Big Israel: How Israel’s Lobby Moves America by Grant F. Smith – Published February 5th 2016 by Institute for Research.
Outstanding, Well-Supported Research on the Reason Behind the Preeminence of the Holocaust
On the back cover, author Grant F. Smith recounts the depth of his research. It also included some lawsuits to pry-loose the unwelcome information. This book centers on American Jews and the induced U. S. government support for the State of Israel. In my review, however, instead of repeating other reviewers, I focus on the induced pre-eminence of the Holocaust in the USA. It extends much beyond just the maintenance of popular support for Israel.
HOLOCAUST/ISRAEL AS A SUBSTITUTE RELIGION FOR JEWS
Total U. S. foreign aid to Israel—not counting covert aid—is now at a quarter trillion dollars total. (p. 4). U. S. disclosed annual aid to Israel rose exponentially in the early 1970s, and, adjusted for inflation, has since amounted to 3-5 billion dollars annually. (p. 4).
Tens of specific American Jewish organizations, that have been promoting the State of Israel, have been identified and tabulated by the author. See his Figure 4 (p. 20).
Author Smith echoes many earlier scholars as he writes, “[Jewish] Federations in the period 1967-1990, bursting with pride over Israel’s 1967 Six-Day War victories, began promoting Holocaust awareness as the second pillar (alongside Israel) of communal identity.” (p. 105). Clearly, those who say that American Jews “have nothing to do with” Israeli Jews and their crimes against the Palestinians, are being quite disingenuous.
JEWS DO NOT CONTROL THE PRESS: JEWS HAVE CONSIDERABLE INFLUENCE OVER THE PRESS
By way of contextualization, Polish Cardinal Jozef Glemp, around 1985, was misquoted [deliberately?] as repeating the old anti-Semitic trope about Jews controlling the press. This same innuendo was resurrected at the time of Glemp’s death in 2013. What Cardinal Jozef Glemp had ACTUALLY said was quite different: Jews have, in his words, sympathetic access to the media, and they have been using this sympathetic access in order to advance their interests at the expense of Poland.
Interestingly, author Grant F. Smith, though focusing on Israel, assesses Jewish media influence in a manner very similar to that of the late Cardinal Jozef Glemp. He comments, “Many JCRC [Jewish Community Research Council] leaders automatically view all critical news coverage of Israel as ‘distorted’ and work hard to suppress criticism and insert pro-Israel spin. Because they are vigilant and local, JCRC op-eds calling for support of Israel are commonplace while their constant pressure likely increases the perceived ‘cost’ for any news outlet considering publishing serious journalism concerning Israel.” (pp. 104-105).
HOLOCAUST SUPREMACY EXTENDS TO THE VERY WORD HOLOCAUST ITSELF (A PROPRIETARY, PRIVELEGED TERM)
George Orwell’s iconic 1984 taught us that the control of the language is the key to the control of what people think. That is why there was Newspeak. Now we have Holocaustspeak, which includes the mystification and monopolization of the very term Holocaust, along with the implicit marginalization of all the other genocides, which of course never get such a privilege.
Along this line, Grant F. Smith writes, “JCRCs [Jewish Community Relations Councils] promote public funding for Holocaust and Jewish studies centers at state universities. They work jointly with the ADL [Anti-Defamation League] to protect the word Holocaust as exclusively referencing events surrounding WWII and not allowing the Holocaust to be used in analogies.” (p.104).
[No wonder that some Poles have facetiously referred to the WWII genocide of 3-4 million ethnic Poles, at the hands of the Nazi Germans, as the Polonocaust.]
THE INSTRUMENTALIZATION OF THE HOLOCAUST AT THE EXPENSE OF ALL OTHER GENOCIDES
Smith comments, “Holocaust memorialization and awareness programs in this period [1980s-1990s] became a major means for IAOs [Israel Advocacy Organizations] to combat growing public discomfort and more informed questions about Israel’s policies and actions.” (p. 20; See also p. 196, on Jews using the memory of the Holocaust as a tool for reclaiming moral high ground in the face of adverse information about the Palestinians).
