This is an ARGENTUM POST News Flash Digest [ APNFD Nr. 80 ]

This article is as well a sequel to the most recent ARGENTUM POST article published on July 27, 2018, which comprised a foreword by the writer of the ARGENTUM POST wherein he introduces his readers to the magnificent academic scholar and humanist, principled, progressive syndicated columnist and editor of ISSUES, the quarterly journal of the prestigious American Council for Judaism, whose name is Allan C. Brownfeld.

The title of the said most recent ARGENTUM POST article is “The Zionist Power Structure of Israel is Exposed by Itself as Being a Racist Ideo-Political Construct Which is a ” Dramatic Departure of Judaism “.

The objective of this article is to provide the readers of the ARGENTUM POST with a copy of a formidable article written by Allan C. Brownfeld titled ” The Future of Jews ” which was published by prestigious, independent, THE JERUSALEM REPORT on June 22, 2018.

This ARGENTUM POST article requires no foreword.  It speaks for itself.

It reflects a historical reality plus a present as well as past global Judaic reality of anti-Zionism AND anti “anti-Semitism” slurs targeting critics of Israel and Zionism.

These slurs are hurled at the said decent critics,  shamelessly by the mainstream media, and neoconservative and neoliberal politicians who have been corrupted to yield to the plutocratic corporatocracy and to the Zionist propaganda lobby AIPAC‘s insidious attempts to continue to inject toxic hate and fear mongering against the hugely vast majority of Jews and non-Jews who fiercely oppose the unholy Trump-Netanyahu alliance and their acolytes in preventing by perverse dishonesty and fake news the peaceful and creative just resolution of the conflict generated by the forcible “might make right” violent implantation of Israel in Palestine, followed by 70 years of murderous suppression of its autochthonous Palestinian inhabitants who have lived for centuries in their homeland, Palestine.

In addition to naming Netanyahu and Trump and  their acolytes,  as guilty of their illegal practices in violation of international law, it is important to highlight the pernicious involvement in this pathological, obsessive disinformation campaign fed by greed and hegemony lust, such politicians as Hillary Clinton, who supported the war on Iraq on the basis of false claims and who, as Secretary of State engineered the outrageous notion that the democratically elected President of Honduras, namely Zelaya,  who was abducted in the middle of the night in a violent coup d’etat by criminal right-wing thugs, so that said thugs would not be condemned by the U.S. and said coup d’etat would not be called a coup d’etat, because of our interventionism in all of Central America (except for Costa Rica) which supported the most radically murderous fascists as they served our so-called “interests” in the region to keep it from becoming authentically democratized by their people’s right to demand decent, uncorrupted, progressive democracies.

The same Hillary Clinton, to this day aligns with said AIPAC lobby which is in violation of the Foreign Agent Registration Act by refusing to register as an Israel Zionist power structure agent, and is the same Hillary Clinton who has been eagerly rewarded by such decadent multi-billionaires as the casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and Haim Saban who contributed lavishly to her so-called “charity“.

Of course, such corrupt and hypocritical Senators as Ben Cardin of Maryland, Schumer of New York,  Bob Menendez of New Jersey and many countless other Democrat neoliberals and Republican neoconservatives are as well guilty of supporting those who have consistently supported U.S. intervention in countries throughout the world, and have thusly denied authentic people participative democracy to peoples from Central America to South American to Southeast Asia and to the  the Middle East, most particularly in this case,  the denial of freedom, democracy, and dignified treatment of the Palestinians for some 70 years.

All of these corrupt to the core politicians have no right to pretend that they are “friends of Israel” or that they are “protecting Israel” when in reality they are active collaborators in the demise of Israel and thus offend eggregiously  the majority of all decent, humanist, sapient Jews world-wide, and most particularly of those who survived the genocidal crimes of the Nazis, such as the parents of this writer.

These corrupt to the core politicians are either extremely ignorant or downright diabolically malevolent, or a combination of both, and hence they need to be barred permanently from serving in public offices of public trust, as they add fuel to raging fires not only in Israel-Palestine, but as well in their diabolical incitement of Iran, by protecting its enemy the MEK terrorist cult as they did during the Cheney/Bush regime invasion of Iraq.  Even though the MEK is a terrorist organization it was supported by the U.S. during the war of Iraq on Iran, notwithstanding the MEK’s insistence during the 1979 hostage crisis to have all American hostages executed.  The prestigious Guardian of London, published an article titled ” Q&A: What is the MEK and Why Did the U.S. Call it a Terrorist Organization”

So, to cut to the chase, see infra a copy of the said superb article by Allan C. Brownfeld.

