Issues and Questions In the Historiography of Pre-State Zionism

Issues and Questions In the Historiography of Pre-State Zionism

The Failure of Jewish Studies in America[i]

Zionism is the movement to make Palestine the site of a nation-state for Jews.  It can also be the ideology associated with the movement.  A Zionist supports the goals of Zionism.  The preceding definitions represent a plethora of questions far more than they provide any sort of explanation, for one must ask in response the following.

• Who are the Jews?
• What is a nation-state?
• Why Palestine?
• Why is there a need?

 

The academic field of Jewish Studies or Judaica should provide answers, reasonable analysis or the tools by which an educated person might be able to address the questions himself.  Unfortunately, this field supplies only propaganda or poor scholarship from the study of the ancient Middle East to the history of Zionism and the State of Israel.  The state of the academic disciplines associated with Judaica can be compared with the situation Eastern European historians faced after the fall of the Soviet Union when they suddenly had to write genuine history, and no one really knew how.  As of today Judaicists are not ready to provide genuine scholarship, but once they are, Eric Hobsbawm’s Budapest 1993 lecture to Eastern European students on the question of proper historiography identifies a large part of the problem that real scholars of Jewish Studies must address.

 

Don’t Touch My Holocaust!

Hobsbawm could perhaps have emphasized far more that correct historiography can have value far beyond the country or regions that are the subjects.  Genuine pre-state Zionist histories should investigate issues of

·         development of a sense of ethnic identity,

·         fabrication or obliteration of “national” memory and

·         the creation of an imagined community.

As these processes take place in the case of Zionism particularly late in the history of European nationalism and with copious documentation, the study of pre-State Zionism can perhaps provide insight not only into the specifically European phenomena but also into general global phenomena or at least into some similar non-European situations like the development of Sikh ethnonational identity in Punjab.

Besides any global or generalizable implications, the study of pre-State Zionism provides a unique window onto Central and Eastern European politics at one of the most critical periods in modern history as well as a magnifying glass on a racist Eastern European settler colonist movement and on the Eastern European settler colonists themselves in their interactions with a non-Western population.  Not only may analysis of the history of Zionist aggression in Palestine aid in understanding Czarist colonial imperialism and Russian expansionist aspirations in Central and Southwest Asia, but comparison with Zionist settlement activities may serve to illuminate French colonialist imperialist endeavors in Algeria.

Better histories of Zionism could have predictive value in the current Palestine conflict.  Zionists have never been particularly imaginative.[ii]  The treatment of Arafat today parallels the Zionist demonization of al-Haj Amin al-Hussayni, the Mufti of Jerusalem during the Mandatory period.  Zionist propaganda transformed the rather compliant Hussayni into a bogeyman.  As a result Zionists could avoid dealing with any of the difficult ethical questions of their aggression against the native population because dealing with the bogeyman took precedence.  The Barghouti trial is merely an attempt to reprise the trial of Eichmann, a Nazi war criminal, who was captured by Israeli spies and then brought to Israel to be tried.  That case could have been concluded within two weeks, but Ben-Gurion wanted to make a show trial to mobilize world opinion and the Israeli Jewish population.  The Barghouti trial has the same purpose.  Even the election of Sharon himself shows the inability of Zionists to develop new ideas in response to new situations, for the Israeli Jewish electorate facing difficult questions has chosen to depend on a member of the generation of ethnic cleansers from 50 years ago and not to rely on their current leadership.[6] 

Sharon himself simply follows the logic of the “Iron Wall” that Jabotinsky, one of the primary pre-State Zionist leaders, articulated from 1916 through 1923.  This idea assumes “What is impossible is voluntary agreement.”  Zionists must work for “the establishment in Palestine of a force that will in no way be influenced by Arab pressure.  In other words, the only way to achieve a settlement in the future is total avoidance of attempts to arrive at a settlement in the present.”  This strategy, as first clearly articulated by Jabotinsky 80 years ago[iii] and as reiterated by Sharon today is, completely incompatible with the goal of globalization as espoused and supported by the USA.

It is hard for an educated American even to notice the recourse of Israeli Jews to outmoded and failed strategies. Because of the laziness of textbook writers or because of Zionist manipulation, in the USA the historiography of the ME at least at the high school and to a large extent at university level conforms to Zionist ideology.  American academic description of the history of Zionism has little factual basis and even less interpretive value.  One could say that the discourse on the ME in the USA is Zionist through and through.  It is a serious problem in a republic that must depend on an informed citizenry.

As long as US strategic foreign policy is hitched to Israel, whether an American citizen supports the alliance between the USA and Israel or opposes it, he must be distressed by the inadequacy of Jewish studies in America because a good background in Judaica is necessary in order to make an informed judgment on this policy.  The discipline of Jewish studies, which is dominated by racists, tribalists and Zionists, has simply failed the obligation to educate Americans.[iv]  The wrong issues are debated while important questions are not posed.

Figure 1 Zionist Dictionary of the English Language

Because of Zionist control of the discourse, obvious facts become the subject of dispute.

Zionism is A racist Ideology

Zionism presupposes that Jewish historical, ethnic or national rights to Palestine are superior to the human rights of the native population.

The first edition of the American Heritage Dictionary defines racism[v] as follows.

The assertion that one group’s rights are superior to another group’s rights is tantamount to the claim that the former group is superior to the latter group.  Zionism is a racist ideology as matter of standard dictionary definitions that American journalists and political leaders simply ignore (viz Figure 1). It is hard to be more explicitly racist than Zionist ideology.[7]  Zionists dispute the point because in our culture it is acceptable to hate racism, racists and those that support racism.  Simple application of dictionary definitions and basic rules of logic like modus ponens show that hostility toward the Zionist state, Zionists and those that support Zionism is perfectly legitimate and as meritorious by modern standards as despising any form of racism.

His Fraudulency, The Unelected President and Thief, Is a Dope[8]

President Bush created perhaps even a stupider more vacuous debate than the non-question of the racism of Zionist ideology when he claimed that “they” hate our freedom and individuality.  In the aftermath of the WTC attack, “they” was supposed to mean Usama bin Ladin and his followers, but talking heads and political commentators quickly expanded the range of meaning to include Arabs, Muslims or some generalized third-world “other.”

1. They do not hate our freedom.[9]

2. As Karen Armstrong points out, at the beginning of the century, western politics, economics, society and culture were admired.[vi]

3. They do hate Israel with perfect legitimacy. (Just check out the Bible.)
    תְבֹרָךְ לֹא וְאַחֲרִיתָהּ בָּרִאשֹׁנָה מְבֹחֶלֶת נַחֲלָה: 20:21 (Proverbs)  מִשׁלֵי .  The verse tells us in a loose translation that is faithful to the meaning, “If you steal a legacy that is not yours, you will be hated [more literally its end result will not be blessed/secure].”

4. The USA is allied with Israel or, to be more accurate, maintains Israel as a colony.   If the USA supports bad people and a bad country, the USA will be hated.

5. The USA inspires hatred

a.        by forestalling Arab political development through the sponsorship of despots that long ago would have been overthrown but for US interference and

b.       by murdering Arabs directly and indirectly in Iraq for a decade while its Zionist colonial surrogate has oppressed, brutalized and murdered the native Arab population of Palestine for over 50 years.

6. They hate US policy with perfect justice, and so should Americans as well.

7. The closed-minded bigotry, ignorance and arrogance of the Bush administration does not improve the general world impression of the President, his policy, the USA or Americans.

 

The Bully Pulpit Betrayed

Bush is not alone in obscuring the basic facts.  If practically all the main political, intellectual, journalistic and academic leaders were not misleading the public not merely on the core racist nature of Zionist ideology but also on practically all other major issues, the key points would be obvious.

• Zionist settler colonists stole the greater portion of Palestine from the native population in 1947-8, and they continue the program to this day.

• The settlers ethnically cleansed the native population from areas under their control in 1947-8 and have continued the program ever since.

• They plundered the native population in 1947-8 and have continued the program ever since[10].

• They have been committing pogroms against the native population since 1947-8[11] and have continued the policy ever since.

• The state of Israel sends death squads to murder the best and the brightest of Palestinians in territories under Israeli control and throughout the world.

 

Zionists Are The Bad Guys!! And the USA should switch sides in the conflict.  A competent statesman in the White House would have all the means at hand to direct American public opinion against Zionism and the State of Israel as well as to act against those organizations that support Zionist racism, aggression and terrorism.

Almost everyone that tries to discuss the issues rationally quickly runs into the first wall of anachronism and obfuscation.  However one attempts to describe Jews, whether as a race, an ethnic group, a people, a Volk, a territorial population, a nation or a religion, a Zionist interlocutor will invariably object according to the following rule.

 

Not only does Zionism control the discourse about Palestine and related issues in the USA; it also attempts to control the English language as used in the discussion.[12]

The Greco-Roman Anachronism:
יהודים, ’Iουδαϊοι and Iūdaei are Judeans Not Jews

Biblical Israel[vii] and the associated Greco-Roman Judean religion of a later period simply were not “Jewish” as we understand it today.  When talking about the Greco-Roman period and earlier,[viii] one should never employ the term Jew, which belongs to a much later time frame.  The correct word is Judean, from which Jew derives etymologically.  The meaning of Judean in the Greco-Roman period is subject to much debate.  I can only assume modern scholars simply do not have much command of classical idiomatic usage, for Judean had the same range of definitions as Roman had then and still has today. Generally, Roman could imply residence in Rome, descent from residents of Rome, practice of a religion or culture perceived as Roman[13] or citizenship in the Roman Empire.  Likewise Judean could imply residence in Judea or descent from former residents of Judea.  It could refer to people whose religious practices were connected[14] or originating with Judea as well as to the subjects of the King of Judea.[15]

Greco-Roman Judean religion has approximately the same connection to modern Rabbinic Judaism that ancient Roman religion, which was centered on the worship of Jupiter, has to modern Roman religion, which is generally called Roman Catholicism. People that observed Roman, Greek or Judean religious or cultic practices in ancient times rarely had ancestry that traced to Rome, Greece or Judea just as few Roman Catholics today are Roman in the sense of residing in Rome or of having ancestors that came from Rome.

Most Judeans in Greco-Roman times were Judean by religious practice, did not live in Judea or Palestine and were neither Judean nor Palestinian by ancestry or by residence.  The majority of the population in Palestine was not Judean by religion.  Sometimes the people of Palestine or of Judea are described as Judean in a purely territorial sense even when they do not practice Judean religious ritual.  Most cultic Judeans lived in Mesopotamia (i.e., Iraq) and were the descendants of non-Judean non-Palestinian populations that took up Judean cultic practices.  Most Judeans of the Roman Empire were Greek-speaking and were the descendants of non-Judean non-Palestinian populations that practiced variants of Judean religion.  During the period of Judean Rebellions in Palestine during the 1st and 2nd centuries, the Romans took some rebels as captives and sold them as slaves to defray costs, but the total number seized from all the rebellions probably did not exceed 20,000. The Romans did not expel the Judean population from Palestine.

Modern Palestinians are descendants of ancient Roman period Judeans (in the territorial sense) or Palestinians of all religions.  They were gradually Christianized and then Islamized like all other Middle East populations. Zionist racists, tribalists and propagandists in the media and in academia promote a false primordialist[ix] equation between modern Jews and ancient Judeans in order to justify or to legitimize the theft of Palestine from the native population by European settler colonists.[x]  Even though the primordialist argument is fundamentally nonsensical even if true (to wit, no one believes Vienna should be handed over to the Irish because the founders were Celts), such primordialism characterizes most Central and Eastern European nationalism of which Zionism is a particular extreme example.  Radical German nationalists attempted to equate modern Germans with ancient Teutonic tribes even though modern Germans have probably more Celtic and Slavic ancestry than anything that can be considered Teutonic and even though we know that there was considerable Hunnish settlement of Bavaria.  Polish nationalists had their own comparable version of primordialist nonsense and claimed to be reviving the Medieval Rzeczpospolita (Republic) while extremist Rumanian nationalists try to equate modern Rumania with ancient Roman Dacia. 

The implicit content of primordialist claims is the assertion that Jews, Germans, Poles or Rumanians as the extremist nationalists define them were there first and that their rights are superior to those of anyone else in the lands the nationalists claim. The counterfactual Zionist primordialist propaganda that pertains to Biblical and Greco-Roman times has tended to be most effective with the most ignorant and gullible of American fundamentalist Christians.

The Medieval Anachronism:
יהודים, ’Iουδαϊοι, Iūdaei and اليهود Become Jews
(Origins of MOdern Rabbinic Judaism)

Despite the uninformed beliefs of most Christians and Jews, modern Rabbinic Judaism crystallizes in the 10th century C.E. thanks to the efforts of Saadya Gaon and other 10th century sages and emissaries from the Gaonic academies of Mesopotamia.  From then on it becomes legitimate to use the term Jew in lieu of Judaean.  This time period was a general age of theological consolidation for cultures derived from ancient Hellenism.  Christian theology attained its final form in the Roman West and the Byzantine East with the exception of some developments linked to the Protestant Reformation.    The stimulus for such consolidation among Christians and Jews may have been the finalization of Islamic theology with the Sunni rejection of the doctrine of المُعْتَزِلَة (the Mu`tazilah).[16] We can only speculate why the Gaonic form of Judean religion became dominant as modern Rabbinic Judaism, but there is evidence from Geniza studies that the Geonim were in communication with elite of the Khazar Turks, who seem to have converted en masse to Judean religion between the 8th and 9th centuries as they migrated westward from Central Asia into Southern Russian and the Ukraine and then into the Balkans.  The Khazar elite may have provided funding to the Gaonic academies, whose form of Judean religion thus had a tremendous advantage over other forms of Judean religion like modern Karaitism in the competition for the hearts and minds of adherents of Judean religion.

Modern Rabbinic Judaism could well be a product developed jointly by a collaboration of the Geonim and the Khazar Turks.[17]  Even if not, modern Rabbinic Judaism is still properly understood as the youngest of the Abrahamic religions.[18]  It originates in the Diaspora, and its natural environment is the Diaspora.  The Zionist assertion of having returned (Rabbinic) Judaism to its native soil is about as anachronistic as a claim can be and serves as nationalistic propaganda that is most effective among Jews whose origins are Central and Eastern Europe.

