posted 02-02-2002 08:42 PM            

Benjamin Ginsberg's 'The Fatal Embrace:
Jews And The State'
From Ingrid Rimland
irimland@zundelsite.org
2-2-2

Dear Jeff -

My friend, Anita, who prefers to be called "colored" rather than "Black", is an avid activist on behalf of Freedom of Speech in her own ethnic community. She contacted me years ago and alerted me to Jewish author Benjamin Ginsberg's amazingly frank, taboo-breaking book, "The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State."

It gives me sweet pleasure to offer you today Dr. Stephen J. Sniegoski's review of Fatal Embrace. Please remember that this book review is about 7 years old - it was written during the Clinton era, long before George W. Bush became a neo-con Republican candidate and eventual President!

Begin review -

By Dr. Stephen J. Sniegoski

Benjamin Ginsberg's "The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State," which deals with the rise and fall of Jews in different societies, is an intellectual bombshell. A liberal American Jew who teaches political science at Johns Hopkins, Ginsberg makes observations about Jewish influence in government and society that would be deemed anti-Semitic if expressed by a Gentile. Ginsberg, however, does not criticize that Jewish power for being harmful to Gentiles; his only concern is the harm it can cause for Jews by provoking Gentiles to anti-Semitic actions.

Outlining Jewish power since the Middle Ages, Ginsberg notes that Jews helped kings expand and centralize their realms; in mediÊval Spain, for example, Jews were closely tied to the monarchies, largely, but not solely, in the financial sphere. But they also took the lead in working for the revolutionary destruction of societies hostile to Jews; thus, Jews played key roles in European revolutions, liberal and Communist alike.

In the liberal revolutions and in the development of liberal states, Jews propagandized the public and financed liberal groups. In France, Jews helped established the Third Republic in the 1870s; their influence loomed especially large in the republic's anti-clerical campaigns. Jewish financial and media power also provided the underpinning for the Weimar Republic, whose depiction as the "Judenrepublik" by anti-Semites was not far from the mark. In late 19th-century Britain, the Jewish-dominated press championed imperialism, which benefited Jewish finance. And during the early stages of the Soviet regime, Jews were numerous in leadership positions, especially in the secret police and the propaganda agencies, which they dominated. In contrast to Judeophiles who claim that Jews observe a higher humanitarian ethos, Ginsberg acknowledges that Jewish Communists played a ruthless role in liquidating their opposition.

Ginsberg warns that as a result of their great power, Jews become a highly visible target for the enemies of the regime and often suffer group destruction with the regime's demise. Thus in the late 15th century, Ferdinand and Isabella expelled the Jews from Spain, where they had occupied key positions under previous monarchs. In Germany, Hitler eliminated the Jews along with the Weimar Republic; what enabled Nazism to succeed was a coalescence of lower- and upper-class opposition to Jewish power. Where such a fusion of divergent classes does not take place, as in the French Third Republic, Jewish power survives despite a high degree of anti-Semitism.

The Jewish fall from power does not always require the demise of a friendly regime. Sometimes a previously hospitable regime will eliminate Jews when they are no longer necessary for the maintenance of power, as was the case in the Soviet Union when Stalin dispensed with Jews. Ginsberg's fundamental theory is that the Jewish close relationship with the state is a "fatal embrace": the achievement of great power, and the concomitant high visibility, invite group destruction as situations change.

***

Ginsberg devotes the greatest part of his book to the history of Jewish power in America. German Jews gained significant power in the United States after the Civil War, largely in the realm of finance. Jews financed the U.S. regime's Civil War debt, the debts of the reconstructed Southern states, and the nascent industries. In essence, according to our author, Jews were a part of the new business and industrial class of the Gilded Age, and became "identified with the worst excesses of the nineteenth-century industrial order." (p. 75) Jewish prominence induced an anti-Semitic opposition from Southern and Western agrarians (Populists), and from old-stock New England patricians. Reacting to that anti-Semitic criticism, the Gentile business class jettisoned its ties with the Jews and aligned itself with the patricians. Thus, the 1890s saw the emergence both of exclusive clubs that barred Jews and of anti-Jewish quotas in the Ivy League colleges. Having been thrust out of the business elite, Jews sought to alter the American economic system, Ginsberg writes. They identified with the Progressive reform movement and - on the part of the newly immigrating Eastern European Jews - with radical socialism. The Jewish role in the Progressive movement crested in the Wilson administration, with Louis Brandeis playing a major role in the creation of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Trade Commission. However, the Jewish rise was transitory, cut short by the anti-radical Red Scare in the aftermath of World War I, which destroyed radical and reform movements as well as (in Ginsberg's view) an emerging welfare state.

