Mahmoud Amadinejad, the demonized leader of Iran is greeted by New York rabbis who traveled to Tehran in late 2006 for a conference on the Holocaust. In Praise of The Jewish People.
by Donald Robert Clasen
June 1, 2015
The focus of this blog is articles that support the basic theme of my book, American Babylon, American Antichrist. Therein I argue that the US and Israel are the two biggest rogue nations on the earth today, the exact opposite of the Church’s usual take. This will eventuate in nearly the whole world turning on them in the Battle of Armageddon in northern Israel. Thus while Bible prophecy covers a wide range of topics I focus on these two nations only because they are so central to this puzzle and because we are so blind in this area.
Because of this, some of my readers especially Jewish ones, could mistakenly come to the conclusion that I’m anti-Semitic, that most dreaded of all labels in our time. And indeed that is exactly the kind of one dimensional thinking Zionist hasbara is currently in a desperate attempt to establish. They want the world to identify criticism of Zionism with bigotry toward all Jews.
Indeed, from the time the Jews were expelled out of Judea 1900 years ago, the Pharisee movement inherited control over those who did not accept Jesus Christ as their Messiah. The rabbis thereafter perfected a monopolistic philosophy, claiming that they and they alone spoke for and were the defenders of their people. When Zionism emerged and evolved into a race-based, supremacist political and eschatological vision, this became the vehicle for their professed right to inherit the earth.
But they do not have such a monopoly and not only am I not a bigot, I am in truth deeply appreciative of the contribution Jewish people have made to true progress and world culture. Without their largely-disproportionate efforts we would all be much worse off, and I am not talking here about the obvious religious legacy going all the way back to Abraham. I am referring to what these people have accomplished the last two or three centuries especially, once the modern nation-state system accorded rights to all citizens and Jews were allowed to escape the rabbinic-dominated shetl communities.
An Impressive List of Accomplishments
Ever since and in almost every field of endeavor, Jewish people have greatly contributed to real progress for humanity. Whether we are talking about academics, medicine, science, the arts, entertainment, politics, law, business, inventions—virtually anything having to do with the mind especially, they have distinguished themselves in excellence and leadership. About one fourth of all Nobel Prize winners have been Jews, over a third of them American, and this for a people that make up less than .2% of the world’s population!
I do not attribute this to some sort of “Jewish genius” or inherent mental superiority as some might claim though, but due mostly to their culture. Jewish culture stresses the importance of study, of developing the mind, of seeking a profession, of not just being a bump on a log but someone who does something with their life. And who can argue with that? A statement by Nathanael Kapner, raised an Orthodox Jew but now a Russian Orthodox Christian and a strident critic of his own people put it well. “While most kids are out playing B-ball after school the Jewish kid is up in his room doing his homework.” What culture can’t learn from values like that?
As Israel seems to get more and more extreme, as researchers discover deeper and deeper layers of the Zionist fantasy plan for world domination and its dirty tricks, it’s also important that Gentiles understand the hellish nature of this people’s experience during the Diaspora of the last 2000 years. While blame has not been all one-sided one way or the other, it is still true that they have suffered some horrible episodes of false accusation, hysteria, persecution, pogroms, murder, unfair limitations and the like in the course of their history. Like anyone, they hate it when they are wrongfully blamed and don’t get the credit and respect they feel they deserve.
Likewise, they have suffered right up to the present day as much exploitation at the hand of their own religious, political and cultural elites as any other people group. The Netanyahus, Adelsons, Koch Brothers, Madoffs, Foxmans, Murdochs, Rothschilds, Greenspans, Kissingers, Dershowitzs, et. al. among them no more represent their interests than the Bush crime family represents those of the American people.
Judaism as a religion has as many if not more sex offenders, charlatans and con men per capita within the rabbinic priesthood and cultural leadership as you would find in Christianity. The Mafia code of omertà (silence) which has its roots in the Talmud made sure of that. The scandals involving sexploitation, financial fraud, fear mongering, manipulation, and outright organized crime as with the Chabadists, have been epic in scope. You just won’t read that much about it in the New York Times.