Anachronism Upon Anachronism:
Eastern European Jews Become Ashkenazim
(Origins of the Autochthonous Eastern European Ashkenazi Ethnic Group)

During and subsequent to the time period when communities practicing Judean and related rites became modern Rabbinic or modern Karaite Jews, there is no evidence of any migration from the Middle East or N. Africa to medieval Central or Eastern Europe except for a small migration into France from Egypt and N. Africa during the late 12th and early 13th century and another migration into Hungary during the 100 year occupation by the Ottoman Empire that ends in the middle 16th century. 

All archeological, historical, ethnographic, linguistic and textual evidence available to us is consistent with the assumption that Jews from Central and Eastern Europe, most of whom later came to be known as Ashkenazim, are an autochthonous population of Eastern Europe or Southern Russia and have practically no ancestry from the ancient Palestinian Judean communities of the Greco-Roman period or earlier.[19]  Jews in Central and Eastern Europe were an indigenous population whose Germanic, Slavic, Turkic, Celtic and Romanic ancestors assumed some form of Judean cultic practices long ago and then were subsequently Judaicized to Rabbinic Judaism like almost all populations that practiced some form of the ancient Judean religious rites.[xi]

At first only Jews in the region bounded by the Rhine, Danube and Elbe called themselves Ashkenazim (viz Figure 2).  There is a good possibility that many early Judean-rite immigrants to this region came from the Turkic Khazar Empire, for the time frame of the founding of the Ashkenazi communities in German territories corresponds roughly to a period of increasing practice of Judean rituals within the Khazar Empire and continuing migration of Eastern populations westward.  There is also considerable archeological evidence of western migration of refugees when the Empire finally dissolved and was overrun.[xii]

The use of the term Ashkenazi for self-identification is suggestive in and of itself. Ashkenazi is a Hellenistic Judean Hebrew-Aramaic term for Scythian (also known as Ashguzai), Turk, Phrygian, Mysian or Ascanian.  Geographically, the term is associated with Southern Russia, Western Turkey and parts of the Balkans.  During the period of the Khazar Empire, Khazars that practiced Judean rites probably called themselves Ashkenazim because of this traditional terminology. Khazar immigrants to Central Europe could have joined already existing pre-Ashkenazi communities of Celts and Germans that followed some form of Judean or related religion.  Probably, Khazar immigrants, associated with the activities of Radanite merchants, dominated these communities economically, intellectually and culturally.  As Central European populations that practiced pre-modern Judean cults were gradually Judaized to modern Rabbinic Judaism, they forgot their actual origins like many other European populations.  When only memory remained of the name by which the dominant element described itself, all Central European Jews came to be known as Ashkenazim, and the Central European German speaking region became the original territory of Ashkenaz.[20] 

Before Eastern Europe became the eastern region of greater Ashkenaz, it was a major source of slaves during the Medieval period and was at first known as Canaan in Jewish writings because Hellenistic Judean Aramaic used Canaanite as a common term for slave just as most Medieval European languages and Medieval Arabic used some variant of the word Slav as the word for slave.[21] 

There were some basic differences between Ashkenaz and Canaan simply because the Ashkenaz region was mostly Germanic linguistically while Canaan in the early period was mostly Slavic in terms of language, but the critical historical divergence between Central and Eastern Europe takes place in 1648. 

In Central Europe, the Treaty of Westphalia, which ended The Thirty Years War, had the effect of excluding religion as a cause for war in Western and Central Europe.

In Eastern Europe, the Chmielnicki Rebellion results in a series of slaughters of Polish Roman Catholics,[22] Polish Jews and Ukrainian Orthodox.[xiii]  Relations among the three groups begin a long downward slide. Confessionalism, which is religious hatred without religious belief, takes root in Eastern Europe as a precursor to the development of modern ethnic identities.  

Figure 2 from A Dictionary of Ashkenazic Given Names by Alexander Beider

The short-term consequences of Chmielnicki Rebellion included the absorption of Poland and the Ukraine into the empires of the Prussian Hohenzollerns, the Austrian Habsburgs and the Russian Romanovs while Jewish Canaan completed its merger into Ashkenaz.  As a result, Eastern European Jews finished the linguistic shift from derivatives of West Yiddish and from Slavic (as well as possibly Turkic, Romanic or Yavanic) languages to East Yiddish, which is basically a Germanoslavic creole or fusion language.  Nowadays, practically all Jews whose origins lie in Central and Eastern Europe are considered Ashkenazim.[23]

In the long-range the effects of the Treaty of Westphalia and the Chmielnicki Rebellion defined the 19th century evolution of modern nationalism, which demanded that the nation and the state must be congruent.

·         France and the UK, belonging wholly to the area of the Treaty, developed a secular civil or voluntary nationalism according to which citizenship conferred membership in the nation,

·         Germans, whose territories came to span the regions of the Treaty and the Rebellion, tended toward secular organic nationalism according to which the individual was analogous to a cell in the organic body of the nation and the state was identified with a specific ethnonational group, and

·         Eastern Europeans including Ashkenazim developed a confessional organic nationalism according to which the specific ethnonational group to which the state belongs was strictly defined on confessional boundaries even though religious belief declined precipitously among Eastern Europeans during the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.

The pattern of secularity and confessionalism among Central and Eastern Europeans held true even during Nazi persecutions of European Jews.  Nazi Germans claimed to abuse Jews on strictly racial grounds while Eastern European collaborators generally showed strong confessional tendencies in their persecutions.

Modern Ashkenazi history no more takes place in a vacuum than Greco-Roman Judean history, but modern historiography of Ashkenazim is flawed not only by anachronism as Hobsbawm points out but by exceptionalism and omission.  Exceptionalism is probably either Zionist or racist in origin. Omission is characteristic of all false and propaganda histories.  Zionist historians have gotten away with this sort of intellectual dishonesty far longer than most similar historian-propagandists.

 Exceptionalist histories of Ashkenazim avoid connecting Ashkenazi social, political, intellectual and economic history to the Central and Eastern European environments in which they lived.  Exceptionalist history serves Zionist purposes because prejudiced historians and propagandist can avoid interpreting Zionist ideology and actions as part of the general tapestry of European aggression, imperialism and colonialism against the non-Western world.  Instead, such exceptionalist pseudohistorians can portray well-meaning Zionist settlers as merely reacting to groundless savagery and hostility according to the Zionist formula popularized by Herzl in Altneuland.[24],[xiv] At the same time such exceptionalist histories are fundamentally racist because they follow a standard Judeophobic racist formula that Ashkenazim are non-Europeans that have no place in Europe.

In the non-exceptionalist history of the 17th and 18th century, Ashkenazim in Central and Eastern Europe faced the common issues related to modernization of traditional societies just like all other Central and Eastern Europeans.  For the most part Ashkenazim selected one of three possible responses.  The earliest and most commonly chosen reaction was Enlightenment (השכלה) and assimilation.  Most Eastern European and practically all German and Austrian Ashkenazim selected this path,[25] which was particularly easy for the latter group because there were no major ethnolinguistic distinctions between German-Austrian Ashkenazim and other German-speakers and because most German nationalists had no inclination to exclude German Ashkenazim from German ethnicity or identity until the later part of the 19th century.[26]  German Ashkenazim were Germans just like German Protestants or German Roman Catholics, and Ashkenazi identity in Germany was purely religious.

Somewhat later Yiddishism developed as a particularly Eastern European populist Ashkenazi response to modernization.[27]  Yiddishism developed into several distinct movements that sought Yiddish cultural autonomy in various forms.  Yiddishism was an expression of the developing Eastern European Ashkenazi ethnic identity that was distinct from Jewish religious identity and unprecedented in the history of Jewish religion since the 10th century.  Zionism was primarily an even later development among a very small group of elitist Central and Eastern European Ashkenazi intellectuals that were estranged both from Jewish religion and from Eastern European Ashkenazi culture.  Such Ashkenazi intellectuals are typically called non-Jewish Jews, but they are more correctly identified as non-Jewish Ashkenazim.  The animosity between Yiddishists and Zionists was immense in practically every way (viz Figure 3).

Zionism like practically all other 19th century Eastern European nationalist movements makes its first appearance as a rerun and translation of Polish nationalist ideology into Ashkenazi terms.  The Medieval Polish Rzeczpospolita (Republic) provides the archetype of the anachronistic mythological lost nation state that must be restored.  Even though important Polish nationalists had proto-Zionist or Zionist beliefs and even canvassed the Polish Ashkenazi community for support of both Polish nationalism and also of Zionism, no history of Zionism mentions the connection of Polish nationalism with early Zionist thought while the standard histories like those of Walter Laqueur, Howard Sachar or Arthur Hertzberg dig up a long list of fairly implausible Jewish forerunners of Zionist ideas.  This effort looks more like a dishonest attempt to establish the internal Jewish legitimacy of Zionism and to deny the connection with Polish nationalism than to provide historical illumination. 

To find fully integrated analysis of the politics of Polish Ashkenazim within the context of political developments within all Poland, one must search outside the standard histories of Zionism or of Ashkenazim in texts of general European political history like Fire in the Minds of Men by James H. Billington[28] or in Polish language biographies and memoirs of Polish nationalist leaders.  The absence of investigation of the Polish influence in the origins of Zionism may be symptomatic of the anti-Polish and anti-Slav prejudice of many historians that specialize in Jewish studies.

Polish nationalism is hardly the only Slavic influence or source for proto-Zionism or early Zionism.  The influence of Russian culture is fairly obvious although hardly ever mentioned in the standard histories of Zionism.  Czar Alexander II encouraged a very Palestine oriented form of Russian Orthodoxy especially in the 1870s and sponsored the pilgrimage of tens of thousands of Russians to Palestine.  Shortly after the institution of this program the ציון חבת (Love of Zion) movement appears among Russian Jews.  The development of Zionism among Russian Ashkenazim could be a symptom of the thoroughness of the Czarist Russianization program that had made Russian the primary language of most of the world’s Jews by 1905.  The absence of discussion of the influence of Russian social, political and religious culture in the development of early Zionist thought suggests anti-Russian or anti-Slavic bias and a conscious distortion of the history of Zionism by historians associated with Jewish studies.[xv] 

The Known Facts

There is no doubt that German, Austrian and Russian social, political and intellectual culture served as the main influence on the three primary leaders of Zionism from the 1890s through the first decades of the 20th century, for Herzl the journalist, Nordau the social critic and Жаботинский (Jabotinsky) the literateur were the most non-Jewish of Ashkenazim. Like most German, Austrian and Russian intellectuals of the fin de siécle, they were all anti-bourgeois, anti-liberal, collectivist, anti-democratic and social Darwinist.  Even though in their own minds they were very much members of the European elite and men of great personal achievement, they found themselves excluded from the highest ranks of German, Austrian and Russian society in a manner somewhat analogous to the treatment of Burakumin in Japan or Hakka in China.[29]  For such cultured men espousing “primitive” Eastern European Ashkenazi Yiddishism was simply out of the question. 

Figure 3 The literary battleground between Yiddishists and Zionists.[30]

Instead, they redefined the Eastern European Ashkenazi ethnic group as the Pan-Judaic Jewish nation on Pan-German and Russian Pan-Slavic models.[31],[xvi] Herzl was quite frank in his diary that Central European German and Austrian Ashkenazim, who were not a Volk or Race in the Pan-German sense, would have to be shaped into a nation.[32]  Naturally, Herzl, who was developing a primordialist pan-Judaic fiction of ancient Jewish glory for Zionists, found inspiration in Wagner’s attempt to create a modern myth of a heroic German past for romantic nationalist pan-Germanists.[33]

Herzl’s pan-Judaic Zionism looks like a combination of the ideas of Western European and perhaps Russian imperialist colonialism with the pan-German ideology of the Austrian politician and racist anti-Semite Georg Ritter von Schönerer, who founded the Pan-German party, a direct ancestor of the Nazi party and who achieved the rank for which Herzl longed.  Herzl’s newspaper, Die Neue Freie Presse, carried many stories about von Schönerer and his party.[xvii]   A genuine historian that sought the inspiration and model for Herzl’s Zionism would probably investigate connections between Herzl and von Schönerer and not waste time on insignificant rabbis like Yehuda Alkalai[34] and Zvi Hirsch Kalischer or Ashkenazi eccentrics like Moses Hess in a propagandistic effort to provide a Jewish lineage and legitimacy for Herzl’s ideas.

The origins of Nordau’s and Jabotinsky’s ideas come no less from the Austrian, German and Russian cultural milieu than Herzl’s.  The nation, body and violence worship of the racist anti-Semite Turnvater Jahn, who founded the German nationalist gymnastic movement in the early 19th century, apparently had a strong influence on both Nordau and Jabotinsky[35].  Jabotinsky was fortunate in developing his form of Zionist ideology in the Russian culture milieu from whose models of gunpowder imperialism, colonialism and expansionism he could draw directly.

The fascination that racist anti-Semites held for the three patriarchs of Zionism is not a little bizarre but does make sense in terms of their personal belief systems and of their goals for European Ashkenazim.  The attraction that anti-Semitic public personalities exerted over them is also not particularly hard to document even though it rarely appears in Zionist histories.  Nordau had a particularly long-standing, somewhat twisted and probably sexual relationship with the rather notorious Russian anti-Semite Olga von Novikoff, to whom he dedicated his play The Right to Love.[36]

The Scary Story

Jabotinsky’s thought and behavior crosses the line from the peculiar and disconcerting to the scary.  His writings of the naughts and teens of the twentieth century were far more creative and innovative than either Herzl or Nordau.  A lot of this material is either not translated or is badly translated from Russian to English or to Hebrew.  “Сионизм и Палестина” (“Sionizm i Palestina” – Zionism and Palestine) in Еврейская Жизнь (Evreiskaia zhizn' – Hebrew Life), no. 2 (February 1904), p. 205, proclaims a very strong primordialist blood and soil form of nationalism.

