Tim May wrote:

I don't recall the context, but I don't have any such friends or even acquaintances. Even those I know on the Far Right don't want to kill _all_ Jews, just the pesky freedom-stealing ones, and the millions who form the Zionist Occupation Government in the Zionist Entity of ZOG-Occupied Palestine.

This was the remark I had in mind: Tim May wrote on August 16, 2001:

(I know folks who think Judaism is in fact far worse, and who hope and pray for the day when 4 million Jews in Occupied Palestine are rounded up and liquidated. I take no position on this...

I see now that "all Jews" mischaracterized your statement. My apologies.

Add nerve gases and biological agents to the mix over the next several years.

Cuts both ways, of course. If the past is any guide, mostly the innocent would die.

And I won't shed a tear, as those who left New York and Oslo and Berlin and Phoenix to go to some tiny patch of land which they claim YHWH the Terrible granted to the sons of a desert minor potentate--this all revealed in a hash dream by an old man, allegedly--well, they were fools in 1948 to kick Arabs off of their farms and out of their homes. The Jews will suffer mightily. Which might be all they really want, oy vey!

I've known very few Jewish people who believe God gave them Israel, but it clearly has something to do with why that particular patch of land was chosen. Maybe it's the Schelling point of Zionism. The area is symbolically loaded for Jewish people, but the downside is that it's important to other people as well. Most Israelis that I've known see the religiously based Zionists as crazies, especially the ones from the U.S. Saying that Israelis are a certain way because there are people in Israel with certain views is as reasonable as saying that Jim Bell is a good guide to the cypherpunks. The exact nature of Zionism seems hard to pin down, sort of like defining a "cypherpunk". It is clear that many Zionists are not religious.

And I know many people who support, as I do of course, the right of Aryan Nation(s) to do their thing without lawsuits from offended Jews and liberals. Last I heard, Aryan Nation(s) was not building any gas chambers. Shutting down the "organization" due to, for example, the murder of Allan Berg in Denver makes no more moral or legal sense than shutting down the Catholics because some Catholics have bombed abortion clinics.

Agreed. Many prominent Catholics have publicly declared that abortion is murder. Applying the same level of integrity as has been applied in criminal trials of technical people, this could be seen as incitement. What is insidious about charging people with organizational involvement is that it bypasses the criminal justice system. The organization itself doesn't stand trial. At the same time the members are not charged with any specfic crime. Thus, the trial can consist of little more than innuendo and the defendant stands a good chance of conviction. It is very close to simple political repression.

The Jews lacked their equivalent of a Reformation, the Lutheran and Calvinist revolution in thinking which laid the groundwork for the modern age. And instead of moving on, embracing the future, many of them retreated to a desert land they thought of as their historic homeland, never mind that more Polish blood flowed through the veins of Jews born in Krakow than blood from their ancestors who fled or otherwise left Palestine 1500 or more years ago.

But aren't you the one bringing up the racial purity theory here? I've never known a Jewish person, and I've known many, who spent any time worrying about the genetic purity of their Jewish descent. Presumably they exist somewhere, but the breed is rare. Some Jewish people do seem to have long discussions about "What is a Jew (sic)?", but they do not seem to be genetically driven. I am having a little difficulty understanding what you mean by "embracing the future". This strikes me as a straw man, but perhaps I'm not getting your point. The Jewish community, even the Jewish religious community, does not seem to have had any problem accepting scientific discoveries, which one could describe as "embracing the future". Many Christians, Protestant and otherwise, have had serious problems in this department. For example, the theory of evolution was accepted without a fuss. Even in Jewish religious schools, the theory of evolution is taught. I think the idea behind going to Palestine and founding Israel was to find a way to not be murdered any more. After over 1000 years of abuse ending with 2/3 of the group being killed, it doesn't seem unreasonable that many of the survivors would conclude that it was unsafe to live among Europeans. My guess is that they figured they could just sort of push the Arabs aside and after a bit of fuss, everybody would get used to the idea and they'd have a country where they would have full political rights and even own land without fears of confiscation. Most peoples have done exactly the same thing at some time or other. And, there was already a sizeable Jewish population in Palestine. Do you believe that Jewish activities along these lines are more offensive than similar activities by many other people? If so, do you find them offensive because they are so recent, or is it just the unpleasant fact that American money is contributing to it?

I don't care too much if Arabs and Jews are killing each other, but I hate like hell to see taxpayer money and armaments shipped to ZOG-Occupied Palestine to help kill more Arabs and expand ZOG borders.

Agreed. I have better things to do with my money, too. Here's my somewhat uninformed take on the Middle East: Anything the U.S. is doing there is going to be related to oil. Support of Israel gives the U.S. cards to play with the oil producing countries. If the oil producing companies are uncooperative, Israel gets new cool weapons. If they are cooperative, then the U.S. news media start talking about the bad things the Israelis are doing. When the oil producing countries complain, the answer is probably that the Jewish lobby is so powerful that the U.S. has to support the Israelis. I believe that the Jewish lobby is powerful only to the extent that they are allowed to be. If they stood in the way of U.S. policy to any significant extent, they would be curtailed. Israel also plays a useful role for the oil producing governments - they help keep the population unified. A great deal of money flowing into the area does not benefit the populations of the countries there. For example, half of adult male Saudis are illiterate. Keeping those people focused on Israel keeps them from noticing where the money is going. Also, the rulers can accuse detractors of being Israeli spies. I do not think U.S. support for Israel has much to do with post-Holocaust compassion or with the desire to support a democracy in the Middle East or with the Jewish lobby.

And I am offended--but also amused--by the irony of European Jews recapitulating Hitler's "lebensraum" and "Endlosung" solutions so soon after WW II ended.

Yes, Jacobo Timerman ("Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number") said the same thing a few years after he fled to Israel from Argentina. He made himself somewhat unpopular by questioning the propriety of the invasion of Lebanon. Some Israelis felt he was ungrateful. Sort of interesting because the original idea was that everybody Jewish could consider themselves Israeli and therefore gratitude would not be in order. (A comparison could be made to the Palestinian situation with respect to their alleged brother Arabs.) Anyway, there is probably a well understood psychological phenomenon at work. Once somebody is abused, they will tend to find somebody else, hopefully subordinate, to mistreat. I've wondered whether this effect isn't related to explain Henry Kissinger's criminality. Kissinger lost two relatives in the Holocaust, but in his political career he associated with and backed people with less than pristine credentials. For example, Nixon had connections to war criminals associated with the Rumanian Iron Guard. The military regimes Kissinger encouraged in South America tended to have people with a certain admiration for the Third Reich. The policies pursued in Southeast Asia bear certain similarities to those of the Nazis. Timerman, incidentally, described himself as Zionist.

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People carp about Tim, but I'd like to see anybody try to do one Tim May quality post every day for two weeks.

Thanks, even if you're a Jew-lover.

Literally the truth, although not exclusively. ;-)