Archive for Israel Shahak
The Israeli Terrorist State and its Mossad Assassins
Posted in Media Watch with tags assassination attempt, Hamas, Israel Shahak,Mossad on March 15, 2009 by The 800 Pound Gorilla
The Washington Report on Middle East Affairsby Dr. Israel ShahakEditor’s Note: The Campaign for Radical Truth in History welcomes Dr. Israel Shahak to our web pages. Dr. Shahak is a resident of Jerusalem. He is professor emeritus at Hebrew University. He relocated to Palestine at age 12 in 1945, after four years incarceration in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. He is the author of the landmark book, Jewish History/Jewish Religion (Pluto Press).
In the stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes is often made to say that “the important thing is that the dog did not bark” on the night the crime was committed. Similarly, despite voluminous media coverage of the Khaled Meshal affair, the real issues and right questions have been deliberately omitted. Instead, the affair was used as another attempt to topple Netanyahu from power. Ironically, the backlash from this attempt has increased his popularity.
There is nothing new in the fact that Israel is a terrorist state which, almost from its inception, has used one of its intelligence agencies, the Mossad, to carry out violence or terror, including assassination, it considers necessary for its ends. The Israeli terrorism in Lebanon was exhibited in the “Accountability” and “Grapes of Wrath” operations, for example, when so many people were ordered to leave their homes on a day’s notice lest they be bombed to death. Such state terrorism was even worse than the assassination of specific individuals.
In fact, however, all Israeli governments have carried out terroristic acts and all Zionist parties support them in principle. To be specific, when he was prime minister, Shimon Peres ordered the assassination of Yehya Ayyash n Area A, supposedly under the sole control of the Palestinian Authority, an act which, according to Hamas, triggered the retaliatory suicide bombings of February-March 1996. (Although I personally doubt this Hamas explanation, there is little doubt that those suicide bombings contributed to the thin majority of votes which elected Binyamin Netanyahu and defeated Peres in the May 1996 election.) [1]
A few months earlier,Yitzhak Rabin ordered the assassination of Fathi Shikaki, head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad organization, in Malta. One could also cite other acts of terrorism which neither the Israeli opposition parties nor Israeli media have mentioned in connection with the assassination attempt in Amman.
The total refusal to consider the issue of state-terrorism in general, and Israel’s frequent use of terror in particular, has led Netanyahu’s Israeli and American Jewish critics to concentrate on the purely pragmatic issues of whether the assassination attempt in Amman was “wise” at this time and who was to blame for its failure. The truth, however, is that the record of past Mossad failures is quite extensive.
To mention only two examples, in the “Lillehammer affair” of 1972 in Norway, a Mossad hit team assassinated a Moroccan waiter instead of the intended Palestinian victim, and then team members compounded their failure by getting caught. Some of them also took refuge in the Israeli Embassy in Oslo, as occurred in the unsuccessful Meshal affair in Amman.
The second example was from the early 1950s, when Israeli agents in Egypt, under the direction of a military intelligence agency rather than Mossad, put firebombs in public places (including theaters and U.S. diplomatic missions in Cairo and Alexandria) to cause Britain to reconsider its decision to withdraw from the Suez Canal Zone. The attempt was even more stupid than it was criminal, and the result was a colossal failure, with all but one of the perpetrators being caught.
Both of these acts of terrorism were ordered by Labor governments. Thus, it was easy for Netanyahu supporters to point to the fact that when acts of terrorism ordered by Labor governments fail, Likud and the right wing in general “behave responsibly”–that is, they don’t try to make political profit (or too much of it) from what are, after all, failures of Israeli policies, while the “left” does not behave in this patriotic way.
Since Netanyahu critics are, in any case, part of a decaying elite which exhibits, in the most vulgar way, its mistaken belief that “only we know how to conduct affairs,” and since it is easy to connect such arrogance with the persistent gulf between the European Ashkenazi and the Oriental Sephardic Jews, the vehement criticism of Netanyahu created a backlash in his favor that illustrated how completely his “leftist” opponents have lost touch with what most people feel.
In my own view the failure is a secondary matter for which the Mossad and its chief, Danny Yatom (appointed by Peres in a doubtful manner a few weeks before the elections) [2], are primarily responsible. In fact, after the failure became known to him, Netanyahu behaved as competently as possible. In any case, his popular support has increased, especially among “the floating vote.” The most prominent commentators agree that if elections were to be held now Netanyahu would win again and I, too, am of this view.
