Approximately 82 years ago I was born in New York City to Jewish parents. Therefore, I am a Jew by birth but an atheist by choice. However, as far as the fascists are concerned, as demonstrated in the 1930s and 40s, I am a Jew regardless of my beliefs or lifestyle.
During my life, I’ve often reflected on WW2 and thought that, if not for my good fortune to be born in the US, I might have been one of the millions to be gassed or I might have become the male alternative to Anne Frank.
Why am I taking the time to write this? There is a growing movement here in the US and Europe toward fascism and along with that a sense of more and more people willing to express their anti-Jewish sentiments openly. Needless to say, I am concerned.
Fascism is not an opinion and is not a debatable issue. Fascism is a threat, a threat to millions of people who are classified as unfit and, therefore, disposable. There is only one response . . . destroy it by any means necessary.
Some are blaming world Jewry for Israel’s program of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, while others are denying the Holocaust ever occurred or occurred but was extremely exaggerated. In other words, there weren’t really 6 million Jews who died at the hands of the fascists in Europe.
According to these folks, the claim that 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust was the main instrument used by the Zionists to convince the world that the Jewish people were entitled to their own homeland, their own safe haven.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t that simple. The notion of a Jewish homeland was projected as far back as 1917, well before the Holocaust, when the United Kingdom’s foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, floated that idea to the British Jewish community and the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland.
One has to ask the question, why? After centuries of exploitation, scapegoating, assassinations, ghettoizing, etc., why was Great Britain pursuing the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine?
Did the British leadership wake up one morning to recognize their sins and realize they actually loved Jews?
I think not. To understand the political foundation of an Israel, we can only look at Israel’s role in the Middle East today. Israel is an extension of US and NATO influence in that area of the world, an area not particularly friendly to the US and NATO countries. They are the eyes and ears and the implementers of actions needed by the US, actions that the US does not want to be connected to.
There is a reason why the US was instrumental in helping Israel develop a nuclear weapons program by supplying money, equipment, and expertise and why, through the years, they have protected Israel’s right to have such a program. There is a reason why the US sends $3.5 billion annually to Israel for the purchase of weapons and military hardware. And, it is not because they love the Jews.
Many have expressed anger and accused Israel of manipulating and exploiting the US. That’s like saying, “the tail wags the dog.” The US is the most powerful and wealthiest country in human history. Israel serves an important purpose in that area of the world especially since the main aspect of the US agenda is world domination and control of all the world’s resources . . . oil, gas, minerals, etc. Israel is a client state that offers a service to the US and in return the US agrees to protect Israel and keep it well armed and strong. They need one another.
So, when people get wrapped up in how many Jews really died during WW2, I find that misleading and irrelevant. Yes, the Holocaust was a factor in convincing the rest of the world that the Jewish people were entitled to their own homeland. But, whether it was 6, 5, or 3 million Jews dead, the powers that be saw an opportunity to establish a Eurocentric outpost in a resource rich, unfriendly area of the world and they would have done so regardless. The driving force was not guilt but political expedience.
I do not know how many Jews were sacrificed during the war, but we are talking about millions. It is ludicrous to make an argument, as some are, that 6 million deaths was the magic total that would convince the world’s leaders to support the establishment of a Jewish homeland. Does anyone really think that 3 or 4 million would not have been sufficient and would have caused the Zionists to lose their support? The Holocaust was used as the rationale to justify the birth of Israel while the powers that be were striving to develop a presence in that hostile part of the world.
It is true that many are reluctant to confront Israel for fear of being labeled anti-Semitic. In fact, I’ve, as a critical member of the tribe, been called a “self-hating Jew. Criticism of Israel is not only unacceptable, but there are nations that are ready to criminalize such behavior (Fascism 101).
But, the most important factor in being critical of Israel’s policies and racist actions, is the danger of angering the beast . . . the USA, the country that can destroy you militarily and/or economically and has demonstrated that it would not hesitate to do so.
