JUSTICE DENIED:
Thoughts on Truth, ‘Canards’ and the Marc Rich Case: Part 1 of 2
Andrew Joyce
May 10-12, 2013
When someone does you wrong, do not judge things as he interprets them or would like you to interpret them.Just see them as they are, in plain truth.Emperor Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 4: Verse 11.
In my opinion, one of the most intriguing features of the posturing of the Anti-Defamation League and other Jewish ethnic activist organizations is their frequent discussion of what they call canards. There are, I am informed, many canards ranging from allegations that the Jews killed God and mutilated communion wafers to allegations that Jews control the media and have inordinate influence in the areas of culture and politics.
For many years I had been aware of this list of canards, and one or two things had consistently bothered me about it. For a start, the many attempts by Jewish writers to lay emphasis on the importance and impact of superstition appeared to me to be little more than crude efforts to shift the blame for ethnic conflict onto Christianity and an allegedly irrational populace, and away from some of the harsher realities of resource competition in the Middle Ages. While I have no doubt that the so-called Blood Libel contributed to violent actions taken against Jews, I have never been convinced that this charge, and others like it, was in any way sufficient in itself to spark violence. Even adopting the mentality of the age, thickly populated with tales of spectres and demons, it is difficult to imagine that the animosity which arose was rooted solely in such charges.
In fact, I am convinced by the theory of respected historian and folklorist Gillian Bennett, who argues that where accusations of ritual murder were made in this period, it is more probable that they were cause celebres around which anti-Jewish feeling could crystallize, rather than the cause of anti-Semitism in the first place.[1] The posturing of Jewish ethnic activists about the potency of this particular set of canards, both in the past and the present, can be attributed to their desire to deceive others and themselves.
The second problem that I had with this fixed set of canards was that it was apparent to me that the question of whether Jews were supernatural demons, and the question of Jewish over-representation in the media or at elite universities, were clearly worlds apart - the former simply ridiculous and the latter capable of being empirically examined and, at least in theory, logically and rationally discussed.
Put simply, there was a patently obvious incongruence between, on the one hand the superstitious and extinct, and on the other, the obviously live question of Jewish influence in contemporary society. But time and again I found them bundled together on the same lists of anti-Semitic tropes, and discussed in the same breath by committed ethnic activists as if they were in any way comparable.
I believe that self-deception plays a role here, but I have also arrived at the conclusion that the old myths serve a purpose in the present by helping to dent the credibility of legitimate grievances related to Jewish influence. By say, linking a criticism of Jewish influence in the contemporary media with a centuries-old legend that Jewish males menstruate, they can dismiss the former with all the greater ease. One can see the benefit Jewish ethnic activists can derive simply by maintaining a list of such canards long past their expiry date. This should also act as a warning to those who think they help our cause by employing long-discredited charges and equally dubious sources.
Over time, organizations such as the ADL have come to jealously guard this list, and canard has achieved the remarkable feat of acting like a magic word - capable, on deployment, of making even the most blatant Jewish misdemeanor disappear. Take American Jews, who are no more loyal to Israel than a Chinaman - because to suggest otherwise would be to employ the canard of dual loyalty. Likewise, Jews have an unblemished record when it comes to matters financial - because to say otherwise would be to employ the canard of the greedy or untrustworthy Jew. Palestinian children never fall victim to Israeli incendiary devices - because to say otherwise would be to employ the canard of the Blood Libel.
In fact, any statement or image linking Jews with blood, death, or children - no matter how rooted in fact it may be - is enough to bring it within the orbit of the Blood Libel, as I demonstrated in my review of Anthony Julius treatment of English literature in Trials of the Diaspora. Since any criticism of Jews is liable to fall into at least one category in the ADL’s all-embracing canard taxonomy, we may conclude that this is an impressive and effective work of artifice.