As for Israeli relations with Jordan, they will continue more or less as before, just as Israeli relations with neither Britain nor Norway were seriously damaged by Mossad involvement in assassinations in those states. As the Hebrew press puts it, “according to information from foreign sources” Jordan has permitted Mossad to operate a large establishment in the center of Amman. In my view this occurred for many years before the peace treaty was signed between the two countries. This is proof enough that Jordan, or the Hashemite regime if one prefers the expression, has a very strong interest in “doing business” with Israeli intelligence for its own reasons [3].
One must add that the Israeli minister who succeeded, in the end, in striking a deal with King Hussein was Ariel Sharon, whose power in Israel was much enhanced by this success. In the future some niceties will perhaps be observed. The large Mossad establishment may have to operate from a more discreet site than before, but I have no doubt that the same arrangement will continue between Israel and Jordan, no matter what is said in public.
This article is reprinted with permission from the Jan./Feb. 1998 issue of The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. Michael A. Hoffman II’s Annotations:
[1] Readers should note well the fact mentioned by Dr. Shahak, that Hamas’ terrorism helped get the Arab-hating Netanyahu elected Israeli Prime Minister. Netanyahu and his Likud party instigate Arab terror, by denying all justice to the Palestinian people, thereby getting Israelis killed, in order to create implacable hostilities between Arabs and Israelis, which benefit the intransigent, racist policies of War Zionism. This is the language of Purimshpiel.
Since Dr. Shahak’s report was written:
[2] Danny Yatom resigned as director of Mossad.
[3] The extremist Zionist thought control group, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, gave King Hussein of Jordan one of its “prestigious” awards.
The above article can be found at:http://www.revisionisthistory.org/essay8.html
The Israeli Terrorist State and its Mossad Assassins
Israel Shahak: Blowing the lid off the Talmud and Jewish fundamentalism
Posted in Essential Reading with tags Caballa, Israel Shahak, Jewish conspiracy, Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Jewish History, Jewish Mysticism, Jewish Religion, Kabbala, Kabbalah, Satanism on November 3, 2008 by The 800 Pound Gorilla
If you read only one author on the subject of Talmudic Judaism, it ought to be Israel Shahak. In his trilogy of books on the subject, Shahak — a highly-respected Jewish-Israeli historian/researcher and human-rights campaigner — reveals the horrific truth behind “Talmudic ideology” and its fundamentalist, anti-gentile world-view.Shahak’s most important academic contribution lies in the fact that he — as a speaker of Hebrew — is able to provide unparalleled insight into what is written in the Hebrew-language press itself about these contentious topics:
“All modern studies on Judaism, particularly by Jews, …bear the unmistakable marks of their origin: deception, apologetics or hostile polemics, indifference or even active hostility to the pursuit of truth,” Shahak writes on Page 22 of his “Jewish History, Jewish Religion.”
Two pages later, he adds: “Modern scholars of Judaism have not only continued the deception, but have actually improved upon the old rabbinical methods, both in impudence and in mendacity.”
Israel Shahak has written hundreds of thoroughly-researched articles and essays about these topics. His seminal work, however, is his brilliant trilogy of books, which consists of “Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years” (1994); “Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear and Foreign Policies” (1997); and “Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel,” with co-writer Norton Mezvinsky (1999).
Choosing selections from Shahak’s trilogy is difficult because it contains so much revealing and highly relevant material — but here’s an attempt, nevertheless. The following quotations from “Jewish History, Jewish Religion” will hopefully encourage the reader to download and read all three books in their entirety (see below).
Again, the insight Shahak brings to these traditionally off-limit subjects — as a reader of Hebrew — cannot be overemphasized.
