I’m typing this post with one hand while attempting to remove my foot from my mouth with the other.
A reader wrote me this evening to say this:
Do not alienate the Jewish community. I personally do not know how many Jews read your blog, but we are your natural allies. Who is a stauncher ally than Israel against the threat of militant Islam? Americans have only been attacked on US soil twice. Israel lives with the reality, not the threat, but the reality of constant terror. Death to America is chanted all over the Islamic world, but not as much as Death to the Jews is chanted.
Referencing your post, “Beyond the Pale,” why would you feel the need to toss away such a natural ally? There is no call for belittling anti-Semitism. If I am not mistaken, you say that freedom of speech should be protected. I would die for Hargrove’s right to say Jews killed Christ, wrong as it may be. However, I think you need to make it more explicit that you are ridiculing Hargrove for adding offense to an unrelated party (Jews) in addition to ridiculing the state of Virginia for apologizing for slavery. Indeed, I understand you are making fun of the PC police. Still, the way you phrased your original post made it seem you meant that you supported Hargrove’s sentiments.
I know you mean well. As a moderate Democrat, I know you are not a crazy right wing intolerant Christian lunatic as the bleeding heart liberals would call you. You are a secular humanist, full aware of the dangers Islamofascism poses to the enlightened world. Are you a crusader? I should say so, though not in the vein the jihadists would accuse you. You crusade against an inhumane evil, against those would limit free speech in a misplaced sense of decency. When WWII threatened democracy all over the world, it was people who spoke up and fought against the Fascists that saved freedom.
Allah loves ya! (irony~)
His point is well-taken. Del. Frank D. Hargrove’s little aside about the Jews was so self-evidently ludicrous that I didn’t think I needed to point it out.
But now I know that I should have, and I will be clear: I do not support any version of the old canard about the Jews and Christ; I consider it a close cousin to the Blood Libel. Mr. Hargrove’s mention of it is at least as embarassing as the politically correct high dudgeon that arose in response to the rest of what he said.
Mel Gibson has managed to drive the idea into the mainstream, so that it is no longer obviously ridiculous.
When I’m feeling sardonic I get carried away, and obviously I’m not paying enough attention to how my words appear to you, our loyal readers.
I’m glad you all are keeping me in line; don’t hesitate to take me to task. I rely on you for it.
[Nothing follows]
I don’t think any special pointing out was needed.
The rep is probably a racist moron.
What else is there to say?
I went to school in Charlottesville from 67-71 and it’s the only place outside of my gulf arab acquaintances I have seen real live racism. No shock that a state rep let’s it out, or that ex Sen Allen being too stupid to name the monkey properly exposes both that and his undersoul simultaneously.
No, I don’t think too much needs to be said…ot was pretty clear.
Someone like that probably sees the apology issue as not being needed for a bunch of now uppity….., well you know…
I thought it clear
Aaron Solts, Matvei Berman, Lazar Kogan, Naphtali Frenkel, Lazar Kaganovich; all Jews, all NKVD officers and lieutenants to Stalin, in command of the White Sea-Belomor canal and the Gulag Archipelago and as such they were responsible for the enslavement and murder of over 40,000,000 Russian citizens, the vast majority of whom were christians.
As you can see, it is a little difficult for me to listen to the endless whining and political profiteering of the Jewish holocaust industry as they flog their 6,000,000 dead for all the cash and political advantage they can garner while the unquiet ghosts of the forgotten 40,000,000 seem to have been flushed down the Orwellian memory hole.
ummmm Mr. Hargrove made a valid point. i quote from your previous post:
“Hargrove said in the interview that slavery ended with the Civil War and added, “I personally think that our black citizens should get over it.” He also asked how far back apologies should go and wondered, “Are we going to force the Jews to apologize for killing Christ?””
Hargrove was clearly equating the two as equally ridiculous, not demanding an apology from Jews.
and seriously, i don’t think we could do anything short of resurrecting hitler that would cause us to lose the jews as allies against islam.
crucis don’t forget that Communist slaughter is covered up mostly by American Communists in the media
scrilla,
No he didn’t. It would have been a valid point only if Jews, rather than Romans, did the deed.
Though we should all keep in mind the true Christian understanding of who killed Christ. In this regard it’s hard to surpass the priceless words of Johann Heermann (err, or more precisely of his translator Rober S. Bridges):
Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee?
Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee!
‘Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee;
I crucified thee.
Or, if you prefer something written a bit more recently (by Stuart Townend):
Behold the Man upon a cross,
My sin upon His shoulders
Ashamed I hear my mocking voice,
Call out among the scoffers
Nuff said!
I thought the original post was spot on. Hargrove made a clumsy “insensitive” comment, the reaction was over the top. He made a clumsy comparison to a ludicrous slur in order to demonstrate how ludicrous the slavery claims are. Wrong audience obviously, cause they apparently took both demands for ludicrous apologies seriously.
