From: "wayne mcguire" <wayne.mcguire@channel1.com>
Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast
Subject: jews as a race
Date: 11 Jan 93 22:28:14 EST
Reply-To: "wayne mcguire" <wayne.mcguire@channel1.com>
Distribution: talk
Organization: Channel 1 Communications

To: Shai Guday

 SG> Nazis perceived their policies as being racial ones.  They
 SG> believed in the conecpt of a "jewish race" and cited
 SG> examples of what they perceived to be racial
 SG> characteristics. Their policies are labelled as racist for
 SG> this reason, among others.

Again, it can't be emphasized too strongly that the notion that
Jews are a race is not a malicious Nazi invention but a strident
article of faith among many Jewish leaders throughout the ages,
including Maimonides, Moses Hess (the ideological godfather of
Zionism), and Ze'ev Jabotinsky (the ideological godfather of the
branch of Zionism of which Likud is the current expression).

The Torah is filled with hundreds of references to Jews as a
racial and biological entity. Nor are these references peripheral
to Judaism: on the contrary, "the seed of Abraham" constitutes
the Torah's core myth.

That these racial myths are still an active force can be seen in
the fact that the Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard argued in a
private letter that all Jews worldwide owe their supreme
allegiance to "the race of Abraham." Apparently Pollard bought
the biological myth hook, line and sinker. I wonder how many
other Jews openly or privately share his views?

Zionism, with the Law of Return and its system of dual
citizenship, has reinforced the notion that Jews are a race.
Zionism defines a Jew as someone with a Jewish mother. That is a
biological and genetic criterion. Christians, Muslims and
Buddhists would never argue that one is a Christian, Muslim or
Buddhist because one's mother is. Being a Christian, Muslim or
Buddhist is a question of free intellectual and spiritual
affirmation, not a matter of possessing the correct genes.

The argument that anyone in the world can convert to Judaism
strikes me as somewhat bogus, even as a public relations gimmick
devised with the recognition that racial notions of Jewishness
haven't gone over very well with the non-Jewish world. In the
real world, conversions are discouraged and are few and far
between. If the entire Arab world decided to convert to Judaism
tomorrow, there would be great consternation in Judaism and the
rabbinical authorities would no doubt come up with a new gimmick
to prevent the subversion of the sacred seed.

Jewish doctrine argues that the Messiah must be a descendant of
David. Again, that is a biological and genetic criterion.

If Christianity and Islam have a more modern feel than Judaism,
it may be because they revolted against the notion that "seed"
and chosenness (in the sense of possessing a special connection
to divine wisdom) are integrally linked. Free intellectual and
personal choice may be a more viable framework for social
organization in the nuclear age than tribalism or genetic
determinism.

<knotes>

<o>#clip

<des>

     Leading Zionist ideologue Ze'ev Jabotinsky preaches the
     doctrine of Jewish racial purity. (Schoenman Hidden History
     of Zionism 1988)

<doctype>book
<author>Schoenman, Ralph
<title>The Hidden History of Zionism
<city>Santa Barbara, CA
<publisher>Veritas Press
<year>1988

<excerpt>

     It's interesting to recall, as well, that Jabotinsky located
     his colonial impulse in the doctrine of the purity of blood.
     Jabotinsky spelled this out in his "Letter on Autonomy:"

     "It is impossible for a man to become assimilated with
     people whose blood is different than his own. In order to
     become assimilated, he must change his body, he must become
     one of them, in blood. There can be no assimilation. We
     shall never allow such things as mixed marriage because the
     preservation of national integrity is impossible except by
     means of racial purity and for that purpose we shall have
     this territory where our people will constitute the racially
     pure inhabitants."

     This theme was further elaborated by Jabotinsky:

     "The source of national feeling ... lies in a man's blood
     ... in his racio-physico type and in that alone.... A man's
     spiritual outlook is primarily determined by his physical
     structure. For that reason we do not believe in spiritual
     assimilation. It is inconceivable, from the physical point
     of view, that a Jew born to a family of pure Jewish blood
     can become adapted to the spiritual outlook of a German or a
     Frenchman. He may be wholly imbued with that German fluid,
     but the nucleus of his spiritual structure will always
     remain Jewish."

     The adoption of chauvinist doctrines of racial purity and
     the logic of the blood were not confined to Jabotinsky or to
     the revisionists. The liberal philosopher, Martin Buber,
     located his Zionism equally within the framework of European
     racist doctrine:

     "The deepest layers of our being are determined by blood;
     our innermost thinking and our will are colored by it."

<excerpt pages>26

</o>
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