 

Subsequent discussion combines the blood and soil logic with social Darwinism to create a very basic form of biological determinism.  In short, Jabotinsky develops in the naughts a political ideology that combines extremist organic nationalism, primordialism, biological determinism and social Darwinism.  Zionist historians either credulously or disingenuously describe Jabotinksy’s occasional and perfunctory protestations of devotion to democracy, liberalism and Enlightenment ideals to English-speaking audiences as indicative of his fundamental beliefs. Yet, in Russian Jabotinsky never wavered in his anti-democratic anti-bourgeois anti-liberal ideals.  In short, Jabotinsky created about two decades in anticipation of Hitler a complete abstract form of Nazism.[38]  Labor Zionists were correct when they called him Vladimir Hitler with the qualification that Jabotinsky’s abstract Nazism is an independent creation and crystallizes earlier than German Nazism.[39]

Americans incorrectly view Nazism as a uniquely horrible movement that requires singularly evil political leaders.  In reality Nazism is just a specific conglomeration of 19th century fin de siécle ideas.  Nazism can occur over and over again if we fail to keep guard against it. The component ideas of Nazism suffused the intellectual milieu of Central and Eastern Europe.  Jews and Non-Jews were equally likely to incorporate them into their Weltanschauungen.[40],[xviii] The ideology of Sharon and his government, with which the USA is allied, is on the straight line of development from Jabotinsky’s abstract Nazism.  If one understands Modern Israeli Hebrew and German, the similarity of political discourse in Israel and 1930s Germany is striking.  Despite the portrayal in US media there is hardly any debate about transfer among Israeli Jewish politicians.  Usually, the discussion focuses mostly on manner and on means.[xix]

Exceptionalism and Omission:  A Fantasy Pretending to Be History

The disconnection between reality and American perception of Zionism directly relates to the Zionist control of the historical and political analysis taught in American universities.  The indoctrination then percolates outward into primary and secondary school education as well as into the journalistic and popular media.  Two examples can show some of the perniciousness of Zionist historiography.  A conscientious college course whose topic related to Zionism might include readings from The Founding Myths of Israel by Zeev Sternhell or from Zionism and the Arabs 1882 – 1948, A Study of Ideology, by Yosef Gorny, for these two books are probably the best of Zionist historiography, and there is some internal evidence that at a conscious level both authors tried to transcend the mindset of Zionist propaganda and write genuine history even though they were mostly unsuccessful.

Zeev Sternhell

Sternhell is one of the leading experts on late 19th and early 20th European political movements of which Zionism is one example. The Founding Myths of Israel purports to be a genuine history of the development of Labor Zionist ideology even as it makes an internal Israeli political argument for a new civil nationalist form of Zionism.  The political argument is mostly irrelevant to the topic of pre-state Zionist historiography while the actual concept that Sternhell advocates is oxymoronic.  As an historian Sternhell made his reputation with several books and papers on the origin and development of fascist and nationalist socialist thought.  In the historical framework that Sternhell has developed, nationalist socialism is a nationalist revision of Marxist socialism according to which the class struggle is transcended via national revival while fascism combines opposition to bourgeois democracy with extremist organic nationalism, nationalist socialism and state corporatism, which places industry and agriculture under the collective control of worker syndics or unions in coordination with the government. 

The Founding Myths has some value in its discussion and analysis of Labor Zionist ideology, but for the most part, it tends consciously or unconsciously to subtle Zionist propaganda and disinformation.  Sternhell admits facts that are harmless or indisputable.  He notes that the Zionist linguistic program is fairly typical of Eastern European nationalist political movements.  He admits that the Labor Zionist ideologist Berl Katznelson plagiarized ideas from the Henri de Man, the leader of Belgian fascism.  Sternhell even admits that the Zionist state is racist albeit somewhat cravenly, for he uses the German word völkisch instead of plain English.[41]  Yet, The Founding Myths remains a unique example of Zionist exceptionalism, for Sternhell fails to apply to Labor Zionism the same intellectual apparatus by which he analyses fascist and nationalist socialist movements or ideologies in Neither Right nor Left and his other publications.  Thus, Sternhell’s own historical analysis of Zionism is exceptionalist with regard to Sternhell’s own historical analysis outside Zionism.[xx] 

When readers have asked Sternhell to explain why Labor Zionism is not a fascist ideology, Sternhell simply lies.  He claims that Labor Zionists were not anti-democratic.  The main Labor Zionist ideologist Victor Arlosoroff did not conceal his anti-democratic political positions while Labor Zionists invariably opposed the creation of local democratic political structures in Palestine whenever the issue came up in discussions with the Mandatory government, and it is certainly impossible to call any movement democratic whose first act in achieving state power is the ethnic cleansing of the majority of the population.  But Sternhell makes most of his argument by omission, for he fails to place Zionism in the Eastern European context, where Fascist movements and ideologists under the influence of the myth of the ancient Polish Rzeczpospolita have generally preferred a formal democracy that concealed an undemocratic political military oligarchy to outright antidemocratic political forms and structures.

From the creation of the State of Israel through the 60s the oligarchic structure of the Israeli state has been obvious, for citizens were given the option of voting for party lists chosen by the parties.  Later, the Zionist government has used more subtle means to discount the votes of non-Zionist elements of the population especially as the native proportion of the population has increased.  In a genuine democracy, we would expect the government of the state to change as the demography of the state changes.  In non-democratic states like Israel the political leadership develops a strategy to change the demography of the state[42] to maintain the power of political elite.

Yosef Gorny

Despite its problems Sternhell’s work has a lot of value, but Gorny’s has less.  It is a measure of the quality of pre-State Zionist historiography that this text has become more or less the standard work from which Hebrew and English speakers learn this area of ideological history.  Even Finkelstein cites him rather uncritically.  Zionism and the Arabs embodies every questionable aspect of Zionist historiography. The least of its flaws is the use of ideological terminology in the presentation of an “alleged” history of ideological development.  The book uses expressions like “return of Jews to Palestine” instead of  “emigration of Ashkenazim to Palestine.” 

Gorny is a complete and utter historical exceptionalist.  He is blind how Slavic racist the Zionist theory of relations with the native population is. The argument whether Palestinians[xxi] are a genuine nation show the typical logic by which Slavic nationalists deny minorities national or cultural rights.  Extremist Slavic nationalists invariably casuistically describe people whose rights are to be denied as a народность (nationality) and not as a народ (nation).

Gorny unlike Sternhell is also blind how thoroughly German völkisch racist Zionist ideology about relations with the native population is.  The argument whether Palestinians are a genuine people or defined only negatively in response to Zionism evinces the typical logic that German racists applied to Ashkenazim when they argued that Ashkenazim were a Gegenvolk (i.e., an anti-people) and not a genuine Volk (i.e., a people in the racial spiritual sense of German Romanticism)?

Gorny simply ignores the effects of the Nazi persecutions on Zionist ideology.  When one reads Zionist literature of the 40s or often even earlier, one cannot help but notice that Palestinians had become surrogates in the thinking of many of the Palestine-resident Zionist leaders for all the supposed European persecutors of Ashkenazim in the false “pogrom and persecution” version of Ashkenazi history that Ashkenazim commonly believe.  It is simply mind-boggling that the UN could propose in 1947 to place so many Arabs under the rule of people so likely to view them as reasonable targets of revenge for every real and imagined grievance against someone else.

Nevertheless, according to Gorny’s narrative Zionist leaders are invariably moderate and reasonable while Arab leaders are extreme, unreasonably and unwilling to negotiate.   He omits to mention that Shakib Arslan as an agent al-Hussayni and later various Syrian Nationalists offered to facilitate the immigration of Ashkenazim into Arab countries if Zionists would renounce the goal of making Palestine a Jewish state.  Arabs offered Ashkenazim more in the way of refuge than the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia or anyone else, but this fact is absent from practically all histories of the Pre-State Zionism[43] because it belies “the compelling necessity” argument for Zionism.[xxii]  Gorny dismisses pre-State Arab attempts to negotiate just as Barak did at Camp David.  Like most Zionists Gorny does not permit the facts to interfere with his worldview.

Gorny includes the usual counterfactual nonsense that the rumor of the murder of an Arab boy by a Zionist settler immensely disturbed העם אחד (Ahad Haam, Asher Ginzburg[44]) even though there is no evidence whatsoever that Ashkenazim were any less violent than other Eastern and Central Europeans.  In Eastern Europe throughout the 19th century and 20th century, Ashkenazim took part in revolutionary and terrorist violence just like all other Eastern European ethnic groups.[45] In Palestine during the teens Ashkenazi שומרים had no reluctance to use violence, terrorism and intimidation to claim property illegitimately or to deny Palestinians their legitimate non-title rights to land use.[46] 

In the aftermath of WW1, rage, disappointment and anger drove many demobilized soldiers to join or form private militias.[47] Tough violent former soldiers existed just as frequently among Ashkenazim as they did among all other Central and Eastern European populations. The Yiddish novel, Steel and Iron by I. J. Singer, focuses on such a tough former Jewish soldier.  It is a great novel that portrays a reality very different from the Zionist anti-Diaspora ideology of passive and weak Diaspora Jews.  Such Zionist anti-Diaspora attitudes represent genuine irrational anti-Semitism unlike the Palestinian anti-Zionist resistance, which is simply a normal reaction to murderous genocidal racism and theft.

Not only does Gorny ignore 19th and early 20th century history of Ashkenazim in Europe, he fails to contextualize the Zionist ideology of the relationship with native Palestinians in the framework of Eastern and Central European Orientalist discourse, particularly that which is associated with Russian imperialism and colonialism in Central Asia.  Nowadays, scholars probably do not put the Prussian or Austrian policy of colonization, domination and Germanization in Eastern Europe in the same category as European colonialism and imperialism in the 3rd world, but in the 19th century the similarities were undeniable, and Ashkenazim were often in the position of local collaborators with the foreign Austrian or Prussian overlords.[48]  One could argue that Herzl’s Altneuland was a sort of personal advertisement of a would-be colonial surrogate population for an imperial motherland.

Because Germany and Austria had no imperial possessions, German Orientalism of the Ancient and Modern Middle East or India was generally accounted a subspecialty of Classics and therefore tended to relegate even modern Arabic cultures to a non-living status.[49]  German Ashkenazi Zionists steeped in German Semitics had no problems in denying the national and human rights of the members of dead cultures.  German Indology, which had a direct input into Nazi theories of Aryan superiority, probably also had indirect influence on Zionism through the idea of Umvolkung or population supplantation as it developed in extremist German nationalist discourse to justify the displacement of inferior races.

Gorny disregards completely this ideological framework, which first appears among Zionist ideologists during the naughts and the teens in discussions of the transfer or removal of Arabs.  German Nationalists called such a process Umvolkung or population supplantation.  Hitler’s Professors[xxiii],[50] by Max Weinreich describes in detail the Nazi Umvolkung program.  Landeskunde or knowledge of country was the linchpin of this program, whose first step comprised dispatching academics and archeologists to find archeological evidence of ancient ancestors.  The historical presence of ancient Teutons or the shedding of Germanic blood in a region would be verified to justify replacement of the current residents with German settlers.  Thus, German academic Landeskunde was an intimate part of the racist German theory and practice of relations with subordinate non-Germans.

הארץ ידיעת (yedi`at ha’arets, a loan translation of Landeskunde) is the transference of racist German practices and theory to the Zionist context of relations with Palestinians.  הארץ ידיעת  provides the evidence for the claim of superior rights of Ashkenazim to Palestine as Zionist leaders like Jabotinsky claimed on “a strictly positivist basis.”  If Zionism had not been so murderous and genocidal, there would almost be something sad and pathetic that a population like Eastern European Ashkenazim would be so ashamed of their own history that they would deny their own heritage and attempt to claim or to steal the history and heritage of another people.

Unfortunately, in the case of Zionism conflicted Ashkenazi feelings about their genuine ancestry lead to massive brutality and heinous crimes.  From appropriating the archeological and historical sites of Palestine,[51],[xxiv] it was only a small step to stealing the property, expelling the population and destroying the evidence physical presence of the native population. הארץ ידיעת provides the basic ideological legitimization of Zionist expulsion of the native population of Palestine, which in current Israeli discourse is still the final solution to the Arab question within Zionism just as expulsion was the Nazi solution to the Jewish problem up to 1939.[xxv]

הארץ ידיעת directly ties Zionist ideology to German racist and Nazi ideology of purifying the lands of Eastern Europe of non-Germans.  Yet, there is no mention of הארץ ידיעת or Umvolkung in a book that claims to be a study of ideology but is like practically all pre-State Zionist historiography really a whitewashing of a fundamentally racist genocidal program of colonial aggression against an innocent and inoffensive Arab population.  Such historiography makes it possible to portray crimes against humanity as a just and heroic endeavor in which Zionist Ashkenazim and their supporters should take pride.

The failings and distortions associated with the Zionist historiography, of which Sternhell and Gorny are in some sense the best examples, have obvious consequences and repercussions for American historical and political debate as well as the popular culture from which most Americans learn their history and develop their political choices.

…what people learned from … the writers of history books…

The excerpt in Figure 4 from a standard junior high school history textbook used in the Boston public school system shows how the Zionist control of historical discourse affects pre-college education.  This item is hardly the worst example of questionable analysis contained in the book, but it is exceptionally pithy.  Boston students do not learn history; they receive religious indoctrination and study Zionist legitimization narratives or myths. 