The ADL, an organization which has long been linked to illegality, has been built around the concept of the canard - it is the focus of its work and one of the foundations of its ideology. Much of its research output and political leverage derives from annual assessments, which measure levels of anti-Semitism around the world. These assessments are themselves based on obviously unscientific surveys which monitor the level of acceptance of a series of the ADL s pre-designated yet poorly-defined canards.
One of the great contributions that Kevin Macdonald has made to our efforts to understand the thought-processes of Jewish ethnic activists, has been his emphasis on the importance of self-deception. In Separation and Its Discontents, Macdonald writes that Jewish self-deception touches a variety of issues, including personal identity, the causes and extent of anti-Semitism, the characteristics of Jews (e.g. economic success), and the role of Jews in the political and cultural process in traditional and contemporary societies (see here, p. 248).
The ADL s surveys are a typical manifestation of Jewish self-deception: these surveys ignore the great prosperity of global Jewry; they ignore the almost total lack of physical or legislative actions directed against Jews around the globe; they ask loaded or closed questions, and conclude on no credible evidence that all Jews are disliked simply for being Jews.
Take for example, the most recent ADL survey on Attitudes Towards Jews in Ten European Countries. This survey asked respondents to describe as probably true or probably false the statements 1) Jews are more loyal to Israel than to this country, 2) Jews have too much power in the business world, 3) Jews have too much power in international financial markets, 4) Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust.
How precise will the results be? What would they indicate? Is the methodology even reliable? The introduction of ambiguous terms like probably, and obviously vague value judgments like too much (how much is too much?) allow for any number of conclusions to be derived from the data. And of course, this is precisely why this methodology has been adopted.
G.A. Tobin of Brandeis University at least concedes, in an otherwise execrable article on Jewish Perceptions of Antisemitism and Antisemitic Perceptions about Jews, that studies such as those carried out by the ADL and the American Jewish Committee are littered with analytical problems, not least the fact that asking whether statements are probably true or probably false is too vague. [2] What poor critics they are of themselves.
The limitations imposed on the question simply by virtue of its structure consequently impose limits on the scope of the answers. By asking questions about Jews rather than some Jews, or better yet, influential Jews, respondents are also goaded into giving a categorical answer which, while closer to their opinions on the subject, is still not an accurate or suitably complex representation of their true thoughts on the matter.
The same approach is often employed in attacks on individuals and organizations committed to White interests who, in their attempts to raise the issue of Jewish influence, are smeared as attacking, de facto, every Jew on earth. As to whether this is a deliberate handicapping of the respondent, I refer readers to the erudite E.R. Emmet s comments in his classic Learning to Philosophize (1968), in which he states that questions that are leading or loaded are usually so by the intention of the questioner in the particular circumstances. He who asks is generally aware, to some extent at least, of the suggestive nature of what he is doing. [3] When you are trying to paint a portrait of extremism, it helps to inhibit the opportunity for a picture of reason and moderation to emerge.
Returning to the issue of the ADL s canards, what do they really tell us? Evidence indicates that positive answers to these questions, far from illustrating irrational hatred on the part of the respondent, points to a higher degree of familiarity with the facts. In relation to the question of loyalty to Israel for example, which attracted the highest number of positive responses, it is worth bearing in mind the latest report on Jewish attitudes towards Israel compiled by the UK-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research. In this report, conducted under more stringent conditions than anything produced by the ADL, it is said that the vast majority of respondents exhibit strong personal support for, and affinity with, Israel: 95% have visited the country, 90% see it as the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people, and 86% feel that Jews have a special responsibility for its survival. For 82% of surveyed Jews, Israel played a central or important role in their Jewish identities, 72% described themselves as Zionists, 87% said that although they lived in Britain, they were part of a larger Jewish Diaspora, 76% said that Israel was relevant to their day-to-day lives in Britain.
This is an astonishing degree of consensus.