If I have one complaint above all others about the Jewish people as a whole, it’s that I wished they were more outspoken as people like Norm Finkelstein, Nathanael Kapner, Gilad Aztmon, Roi Tov and many others have been. But considering the possibility of your career (or you!) being killed, your family holding a literal funeral for you (if you believe in Christ as Messiah), fears of fueling a new Nazism and the like, perhaps we might better understand the enormous pressure they are under.
In this article then I would like to present a short list of some Jewish luminaries whom I consider to be personal heroes to me and people I am thankful for. Very few are believers in Christ as Messiah but I try to accept people as best I can for what I can.
One of The Most Diverse Cultures In The World
As an ethnic group there is perhaps none more “all over” the political and religious map than the Jews. There are Jews in almost every religion ranging from Hinduism (Ram Dass, nee Richard Alpert) to hard core occultism (Anton LeVey, founder of the Church of Satan). Politically they range from fascism[2] to Communism, from deeply conservative to deeply liberal and everything in between. Indeed, when you get a grasp of just how massive a spectrum of diversity is to be found within this one ethnic group you come to see how ridiculous, intimidating and irrelevant the “anti-Semitism” or “self-hating” charges are on all of us.
Hardly any of the Jews listed below are from the ranks of “the religious” (fundamentalist Judaism),[3] nor the Jewish revolutionary spirit (Communism and neo-conservatism),[4] nor the Jewish sexual revolutionary spirit (pornography, sexual deviance-mongering), nor the Holocaust Industry hucksters, but mostly from what I would call the Jewish liberal/progressive tradition. Mine is not an endorsement of all that they believe either, nor of hidden motives I am not qualified to judge. I am a liberal but not a doctrinaire “progressive.” All the same, most of what I appreciate comes from that sector.
I am only going to give a short survey here of some personalities that come to mind for time’s sake. In no particular order they include:
Academia:
Jewish people disproportionately dominate academia and not without reason. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard Jewish intellectuals and professors being interviewed on the radio (which I spend a lot of time listening to) speaking on issues. I could wish my own people (Protestants, Evangelicals) were as informed as they are. A handful include people like:
–Norm Finkelstein, whose mother was a true Holocaust survivor bilked out of her reparation money by the con-men who guard what Norm came to call “the Holocaust Industry.” As a reward for his honesty Alan Dershowitz, one of the greatest national embarrassments to ever haunt the halls of Harvard, persecuted him relentlessly, robbing him of an academic career.[5]
-Professor Stephen Cohen of Princeton and NYU, one of America’s premier experts on Russia. He has lately stood almost alone against the deafening drumbeat in Washington and academia to demonize and taunt the people who defeated the armies of Hitler and Napoleon.
-Professor Noam Chomsky, an atheist but an undeniably-prolific author on the American Empire, global politics and many other subjects. Chomsky’s words of advice to Finkelstein that academia is a “gang of frauds, and they are not going to like it, and they’re going to destroy you” for challenging Joan Peter’s shoddy “scholarship” regarding Palestine history revision shows you what people like him are up against.
-Historian Tony Judt who lost his professorship at NYU simply for criticizing Israeli policy. There are many others both Jew and Gentile who have suffered the same fate.
Economics:
Paul Krugman, Richard Wolfe (a good analyst at least), Joseph Stiglitz and Robert Reich, countering the neoliberal banker con man philosophy of supplysiders like Milton Friedman and other economists from Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, David Ricardo to Ayn Rand, etc. (Who are almost all Jews themselves).
Literature:
Boris Pasternak, Isaac Asimov and many others. (I have to admit I haven’t been much “into” fiction since college days).
Hollywood Screenwriters:
such as Aaron Sorkin, Lawrence Kasdan and many, many more.