This particular textbook is implicitly primordialist.[52]  It does not explicitly say that modern Israeli Jews are descended from Ancient Judeans or Israelites of Canaan or Palestine, but why would anyone reading the text assume otherwise?  Even if modern Ashkenazim were the descendants of Greco-Roman natives of Judea – as we know they are not -- does it make sense for people to attempt to claim the lands where their ancestors might have lived thousands of years ago?  The text does not address this question, but the Bush administration answered the question at Durban at the UN World Conference Against Racism where it argued that for the sake of progress and economic development claims for compensation for events from only 200 years ago must be stayed or allowed to lapse.[53]

Figure 4, World History, Patterns of Interaction, McDougal Littel, p. 75.[54],[xxvi]

… what people learned from … television programmes [and movies] …

 

The ill effects of Zionist control of the political and historical discourse hardly cease with pre-college education.  Americans are constantly bombarded with false and racist depictions of the conflict in the Middle East by the popular media.  No one should wonder why American political leaders consistently side with Zionists on the question of Palestine.  The following partial list of American produced and directed non-documentary non-docudrama feature films,[55] that specifically mention Israel, Israelis, Palestine or Palestinians, shows how much Hollywood and American Indie (Independent) cinema culture has assimilated or absorbed Zionist myths, attitudes and beliefs into its products for dissemination into the American and world market. [56],[xxvii] No Hollywood or American Indie studio has ever produced a feature film with a Palestinian point of view (viz Figure 5).  In fact, the films reviewed contain a plethora of images and scenes in which Palestinians or Arabs kill countless innocent non-combatants while Israelis never kill Palestinian or non-Palestinian innocents, a record that even the US military and special forces cannot match in American film.

Figure 5 Only Zionists need apply.

Both explicit and implicit propaganda films are common.  The stealth indoctrination of the American public begins in the 1950s.

• Ben-Hur (1959, MGM) contains a tremendous amount of metaphorical Zionist propaganda.  The oppressive Roman Empire represents the British Empire, against which the Americanized Jewish[57] hero must struggle. The Arab Sheikh Ilderim is portrayed as effeminate and subordinate -- almost a second Esther in his relationship to Judah Ben-Hur.

It is a screen representation of the Zionist propaganda that national liberation of the Jews (i.e., stealing Palestine from the Palestinians) will bring liberation of the Arabs albeit as subordinates to the Jews.  This movie sets the standard for very subtle and very effective Zionist indoctrination.[58]

• Solomon and Sheba (1959, MGM/UA) targets Ashkenazi Americans and superficial Zionistically-inclined biblical literalists.

Anachronism is pervasive in this film.  The Star of David was completely unknown as an ancient "Israelite," Judean or even Jewish symbol until the last few hundred years.  As a Jewish symbol, before Zionism the hexagram is associated mostly with Sabbatian and perhaps Frankist heresies.  Yet, the troops of King David and King Solomon wear Stars of David on their uniforms, and it serves as a decoration throughout the film.

King Solomon, who is played by Yul Brynner, repeats all sorts of Zionist slogans throughout the movie, and the geopolitical situation described in the movie is obviously constructed to reflect the situation of the State of Israel in the 1950s.

Nevertheless, it is intriguing that the director, whose conceptualization of story the movie ultimately reflects, was King Vidor.  King Vidor was one of the most talented of Hollywood directors.  He directed the Wizard of Oz.  He also had strong connection to Premillennial Dispensationalist Christianity.  He grew up in Vidor, Texas, which was founded by his father C. S. Vidor.  This town is still noted for irredentist unreconstructed Confederate attitudes, apocalyptic evangelical fundamentalism, KKK connections and extreme racism.  It is also very typical bedrock Texas community of the sort the supports George Bush.

Solomon and Sheba was not a blockbuster, but it did make money and was perhaps symptomatic of things yet to come.

Both the director Otto Preminger and the author Leon Uris had many revisionist associations. Therefore, it is not too surprising that Exodus contains a Jabotinskian or Revisionist justification of Zionist terrorism that in 2002 underscores the hypocrisy of the Israeli and American Ashkenazi reactions to legitimate terrorism against the State of Israel.  Like most Hollywood movies that contain the theme of nation creation, the movie ends with a poignant sacrifice for the sake of the nation.  Exodus is particularly creative in this regard because one of the martyrs on behalf of Zionism is a Zionist Arab.  Exodus is exceptionally explicit in sending the message that the USA should get in bed with Israel.

• United Artists had a fair amount of success with Exodus and tried once again with Cast a Giant Shadow (1966, UA).  This movie gives the story of Colonel Mickey Marcus, who was recruited by the Haganah, the Labor Zionist militia, to provide operational expertise.  Marcus conveniently dies in 1948 so that the film can have the typical ending for films of nation creation.  The movie lectures the viewer in the standard Labor Zionist הסברה but goes one step beyond Exodus to argue that American Ashkenazim should serve Israeli interests.  The beginning of the movie is worth watching.  It goes through all the standard Zionist propaganda that is still repeated in American schools, universities and media to this day.  It portrays the Ashkenazi settlement as outnumbered although it was not.  It claims Arab leaders made statements that are mostly impossible to verify.  It claims that the Ashkenazim had no place to go even though the Ashkenazi displaced persons could have been resettled fairly easily within a few years while most of the Ashkenazi settlers in Palestine would probably have been happy for the colony to be dismantled.  Major Safir, the Zionist emissary, makes the obligatory emotional pitch about the threat to the Ashkenazim in Palestine so that Marcus will only react reflexively rather than think rationally about the claims Safir makes because otherwise a little reflection might have lead to the revelation that the native population has just as much claim to liberty and justice as the Ashkenazi settler colonists.  At the time Safir is supposed to give his speech, Zionist forces have already begun their ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

• Videoclip 1 and Videoclip 2 from the next film, Black Sunday (1977, Paramount), are rather more interesting.  Not only is this movie the first action adventure film that combines the Israel-Palestine conflict with Neoconservative political thinking, but also this movie looks in retrospective exceptionally prophetic after the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center.  One might hypothesize that Usama bin Ladin was inspired by the imagination of Thomas Harris, the author of Black Sunday as well as Red Dragon, The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal.  
  

Michael Lander is a disgraced US Air Force pilot that plots with the help of Black September to kill 80,000 people and the president of the United States at a Superbowl football game by crashing an explosive laden blimp into the stadium.  Because of the similarity of the movie’s terrorist operation to the WTC attack, it is worth mention that that no Palestinian group was involved in the September 11 atrocity and that the perpetrators were members of an extremist group loosely associated with the Egyptian Muslim brotherhood (المسلمون الإخوان), which has its own distinct and often legitimate grievances against the USA.  Such complaints, as Palestinians and other Arabs can make against the USA, do not interest Harris, who focuses mostly on the psychopathology of the killer.  Palestinians, the Middle East conflict and Black September are mostly props in his book.  Harris suggested a possible connection of Black September to Vietnamese communists by means of a videotape of Lander’s confession to war crimes while he was a POW during the Vietnam war.  The screenwriter made the connection to international anti-Americanism by explicitly portraying collaboration with Japanese terrorists.

Both the movie and the book are somewhat unique in that they begin with murders of Arabs by an Israeli death squad in Lebanon. Normally, Israeli terror squads are portrayed as retaliating for some on-screen act of violence, but Harris’ lack of interest in Middle East issues may have immunized him to some extent to the common Zionist attitudes that most Americans have adopted.[59] Nevertheless, the terrorist act itself corresponds far more to Zionist mythology than to actual Palestinian operations at the time, which generally confined themselves to the seizure of hostages or airplanes to secure the release of prisoners that were held by Israelis under torture and the threat of execution at any time. 

The director and the scriptwriter went beyond the book to explore motivations and the cause of the conflict.  In the movie Major Kabokov, the Israeli protagonist, suffers from the usual “whack ‘em and weep syndrome.”  Harris and the screenwriter portray such as qualms as explicitly negative in conformance with the Neoconservative ideology that is developing at the time.  If Kabokov had not shown mercy toward Dahlia Iyad in Beirut, the Black September attack would have been stopped before it could even stop. 

Kabokov’s self-doubts belong to the films subtheme of recovering masculinity.  The US agents are paralyzed by procedures and rules that prevent them from taking the necessary action to stop the terrorists.  Lander’s masculinity has been permanently damaged by his imprisonment in Vietnam.  The paralysis of US intelligence agents and Lander’s impotence serve as fairly obvious metaphors for the Vietnam syndrome.  Lander uses the wrong methods to overcome his sexual dysfunction by sexual and terrorist collaboration with Iyad, who lends Lander evil power by means of Arab sensuality and seduction. She makes Lander hard and tough once again as she directs him to undertake a terrorist attack on behalf of Black September. In contrast, when Kabokov overcomes his self-doubts in response to the killing of his partner and thwarts the terror attack, he becomes in conformance with Neoconservative ideology the forceful Israeli that teaches Americans how to deal with foreign and in particular Arab threats.

The scenes of the auditing of the Black September post-attack tape and of the identification of the Dahlia Iyad by Egyptian security are worth reviewing.  The message that Iyad reads is far more powerful in the movie than in the book while the identification scene was created for the movie. 

One can only speculate why it was necessary in the movie to identify Iyad as an Arab of German Palestinian extraction. Perhaps after showing some sympathy with Palestinian suffering, the director might have felt an obligation to pander Zionist myth of the Arab German link in the opposition to Zionism. Or perhaps, the director just needed explain the portrayal of a Palestinian woman by an actress of German extraction.

I also have to wonder whether the director was reluctant from the start to portray Arabs as relentlessly negative as Harris wrote in the book.  While there could have been some last minute editing of the film in response to Sadat’s peace initiative, there might be a subtle indoctrination that the validity of Arab or Palestinian grievance is irrelevant.  Arabs and Palestinians are too dangerous, and the coalition of Americans and Israelis must crush them without mercy in all their schemes.

The movie’s ending differs significantly from that of the book.   While Harris’ book is on the whole rather flawed, his denouement in which Kabokov sacrifices himself to stop Iyad and Lander would have created a far superior climax for the movie. A powerful cinematic ending seems to have been sacrificed to the desire to provide a triumphalist Neoconservative conclusion to the film.

• Golda (1982, Paramount) is a biography of Gold Meir that is mostly hero worship and Labor Zionist הסברה.  The descriptions of the issues of Palestinian refugees and of access to Jerusalem are simply dishonest.  The movie probably correctly but accidentally portrays Meir as a person that lacks any ethical awareness, understanding and impulses. In the clip presented she has the nerve to ask the self-serving question what population could remain a refugee population for 30 years even though she herself is the leader of the movement that made them refugees and even though the Zionist movement justifies its seizure of Palestine by means of the primordialist argument that Jews have been refugees for 2000 years.

• Hanna K. (1983, Universal) is fascinating because of the timidity that Costa-Gavras shows in portraying ethically dubious Zionist beliefs, actions and behavior. The movie depicts problems in the life of an attorney loosely modeled on Felicia Langer.  She is defending a Palestinian infiltrator.  According to its own internal documentation, the IDF usually simply shoots unarmed infiltrators, but the director and writer uncritically accepts the Zionist viewpoint that Israel actually has a functioning legal system and that Zionists actually make effort to deal with difficult ethical questions as well as they can.[60] 

Because the film concedes the possibility that aspects of Zionism might have morally problematic effects, major public controversy accompanied general distribution.  The clip shows Hanna, the prosecutor and the judge as they attempt to find an extra-juridical solution to the problem that the defendant presents.  Note how the judge makes the usual irrational and unethical Zionist arguments to justify Zionism while he uses the usual psychological triggers about the Nazi persecutions to intimidate Hanna into accepting his viewpoint.

Hanna K. like Torn Apart[61] (1990, Warner Studios) and Double Edge[62] (1991, Faye Milano Limited Partnership) represents a sort of Liberal Israeli or Ashkenazi American fantasy, in which the Zionist heroes really are moral people that strive to overcome obstacles and do right in difficult situations.  Such movies do not address the possibility that Zionism might be fundamentally ethically questionable.  The depiction of Palestinians in these films corresponds to fantasies about Palestinians from Zionist narratives or propaganda and not to any sort of discernible reality.  While individual Israeli settler colonists may be obnoxious or defend themselves violently in the course of the plot, only Palestinians ever commit crimes or aggression in this class of film.[63]

• Little Drummer Girl (1984, WB) was also released with a major controversy, which in retrospect is hard to understand, for the movie is similar to Black Sunday except for less examination of motivations.  The movie begins with a Palestinian terrorist attack so that Israeli actions can be portrayed as legitimate retaliation.  Even though the members of the Israeli hit team are particularly unpleasant as they murder and use non-Jews in order to track down and assassinate an important Black September leader, Zionist self-perception and claims are never challenged.  In the course of the story the Palestinian terrorists specifically target an Israeli peace advocate, and the movie includes some “whack ‘em and weep” Zionist blubbering.

• Oh God! You Devil (1984, WB) really demonizes Arafat.  The devil comments that he has had Arafat’s soul for years.  As far as 3rd world national liberation leaders go, Arafat does not seem much different from Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, Ahmed Ben Bella, etc.  His demonization in the USA is particularly incomprehensible except as a symptom of the pervasive assimilation by Americans of the Zionist point of view.

• Splash (1984, Touchstone Pictures).

• Schindler’s List (1993, Universal) is unprecedented as an expression of extremist nationalist Likud הסברה. We know that the story is fundamentally a nation creation narrative because the movie ends with the death of Schindler to show that the people he lead became capable of standing on the own.  This movie proved to be a genuine blockbuster[64] unlike earlier Zionist oriented films that were only moderately successful.  Obviously, no one visits the cinemaplex for a lecture in Labor Zionist ideology.

This film is extremely problematic on several grounds.  It is a consciously inverted film noir Wizard of Oz that markets its message subliminally. The evil of Nazism is reduced to psychopathology.  Zionist ideologues prefer such an understanding of Nazism because genuine analysis of the phenomenon of Nazism would find too many similarities to Zionism. As history, the movie embodies the serious failures of Zionist historiography to which Hobsbawm referred.  The movie describes the Holocaust of Zionist myth not the historical שואה (or catastrophe). The Soviet officer makes the pitch of a שליח (a Zionist emissary that recruits new immigrants).