With especial reference to Native Americans and African-Americans, Smith sagely cuts to the quick, as he remarks, “The prevalence of Holocaust memorial resources in the United States as a politically useful venture is made suspiciously prominent in the absence of memorials and mass media about more closely related and relevant events that occurred in the Americas…No similar effort to memorialize or educate about these tragedies have anywhere near the funding trajectory of Holocaust memorialization.” (p. 197).
Much, much more can be said about the magnitude of the Holocaust supremacy and how it permeates American society. See the first-posted comment under this review.
HOLOCAUST INDOCTRINATION IN AMERICA’S EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM
Author Grant F. Smith leaves nothing to the imagination as he writes, “By 2015, six states (California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, New Jersey and New York) mandated that the Holocaust be taught in the educational curriculum. Eleven states (Alabama, Connecticut, Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Washington and West Virginia) recommend teaching the Holocaust in their educational curricula. Every year, millions of dollars in federal and state appropriations are sought to fund the expansion of Holocaust curriculum in American schools.” (p. 199).
Needless to say, no other genocide gets anywhere near this kind of exposure to young, impressionable minds.
HOLOCAUST SUPREMACISM IN ITS MOST OVERT FORM. WHY VICTIMHOOD COMPETITION (VICTIM OLYMPICS)
The perceptiveness of author Grant F. Smith culminates in his following statements, “Because there are so many tragedies in competition for ‘most brutal of all’ status, the Holocaust is also framed and defended by IAOs and memorialization advocates as ‘unparalleled’ and therefore ‘unique’ and ‘beyond comprehension.’” (p. 197).
Jan Peczkis
- Source: GoodReads.com , July 24, 2018
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- The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by John J. Mearsheimer, Stephen M. Walt – Published August 27th 2007 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Edition Language: English.
Widespread Censorship in the “Land of the Free”, Including Interference in Polish-Jewish Dialogue, and the Control of Holocaust-Related Discourse
This book expounds, in great detail, on how the Israeli Lobby in the USA has worked to produce and sustain American support for the State of Israel. Many other reviewers have elaborated on this. My review instead focuses on how the Israeli Lobby controls the discourse on the Holocaust, and sometimes uses censorship for this purpose.
I use the term censorship to refer to any organized attempt to obstruct the free exchange of ideas, and not in the narrow sense of the use of government power for such ends. The authors describe quite a few instances of such censorship, and I focus on a few of them.
POLISH SELF-CENSORSHIP: CERTAIN INFLUENTIAL JEWS TELL POLES, “JUMP!” POLES ASK “HOW HIGH?”, AND COMPLY
Mearsheimer and Walt write, “Consider what happened in October 2006 to Tony Judt, a New York University Historian who is Jewish but frequently critical of Israel’s actions. He was scheduled to give a lecture at the Polish consulate in New York City, ‘The Israel Lobby and U. S. Foreign Policy.’ The Polish government was not sponsoring the event; the consulate had merely rented its facilities to Network 20/20, an independent group that sponsors lectures on a wide range of topics. David Harris, the executive director of the American Jewish Committee, got wind of the event and contacted the Polish consul general. Harris later explained that he had called as a ‘friend of Poland’ and said that the lecture ‘was going to be entirely contrary to the spirit of Polish foreign policy.’ The consul general also received two inquiries from the ADL, and he later described the calls as ‘exercising a delicate pressure…We are adults and our IQ’s are high enough to understand that.’ The consulate canceled Judt’s lecture at the last minute, which led to a group of prominent American intellectuals to issue an open letter denouncing this obvious effort to stifle free discussion. Judt also reported receiving death threats against him and his family on other occasions, inspired by his previous criticisms of Israeli policy.” (pp. 185-186).
