Jews and the Empire 

By Israel Shamir 

(A Talk given in the House of Lords, Westminster, on February 23, 2005) 

Ladies and Lords, Gentlemen, Friends, 

It is a great honour for this small writer from far-away Jaffa to speak
to you in this ancient abode of democracy and aristocracy intertwined,
and I wish to thank my host tonight, my dear brother, his lordship Nazir
Ahmed of Rotherham in the heather-bound Yorkshire. I would give much to
have another dear friend present here, the late Sir Robin, Lord
Phillimore for much of my love and understanding of England is due to
this friendship. I was but a pup, a young journalist, who came to work
at your renowned BBC, and the Lord Phillimore was my bridge and my guide
to the good old England of Pickwick Papers, for his home stood in this
most English swat of land near Henley-on-Thames. Thus England became a
love of my youth, England of pubs serving Brakespear Old Fashioned ale,
of neat green squares of Kensington where I lived, of milk bottles on
doorstep, of the punchy smell of bacon-and-eggs and burned toast in the
morning, of the pleasant feel of the Guardian pages, of the calm
bonhomie of English people, of your lovely maidens who are able to
propose and prepare a nice cup of tea in the least suitable moment, of
your men with their fair play, the green sweet and somewhat parochial
England of Blake, Hopkins, Waugh and G K Chesterton, England as opposed
to the Empire. 

Much as I love England I came to dislike the Empire. The Empire was a
vile 19th century invention. The Empire ruined Iraq and used poison
gases against its citizens long before the present Bush-and-Blair
offensive. No land was too far or too near to be safe from the Imperial
assaults: from Shimonoseki in South of Japan to Gondor in mountains of
Ethiopia, from Beijing to Archangelsk, from the fishermen’ city of
Oriente in Brittany to Baghdad, from Dublin to Kandagar, from Dresden in
Saxony to Akka in Palestine, the Empire bombed them all. And I do not
speak of some long gone days of Queen Anne, but of last hundred fifty
years since the fateful accent of your first Zionist ruler, Lord
Beaconsfield. 

In our country, in Palestine, much of present sorrows are result of the
Imperial intervention. The first Intifada, the great Arab revolt of
1936-1939, caused by the creeping Zionist takeover, was crushed by the
Imperial forces with great severity. Thousands of native Palestinians
were killed, executed, hanged, expelled from their land. The Arab
defeat, al-Nakba of 1948 can’t be understood without the context of the
previous Imperial war against the Palestinians. The Zionist armies
administered the coup-de-grace to the disarmed, bleeding, powerless
rural population whose elite and best fighters were eliminated by the
Empire. 

Oh, you say, why should we remember it now? We can’t let bygones be
bygones for the Empire is not a thing of past. Like a monstrous parasite
it migrated after sucking the juice of the Brits. Its capital was
relocated to Washington and New York, while England remained a
subservient part of Empire, a Greece to the New Rome, or rather a Tyre
to the new Carthage. Not only your RAF assists the Americans, but your
BBC, once a paragon of objectivity, became a propaganda tool for the New
Empire. 

I did not come to condemn you but to offer my condolences, for England
is one of the Imperial victims. I came first time to your land some
thirty years ago, and since then the Empire eats you up as much as it
eats everybody else. London became a faceless cosmopolitan city, your
cinema is destroyed, your streets are taken by international chains of
shops, your newspapers belong to Zionists, and there is a danger the
English will be turned into human dust by the Imperial burden as the
Romans and Macedonians of old, to be followed by the Americans. 

The Empire is not particularly good for people, including the people of
the mother country. Let us consider Palestine. Thousands of young
British men died in order to conquer Palestine and give it to the Jews.
They committed many atrocities, killed a lot of natives, and enforced
Jewish supremacy in Palestine. They received no gratitude. Elder people
maybe remember the subsequent Zionist terrorist attacks on the British
troops, the assassination of Lord Moyne, maybe they remember the two
British sergeants who were kidnapped and hanged by the Jews, and their
dead bodies were defiled, booby-trapped by the killers. Menachem Begin,
our late Prime Minister, was particularly proud of it. Younger people
won’t even know it, for your media, the mind and the nervous system of
the nation, is hijacked by Zionists like Conrad Black and Murdock, and
they won’t allow this knowledge to be remembered. 

But it is vital to remember, for the new empire continues the ways of
the old. Now in Iraq, the US and its British dependency continue the
same old fight for ensuring Jewish supremacy in the Middle East, for
England – or even English business – has no need to be in Baghdad and
Basra. Indeed, in the Middle East we have just one reason for wars,
terror and trouble – and that is Jewish supremacy drive. In our country,
Israel or Palestine, we can have peace today, if we were to agree to
equality of Jew and non-Jew. But this principle, so carefully observed
in Europe, is anathema to the Jews in Israel. Like in England before the
reforms of 1832, your predecessors would not agree to equality of a lord
and a commoner before the law; or in Rhodesia of Ian Smith, the white
settlers did not want to be equal with the blacks. 

Well, so Jews do not want to be equal. But why should you assist them in
their pursuit of supremacy? There is an American joke [of Jay Leno]: "If
God doesn’t destroy Hollywood Boulevard, he owes Sodom and Gomorrah an
apology." Indeed, if England keeps supporting the apartheid Jewish
state, it owes an apology to Rhodesia and South Africa. Why, indeed, it
does? This is not a rhetoric question. Why the New Empire went to war,
committed itself to the vast expenses and dangers, antagonised bigger
part of the world – and all that in the interests of Jewish supremacy? 