Journalism and Media:
Thank God for a handful of honest Jewish journalists in a deep ocean of deceit and cynicism. Glenn Greenwald, Amy Goodman, Brad Friedman, Naomi Klein, Max Blumenthal, Robert Scheer, Norman Goldman, Randi Rhodes, and Ari Melber are just a few examples. Such journalists provide an encouraging alternative to a vast army of Jewish hacks sometimes hired by fellow tribalists and their Gentile colleagues running interference for Zionist money and Establishment insiders.
Amy Goodman, Host of Democracy Now!
Some are outright intelligence agents (Mossad, CIA, MI6), others serve as useful tools at best who are very good at smogging up the intellectual discourse, ignoring facts, deliberately boring people, reading government handouts, and redirecting attention away from real stories, real problems and real solutions. These include a wide range of culpability from mere bias to the outright suspect, such as Jeffrey Goldberg, David Horowitz (Front Page Magazine), World Net Daily, Laura Ingraham, Fox News in general, Andrew Breitbart, Mark Levin, Wolf Blitzer (a former public affairs director for AIPAC, a virtual arm of Tel Aviv), Matt Drudge, Michael Savage, David Brooks, David Gregory, the Podhoretzes and Kristols et. al. of Weekly Standard infamy, Marty Peretz, Richard Cohen, Jonah Goldberg (a true poster child for Zionist nepotism), etc.
Politics and Activism:
With Washington a virtual captive to the Israel Lobby and with Congressional approval ratings in single digits, there is little to cheer about most anyone stuck in the Belt Way swamp. The narratives they are expected to parrot if they know what’s good for them reflect that reality.
However there are a few politicians working for the people’s interests anyway who happen to be Jewish. Most prominent is Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont, a tireless champion of the average American who is currently running for the Democratic nomination for President. Like JFK’s Catholicism before him, I’m sure some will not vote for him simply because he’s a Jew.
Myself, I would be proud to vote for America’s first Jewish President and Bernie is light years beyond anything the Republicans could ever come up with. I once watched him on C-Span eat alive Alan Greenspan in a Senate hearing when everyone else was treating that faker like the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.[6]
–Russ Feingold, the only senator to vote against the PATRIOT Act and who generally seemed to have a lot of common sense and regard for the real interests of the American public. Turned out of office in 2010, he just recently announced he will be running for the Senate again in 2016. Good news. (Update: Feingold lost to the execrable Republican Ron Johnson, about as dull a wit as you could want).
-Even my two Jewish senators from California, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein I am sometimes appreciative of. Feinstein really blew my mind recently when she called Netanayhu “arrogant” for “claiming to speak for all Jews.” Good for her.
-Others include Medea Benjamin, founder of Code Pink (gutsy gal), Harvey Wasserman (renewable energy activist) and many others.
On the dark side, the cup holdeth much. Pamela Geller is a classic example of a Mossad honeypot, at least in her younger days.[7] Joe Lieberman, the Senator from Israel was but one Mossad bullet away from becoming President if Gore had been elected. Perhaps that’s why the Supreme Court ruled on behalf of Bush and Cheney, because the God of all love thought that even that crew was better than a President Lieberman). Richard Holbrooke was a dark angel in diplomacy, Henry Kissinger a mass murderer, ultimate insider and sometimes tormented tribalist I sense. So many more examples. You get the idea.
Medicine:
Medical researcher Jonas Salk whose discovery of a polio vaccine rid the world of a former scourge; Selman Waksman, Albert Schatz (antibiotics), Ernst B. Chain (penicillin), Paul Ehrlich, Elie Metchnikoff (immunology), Hans Krebs, Fritz Lipmann and Arthur Kornberg (biochemistry), e.g. In all, 28% of Nobel prizes in medicine have gone to Jews. You can’t fake that.
Thanks also to Dr. Alan Urdang, my good-natured and patient family dentist when I was growing up. My father always took credit for putting his kids through college considering what a sweet tooth I had. A salute here too before I forget to Teddy Katz, my first college roommate at Temple University who’s now, I’m sure, an MD.
