Vietnam. American G.I.s too became "exhausted, confused and without direction." In boot camp the young soldiers learned that the enemy was "gooks" and Communists. This made it easier for American G.I.s to follow their orders to attack the Viet Cong. Similarly, Israeli soldiers find it easier to shoot at Palestinians and bulldoze down their homes after all the efforts by Zionist leaders -- and their Hamas helpers in this regard -- to convince them that Arabs are bloodthirsty Jew-killers. But American soldiers also saw that they were being ordered to attack the entire Vietnamese peasantry, and they had no idea why. Troops were told it was treason against the United States if they sided with ordinary Vietnamese against U.S. rulers. So there was little overt rebellion by G.I.s against the U.S. government. But G.I.s "fragged" (i.e. killed, typically with a fragmentation bomb) their "gung ho" (i.e. very enthusiastic and dedicated) officers in the field to avoid obeying orders to attack the peasants. This and other forms of passive resistance to the U.S. high command eventually made it clear to President Nixon that he could no longer rely on American soldiers to fight Vietnamese peasants, and it forced the U.S. to pull out of Vietnam in disgrace.
In Israel today IDF soldiers are engaging in more than just passive resistance. They are organizing overt resistance to Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with many speaking out publicly against the occupation and flatly refusing to serve in the occupied territories. The refuseniks have not, to my knowledge, challenged the idea of a Jewish state (which is a serious weakness in their efforts to achieve a real peace.) But a movement -- were it to be organized -- based on class solidarity between ordinary Jews and Arabs and calling for a one-state solution in which Jews and Arabs were truly equal would certainly appeal to many Jews looking for a way out of the trap into which they have been thrust by history.
Most of the Israeli population, when not diverted by fear of Arabs, already find themselves in conflict with their Zionist rulers. Huge strikes in Israel are frequent. The latest one occurred November 3, 2003 when "a nationwide strike against plans to overhaul Israel's welfare state shut down government services, banks and train service." [Peter Enav, Canadian Press, November 03, 2003 ] One of the largest occurred from December 3 through 7, 1997, when 700,000 Israeli workers mounted a general strike against the government. The country was paralyzed, with airports, seaports, banks, government offices, state-owned industries and the national stock exchange effectively shut down. After the first day of the strike, the nation's teachers joined in the walk-out and the national journalists' association declared their support for the strike. The strike was a response to indications that the Treasury was attempting to violate wage and pension agreements signed in 1995 and 1996. Israeli workers were also protesting government privatization plans which would entail large-scale lay-offs.
Many Israeli Jews experience Zionism in their daily life the way Yaffa Yosefian does. Yaffa Yosefian, according to the New Israel Fund's Fall, 2003 NIF News, was
one of Israel's 113,000 single mothers [who] doesn't know if she and her family will survive from month to month. On July 1, the Finance Ministry cut deeply into social support payments to Israel's needy, including single mothers, as part of its new economic austerity program...Yosefian is one of dozens of women who camped outside the Ministry of Finance in Jerusalem. She was motivated to protest not only by her own plight but also a sense of social responsibility for all the single-parent families hit hard by the cuts.
Some people say the Jewish religion itself is the problem. They
claim that it turns Jews against the rest of humanity. They point to passages in
the Old Testament and to the classical (i.e.
Middle Ages until the end of the18th century)
writings of acclaimed rabbis telling Jews that they are the "chosen
people," that non-Jews are inferior
and unworthy of rights that belong only to Jews, that Jews should not marry
non-Jews and should not even encourage non-Jews to convert to Judaism. The
holocaust survivor, Israel Shahak (not to be confused with Israel Shamir, cited
earlier), provides strong evidence for these claims about traditional orthodox
rabbinical teachings in his book, Jewish
History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years.
Such rabbinical teachings
-- a kind of
Jewish nationalism pre-dating modern Zionism -- were no doubt used by Jewish elites in the past to turn ordinary Jews
against non-Jews, bind them to their "betters" and make them more
controllable. The old rabbinical teachings also dovetail with modern Zionism,
and (with the exception of the small Neturei Karta orthodox Jewish group, who,
wearing their traditional black garb, go to demonstrations holding signs that
read, "Zionist Spokesmen Do Not
Represent World Jewry" [http://www.nkusa.org/])
Jewish orthodox religious leaders are pro-Zionist. The relevant point, however,
is that however influential the chauvinistic aspect of the Jewish religion may
have been in the past, it is rapidly losing its influence over contemporary Jews
around the world. Of the approximately 13.5 million Jews in the world, 4.9
million live in Israel and 5.6 million live in the United States. Of all the
Jews in Israel, 71% light the Hanukkah candles (which signifies no more
religious persuasion than does decorating a Christmas tree for a Christian) but
only 23% say they always attend synagogue on Saturday morning, and 56% say they
never do. [http://www.jcpa.org/dje/articles2/howrelisr.htm]
Among the majority of Jews, who live outside of Israel (the "diaspora"
), surveys done in 1998 indicate that fifty percent marry outside their faith,
and in some American cities the intermarriage rate reaches 80 percent. In the
U.S. only about 20 to 25 percent of intermarried couples where one partner is
Jewish raise their children as Jews. [http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/1298/9812056.html]
These demographic facts are cause for great anxiety on the part of Zionist
leaders who, though largely secular themselves, rely very much on the orthodox
religious Jews to provide the
"moral"
backbone of Zionism. But for those who want Jews to join a movement against
Jewish nationalism and chauvinism it is only encouraging news.