One must wonder how a Palestinian would view the conclusion.  It shows the Schindler Jews, who mostly did not migrate to Palestine, as they step into a rebirth of color and into Jerusalem to the sound in the background of זהב של ירושלים, a song that celebrates the culmination of a series of dispossession, tragedies and expulsions of the native population and that is generally associated now with the extreme right in Israeli politics.[65] 

Spielberg is indoctrinating the audience with the following propaganda.

a.        The State of Israel is an appropriate monument to murdered European Jews even though the vast majority were either non-Zionist or anti-Zionist, and

b.       making Palestine a Jewish state was proper recompense for persecution of European Jews despite the wishes of the majority native population (who in a sinister foreshadowing of planned expulsion or mass extermination are absent as the theme of the 1967 conquest is played).

I am not surprised that the Egyptian and many other governments had some serious issues with subjecting their populations to this sort of blatant Zionist propaganda.

There are a lot of ethical problems associated with the UN recommendation to partition Palestine along völkisch principles that violated the UN charter and that wronged the native population. Universal Studies should have given the film a voluntary NC-17 rating, for it is certainly wrong to indoctrinate young people and children with the idea that two wrongs make a right.

This ending was so close to the Likud formula for “national ritual assertion of Israel state identity and superiority” and conformed so exactly to the “central item of the official system of national beliefs” as promulgated by the Likud party that the ending had to be modified for Israeli audiences. USA popular culture has an even higher tolerance of the most extremist Zionist myth and propaganda than Israeli Jews do.  One must wonder whether the success of such clever Likud propaganda at the box office presaged the failure of the Oslo Process?[xxix]

The frequency of the appearance of Zionized Hollywood films definitely increases over the period from 1950 to the present, but Americans were not necessarily exposed to less Zionist propaganda in the earlier period, for Israeli film makers made up for the lack of Zionized American cinema.  Nowadays they do not have to bother because Hollywood routinely incorporates Zionist themes, propaganda and myths.  The legitimization narrative has changed since the early period to depend more on the Holocaust than on Zionist ideology or primordialist myth.

 

The offhand appearance of Zionist attitudes in ordinary non-ideological movies is in some regards even more disturbing than the lies and misrepresentations of the consciously Zionist films.  Obviously, the penetration of Zionism throughout American society is so deep and all pervasive that Americans express Zionist attitudes reflexively and unconsciously.  The amount of effort required to counteract the Zionist indoctrination is simply daunting.

Zionist Intimidation and McCarthyism: Anti-Semitism, Judeophobia and Justified Hostility

The moment one expresses concern about the Zionist domination of American attitudes and discourse one is accused of anti-Semitism. Yosef Gorny in his preface provides a useful comment on this issue even though his perspective is tainted by Zionist primordialist mythology.

 

 In other words, a term like anti-Semitism refers to a reality of the past not the present, is anachronistic and simply does not apply to the conflict over Palestine (viz Figure 6).  It is a Pavlov trigger used to cause a reflex response instead of rational thought.  On hearing the accusation of anti-Semitism the listener is supposed to think of poor oppressed Jews, who are being threatened with machine guns, instead of the current reality in which "Jewish" citizens of an ideologically racist "Jewish" state are engaged in ongoing oppression, plunder and genocide against the native population of Palestine.   When a university president like Lawrence Summers of Harvard uses such tendentious, propagandistic and inappropriate terminology in a discussion of academic policy, one must question his fitness to lead an institution of higher learning.  A person that uses the term anti-Semitism in a debate about Palestine is simply intellectually dishonest.  Such a person should be denied any position of political or educational responsibility.

Genuine scholars avoid the use of the term anti-Semitism except in association with late 19th and early 20th century political ideologies that justified hatred or fear of Jews on the basis of pseudoscientific social Darwinist or biological determinist ideas. This form of hostility toward Jews was usually associated with important and often powerful Central or Eastern European political parties. The preferred academic term for generic hatred or fear of Judeans or Jews is Judeophobia.  Many scholars, like Peter Schäfer in Judeophobia: Attitudes Toward the Jews in the Ancient World, have often tried to find a common principle that links all instances of hostility towards Judeans or Jews from the conflicts between Judeans and non-Judeans in Greco-Roman times to today’s worldwide hatred of Zionism, Israel and their supporters.  Yet, the claim of a universal “anti-Semitic” phenomenon seems intellectually dishonest, delusional or paranoid because the historical conditions, alleged reasons for hostility, probable reasons for hatred and actions of the antagonists are for the most part very different in each supposed instance of anti-Semitism while the actual frequency of anti-Judean or anti-Jewish incidents in a specific area on careful study invariably proves to be quite small even in “historic” alleged “anti-Semitic” “hotspots.”

In antiquity, citizens of a polis might have taken issue with Judean refusal to pay taxes to support the temple services to the gods that protected the cities while the Judean Rebellions probably inspired sporadic hostility toward Judeans as Roman imperial enemies, but such negative feelings seem hardly different from similar emotions directed at other times toward ancient Celts, Teutons, Persians, Carthaginians or Greeks.  During the Crusades attacks on German Jewish communities seem to be a side effect of the Church’s war against Catharism and other heresies, whose adherents, in contrast to the Jews, were completely obliterated.  After the wars of the Reconquista, the Spanish monarchs had no tolerance for religious diversity although they definitely wanted the Iberian Jews to remain in Spain and Portugal after conversion to Christianity.  Central and Eastern European anti-Semitism seems to have grown out of a confessional form of extremist organic nationalism that did not target Jews specifically but has fomented attempts at the genocide of several populations in Central and Eastern Europe.  Hatred of Zionism, the Zionist State of Israel and their supporters by Palestinians and anyone sympathetic to the Palestinian cause is hardly different from the hatred that Poles felt toward Germans and Nazis after Nazi Germany invaded Poland and acted to incorporate its territory into Nazi Mitteleuropa.[xxx]

Figure 6 The Meaninglessness of Anti-Semitism in Current Usage

The Evil That Zionism has created

Concentration on a theory of universal anti-Semitism to establish a grand unification of such totally different phenomena tends to serve as a distraction from the evil that Zionists planned and committed in murdering Arab Palestine and in driving out the native population.  Such Zionist behavior is clearly comparable to Nazi goals for Eastern Europe.  The evil is less well-known that Zionism created in forcing DPs (Displaced Persons) to settle against their will in the State of Israel after WW2 and in inciting Arab Muslim hostility toward Arab Jewish communities, which were ultimately destroyed as a result of Zionist crimes in Palestine.  But the most insidious evil of Zionism from the standpoint of America lies in inspiring the alliance of American Zionists, Neoconservatives and Neoconfederates.  These political factions have joined together in a commitment to maintain a racist Jewish colony in Palestine by means of the brutal oppression and suppression of the native population.

American Zionists are mostly inspired by misguided feelings of guilt and a confused need for atonement.  But they have chosen an incorrect method of satisfying this need because giving Zionists a license to commit the sorts of crimes against native Palestinians that Nazis committed against European Jews is a completely mistaken form of expiation.  American Zionists only succeed in supporting Zionist crimes against humanity in Palestine and in becoming a major driving force for anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab and anti-Muslim prejudice in the USA.

Neoconservatives are intellectual descendants and often the blue-stripe diaper babies of American Revisionists or Jabotinskians.  They argue for a muscular American Empire so that Israel can serve as a middleman or colonial surrogate for the USA in the Middle East just as their forbears claimed a Jewish colony in Palestine could serve the British Empire.  Neoconservatives thrive on the disorder that the presence of Israel creates, for they want the USA to treat the symptom by interfering with Arab governments, invading Arab countries and by stationing troops in the Middle East.  Neoconservatives absolutely reject any idea of doing away with one of the major causes of Middle East turbulence by forcing the State of Israel to renounce Zionist racism and to make full restitution for Zionist crimes against the native population.

Neoconfederates are white Apocalyptic Evangelical Fundamentalists.  They are the most bizarre block of the supporters for Israel and really require a separate study.  Intellectually they are the descendants of racist unrepentant and unreconstructed Southern Confederates, who turned to religion with the defeat of the Confederacy.  They found spiritual solace in Premillennial Dispensationalism particularly in the form espoused by the Moody Bible Institute and Cyrus Ingerson Scofield.  They believe that the creation of Israel in the 1947-8 murder of Arab Palestine is a genuine sign of the beginning of the End of Time.  Because they believe they have a realized eschatology, they are completely irrational and think mythographically.  They are extremely dangerous.[xxxi]

This unholy political union that is centered on the State of Israel brings together ideologies of racism, racist colonialism, prejudice, bigotry, social intolerance, religious intolerance, social Darwinism, biological determinism, imperialism, millennialism, extremist nationalism, contempt for democracy and contempt for human rights.  Never has there been anything closer in the USA to a genuine American Nazism.  Defeating this sort of politics is absolutely necessary for the salvation of American democracy and will require a long-term effort with careful planning.

What is to Be Done?

The battle starts at the most basic levels of popular and academic culture.  Zionist ideas are so embedded in American thinking that discussing major political issues in the USA without accepting Zionist assumptions is practically impossible. The damage that this Zionist control of discourse does is practically all encompassing.  It starts with the miswriting of history in academia and spreads outwards.  In America, the field of Jewish studies begs practically all questions of history and ethics on subjects even only remotely connected with Zionism.  Zionist professors and academics like Harvard’s President, Lawrence Summers, have practically ruined the whole concept of a free and open academic environment in the USA.

The field of Judaica or Jewish Studies is the archetype of Zionized academia and the model for the future.  Only subservience to Zionist interests remains. If genuine Jewish studies existed in the USA instead of a Zionist propaganda machine, the Palestine question would be a no-brainer. The USA would probably have kissed Israel goodbye long ago or bombed Israel into submission as it did Milošević. A US alliance with Zionism is a betrayal of ideals to which Americans are supposed to cling.  To advocate or to support such an alliance is a betrayal of America.  An American that supports or advocates this alliance is a traitor to fundamental American ideals whether he is the President, who holds office by a judicial coup, or an ordinary citizen. The foreign policy course for the USA is obvious and presents one of the few cases where ethics, ideology and pragmatism are congruent.  To switch sides and treat Israel as an enemy would win many friends and no significant enemies. Regime change first in Palestine first to overthrow Zionism and then to bring to justice Zionist war criminals or perpetrators of crimes against humanity would probably have eliminated most opposition to military action against Saddam Hussein.

At the Local Level

Obviously, most of us do not have the resources to combat Zionism either at the national or university level, but parents in particular can play an important rôle.  They have to be involved in politics at the community level because American Zionists are already there disseminating propaganda and falsehood. 

Parents must force textbooks like World History, Patterns of Interaction out of the school systems and coerce the publishers to present history that has some connection to reality.  But parents cannot stop there.  In many states Holocaust instruction is mandated.  These courses are very bad.  Usually, the course materials are prepared directly or indirectly by the State of Israel so that no genuine history is taught, and the classes focus on legitimization myths for Zionism.  Such courses distract from the crimes that have been committed in the USA like slavery and the genocide of the Native American population.  Even the name is bad.  Wiesel used the word holocaust to refer to the Nazi murders of Jews to suggest that the deaths were burnt offerings to God to sanctify the creation of the State of Israel.  As the vast majority of the murdered were non-Zionist or anti-Zionist, Wiesel’s nomenclature is offensive and insipid to say the least.  The Yiddish word, חורבן (khurban), and the Hebrew word, שואה (sho’ah) are more appropriate, for they simply mean catastrophe like the نكبه (nakbah).[66]  All Holocaust studies must be coupled with study of the Nakbah and of the crimes of Zionism because according the normal pattern in human history, which we probably wish to teach children to avoid, victims turn into victimizers at the drop of a hat.  The שואה and Zionism provide an illustrative example.

Anti-Zionist activism must go beyond the public schools.  Arab Americans and any American committed to justice must punish local politicians whenever they espouse Zionism.  Then maybe national politicians will get the message.  I know that some Muslims have religious problems with political participation.  When someone argues that a true Muslim should not participate in an infidel government, I respond that the US government is no more an infidel than a tank or a fighter plane.  The government is just a big machine that can be put to any use if one is willing to make the effort to control or influence it.  Anyone that is unwilling to vote or to participate simply concedes the power of that government machine to Zionists or other bad guys that are willing to put their money and attention to working the political system.  To concede such power to such forces is un-Islamic, for it is a service to injustice.  We must all work to make anti-Zionism as reflexive in the USA tomorrow as Zionism is today.

 

What People Of Jewish or Ashkenazi Ancestry Can Do

Zionism and the State of Israel present people of Jewish or Ashkenazi ancestry with a severe ethical problem because Zionists claim to represent all Jewish people and Israel is self-defined as the state of the Jewish people.  As long as Jews or Ashkenazim are silent, they give consent.  There are four obvious models that they can use in acting against Zionism.

1.       Doctor Seuss (Theodore Geisel) albeit an American of German ancestry took an avant-garde position to propagandize against everything for which Nazism stood and to advocate early entry of the USA into a war against Nazi Germany.  American Jews and Ashkenazim have no excuse not to imitate Geisel with similar opposition to Zionism and the State of Israel.[67]

2.       Marlene Dietrich took the position that if Nazis define what it means to be German, then she was not German.  She left Germany and never hesitated to condemn Nazism and Nazi Germany.  Israeli Jews could take exactly the same position, renounce their Jewishness as defined by the Israeli government, emigrate from Israel and denounce Zionism and the State of Israel at every possible chance.

3.       Nataśa Kandić albeit a Serb never missed a chance to condemn Serb racism, to thwart Serb anti-Albanian action and to advise NATO to attack Serbia.  Concerned Jews should condemn Zionist racism, work to thwart Zionist anti-Palestinian action and should demand that NATO attack the State of Israel on the same grounds that NATO took action against Serbia.

4.       German anti-Nazi resistance groups like the White Rose undertook sabotage against Nazi Germany.  Israeli Jewish groups should likewise undertake campaigns of sabotage against the State of Israel.  In a sense, when Allegra Pacheco took Israeli citizenship to fight Zionism she was following the example of the White Rose.

As long as the effects of the last 50 years of Zionist indoctrination of the American population can be overcome, combined efforts of Jews and non-Jews of good will should be able swiftly to end the US-Israel alliance, to eliminate Zionism as a living political ideology and to obtain justice with restitution for the Palestinian people.