Science:
Albert Einstein, Neils Bohr, Max Born and many others.
Law:
A lot of names here but just one to use as an example. Judge Richard Goldstone, prominent and respected world-wide, the judicial face of the new South Africa who presided over Yugoslavan and Rwandan war crimes tribunals. He went from hero to zero within his own Jewish community after he issued a devastating but accurate UN report on the Gaza War of 2012.
Community leaders hurled words like “fury, outrage, disappointment, betrayal and self-hating” at him. The barrage of criticism world-wide by his own people was so over-whelming that he had to issue a humiliating apology for being right the first time. God only knows what they would ever say should the UN appoint a Palestinian to do a special investigation someday! Then maybe the incessant charges of UN anti-Semitism might finally be within the realm of possibility.[8]
Entertainment:
Dr. Israel Shahak late of Hebrew University wrote that during medieval times the rabbis forbade the Jewish people from making jokes, unless it was jokes about other religions, interestingly. Boy, have they been making up for lost time ever since! I generally share the Jewish love for bombast, irreverence and raucous behavior at the dinner table. Protestant culture is much more polite but sometimes too thin-skinned and boring.
The entertainment industry is “so Jewish” that when Jon Stewart was asked why he adopted a stage name he quipped, “Because Leibowitz sounded too Hollywood.”
Yes, Jon is one of my favorites but there is so much representation here I can only mention some highlights that have made my life more enjoyable—Phil Silvers, the Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges, Dustin Hoffman (a really gracious guy), Ed Asner, Mel Brooks, Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, Bette Midler, Kenny G, Michael Bolton, Harrison Ford, Jeff Goldblum, Al Franken, Michael Mann, Robert Downey, Jr., Henry Winkler, Neil Diamond, Keith Green, Jake Gyllenhaal, etc., and even William Shatner (ok, in doses at least).
This is what I mean by doses:
There are so many other areas such as the arts (Itzhak Perlman, featured on the post page), the business world, etc., that could be mentioned. But this is getting to be a long post so I’ll cut it short. I hope it’s been helpful.
Notes:
[1] While this is a subject for another day, the vast majority of Christians are unaware that the Bible is not studied in Judaism expositionally, seeking to discover the plain meaning of the text. Especially the Kabbalah looks upon the Scriptures like a source book for numerological patterns and obscure word associations, as an occultic dark art. And of course, only a rabbi is trained to understand this “deeper meaning.”
[2] Benjamin Netanyahu’s father, whom he adored, was a literal fascist right through World War II, a follower of Mussolini’s philosophy who edited a column called From The Desk of a Fascist. It should give pause about the Prime Minister’s possible inclinations carefully withheld from public declaration.
[3] A notable exception is how many orthodox rabbi groups protested the idea of a Jewish national state when Zionism was in its infancy, rightfully stating that the Jewish people have been condemned by God to wander without a home until the Messiah comes and brings peace to mankind. If you think groups like this don’t exist, just take a look at this picture at the top of one of them greeting the evil Iranian Amadinejad no less, during a visit to New York, thanking him for his protection of 20,000 Iranian Jews.
[4] The Trotskyite Lenni Brenner who wrote the fascinating expose Zionism In The Age of Dictators is an interesting exception.
[5] The same fate befell Kevin Barrett who was hounded out of the University of Wisconsin for questioning 9-11.
[6] In his later biography, Greenspan bragged about how he would go into those hearings as Fed Chairman with all kinds of esoteric language pre-planned for the fun of watching their eyes glaze over.
[7] In the spy trade, a honey pot is an agent who throws her sex around as part of a tactic to literally seduce the enemy, whether it’s an individual target or an entire population.
[8] Some more over-the-top hysterics included that Goldstone is “a small man who knows nothing of international law” – Shimon Peres; “worse than Mengele [the Angel of Death of Auschwitz]” – Alan Dershowitz; and that his report was “worse than Mein Kampf and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion” – Michael Oren, Israeli Ambassador. Classy stuff.
