There is evidence to support the allegation that the Nazis toyed with their Jewish captives in a manner so savage that you wonder how someone could be this disconnected from their humanity. For example, some Nazi guards are said to have forced the Jews to spit on the floor and lick the spit. The question is whether this attitude came about instantaneously or whether it was the result of an escalation between two antagonists where each side played a role in shaping the behavior of the other. I have no way of knowing what led to such behavior decades ago in a place where I was not born and a culture in which I never lived. Also, the record does not show with enough clarity the social set-up that existed then as it related to the interaction between the two ethnic groups.
Given that the Nazis were defeated long ago and that the people who used to live under their culture no longer live by the rules of that time and neither do their descendants, there is little that I can do directly to shed light on the situation as it existed then. But there is something I can do indirectly. I can begin with the assumption that both the Nazi culture and the Jewish culture were normal and that they were interacting as any two cultures would. With this in mind I can observe the Jewish culture today and try to answer this question: Do the Jews exhibit signs of being disconnected from their humanity when interacting with other people that they can provoke ordinary folks to respond in a way that mirrors their behavior? If I can answer this question one way or the other I should be able to determine if the Jews triggered a process of escalation long ago that may have contributed to the escalation that led the Nazis to treat them the way they did. I may even go beyond that and determine whether or not another holocaust can happen.
Well, I have observed the Jews as a child because I grew up surrounded by some of them when I did not see the need to study them. But I shed my innocent view of life as I matured and found it necessary at some point to start observing the Jews with the view of studying their behavior as it relates to the question I raised in the previous paragraph. I can report from personal experience that the answer I came across is unusual because the situation is highly convoluted. To begin with, I found that Jews come in all sorts of races and all sorts of ethnic backgrounds, therefore, they have a DNA that can belong to anyone on the planet; from a black Ethiopian Jew to a blue eyed and blonde Russian Jew. Certainly, you would agree that these two cannot be of the same racial stock and neither of them has a probability much higher than zero at being Semitic. I also found that the Jewish religion is no more monolithic than any other in that it is subdivided into groups of various sects and various factions. These groups are themselves separated from each other by interests that diverge; and they are drawn to each other by interests that converge. And there are Jews who accuse other Jews of not being Jewish enough, even go as far as deny them their Jewishness altogether. I must, therefore, conclude that individual Jews are separated from each other as any two individuals can be when picked randomly from anywhere on the planet. So then, aside from the Jewish appellation, what is there that ties these people into a single group?
The common interest that seems to unite all Jews is that they claim to have a shared history; and this is where the convolution begins because, being varied racially and religiously, they could not have one and the same history. Nevertheless, what they call their history seems to have a few pillars on which the various factions anchor themselves but everything else remains amorphous and regenerating – a source of confusion that happens to be what they need to muddy the historical record. If this sounds like a process of nature where things change all the time it is because there is a resemblance between the two. But there is also a huge difference because unlike the trunk of a tree that sheds foliage and fruits in winter to regenerate itself in the spring, Jewish history has a trunk that changes shape unexpectedly, and branches that bear apples during one season and oranges during another. Indeed, the history that is told by Jews is told in a way that suits the moment and would change in the blink of an eye to suit the changing circumstances. As a result, nothing remains constant in Jewish history except the notion that Jews were mistreated by the other groups therefore entitled to compensation wherever they come from, whenever they lived. And when it comes to giving details about specific incidents that may back up their claim, the storyline changes depending on who is a friend of the Jews today and who is not. Thus, when you listen closely to those who call themselves Jewish historians, you get a feel of what they want, and conclude that in their eyes, history is a commodity they are obliged to use like a currency to play on people's emotions. And watch out if they succeed to get control of your emotions because this is when they show how adept they are at turning the success into hard cold cash.
This description of the Jews has been a part of the stereotype that was painted of them by all sorts of people everywhere they went, every time they popped somewhere on the planet. Leaving aside the truthfulness of the description, we may ask the question: Is this provocative enough to motivate someone to want to harm the Jews as a group? On the face of it the answer should be no but the consequence of the behavior is that the thing can escalate and lead to unexpected outcomes. To see how this can come about we pick one example and discuss it. There was a leader called Saddam Hussein in the Arab country of Iraq. He fought the Iranians to the delight of the Americans who supported him military because they were humiliated by the Iranians when the latter held their embassy staff hostage. On their part, the Iranians staged the hostage taking incident in retaliation to a coup that was engineered by the American CIA against a government that was duly elected by the people of Iran. To make a long story short, Saddam Hussein decided at the conclusion of his war with Iran to invade the Arab country of Kuwait and take it over. This did not sit well with the other Arab countries because they all belong to a grouping called the Arab League where they have a Charter that says no Arab country shall harm another Arab country, and that disputes among the Arabs must be settled through negotiations under the auspices of the Arab League.