The article’s title is “THE FUTURE OF JEWS“, and it is found on page 3, the Jerusalem Report.

THE FUTURE OF THE JEWS

The article “The Future of the Jews?” by Amotz Asa-El (The Jerusalem Report, June 22, 2018) makes the case that the “Jewish nation” will soon be centered in Israel, which is the “homeland” of all Jews, and that Jews who remain in the “diaspora” will find their Jewish identity largely in Israel’s reflection.

This analysis is the product of both ideology and wishful thinking, and bears no relationship to reality.  The very idea of a “Jewish nation” is a product of Zionist mythology.  Judaism is a religion of universal values, not a nationality.  Zionism is, in fact, a rejection of Judaism’s religious role.

In 1929, Rabbi Aaron Samuel Tamarat wrote that the very notion of a sovereign Jewish state was “a contradiction to Judaism’s ultimate purpose.”  He noted that, “Judaism at root is not some religious concentration which may be localized or situated in a single territory.  Neither is Judaism a ‘nationality,’ in the sense of modern nationalism, fit to be woven into the three-foldedness of ‘homeland, army, and heroic songs.’  No, Judaism is Torah, ethics, and exaltation of spirit.  If Judaism is truly Torah, then,it cannot be reduced to the confines of any particular territory.  For as Scripture said of Torah, ‘Its measure is greater than the earth.'”

The Zionist idea that Jews outside of Israel are in “exile,” is not one shared by Jews living outside of Israel, certainly not in the United States.  American Jews have never felt anything but “at home.” something the Eastern Europeans who created Zionism never understood. In 1841, for example, at the dedication of America’s first Reform temple in Charleston, South Carolina, Rabbi Gustav Poznanski told the congregation, “This country is our Palestine, this city our Jerusalem, this house of God our temple'”

This is a view shared by the overwhelming majority of American Jews.  In an editorial on Israel’s 70th anniversary. Jane Eisner, editor of The Forward, the widely read American Jewish newspaper, rejected the entire Zionist notion of exile.  Her editorial was headlined, “It’s Time for Israel to Recognize That Diaspora Jews Are Already Home.”  She calls for abandoning “the outdated notion of…homeland and exile.”

In fact, the “homeland” of American Jews is the United States, not Israel.  Americans of Jewish faith are American by nationality and Jews by religion, just as other Americans are Protestant, Catholic or Muslim.  What Mr. Asa-El seems to be proposing is a Jewish identity centered on a particular sovereign state, not God and the moral and ethical.precepts of the Prophets.  This is a form of idolatry, worshiping the state, or “the Jewish nation,” not the universal God, the Creator of men and women of every race and nation.  Such idolatry is reminiscent of  worship of the Golden Calf in the Bible.

 Beyond this, Israel and American Jews do not, it appears, share common values.  American Jews believe in separation of religion and state and in religious freedom.  Israel is quite the opposite. It is a theocracy in which non-Orthodox rabbis cannot,perform weddings, funerals or conversions.  A Jew and non-Jew who wish to marry must leave the country to do so.

The early Zionists had no understanding of the American experience, where from the start of the  nation the First Amendment guaranteed religious freedom for all.  It,is almost certain that Theodor Herzl never read the arguments set forth by Thomas Jefferson in the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, a forerunner to the First Amendment, passed by the Virginia General Assembly on Jan. 16, 1786.  In America, religious freedom was a principle adopted by the majority.  In Israel, the Jewish majority seems to have adopted a quite different philosophy, one which alienates American Jews and gives the impression that Jews only promoted religious freedom in the West, because they were a minority and it served their interests—not out of principle.

Hopefully, Mr. Asa-El will give further consideration  to what has taken place in the course of American history, and stop trying to claim that millions of American Jews are part of a “Jewish nation” based in Israel.  This may be his dream, but it has  no relationship to reality.

                     ALLAN C. BROWNFELD,

                             Alexandria, Virginia