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Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of
3,000 Years
By Israel Shahak, with a foreword by Gore Vidal. Published by Pluto
Press (London, 1994).
When the Roman historian Tacitus pointed out 19 centuries ago that the
Jews are unique among the races of man in their intense hatred and
contempt for all races but their own, he was only repeating what many
other scholars had discovered before him. For the next 1,900 years other
investigators came to similar conclusions, either from a study of the
Jews' religious writings or from a study of the Jews' behavior toward
non-Jews.
Notable among these was the Great Reformer, Martin Luther, who in 1543
wrote in Von den JØden und Ihren LØgen :
Does not their Talmud say, and do not their rabbis write, that it is no
sin to kill if a Jew kills a heathen, but it is a sin if he kills a
brother in Israel? It is no sin if he does not keep his oath to a
heathen. Therefore, to steal and rob, as they do with their usury, from
a heathen is a divine service. For they hold that they cannot be too
hard on us nor sin against us, because they are of the noble blood and
circumcised saints; we, however, are cursed goyim. And they are the
masters of the world, and we are their servants, yea, their cattle....
Should someone think that I am saying too much, I am not saying too
much, but much too little. For I see in their writings how they curse us
goyim and wish us all evil in their schools and their prayers.
The Jews responded to Luther like they responded to all the others. They
put him down as just another "hater," blinded by religious bigotry. And
today that's still the Jews' standard answer to everyone who says or
writes anything about them except the most fawning praise.
When British newsman William Cash, Los Angeles correspondent for
London's Daily Telegraph , reported late last year in a magazine article
the simple fact that the executives in Hollywood's motion picture
industry are nearly all Jews, they shrieked at him, "Hater!" and denied
his fact. When spokesmen for the National Alliance, America's premier
patriotic organization, discuss on the group's radio programs the Jewish
control of the news and entertainment media or Jewish backing for gun
confiscation or for racial mixing, the Jews also denounce them as
"haters," and a call goes out to prohibit "hate" on the airwaves.
Thus, Israel Shahak's book is all the more important for being a
document by a knowledgeable Jew--a Jewish "insider"--about the beliefs
and behavior of his fellow Jews. Born in Warsaw in 1933, Shahak spent a
portion of his childhood in the concentration camp in Belsen, from which
he immigrated to Palestine in 1945. He grew up in Israel, served in the
Israeli military, and became a chemistry professor. Like all Israelis,
he became fluent in Hebrew. He also became acclimated to the peculiar
moral atmosphere of Israeli society: a combination of overweening
arrogance and deceit, a mixture of pugnacious self-righteousness and
duplicity.
Unlike his fellow Israelis, however, Professor Shahak is deeply troubled
by this peculiar atmosphere. Whereas the Jews around him take it for
granted that the goyim on whom they depend for economic, military, and
diplomatic support are too stupid ever to figure out what the Jews think
about them and say about them behind their backs and plan to do to them
when they can, and too sheeplike ever to take effective action if they
do figure it out, he worries. He remembers that the Romans figured it
out, and they consequently sacked Jerusalem and chased the Jews out of
Palestine. He remembers that the Germans figured it out, and that's why
he became an involuntary tenant in a concentration camp. He's worried
that if his fellow Jews continue behaving as they always have, they will
get themselves into some really serious trouble--again.
In particular, Professor Shahak is concerned about the behavior of those
of his race who adhere to Judaism. He is not one of these himself, and
so he is able to look with some degree of objectivity at the mixture of
superstition, Jewish chauvinism, and hatred of non-Jews which makes up
the Jewish religion and its sacred writings. He deplores traditional
Jewish teachings, not only because of the danger that some new Martin
Luther will come along and spill the beans to the Gentiles, but because
of the spiritually debilitating effect these teachings have had on the
Jews themselves. Of the world of medieval Jewry in Europe, the world of
the ghetto and the shtetl which modern Jewish writers refer to in
euphoric tones as a world of quaint tradition and piety, Shahak says:
"It was a world sunk in the most abject superstition, fanaticism, and
ignorance . . . ."
He cites a number of specific instances of the ways in which Jewish
religious authorities have kept their flocks under control. In general,
the rabbis have taught their fellow Jews that their Gentile neighbors
are spiritually and morally unclean; that they are subhuman, on a level
with the beasts of the field; and that they hate Jews and must be hated
in return. Jews are taught that the Christian religion is a religion fit
only for animals, and that its founder, Jesus, was the son of a
prostitute and is presently immersed in a pit of boiling excrement in
hell.
Among the Hassidim (Hebrew for "pious ones") all of these teachings are
kept current. Shahak points out that a central thesis of the Hassidic
doctrine is that only Jews are human beings, and that the universe was
created for them alone. Non-Jews were created only to be used by Jews.