It was with Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal that Jews gained long-term power in the United States, power that continues into the present. Jews served as Roosevelt's idea men and staffed his New Deal agencies. They played a fundamental part in fashioning the centralized American welfare state - and Ginsberg asserts that they created it to serve their own interests. In contrast to American Protestants' success in the private sector, Ginsberg writes that Jews "relied upon the state and the public economy to achieve positions of influence and status in American society." (p. 103) That account contrasts, we should note, with Thomas Sowell's portrayal of Jewish success via the free market.

Jews also played a significant role in getting the United States into World War II to destroy their Nazi nemesis. And they worked actively to undermine popular noninterventionist resistance to war. For example, the Anti-Defamation League "employed investigative agents who secretly penetrated isolationist and anti-Semitic organizations and collected potentially damaging or incriminating information" which it turned over to the FBI and other federal agencies. (p. 110) Ginsberg does not develop this point, but given the fact that the overwhelming majority of "isolationists" were not enemy agents and were simply exercising their constitutional right to oppose a policy, it is apparent that activist American Jews have been quite willing to crush the civil liberties of others in order to advance their own goals. Jews also played a critical part in turning the media toward a prowar stance. (That was quite an achievement, since the American mood in the 1930s was strongly antiwar and "isolationist.") In Hollywood, Jewish film makers concentrated on producing anti-Nazi propaganda films to prepare the masses for a crusade against evil.

In the immediate postwar period, right-wing attacks on Communist subversion put Jews on the defensive. Since Jews had been numerous in the American Communist Party, to them the attacks reeked of anti-Semitism. But by joining forces with the also-imperiled WASP elite, Jews were able to destroy the threat by exercising their media power. They did not just succeed in downplaying the idea of Communist subversion; they were even able to change the issue from Communist subversion to the right-wing threat to American civil liberties. That was quite a striking ideological turnaround from the Jews' total disregard of the civil liberties of pre-World War II "isolationists." The Jewish success against the right-wing danger meant that by the late 1950s, "conservative anti-Communists who sought to maintain a modicum of respectability ... carefully avoided the least hint of anti-Semitism." (p. 125) Ginsberg cites William F. Buckley Jr. as an example.

In the 1960s, the Jews played key roles in the civil rights revolution and the concomitant Great Society programs. For Jews, Ginsberg points out, support for black civil rights was not only a "moral commitment" but also an "important political tactic" to weaken the white South and the ethnic machine politicians in the North, and, as a consequence, increase their own relative power within the Democratic coalition. Moreover, the advancement of the concept of "equality of opportunity" bolstered Jewish power throughout society. (pp. 125-26) Jews opposed the Vietnam War because it inhibited the expansion of those liberal Great Society programs in which their power resided.

By the end of the Great Society reforms, Jews, in Ginsberg's view, had become the major force in American politics and government: "From the 1970s onward, Jews led or were influential in most, though not all, of the political reform, feminist, consumer rights, gay rights, environmentalist and other public interest groups and related foundations, study groups, and think tanks that came to dominate the Democratic party during the 1970s and continue to be the leading forces within that party today." (p. 137) And Jews wield considerable power in the institutions of the American welfare state, holding as they do prominent positions in the "public or quasi-public economy of government agencies, helping professions, private foundations, think tanks, and universities." (p. 140) Since Jewish power and wealth is either directly or indirectly tied to the national government, rather than to state and local governments or to the strictly private sector, Jews have a vested interest in its maintenance and expansion. In short, Ginsberg contends, Jews support the liberal welfare state for reasons of material self-interest: "Jewish liberalism is more an institutional than an attitudinal phenomenon. It is associated more with Jews' political linkages and involvements than with their underlying attitudes." (p. 143)

