Eric Hoffer in 1968 on Jews and Israel (prescient)

national review ^ | 1968 | Eric Hoffer

[dennisw]

A friend just emailed me (Michael Ledeen) this, a comment from Eric Hoffer in 1968:

The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews.

Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it, Poland and Czechoslovakia did it, Turkey threw out a million Greeks, and Algeria a million Frenchman. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese-and no one says a word about refugees.

But in the case of Israel the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab. Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis. Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace .

Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world. Other nations when they are defeated survive and recover but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed. Had Nasser triumphed last June [1967] he would have wiped Israel off the map, and no one would have lifted a finger to save the Jews. No commitment to the Jews by any government, including our own, is worth the paper it is written on .

There is a cry of outrage all over the world when people die in Vietnam or when two Blacks are executed in Rhodesia. But when Hitler slaughtered Jews no one remonstrated with him. The Swedes, who are ready to break off diplomatic relations with America because of what we do in Vietnam, did not let out a peep when Hitler was slaughtering Jews. They sent Hitler choice iron ore, and ball bearings, and serviced his troop trains to Norway.

The Jews are alone in the world. If Israel survives, it will be solely because of Jewish efforts. And Jewish resources. Yet at this moment Israel is our only reliable and unconditional ally. We can rely more on Israel than Israel can rely on us. And one has only to imagine what would have happened last summer [1967] had the Arabs and their Russian backers won the war to realize how vital the survival of Israel is to America and the West in general.

I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us.

Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us.

[bybybill]

Is this the Eric Hoffer that wrote, :The True Believers"?

[ClearCase_guy]

Eric Hoffer was a very wise man. I've read quite a few of his books, and he always stuns me with how clearly and deeply he sees into difficult issues.

[sionnsar]

Eric Hoffer, the 1960s longshoreman philosopher. He got a number of things right...

[dennisw]

yep

[marron]

ping

[SE Mom]

The more things change..the more they stay...

ping.

[varina davis]

He was one of the great thinkers and philosphers of our time.

[elhombrelibre]

Yes, and it's a great book. He was a brilliant autodidact philosopher and a longshoreman who went blind. He wrote in a brilliant pithy prose style.

[elhombrelibre]

By the way, his book became popular after 9/11 because it helped explain the moral cretins who attacked us.

[GOPJ]

I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us.

Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us.

I believe this also...

[elhombrelibre]

Ping

[nopardons]

Is/was there another one?

[Prost1]

This is a good post in several ways.

1.) It reminds me and others of the wisdom of Eric Hoffer.
2.) It reminds me and others of the perpetual hatred that the state of Israel faces each and every day.
3.) It reminds me and other that much of the wisdom known over 40 years ago is still true today.

Our country, indeed, the western world lacks the courage of the promise of the League of Nations or the United Nations. The 1st collapsed under its own misguidedness and the 2nd survives on the very same basis of the original failure.

[Alouette]

FRmail me to be added or removed from this Judaic/pro-Israel/Russian Jewry ping list.

Warning! This is a high-volume ping list.

[Salem]

---

Zec 12:6 In that day will I make the governors of Judah like an hearth of fire among the wood, and like a torch of fire in a sheaf; and they shall devour all the people round about, on the right hand and on the left: and Jerusalem shall be inhabited again in her own place, even in Jerusalem.





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Warnings ~

"The West has given more significance to the myth of the genocide of the Jews, even more significant than God, religion, and the prophets...."—Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
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" ... It's time we recognized the nature of the conflict. It's total war and we are all involved. Nobody on our side is exempted because of age, gender, or handicap. The Islamofacists have stolen childhood from the world."—FReeper Retief
"Palestine is the wrong name for their State. It should be called Anarchy."—FReeper sgtbono2002
"Then let's wait and see what the Arabs do after they take Gaza. There's nothing like Arab reality to break up a Jewish fantasy."—FReeper Noachian
A student told his professor he was going to "Palestine" to "fight for freedom, peace and justice,"—Orwellian leftist code words that mean "murder Jews."
The Nature Of Bruce ~

[Texas Songwriter]

The Jews and Israel do not stand alone in the world. I am a white Christian Southerner and I will stand with Israel until the end of the earth.

[betty boop]

The obvious hypocrisy operating here is heart-breaking, marron. Truly it seems the Jews are "the suffering servant of mankind." They pay an everlasting price for their role as the bearers of the Truth of God: To kill Jews is to strike God in the face. This Allah so-called divinity is manifestly Satan in disguise: "By his works shall ye know him."

I'm sorry I can't be more cogent in my response to your ping, dear marron. I am deeply, mortally troubled about breaking events, and haven't yet got a grip on how justly to articulate my thoughts and feelings about them. All I can say is it is very clear to me that the Jews are not the "bad guys" in this piece. And I am sick unto vomiting that the MSM refuses to justly characterize the Jews' position relative to the manifest evil they are trying to confront and defeat. As it turns out, not only for their own survival, but for the survival of Western civilization.

I am extremely disappointed (to say the least) with the help they are getting from the American State Department. As if State and almost all of Europe are justified in thinking Israel is the ultimate target in this war.

The appeasers (and they are legion in the MSM and the American "street") need to come to grips with reality here: The "big bull's eye" is painted on America's back. Israel is just the hors d'oeuvres of what Tehran expects will be an extended and quite sumptuous banquet. (Sorry to mix my metaphors like this.)

Thank you for the ping!

[BIGLOOK]

Thanks for bringing back Eric Hoffer. Hilaire Belloc was another that had a sense predicting our present problems. Winston Churchill another.

The world is not deaf but does not listen.

[I got the rope]

Bookmarking.