Posted on 11/27/2012 5:06:42 AM PST by SJackson
Several years ago, I interviewed noted producer Leonard Goldberg for my book on liberalism in television, Primetime Propaganda. Goldberg, noting my Jewish surname, asked me why I thought so many Jews in Hollywood didnt care about Israel. He said he was shocked by the lack of pro-Israel Jews in town.
My answer was simple: most Jews in Hollywood arent religious, feel no connection with the Torah, and have no interest in the State of Israel. In fact, they feel that they can gain credibility by bashing the State of Israel, demonstrating that they are world citizens rather than parochial tribalists. Nowhere is that truer than in the Center of Smugness, Hollywood.
No wonder during the consistent rocket attacks on Israel from the terrorist group Hamas, Jewish Hollywood has been absolutely silent. Wheres Barbra Streisand, who assured American Jews that President Obama stood strongly with our ally Israel and in preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons? Nowhere to be found. How about vulgarian Sarah Silverman, who has a sister living in Israel? She says nothing about Gaza, but tweets encouragement to wild leftist pacifists Meretz and the Green Movement for Knesset. As for Steven Spielberg, who spent millions of dollars on the anti-Israel tripe by Tony Kushner, Munich, he has nothing to say while Israelis are murdered by rockets fired by the worlds leading anti-Semites.
Worse, none of them have anything to say when fellow Hollywoodniks repeat the worst anti-Semitic slurs with regard to the State of Israel. This week, double-digit IQ former actress and current co-host of The View Whoopi Goldberg retweeted the myth that men, women & children in Gaza, Palestine have been getting Massacred for the past week. Thats a blatant lie, and its the same anti-Semitic lie that Hamas and its Jew-hating sympathizers in the Muslim world parrot each time Israel defends itself. In point of fact, no country takes greater precautions against civilian casualties than Israel, which is why Hamas and the Palestinian Authority routinely place terrorist centers in civilian areas.
So where were the Jews when Whoopi retweeted that? Nowhere to be found. Or busily helping Whoopi argue that all attacks on incompetent liar UN Ambassador Susan Rice were motivated by racism and sexism.
But all three of these Hollywood Jews will, no doubt, claim pride in their Jewish heritage. What makes them proud to be Jewish? Certainly not marriage. Certainly not belief in the Torah. Certainly not Israel. Bagels and lox. Vague notions about social justice derived more from Karl Marx than from Jewish principles. The Holocaust.
The Holocaust has taken such a central place in Jewish Hollywood not because Hollywood Jews understand it to the extent they think about, they suggest that its just an outgrowth of religious hatred rather than militant secular fascism but because the Holocaust allows them to grab hold of the brass ring of victimology. Sure, they arent black or gay. But at least they arent white, either! Theyre members of a people who have been historically victimized!
But that leaves one question: Israel is currently victimized. Anti-Semitism on a global scale remains a far greater problem than racism. Europe is increasingly anti-Semitic. The Muslim world makes clear that it would celebrate a second Holocaust. Minority leaders like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have been spewing anti-Semitic canards for years, cheered on by Hollywood Jews. What gives?
The answer is simple: Hollywood Jews arent interested in just being victims. Theyre interested in being victims of white Christians. Thats the reason why Steven Spielberg will happily produce Schinders List, which depicts Jews at the hands of white Germans, then turn around and produce Munich, which shows Jews being murdered by Arab terrorists, but justifies Arab terrorism. Thats why if you ask most Hollywood Jews, theyll suggest that the biggest problem for Jews is the American Christian community the greatest friend the Jewish people have ever had and that the Muslim community is just misunderstood. Hollywood Jews are more interested in solidarity with other perceived minorities than they are in preserving Jewish lives or a Jewish future.
Goldberg was right. Hollywood Jews have abdicated their Jewish identity, and in the process, theyve abandoned Israel. Theyre shamefully smug, self-righteous empty vessels who claim the mantle of Judaism only so they can glorify themselves.
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bump
Ben Shapiro absolutely nails it.