Ginsberg attributes the rise of black anti-Semitism over the past couple decades to the desire of upwardly mobile blacks to share in the positions of power held by Jews in the welfare-state apparatus. Jews may oppose some black activities, but they cannot become too critical of blacks because it is the idea of helping disadvantaged blacks that provides the "legitimation of the American welfare state." Indeed, Ginsberg maintains, "Many Jews and Jewish organizations believe that the fundamental interests of Jews are so closely tied, both politically and institutionally, to those of blacks, that it is sometimes necessary to support black demands even when, conceived narrowly or in the short term, these seem to be disadvantageous to Jews." (p. 165) It is that vested interest in the liberal welfare state that prevented most Jews from turning to Republicanism in the 1980s despite the Republicans' support for pro-Jewish positions on racial quotas and the defense of Israel.

Although the overwhelming majority of Jews did not turn to Reagan Republicanism in the 1980s, "Jews played important roles in implementing the administration's economic and foreign policy objectives," Ginsberg writes. "The association of Jews with Reaganism, especially in the realm of foreign policy, helped to heighten the anti-Semitism of forces on the political Left but produced a measure of philo-Semitism on the right, most notably among Protestant fundamentalists." (p. 188) Neoconservative Reaganauts identified Israel as America's "strategic asset" in the Cold War, and Israel actually helped the United States fight communism in Latin America and elsewhere. In the economic realm, Jewish parvenu financiers such as Michael Milken were the major beneficiaries of the Reagan rollback of regulations.

Ginsberg claims that the Republicans, unable to attract any significant number of Jews to their side, abandoned their support of the neocon elite with the end of the Cold War. Israel simply was no longer needed as an ally. Thus President Bush and Secretary of State James Baker tried to coerce Israel into following American Middle East policy and in so doing alienated their neoconservative support. Ginsberg, who completed "Fatal Embrace" at the beginning of the Clinton administration, emphasizes the large number of Jews who were entering that regime, reinforcing his theme of American Jewry's continued identification with liberal Democrats.

The author attempts to gauge whether Jewish power - which aroused strong opposition in the past - is threatened today. Despite the explicit anti-Semitism of blacks, Ginsberg doubts that they pose a direct threat to Jews because of their dependence on the welfare state that Jews supervise: blacks and Jews are "locked into a long-term relationship which neither can easily abandon." (p. 183) Black anti-Semitic rhetoric, however, has loosened the taboo against anti-Semitism in American society, according to Ginsberg, so that white right-wing forces - Joe Sobran, Patrick Buchanan, David Duke, paleoconservatives - can attack Jews and their agenda. Ginsberg believes that those right-wingers, if they should use the correct populist appeal to unite upper- and lower-class whites in what he characterizes as the Nazi manner, could pose a formidable threat to American Jewry: "An alliance of radical populists and respectable conservatives would almost inevitably make vigorous use of anti-Semitic themes to attack the liberal Democratic regime, and the Jews would find themselves locked in the fatal embrace of yet another state." (p. 243)

***

Ginsberg is far more explicit on the reality of Jewish power than any other pro-Jewish author of which this reader is aware. However, he leaves some important matters unresolved.

First, it must be asked: What enables Jews to dominate societies? Ginsberg says they have certain talents - scholarly, business, managerial - not possessed by the bulk of the population. However, he does not claim (like Nathaniel Weyl) that Jews are innately more intelligent than other people. It is odd that societies supposedly based on equality (such as America's current welfare state) would come to reflect greater Jewish dominance. With all the purported equal educational opportunities and aid to the disadvantaged, one would think that social and economic differences among groups would lessen over time. Of course, it could be argued that the real purpose of the liberal welfare state is not to help the disadvantaged but rather to keep them dependent in order to maintain the rationale for the welfare institutions that Jews dominate. Ginsberg does not even hint at this explanation.