Although this teaching about the subhumanity of Gentiles is most open
and explicit among the bearded, sidelocked, black-hatted Orthodox Jews
that one sees in Jewish strongholds such as New York City, it comes from
the core of Jewish tradition and is accepted to a greater or lesser
degree by all pious Jews. It is, for example, a specific tenet of the
Jewish Defense League and is cited in the membership handbook for that
group.
Especially frustrating to Professor Shahak is the clever deception which
his fellow Jews use to conceal the true nature of Judaism from their
Gentile neighbors. Regarding the veil of false piety which conceals from
Gentile eyes the malevolent doctrine of the Hassidim, he writes: "A
chief deceiver in this case, and a good example of the power of
deception, was Martin Buber. His numerous works eulogizing the whole
Hassidic movement (including Habbad) never so much as hint at the real
doctrines of Hassidism concerning non-Jews." Buber (1878-1965) promoted
Hassidism in Germany during the rise of the National Socialists--in
fact, until 1938, when he left for Palestine--and Shahak considers
Buber's efforts, despite their deceptiveness, at least partly
responsible for the National Socialist reaction to the Jews. There were,
after all, plenty of National Socialists perceptive enough to see
through the veil. One of these was Adolf Hitler's early comrade, the
editor and playwright Dietrich Eckart, whose booklet Der Bolschewismus
von Moses bis Lenin is especially revealing in this regard (available in
English translation from National Vanguard Books for $5.00, postpaid).
Another example of Jewish deception given by Professor Shahak concerns
the etymology of the Yiddish word for a Gentile girl, shiksa . He cites
the popular English-language book The Joys of Yiddish (New York, 1968),
by Leo Rosten, which tells its readers that shiksa comes from the Hebrew
word sheqetz , meaning "blemish." Writes Shahak, "This is a barefaced
lie, as every speaker of Hebrew knows. The Megiddo Modern Hebrew-English
Dictionary, published in Israel, correctly defines sheqetz as follows:
`unclean animal; loathsome creature, abomination . . . .'"
Professor Shahak writes with passion. He evidently feels that liberating
Jews everywhere from the shackles of their misanthropic superstitions
and freeing Israeli state policy in particular from the stifling
influence of Judaism is a matter of some urgency. He focuses our
attention especially on the inherent hatefulness of Judaism with
citations from a number of Jewish religious writings.
This has been a favorite activity of anti-Jewish writers for centuries,
who have belabored us with the Talmud's insulting and hostile comments
about Gentiles. The inaccessibility to Gentiles of many of the Hebrew
texts, however, together with the deception veiling them, has made
Talmudic exegesis a problematic task for all Gentiles with less
scholarship or determination than that of Martin Luther. For this reason
one must exercise considerable discretion in quoting from many
anti-Jewish writings: translations are often questionable, and
references are often garbled.
Professor Shahak does not have these limitations: he knows where to
look; he understands the secret meanings of all of the deceptive
euphemisms; and he gives us clear and reliable translations. In a
chapter titled "The Laws against Non-Jews," he writes:
. . . [T]he Halakhah, that is the legal system of classical Judaism--as
practiced by practically all Jews from the 9th century to the end of the
18th and as maintained to this very day in the form of Orthodox
Judaism--is based primarily on the Babylonian Talmud. However, because
of the unwieldy complexity of the legal disputations recorded in the
Talmud, more manageable codifications of talmudic law became necessary .
. . . The most authoritative code, widely used to date as a handbook, is
the Shulhan 'Arukh . . . .
He then cites the teaching of this code regarding homicide:
According to the Jewish religion, the murder of a Jew is a capital
offense and one of the three most heinous sins (the other two being
idolatry and adultery). Jewish religious courts and secular authorities
are commanded to punish, even beyond the limits of the ordinary
administration of justice, anyone guilty of murdering a Jew. . . . When
the victim is a Gentile, the position is quite different. A Jew who
murders a Gentile is guilty only of a sin against the laws of Heaven,
not punishable by a court. To cause indirectly the death of a Gentile is
no sin at all.
Thus, one of the two most important commentators on the Shulhan 'Arukh
explains that when it comes to a Gentile, "one must not lift one's hand
to harm him, but one may harm him indirectly, for instance by removing a
ladder after he had fallen into a crevice . . . there is no prohibition
here, because it was not done directly." . . .
A Gentile murderer who happens to be under Jewish jurisdiction must be
executed whether the victim was Jewish or not. However, if the victim
was Gentile and the murderer converts to Judaism, he is not punished.
Then Shahak gives us a rabbi's answer to an Israeli soldier who has
asked whether or not it is proper to kill Arab women and children. In
his answer the rabbi quotes from the Talmud: "The best of the
Gentiles--kill him; the best of snakes--dash out its brains."
Perhaps even more offensive are the Jewish beliefs on sexual matters.