On “Jewish ideology” (i.e., Talmudic ideology) and its influence on Israeli military policies:
“Indeed, close analysis of Israeli grand strategies and actual principles of foreign policy, as they are expressed in Hebrew, makes it clear that it is ‘Jewish ideology,’ more than any other factor, which determines actual Israeli policies.” (Page 9)
“The dangers of the policies of [first Prime Minister of Israel David] Ben-Gurion or [former Israeli PM Ariel] Sharon, motivated by ‘Jewish ideology,’ are much worse than merely imperial policies, however criminal.” (Page 11)
“The influence of ‘Jewish ideology’ on many Jews will be stronger the more it is hidden from public discussion.” (Page 11)
On the longstanding campaign of disinformation perpetrated by mainstream Jewish writers on subjects such as Judaism, Jewish history, Talmud and Kabala, which has been pursued with the intention of deceiving non-Jews:
“Nor can one find in the numerous English-language ‘Jewish histories’ the elementary facts about the attitude of Jewish mysticism (so fashionable at present in certain quarters) to non-Jews: that they are considered to be, literally, limbs of satan… The great authorities, such as [prominent Kabala scholar] Gershom Scholem, have lent their authority to a system of deceptions in all the ‘sensitive’ areas, the more popular ones being the most deceptive and misleading.” (Page 16)
On the seeming contradiction between the racism inherent in Talmudic Judaism and the vaunted Jewish sympathy for the African-American cause:
“Surely one is driven to the hypothesis that quite a few of Martin Luther King’s rabbinical supporters were either anti-Black racists who supported him for tactical reasons of ‘Jewish interest’ (wishing to win Black support for American Jewry and for Israel’s policies) or were accomplished hypocrites, to the point of schizophrenia, capable of passing very rapidly from a hidden enjoyment of rabid racism to a proclaimed attachment to an anti-racist struggle — and back — and back again.” (Page 26)
On the apparently Satanic nature of Jewish mysticism, or Kabala:
“Other prayers or religious acts, as interpreted by the Cabalists, are designed to deceive various angels (imagined as minor deities with a measure of independence) or to propitiate Satan… Indeed, the Cabalists believe that some of the sacrifices burnt in the temple were intended for Satan.” (Page 34)
On the centrality of the Talmud — as opposed to the Torah, or Old Testament — in modern Judaism:
“There is yet another misconception about Judaism which is particularly common among Christians, or people heavily influenced by Christian tradition and culture. This is the misleading idea that Judaism is a ‘Biblical religion’; that the Old Testament has in Judaism the same central place and legal authority which the bible has for Protestant or even Catholic Christianity. Again, this is connected with the question of interpretation. We have seen that in matters of belief there is great latitude. Exactly the opposite holds with respect to the legal interpretation of sacred texts. Here the interpretation is rigidly fixed — but by the Talmud rather than the bible itself.” (Page 36)
“It should therefore be clearly understood that the source of authority for all the practices of classical (and present day Orthodox) Judaism, the determining base of its legal structure, is the Talmud, or, to be precise, the so-called Babylonian Talmud…” (Page 39)
(For more on this topic — the replacement of the written tradition, i.e., the Torah, with an oral tradition, i.e., the Talmud — see the work of Michael A. Hoffman on “Judaism’s strange goods.” Download the book and accompanying audio files HERE)
On the true reasons — downplayed in mainstream history — for anti-Jewish feeling in medieval Europe, particularly in places like Poland, which saw the frequent oppression of the peasantry by both Jews and nobles:
“The legal status of a Jewish community in the period of classical Judaism was normally based on a ‘privilege’ — a charter granted by a king or a prince to the Jewish community and conferring on it the rights of autonomy — that is, investing the rabbis with the power to dictate to the other Jews. An important part of such privileges, going as far back as the late Roman Empire, is the creation of a Jewish clerical estate which, exactly like the Christian clergy in medieval times, is exempt from paying taxes to the sovereign and is allowed to impose taxes on the people under its control — the Jews — for its own benefit… Similar arrangements existed, within each country, during the whole period of classical Judaism… Because of all this, throughout the classical period (as well as in modern times) the rabbis were the most loyal, not to say zealous, supporters of the powers that be; and the more reactionary the regime, the more rabbinical support it had.” (Pages 54, 55)
