Friday, August 14, 2009

Terra Incognita 95 women, self hate and 'the white man's burden'

Terra Incognita
Issue 95

“Written to enlighten, guaranteed to offend”

A Publication of Seth J. Frantzman
Jerusalem, Israel

Website: http://journalterraincognita.blogspot.com/

August 9th, 2009

1) How Modernity let down women: Recent stories from Japan about middle class women preferring the job of ‘hostessing’ t other jobs once again shows the failure of the West in terms of educating women and creating women who value themselves, their lives and their freedom.

2) The people of illogic: Notes on Jewish self hate: Jewish self hate is one of the most fascinating phenomenon’s. While many nations now produce intellectuals who have self-hate the Jews seem especially adept at it. It is worth examining a few cases to understand that self-hate is primarily based on illogical concepts.

3) The White man’s two burdens: The White man once took upon himself the burden of civilizing the world. Later he took upon himself the burden of feeling guilty for having attempted to civilize. Now he spreads that burden around to other people he deems white, hoping to make us all feel guilty for an endeavor that was not of our making and one that there is no reason to have any guilt for.



How Modernity let down women
Seth J. Frantzman
July 31, 2009

In a recent article about Japan we learn that “club hostesses lose their stigma.” The article explains that young women now “view them as well paid role models.” The article explains that this is “among the most lucrative jobs available to women”. According to a recent study it was the 12th most popular job choice for women graduating high school.

The story of most young women yearning to be “hostesses” in Japan is not surprising. “Hostessing” in Japan is not being a hostess at a restaurant. It is a form of semi-prostitution where clubs of male clientele have young women in swank dresses who sit with the men, chat with them and encourage them to buy drinks. Sometimes the women sleep with the men. The clubs are located in red light districts much like strip clubs.
The fact that in the most wealthy countries where women have been obtained and been granted western freedoms they desire nothing more in life than to be objects for men’s affections, t be paid for their time to service men sexually, to work as strippers, porn stars, models or some manner of the three combined points to a severe problem in the trajectory of this thing called “west” and “freedom”. Women that are bought and sold in the sex slave trade of prostitution, as slaves, are not women from uneducated and impoverished backgrounds, they are from lower middle class educated backgrounds and all of them come from countries where women were granted equality with men and freedom long ago, such as Ukraine or Russia.

Is the failure of the hopes of the West due to women or due to the West? The answer lies in both. Both are equally at fault. Consider the situation in Japan. Women do not find work in business or other places that pay well. This is part of the fault of society that has not opened up the workplace to women, despite granting them equality and freedom. But the next choice, the choice to become a prostitute, lies entirely with the women. That women value, as highest among the occupations, modeling or hostessing, this is entirely the fault of women.

It is the same among western women who choose to convert to Islam and marry men who commit honour killings. Consider the hypocrisy of the western woman who marries a traditional Muslim man. She first dresses immodestly in her western culture, using the freedom granted her in the West to dress as she pleases. Through this behavior she meets a Muslim man who, denied the ability to see his own women who he has placed in Burkas now spends his days looking for immodest and immoral western women who will sleep with him. She then converts to Islam to marry into a religion where, if her daughter behaves as she did and dates outside her community the daughter will be killed. This is the hypocrisy that is natural and part and parcel of the West: the need to cleanse and destroy all figments of tradition to make people secular and un-believing. The result is the mass conversion of those people to any religion they are exposed to that fills them up with tradition and god. So the fact that the western woman converts to Islam or finds it exotic and interesting is not her fault, it is the fault of the West which has not provided her with tradition or religion or order or any foundation or patriotism or anything. But her decision to marry traditional fundamentalist men, traditional men, the same men she hated and spurned in her own society, is her fault. The contradiction of her marrying he man that, were she his daughter he would kill for her behavior is her fault.

Thus the West creates the basis for the society in which women are left with the choice to destroy their lives. Western society frequently denies them many of the god choices they might otherwise have made. Western society brainwashes women to be leftist and secular and immodest and immoral. Women’s rights groups describe prostitution as “sex work” and tell women to become involved with it. Popular culture encourages women to be models in the West and “hostesses” in Japan by valuing only those women who expose themselves nude in public. All these are the evils of the west that took women who were not much more than chattel in the 19th century and, after 100 years of liberalism, turned them back into chattel, lowering their station to worse than it was before. But the west’s self-destructiveness is matched by the collaboration of women with degrading activities that transform them into little more than cattle. In this the western woman is more dehumanized than her Islamic counterpart. Muslim women are, oddly considering all they are denied, the pillars of their culture and its greatest defenders. Western women are, oddly considering all they are given, the weakest link in their culture and the first to insult and degrade it and condemn it and desert it. It s not surprising that in the liberal-homo-self-hating culture of the West that patriotism is considered chauvinistic and so is religion. But for a western women to don a khaffiyeh and become a militant for Islam or don a burka and birth 13 children for some man in the East this is considered “female empowerment” and for a woman to work as a prostitute and be bought and sold in bathroom stalls and auditioned for work as a “sex worker”, this is part of “empowerment”. The evil is inter-twined. The West long ago failed women when the first feminists became advocates of porn work for women and when the first one’s became admirers of the Iranian revolution.