Organizations like the ADL cling very tightly to the use of the word loyalty when discussing Israel, primarily because it is another one of those usefully emotive, baggage-laden terms that lends itself easily to the concept of a canard. By bringing these words into the discussion they dictate its trajectory and tone, and by constantly bringing the word loyalty to bear on the discussion of Jewish attitudes to Israel, the ADL thus forces the issue into the territory of emotional polemic. From there it is easily relegated to the fringes of acceptable political discourse, and is thus neutralized as a political issue.
However, as crude as the tactic is, it can be overcome just as crudely. Let us dispose of the term entirely. Examining the data, can we not still see that the vast majority of Jews in England hold attitudes towards Israel which are bound to be strikingly different than those held by the average non-Jewish Englishman? As someone who believes that there will necessarily be a conflict of interests on this issue, the acknowledgment by Jewish organizations that they hold fundamentally different attitudes and outlooks from non-Jews on this subject, and the public discussion of the implications of this difference, is all I seek.
Clouding the debate with talk of loyalty only serves to obfuscate an otherwise clear fact - let us then see things in plain truth and state that based on this set of evidence, Jews, as a group, differ radically from non-Jewish Whites in the way they see Israel and their role in a global diaspora. The notion of a confluence of interests so cherished and propagated by a collection of activists, who are noisier than they are intelligent, is nothing but a myth.
Not that I expect a survey of Jewish attitudes to change the mind of the ADL. To present an example of how one of these people responds when presented with the facts, consider Henry Feingold s response in his awful Jewish Power in America: Myth and Reality to documented proof of inordinate Jewish funding of both the Democrats and Republicans: Over 60 percent of the campaign funds collected by the Democratic Party and a respectable percentage of Republican campaign funds stem from Jewish sources. But precisely what this means in terms of enhancing influence is difficult to determine. [4] Come now Mr. Feingold - let s not play the goysihe kop!
How many more blatant truths, easily backed by evidence, lie behind the ADL s many canards ? And how much more clearly will the situation appear when we dispense further with the language of the ADL?
In this essay, I want to probe some more of these canards and subject the ADL s contention that they are simple fabrications to cold scrutiny. Be warned - there are canards aplenty ahead: among others we will cover Jews and money; Jewish influence in high places; ethnic networking on a global scale; the perverted use of Holocaust-derived moral capital; the manipulation of the President of the United States of America; and even the role of Israel as a haven for Jewish crooks. My chief source for the exploration that we are about to embark upon, is not, as Mr. Foxman might have you believe, some obscure decaying document from deepest Eastern Europe. We do not deal in fossils here. I prefer those sources which cannot be so easily dismissed, and for the present discussion I have selected a report authored by government investigators acting in the name of the United States Congress. House Report No. 454: Justice Undone, Clemency Decisions in the Clinton White House, United States Congressional Set, No. 14778, Volumes 1 2, concerns the elaborate Jewish campaign surrounding the Presidential pardon given to Marc Rich in 2001. Some of its revelations are remarkable. To ensure the maximum transparency of my methodology and the facts presented here, I draw the attention of all concerned that this document is publicly available, as well as being viewable online. Let’s begin.
For our purposes, the sordid story of commodities traders Marc Rich and Pincus Green began in 1983 when Federal Prosecutor Rudy Giuliani indicted both on charges of tax evasion and illegally trading with Iran. The pair, both Jewish, were indicted while in Switzerland and they refused to return to the United States. According to the authors of House Report No. 454, the Department of Energy issued clear warnings to oil resellers in the early 1980s that they were not to profit by more than $0.20 per barrel. However, according to investigators (p.158), Rich and Green made profits far in excess of that limitation but created fraudulent invoices and filed false reports to hide about $100 million in illegal profits from both DOE and the IRS. In other words, Rich and Green were engaged in classic criminal financial fraud. Most of the fake invoices were created in co-operation with West Texas Marketing, in a move described (p.157) by the authors of House Report No. 454 as clearly intended to contravene the regulations and perpetrate tax fraud against the United States.