“Outside the towns very many Jews throughout Poland… were employed as the direct supervisors and oppressors of the enserfed peasantry — as bailiffs of whole manors (invested with the landlord’s full coercive powers) or as lessees of particular feudal monopolies… in short, in eastern Poland, under the rule of the nobles (and of the feudalized church, formed exclusively from the nobility) the Jews were both the immediate exploiters of the peasantry and virtually the only town dwellers.” (Page 62)
“The peasants suffered worse oppression at the hands of both landlords and Jews; and one may assume that, except in times of peasant uprisings, the full weight of the Jewish religious laws against gentiles fell upon the peasants… These laws are suspended or mitigated in cases where it is feared that they might arouse dangerous hostility towards Jews; but the hostility of the peasants could be disregarded as ineffectual so long as the Jewish bailiff could shelter under the ‘peace’ of a great lord.” (Page 63)
“It must be pointed out that in all the worst anti-Jewish persecutions, that is, where Jews were killed, the ruling elite — the emperor and the pope, the kings, the higher aristocracy and the upper clergy as well as the rich bourgeoisie in the autonomous cities — were always on the side of the Jews. The latter’s enemies belonged to the more oppressed and exploited classes…” (Page 64)
On the unholy alliance, seen throughout modern history, between Zionists and so-called “anti-Semites”:
“Close relations have always existed between Zionists and anti-Semites: exactly like some of the European conservatives, the Zionists thought they could ignore the ‘demonic’ character of anti-Semitism and use the anti-Semites for their own purposes. Many examples of such alliances are well known. Herzl allied himself with the notorious Count von Plehve, the anti-Semitic minister of Tsar Nicholas II; Jabotinsky made a pact with Petlyura, the reactionary Ukrainian leader whose forces massacred some 100,000 Jews in 1918-1921; Ben-Gurion’s allies among the French extreme right during the Algerian war included some notorious anti-Semites who were, however, careful to explain that they were only against the Jews in France, not in Israel.” (Page 71)
“Perhaps the most shocking example of this type is the delight with which some Zionist leaders in Germany welcomed Hitler’s rise to power, because they shared his belief in the primacy of ‘race’ and his hostility to the assimilation of Jews among ‘Aryans.’ They congratulated Hitler on his triumph over the common enemy — the forces of liberalism. Dr. Joachim Prinz, a Zionist rabbi who subsequently emigrated to the USA, where he rose to be vice-chairman of the World Jewish Congress and a leading light in the World Zionist Organization (as well as a great friend of Golda Meir), published in 1934 a special book, Wir Juden (’We, Jews’), to celebrate Hitler’s so-called German Revolution and the defeat of liberalism.” (Page 71)
Download “Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years” in PDF format HERE
The above represents only a tiny smattering of the many important lines of research pursued by Shahak in “Jewish History, Jewish Religion.” His other two books — “Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear and Foreign Policies” and “Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel” (with co-writer Norton Mezvinsky) — are no less essential for the serious student of Talmudic Judaism.
In “Open Secrets,” Shahak exposes Israel’s strategic foreign policy “as it really is.” To quote the back of the book: “Drawing solely on the Hebrew press, and working very much as an insider in the country, Shahak reveals that what Israeli Jews are told about their county’s foreign policy through the national media is entirely inconsistent with what the Israeli government is telling the rest of the world. Shahak demonstrates that, with the support of the US Jewish lobby, Israel is conducting a covert policy of expansionism and aims to gain political control, not just of Palestine, but of virtually the entire Middle East.”
Download “Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear and Foreign Policies” in PDF format HERE
“Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel,” meanwhile, provides the reader with “a thorough assessment of [Jewish] fundamentalism in modern Israel.” Again, to quote the back of the book: “The authors trace the history and development of Jewish fundamentalism, examining the various different strains, and identify the messianic tendency as the most dangerous… The authors argue that Jewish fundamentalism is essentially hostile to democracy because it opposes equality for all citizens and therefore it poses a considerable threat to democracy in Israel.”
Download “Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel” in PDF format HERE
Shahak’s work is so good, in fact, that some have suggested that the similarly-named Israel Shamir — who offers his own trilogy of books devoted to similar topics — is a disinformation agent meant to draw readers away from Shahak. For more on this hypothesis, click HERE and HERE [LINKS TO TWO SHAMIR ARTICLES].
Shahak died suddenly at age 68, only two months before the Mossad/CIA-perpetrated 9/11 attacks of 2001. Read his obituary from UK daily The Guardian HERE.
