Khazarei:

by Steven Plaut

This week I published an article on how Neo-Nazis, Palestinian terrorists, and leftist anti-Semites are obsessed with the "Khazar Myth", holding that all Ashkenazi Jews are descendent from Khazar converts to Judaism over a millennium ago. It is a way to delegitimze Israel and Jews:

It is one of the great ironies of the 21st century that anti-Zionists and anti-Semites on both the Left and the Right, have returned to racialist arguments against Jews that most of us thought had died out after World War II. Nearly every anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi website denounces Zionists and Israelis as "Khazars." Web chat lists in which Jews defending Israel are dismissed as "Khazar usurpers" are too numerous to count. The racialism once again in vogue holds that Jews would only have legitimate claims to the right of self-determination in their homeland if they were appropriately Semitic from a racial point of view. Palestine is part of the Semitic racial lebensraum and those who do not possess the correct pure racial markings have no business being there. Racial purity is suddenly the new basis for national rights.

The "Institute for Historic Review" is a Holocaust Denial Neo-Nazi web site. Here it behaves as a wonderful member of the Axis of Evil, Nazis allied with Arab terrorists, banning together to promote the Khazar Myth:
Furthermore, the Jews of Ashkenazi extraction are descendants of the Khazars, a people of Turkish stock, who occupied an area between the Black and Caspian Seas, a territory now a part of the Soviet Union. The Khazars, originally pagans, had in 740 A.D. embraced Judaism and their descendants, while they may profess the Jewish faith today, cannot claim to be of the "seed of Abraham" and "heirs according to the Promise." The ancestors of those Jews who today immigrate to Palestine from Europe and the Americas and claim Palestine and beyond as their ancestral homeland, came not from Jordan but from the Volga, not from Canaan but from the Caucasus, and that genetically, they are more closely related to the Hun and Magyar than to the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Besides, religion does not confer heritage or property rights on people!

The writer, Hadawi, claims to be a Palestinian refugee. Sure, we believe him.

Finally, a Neo-Nazi "blogger" named Kurt Nimmo, who is an unemployed New Mexico conspiracy nut, a groupie of Holocaust Denier David Irving, and a regular on the Uruknet web site of exiled Iraqi Baathists, has called ME a Khazar: Plaut and his Ashkenazic buddies are actually descended from the Turkic Khazars in eastern Europe, although they like to pretend they are direct descendants of the ancient Hebrews, a Semitic people closer to the Palestinians than Plaut would ever admit. Plaut and his poseur settler friends are a far cry from the ancient Assyrians, Babylonians, Chaldeans, Arameans, Hebrews, and Arabs. They are more akin to English colonists attacking Pequot villages and killing innocent men, women, and children than I will ever be.

I would have no problem with finding a family connection to folks with Khazar lineage, especially if they are in a position to make me a cheap loan.

Richard Gere -- Suicide Kisser

by Jack Engelhard


This would not be a good time for Richard Gere to revisit India. There’s a warrant for his arrest. What did he do? He kissed India’s leading lady, Shilpa Shetty, during an AIDS-awareness event in New Delhi. All that took place out in the open, in front of the news media and others who craned for a glimpse of these two glamorous actors staging a worthy extravaganza.

Apparently, Gere failed to read the “Thank You For Not Kissing” signs posted across the country.

Extremists over there started rioting for what they termed lewd behavior. A court in Jaipur wants Gere to present himself before a magistrate, and Shetty also faces charges, though anyone who has seen the footage can attest that Shetty demurred and wanted no part of Gere’s public display of affection.

India’s “Bollywood” turns out more movies than our own Hollywood and it’s doubtful that most citizens of that great democracy support the moralistic and legalistic hysteria -- like this reaction from former attorney general Soli Sorabjee: “Magistrates should not behave like the Taliban moral police. The [arrest] order is unsustainable and makes us look ridiculous.”

Gere has apologized for his disorderly exuberance and Shetty continues to be burned in effigy. In one particular hot spot, Meerut, mobs have been chanting “Down with Shetty.” They want her movies banned. That probably won’t happen in movie-crazed India, where Shetty is a film goddess. Obviously, though, she’ll never eat lunch in that town again.

Shetty tried to calm the protesters by saying that kissing derives from Gere’s culture, not her culture:

“I understand people’s sentiments,” she said, “but I don’t want a foreigner to take back bad memories from here.”

Planting a kiss is not the same as planting a bomb and should be appreciated as a welcome distraction in a world gone mad -- or so you’d think.

This really isn’t about India as much as it is about a world that’s gone topsy-turvy. Mickey Mouse, anyone? Hamas has been broadcasting a Mickey Mouse look-alike to recruit Arab kindergarten children into the business of murdering Israelis – Jews and Christians. Is there no end to depravity? All this from Hamas in Gaza, the same Gaza that Israel handed over as a concession to peace. (We're told that this Mickey Mouse show has been pulled by the PA, Too late. Damage done, and those PA textbooks still carry the same message of hate.)

Gere is a practicing Buddhist, an adherent of the Dalai Lama, whose message is international harmony and interfaith healing. India generally encompasses those virtues and is famed as a literate nation that values inclusiveness and tolerance. So all that feverish denunciation (by only a fringe of the population) is truly an exception for India, not the rule

Those of us who’ve seen the (now disgraced) footage can only wonder what Gere (once dubbed the sexiest man alive) could have been thinking. He was indeed overly affectionate. Is that a crime? Yes, if you do it in some dark alley, but not when you’re promoting AIDS-awareness in front of the whole world.

He was only trying to make love, not war, and must still be mystified that his gesture backfired.