Dear Reader, though we have just begun this journey, I regret to inform you that we have already, despite our best intentions, strayed into canard territory. Apparently, there are myriad stereotypes about Jews and money - and foremost among them is the notion that Jews tend to be dishonest in business. I have no idea how such an idea could have taken root, but fearful that this case involving Rich and Green might confirm the stereotype, I rushed to get a copy of Abraham Foxman's meticulously scholarly Jews and Money: The Story of a Stereotype. On page ninety-nine of this intellectual tour de force, the jovial Mr. Foxman assures me that Jewish religion and tradition are exceptional on the world stage for the special emphasis they give to generosity, charity, and fair economic dealings with one s fellow human beings.[5]
Exceptional he says! I breathed a sigh of relief only to realize that Mr. Foxman hadn't provided any credible argument or evidence that this was the case. In fact, his heart-warming quip didn't chime at all with the first chapter of his book, in which Foxman can name only one Jew who he deems to have been fair in matters financial - Aaron Feuerstein of Malden Mills fame. Unfortunately, the sainthood conferred upon this apparently altruistic icon by a fawning publicity machine has been capably deconstructed by Thomas Teal of Oregon State University ("Not a Fool, Not a Saint"), so I was back where I began.
Strangely, Foxman found it remarkably easy to think of Jewish businessmen who have been unfair in matters financial - listing Bernard Madoff, Michael Milken, and Ivan Boeksy in a New York minute.[6] Of course, Mr. Foxman is being more than a little frugal here (sorry, another canard - it's like trying to walk across a floor covered in mousetraps).
Now, I think it's important to state that many non-Jews have also been involved in financial fraud. However, I would posit that interesting common features of specifically Jewish instances of financial fraud are that they are normally based on the ponzi scheme model, and the amount of money concerned is usually much larger. Don't take my word for it, just look at the cases of Samuel Mouli Cohen, Scott Rothstein, Steve Cohen and Michael Steinberg, Maurice Hank Greenberg, Eric Stein, Eliyahu Weinstein, Sam Israel, Samuel D. Waksal, Martin Frankel, Simon Feldman, Jeffrey Greenstein, Solomon Dwek, Cary Feldman, Sholam Weiss, Chaim Mayer Lebovits, David and Donna Levy, Frederick D. Berg, Lou Pearlman, Andrew Rosenfeld, and Timothy Roth.
Of course, these higher profile cases don't include the thousands of smaller-scale frauds based on the classic insurance scam model, like the case of Raymond Roth, who faked his own drowning. Or Jewish doctors and pharmacists committing insurance scams; Have a look at David Silverstein and Lyudmila Shimonova, the wealthy Washington chiropractor and his partner who made fraudulent welfare claims to pad their lifestyle. Georgia chiropractor Andrew Sokol made over $6.5 million before he got caught. New Jersey chiropractor Scott Greenberg made more than half a million dollars in insurance scams before he got caught. Another New Jersey chiropractor, Daniel Dahan, almost made it to $4 million.
Going back in time doesn't help matters. There we find incidents like the Indian Silver Scandal perpetrated by the firm of Samuel and Montagu, as well as the Marconi share price fixing scandal (see also Edmund Connelly's The Culture of Deceit). I'm left with the impression that the only thing likely to get lighter around these representatives of the light unto the nations is my wallet. Of course, I'm attributing the behavior of all these individuals solely to a failure to get that memo about the special emphasis that, according to Mr. Foxman, Judaism places on fair economic dealings with one's fellow human beings.[1] Gillian Bennett, William of Norwich and the Expulsion of the Jews , Folklore 116:3, 311 314 (313).
[2] G.A. Tobin, Jewish perceptions of Antisemitism and Antisemitic perceptions of Jews, Studies in Contemporary Jewry, 1988, p.218-9.
[3] E.R. Emmet Learning to Philosophize (Penguin, 1968),p.93.
[4] H. Feingold, Jewish Power in America: Myth and Reality (Transaction Publishers, New Jersey, 2011), p.4.
