Jewish Self Criticism Excoriated Alexander

Jews Against Themselves, by Edward Alexander. 2015

Immoderate Criticisms of Jews Who Dissent From Jewish Anti-Polonism and the Preeminence of the Holocaust

Author Edward Alexander uses strong terms against modern Jews that do not act in the way that he thinks they should be acting. He refers to them as “Court Jews” (e. g, p. 84) and even compares them to long-ago apostate Jews that had encouraged the persecution of Jews. For instance, he comments, “Martin Luther’s seemingly innovative program of burning synagogues, destroying Jewish homes, and confiscating the Talmud and all other Hebrew books was in fact derived from the proposals of Johannes (formerly Josef) Pfefferkorn, the Jewish convert who, years earlier, had exhorted his German countrymen to ‘drive the old Jews out like dirty dogs and baptize the young children’ and “take their goods and give them to those to whom they belong.’” (p. 1).

Is there supposed to be a “Party Line” on valid Jewish thinking? The tone of this book makes it seem so.

Instead of focusing on Israel, as other reviewers had done, I examine the following:

IS ANTISEMITISM ALWAYS SOMEBODY ELSE’S FAULT?

Author Edward Alexander complains that Israeli politician Shulamit Aloni “has also blamed Jews for arousing anti-Semitism in Poland by displaying the flag of the Jewish state at Auschwitz and other Holocaust –related activities…” (pp. 29-30). However, visiting Israeli students, during the so-called March of the Living, have done much more than that. They have consistently shown disrespect to the Polish people. See my review of ABOVE THE DEATH PITS.

The complaint about Shulamit Aloni, voiced in this book, is itself instructive. It seems to point to a “peer pressure” among many Jews to never recognize Jewish conduct as the root of anti-Semitism, and to exclusively blame Poles for everything that is negative in Polish-Jewish relations.

The author’s reasoning can be extended to developments that have occurred in the three years since this book was published. Consider Jonny Daniels, a British Jew active in Poland. He has been subject to a lot of flak from many Jews for his “friendship” towards the freely-elected PiS government, and for his rejection of many (though certainly not all) of the canons of the standard anti-Polish Holocaust-related narrative. For doing so, Jonny Daniels has been called a “Court Jew”, a “practitioner of the world’s oldest profession”, and worse.

JEWS WHO OPENLY DISAGREE WITH THE STANDARD HOLOCAUST-SUPREMACIST ORTHODOXY

Author Alexander has rather superficial and dismissive words about noted Jewish film critic and writer Phillip Lopate. (pp. 54-56). This, IMO, is the most non-objective part of this book. To fill-in the reader on the facts, and to do justice to Lopate’s perceptive views, I have looked up the original source [TIKKUN 4(3)55-65]. The following are direct quotations from Phillip Lopate [ORGANIZED BY SUBTOPICS]:

[THE HOLOCAUST AS A POLITICAL WEAPON]:

In its life as a rhetorical figure, the Holocaust is a bully. (p. 56).

It had a self-important, strutting air…the Holocaustians used it like a club to smash back their opponents…one ethnic group tries to compel the rest of the world to use as a token of political respect. (pp. 55-56).

There are other reasons besides chauvinism why Jews might be loath to surrender the role of chief victim. It affords us an edge, a sort of privileged nation status in the moral honor roll… (p. 61).

We Jews own the Holocaust; all others keep your cotton-picking hands off…The Holocaust is a jealous God; though shalt draw no parallels to it. (p. 56).

Holocaust monuments seem to me primarily a sign of ethnic muscle flexing…. (p. 60).

[THE POLITICAL CIRCUS INSTIGATED BY HOLOCAUST SUPREMACISM]:

Will the pope single out sufficiently the tragedy of the Jews in his remarks about World War II? If not, the Jewish organizations are quick to get on his case. There is something so testy, so vain, so diva-like about this insistence that we always get top billing in any rite of mourning…all our monitoring and suspicious rebuttal only leaves the impression of a Jewish lobby seeking to control, like a puppeteer, the language of politicians and popes. (p. 59).

Sometimes I see the Jewish preoccupation with the Holocaust, to the exclusion of all other human disasters, as uncharitable, self-absorbed, self-righteous, and, well, pushy. (p. 65).

[THE MYSTIFICATION OF THE HOLOCAUST]:

I find it curious for people to speak of the murder of six million Jews as a “mystery” and the murder of several million Cambodians a more run-of-the-mill, open-and-shut affair. (p. 56).

A good deal of suspicion and touchiness reside around the issue of maintaining the Holocaust’s privileged status in the pantheon of genocides. It is not enough that the Holocaust was dreadful; it must be seen as UNIQUELY dreadful. (p. 57; Emphasis is Lopate’s).

I cannot help but see this extermination pride as another variant of the Covenant; this time the Chosen People have been chosen for extraordinary suffering. As such the Holocaust seems simply another opportunity for Jewish chauvinism. (p. 61).

The hostility toward anything that questions the uniqueness of the Holocaust can now be seen as part of a deeper tendency to view all of Jewish history as unique, to read that history selectively and use it only insofar as it promotes a redemptive script. (p. 64).

[HOLOCAUST SUPREMACISM DEFINITELY MARGINALIZES ALL OTHER GENOCIDES]:

What disturbs me finally is the exclusivity of the singular usage, THE Holocaust, which seems to cut the event off from all others, and to diminish, if not demean, the mass slaughters of other peoples—or, for that matter, previous tragedies in Jewish history. (p. 56; Emphasis is Lopate’s).

It is hard to escape the conclusion that, to us in North America, those piles of other victims are not as significant as Jewish corpses…When it comes to mass murder, I can see no difference between their casualties and ours. (p. 58).

In the meantime, is it not possible for us to have a little more compassion for the other victimized peoples of this century and not insist quite so much that our wounds bleed more fiercely? (p. 61).