The Righteous Among the Jews

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The first Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, was founded in West Jerusalem in 1953. This memorial was unique in two ways: (1) it is the only memorial built by Jews primarily for other Jews, rather than gentiles, and (2) it is the only Holocaust memorial created before organized Jewry began exploiting Jewish victimhood during WWII as a means to justify Israel’s expansionist policies by equating critics of Israel with the Nazis.

One of the honorifics adopted by the state of Israel along with the founding of the museum was “Righteous Among the Nations,” also known as “Righteous Gentiles,” an honor bestowed on non-Jews who saved Jewish lives. According to the Yad Vashem website:

In a world of total moral collapse there was a small minority who mustered extraordinary courage to uphold human values. These were the Righteous Among the Nations. They stand in stark contrast to the mainstream of indifference and hostility that prevailed during the Holocaust. Contrary to the general trend, these rescuers regarded the Jews as fellow human beings who came within the bounds of their universe of obligation.

In today’s world the tables are turned, and the “general trend” of the Jewish Diaspora has been toward unconditional support of Israel at any cost to the nations in which Jews reside. The Palestinians suffer the humiliation of illegal military occupation as their land is slowly expropriated by extremist zealots, while Americans suffer through involvement in wars that do not support American interests, incur the hatred of the rest of the world, and pay other costs such as ever-increasingly intrusive security screening at airports. And the world as a whole suffers as America and Israel inch closer to starting a major war with Iran over its alleged nuclear program, while Israel develops Jericho-III ICBMs with a 7,000 mile range. Jewish religious fanatics have more and more reasons to believe that they are, in fact, the Chosen People with a God-given right to all of Palestine. How could they have accomplished so much if it were otherwise?

Given this threat to world peace and human rights, it’s important for non-Jews to recognize a small but growing Jewish minority who speak out against it. Analogous to Yad Vashem’s Righteous Among the Nations, they are the Righteous Among the Jews. These Righteous Jews uphold the rights of other groups, oppose AIPAC and America’s globalist foreign policy, and stand in opposition to the prevailing view of the organized Jewish community. They face extreme social ostracism and hatred from other Jews for speaking out, but nonetheless muster the courage to uphold human values and speak out for non-Jews, who “come within the bounds of their universe of obligation” just as Jews did for the Righteous Gentiles during WWII.

In this article I can only give an overview the Righteous Jews and name a few of them and their chief contributions/works. I could devote an entire review to each work, so this may become the first article of a series.

The most famous (or infamous) Righteous Jew is former DePaul University professor Dr. Norman Finkelstein. Finkelstein has been the target of countless attacks for his scholarly works about the Holocaust Industry and the misuse of the label “anti-Semite” to silence critics of Israel. His courageous book, The Holocaust Industry, primarily deals with the exploitation of Jewish suffering during WWII to demand a handout from the rest of the world, while his second book Beyond ChutzpahBeyond Chutzpah
deals more broadly with the misuse of the charge of “anti-Semitism” as a means of immunizing the State of Israel from criticism.

I highly recommend American Radical: Trials of Norman Finkelstein, a 2009 biographical documentary on Finkelstein. The film shows his incredible bravery and devotion in exposing the injustices Israel perpetrates against the Palestinians, as well as the fraudulent Big Lies that America’s Zionist oligarchy employs to justify Israeli excesses. The movie shows how Finkelstein exposes Alan Dershowitz as a fraud during a 2005 interview, as well as the skill with which Finkelstein is able to counter intellectually dishonest rhetorical attacks like “crocodile tears” and the “When did you stop beating your wife?” technique, as illustrated in the following two clips:

Crocodile Tears

The “When Did You Stop Beating Your Wife?” Technique

Finkelstein never apologizes and never backs down, a characteristic that may cost him a few of his supporters but earns him tremendous respect from others, myself included.

It is imperative White Nationalists learn the same rhetorical skill in dealing with dishonest attackers. Unfortunately some don’t want honest reasoned debate, the achievement of greater understanding, or to win an argument with reason. Instead, they want to attack the character and credibility of anyone who says what they don’t want to hear. When advancing our ideas we must respond to this sort of rhetorical foul play correctly: we shouldn’t treat it as a sincere question, but at the same time we can’t ignore it without appearing weak. We must do what Finkelstein does: publicly acknowledge the question as unfair, then admonish the attacker for asking it.

