XPost: or.politics, alt.usage.english, alt.society.liberalism   
   XPost: rec.food.cooking   
   From: void@invalid.noy   
      
   Zionism and American Jews   
      
   Alfred M. Lilienthal   
      
   It had been a nasty, rainy night when an elderly, affluent Hartford   
   couple made their way from their home to a meeting. As their car   
   slowly turned left at the entrance to the Jewish Community Center,   
   another automobile raced out of the fog and rammed into them. My   
   cousin, whose countless civil and philanthropic deeds had endeared her   
   to the community, was dead before she could reach the hospital; her   
   husband seriously injured.   
      
   Ever since the appearance of my Readers' Digest article, in which I   
   crossed swords with Zionist Organization chieftain, Rabbi Abba Hillel   
   Silver, my relatives in Hartford had looked upon me as a plain and   
   simple nut, if not a traitor. Former close family ties had   
   deteriorated to a point of near-total ostracism. Nevertheless, blood   
   is thicker than water, and I rushed to Connecticut for the last rites   
   of a wonderful woman, and was among the 800 to pay Sunday morning   
   tribute to her in a packed synagogue-the very one from which, in the   
   presence of many family members, I had been excoriated by the rabbi   
   during the High Holy Days services thirty years earlier for daring to   
   speak out publicly against Zionism.   
      
   Having flown up from Washington, I spent the night at the home of   
   other cousins from whom my iconoclastic views had separated me even   
   before the Digest piece appeared.   
      
   Cousin Bern and I stayed up reminiscing late into the night, and, of   
   course, the Middle East crisis came into our conversation. "You know,   
   I have never been a Zionist," he said. "But something had to be done   
   to provide a home for Jewish refugees. That is why I have always   
   supported the State of Israel, given substantially to the UJA, and   
   even headed the Hartford drive." This reasoning, so typical of   
   thousands of other Jews, has been responsible for the Zionist takeover   
   of the American Jewish community-lock, stock and barrel.   
      
   My rejoinder, I feared, fell on ears as deaf as those I had   
   encountered in my continual efforts to open doors to reasoning and to   
   banish emotionalism. Americans of Jewish faith cannot visualize the   
   extent to which their rabbis and secular leadership, operating through   
   Organized Jewry, have totally deceived them into confusing   
   humanitarianism with nation-building, religion and nationalism. A home   
   could have been found in 1947 for the 285 000 survivors of Hitler's   
   concentration camps without ever establishing a state; just as today   
   security for the Jews of Israel can be obtained without the continued   
   expansionism wrought by the West Bank settlements policy or the   
   ruthless repression of the rights of the Palestinian people.   
      
   But only an ever-larger state will appease the hungry ambitions of   
   Zionist leaders. Privately they have incessantly declared that they   
   have no interest in refugees, only in creating a sovereign state. In   
   their atheism and agnosticism, they have manifested even less concern   
   for Judaism, the religious faith. Adroitly exploiting Nazi genocide,   
   their propaganda has used the Holocaust to extract a blank check from   
   Zionist and non-Zionist co-religionists which enabled them in 1948 to   
   bet the future of American Judaism on the roulette of power politics.   
      
   Speaking unqualifiedly in the name of all Jews, Zionist acumen made   
   certain that the politicians remained hypnotized more than ever by the   
   "Jewish vote." All they had to do was to remind both political parties   
   that their eloquent support of Israel was a prerequisite for their   
   conquest of pivotal election states.   
      
   When so much is at stake in the Middle East, inevitably the question   
   must arise: How has the Zionist will been imposed on the American   
   people? Far from all Jews believed in the concept of the Jewish state,   
   and the Jews themselves constituted but a very small minority of the   
   American population, less than three percent. Is it possible that   
   Americans have been so apathetic that six million can manipulate 230   
   million?   
      
   But there are many compelling reasons why population figures are of   
   little relevance to the Zionist success story. Mahatma Gandhi once   
   remarked: "Numbers are not critical to any struggle. Strength and   
   purpose are." This strength, matched by wealth and position, can be   
   summed up in one word: power. The Zionists have been able to muster   
   fantastic muscle at the right moment and at the right place, or   
   instill the fear that it might be used.   
      
   The triumph of Zionism would never have been possible without the 20th   
   century's Holy Trinity: Hitler, the supine politicians, and the   
   compliant media. By labeling those who opposed the course upon which   
   Israeli leadership intractably committed their new state as   
   "anti-Semitic," they crushed budding dissent. Without understanding   
   the underlying reasons, the Jewish rank and file could point to the   
   large number of prominent Christian supporters of the state and boast:   
   "Just as it is not necessary to be Jewish to love Levy's rye bread, so   
   one need not be Jewish to be a Zionist." Everyone loves a winner. What   
   little organized opposition there was to Zionism totally collapsed   
   with Israel's stirring victory in the June 1967 six-day war. The   
   anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism all but vanished, and   
   thereafter, even non-Zionists were not ashamed to be counted in   
   Zionists ranks, as Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz so loudly   
   proclaimed in "Now, Instant Zionism."   
      
   A principal reason for the remarkable political success achieved by   
   the Jewish connection and the Zionist connectors lies deep in the   
   American political system. Our system of representative government has   
   been profoundly affected by the growing influence and affluence of   
   minority pressure groups, whose strength invariably increases as   
   presidential elections approach. This makes it virtually impossible to   
   formulate foreign policy in the American national interest. The   
   Electoral College system has greatly fortified the position of the   
   national lobbies established by ethnic, religious and other minority   
   pressure groups-the Jewish-Zionist-Israel lobby in particular.   
      
   Under this anachronistic system, state votes go as a unit to the   
   candidate winning a plurality of the vote, which endows a   
   well-organized lobby with tremendous bargaining power. And the Jewish   
   connection has been augmented by the Jewish location: seventy-six   
   percent of American Jewry is concentrated in sixteen cities of six   
   states -- California, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio and   
   Florida -- with 181 electoral votes. It only takes 270 electoral votes   
   to elect the next President of the United States.   
      
   This explains why the politicians have been mesmerized by fear of the   
   "Jewish vote" in a hotly contested state. The inordinate Israelist   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)