In my book – that is the one I came to promote – I try to explain why
the Jews have a special place in the Imperial conscience. Superficially,
one can explain it by personalities, by the special position of the
Neo-cons in Washington and of the Jewish media-lords in the US and
elsewhere. Jews indeed own, control and edit a big share of mass media,
this mainstay of Imperial thinking; just last month a Rothschild bought
the French daily Liberacion, and an Israeli citizen bought a TV 4
channel in Sweden. This is a valid observation, but not sufficient. 

The New Empire, even more than the old one, is infused with Judaic
values on an ideological and theological level. This is the thing I try
to deal with, because preoccupation with ethnic or religious origins of
a person is not only improper but often misleading. Indeed, the
strongest enemies of the Judaic values are often people of Jewish
origin. Allow me to mention St Paul, Karl Marx and Simone Weil to make
my point clear. Another example can be provided by Sir Carl Popper, a
colleague of yours who referred to the Judaic concept of chosen-ness as
‘vile’. He also rejected an approach of a Jewish Year Book to have him
included, for he said, he does not believe in race and has nothing to do
with Jewish faith or values – despite his Jewish origin. Do not
concentrate on ethnics, look for ideology. In your case, Michael Howard
is less Judaic than Tony Blair, for the first objects to removal of
British liberties and to sweeping anti-Muslim legislation, while the
second brought this country into the Iraqi war for Israeli interests. 

While a Judaic tendency is just an ideological tendency, a special
feeling towards Jews is a symptom of certain pro-Imperial
predisposition. For instance, Tony Blair is a great supporter of the
Empire. But even if we would not know that, we would be able to guess:
for he expressed unlimited support of the Jewish state. The Jewish state
is the country where a Jew has more rights than a non-Jew. Three to four
million of our native residents have neither right of vote nor
citizenship rights for a single fault: they are not Jews. Do not forget,
Rhodesia was dismantled for the equal sin of ethnic or racial supremacy.

This feeling that ‘Jews are special’ found now its expression in the
story of Ken Livingstone and his sin coming hard on the heels of Prince
Harry and his mishap. Actually, I have heard that at the next costume
ball, Prince Harry will be dressed as Ken Livingstone. The Ken’s story
is simple: the Mayor was rude to a hack. Being a journalist, I
sympathise with the journalist; but being rude to is our professional
hazard. However, the insult was blown well over normal proportions. If
Ken would be equally insulting to a member of Royal family, he will be
forgiven if not encouraged. But here – even the Students’ Union decided
to ban Ken. 

Your anti-racist feelings do not come into it. Some time ago I watched
the Hard Talk with Tim Sebastian on the BBC. Tim was grilling a Uganda
Asian businessman living in England. He told him: well, you Asians in
Uganda were heavily engaged in the black market activities, smuggled
hard currency abroad, despised the natives and refused to marry them.
Actually the same accusations were traditionally levelled against Jews.
If Tim would just try to say it to a Jew he would be kicked out of his
job same day. But applied to the Muslims – they did not cause a stir. It
was just a Hard Talk. So it is not ‘anti-racism’. In my view, this
unbelievable out-of-proportion response to Ken’s affair shows again a
mysterious connection of Jews and the new Empire. 

One reason is that Jews like an Empire. If there is a choice between an
England and an Empire, the Jews prefer an Empire. Benjamin Ginsberg, the
Professor of Political Science at John Hopkins University, wrote a book
on this subject, called Jews and the State: The Fatal Embrace and he
attests to this Jewish love of Empire. Any Empire: Franz Josef, the last
Emperor of Austro-Hungarian Empire, used to say that Jews are the most
loyal of his subjects. In your country, Disraeli was equally proud of
his Jewish ancestry and devoted to the Empire-building. 

A Jewish joke tells of two Jewish brothers in revolutionary Odessa; one
of them emigrated to England and became a peer of the realm, another one
remained in Russia, suffered as much as anybody, and eventually the
Russian brother was invited by his British brother to London. The
brother arrived, received English citizenship, had whale of time, went
to Covent Garden, maybe to the Palace, at night the brothers come home,
and the Russian brother began to cry. “Oh do not cry, told him the
English brother, you had your life, I had mine, it could happen other
way around.” “You did not understand me, - says the Russian brother, - I
weep for India we have lost”. 

This love of Empire explains the easiness Jews change their allegiance –
indeed, the same people who were all for the Russian or French or
British Empire now became ardent supporters on the new American Empire.
Simple minds call it ‘treacherous behaviour’, but it is actually love of
Empire per se, and it does not matter who is the titular head of this
Empire: Jews are good for an Empire, as long as they feel the Empire is
good for them. 

Now, there is a large and thriving Muslim community in England. In my
view, Islam is a form of Christianity, even nearer to the Nicene Creed
than some Pentecostals or other American denominations. What is more
important, they are now on the side of freedom, against the Empire, and
they are not afraid of enforcers of Judaic values, Jewish or Gentile.
This community is very important in order to turn the tide. Let us hope
that its introduction will be important for England’s future. 

This is the right time to overcome left-right divide: if Michael Howard
stands on the right –for liberties - and Blair stands on the left – and
for anti-Muslim legislation, for police control and for war, the terms
have little relevance today. There are friends and enemies of the Empire
in all your major political parties, and equally all the parties are
Zionist-infiltrated. There is a need for new realignment in order to
unite anti-Imperial forces for full withdrawal of British troops from
overseas, for independence of England from the American Empire. 

In the Apple Cart by Bernard Shaw, the US makes a bid to take over
England, and a wise monarch keeps its independence. Disentanglement of
England from the US embrace is much needed, an answer to the Boston Tea
Party is called for.