Surely that disproportionate resonse can be ridiculed without obligatory ading of 28 this-is-sarcasm-and-therefore-really-non-anti-semitic disclaimers, right?
Apparently not, the silly commenter reactions IMHO reinforced the original post.
I guess that the Baron’s apology for making light of ludicrous demands for apologies compared to other ludicrous apologies is really just more satire. Otherwise it’d be ludicrous.
Those people really need thicker skins.
I completly agree with Fellow Peacekeeper and wish I could write that well myself.
I think of Israel as one of the brightest lights in the battle for the free world and I cant imagine any rightmindet person would ever dream of tossing away such a natural ally.
The question asked: “why would you feel the need to toss away such a natural ally?”, should realy be turned around.
Would any Jews or Israelis seriusly consider tossing away otherwhise good and natural allies over something like these posts ?
It just sounds so unbeliveable. Is it realy that offensive ?
I cant help but think of it, as somewhat arogant. As if you only want to be friends with people as long as they only say things you aprove of.
In the end I dont think it will matter so much. All us rightmindet people will just keep being allies of Israel and the Jews, whether you like it or not *grin*
Cheer up
You’re apologising for nothing and making yourself look ridiculous.
Baron, no apology is necessary.
The first sentence of your post made perfectly plain where you stood – even for a first-time reader – and I’d have thought it impossible to misconstrue that.
crucis3, after sitting across a voter registration tables in the 60’s from some folks who I knew damn well wore sheets at night, it is my opinion, you have a problem.
That screed sounds an awful lot like past little speeches I have heard which marshal scant facts to justify an inner illness.
“Jewish holocaust industry”
That is simply a COVER for SICKNESS (don’t bother using Finklestein, it puts you in bed with REAL denier defenders).
CYA
By the way what others may perceive as ‘thin skin’ is NOT about the Holocaust it’s about THIS
The Holocaust is nothing special…it’s just the same old same old occurring at a moment it could be married to the might of an industrial western state…..and it is, apparently very alive and very well right now.
HERE
Only the truth will set you free Epaminondas.
The disproportionate Jewish component of Bolshevism is true.
The deathly silence of B’nai B’rith and other Jewish groups is true.
The deathly silence of the world media is true.
The enslavement and slaughter of the 40,000,000 is true.
Your hysteria and defensiveness [borderline as-hominem] are very revealing.
I await your apology
[but I’m not holding my breath]
Apology? Sorry fella, I’ve worked in civil rights, and YOU have a problem.
You say what the sheet fitters said, and use the exact same arguments. WORD FOR WORD, it’s 1965 in Staunton, and Yazoo City by your arguments. WORD FOR WORD, get it???
Also like you, my gulf arab acquaintances make IDENTICAL WORD FOR WORD arguments.
WORD FOR WORD.
Hysteria?
Sorry, I’ve been held against trees by the pointy hats.
This is a trifle.
But that doesn’t change the FACT that you are justifying an inner deviation with what you consider signifying facts.
By that reasoning all jews are saints as well.
Jonas Salk to you.
Felix Frankfurter to you
Louis Brandeis to you
ENTER XXXX jewish nobel winner here, out of ALL population proportion. (or perhaps those awards were due to undue influence, eh?)
So what?????
Anecdotal individuals are not signifying, otherwise GA Custer would be a model, and not Omar Bradley, or Joshua Chamberlain.
Sorry but YOU have a problem.
With jews.
Next you ask for my papers, right?
But don’t worry, as americans who happen to be asian come to dominate by excelling performance many professions, including politics, no doubt people like you will find much to find fault with as ‘them’, and what ‘they’ do.
I just hope you are not an american.
But I fear by your syntax, you are.
Illness abounds.
Nevermind deicide, the ‘jews’ enslaved/killed 40,000,000 christians in Czarist Russia? Pretty good.
Explains how jews were SINGLED OUT in communist russia, from the beginning to the prevention of their leaving for Israel? UGH, don’t bother.
Please, DO hold your breath. This conversation is over.
Hmmm.
I completely agree with Hargrove.
1. Reparations for slavery, 150+ years ago, is ridiculous and outrageous.
2. And yes many Jews do have thin skins. Was the Holocaust horrific? Yes. What about the 100 Flowers? Cultural Revolution? The Killing Fields? Ukrainian Famine? The Great Hunger of Ireland?
There are plenty of examples of man’s horrific treatment of fellow men. But at some point you’re going to have to let go. Otherwise you’ll end up a caricature.
3. Hargove’s question about Jews apologizing for Jesus’s death is easily read as a sarcastic example of how ridiculous the idea of slave reparations is. Nothing more.