Israel Shahak: Blowing the lid off the Talmud and Jewish fundamentalism
“All modern studies on Judaism, particularly by Jews, …bear the unmistakable marks of their origin: deception, apologetics or hostile polemics, indifference or even active hostility to the pursuit of truth,” Shahak writes on Page 22 of his “Jewish History, Jewish Religion.”
Two pages later, he adds: “Modern scholars of Judaism have not only continued the deception, but have actually improved upon the old rabbinical methods, both in impudence and in mendacity.”
Israel Shahak has written hundreds of thoroughly-researched articles and essays about these topics. His seminal work, however, is his brilliant trilogy of books, which consists of “Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years” (1994); “Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear and Foreign Policies” (1997); and “Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel,” with co-writer Norton Mezvinsky (1999).
Choosing selections from Shahak’s trilogy is difficult because it contains so much revealing and highly relevant material — but here’s an attempt, nevertheless. The following quotations from “Jewish History, Jewish Religion” will hopefully encourage the reader to download and read all three books in their entirety (see below).
Again, the insight Shahak brings to these traditionally off-limit subjects — as a reader of Hebrew — cannot be overemphasized.
On “Jewish ideology” (i.e., Talmudic ideology) and its influence on Israeli military policies:
“Indeed, close analysis of Israeli grand strategies and actual principles of foreign policy, as they are expressed in Hebrew, makes it clear that it is ‘Jewish ideology,’ more than any other factor, which determines actual Israeli policies.” (Page 9)
“The dangers of the policies of [first Prime Minister of Israel David] Ben-Gurion or [former Israeli PM Ariel] Sharon, motivated by ‘Jewish ideology,’ are much worse than merely imperial policies, however criminal.” (Page 11)
“The influence of ‘Jewish ideology’ on many Jews will be stronger the more it is hidden from public discussion.” (Page 11)
On the longstanding campaign of disinformation perpetrated by mainstream Jewish writers on subjects such as Judaism, Jewish history, Talmud and Kabala, which has been pursued with the intention of deceiving non-Jews:
“Nor can one find in the numerous English-language ‘Jewish histories’ the elementary facts about the attitude of Jewish mysticism (so fashionable at present in certain quarters) to non-Jews: that they are considered to be, literally, limbs of satan… The great authorities, such as [prominent Kabala scholar] Gershom Scholem, have lent their authority to a system of deceptions in all the ‘sensitive’ areas, the more popular ones being the most deceptive and misleading.” (Page 16)
On the seeming contradiction between the racism inherent in Talmudic Judaism and the vaunted Jewish sympathy for the African-American cause:
“Surely one is driven to the hypothesis that quite a few of Martin Luther King’s rabbinical supporters were either anti-Black racists who supported him for tactical reasons of ‘Jewish interest’ (wishing to win Black support for American Jewry and for Israel’s policies) or were accomplished hypocrites, to the point of schizophrenia, capable of passing very rapidly from a hidden enjoyment of rabid racism to a proclaimed attachment to an anti-racist struggle — and back — and back again.” (Page 26)
On the apparently Satanic nature of Jewish mysticism, or Kabala:
“Other prayers or religious acts, as interpreted by the Cabalists, are designed to deceive various angels (imagined as minor deities with a measure of independence) or to propitiate Satan… Indeed, the Cabalists believe that some of the sacrifices burnt in the temple were intended for Satan.” (Page 34)
On the centrality of the Talmud — as opposed to the Torah, or Old Testament — in modern Judaism:
“There is yet another misconception about Judaism which is particularly common among Christians, or people heavily influenced by Christian tradition and culture. This is the misleading idea that Judaism is a ‘Biblical religion’; that the Old Testament has in Judaism the same central place and legal authority which the bible has for Protestant or even Catholic Christianity. Again, this is connected with the question of interpretation. We have seen that in matters of belief there is great latitude. Exactly the opposite holds with respect to the legal interpretation of sacred texts. Here the interpretation is rigidly fixed — but by the Talmud rather than the bible itself.” (Page 36)
“It should therefore be clearly understood that the source of authority for all the practices of classical (and present day Orthodox) Judaism, the determining base of its legal structure, is the Talmud, or, to be precise, the so-called Babylonian Talmud…” (Page 39)
(For more on this topic — the replacement of the written tradition, i.e., the Torah, with an oral tradition, i.e., the Talmud — see the work of Michael A. Hoffman on “Judaism’s strange goods.” Download the book and accompanying audio files HERE)