DISCUSSION OF “COMPLICITY IN THE HOLOCAUST” IS FINE; DISCUSSION OF JEWISH CRIMES IS VERBOTEN
The French embassy in the USA had scheduled a reception to celebrate the publication of Carmen Callil’s BAD FAITH, which focused on a Vichy French official (Louis Darquier) that had dispatched French Jews to their deaths at Auschwitz. So far so good. But then it got censored for forbidden content, as described by the authors, “Although the book is a passionate and moving indictment of French complicity in the Holocaust, the embassy reportedly received complaints about a brief passage in Callil’s postcript: ‘What caused me anguish, as I tracked down Louis Darquier, was to live so closely to the helpless terror of the Jews in France, and to see what the Jews of Israel were passing on to the Palestinian people.’ Bowing to the pressure, the French embassy said that ‘it could not endorse a personal opinion of the author expressed in the postscript of the book’ and canceled the reception.” (p. 186). Score one for thought control. Evidently, “coming to terms with the past” is good for some people but not others.
THE PEDAGOGIKA WSTYDU (NAME AND SHAME): WHY CHRISTIANITY IS BLAMED FOR THE HOLOCAUST INSTEAD OF THE GUILTY PARTY–THE GERMANS
Most of the time, censorship is not necessary in order to maintain control of the discourse on the Holocaust: The self-censorship imposed by name and shame tactics, and other entrenched forms of political correctness, are usually sufficient. Apropos to this, Stephen Steinlight, former director of national affairs of the American Jewish, in addressing the dual loyalty of American Jews simultaneously supported Israel and the USA, makes the following revealing comment about the value of keeping non-Germans feeling guilty for the Holocaust, “We have no less difficult a balancing act between group loyalty and a wider sense of belonging to America. That America has largely tolerated this dual loyalty—we get a free pass, I suspect, LARGELY OVER CHRISTIAN GUILT ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST—makes it no less a reality.” (p. 149; Emphasis added).
However, there is much, much more to gain, by blaming Christianity for the Holocaust, than just diffusing any questions about Jewish dual loyalties in the USA! As I write this (March 2019), there is a major media effort to blame Poles and Polish Catholicism for the mythical so-called Polish complicity in the Holocaust. This follows decades of propaganda linking Polish Catholicism, and Christianity in general, with the German-made Holocaust.
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THE CENSORSHIP OF AUTHORS JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER AND STEPHEN M. WALT
The authors describe their own experiences after they had been invited to speak at the U. S. Naval College annual Current Strategy Forum, “Following the publication of our original article, ‘The Israeli Lobby’, in March 2006, the president of the War College received phone calls from several members of Congress who questioned whether it was appropriate to have us speak at the conference. To his credit, the president took no action in response to these calls and we appeared without incident. A subsequent invitation to Walt to speak in a lecture series at the University of Montana also provoked heated denunciations by several faculty members, who began a protracted but unsuccessful campaign to have the faculty coordinator of the lecture series removed from his post.” (p. 184).
THE CENSORSHIP OF NORMAN GARY FINKELSTEIN
The authors describe the efforts, of the likes of the ADL (Anti-Defamation League), and Alan Dershowitz, to try to prevent the publication of several named books by Norman G. Finkelstein. (p. 184).
THE CENSORSHIP OF PALESTINIAN-AMERICAN HISTORIAN RASHID KHALIDI
Authors Mearsheimer and Walt point out that, “The campaign to keep Americans from reading or hearing critical views about Israel even occurs at the high school level. In February 2005, for example, the NEW YORK SUN reported that Columbia’s Khalidi was involved in a lecture program for high school teachers sponsored by New York City’s Department of Education. The SUN and some local politicians immediately went to work to get him fired…Joel Klein, the chancellor of the Department of Education, dropped him from the program the next day…” (pp. 184-185). Had historian Rashid Khalidi been running down Poland on behalf of the standard narrative on the Holocaust, he would have been made into a hero.
Jan Peczkis
- Source: GoodReads.com , March 18, 2019
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