At the beginning, the Americans did not know how to react to the invasion given that Saddam Hussein was their darling while the other Arab countries who were unhappy with Saddam's behavior were their friends and allies. George Bush 41, the father - as they call him - was then President of the United States of America and he started to consult with his advisers as well as the leaders in the Middle East before deciding on a response. All of this is the normal sort of manoeuvrings that go on all the time in international diplomacy, and it is something that everyone understands. What was abnormal, convoluted and hard to understand were the reactions of Israel, the Jewish organizations and their supporters in America. Take for example the reaction of the two non-Jewish operatives, Fred Barnes and Morton Kondrake, who were nonetheless closely attuned to the Jewish narrative and the mentality that generates it.
These two appeared on the John McLaughlin show before President Bush had made the decision to oppose Saddam Hussein. And while the President was busy going through the process of consulting, thinking, debating and deciding on the proper course to take - something everyone knew will have huge ramifications on the region, on America and the world for generations to come - Barnes and Kondrake took advantage of the situation and planted the Jewish dagger in the back of their President for the sheer joy of it as they were having a ball expressing their weird opinions. Indeed, without engaging in any intelligent debate or even a dumb one about the merits and demerits of opposing Saddam's army, they said in unison that Bush was kissing Saddam's ring, making it clear they meant to say he was kissing Saddam's ass. And why was that? Because knowing where Israel stood on the issue, Bush did not save himself the trouble of having to think when he could have made a snap decision to send American boys and girls to war. After all, what was at stake were only American and Iraqi lives.
And so the question we must ask is this: What should historians take from this episode and from the many episodes like it that have flooded the print pages and the TV screens at the time? Well, that moment was but one of the many moments when the interests of America and those of Israel collided. America's interest was to contain Iran while Israel's interest was to destroy each and every Arab country - Iraq being high on the list. Barnes and Kondrake not only sided with Israel against their own country, they went about expressing their preference by publicly humiliating their own President in the most demeaning of ways: they said he was kissing Saddam's ass because he was not doing what they were doing, kissing Jewish ass. Therefore, what the historians should take from this episode is the recognition that the moment was a pivotal one in the transformation of the American system of governance from one of a functioning democracy to one of a has-been democracy currently dedicated to serve the interests of a Zionist entity that is no more than a small fart stinking a neighborhood thousands of miles away.
Here is another pertinent question: What may result when Barnes, Kondrake and others like them are trained and conditioned to think, behave and talk the way they did? Well, we can see the result now, twenty years later. If you are an American official of any stripe or rank, if you are in government or in private practice, you do not stop and think where America's interests stand; you swallow in whole the Israeli position and you internalize it without asking a single question. You then make a snap decision to act in accordance with Israel's wishes like good soldiers do. And to make sure that the whole world knows what you're up to, you shout as loudly as you can the assertion that there is no daylight between Israel and America when it comes to looking after the interests of Israel. You repeat the assertion once or twice more then bloody well shut your mouth because there will be nothing more for you to say until further notice is sent to you from Israel or from AIPAC. In the meantime, no condition will be attached to America's support for Israel. No accounting will be required as to what Israel does with the support it gets. And no equivocation on America's part will be expressed no matter how Israel behaves or what the consequences of its behavior will do to America's interests worldwide. Like Barnes and Kondrake, every American official will do what is good for Israel; they will then forget about it and let the Israelis savor their moment of triumph in peace and tranquility.
When a scenario like that is repeated time and time again, when it is repeated incessantly and without fail, does it make some people want to force the Jews to spit on the floor and lick the spit? Can this sort of performance lead to a pogrom or a holocaust? The answer to both questions is yes because people will forgive their leaders all sorts of mistakes but will not forgive them the betrayal of country especially when the betrayal is meant to serve the interests of another entity. When people catch their leaders conduct themselves in that manner, they inflict on them and the alien entity the most atrocious of punishments such as a pogrom or a holocaust. Thus, when the Jews set themselves apart from the society in which they find themselves - something they always do - and when they work their way up the ranks by hook and by crook only to influence the seat of power and steer everything of worth in their direction, they bring on themselves pogroms and holocausts like those recorded throughout history. And now that Israel is there, standing as a symbol of Jewish apartness if not apartheid, people do not need to work their imagination too hard before they realize that their Jewish neighbors harbor a loyalty that extends far away to another land, another epoch. The stereotype feeds on itself and the innocent Jews are swept together with the evil characters that stand a better chance at getting away with the gains they made.
We cannot escape the conclusion that the stereotype painted of the Jews is not a mistyping of reality but an authentic accounting of what goes on in real life. And like a powder keg, the reality is once again waiting for a spark to set it off and send it sky high like it happened many times before. They say never again but they do it again and again. We are tired of this game and we should not hide it anymore; we must say so and they must listen.