[5] A. Foxman, Jews & Money: The Story of A Stereotype (Palgrave, New York), p.99.
[6] Foxman, p.39.
Part Two of Two
In the aftermath of their indictment, one of the earliest strategies that Rich, Green, and their lawyers attempted to employ was that of claiming anti-Semitism was behind the legal measures brought against them: both claimed that they had been singled out because they were Jews. And so we find ourselves finding truth behind another ‘canard’ — that Jews have used accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ to avoid scrutiny of their behavior. In our bid to extricate ourselves from this one, let’s rely on the authority of the government investigators: the authors of House Report No. 454 write (p. 157) that this argument was "false," "preposterous" and a (p. 159) "clumsy attempt to play the race card" that was so poorly executed that it was "rejected by associates like Abraham Foxman."
This is a very interesting choice of words by our helpful authors — for they imply that if this false charge had a little more credibility, the jovial Mr. Foxman would have been on it in no time. Who am I to argue? The report goes on to state that investigators discovered (p. 157) that Rich’s lawyers were in possession of a 1988 memo which clearly listed almost fifty other criminal cases brought against non-Jewish crude oil resellers in the previous year. Rich, Green, and his associates knew that their Jewishness had nothing to do with the indictment — the charge of anti-Semitism was indeed used cynically in an attempt to escape scrutiny and punishment.
Both Green and Rich remained on the F.B.I’s Ten Most Wanted list for over a decade, until the pace of Rich’s appeal effort increased in intensity around 1999. During his period of self-enforced exile, Rich made repeated efforts to extract strategic advantage from the fact his daughter was dying of leukaemia, and later in his petition to the White House he claimed that he had been prevented from returning to her bedside and from attending her funeral because of Federal prosecutors. The authors of House Report No. 454 write (p. 155) that "nothing could be further from the truth. Rich knew that if he returned he would receive bail, and that he would not be incarcerated unless convicted of crimes he had been accused of committing. He was prevented from returning to visit his dying daughter only if he refused to face the U.S justice system. Rich’s desire to have his cake and eat it too, makes it difficult to generate sympathy for him in this matter. In fact, the only possible conclusion is that Marc Rich placed his own needs over those of his daughter."
The frankly unbelievable level of cynicism seen in Rich’s behaviour towards his daughter, and the deeply immoral core of this particular aspect of the petition was by no means the only significant problem with it. Government investigators state (p. 154) that "the centrepiece of Marc Rich’s effort to obtain a Presidential pardon was the pardon petition, which was put together by the Marc Rich legal team. … The resulting document, which had a number of misrepresentations and factual inaccuracies, was a surprisingly poor effort, considering the amount of time and money that went into it."
Funny, I was thinking precisely the same thing the other day about the thousands of shoddy works of history, philosophy and junk science that take up valuable space on the shelves of our libraries. The petition consisted of over thirty double-spaced pages, the first twenty of which "attempted to cast Rich and Green in a favorable, even likeable light." The authors of House Report No. 454 comment that "these statements seem almost laughable given what the world knows about Marc Rich and Pincus Green."
The statements also resurrected, and not for the last time, the charge of anti-Semitism. Entirely absent from the petition was any reference to the fact that (p. 155) "Marc Rich’s business was built by supporting corrupt and dictatorial regimes across the world," or that "deals with Third World countries meant that Rich himself gained monopolies over commodities that often paid developing nations less than fair-market prices."
In fact, the Jewish activists behind the petition claimed that rescinding the charges on Rich would be in keeping with a ‘confluence of interests’ shared by Rich and the United States. Where have I heard that before? In the petition, signed by, among others, Abraham Foxman, it was stated: "Marc Rich has made amends. Over the past twenty years through his foundations he has donated over $100,000,000 to educational, cultural and social welfare programs. … His life has been committed to making the world a better place."