Hollywood Jews are among those who have self-converted to another religion. This “religion” has its own “holy books”, rituals, dogmas and closely held beliefs.
It is known as LIBERALISM.
Its basic tenet is a deeply held hatred of anything and anyone who it disagrees with.
It’s High Holy Days are observed by protesting the Holy Days of those it loathes.
Ping
Is this new?
What were American Jews doing to help their kin in Europe during WWII?
Not a rhetorical question.
The drives were led by Israeli leaders like David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir. It seems that all of Hollywood, Jews and Christians alike, rallied around to lend its support to the imperative cause.
Moguls like Sam Goldwyn, the Warner brothers, Selznik, etc., raised vast sums of money for the struggling new nation. $52.6 million was raised the first year alone, a tremendous amount in the dollars of the fifties.
Many film celebrities staged fund-raising events in New York and throughout the nation. These events were reported regularly and with much fanfare in the media of the day.
Today, the perils and uncertain future of the beleaguered Israeli state scarcely raises a "ho-hum" from the well-heeled in the Hollywood/LA entertainment complex. Israel still sells bonds but it's barely noticed. Today, a "fund drive" organized and participated in by the Jewish entertainment industry would undoubtedly never even get off the ground or it would be laughed off the stage.
Today's movie moguls and stars of Jewish heritage should be asking themselves, "What price fame and glory if you lose your soul?"......but, then, it appears most of them have long ago discarded their religion, heritage, traditions and roots for a mess of pottage.
Leni
Not much -- as noted by Szpilman.
I am pretty sure that Whoopi Goldberg is NOT her birth name.
She made that name up.
Whooopi Goldberg was born Caryn Elaine Johnson. She adopted the traditionally German/Jewish surname Goldberg as a stage name because her mother felt the original surname of Johnson was not “Jewish enough” to make her a star.
“What were American Jews doing to help their kin in Europe during WWII?”
In the run up to war some wealthy American jews saw the writing on the wall and tried to sponsor German Jews out of NAZI Germany. The Roosevelt administration paid lip service on behalf of European jews, but did not open up immigration like many American jews wanted.
I used to know a German woman who, as a girl, spent a year on a train in revolutionary Spain trying to secure a visa. She was sponsored by wealthy American Jews. She was repatriated back to Germany and then put on a ship with fake nursing credentials and sent to the Phillipines just in time for the Japanese invasion. She spent the war in a Japanese prison camp (ironic, I know) as a fake nurse, but lived to marry an American and come to the US. Her entire family was murdered in the camps. She had no living relatives.
In the 1950s, the Soviets saw Israel as a potential 'friend.'
The Soviets changed their mind in the 60s and began working overtly and covertly to undermine and destroy Israel.
Most of the crap they preach about Israel, "The Palastinians" and the entire Mideast even today, is nothing but rehashed KGB propaganda from the 60s and 70s.
I'm actually old enough to remember when liberal Hollywood Jews really were pro-Israel (often implying that if you weren't liberal you couldn't be pro-Israel). Remember all the pro-Israel made-for-TV movies there used to be? Now they're all gone, sunk in an Orwellian memory hole because the "party line" changed.
While liberals and some conservatives have flip-flopped on the issue, only Biblical Fundamentalists have been consistently pro-Israel in all circumstances.
That was actually the late '40's. Before Stalin died the Communists were already executing "Zionists" and "Israeli spies," and they were supporting Arab Communists like Nasser very early on.
Realistically there wasn’t much they could do during the war other than serve the US. In the 30s many Jews helped, as did many Christians, but a minority. The status of Jews in Germany really a well known issue, or an issue of much concern to the media. Or our or any western governments.
They could join the US Military, which some did. By the time war came, though, there was little anyone could do from outside Germany. Of course there was no Israel then either, to rally around.
Jews in the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth (1389-1793) were pretty much governing themselves and lived in peace -- in the late 1700s they comprised nearly 80% of world Jewry. The Hebrew joke was for 'polonia' (Poland in Latin) to be read as poh-lan-ya (God rests here). In the words osponsa No. 73 of the great Kraków rabbi Moses Isserles 'Remuh' (1510-72): "It is better to live on dry bread, but in peace, in Poland."