On the true reasons — downplayed in mainstream history — for anti-Jewish feeling in medieval Europe, particularly in places like Poland, which saw the frequent oppression of the peasantry by both Jews and nobles:
“The legal status of a Jewish community in the period of classical Judaism was normally based on a ‘privilege’ — a charter granted by a king or a prince to the Jewish community and conferring on it the rights of autonomy — that is, investing the rabbis with the power to dictate to the other Jews. An important part of such privileges, going as far back as the late Roman Empire, is the creation of a Jewish clerical estate which, exactly like the Christian clergy in medieval times, is exempt from paying taxes to the sovereign and is allowed to impose taxes on the people under its control — the Jews — for its own benefit… Similar arrangements existed, within each country, during the whole period of classical Judaism… Because of all this, throughout the classical period (as well as in modern times) the rabbis were the most loyal, not to say zealous, supporters of the powers that be; and the more reactionary the regime, the more rabbinical support it had.” (Pages 54, 55)
“Outside the towns very many Jews throughout Poland… were employed as the direct supervisors and oppressors of the enserfed peasantry — as bailiffs of whole manors (invested with the landlord’s full coercive powers) or as lessees of particular feudal monopolies… in short, in eastern Poland, under the rule of the nobles (and of the feudalized church, formed exclusively from the nobility) the Jews were both the immediate exploiters of the peasantry and virtually the only town dwellers.” (Page 62)
“The peasants suffered worse oppression at the hands of both landlords and Jews; and one may assume that, except in times of peasant uprisings, the full weight of the Jewish religious laws against gentiles fell upon the peasants… These laws are suspended or mitigated in cases where it is feared that they might arouse dangerous hostility towards Jews; but the hostility of the peasants could be disregarded as ineffectual so long as the Jewish bailiff could shelter under the ‘peace’ of a great lord.” (Page 63)
“It must be pointed out that in all the worst anti-Jewish persecutions, that is, where Jews were killed, the ruling elite — the emperor and the pope, the kings, the higher aristocracy and the upper clergy as well as the rich bourgeoisie in the autonomous cities — were always on the side of the Jews. The latter’s enemies belonged to the more oppressed and exploited classes…” (Page 64)
On the unholy alliance, seen throughout modern history, between Zionists and so-called “anti-Semites”:
“Close relations have always existed between Zionists and anti-Semites: exactly like some of the European conservatives, the Zionists thought they could ignore the ‘demonic’ character of anti-Semitism and use the anti-Semites for their own purposes. Many examples of such alliances are well known. Herzl allied himself with the notorious Count von Plehve, the anti-Semitic minister of Tsar Nicholas II; Jabotinsky made a pact with Petlyura, the reactionary Ukrainian leader whose forces massacred some 100,000 Jews in 1918-1921; Ben-Gurion’s allies among the French extreme right during the Algerian war included some notorious anti-Semites who were, however, careful to explain that they were only against the Jews in France, not in Israel.” (Page 71)
“Perhaps the most shocking example of this type is the delight with which some Zionist leaders in Germany welcomed Hitler’s rise to power, because they shared his belief in the primacy of ‘race’ and his hostility to the assimilation of Jews among ‘Aryans.’ They congratulated Hitler on his triumph over the common enemy — the forces of liberalism. Dr. Joachim Prinz, a Zionist rabbi who subsequently emigrated to the USA, where he rose to be vice-chairman of the World Jewish Congress and a leading light in the World Zionist Organization (as well as a great friend of Golda Meir), published in 1934 a special book, Wir Juden (’We, Jews’), to celebrate Hitler’s so-called German Revolution and the defeat of liberalism.” (Page 71)
Download “Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years” in PDF format HERE
The above represents only a tiny smattering of the many important lines of research pursued by Shahak in “Jewish History, Jewish Religion.” His other two books — “Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear and Foreign Policies” and “Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel” (with co-writer Norton Mezvinsky) — are no less essential for the serious student of Talmudic Judaism.
In “Open Secrets,” Shahak exposes Israel’s strategic foreign policy “as it really is.” To quote the back of the book: “Drawing solely on the Hebrew press, and working very much as an insider in the country, Shahak reveals that what Israeli Jews are told about their county’s foreign policy through the national media is entirely inconsistent with what the Israeli government is telling the rest of the world. Shahak demonstrates that, with the support of the US Jewish lobby, Israel is conducting a covert policy of expansionism and aims to gain political control, not just of Palestine, but of virtually the entire Middle East.”