A better place for who? For Jews. According to the authors of House Report No. 454 (p. 189), almost every cent that Rich donated went to Jewish causes, Jewish politicians, and Jewish organizations. The logic of the petition then is this: Rich defrauded United States taxpayers, 97% of whom are not Jewish, to the tune of over $100 million, and illegally funded a then enemy power, but because he funnelled this illegal cash into the coffers of his own tiny ethnic group he should be free from punishment.
My, what a fine confluence of interests. I certainly love it when my tax dollars fund Birthright Israel! According to the authors of House Report No.454 (p. 167), Mr. Foxman’s letter was "one of the most prominently displayed in the petition," something they attributed to the fact that "Rich has given the ADL a total of $250,000 since he fled the country in 1983." There’s that confluence of interests again — you see, all that illegal cash can now support the ADL’s efforts to teach your children that they’re bigots.
Although Foxman was to deny any quid pro quo in his involvement in the petition, government investigators wrote (p. 168): "Notwithstanding Foxman’s denial of quid pro quo, the payment to the ADL raises the general question of Marc Rich’s tactics in drumming up support for his pardon petition."
What they mean by this is that Rich brought the full weight of Jewish influence to bear on his case. Among those organizations that were mobilized, "Marc Rich attempted to secure the assistance of the American Jewish Commmittee (AJC) with the promise of a large contribution." Rich also "pledged $5 million to Birthright Israel" an organization run by Rich’s "long-time friend," and fellow crook, Michael Steinhardt. Steinhardt subsequently "wrote a letter that was included in the petition." The authors of House Report No.454 write that: "As with the public statements of the ADL and the AJC, a spokesman for Birthright Israel denied any quid pro quo relating to the $5 million pledge." True exemplars of this impeccably moral group!
Further investigations revealed (p. 168) that following more cash donations, "yet another person with a connection to Birthright Israel also wrote a letter on behalf of Marc Rich. Rabbi Irving Greenberg, Chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Council, wrote a letter on Holocaust Museum Council letterhead in favor of Marc Rich." Greenberg was also President of the Jewish Life Network, "an organization that is a partner with Birthright Israel."
Israeli support came following Rich’s contribution of $25,000 to Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert’s 1993 campaign. Olmert later wrote (p. 169) "a letter to President Clinton that was included in the petition." The pardon petition (p. 189) contained letters from the Israeli minister for Foreign Affairs, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, the speaker of the Knesset, a former Minister for Finance, a former Minister for Justice, the Israeli Government Secretary, and a former Director of Mossad. Attempts were also made (p. 190) to enrol Shimon Peres, Israel Singer (Secretary General of the World Jewish Congress), and Edgar Bronfman (President of the World Jewish Congress). Most of the legwork in getting all these figures on board was done by Avner Azulay, whom the authors of House Report No.454 describe (p. 196) as a "former high-ranking Mossad agent."
Page 171 of the report shows organized international Jewry in all its glory, as letters in support of Rich poured in from the Chief Rabbi of France and the President of the Jewish Committee of Madrid. Both made frequent mention of Rich’s "philanthropy" but no mention of the exclusively Jewish nature of his philanthropy. I don’t know about you, but I just love it when the Chief Rabbi of France gets a say in a legal case pertaining to my tax dollars.
I also sympathize with the Spaniards. The authors of House No.454 state (195) that King Juan Carlos of Spain even wrote letter for Rich. They add that "It is unclear why the King took this action on Rich’s behalf. It is possible that the King was motivated by Rich’s support of Madrid’s Jewish community."
Let’s simplify — King Juan Carlos was motivated by Madrid’s Jewish community, and the authors of House Report No.454 add (p. 195) that the king had also been lobbied by Israeli Foreign Minister, Shlomo Ben Ami. Let’s simplify it further — a group of Jews whistled and the King of Spain rolled over. Unless of course there’s evidence that King Juan Carlos was acting due to another ‘confluence of interests.’