I actually have a point :) -- after the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth was torn apart by Russia, Prussia and Austria, the majority of the Jews were in the Russian partition with the second-largest in the Austrian
The Russians had no significant Jewish population before this and the sudden, large, prosperous community which governed itself was a shock to them
They didn't know what to do, so Tsarina Catherine the Great kept them restricted to the Pale of Settlement, which corresponded exactly to the P-L commonwealth parts gobbled up by Russia
The Jews there were subjected to pogroms, second class citizenship treatment etc. and the May laws whereby their remaining rights were taken away from them was the last straw
Add this to the other factor in the 1800s -- the rise of nationalism and Jewish nationalism was at odds with not only the strong national identities of the Russians, Poles and Saxon Germans who lived in that area, but also with the Ukrainian, Belarussian and Lithuanian identities that were developing.
Jews didn't have the option they had in the pre 1850 days of governing themselves, being a nation in a nation, they had to assimilate or else retreat further into their tradition, which in the case of the Litvaks and divergently, the Chassids, they did
The Jews also participated in the Polish uprisings against the Russians, but these 3 failed and the Jews like the Poles started to introspect and look for other options politically -- some went to Zionism, some retreated into Jewish tradition, some assimilated into the German, Polish and Russian societies, converting or maybe not and some rejected religion utterly and went into the streams of socialism
Communism with its themes of equality for all had an attraction for a persecuted people -- an understandable one.
Among the Bolsheviks 5 of the 23 leaders of the Bolshevik party from 1917 to 1934 were of Jewish origin and those of Jewish origin comprised nearly 15% of the party before 1934.
I repeat Jewish origin - they were not practising, no more than Stalin or Mikoyan or others.
Trotsky was the leading example of this -- and in many ways Trotsky was the one who saved the Bolsheviks from annihilation. The Bolsheviks during the great war had infiltrated the Imperial Army and sown discontent against the officers. many russian soldiers (all conscripts) were sick of the hell they faced and turned on their officers. This was very successful and led to March 1917.
But the problem then was -- how to create a "Red Army" without officers? Trotsky solved this problem by reinstating the officers, and to ensure that they did not jump to the White Army immediately, he put a political commisar to watch over them
Also, they were given different names rather than Captain etc. -- things like GlavKom etc (short forms of Glawny Kommander etc)
Anyway, so Trotsky now controlled the Army and he was the face of Bolshevism after Lenin -- and this was widely used by those who believed the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" to say see look, the Jews are trying to take over the world
Many in the West -- not just Germany, but also the US, UK etc. fell for this and believed it, equating Judaism with Bolshevism.
Remember this -- it was not only Trotsky but also Marx was of Jewish origin (but his father had converted to Lutheranism before and Karl was an athiest) as was the hungarian Soviet leader (yes, there was a short lived Soviet state in Hungary in 1919-1920) who was partly of Jewish origin
This was enough to demonise the Jews as Bolsheviks -- it was exacerbated during the Polish-Soviet war of 1920 and the White Russian- Red Russian wars when the Pale of Settlement was where much of the battles occured and where Jews were sometimes swept up to forcibly join the Red army
But then in the 1920s, Stalin forcibly came to power, killing off his enemies after Lenin died. Trotsky was his main rival, so Trotsky had to die. This was the seeds of the Communist distrust of Judaism. This went further with Stalin's purges when Kamenev etc were killed
But under Stalin the party continued to be overly weighted in favor of non-Russians, not only those of Jewish origin, but also Georgians like Stalin or Armenians or even Poles like Dzierzhinsky and Radek.
When Stalin fell, the flood-gates lifted and Khrushchv denounced Stalinism in his "Secret speech" -- and the anti-Jewish nature came to fore
This is incredible from a historians point of view -- Jews who were demonised by the West as being Bolshevik sympathisers were demonised by the Soviets as being US-agents, Rotschild agents etc.
There is no long lasting communist anti-Judaism imho,
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