WHO BENEFITS IF WE CATEGORIZE "THE JEWS" AS OUR ENEMY?
Even if all Jews stood against us, would it help our efforts to categorize "the Jews" as our enemy?
Like many others, I find it discouraging to hear Jews (especially close friends) make apologies for Israel and defend Jewish nationalism with remarks like, "No matter how bad its leaders may be, still, we Jews need a homeland of our own and must defend Israel from its enemies." I understand the temptation to lump all Jews together with their Zionist leaders and categorize "the Jews" as the enemy. I have sketched above my reasons for believing that ordinary Jews can be won to a class-based movement against Zionism. (For more discussion of how this requires a clean break with Marxism see The Communist Manifesto Is Wrong [http://www.newdemocracyworld.org/manifesto.htm].) But let us accept, for the sake of argument, that virtually all Jews will forever stand in support of Israel. Who would mainly benefit if we categorized our enemy as "the Jews?"The answer is not ordinary Palestinians or working people anywhere. The answer is that the American ruling class and the Zionist leaders of Israel would be the real beneficiaries. The power of these elites is based largely on nationalism, and defining friend and foe with categories like "the Jews" only reinforces nationalistic thinking. It would in fact endorse the claim of elites to speak for all "their people," thereby greatly enhancing their control. In the Middle East the ruling elites need to prevent the Arab masses from coming to power, and they do that by turning Arab anger against "the Jews." President Bush and the entire corporate elite in the U.S. rely primarily on nationalism to stay in power despite the fact that they attack the values and living standards of most Americans. They rely on the idea that Americans must all stick together and obey their rulers because the "real" enemy is external -- Islamic terrorists or North Korean Communists. Defining the enemy with a category like "the Jews" plays right into the nationalism that elites depend upon.
There is only one way to defeat the elites who truly rule the world. We must identify as the enemy all those who consciously aim to benefit at the expense of the many, who enforce inequality, who control people by pitting them against each other and lying to and manipulating them, who attack people's efforts to help each other and to stand in solidarity with each other, and who impose top-down control and use fake democracy to defeat real democracy. And we must reach out to all of the billions of other people, no matter what their race or nationality or religious beliefs, as friends or at least potential friends. In other words we need to build a movement that isolates our real enemy explicitly on the basis of the elite values they stand for, and unites everybody else on the basis of the positive values they share.
There is a strong association between these values and social class, which is why I use the phrase "class-based" sometimes as a shorthand. Most working class people try to shape the part of the world over which they have any control with the values of equality, commitment to each other and democracy. And most people in the wealthiest ruling families hold the opposite elite values of inequality, competition, and top-down control. But there are exceptions in both cases, which is why I disagree with the Marxist practice of formulating friend and foe based on social class membership. This Marxist approach stems from the fundamental flaw in Marxist theory -- the idea that social change is not caused by people consciously fighting for conflicting values, but by impersonal economic "laws" driven by the supposed fact that everybody is motivated by self-interest and class conflict is merely a conflict of self-interests -- the self-interest of workers who trade labor for wages versus the conflicting self-interest of owners who buy labor to make a profit.