Also problematic is the author's understanding of anti-Semitism. Ginsberg characterizes as anti-Semitic those Gentiles who are critical of Jewish power and its uses. Therefore, anti-Semitism does not necessarily entail racial hatred, threats of racial expulsion or racial extermination, or even lies. A statement can be perfectly truthful and still qualify as anti-Semitic! Despite this apparent meaning, Ginsberg still gives anti-Semitism a negative connotation. Presumably, it is wrong for Gentiles to oppose the Jewish agenda. A reader of Ginsberg's book should understand from the outset that the work is directed to Jews and Judeophiles, and that the author's concern is the long-term effect of Jewish power on Jews. He does not dwell on the negative impacts that Jewish power has had on Gentiles, even though he cites examples in which Gentiles have been harmed - such as in the Soviet Union.

Finally, Ginsberg underplays the importance of neoconservatism. (Paul Gottfried, the foremost paleoconservative analyst of neoconservatism, has underscored the significant power of neoconservatism in such works as "The Conservative Movement". Bush and Baker did anger neocons, but neoconservatism still dominates the Republican Party and the American conservative establishment. Neoconservatism simply does not threaten the welfare-state apparatus that provides Jews a base of power. As paleoconservatives correctly point out, neoconservatism simply acts to coopt the conservative thrust of the electorate, rendering it harmless to those whose interests are served by the welfare state. Besides being innocuous to the domestic welfare state, a neocon Republican regime might better serve Jewish foreign policy interests than a liberal Democratic one. It could pursue a Zionist-oriented globalistic foreign policy without the inhibitions of the Democratic Left. And having neocons in strategic positions in the Republican Party means that the Jews have placed their eggs in more than one basket: no matter who controls the government, Democrat or Republican, Jewish power remains intact. Outside of the Jewish orbit there remain only Patrick Buchanan and the paleoconservatives, whom Ginsberg sees as imminent threats to Jewish power and its agenda.

Despite some questionable interpretations, The Fatal Embrace is of immense value for its candid discussion of Jewish power, especially since it is authored by a Jew who identifies closely with Jewish interests. It is must reading for anyone interested in this taboo but critically important subject.

End of review

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Zundelsite comment: I want to repeat that this book review is about 7 years old - what a prophetic review!

Reread the second-to-last paragraph and ponder it! What do we see today? A "Republican" president expanding the Clinton foreign policy of global military intervention against Moslem groups and states - all, not-too-coincidentally, on Israel's enemy lists.

And what irony! There exists no conservative opposition to the Bush Administration's War on Terror - in or out of Congress. The only voices of opposition to the New Republican Globalism are found, as the reviewer predicted, with Libertarians, new-Liberal Democrats and socialist-anarchist groups. The Left has, in fact, preempted the Right in this struggle. Anarchists and Marxists, Labor Unionists and Libertarians mount street demonstrations and cause riots and near-insurrections whenever and wherever the new Globalists meet - from Seattle to Vancouver to Montreal to Ottawa as well as Italy and Sweden.

Beating the war drums are the neo-cons in the media - George Will, Charles Krauthammer and others - demanding an expansion of the bombing and invasion of countries like Iraq, Libya, Somalia, possibly even Syria, Iran and - if they have their way - the overthrow of Saudi Arabia. These media mavens move in perfect tandem with the new Imperialists like Wolfowitz, Pearl and others within the Administration.

The traditional American, patriotic Right has been marginalized into silence and oblivion. As a political force, they simply don't exist.

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Thought for the Day:

"Well now, I wonder, if the US and Canada merge, will the Canadians gain a First Amendment or will the Americans lose one?"

(Letter to the Zundelsite)

posted 02-10-2002 10:19 AM            

ACTION ALERT:

For NPR, Violence Is Calm if It’s Violence Against Palestinians

January 10, 2002

Before the January 9 gun battle on the Gaza Strip, National Public Radio (NPR) had for weeks been telling its listeners that Israel/Palestine was in a period of “relative quiet.”