Download “Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear and Foreign Policies” in PDF format HERE
“Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel,” meanwhile, provides the reader with “a thorough assessment of [Jewish] fundamentalism in modern Israel.” Again, to quote the back of the book: “The authors trace the history and development of Jewish fundamentalism, examining the various different strains, and identify the messianic tendency as the most dangerous… The authors argue that Jewish fundamentalism is essentially hostile to democracy because it opposes equality for all citizens and therefore it poses a considerable threat to democracy in Israel.”
Download “Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel” in PDF format HERE
Shahak’s work is so good, in fact, that some have suggested that the similarly-named Israel Shamir — who offers his own trilogy of books devoted to similar topics — is a disinformation agent meant to draw readers away from Shahak. For more on this hypothesis, click HERE and HERE [LINKS TO TWO SHAMIR ARTICLES].
Shahak died suddenly at age 68, only two months before the Mossad/CIA-perpetrated 9/11 attacks of 2001. Read his obituary from UK daily The Guardian HERE.
Israel Shahak: Blowing the lid off the Talmud and Jewish fundamentalism
Israel Shamir exposed! A fake or a plant?
Posted in Media Watch with tags Israel Shahak, Israel Shamir, Mossad on September 27, 2008 by The 800 Pound Gorilla
UK IndyMediaApril 26th, 2005
Israel Shamir, the “Israeli-Jewish” enemy of Zionism (and now of Judaism too) has a secret identity which he won’t deny or speak about. He just smears his critics. Here is photgraphic evidence that Shamir, the darling of White Supremacists, the BNP and other racists is a Swedish bloke called Joram Jermas.
The man known as Israel Shamir
For twenty years the Jewish Israeli journalist Israel Shamir has been living a double life as a Swede called Jöran Jermas. Official files show Shamir’s own picture and Siberian place and date of birth (11 June 1947) on the Swedish man’s passport. It’s not another of Israel (Adam) Shamir’s many pen names; it’s a completely different identity. None of this appears in the résumée promoted on his website as The Shamir Legend: so where does legend end and mythology begin?
It was a simple enough question – “Who are you?” But for once the voluble Shamir fell silent when he saw our evidence. From Arizona his publisher Carol Adler at Dandelion Books said “I have not yet heard back from him; I emailed him; I know he is aware you copied me on your correspondence to him.”A brand new ‘super-dissident’ essayist was launched into cyberspace four years ago: it was a linguistic adventure too, it being his first work in English. The obscure middle-aged Russian translator became an instant celebrity, feted as a straight-talking Jewish Israeli whistle-blower. He was rewarded with international speaking tours, books about the Palestine conflict and positions on committees.
Shamir now says he quit Judaism some time ago and joined the orthodox Christian Church of the Holy Land. He writes that he grew disgusted not just with Zionism but with what he now considers the racist and predatory nature of the Jewish faith itself. Jews tricked the Romans into crucifying Jesus Christ, he reasons, and so Jews today can be called “Christ-killers” – which he does in his writings.
Today a number of Palestine campaigns in Europe and the US commend Shamir’s website and circulate his material. That’s how I came across his recent essay, ‘Tsunami in Gaza’. Nor was I alone. Internet fans of the American white-supremacist, David Duke, were urged to read the “very brave Israeli writer, the intrepid Israel Shamir” and to note “the depth of anti-gentile feeling in the Jewish faith” to which his essay testifies. In the UK, the British National Party endorses Shamir’s views online.
‘Tsunami in Gaza’ expands on an Israeli press report of orthodox Jews rushing to Thailand hoping to give Jewish corpses a religious burial. However, Shamir’s essay makes a shocking new claim (which he doesn’t substantiate); that the Thai government agreed to delay mass burials just to please the Jews, and so exposed countless Thai survivors and rescuers to greater risk of deadly epidemics. How did a small army of journalists miss that one? Nonetheless, this is all ‘evidence’ of Judaism’s wilful inhumanity and “nasty exclusiveness”.