It gets better. Part of the petition was a tax analysis from two academics which ‘proved’ that Rich hadn’t actually committed fraud at all. This particular piece of fiscal sleight of hand was (p. 156) produced by the delightfully named but now both sadly deceased Professors Martin Ginsburg and Bernard Wolfman. You can safely bet your last cent these gentlemen weren’t Episcopalians.
On page 160 of House Report No.454, the authors write that although the petition contained pleading claims that Ginsburg and Wolfman were "independent," this was misleading. The authors write (p. 160): "Professor Ginsburg, husband of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was paid $66,199 for his work on the Rich case." Wolfman was paid $30,754, after being hired as a consultant by one of Rich’s firms and paid between $300 and $400 per hour. Nor did they come to their conclusions independently of each other — "rather they worked jointly." The authors add (161) that "Ginsburg and Wolfman sold their names to the highest bidder." Of course, none of this has been mentioned in the gushing obituaries afforded to both men (see here and here). Wolfson and Ginsburg weren’t the only ones on the take.
Between 1993 and 2000 Denise Rich, ex-wife of Marc Rich, gave over $1 million to the Democrats (p. 175), and between 1998 and 2000 she gave $450,000 to the Clinton Library (p. 176). Ehud Barak led a lobbying effort to Clinton in 2000, and claimed (pp. 188, 643) in a phone call to the President on December 11, 2000 that Rich was guilty only of "violating certain rules of the game." Oh, is this the game in which U.S. taxpayers were illegally deprived of over $100 million, and only Israel and diaspora Jewry benefited? Gee I love that game, can we play again?
Once the petition was lodged, Jewish America’s much-lauded ‘moral authority’ was brought to bear on the White House. Some wise-guy had the idea that Elie Wiesel possessed the "the moral authority" to present Rich’s case. Wiesel (p. 193) claimed to investigators that he refused these advances, not because of Rich’s obvious guilt but because "he had already written a letter requesting a commutation of Jonathan Pollard’s sentence and … felt that he could not make another request." Didn’t want to use up all that ‘moral authority’ in one go?
Government investigators subsequently found out that Wiesel was being frugal with the truth (not for the first time in his life I suspect), and that (pp. 193–4) "while this seemingly would have been the end of Wiesel’s involvement in the Rich pardon campaign, there is evidence that it was not. Several e-mails indicate that Wiesel may have lobbied the White House", including at meetings, and in phone calls. This ‘moral authority,’ together with all the letters, the petition, and the ‘tax analysis’ were added to the once more resurrected claim of anti-Semitism. The authors of House Report No. 454 write (p. 159) that notes from Rich’s lawyer suggest "it is possible that he raised the spectre of anti-Semitism in his last-minute appeal to the President on January 19, 2001. … It is unfortunate the President found Rich’s arguments believable — when in fact they were completely inaccurate — a fact the President could have discovered with minimal due diligence."
Clinton caved in; the pardon was granted. Facing an outcry due to the obvious injustice of what had taken place, the day after the pardon Clinton wrote in a New York Times op-ed that he had acted under pressure "from many present and former high-ranking Israeli officials of both major political parties and leaders of Jewish communities in America and Europe." For this openness, Clinton was accused by outraged Jewish leaders of "whipping up anti-Semitism" and "scapegoating" Jews.
Wiesel was partly telling the truth. A miserable Jonathan Pollard told investigators (p. 191) from his cell that he felt Marc Rich’s pardon came at his expense. Pollard is reported as saying ""I should have waved a dollar bill in front of them and convinced them that I had a lot of money. This is the depths to which we have sunk as a nation, that an agent has to bribe his own government to rescue him. This is how low we have sunk." Of course, Mr. Pollard could have saved himself a lot of trouble by enlightening himself with a subscription to The Occidental Quarterly prior to his act of high treason.
So what have we learned? Well, it’s clear that the ‘moral authority’ of these organizations is a fable. We need not condemn every Jew, to demonstrate that the many Jewish figures described here constitute an extremely wealthy and cohesive criminal network of international dimensions that has and will bring immeasurable harm.