The West failed women and western women in turn failed themselves. They failed the test of freedom much the way early democracies of the 1920s failed that test, must the way Russia failed that brief test in 1917, much the way the French Revolutionaries transformed the rights of man into bathing in the blood of man. The death of the West in its own blood of self-hate is only part of the longer self-consuming evils of numerous revolutions that promised man freedom only for man to destroy that freedom as quickly as possible.



The people of illogic: Notes on Jewish self hate
Seth J. Frantzman
July 26, 2009

Recently the German government gave one of its highest civilian awards, the Federal Cross of Merit, to Felicia Langer, a supporter of the Palestinians who calls Israel the “apartheid of the present” and a defender of Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinjad. She noted that the Holocaust denying Iranian president “is right” when “speaking about the suffering of the Palestinians”. He had left Israel in 1990 “because for the Palestinians, unfortunately we cannot obtain Justice.” She speaks often of how the Holocaust has harmed her family and when in Israel spoke of being part of the “other Israel” and noted “I'm for justice and against all those for whom the conclusion of the holocaust is hatred, cruelty and insensitivity.” Al Ahram described her as “a beautiful and petite women with intense blue eyes” who “married Mieciu Langer, a Holocaust Survivor” and when she was given the award the spokesmen noted it was partly due to how “her own background as massively affected by the Holocaust.”