“Morning Edition” anchor Bob Edwards on January 3 stated that U.S. envoy Anthony Zinni was coming to the region during “a time of comparative quiet.” In another report the same day, correspondent Linda Gradstein referred to “the relative calm of the past few weeks.” Other NPR reports have mentioned the “recent calm” (1/5/02) or the “fragile period of quiet” (1/7/02).

What NPR means by this was spelled out most explicitly by Linda Gradstein in a January 4 report on the envoy’s mission. "You know, there's been actually three weeks of relative quiet,” she said. “Only one Israeli has been killed in those three weeks, as opposed to 44 Israelis who were killed when Zinni was here last time in November and early December."

What Gradstein didn’t mention-- and what someone who relied on NPR for their Middle Eastern news would have little idea of -- was that this has been in no way a period of calm for Palestinians. In fact, in the three-week period that Gradstein referred to, at least 26 Palestinians were killed by occupation forces-- more than one a day.

Media critic Ali Abunimah documented the killings in a letter of protest to NPR (1/8/02), starting with 13-year-old Rami Khamis Al-Zorob, shot in the head on December 13 while playing near his home in Rafah, Gaza. Most of the deaths cited by Abunimah were of unarmed civilians; six were minors, ranging in age from 12 to 17.

But none of these deaths received much attention from NPR, leaving the impression that calm for Israelis was calm for Palestinians as well. One of the few times that the Palestinian toll was even vaguely referred to was in this December 24 exchange between "All Things Considered" anchor Robert Siegel and correspondent Peter Kenyon:

SIEGEL: “There was a resumption of violence today, I gather, a shooting of a Jewish settler.”

KENYON: “That's right, the first such shooting of a Jewish settler after a week of comparative quiet. There have been some deaths on the Palestinian side in the past week. But tonight a Jewish settler was shot in the chest, seriously wounded by Palestinian gunmen up near Nablus and the West Bank. One of the gunmen was also shot, and he was killed.”

Kenyon agrees with Siegel’s claim that December 24 marked a “resumption of violence,” even while acknowledging that “there have been some deaths on the Palestinian side.” In fact, there had been at least five Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in the previous week, including 12-year-old Muhammad Huneidek, shot in the chest at a checkpoint near the Neve Dekalim settlement near Gaza. Are we to conclude, then, that the killing of Palestinians is not violence?

That’s the contention of the Israeli government, and NPR appears to take this position seriously. Here’s a January 5 report by Kenyon:

“The raids into the West Bank and Gaza Strip have continued. They were yesterday in the West Bank village of Tel up near Nablus. They killed one Palestinian; four arrested. The army said they were all Hamas members.... But the Israelis don't consider these military raids to be violence. They consider that doing what Yasser Arafat should have been doing, by their rights, which is arresting these people and rounding them up.”

The unequal treatment of Israeli and Palestinian deaths is a long-standing pattern at NPR; a FAIR study of six months of the network’s coverage (Extra!, 11-12/01) found that 81 percent of Israeli conflict-related deaths were reported, but only 34 percent of Palestinian deaths. Strikingly, NPR was even less likely to report the deaths of Palestinian minors killed; only 20 percent of these deaths were reported, as compared to 89 percent of Israeli minors’ deaths. While NPR was more likely to cover Israeli civilian deaths than those of Israeli security personnel (84 percent vs. 69 percent), the reverse was true with Palestinians (20 percent vs. 72 percent).

Of course, NPR is not the only outlet that has misreported the Israeli/Palestinian conflict by downplaying violence against Palestinians. When a battle in Israeli-occupied Gaza recently left four Israeli soldiers and two Hamas guerrillas dead, the New York Times described the story on its front page (1/10/02): “Palestinian gunmen in Gaza put an end to a lull in the violence, ambushing and killing four Israeli soldiers before being shot dead.” The fact that the story inside acknowledges that “at least 20 Palestinians have died violently” in recent weeks only underscores how some violence doesn’t seem to register with mainstream U.S. media.