• Sword in the Desert (1949, Universal).[68]

• Ben-Hur (1959, MGM) contains a tremendous amount of metaphorical Zionist propaganda.  The oppressive Roman Empire represents the British Empire, against which the Americanized Jewish[69] hero must struggle. The Arab Sheikh Ilderim is portrayed as effeminate and subordinate -- almost a second Esther in his relationship to Judah Ben-Hur.

It is a screen representation of the Zionist propaganda that national liberation of the Jews (i.e., stealing Palestine from the Palestinians) will bring liberation of the Arabs albeit as subordinates to the Jews.  This movie sets the standard for very subtle and very effective Zionist indoctrination.[70]

• Solomon and Sheba (1959, MGM/UA) targets Ashkenazi Americans and superficial Zionistically-inclined biblical literalists.

Anachronism is pervasive in this film.  The Star of David was completely unknown as an ancient "Israelite," Judean or even Jewish symbol until the last few hundred years.  As a Jewish symbol, before Zionism the hexagram is associated mostly with Sabbatian and perhaps Frankist heresies.  Yet, the troops of King David and King Solomon wear Stars of David on their uniforms, and it serves as a decoration throughout the film.

King Solomon, who is played by Yul Brynner, repeats all sorts of Zionist slogans throughout the movie, and the geopolitical situation described in the movie is obviously constructed to reflect the situation of the State of Israel in the 1950s.

Nevertheless, it is intriguing that the director, whose conceptualization of story the movie ultimately reflects, was King Vidor.  King Vidor was one of the most talented of Hollywood directors.  He directed the Wizard of Oz.  He also had strong connection to Premillennial Dispensationalist Christianity.  He grew up in Vidor, Texas, which was founded by his father C.S. Vidor.  This town is still noted for irredentist unreconstructed Confederate attitudes, apocalyptic evangelical fundamentalism, KKK connections and extreme racism.  It is also very typical bedrock Texas community of the sort the supports George Bush.

Solomon and Sheba was not a blockbuster, but it did make money and was perhaps symptomatic of things yet to come.

• Exodus (1960, UA)[xxxii] is practically a course in Zionist הסברה or propaganda.  It goes through practically all the standard false claims to justify Zionist Ashkenazi colonization and aggression against the native population of Palestine. The movie leaves out the book’s characterizations of Arabs as smelly or dirty, but it does include the de rigueur association of Nazis with the anti-Zionist resistance.  In point of fact Labor Zionists themselves tried very hard to work with Nazi Germany and did so fairly effectively until 1939 while al-Hussayni was fairly quickly dispatched to Bosnia, where he did not speak the language, when he finally tried to approach Germany for aid.

Both the director Otto Preminger and the author Leon Uris had many revisionist associations. Therefore, it is not too surprising that Exodus contains a Jabotinskian or Revisionist justification of Zionist terrorism that in 2002 underscores the hypocrisy of the Israeli and American Ashkenazi reactions to legitimate terrorism against the State of Israel.  Like most Hollywood movies that contain the theme of nation creation, the movie ends with a poignant sacrifice for the sake of the nation.  Exodus is particularly creative in this regard because one of the martyrs on behalf of Zionism is a Zionist Arab.  Exodus is exceptionally explicit in sending the message that the USA should get in bed with Israel.

• The relatively insignificant Operation Eichmann (1961, Allied Artists) followed Exodus into popular distribution.  It is supposed to provide the story of the capture in 1960 of Eichmann, a Nazi war criminal. It further elaborates the theme of Arab collaboration with the Nazis in what must be a form of psychological projection of the Zionists’ own collaboration with Nazi Germany during the 1930s.  In this movie Israeli agents intend to capture Eichmann in Kuwait, but just before the operation succeeds he flees to South America.  There is no historical basis for this episode in the movie.

• Lisa (1962, Twentieth Century-Fox).

• United Artists had a fair amount of success with Exodus and tried once again with Cast a Giant Shadow (1966, UA).  This movie gives the story of Colonel Mickey Marcus, who was recruited by the Haganah, the Labor Zionist militia, to provide operational expertise.  Marcus conveniently dies in 1948 so that the film can have the typical ending for films of nation creation.  The movie lectures the viewer in the standard Labor Zionist הסברה but goes one step beyond Exodus to argue that American Ashkenazim should serve Israeli interests.  The beginning of the movie is worth watching.  It goes through all the standard Zionist propaganda that is still repeated in American schools, universities and media to this day.  It portrays the Ashkenazi settlement as outnumbered although it was not.  It claims Arab leaders made statements that are mostly impossible to verify.  It claims that the Ashkenazim had no place to go even though the Ashkenazi displaced persons could have been resettled fairly easily within a few years while most of the Ashkenazi settlers in Palestine would probably have been happy for the colony to be dismantled.  Major Safir, the Zionist emissary, makes the obligatory emotional pitch about the threat to the Ashkenazim in Palestine so that Marcus will only react reflexively rather than think rationally about the claims Safir makes because otherwise a little reflection might have lead to the revelation that the native population has just as much claim to liberty and justice as the Ashkenazi settler colonists.  At the time Safir is supposed to give his speech, Zionist forces have already begun their ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

• Judith (1966, Paramount).

• Justine (1969, Twentieth Century-Fox).

• Fritz the Cat (1972, MGM/UA).

• The Human Factor (1975, Frank Avianca).

• Rosebud (1975, MGM/UA).

• The Next Man (1976, Artists Entertainment).

• Videoclip 1 and videoclip 2 from the next film, Black Sunday (1977, Paramount), are rather more interesting.  Not only is this movie the first action adventure film that combines the Israel-Palestine conflict with Neoconservative political thinking, but also this movie looks in retrospective exceptionally prophetic after the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center.  One might hypothesize that Usama bin Ladin was inspired by the imagination of Thomas Harris, the author of Black Sunday as well as Red Dragon, The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal. 

Michael Lander is a disgraced US Air Force pilot that plots with the help of Black September to kill 80,000 people and the president of the United States at a Superbowl football game by crashing an explosive laden blimp into the stadium.  Because of the similarity of the movie’s terrorist operation to the WTC attack, it is worth mention that that no Palestinian group was involved in the September 11 atrocity and that the perpetrators were members of an extremist group loosely associated with the Egyptian Muslim brotherhood (المسلمون الإخوان), which has its own distinct and often legitimate grievances against the USA.  Such complaints, as Palestinians and other Arabs can make against the USA, do not interest Harris, who focuses mostly on the psychopathology of the killer.  Palestinians, the Middle East conflict and Black September are mostly props in his book.  Harris suggested a possible connection of Black September to Vietnamese communists by means of a videotape of Lander’s confession to war crimes while he was a POW during the Vietnam war.  The screenwriter made the connection to international anti-Americanism by explicitly portraying collaboration with Japanese terrorists.

Both the movie and the book are somewhat unique in that they begin with murders of Arabs by an Israeli death squad in Lebanon. Normally, Israeli terror squads are portrayed as retaliating for some on-screen act of violence, but Harris’ lack of interest in Middle East issues may have immunized him to some extent to the common Zionist attitudes that most Americans have adopted.[71] Nevertheless, the terrorist act itself corresponds far more to Zionist mythology than to actual Palestinian operations at the time, which generally confined themselves to the seizure of hostages or airplanes to secure the release of prisoners that were held by Israelis under torture and the threat of execution at any time. 

The director and the scriptwriter went beyond the book to explore motivations and the cause of the conflict.  In the movie Major Kabokov, the Israeli protagonist, suffers from the usual “whack ‘em and weep syndrome.”  Harris and the screenwriter portray such as qualms as explicitly negative in conformance with the Neoconservative ideology that is developing at the time.  If Kabokov had not shown mercy toward Dahlia Iyad in Beirut, the Black September attack would have been stopped before it could even stop. 

Kabokov’s self-doubts belong to the films subtheme of recovering masculinity.  The US agents are paralyzed by procedures and rules that prevent them from taking the necessary action to stop the terrorists.  Lander’s masculinity has been permanently damaged by his imprisonment in Vietnam.  The paralysis of US intelligence agents and Lander’s impotence serve as fairly obvious metaphors for the Vietnam syndrome.  Lander shows us the wrong way to overcome his impairment when Iyad helps us to overcome his impairment in a not too subtle reference to the power of Arab sexuality and seduction.  When Kabokov overcomes his self-doubts in response to the killing of his partner and thwarts the terror attack, he becomes in conformance with Neoconservative ideology the forceful Israeli that teaches Americans how to deal with foreign and in particular Arab threats.

The scenes of the auditing of the Black September post-attack tape and of the identification of the Dahlia Iyad by Egyptian security are worth reviewing.  The message that Iyad reads is far more powerful in the movie than in the book while the identification scene was created for the movie. 

One can only speculate why it was necessary in the movie to identify Iyad as an Arab of German Palestinian extraction. Perhaps after showing some sympathy with Palestinian suffering, the director might have felt an obligation to pander Zionist myth of the Arab German link in the opposition to Zionism. Or perhaps, the director just needed explain the portrayal of a Palestinian woman by an actress of German extraction.

I also have to wonder whether the director was reluctant from the start to portray Arabs as relentlessly negative as Harris wrote in the book.  While there could have been some last minute editing of the film in response to Sadat’s peace initiative, there might be a subtle indoctrination that the validity of Arab or Palestinian grievance is irrelevant.  Arabs and Palestinians are too dangerous, and the coalition of Americans and Israelis must crush them without mercy in all their schemes.

The movie’s ending differs significantly from that of the book.   While Harris’ book is on the whole rather flawed, his denouement in which Kabokov sacrifices himself to stop Iyad and Lander would have created a far superior climax for the movie. A powerful cinematic ending seems to have been sacrificed to the desire to provide a triumphalist Neoconservative conclusion to the film.

• Sorcerer (1977, Universal  & Paramount).

• Jesus of Nazareth (1977, Family Home Entertainment).

• Holocaust (1978, Republic Studios) is mostly a Zionist Holocaust drama that incorporates a lot of הסברה.  While it has the virtue that it shows genuine pathos in the unmitigated suffering of the Weiss family unlike more recent Holocaust schlock like Schindler’s List, it does not correctly portray the time period and cannot be considered an accurate representation of the שואה. 

In the 1932 election the Nazi party significantly toned down its anti-Semitism because this aspect of the Nazi program was not popular with the German population.  There really was no significant demographic distinction between those that supported Hindenberg like Heinrich Palitz, Joseph Weiss’s father-in-law, and those that supported Hitler except perhaps for Jewish religion, and there is some question even whether religion was much of predictor for a voter’s choice between Hitler and Hindenberg. 

The series should have pointed out the collaboration between Labor Zionists and Nazis up until 1939 as well as the problems that Zionist policy made for anyone trying to rescue Jews in Europe. The synagogue burned during the Nazi invasion of Poland has a hexagram (Star of David).  That improbable adornment looks like subtle propaganda to tie Polish Ashkenazim, who were in the vast majority non-Zionist or anti-Zionist, to the Zionist movement.  The anti-Zionist Bund was completely written out of the story even though most of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising were Bundists.

When Helena Slomova (a Czech Zionist Ashkenazi) tells Rudi Weiss (a Jewish German who fled Germany to Eastern Europe) that after the Germans are defeated they will go to Palestine and build a Jewish state, he could have said, "Oh, then we will go to Palestine and do to the poor Arabs what the Germans are doing to us."  Such dialogue would have the virtue of verisimilitude if one has studied the true history and not Zionist propaganda history of the time period.[72] 

The ending in which Rudi Weiss agrees to take Jewish Greek orphans to Palestine provides the usual offensive Zionist propaganda ending to suggest that the theft of Palestine from the native population is some sort of secular redemption.  A more ambiguous ending that showed the revenge that Jews and other Eastern European populations took on Eastern European German populations and that underscored the vicious racist genocidal nature of Zionism in Palestine would have been superior, more true to life, for it would have elucidated the simple truth of human existence that victims almost immediately become victimizers as soon as they get the opportunity.

• Time after Time (1979, WB) also repeats the standard Zionist lie that Palestinian terrorists committed senseless violence against masses of innocent civilians.  None of the references to completely fictional Palestinian terrorism have any intrinsic connection to the plot but serve almost as a subliminal indoctrination of the audience.  This sort of incidental propagandization of the American public is probably more sinister than the thematic use of Zionist myth, which is more obvious and easier to dismiss as obvious nonsense.

• Americathon (1979, UA) is a tasteless political satire that is set in 1998 and that can probably offend almost everyone, but it does demonstrate that the preposterous jokes of yesterday (1979) could very well become today’s history or current events.  The audience is supposed to laugh at the idea that China would totally embrace capitalism and succeed with a vengeance.  John Ritter from Three’s Company plays President Roosevelt, who combines the idiocy of President Bush (“we have no minds, only purpose”) with the libido of President Clinton.  The movie takes place after the economic collapse of the USA because of high oil prices.  Sam Birdwater, the Native American multibillionaire, is going to foreclose and sell the country to the sinister leaders of the United Hebrab Republic, which was formed by Arabs and Israeli Jews after Begin and Sadat signed a peace treaty.

I like insipid political parody as much as the next guy, and Mel Brooks has successfully produced a Hollywood film and a Broadway musical on the premise that dishonest greedy Jews would collaborate with a former Nazi to commit fraud and to profiteer on Hitler and Nazism, but the movie version first appeared 23 years after the end of WW2.  I have to wonder how American Jews would have reacted in 1938 if someone produced a political satire of President Roosevelt in which European Jews and Nazis united to form Judeonazia on the premise of world domination and a basic predilection to use and then dump Slavic women.

• Eyewitness (1981, Twentieth Century Fox).

• The next movie to appear was Masada (1981, Universal).  It is a dramatization of Zionist primordialist myth and הסברה.  The movie has no factual basis in Iosephos, who provides the only “historical” description of the events associated with Masada, but the Masada of Zionist myth was never a matter of history but more an issue of providing Ashkenazim with a secular non-religious connection to Palestine.  During the 30s and 40s, the story was rewritten as an example of courage even though it describes mostly banditry.  Ashkenazi terrorists and suicide attackers used variants of the Masada myth as an inspiration and example for their behavior during the 40s.