4. Frankly Jews have gotten a raw deal over the centuries. So have blacks that suffered through slavery and racism. But I participate in any of that, and neither did anyone in my family.
So anybody thinks I’m going to wear a hair shirt over any of this should realize that’s not going to happen. As for me I was born in South Korea. If you’ve got time to kill I’d suggest reading up on what the Chinese, Mongols and Japanese did in turn to the captive Koreans.
One very popular method of celebrating the taking and sack of a Korean city was to cut the noses off all the surviving men in the city.
Don’t like it? Don’t give a damn.
crucis3 —
I’m not sure if any argument will reach you, but you’re making a categorical error here.
Jews were over-represented among the Bolsheviks — that is true — because they were over-represented among Russian intellectuals, as they were in all countries. It was the intellectuals who gave us mass-murdering Bolshevism.
They weren’t murdering millions in the gulag because they were Jews and their victims weren’t Jews. They murdered them because it was politically expedient to do so, regardless of their race. Many thousands of Jews were among their victims.
The Jewish Bolsheviks came from Jewish families, but they themselves were atheists, and would have considered identification of their race or religion a “bourgeois atavism”.
Hitler, on the other hand, killed Jews because they were Jews.
An important categorical distinction.
Crucis3–
Come on… if you want fight it is ok, but you need to put forth arguments. It is not enough just to rabble off heresay and rumors.
And if you start swearing in a pharaoh voice, well that does not help you either.
If you want to engage in a discussion – well arguments are your only way to do that. Otherwise it is just a matter of blind faith, and that does not work well in the internet age, sorry.
Ummm, excuse me, but the only people who took violent exception to Jesus were his own people. The Romans had no beef with him, and it was at the agitation of the Pharisees and Saduccees that he was executed. You can split hairs that it was the Jewish **leadership** that killed Him, but it was the Jewish established order that had Jesus put to death. In that sense, “the Jews killed Jesus,” but so what? God warned them hundreds of years before this, in the book of Isaiah that they would do this. Read Chapter 53, it says pretty bluntly, “you’re going to kill the messiah, who didn’t do a damn thing to bring it on Himself.”
The important point, that Jew-hating groups like many parts of the Roman Catholic Church conveniently eschew is that Jesus died according to prophecy. God used the mistake of the 1st century Jewish establishment to save mankind, but that is a point lost on many “Christian groups.” They conveniently forget that if the Jews had honored Him as the messiah, there would be no church today.
“As a moderate Democrat, I know you are not a crazy right wing intolerant Christian lunatic as the bleeding heart liberals would call you.”
How many meaningless epithetic tags can be crammed into one sentence? As for epaminondas’ lame attempt to burnish his credentials by “I worked in civil rights”, does he realize he is associating himself with such luminaries as Rev. Jackson who has perfected extortion to an art form? Not that I would indulge in the “guilt by association” fallacy.
Baron,
Pointing out stupidity however, inartfully did not make you anti-Jewish and I never considered you in that light ever.
Your Zionist Friend,
Simon
BTW here is something to cheer you up:
Christian Zionism
Sad to say if Hitler had been nice to the Jews there would have been no Israel.
History is a bitch.
Ezer Was A Savage
Is a story about a miracle in 1948.
That Hargrove is an a-hole. Everyone knows that blacks should never get over slavery, they should just let their anger continue, so as to hold them back so they can vote for the democrats to keep treating them like victims.
absurd thought –
God of the Universe just
admitted he killed Christ
.
Gee Epaminondas, you guys really are a superior bunch, a regular bunch of supermen. Just like the Talmud says. We Goys really are lucky you even take the time to notice us.
Respectfully, Baron, just as our friend Mr Simon noted above, that without Hitler there would have been no Israel, without the Jewish component there would have been no Soviet Union or Communism in the 20th century as we experienced it.
To claim that these men and women were not Jews because they were not religiously orthodox somehow does not ring true.
Is Judaism an ethnicity, a religion, a tribe or something else?
The Rabbis state that Jewishness comes from the mother, making Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Radek et al legitimately Jewish no matter their religious beliefs or lack of same.
This is what God has to say about it
New Testament: Romans
11:25 For I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not be conceited:
A partial hardening has happened to Israel until the full number of the Gentiles has come in.
11:26 And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written:
“The Deliverer will come out of Zion;
he will remove ungodliness from Jacob.
11:27 And this is my covenant with them,
when I take away their sins.”
11:28 In regard to the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but in regard to election they are dearly loved for the sake of the fathers. 11:29 For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable. 11:30 Just as you were formerly disobedient to God, but have now received mercy due to their disobedience, 11:31 so they too have now been disobedient in order that, by the mercy shown to you, they too may now receive mercy. 11:32 For God has consigned all people to disobedience so that he may show mercy to them all.
Well stated Vincent, accepted and agreed.