Much has been written in Israel about “self-hating” Jews, a trait attributed primarily to assimilated Jews. This is quite misleading. Max Nordau, the great Zionist, was an assimilated but not self-hating Jew. In fact, this erudite psychologist regarded self-hating Jews as “degenerates.” His 1895 work Degeneration, republished in 1968, provides insights relevant to Israel’s ruling elites.

Moral degenerates

According to Nordau, “That which nearly all degenerates lack is the sense of morality and of right and wrong” (p. 18). Ariel Sharon once said that his son Omri taught him not to think in terms of black and white – the mentality typical of moral relativists. One concomitant of moral relativism is what Nordau calls “ego-mania,” which he discusses at great length (pp. 241-372). Such is their ego-mania that degenerates are incapable of empathy. Preoccupied with themselves, they are insensitive to the feelings of others (pp. 254-259). Degenerates lack a heightened sense of outrage at the suffering of others, and they lack a sense of honor (p. 260).

Nordau finds that in many degenerates, ego-mania coexists with “self-abhorrence” (p. 20). The combination of ego-mania self-loathing, he says, is indicative of lack of balance and weakness of will, which he also attributes to degenerates (pp. 19, 22, 23, 257-261). Nordau claims that the degenerate is “incapable of correctly grasping, ordering, or elaborating into ideas and judgments the impressions of the external world …” He “surrenders himself to the perpetual obfuscation of … fugitive ideas” (p. 21). He is given to “fixed” ideas, however nebulous (p. 242). Moreover, “facts which do not please him he does not notice, or so interprets that they seem to support his delirium” (p. 31). Here Nordau anticipates Harry Stack Sullivan’s concept of “selective inattention” (so typical of Jews whose lust for peace blinds them to fourteen centuries of Arab-Islamic bellicosity).

Misrepresentation, or fabrication?

This selective inattention raises the question of whether degenerates compulsively misrepresent or consciously lie about reality. Nordau contends that they believe in the truth of their fabrications (p. 25). What is more, such is their inability to face reality that even their instinct of self-preservation, is crippled (p. 31).

This said, we are now prepared to examine the hatred of Jews and Judaism in the so-called Jewish State of Israel. I shall discuss this hatred in terms bound to provoke the hostility of many readers. My objective is to prompt Jews to face themselves and their Jewish enemies, free from the deceptive and intellectually stultifying language contemporary discourse, which labels Jews as “right-wing” or “centrist” or “left-wing,” as “Zionist” or “post-Zionist”.

Nazism

According to Martin Heidegger, reputedly one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, not National Socialism, but hatred of Judaism is the quintessence of Nazism. Heidegger, a Nazi, knew whereof he spoke.

To hate Judaism is to hate the Jewish understanding of man, of history, indeed, of the universe. This hatred of Judaism extends to hatred of Jews who, according to the Nazis, have corrupted mankind.

Now, if, as Heidegger held, the quintessence of Nazism is hatred of Judaism, then anyone who hates Judaism qualifies as a Nazi. Although this does not logically entail genocide, it bodes ill for the Jewish people. From Heidegger’s definition it follows that perhaps a billion Muslims are Nazis! And this is not all.

When Jews hate Jews

What shall we say about the hatred of Judaism by Jews? “Greater is the hatred wherewith ignoramuses [meaning semi-educated Jews] hate the scholar, than the hatred wherewith the gentiles hate Israel.”

עמי הארץ לתלמיד חכם יותר משנאה ששונאין עובדי כוכבים את ישראל.” (Pesachim 49b).

It would be outrageous, however, to call such Jews Nazis, even though the now deceased Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz had the audacity to refer to Jewish settlers in Judea and Samaria as “Judeo-Nazis.”[1] The late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin called them “degenerates.” But as Shlomo Sharan has written, “the cesspool of anti-Semitism belongs to Amos Oz, the famous (or infamous) Israeli novelist, who refers to the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria as: “A messianic cult, insensitive and cruel … a herd of … gangsters … criminals against humanity … sadists … murderers … who have sprung out of … the cellars of depravity and bestiality … in order to impose their blood-soaked and insane rituals…”[2] Surely any gentile that used such language to describe Jews would be deemed a racist, indeed, a Nazi.

Compare Hitler’s less vicious and more interesting assessment of Jews in Mein Kampf: “The Jewish people … is without any true culture, sense of ideal, or defined spatial setting. Thus the Jew lacks those qualities which define nationhood.”

The Left in Israel

Hitler’s assessment of Jews may be compared with the attitude and even the policies of Israel’s Left, specifically, Labor and Meretz. Both parties want to terminate Israel’s existence as a Jewish state and transform it into “a state of its citizens.”

Notice that the Labor-Meretz government that came to power in July 1992 deleted the words “Judaism, “Zionism,” and “Eretz Israel” from the Soldier’s Code of Ethics. That same government all but eliminated Jewish content from the public school curriculum.[3] Doesn’t this attitude imply a hatred of Judaism which Heidegger deemed the quintessence of Nazism?