ACTION: Please contact the NPR’s ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin to ask for an end to NPR’s double standard in reporting on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and for equal treatment of all victims of violence, regardless of ethnicity or nationality.

CONTACT:
Jeffrey Dvorkin
NPR Ombudsman
JDvorkin@npr.org

As always, please remember that your comments are taken more seriously if you maintain a polite tone. Please cc fair@fair.org with your correspondence.

To read Abunimah's letter to NPR, see: www.abunimah.org/nprletters/020108calm.html

posted 02-28-2002 09:44 AM            

quote:

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http://www.ccmep.org/hotnews/israeli012802.html

Israeli Soldiers Refuse to Serve in West Bank, Gaza

By Lee Hockstader

Washington Post Foreign Service

Monday, January 28, 2002

JERUSALEM, Jan. 28 – More than 60 Israeli army reservists, half officers and all of them combat veterans, have publicly refused to continue serving in the West Bank and Gaza Strip on the grounds that Israeli occupation forces there are abusing and humiliating Palestinians.

"We will no longer fight beyond the Green Line for the purpose of occupying, deporting, destroying, blockading, killing, starving and humiliating an entire people," declared the petition signed by the reservists and published in Israel's best-selling daily newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth.

Over the years there have been instances of eligible Israelis declining to serve in the army at all, or refusing to serve in certain places for reasons of conscience or politics. What makes the current case unusual is that so many combat reservists, both soldiers and officers, have come forward publicly at one time.

Moreover, the organizers of the petition – a pair of reserve lieutenants in their twenties who have served previous stints in the Israeli-occupied territories – say their goal is to collect 500 signatures in the coming weeks and launch a broad social campaign.

"We all have limits," reserve Lt. David Zonshein, 28, a software engineer and one of the two men who drafted the petition, told Yedioth. "You can be the best officer, always be first .‚.‚. and suddenly you are asked to do things that should not be asked of you – to shoot people, to stop ambulances, to destroy houses in which you don't know if there are people living."

Zonshein, who wrote the petition with reserve Lt. Yaniv Itzkovich, 26, a university teaching assistant, declined to speak with foreign correspondents. But along with several other signatories of the petition, they told Yedioth about incidents in which Israeli troops had opened fire on Palestinian children and other civilians who posed no apparent danger to their lives.

In a statement, the Israeli army said: "To serve in the Israeli Defense Forces is obligatory under the law and there is no place for reserve soldiers to choose what jobs they want and what jobs they don't want. The writers of the petition don't represent the soldiers and officers of the reserve who understand their mission and are working days and nights toward the security of the state of Israel and peace for its citizens."

Most Israeli men are required to serve as army reservists until they are 45 years old, typically spending a few weeks to a month or more each year away from their families and civilian jobs.

Raanan Gissin, spokesman for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, acknowledged that allegations of abuse by the army do happen and should be investigated, but he dismissed the petition and refusals to serve in the army as a "marginal phenomenon."

The petition "undermines the basic tenet of Israeli democracy," he said. "You can't have a government in which people can decide they'll .‚.‚. bomb this target but not that target. You abide by the rule of the majority and the majority has decided this is the government and this is its policy."

Since the current Palestinian armed uprising erupted in September 2000, more than 500 Israelis have refused to serve in the Israeli occupied territories, including pacifists and veterans, recruits and reservists, according to There's a Limit, an Israeli group that encourages such objectors.

Of that number, about 40 have been sentenced to prison terms that are generally brief, including 12 reserve officers. Others have been ignored or given army jobs inside Israel.

Ram Rahat, 45, a former combat soldier who refused to serve during Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982, said the current refusals mirror patterns that emerged in previous conflicts.

"This says that people who have gone through [army reserve duty] a couple of times, going through the territories and seeing the reality of what's going on there, are starting to get fed up with it," said Rahat, who is an accountant. "It's exactly what happened in the first intifada as well. As more and more people did reserve duty and came back for their second and third tours, there were more and more cases of refusal."

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