Then in late July Prof. Yuri Pines wrote in an email to student about the threat of an Israeli soldier who died in a recent war having his home removed by the government that “I hope that not only the Major’s home will be destroyed, but the entire settlement, and that the settlers will all be gone with the wind… I favor a complete annihilation of the settlement enterprise…they are my enemy.” In an earlier interview the professor had said “I was... disgusted and astonished by the belief in Jews being the ‘chosen people’, in the ‘eternal Jewish rights’ and in the need of all Jews to gather in Palestine.” He encouraged Israeli soldiers to “betray” their country.
These two cases of angry and fanatical Jews who live and thrive off of condemning other Jews is illustrative of most of the shrill and angry hatred by some Jews of other Jews. This strain of anger and those who practice it should be termed “the people of illogic”. Consider a few more examples. Meir Margolit, Meretz representative on the Jerusalem City Council, noted about a new Jewish housing complex on the border with East Jerusalem “The Jews will change the Palestinian profile of east Jerusalem, and this will be an obstacle for peace in the Middle East. I say thank you to these Jews who are coming now because this is a provocation, and we will take advantage of this provocation." Note the anger against “the Jews” and the idea that this will be used as a “provocation” by Meretz in order o encourage Palestinian violence against those Jews.
Consider Professor Bill Freedman, an American immigrant to Israel, who declared that he would begin publically celebrating the Nakba, the day of mourning that Palestinians mark on Israel’s independence day, instead of Israel’s independence day. Freedman said “I can not sit on the sidelines while Israel descends into anti-democratic fascism… I am American originally, and the subject of freedom of speech is ingrained deep inside of me.” Note the anger at his adopted country which he now calls ‘fascist.’
Naomi Klien, who frequently stresses that she is a Jew, came to Israel for a book tour recently. She published her book Shock Doctrine in Hebrew through a publisher run by Jews(Andalus) that specializes in Arabic books and donated all proceeds from it to the Palestinians. She went to Bilin to throw stones at Israeli soldiers and noted “Boycott is a tactic …we’re trying to create a dynamic which was the dynamic that ultimately ended apartheid in South Africa..It’s an extraordinarily important part of Israel’s identity to be able to have the illusion of Western normalcy,” the Canadian writer and activist said. “When that is threatened, when the rock concerts don’t come, when the symphonies don’t come, when a film you really want to see doesn’t play at the Jerusalem film festival… then it starts to threaten the very idea of what the Israeli state is.”
Then there are rabbis Brian Walt, former executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights-North America and Brant Rosen of the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation in Evanston who began, along with 13 other rabbis, a “Taanit Tzedek-Jewish fast for Gaza.” The group supports dialogue with Hamas, and asks “why does Israel need other countries to agree to the nature of its existence… why should other parties affirm the Jewishness of Israel?"
On July 1 Jacques Serving and Igor Vamos withdrew their film “The Yes Men” from the Jerusalem Film Festival in solidarity with the boycott and divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel. They spoke of how they “shared with” other participants “our Jewish roots, as well as the trauma of the Holocaust, in which both our grandfathers died.” They wrote that “. In the 1980s, there was a call from the people of South Africa to artists and others to boycott that regime, and it helped end apartheid there. Today, there is a clear call for a boycott from Palestinian civil society. Obeying it is our only hope, as filmmakers and activists, of helping put pressure on the Israeli government to comply with international law.” They said “its embarrassing as Jews to hear constantly what’s going on in Israel”
Lastly there is Rosanne Barr and Josh Neuman, the former a comedian and the latter the publisher of Heeb magazine, a “jewish” magazine. Both are “Jews”. In a recent photo shoot Rosanne Barr, who recently compared Israel’s actions in gaza to Nazism, dressed up like Hitler and was photographed baking cookies in an oven (a gas oven?) and eating them. Such a stunt could not be made up and who else would publish such a thing but a Jewish magazine. Rosanne blogged about anti-semitism as her reason for doing this, but the same woman who compares Israel to nazim dressing up like the chief nazi, it all seems illogical.
What all these people share and the thousands like them is a claim that they are Jewish, a claim that they were affected by the Holocaust, a focus on Israel although usually they are not born there and an attachment to the Palestinians. But what they also share is a lack of logic. Consider Mrs. Langer. Langer is not a Holocaust survivor. She was born in Poland and fled the German invasion to Russia where her father supposedly died in Stalin’s gulag. But she married a Holocaust survivor and from that point began to claim that she was affected by the Holocaust. Now with that supposed connection to the Holocaust she moved to Israel. In Israel she became an immediate supporter of the Palestinians who she identified with. Later she then left Israel, a country she had no sympathy or identification with and went into “exile” in Germany where she then became a “German Jew” even though, in reality, she was a Polish Jew who was not a Holocaust survivor. As a “German Jew” she not peddled her Holocaust credentials more as someone who, wither her Holocaust background, was an automatic expert on human rights and “as a Jew” had a moral “obligation” to speak out about Israel. Thus the very fact of being “Jewish” means condemning Israel. That was then taken one step further by her, in her identification with the Palestinians, she supported the Iranian president in his hatred of Israel, even as he denied the Holocaust and called Israel a “nazi” state. But consider this problem. Without the Holocaust Langer could not longer be “massively affected by the Holocaust.” Illogic is the center of the Langer ideology. Without the Holocaust there are no Nazis to compare Israel to and there is no Holocaust to make Langer seem like a moral beacon who must “sound the alarm” about Israel. Without the Holocaust, in short, there is no Langer, she is just another “petite blue eyed” woman.
But Yuri Pines illogic is even more interesting. Here is a “Jewish” person who grew up in Russia and opposed Communism, supposedly. He then moved to Israel where he immediately identified with the Palestinians and joined the Communist party in Israel which he found comforting in its calls for a Jewish-Arab brotherhood. He believes the existence of Israel to be illegal and hates settlers, yet he himself settles on the land, land he believes was illegally stolen from Palestinians. He encourages the murder and annihilation of settlers and the destruction of their homes, all the while living as a settler in Israel. Furthermore he condemns the Jews for claiming to be a “chosen people”, a claim that they do not make but one foisted upon them by him. He condemns Zionism for choosing Palestine as a Jewish home and yet he makes his home in Israel, in Palestine. In Russia Yuri hated Communism so he came to Israel in order to hate it as well, condemning it for being Jewish which was the very thing that allowed him as a “Jew” to immigrate there. His Communist Palestinian-Israeli state would, of course, cancel the ‘right of return’ that allowed him to come.
Every extreme anti-Israel hater has the same illogic in their bones. Bill Freedman, an American who celebrated July 4th independence day in the U.S, moves to Israel, as a “jew”, only to then identify with the Palestinians to such an extent that he mourns their Nakba but not his newly adopted state’s independence day. Why didn’t he just move to Jordan or the Palestinian territories or stay in the U.S? Why move to a state that one feels is “fascist”?
Naomi Klein, a Canadian, comes to Israel and claims to know that it is very important for it to be “western”. Towards this end she claims to want to cancel “rock concerts” and “symphonies” from coming to Israel because she believes most Israelis value these things. But most Israelis can’t ever afford to see the expensive rock concerts in Tel Aviv and no one in Israel except the Israel-hating bourgouise left in North Tel Aviv go to “symphonies”.
The “rabbis” in the U.S who fast on behalf of Gaza are equally illogical. Of all the things that as “humanistic Jews” they might fast for Gaza should be low on the list. But there is no fast for Darfur, there is a fast for Gaza precisely because it is next to Israel. Palestinian identity therefore defines these rabbis Jewish identity.
And Jacques Serving and Igor Vamos are even more confused. Neither has a Jewish last name but both claim to be Jewish and both claim to be connected to the Holocaust. Yet while they don’t have any connection to Israel, aren’t citizens or even visitors, they claim to be “embarrassed” by its behavior and “embarrassed” because other people call it “fascist”. Consider the logic in this. A person living in a far off land suddenly decides he has some familial connection with people 5,000 miles away. He then find out other people call those people “fascist” and finds out those people he thought he had a familial connection to don’t behave nicely. He then becomes “embarrassed”? Does this seem logical? Finding out that neighbours of this family these people suddenly are embarrassed by are calling for a boycott they then boycott this people. Its twisted because Mr. Serving and Vamos never had to pretend to have a connection to Israel in the first place and the connection to the Holocaust is entirely contrived, the “Holocaust survivor” connection only informs their hatred of Israel.
Ruth Bronner, a Jerusalem based researcher has shown that in fact the self-hatred of the Jews begins with the German Jews and the Holocaust. For leading Jews such as Hannah Arendt and Victor Klemperer the Nazis “were not German.” In addition “everything Jewish was foreign.” Consider how this works. The Nazis, who sprang from the bosom of Germany, were not the “real” Germans, because that was reserved for the Arendts and Klemperers, assimilated German Jews. Yet the actual Jews, mostly Ostjuden, who were hated and disdained by the German Jews, were “foreign”. So the Nazis and the real Jews were both foreign. So how does that translate down to the present? For the German Jews and those who pretended to be German Jews like Langer (Klemperer too was born in Poland, like Rosa Luxembourg-Klemperer and Langer were also supporters of the Communist regime in East Germany and collaborated with it in its creation of the largest police state ever created) the Nazis and Jews were equally foreign and thus Israel, a Jewish state, can easily be transfigured into a Nazi state, as it has been in the language of many German Jewish intellectuals such as Hebrew University Professors Moshe Zimmerman, Zuckerman, Baruch Kimmerling and others. Thus the logic by which non-Israeli Jews object to Israel being a Jewish state has a logic, they believe that they are the true Jews and Israel, as a foreign thing, a Nazi apartheid fascist thing, is not Jewish and cannot be Jewish because to be Jewish is to be German-Jewish and therefore to be a Holocaust survivor. For these people there are two Judaisms, there are the foreign Jews and there is the self-Jews, those Jews for whome everything Jewish is foreign but who nevertheless need their Jewishness to be unique, because otherwise they fade into the larger mass of humanity and can no longer pretend to be “Jews for Justice in Palestine” or “Rabbis for Human rights”.