Another Righteous Jew is Israeli director Yoav Shamir. Shamir became famous after producing the documentary film Checkpoint, which reveals the arbitrary and capricious nature of Israeli military checkpoints in the West Bank, where Palestinian freedom of movement depends on the whim of teenaged Israeli soldiers. Shortly after Checkpoint was released, an American Jewish reporter labeled Shamir an anti-Semite and “an Israeli Mel Gibson.” Shamir initially thought the reporter’s comment was amusing, since unlike the journalist he had been born and raised in Israel, had himself served in the Israeli military, and had also lost a grandfather during the Holocaust. But the remark inspired Shamir to produce a documentary about anti-Semitism, entitled Defamation.

Defamation is a truly great film, a movie about anti-Semitism that somehow manages to be both hard-hitting yet still remain fair and objective. As a testament to its fairness, let me say that I first watched the film after a White Nationalist friend of mine gave it a glowing recommendation. I watched it, loved it, and then recommended it to an open-minded Israeli Jew I know. She in turn enjoyed and appreciated it enough to recommend it to one of her work colleagues (also Jewish). How many films could you say that about?

Abraham Foxman and the Anti-Defamation League are caught totally off-guard in the movie. Foxman apparently assumed that an Israeli Jew would give them an unqualifiedly friendly, favorable portrayal. Not so. The film examines alleged anti-Semitic “incidents,” finding them to be blown well out of proportion, and interviews Jews critical of Foxman and the ADL, including Orthodox Rabbi Shea Hecht, who goes on record (at 30:43) saying that the ADL has clearly hurt as much as they’ve helped. Not surprisingly, the ADL proceeded to defame Yoav Shamir, calling the film a “perverse, personal, political perspective.” But I can’t say I’m surprised that the ADL would deride a sincere, intellectually honest film that advances the conversation, portrays diverse perspectives on the issue and is appreciated by Jews and non-Jews, left-wingers and right-wingers alike.

The coverage of the ADL is only one aspect of the film; Shamir also travels with a group of Israeli students to Holocaust sites in Poland, and interviews Norman Finkelstein and John Mearsheimer, among others. But as I said earlier, this article is not intended to be a full review of any particular work.

You can find the film itself here, and a good review here.

Finally, I’d like to recognize one more Righteous Jew, Rae Abileah. Rae has interrupted Benjamin Netanyahu twice in less than two years: first, at a Jewish Federation General Assembly meeting last November in New Orleans, and then again during Netanyahu’s speech to Congress last May. The first time she was the last member of a coordinated effort by young members of an organization called Jewish Voice for Peace, which calls for an immediate end to Israeli occupation.

I certainly admire the courage of these young Jews, but what I find most moving about this video isn’t just the interruptions. It’s the hecklers’ age, and the fact that they frame their opposition as representative of the opinions of “young Jews.” They explicitly reject the “self-hating Jew” label by describing themselves as “Young, Jewish, Proud,” yet unlike their older counterparts these Jews are not asking “is it good for humanity?” instead of “is it good for the Jews?”

In this second video, Abileah explains her motives for interrupting Netanyahu’s speech to Congress, pointing out that we send $3 billion in aid each year to Israel and get war crimes in return. We certainly live in interesting times when it takes a left-wing feminist Jewish girl to finally come to Congress and say what conservative WASPs should have said decades ago were they not too gentlemanly, too corrupt, or both.

Finkelstein, Yoav Shamir, and Rae Abileah are but three Righteous Jews. Others include former or present Israelis like Israel Shahak, Gilad Atzmon, Haaretz writers Gideon Levy, Amira Hass, and Merav Michaeli, and Gus Shalom founder Uri Avnery, to name just a few.

While most Righteous Jews are secular leftists, they are still Zionists. They believe in a Jewish ethnostate. What they are fighting against is, in effect, the idea that Jews get to have their ethnostate at the expense of the equal right of others (in this case, the Palestinians) to do the same. Well, that’s what we White Nationalists want too: ethnostates for everyone — although most Jews would reject this comparison in horror. Zionism is just the Jewish form of ethnonationalism, as White Nationalism is our form.

Time and time again racial hatred has been shown to develop when different ethnic groups live together against their will, “tolerating” one another instead of building the homeland that’s best suited to the needs of each particular race. I have no problem with Israel requiring a loyalty oath from its Arab citizens, or with Israeli right-winger Avigdor Lieberman’s proposal for land swaps between Jews and Palestinians that are designed to put Jews inside Israel’s borders and Arabs inside Palestine’s borders. The best path to international peace and national flourishing is to adopt a “live and let live” attitude and work toward the formation of ethnostates for every group, in which minorities will be treated as respected guests with equal rights but until their rights come into conflict with the right of the majority race to preserve its culture and identity in its home country. From an ethnonationalist point of view, no foreign race has the right to deprive the majority race of its right to self-determination.