“In face of the huge tragedy in South East Asia, this insistence of `not being counted among the goyim’ is especially offensive, bordering on denial of our common humanity. What is so bad about Thais, French, Chinese and other people who found their death in the catastrophe that you can’t leave your dead lying next to them?
“Personally,” a British supporter of the Palestinians wrote to me, “I didn’t find Shamir’s article anti-Jewish but certainly I did find it anti-Israel or anti-Zionist. I presumed he was Jewish himself so unless we follow the tortured example of the Zionists’ thinking and consider him a ‘self-hating Jew’, then how can he be anti-semitic? (sic)”
Israel Shamir is equally comfortable with overtly anti-Jewish and White supremacist groups among his fan-base: “It is not White Racist Supremacism oppressing Palestinians,” he writes. “If I were a Palestinian, the White Nationalists would be my legitimate allies.” In his view they have “a common enemy”, the Jews. If you’re intrigued to learn, for example, “Why Zionism is Racism but anti-semitism is not” then Shamir’s website is the place for you. Judaism is behind it all – and they’re all in it together. It’s the Jews’ fault Americans are dying in Iraq: their fault a hundred thousand Iraqis have been slaughtered. This is all hidden from us because Jews also run the media.
On the Shamir website is one apparently critical item – “The Shamir Legend” by Ratibor Petrushkin – Shamir’s former colleague at the far-right Russian weekly Zavtra. It starts well enough, mentioning 27 reasons why Shamir cannot really exist. Disappointingly it fails to outline a single one of them. Instead it copies a 560-word tribute from another Shamir website, the “First unofficial Russian site of Israel Shamir”, and then simply clears him of all 27 charges (whatever they were).
According to the authorised legend, Shamir was born in Novosibirsk in Soviet Siberia, the great-grandson of a rabbi. He was a brilliant student and a radical Russian writer. He migrated to Israel in 1969 and fought in the 1973 war. He spurned a career in law to become a journalist, spending time in the Far East and London. By 1980 he was back in Israel writing for papers and producing a book. He returned to the Soviet Union in 1989 and reported on its collapse until 1993 when he set up his present home in Jaffa.
Such is the legend. However, Israel Shamir first appeared on the Swedish census in 1984 (when the legend has him in Israel). In 1989 he wrote from his Stockholm address trying to sell the original Himmler’s war service diary to the Holocaust revisionist, David Irving. Shamir said he was acting for unnamed Russian businessmen. It fell through, but the correspondence is still on Irving’s website.
Publicly available Swedish government files show Shamir later became a citizen and is still registered as living in Stockholm, with his second wife – not in Jaffa. His first wife and their two sons also live in Stockholm. In 2001 Israel Shamir changed his name to Jöran Jermas. He was already a Swedish citizen, now he had the name to go with it. Finally, the National Passport Registry has provided a copy of Jöran Jermas’ passport file. It contains Israel Shamir’s photograph and his place and date of birth. We copied the file to Mr Shamir and his American publisher. We invited him to comment on this evidence, to explain it or denounce it – but he has said nothing.
By contrast his fellow Swede, the Palestine-born activist Ammar Makboul, was happy to speak about Israel Shamir: “Refuting one type of scapegoating with another is to substitute the demand for freedom, human rights and a just peace, with racist conspiracy theories. And that’s the reason that we cannot accept Shamir as part of the Palestinian solidarity movement.” The Palestine Solidarity Association in Sweden has shunned Shamir’s latest collection of essays and sales are low. In October Shamir’s “L’autre Visage d’Israel” (Israel’s Other Face) was de-published by Balland/Blanche in France. They removed it from bookstores and stripped it from public libraries less than a fortnight after going on sale.
One puzzle has been solved, but questions remain: “Who is “Israel Shamir”? Is he “Jöran Jermas”? Or are they both fictional? What about his other aliases, “Vassili Krasevsky” and “Robert David” (inter alia?)? More important still, whoever he is, what’s his game?”
© 2005 Manfred Ropschitz
Manfred Ropschitz is a journalist and broadcaster based in the UK. He’s an anti-Zionist Jew, the son of a Polish Holocaust survivor and an active supporter of Palestinian rights since the late 1970’s.
manfred ropschitz
Please also checkout Israel Shamir on 9/11: “The Panamanians
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/04/309818.html