Notice that the Jews aiding Marc Rich are not marginal, isolated individuals; they are Jewish elites—at the center of Jewish life in Israel and the Diaspora. Financial crimes are morally acceptable within the Jewish community, as indicated by the fact that Jews like Marc Rich, Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken are pillars in the Jewish community and major donors to Jewish charities. How many Christian Zionist dupes would be swayed by information that the state of Israel stepped in to help a wealthy ethnic brother because he greased their palms; for them the interests of Israel come first and the interests of American taxpayers come beneath those of a bullfrog.
The stance of the ADL is riddled with schizophrenic contradictions which sane and informed men find intellectually offensive. During a recent prolonged rant in Abraham Foxman's Jews & Money: The Story of a Stereotype, the ADL director claims that Jews are just another ethnic minority,[1] and yet in the same chapter he writes:
"the Jewish federation movement makes up one of the ten largest charitable organizations in the United States. Bear in mind that Jews constitute just under 2 percent of the total population of the country"[2]; "Jewish foundations represent almost 18 percent of the total 39,000 private foundations identified by the Foundation Centre - another enormous disproportion in view of the tiny size of the Jewish population" [3]; "Jews have enjoyed success in the business world out of proportion to their share of the population" [4]; and that in relation to Jews in the media and Hollywood "the idea that Jews are unusually successful does have a grain of truth." [5]
Just a grain Mr. Foxman? While we're at it we may as well call the Sahara a sandbox, and Titanic a bath toy.
According to Mr. Foxman and the ADL, Jews are at one and the same time just another ethnic minority and nothing at all like any other ethnic minority. The rules of the game are a little different for them. You might say they are equal - just a little more equal than the rest of us.
Take care in your interpretation of this puzzle wrapped inside an enigma, for your interpretation may have harmful potential, and this potential is another bargaining chip on which our peaceful paupers like to trade. Conceptually, this contradiction is similar to the practice of Jewish organizations which exile from the community those few of their ethnic brothers and sisters who may see fit to criticize the Jewish way of life or the actions of the Israeli government. Eliminating the ideological outsiders leaves a more or less ideologically homogenous rump. But woe to the man who implies that all Jews are alike. Enforcing homogeneity but criticizing the acknowledgment of that homogeneity go hand in hand for these dreamers. You might say that organized Jewry is diverse - just differently diverse from the rest of us. I have no patience for such deceivers and self-deceivers; their deception and self-deception comes at the expense of my people.
At the conclusion of Mr. Foxman’s epic tome, he almost plagiarises Kevin Macdonald when he writes:
We all have that grain of tribal loyalty inside us that makes us care just that little bit more about people like us than about those others. Maybe it has evolutionary roots: There may have been adaptive value to behaviors that increased the survival of my genes as opposed to those of the people in the next valley. & It's usually expressed in such forms as our love for a culture and traditions we find familiar and beautiful, the pride we feel about accomplishments by members of our group, and the desire to see what is best about our heritage preserved and extended into future generations.
Hear, hear Mr. Foxman, but I'm compelled to recall that you and your organizations, pockets bulging with finances of dubious origin, have never shown the slightest tolerance for our desire to preserve our heritage and our people as well.
I’ll close, as I began, with some words from the noble Marcus Aurelius:
If someone can prove me wrong and show me my mistake in any thought or action, I shall gladly change. I seek the truth, which never harmed anyone: to harm is to persist in one s self-deception and ignorance.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Six, Verse 21.
[1] Foxman,p.89
[2] Ibid, p.90.
[3] Ibid, p.91
[4] Ibid, p.93.
[5] Ibid, p.97.
[6] Ibid, p.232.
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2013/05/justice-denied-thoughts-on-truth-canards-and-the-marc-rich-case-part-one-of-two/
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2013/05/justice-denied-thoughts-on-truth-canardsand-the-marc-rich-case-part-two-of-two/