Shahak writes:
Sexual intercourse between a married Jewish woman and any man other than
her husband is a capital offense for both parties, and one of the three
most heinous sins. The status of Gentile women is very different. The
Halakhah presumes all Gentiles to be utterly promiscuous and the verse
"whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose issue [of semen] is
like the issue of horses" is applied to them. . . . Therefore, the
concept of adultery does not apply to intercourse between a Jewish man
and a Gentile woman; rather the Talmud equates such intercourse to the
sin of bestiality. . . .
According to the Talmudic Encyclopedia : "He who has carnal knowledge of
the wife of a Gentile is not liable to the death penalty, for it is
written: `thy fellow's wife' rather than the alien's wife . . . and
although a married Gentile woman is forbidden to the Gentiles, in any
case a Jew is exempted."
This does not imply that sexual intercourse between a Jewish man and a
Gentile woman is permitted--quite the contrary. But the main punishment
is inflicted on the Gentile woman; she must be executed, even if she was
raped by the Jew: "If a Jew has coitus with a Gentile woman, whether she
be a child of three or an adult, whether married or unmarried, and even
if he is a minor aged only nine years and one day--because he had
willful coitus with her she must be killed, as is the case with a beast,
because through her a Jew got into trouble."
The Talmud's overriding concern with matters of money and property
mirror that of the Jews, and Professor Shahak offers a number of
hair-splitting examples of Jewish beliefs on the subject and the way in
which distinctions are made between the property of Jews and Gentiles,
and between Jewish dealings with another Jew and with a Gentile. Two of
these examples will suffice here:
If a Jew finds property whose probable owner is Jewish, the finder is
strictly enjoined to make a positive effort to return his find by
advertising it publicly. In contrast, the Talmud and all the early
rabbinical authorities not only allow a Jewish finder to appropriate an
article lost by a Gentile, but actually forbid him or her to return it.
. . .
It is forbidden to defraud a Jew by selling or buying at an unreasonable
price. However, "Fraud does not apply to Gentiles, for it is written:
`Do not defraud each man his brother' . . . ."
Shahak points out that "the Halakhah interprets all such idioms [as
`each man his brother' or `neighbor'] as referring exclusively to one's
fellow Jew."
How have the Jews managed to keep teachings of this sort concealed from
the Gentiles among whom they live? The truth of the matter is that they
have not always been able to do so. Luther was not the only Christian
scholar who learned Hebrew, peered into the Talmud, and was horrified by
what he saw. Sometimes the Jews were able to bribe the Christian
authorities to overlook such things, but throughout the later Middle
Ages there were prohibitions and burnings of talmudic literature by
outraged popes and bishops.
The Jews developed a clever system of double bookkeeping to circumvent
such "persecution." They modified or deleted the offending passages from
new editions of the Talmud, and they made up a separate
compendium--Talmudic Omissions , or in Hebrew Hesronot Shas --which
circulated surreptitiously among the rabbis. In Israel today, feeling
cocky enough to dispense with most such deceptions, the Jews are putting
the passages which formerly had been omitted or modified back into the
latest editions of the Talmud or the Shulhan 'Arukh in their original
form. They are still careful with translations into Gentile tongues,
however. Professor Shahak gives an example:
In 1962 a part of the Maimonidean Code . . . the so-called Book of
Knowledge , which contains the most basic rules of Jewish faith and
practice, was published in Jerusalem in a bilingual edition, with the
English translation facing the Hebrew text. The latter has been restored
to its original purity, and the command to exterminate Jewish infidels
appears in it in full: "It is a duty to exterminate them with one's own
hands." In the English translation this is somewhat softened to: "It is
a duty to take active measures to destroy them." But then the Hebrew
text goes on to specify the prime examples of "infidels" who must be
exterminated: "Such as Jesus of Nazareth and his pupils, and Tzadoq and
Baitos [the founders of the Sadducean sect] and their pupils, may the
name of the wicked rot." Not one word of this appears in the English
text on the facing page (78a). And, even more significant, in spite of
the wide circulation of this book among scholars in the English-speaking
countries, not one of them has, as far as I know, protested against this
glaring deception.
Professor Shahak is too naive. If he ventured out of Israel more and
came to know Christian scholars better, he would understand what a
pathetic and Politically Correct rabble they have become. There is not
the slightest spark of Martin Luther left in the lot of them. Traitors
to their own people as well as to their religion, they smile and
genuflect at every insult from the Jews and are capable of feeling
indignation only when the Jews receive some slight. The Jews are able to
enlist them by the regiment to denounce in unison as "hate" any
criticism of Jewish policies or doctrines, but they turn a blind eye to
the virulent hatred which permeates Judaism and motivates the great
majority of Jews, religious as well as secular.
Israel Shahak is a rare Jew indeed, and his book is essential reading
for anyone interested in the problem of the Jews.
http://www.jewwatch.com/jew-genocide-gentilehate.html
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