Let me add for clarity, I do not support Israel as a Jewish state . . . To accept Zionism is to foster racism and genocide.
Dave Alpert has masters degrees in social work, educational administration, and psychology. He spent his career working with troubled inner city adolescents.
I thought I was going to read about the rise of anti-Semitism, but I found this article to be confusing. Dave Alpert writes, “There is a growing movement here in the US and Europe toward fascism and along with that a sense of more and more people willing to express their anti-Jewish sentiments openly.” True. But correlation does not prove causation. The people expressing anti-Jewish sentiments may not always be fascist, and fascists today are not always anti-Semitic. Alpert himself gives an example:
“Fascism is a threat, a threat to millions of people who are classified as unfit and, therefore, disposable.”
So when Israel is a threat to millions of Palestinian people that are considered disposable, is that not fascism? Yet Israel is not anti-Semitic. Fascism and anti-Semitism are not synonyms. So where is the evidence of rising anti-Jewish sentiment? Alpert cites only two examples, both rather general:
“Some are blaming world Jewry for Israel’s program of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, while others are denying the Holocaust ever occurred or occurred but was extremely exaggerated.”
For the latter example, Alpert says that even if the Holocaust was exaggerated, it is irrelevant because there were other, preceding and more powerful motives for the establishment of Israel. That seems like a straw man to me. While there may be some people arguing about numbers, I think more people are asking why is this genocide different from all other genocides. I think that’s a legitimate criticism, not anti-Semitism.
As for those blaming Israel for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, that too is a fact, not an opinion, stating a fact is not anti-Semitism.
But Alpert wants to separate Israel and Zionism, and blame Zionism for what Israel does to the Palestinians. Zionism does not exist separately from Israel, just as Israel, which calls itself the Jewish state, does not exist separately from Judaism.
There is indeed a rise in fascism in the United States. California has decided to become smoker-free by 2030, a mere 12 years from now. They say “smoke-free,” but they have redefined all products of combustion (smoke) not associated with individual smokers, as “not-smoke,” to be called smog or pollution and not to be part of the smoker-free policy. I’ve been smoking for 62 years and do not wish to stop, and I know what happened to members of my family when Germany tried to become Jew-free or Juden-frei. And when they round me up and shoot me for the benefit of the public good, they will not allow me a last cigarette. That’s fascism. Already, as happened with Jews in WWII Germany, smokers have been declared by the courts to have no rights. People don’t have to hire you or rent to you, and you don’t get the same protections under the California Constitution as others considered to be major polluters.
I’m proud of being a smoker. Wherever smoking rates go down, cancer, heart disease, obesity, Parkinson’s and Alzheimers go up, and longevity goes down. I’ve been eating and drinking for 78 years but nobody calls me an air addict or a food addict. I’ve only been smoking for 62 years, so why am I called a nicotine addict? Already I have to go outside into the urban smog, chemtrails, and radiation, to smoke my organic tobacco. Well, Auschwitz also had a designated smoking area.
Israel belongs to world Jewry. All Jews everywhere have the right of return to Israel, even those who were never there and whose ancestors were never there. So the racism and genocide perpetrated against the Palestinians by Israel is the responsibility of world Jewry. If Dave Alpert thinks that fascists would consider him, an atheist, to be Jewish due to his heritage, then maybe he should try to do more than just deflect criticism of Israel to “Zionism.” If the criticism is justified, then it doesn’t matter if the perpetrators of genocide are Israelis, Zionists, or secular jews: the genocide has to stop before criticism of it can stop, and for as long as fascist oppression continues, criticism of it, anywhere by anyone, is justified.
This is not the CIA blaming Assad or Putin for what US-supported terrorists do. This is the Jewish state saying that any criticism of the state is criticism of Jews. And apparently, Jews cannot be criticized, even when they commit genocide, for fear of anti-Semitism spreading and leading to another Holocaust. Am I the only one who finds this confusing?