Who knows if there’s an extradition treaty between the United States and India for the crime of kissing, which could lead to dancing, and in fact, here’s part of Gere’s apology: “My clumsy attempt at a ‘Shall We Dance’ move was a naïve misread of Indian culture, and I assure you, nothing more.”

Can’t happen here, you say, this brand of moral outrage? Okay, back at the office, try this: “Hi, Deborah.. Love your new dress, and you look sensational today.”

Go ahead.

Creating Our Future Leadership

by Nissan Ratzlav-Katz

How Self-Hatred in Israel differs from the Diaspora

by Steven Plaut

Please see this review of the excellent new book "Jewish Divide over Israel" by Edward Alexander and Paul Bogdanor, Transaction Books, 2006, reviewed by moi.

As part of the review, here is an observation on the difference between Israeli leftist Jewish self-hatred and assimilationist self-hatred in the Diaspora:

By and large, for such secularized assimilated Jews in the Diaspora, Jewish "self-hatred" was less a form of anti-Semitism than it was an expression of indifference to their own Jewish roots and origins.  Most "self-hating" assimilationist Jews in the Diaspora are simply non-Jewish Jews, people with no interest in belonging to the Jewish community or in practicing any form of Judaism.  By and large they do not actively wish other Jews harm and most have no sympathy at all for anti-Semites....

But Israeli Jewish anti-Semites are a completely different kettle of fish.  They are not posturing against Israel and against Jews because they are a small persecuted ethnic minority in some gentile country of residence.  It is true that there is an element of seeking social acceptance for them, attacking Jews and Israel in order to court favor among overseas anti-Semites, especially among Israeli leftists.  There is also clearly a repudiation of all attachment to Jews and Jewishness among such people, where "Canaanism" in the form of post-Jewish Israeliness is almost universal among Israeli anti-Semites.  But that is clearly not the same as Diaspora assimilationism.  Israeli anti-Semites may posture as "Jewish Palestinians", but none of them are seriously trying to learn Arabic or dress and live as Arabs.  

If Diaspora "self-hating" Jews are by and large simply indifferent to their Jewishness, Israeli Jewish anti-Semites quite openly hate their own people and country.  They invariably identify with and endorse the enemies of their country.  Tali Fahima and Udi Adiv differ from other Israeli anti-Semites only in the degree of their actual treason.  Israeli Jewish anti-Semites are not seeking social and cultural acceptance as much as they are seeking the destruction of their own people and the annihilation of their own country.  They resemble far more Lord Haw-Haw or Taliban John than they do the assimilated suburban American Jew.  

As such, Israeli Jewish anti-Semites increasingly resemble the candidly treasonous fringes of the American and European Left.  Just like the American Left is essentially little more than a movement of anti-Americanism and can be counted on to endorse every enemy of the United States and oppose American interests in everything, so the Israeli Left is motivated by an acute desire to see its own country harmed.  The difference of course is that the anti-American Left in the United States is harmless and an amusing distraction, whereas the radical self-hating Israeli Left is actively collaborating with the enemies of its own country during time of war and when the goal of those enemies is the annihilation of Israel.

The New Bishara Treason Chic

by Steven Plaut

The Left joins Bishara Treason Chic

Invitation to a hanging?

 

Well, the peek-a-boo game is over and the press in Israel have at last been allowed to print the charges against Knesset Member Azmi Bishara.  Bishara is an Anti-Semitic pro-terror Arab fascist, so naturally he is beloved by the Israeli far Left.  An ad was run in Haaretz this week declaring "Azmi Bishara you are our Brother," and signed by a handful of Israeli anti-Israel leftists and communist moonbats, including Anat Biletzki, professor of philosophy at Tel Aviv University.  Because Bishara is so openly a traitor, he is also being celebrated by Neve Gordon from Ben Gurion University, who previously cheered and celebrated such people as nuclear spy Mordecai Vanunu (Gordon declared he deeply admires him and thinks Vanunu was a patriot) and terrorist collaborator Tali Fahima.

 

The charges against Bishara are described here,  reporting that Bishara

'received several hundred thousand dollars from Hizbullah for delivering intelligence information during the Second War in Lebanon last summer. He was also in touch with intelligence agents from other unnamed countries.  Bishara is accused of handing over information about strategic locations to enable Hizbullah to strike at them during the war. He is also suspected of stealing millions of shekels from Arab aid organizations, laundering the money through eastern Jerusalem money-changers, one of whom has reportedly turned state’s witness. Bishara allegedly received envelopes full of cash, with one such envelope containing $50,000 in cash which he deposited in a Jordanian bank. Officials did not reveal from which country the money came.'

The Jerusalem Post reports that Bishara was helping the Hizbollah choose targets to attack.

When Bishara was elected to the Knesset as head of an Arab fascist party, Israel's moonbats were demanding that he sit on the Knesset intelligence committee.  I guess they wanted to make it easier for him to spy for his terrorist friends.  Instead, he was put on the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee and the Parliamentary Inquiry Committee on Wiretapping (I guess whoever assigned him had a sense of humor).

Bishara is a longtime Stalinist.  That is probably why the anti-Israel Van Leer Institute in Jerualem recruited him for their board.  The New Israel Fund in the US tried to bring Bishara to the Smithsonian as the official representative of Israel for Israel's 50^th independence events in 1998.  Bishara represents the kind of "New Israel" that the New Israel Fund seeks to create.

Bishara is a walking advertisement for why Israel should have capital punishment for treason, for both Jewish and Arab traitors.  The only problem with the idea is that there would be such a long line of those waiting their turns for its application.