But what about the Likud, which has been identified as part of the “Right”? A Likud government under Ariel Sharon not only expelled some 10,000 Jews from their homes in Gaza and northern Samaria, it also destroyed their yeshivas and synagogues. That same government demonized these stalwarts of Judaism. Had gentiles done this, would they not remind us of Nazis, who hated Jews and Judaism?

As may be seen in the Sharon government’s coalition agreement of March 3, 2003, the Likud is committed to implementing the Oslo Accords and its derivatives. But this is exactly the policy of the Left. Let us understand what this means.

Oslo

Oslo, as intended by the Left, entails the loss of Judea and Samaria, including the Old City and the Temple Mount – the precondition of establishing an Arab state on this Jewish land. But this is only the surface of the Left’s intentions. Oslo must be understood as the Left’s attempt to destroy the historical memory of the Jewish people, which is tantamount to spiritual genocide![4] So long as Israel retains Judea and Samaria, the heartland of the Jewish people, most Jews in Israel would remain bonded to the teachings of their prophets and sages, with whom Judea and Samaria are so intimately connected.

Only ponder the impact on the minds of Jewish youth if an Arab state was established in Judea and Samaria as per PM Netanyahu’s June 14, 2009 endorsement of a Palestinian state, which entails abandonment of the Temple Mount and the desecration of God’s Name. This treachery make nonsense of the Hebrew prophets and the Bible of Israel, of Jewish history and culture. Jewish beliefs and values would be devoid of life and relevance, would be of interest only to antiquarians.

But to implement Oslo and abandon Judea and Samaria is tantamount to confirming Hitler’s description about the Jewish people, a people devoid of true culture! And yet, making Judea and Samaria Judenrein is the policy of the Likud and of its offspring, Kadima, to which leading members of the Labor Party have been attracted like flies to excrement.

Kadima: forward or backward?

Is it not remarkable and unheard of in any democracy that Kadima, a party which never competed in an election, nonetheless gained control of Israel’s government? (Even the Nazi party came to power by virtue of a democratic election.) But as the present writer has often demonstrated, the State of Israel, contrary to its reputation as a democracy, is in fact a democratically elected despotism. No Israeli government has more blatantly illustrated this fact than the Sharon government, which adopted the “Disengagement Plan” of the opposition Labor Party even though that policy was rejected by an overwhelming majority of the public in the January 2003 election!

The Sharon government deployed 50,000 soldiers and police to expel the Jews from Gush Katif. And even though there was hardly any resistance to the expulsion, video clips reveal that many of the Jewish residents, mostly religious, were brutalized. Hatred of Jews and Judaism fueled this brutality.

Tragically significant is this: it was a Likud-led government that enacted and implemented the expulsion or deportation law.[5] Here we touch on one of the deep secrets of the so-called Jewish State of Israel, namely, that its ruling elites are animated by a hatred of Jews and Judaism which Heidegger deemed the essence of Nazism! The time has come to explode the myth that adorns the Likud.

Likud is not Zionist

The Likud has long been reputed as a right-wing and Zionist party. It is nothing of the kind. In fact, because of its unwarranted reputation, the Likud is far more devious and deceptive than any left-wing or post-Zionist party.

The Zionism of the Likud is based on the territorial nationalism of Gentile Europe. It has nothing to do with the “Zion” of the prophets and the Torah.

“Zion” is one of the most sacred words in the dictionary of authentic Judaism. “Zion” is the dwelling place of God’s glory. It is the Sanctuary of the Torah, the Holy City which surrounds it, the Holy Land of which Jerusalem is the eternal capital. From Zion, from Jerusalem, the word of God – the Truth – shall come forth. The Likud has nothing to do with such exalted ideas.

Conclusion: Real Enemies of Israel

Nowhere else in the world is there more Jew-hatred than in the so-called Jewish State of Israel! Accordingly, Israel’s most dangerous enemies are not the Arab successors of the Nazis, so much as the Jewish elitists tainted by a hatred of Judaism. These elitists, who parade in the name of “democracy,” are engaged in a war against religious Jews. As foreseen in The Zohar (Exodus 7b), such is their hatred of Judaism that many are aiding and abetting Israel’s genocidal enemies.□

Endnotes

[1] Leibowitz, reputedly an orthodox Jew, was in fact a moral relativist, as may be seen in his 1981 interview with the Jerusalem Post. Contrasting religion and science, he declared: “Science is a cognitive realm and its study offers [verifiable] conclusions. My religious beliefs and practices are founded on pure, unreasoned faith, and decisions stemming from it.” Moral relativism permeates the mentality of Israel’s secular elites.

[2] See Shlomo Sharan, “State and Religion in Israel: Why the Separation of State and Religion is Inappropriate for Israel,” Ariel Center for Policy Research, 1999, p. 23.

[3] See note 4 below.

[4] To be fair, however, it should be noted that the Ultra-orthodox Shas party is fully responsible for Oslo. In violation of its campaign pledge in the June 1992 election, Shas joined and actually made possible the Labor-Meretz government, which produced the treacherous 1993 Israel-PLO Agreement which still curses the Jewish state.

[5] Again to be fair, the Labor-Meretz government was made possible by the participation of United Torah Judaism, another Ultra-religious party.