The White man’s two burdens
Seth J. Frantzman
August 2, 2009

In the 19th century the White man took upon himself the burden of bringing progress to the rest of the world. He brought them law and order, roads, technology and freedom from tyrannical oppression and slavery and arbitrary savagery. He brought them freedom from the chaos of borderless states and armed gangs. He brought them, in some cases, Christianity. He civilized them.

Later this burden which he had carried, of bringing light to the nations, was condemned as racist, colonialistic, Eurocentric, evil and imperialistic. So the White man gave his former colonies freedom. The people he had saved from slavery he returned them to a state of slavery, slavery to the petty dictators that arose when he left. In some cases some remnant of what he had brought remained. Rail networks, factories, systems of law, even whigs. All sorts of strange things remained behind. He left his own human stain on the environment as well. He had mixed with the locals and he had sent his own colonists abroad who he abandoned, or whome achieved their own forms of independence.
Then in the second half of the 20th century the White man became burdened once more. He became burdened with the guilt over his creation. Much like the tale of the heathen pagan who cuts down a tree and makes a god out of the very thing he himself has cut down, the White man made a god out of the savage people he had once ruled. They became perfect, unique and blameless. They became exotic and wonderful and the center of attention of white women.

The White man took on the burden of guilt and whining and self hate for his own creation. Every evil in the former colonizes became the fault of the white man and he flagellated himself, much as the Christian monks of old, for his sins. But then he did something more. He forced the poor people, the people who had themselves been the victims of the White man’s power, to also burden themselves. In the former colonies of the White man all sorts of wretched immigrants were subsumed under the category “white” and forced to carry the burden for which others ascribed guilt to themselves. In countries such as England where the wealthy aristocracy had been the leaders of empire the middle class and poorer white classes were told that they too were racist colonizers, when in fact they had had nothing to do with the project. In Eastern Europe, where it was the whites who had been colonized by Turks, the White man extended his burden, forcing Rumanian and Slavs and Greeks to feel sorry for their former colonizers. The burden was shifted to the masses and spread out. Southern Italians, relabeled whites out of convenience, were now part of those who had to be burdened. Furthermore Jews, who themselves had suffered, were told that they too much shoulder the burden. Thus did the White man burden himself twice and thus did he shift the burden to others. The question is, when will people throw off the White man’s burden once and for all?

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