Eggs in One Basket
About a
hundred years ago, the Russian Czar’s secret police cobbled together a document
they called the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”. The “authors” were not
particularly original – they took a satire, written decades earlier about
Napoleon III’s ambitions for world domination, and substituted Jewish rabbis
for the French emperor. According to the revised document, the Jews are
plotting to control the world, and the tentacles of this conspiracy reach
everywhere.
When this
fabrication was composed, the scenario was quite outlandish. In mighty Russia,
which at that time included a great part of Poland, Jews had hardly any
influence at all. In the German Reich, Jews were indeed prominent in several
fields – such as banking, commerce and the press – but they were remote from
the real centers of power. The Kaiser kept them out of the prestigious
officers’ corps and the higher echelons of the powerful bureaucracy. Jews
prominent in the sciences could count themselves lucky if they obtained a
professorship.
In the United
States some Jews were getting rich, but they
could not penetrate the highest ranks of the economy and
society.
How hollow
the legend of Jewish power really was, became evident when the Nazis, after
soaring high on the wings of anti-Semitism, annihilated the Jews of Europe.
American and British Jews could not (and, indeed, did not even seriously
attempt to) push their government into doing something to save their brethren.
Both governments were afraid of providing ammunition for the Nazis, whose
propaganda claimed that Roosevelt and Churchill were stooges of International
Jewry.
After a
decent interval of several decades, the Elders of Zion have staged a comeback
in the last few years. The internet is now full of anti-Semitic messages that
adapt the old falsified document to the present realities. But the disgusting
old slogans have not changed a bit.
On the face
of it, the job of the anti-Semites is much easier now. Since the Protocols were “discovered”, much
has changed in the world. True, the Holocaust eradicated almost all of European
Jewry, but in its wake the State of Israel, which defines itself as a Jewish
State, came into being. And, most importantly, the Jewish community in the
United States has attained a standing comparable only to the Golden Age of the
Jews in medieval Muslim Spain.
In a way, the
lies of the Protocols have fulfilled themselves. “America controls the world,”
the anti-Semites now say, “and the Jews control America.”
In support of
this, they point to the war in Iraq. It is well known that a group of
“neo-conservatives”, almost all of them Jews, occupied central positions of
power in Washington and pushed for the invasion of Iraq. Some years before
that, members of this group acted as advisors to the then Prime Minister of
Israel, Binyamin Netanyahu.
According to
the anti-Semites, these Jews sold the war to the United States with mendacious
arguments, in order to eliminate Israel’s most dangerous enemy in the Middle
East, Iraq. Now they are conspiring against Israel’s two remaining enemies,
Syria and Iran.
On the face
of it, but only on the face of it, there is some truth in these allegations.
The neo-cons indeed believe that the interests of the Unites States and Israel
coincide, and they indeed pushed for this war. But a thousand neo-cons like
Wolfowitz and Perle would not have succeeded in this, without the influence of
another group in Washington, much more powerful, and much less visible: the oil
people.
The Bush
family and Vice President Dick Cheney represent the interests of this group.
Behind them looms the immense power of the oil companies, in which Jews play
hardly any part at all. Their aim was not only to take over the huge oil
reserves of Iraq itself, but also to locate a permanent American military and
political base between the immense oil resources of the Caspian Sea in the
North and the Persian/Arabian gulf in the South. This, they argue, is necessary
in order to assure American dominance in a world in which oil is a dwindling
resource of fundamental importance to all industrialized economies.
The neo-cons
supplied only the ideological embellishment and the moral justification. One
could almost say that this is the traditional job assigned to the Jews.
It is easy for anti-Semites to list all
the Jewish names in the American administration. As in Germany after World War
I, during the so-called Weimar Republic, American Jews are prominent in the
administration, economy, media, law, medicine and science. The Zionist lobby
brags openly (perhaps too openly) that it can bring down any senator or
congress(wo)man who criticizes Israel. They have given ample proof of that.
Somebody once said that if AIPAC, the pro-Israeli Jewish lobby, submitted a
resolution to Congress abolishing the Ten Commandments, 80 senators and 400
congressman would sign on the first day.
The situation
is especially glaring as far as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is concerned.
During the watch of President Bill Clinton, almost all the team dealing with
this problem were Jews. Their meetings with Israeli politicians could easily
have been conducted in Yiddish. With the advent of George W. Bush, a
fundamental change took place: the liberal Jews in the team were supplanted by
conservative Jews. Now, too, almost all the people in the American
administration dealing with the Middle East are Jews.
The
anti-Semitic publications stress these facts – which are true in themselves –
in order to prove that the Jews control the world. But reality is more complex
by far.
True, the
Zionist lobby is big and strong, but there are others equally strong or
stronger in the field. One could mention the American Rifle Association, the
lobbies of physicians and trial lawyers and others, and in the political field
the even more powerful Christian Evangelists. Much to the chagrin of the
anti-Semites, this lobby is also completely devoted to Israel. Indeed, the
Christian Evangelists, especially in the United States and Britain, invented
modern Zionism long before Theodor Herzl and his colleagues adopted this idea.
The American
Jewish community is proud of its great influence. That is understandable, if
one remembers that only two generations ago Jews were not admitted to the
important clubs (prompting the Jewish comedian Groucho Marx to quip: “I don’t
want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member!”) Their amazing
ascent stems from hard work, organizational talent and readiness to donate
money.
But anyone
conversant with Jewish history may suspect that, as the Yiddish saying goes,
“Die kalle ist zu shein” (“the bride is too beautiful.”) After the Golden Age,
all the Jews were expelled from Spain. After the brilliant success of the Jews
in Germany, the Nazis came to power. Today, anti-Semites in the United States
are a vocal and despised marginal group, but it is a mistake to ignore the
danger.
What would
happen for example, if the United States sank ever deeper into the bloody swamp
of Iraq, into an atmosphere of national calamity? When the search for a
scapegoat is on, the Jewish neo-cons will stick out.
What would
happen if Americans started to wonder about the roots of the terrorism of Islamic fanatics? Won’t
there be some who would argue that America got into the Clash of Civilizations
with the Muslim world only because of Israel?
And if America
gets into a really deep economic depression, might not Jewish names – like that
of the chief of the Federal Reserve – come up?
One should
not exaggerate these dangers. At present they are hardly specks on the horizon.
But I would advise the leaders of the Jewish institutions in the United States
to exercise some self-restraint. Intoxication with power can easily lead to
dangerous excesses. And I would also advise the government of Israel not to put
all its eggs in one basket.