It is impossible to accurately identify who are our friends and who are our foes if we resort to using nationalistic categories like "the Jews." Doing so obscures what our struggle is all about. It shifts attention away from the categories that precisely define who we are fighting and who we are asking to join us and what we are fighting for. A movement organized around such misleading and nationalistic kinds of thinking is easily misled by any skilled leader fronting for the elite. This is why mis-leaders have been able to sabotage real resistance to Zionism in the Middle East. Yasser Arafat, for example, denounces Israel and waves the Palestinian flag but his real role is to pacify Palestinians by lying to them that they will get all they want by waiting patiently for negotiations to work, and telling them that in the meantime they already have Palestinian rule (the "Palestine Authority.") The sham "peace process" of Oslo and the "Road Map" could not have succeeded in dampening Palestinian resistance without a nationalist mis-leader like Arafat, whose legitimacy depends on Palestinian confusion about who are their friends and who are their foes. Nationalism makes it hard for Palestinians to organize anything Arafat disapproves of, even though most Palestinians can plainly see that he presides over a corrupt Palestinian Authority that has enabled the number of millionaires under the Palestine Authority to grow from zero to 500 in the last nine years while 50% of the Palestinian population lives on less than 2 US $ per day. (For more on this see What Will The New Palestine Be? [http://www.newdemocracyworld.org/new_Palestine.htm].)
There are moments in history when crucial decisions must be made that will affect the outcome of great struggles, and this is one of them. A very encouraging consensus is developing for a one-state solution in Palestine/Israel. This is a profound and inspiring rejection of George Bush's nationalistic propaganda calling for a "two state" solution based on the idea that Jews and Palestinians have inherently competing values and interests and therefore each needs a "state of their own" (ruled, it goes without saying, by "their own" elites.) Our enemies will do everything possible to prevent ordinary Palestinians and Jews from uniting around their shared aspirations. In particular they will encourage our movement to label "the Jews" as our enemy. Let us avoid this terrible trap, and build a movement that unites all of our potential friends against all of our real enemies and wins.
Shamir's response: It is very good that John supports One State solution in Palestine/Israel. It makes the difference between our opinions less than very important, for the bottom line matters. However, it makes sense to point out some logical faults of John: His article consists of three parts. In first part, he tries to find some 'imperial ratio' for the US Middle East policy, namely: "The strategy is for Israel to serve as a "lightning rod" of class struggle for the whole region" It is a better reason than "the cop on the beat" of Chomsky, but not good enough. It is an extension of the classical Jewish-leftist position that "antisemitism is a lightning rod of class struggle" . However I do not agree with both. The US manages to make enough trouble everywhere at less cost. The Arab world is quite pro-American, and was even more so before 9/11 and the beginning of JINSA offensive. Class struggle is unheard-of in Saudi Arabia, where all citizens enjoy high income (as opposed to guest workers). The US pays $2 bln to Egypt to avoid confrontation with Israel, while if John's explanation were true, the US should encourage Egypt to arm and prepare for war with Israel. In my opinion, the true imperial interest of the US could be easily obtained without the US support for Israel, and the reasons were discussed in full in my article. In second part, he says: Ordinary Jews, an "exhausted people, confused and without direction," far from being "rulers of the world" are like working class people of any other nationality. Naturally, ordinary Jews do not rule the world. Likewise, ordinary Americans do not rule unipolar world we inhabit; and ordinary British men did not rule the British Empire when it was in apogee of its glory. But does it mean that The US is not a superpower? Or that the British Empire did not rule the waves? Or that the Jews have no incredible influence in the world? John discovered that 'the Jews' is not one big happy family. It is true, but you can say that about any party, army or other structure. There was difference between Agamemnon and Thersyte in the Greek army at Troy, but the city was vanquished all the same. In third part, he asks:Even if all Jews stood against us, would it help our efforts to categorize "the Jews" as our enemy? and gives a negative answer. The enemy is not something we choose - the enemy chooses us, to start with. Your proposal is to embrace ostrich's policy: to see no evil. We would like to have the Jews as our allies, as the communists had had once, but one should be realistic: it was their choice to ally with the forces you rightly defined as "all those who consciously aim to benefit at the expense of the many, who enforce inequality, who control people by pitting them against each other and lying to and manipulating them, who attack people's efforts to help each other and to stand in solidarity with each other, and who impose top-down control and use fake democracy to defeat real democracy". Zionism is just a part of the picture. Read Alexander Panarin, a Russian leftist historian: he also concludes, with great sorrow, that the Jews became the Fifth Column of the American imperialism in Russia and in the Eastern Europe. In Jewish publications, anti-Americanism, environmentalism, equality, anti-Globalism are considered 'antisemitic' as much as anti-Zionism. But our enemy is not 'Jews' but 'the Jews', not people of Jewish origin, but the state-like structure. Zionism is dangerous for us, residents of Palestine/Israel, but for instance East Europeans and Russians would not care much for Palestinians, if the Jews would not support the SPS, the pro-American party that lost the last elections, and other pro-market forces. As for Jews, the world should re-start the stalling engine of assimilation and emancipation in order to undo this remnant of past. This 'revolutionary' objective was proclaimed even by Moses Mendelsohn, and by early Zionists - let us bring it into today's consideration.anti-semitism?