• Golda (1982, Paramount) is a biography of Gold Meir that is mostly hero worship and Labor Zionist הסברה.  The descriptions of the issues of Palestinian refugees and of access to Jerusalem are simply dishonest.  The movie probably correctly but accidentally portrays Meir as a person that lacks any ethical awareness, understanding and impulses. In the clip presented she has the nerve to ask the self-serving question what population could remain a refugee population for 30 years even though she herself is the leader of the movement that made them refugees and even though the Zionist movement justifies its seizure of Palestine by means of the primordialist argument that Jews have been refugees for 2000 years.

• The Soldier (1982, Embassy).

• When Wrong is Right (1982, Columbia) first appeared, the Arab American community was justifiably incensed, and the Sony Corporation, which provided considerable money and equipment to assist the production of this film in return for a very prominent listing in the credits, promised to be more sensitive in the future.   The movie is not a little incoherent for it combines the theme of media irresponsibility as depicted in Network[73] with a parody of US politics and a tremendous amount of negative stereotyping of Arabs and Palestinians as well as just plain anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racism.  The movie was probably an attempt at parody of US and Arab culture and politics.  Generally, parodying one’s own culture is acceptable while parodying someone else’s culture tends to turn into an exercise in bigotry and prejudice.  In this particular case, the director, Richard Brooks, who was also screenwriter and producer, seems to have known absolutely nothing about Arab culture, politics or current affairs.[74]  To compensate for complete ignorance he incorporated the usual Zionist or Israeli anti-Arab anti-Israeli propaganda.[75]   Some of the material that satirizes US politics and culture is still relevant today, for one subtheme of the plot involves the fabrication of a false threat of nuclear terrorism both to justify the invasion of an oil-rich Arab country and also to foment reflexive unthinking patriotic support of the president.   A person that can ignore the half of the film that is devoted to derision and demonization of Arabs and Palestinians might want to watch it.

• Hanna K. (1983, Universal) is fascinating because of the timidity that Costa-Gavras shows in portraying ethically dubious Zionist beliefs, actions and behavior. The movie depicts problems in the life of an attorney loosely modeled on Felicia Langer.  She is defending a Palestinian infiltrator.  According to its own internal documentation, the IDF usually simply shoots unarmed infiltrators, but the director and writer uncritically accepts the Zionist viewpoint that Israel actually has a functioning legal system and that Zionists actually make effort to deal with difficult ethical questions as well as they can.[76] 

Because the film concedes the possibility that aspects of Zionism might have morally problematic effects, major public controversy accompanied general distribution.  The clip shows Hanna, the prosecutor and the judge as they attempt to find an extra-juridical solution to the problem that the defendant presents.  Note how the judge makes the usual irrational and unethical Zionist arguments to justify Zionism while he uses the usual psychological triggers about the Nazi persecutions to intimidate Hanna into accepting his viewpoint.

Hanna K. like Torn Apart[77] (1990, Warner Studios) and Double Edge[78] (1991, Faye Milano Limited Partnership) represents a sort of Liberal Israeli or Ashkenazi American fantasy, in which the Zionist heroes really are moral people that strive to overcome obstacles and do right in difficult situations.  Such movies do not address the possibility that Zionism might be fundamentally ethically questionable.  The depiction of Palestinians in these films corresponds to fantasies about Palestinians from Zionist narratives or propaganda and not to any sort of discernible reality.  While individual Israeli settler colonists may be obnoxious or defend themselves violently in the course of the plot, only Palestinians ever commit crimes or aggression in this class of film.[79]

• Winds of War (1983, ABC).

• Little Drummer Girl (1984, WB) was also released with a major controversy, which in retrospect is hard to understand, for the movie is similar to Black Sunday except for less examination of motivations.  The movie begins with a Palestinian terrorist attack so that Israeli actions can be portrayed as legitimate retaliation.  Even though the members of the Israeli hit team are particularly unpleasant as they murder and use non-Jews in order to track down and assassinate an important Black September leader, Zionist self-perception and claims are never challenged.  In the course of the story the Palestinian terrorists specifically target an Israeli peace advocate, and the movie includes some “whack ‘em and weep” Zionist blubbering.

• Oh God! You Devil (1984, WB) really demonizes Arafat.  The devil comments that he has had Arafat’s soul for years.  As far as 3rd world national liberation leaders go, Arafat does not seem much different from Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, Ahmed Ben Bella, etc.  His demonization in the USA is particularly incomprehensible except as a symptom of the pervasive assimilation by Americans of the Zionist point of view.

• Splash (1984, Touchstone Pictures).

• Wild Geese II (1985, Warner Brothers).

• Hostage (1986, Blue Flower/Alpine).

• Scorpion (1986, Crown International).

• Half-Moon Street (1986, RKO) reworks Dr. Slaughter, a short novella by Paul Theroux, from a dark examination of identity, desire and conspiracy in late 1970s London into a rather trivial romance.  In the original story no one is exactly who he or she claims to be.  In the movie, Sigourney Weaver plays Dr. Slaughter, who is an American post-doctoral researcher at a London research institute and who is completely out of her league.  She has money problems and experiences class snobbery.  In order to survive in London, she works as an escort.  Unlike the original story, the screenplay identifies Karim as unequivocally Palestinian but fails to identify Lord Bulbeck as Jewish and leaves out Dr. Slaughter’s use of different names in different circumstances.  Theroux never tells the reader what exactly Dr. Slaughter’s mysterious contacts are truly doing while the scriptwriter makes a much younger Lord Bulbeck the key to a new peace initiative and Karim becomes the evil Palestinian that is the enemy of a just peace, an idea that never appeared in the novella.

• Death Before Dishonor (1987, New World Pictures).

• The Human Factor (1987, New World Pictures).

• Wanted Dead or Alive (1987, New World Pictures) suggests a connection to Israel and the conflict over Palestine because the bad guy, Malak al-Rahim (the Angle of Mercy), infiltrates the USA by posing as a Hebrew-speaking Rabbi.  Every Arab character is either a psychopathic killer or wants to be.  The movie projects that view that fighting Arab terrorists and defeating them is a way to compensate for American failures in Vietnam.

• Escape from Sobibor (1987, The History Channel, Rule/Starger, Zenith Productions, Avala Film) shows how to produce an historical feature film of the WW2 Nazi death camps without adding Zionist propaganda and myth.  Anachronistic Zionist symbols do not appear.  The role of Zionist parties and factions corresponds to the historical records.  The creation of the State of Israel and concomitant theft of Palestine from Palestinians do not serve as some form of mystical compensation for the suffering of European Jews during the Nazi period.  Reference to Israel occurs once during the conclusion to the film when the narrator mentions that two of the survivors of the break out settle in Holon in the State of Israel.  The comparison of Escape from Sobibor with Schindler’s List (vide infra) underscores the Zionist ideological and propagandistic nature of the latter film.  While Escape from Sobibor avoids the falsity of Zionized Holocaust drama, the existence of a good historical drama of the Sho’ah underscores the complete absence of any comparable historical feature film of the Nakba.

• Bright Lights, Big City (1988, MGM/UA) investigates the 1980s New York yuppie singles scene while Michael J. Fox tries to deal with the failure of his marriage as his wife trades up to the lifestyle of a Paris-based model.  In one scene, Fox’s friend, Kiefer Sutherland explains the absence of Fox’s wife with a story that she suffered a meaningless death in a shootout in Paris between Palestinian terrorists and the Parisian police.  While such a dialogue snippet contributes to anti-Palestinian racism and demonization in the USA, it does accurately reflect the pervasive anti-Arabism of a large part of the New York population, which is culturally dominated by the prejudices of racist Ashkenazi Americans.

• Frantic (1988, Warner Brothers).

• The Lighthorsemen (1988, Cinecom).

• War and Remembrance (1988, ABC).

• Loose Cannons (1990, Columbia Tristar) rewrites the Kurt Waldheim affair at the UN into something far more sinister and salacious that the real story ever was.  US homicide detectives cooperate without a second thought with Israeli Mossad operatives undertaking an illegal covert operation in the USA.

• Homicide (1991, Columbia Tristar) is David Mamet’s attempt to explore the seething somewhat paranoid ethnic subculture of 1970s and 1980s New York City.  Jewish police officer, Bobby Gold (Joe Mantegna), becomes enmeshed with a JDL-like Zionist organization and chooses to blow up a publisher of anti-Semitic literature on behalf of this organization.  The organization takes compromising pictures of Gold in order to blackmail him.  The movie explores issues like betrayal by one’s family or members of one’s ethnic group.  The movie contrasts a virile Zionist Israeli Jewish with Gold as a somewhat weak and effeminate goles Jew.  In the end Gold loses everything, and his paranoid assumptions prove to be completely delusional.  If Gold’s seduction by the JDL-like group had been more believable, the movie could have been powerful exploration of a certain type of mentality that supports Zionism or ethnic paranoia, but Mamet proved incapable of adequately exploring the theme.  The dialogue in this movie is exceptionally poor, and the NYPD acts unbelievably insanely and incompetently.

• Patriot Games (1992, Paramount).

• The Quarrel (1992, Fox Lorber).

• Schindler’s List (1993, Universal) is unprecedented as an expression of extremist nationalist Likud הסברה. We know that the story is fundamentally a nation creation narrative because the movie ends with the death of Schindler to show that the people he lead became capable of standing on the own.  This movie proved to be a genuine blockbuster[80] unlike earlier Zionist oriented films that were only moderately successful.  Obviously, no one visits the cinemaplex for a lecture in Labor Zionist ideology.

This film is extremely problematic on several grounds.  It is a consciously inverted film noir Wizard of Oz that markets its message subliminally. The evil of Nazism is reduced to psychopathology.  Zionist ideologues prefer such an understanding of Nazism because genuine analysis of the phenomenon of Nazism would find too many similarities to Zionism. As history, the movie embodies the serious failures of Zionist historiography to which Hobsbawm referred.  The movie describes the Holocaust of Zionist myth not the historical שואה (or catastrophe). The Soviet officer makes the pitch of a שליח (a Zionist emissary that recruits new immigrants).

One must wonder how a Palestinian would view the conclusion.  It shows the Schindler Jews, who mostly did not migrate to Palestine, as they step into a rebirth of color and into Jerusalem to the sound in the background of זהב של ירושלים, a song that celebrates the culmination of a series of dispossession, tragedies and expulsions of the native population and that is generally associated now with the extreme right in Israeli politics.[81] 

Spielberg is indoctrinating the audience with the following propaganda.

a.        The State of Israel is an appropriate monument to murdered European Jews even though the vast majority were either non-Zionist or anti-Zionist, and

b.       making Palestine a Jewish state was proper recompense for persecution of European Jews despite the wishes of the majority native population (who in a sinister foreshadowing of planned expulsion or mass extermination are absent as the theme of the 1967 conquest is played).

I am not surprised that the Egyptian and many other governments had some serious issues with subjecting their populations to this sort of blatant Zionist propaganda.

There are a lot of ethical problems associated with the UN recommendation to partition Palestine along völkisch principles that violated the UN charter and that wronged the native population. Universal Studies should have given the film a voluntary NC-17 rating, for it is certainly wrong to indoctrinate young people and children with the idea that two wrongs make a right.

This ending was so close to the Likud formula for “national ritual assertion of Israel state identity and superiority” and conformed so exactly to the “central item of the official system of national beliefs” as promulgated by the Likud party that the ending had to be modified for Israeli audiences. USA popular culture has an even higher tolerance of the most extremist Zionist myth and propaganda than Israeli Jews do.  One must wonder whether the success of such clever Likud propaganda at the box office presaged the failure of the Oslo Process?[xxxiii]

• True Lies (1994, Twentieth Century-Fox).

•   Executive Decision (1996, Warner Brothers).

• Independence Day (1996, Twentieth Century-Fox).

• The Siege (1998, Twentieth Century-Fox).

• Snake Eyes (1998, Paramount).

• The version of The Mummy (1999, Universal Studios) released to theatres appears to have included lots of derogatory anti-Arab racism focused mostly on smell and dirtiness, but the DVD included practically none of these comments.  One most interesting aspect of the Zionization of modern American cinema has been the transfer of such traditional anti-Semitic and Judeophobic motifs to Arabs.  This movie never really talks about Zionism or Palestine, but it mixes a certain amount of biblical literalism with the story of the Mummy to appeal Christian fundamentalists.  The Mummy recognizes contemporary Hebrew as the language of the slaves despite the immense phonemic, syntactic and vocabulary difference between Israeli Hebrew and ancient Canaanite and even though modern archeological researchers as well as historians of pharaonic Egypt generally doubt the veracity of the stories of Israel in Egypt and of the Exodus.  By means of the inclusion of such nonsensical and unnecessary details, the scriptwriter indoctrinates the audience with Zionist primordialist mythology, which legitimizes the theft of Palestine from the native population.

• Mary, Mother of Jesus (1999, Hallmark Home Entertainment).

• Jesus (2000, Vidmark/Trimark).

• Point Men (2001, Columbia/Tristar) recycles a lot or tired old Zionist הסברה and clichés.

• The Believer (2001, Fireworks Pictures) is mostly a meditation on obsession, Jewish identity and Jewish self-hatred.  It is the exception that proves the rule of the Zionization of American movies and popular culture.  While this film does not present a Palestinian point of view, it is the only American produced film that has ever appeared that suggests aspects of Zionism or Israeli behavior are fundamentally questionable, but it has barely had the opportunity to appear before American audiences.  Rabbi Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center seems to have helped kill it in distribution.   Showtime, which bought distribution rights, has been skittish about showing it on cable television.

Zionism and the Fin de Siècle: Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism from Nordau to Jabotinsky
by Michael Stanislawski

 

A Dictionary of Ashkenazic Given Names: Their Origins, Structure, Pronunciations, and Migrations
by Alexander Beider

 

Facts on the Ground: Archeological Practice and Terminal Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society
by Nadia Abu El-Haj

 

[The Founding Myths of Israel
by Zeev Sternhell, David Maisel (Translator) or

Aux origines d'Israël: Entre nationalisme et socialisme
de Zeev Sternhell (There are some intriguing differences between the French and English versions). and

Neither Right nor Left
by Zeev Sternhell, David Maisel (Translator)]

 

[Cities of Salt
by Abdelrahman Munif, Abd Al-Rahman Munif, Erroll McDonald (Editor)

The Trench (The Cities of Salt Trilology, Vol 2)
by Abdelrahman Munif, Abd Al-Rahman Munif, Erroll McDonald (Editor)

Variations on Night and Day
by Abd Al-Rahman Munif, Peter Theroux (Translator), Abdelrahman Munif]

STEEL AND IRON
by I. J. Singer

The Invention and Decline of Israeliness: State, Society, and the Military
by Baruch Kimmerling

Palestinian Identity
by Rashid Khalidi

The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World
by Avi Shlaim

The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948
by Eugene L. Rogan (Editor), Avi Shlaim (Editor)

The Politics of Yiddish: Studies in Language, Literature, and Society (Winter Studies in Yiddish, V. 4)
by Dov-Ber Kerler (Editor), Oxford Winter Symposium in Yiddish Language, Literature and Society

Jewish Socialist Movements, 1871-1917: While Messiah Tarried (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization)
by Nora Levin

The Destruction of the European Jews (Third Edition)
by Raul Hilberg

[Selling the Holocaust: From Auschwitz to Schindler; How History is Bought, Packaged and Sold
by Tim Cole

The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering
by Norman G. Finkelstein

The Holocaust in American Life
by Peter Novick]

Prolegomena to the Qur'an
by Abu Al-Qasim Ibn Ali Akbar Khui, Abdulaziz A. Sachedina (Translator), Al-Sayyid Abu Al-Qasim Al-Musaw Al-Khui [There are many introductions to the Qur’an from a Sunni viewpoint.  This book provides a Shiite version.]

Jewish Socialists in the United States: The Cahan Debate, 1925-1926
by Yaacov N. Goldstein (Editor), Abraham Cahan, Jacob Goldstein

Degeneration
by Max Simon Nordau, George L. Mosse (Designer)

 [Fima
by Amos Oz, Nicholas De Lange (Translator) or

השלישי המצב :עוז עמוס]

The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe.
by Patrick J. Geary

The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel
by Thomas L. Thompson

Zionism and the Arabs, 1882-1948: A Study of Ideology
by Yosef Gorny

Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism
by Benedict Anderson

נופש עיר ,באדנהיים אפלפלד׃ אהרן

The Terrorist[xxxiv]
by Caroline B. Cooney

The Changing Agenda of Israeli Sociology: Theory, Ideology, and Identity (Suny Series in Israeli Studies)
by Uri Ram

Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality
by E. J. Hobsbawm (Author)

Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith
by James H. Billington

[Jewish State or Israeli Nation?
by Boas Evron, James Diamond or

הלאומי החשבון עברון׃ בעז (The Hebrew version has more detail)]

The Masada Myth: Collective Memory and Mythmaking in Israel
by Nachman Ben-Yehuda

The Wilkomirski Affair: A Study in Biographical Truth
by Stefan Maechler, John E. Woods (Translator), Stefan Maechler, Wilkomirski

John Brown (Modern Library Classics)
by W. E. B. Du Bois, David R. Roediger (Editor)

Hitler's Professors: The Part of Scholarship in Germany's Crimes Against the Jewish People
by Max Weinreich [There is some irony in this book because it contains some gratuitous anti-Palestinian propaganda.  Thus, Weinreich himself is an academic conspirator in crimes against the Palestinian people.]

Germans into Nazis
by Peter Fritzsche

The Postzionism Debates: Knowledge and Power in Israeli Culture
by Laurence J. Silberstein

[Heart of Darkness
by Joseph Conrad

Apocalypse Now (1979) (movie)]

Traumnovelle
von Arthur Schnitzler, Hilde Spiel (Mitarbeiter), Egon Schiele (Illustrator)

A Psychohistory of Zionism
by Jay Y. Gonen

ערבסקות שמאס׃ אנטון

Unequal Conflict: The Palestinians & Israel
by John Gee

The Secret Agent
by Joseph Conrad

The Invention of Tradition
by Terence Ranger (Editor)

De la colonie en Algérie
de A. de Tocqueville

J'accuse
de Emile Zola

Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories
by Ghassan Kanafani, Hilary Kilpatrick (Translator)

[Mahomet et Charlemagne
de Henri Pirenne, Quadrige and Mohammed, Charlemagne and the Origins of Europe
by Richard Hodges, David Whitehouse (Photographer), Charlemagne Mohammed (Photographer)]

Danzig, Between East and West: Aspects of Modern Jewish History (Harvard Judaic Texts and Studies, Vol 4)
by Isadore Twersky (Editor)

[Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust
by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen and A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth
by Norman G. Finkelstein, Ruth Bettina Birn]

The Birth of the Modern: World Society, 1815-1830
by Paul Johnson

The Greek Myths
by Robert Graves

Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis by Robert Graves
by Robert Graves, R. Patai

Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Antisemitismus. Imperialismus. Totale Herrschaft  von Hannah Arendt

Wenn ihr wollt, ist es kein Märchen. Altneuland / Der Judenstaat
von Theodor Herzl

Exile's Return: The Making of a Palestinian American
by Fawaz Turki

The Qur'an and Its Interpreters
by Mahmoud Ayoub

The Qur'an and Its Interpreters: The House of 'Imran
by Mahmoud M. Ayoub

Jews of Arab Lands a History and Source Book
by Norman A. Stillman

The Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times
by Norman A. Stillman

Bibelausgaben, Novum Testamentum Graece et Latine (Nr.5401)  von Eberhard Nestle (Mitarbeiter), u. a.
Deutsche Bibelges., St (1999)

LTI (Lingua Tertii Imperii). Notizbuch eines Philologen
von Victor Klemperer

Curriculum vitae. Erinnerungen 1881 - 1918
von Victor Klemperer, Walter. Nowojski (Herausgeber)

Leben sammeln, nicht fragen wozu und warum. Tagebücher 1918 - 1932
von Victor Klemperer, Walter Nowojski (Herausgeber), Christian Löser (Herausgeber)

Ich will Zeugnis ablegen bis zum letzten, Tagebücher 1933 - 1945. 2 Bd.
von Victor Klemperer, Hedwig Klemperer (Mitarbeiter), Walter Nowojski (Herausgeber)

Approaching the Qur'an: The Early Revelations
by Michael Sells (Translator)

Bibelausgaben, Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (Nr.5218)

The Septuagint with Apocrypha
by Lancelot C. Brenton (Editor)

Victims of a Map: A Bilingual Anthology of Arabic Poetry
by Mahmud Darwish

Frieden ohne Gerechtigkeit? Israel und die Menschenrechte der Palästinenser
von Ludwig Watzal

Things Fall Apart
by Chinua Achebe

Bible and Colonialism
by Michael Prior

Zionism and the State of Israel: A Moral Inquiry
by Michael Prior

The Jews in the Greek Age
by Elias J. Bickerman [I object to the use of the term Jews during the Greco-Roman period.  It is a topic on which there is much scholarly dispute, but Bickerman is probably a reasonable place to start]

The Modern Jewish Canon: A Journey Through Language and Culture
by Ruth R. Wisse [A fairly vicious racist and generally insipid person, but hard to find an appropriate introduction]

The Book of Beliefs and Opinions (Yale Judaica Series, Vol 1)
by Saadia Gaon, Samuel Rosenblatt (Translator)

Orientalism
by Edward W. Said

Orientalism
by A. L. MacFie

Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland
by Jan Tomasz Gross

Nationalism, Marxism, and Modern Central Europe: A Biography of Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz (1872-1905) (Harvard Papers in Ukrainian Studies)
by Timothy D. Snyder

Réflexions sur la violence
de Georges Sorel, Jacques Julliard (Préface), Michel Prat (Sous la direction de)

Virgil: Eclogues-Georgics-Aeneid Books I-VI (Loeb Classical Library, 63-64)
by Virgil, Fairclough, H. R. Fairclough (Translator)

The Ugly American
by Eugene Burdick, William J. Lederer

Basic Concepts of Probability and Statistics
by Joseph Lawson Hodges, E.L. Lehmann

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
by Hannah Arendt

Judaism in Islam: Biblical and Talmudic Backgrounds of the Koran and Its Commentaries
by Abraham Isaac Katsh

[The Odyssey (The Loeb Classical Library, No 104 & 105)
by Homer, George E. Dimock, A. T. Murray (Translator)

O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) (movie)]

The Iliad (Loeb Classical Library, No. 170)
by Homer, A. T. Murray (Translator)

Josephus: All Volumes (Loeb Classical Library)
by Josephus

Philo: All Volumes (Loeb Classical Library)
by Philo

Ovid III Metamorphoses, Book One Thru Eight, No#42 (Loeb Classical Library)
by Ovid, Frank J. Miller (Translator)

Ovid: Metamorphoses Books 9-15 (Ovid, Volume 4 - Loeb Classical Library)
by Ovid, A. Miller, Grant Showerman, G. P. Goold, Frank J. Miller (Translator)

Homeric Hymns Epic Cycle Homerica
by Hesiod, Hugh G. Evelyn-White (Translator)

Pindar: All Volumes (Loeb Classical Library)
by Pindar, William H. Race (Editor)

Apollodorus: All Volumes (Loeb Classical Library)
by Apollodorus, J.G. Sir Frazer (Translator)

The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition
by Florentino Garcia Martinez (Editor), Eibert Tigchelaar (Editor), Martinez, Florentino Garcia Martinez

Ein Land und zwei Völker. Zur jüdisch-arabischen Frage
von Martin Buber

Late Marriage
Starring: Lior Ashkenazi, Ronit Elkabetz, et al.
Director: Dover Koshashvili
Rated: Unrated
Opening Date: May 17, 2002 (limited release)

The Days: His Autobiography in Three Parts (Modern Arabic Writing)
by Taha Hussein, E. H. Paxton, Hilary Wayment, Kenneth Cragg

Gesammelte Werke, 5 Bde. in 6 Tl.-Bdn., Bd.4, August 1914 bis Januar 1919
von Rosa Luxemburg

Zionism and the Arabs: An American Jewish Dilemma, 1898-1948
by Rafael Medoff

Militant Zionism in America: The Rise and Impact of the Jabotinsky Movement in the United States, 1926-1948 (Judaic Studies Series)
by Rafael Medoff

Jabotinsky and Arlosoroff writings in the original – translations are unreliable.

The Making of Israeli Militarism
by Uri Ben-Eliezer

Identity Politics on the Israeli Screen
by Yosefa Loshitzky

A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East
by David Fromkin

Pan Slavism Its History and Ideology
by Hans Kohn

Heidegger's Children: Hannah Arendt, Karl Lowith, Hans Jonas, and Herbert Marcuse.
by Richard Wolin

Annenberg/CPB
Fokus Deutsch

Introduction to Biblical Hebrew
by Thomas Oden Lambdin

 

RUS': A Comprehensive Course in Russian
by Sarah Smyth (Author), Elena V. Crosbie (Author)

 

Alif Baa: Introduction to Arabic Letters and Sounds
by Kristen Brustad, Mahmoud Al-Batal, Abbas Al-Tonsi

 

Al-Kitaab Fii Ta^callum Al- ^cArabiyya: A Textbook for Beginning Arabic
by Kristen Brustad, Mahmoud Al-Batal (Contributor), Abbas Al-Tonsi (Editor)

 

Al-Kitaab Fii Ta^callum Al--^cArabiyya /a Textbook for Arabic
by Kristen Brustad, Mahmoud Al-Batal (Contributor), Abbas Al-Tonsi (Contributor)

 

Al-Kitaab Fii Ta^callum Al-^cArabiyya: A Textbook for Arabic, Part 2
by Kristen Brustad, Abbas Al-Tonsi (Contributor), Mahmoud Al-Batal (Contributor)

 

Al-Kitaab Fii Ta^callum Al-^cArabiyya: A Textbook for Arabic, Part Three
by Kristen Brustad, Mahmoud Al-Batal, Abbas Al-Tonsi

Textbook of Israeli Hebrew With an Introduction to the Classical Language
by Haiim B. Rosen [linguistics oriented and idiomatically dated] or

[Modern Hebrew for Beginners
A Multimedia Program for Students at the Beginning and Intermediate Levels
By Esther Raizen
With contributions by Yaron Shemer

Modern Hebrew for Intermediate Students
A Multimedia Program
By Esther Raizen]

An Introductory Grammar of Rabbinic Hebrew
by Miguel Perez Fernandez, John Elwolde (Translator)

Writing Arabic: A Practical Introduction to Ruq'ah Script
by T. F. Mitchell

An Introduction to Koranic and Classical Arabic: An Elementary Grammar of the Language
by Wheeler M. Thackston

An Introduction to Koranic and Classical Arabic: An Elementary Grammar of the Language Key to Exercise
by Wheeler M. Thackston

Homeric Greek: A Book for Beginners
by Clyde Pharr, Wright, John Henry Wright (Photographer)

Introduction to Attic Greek
by Donald J. Mastronarde, Donald J. Matronarde

A Biblical Greek grammar

An Introduction to Aramaic (Resources for Biblical Study, No 38)
by Frederick E. Greenspahn

Wheelock's Latin
by Frederic M. Wheelock, Richard A. Lafleur [The whole course]

French in Action: A Beginning Course in Language and Culture, the Capretz Method
by Pierre J. Capretz, Beatrice Abetti (Contributor), Marie-Odile Germain, Laurence Wylie (Contributor)

Intermediate Polish
by Oscar E. Swan [I am not sure what would be a good introduction or advance book nowadays]

College Yiddish: An Introduction to the Yiddish Language and to Jewish Life and Culture
by Uriel Weinreich

Yiddish II: A Textbook for Intermediate Courses
by Mordkhe Schaechter