The "self-hating Jew"

 
-- Leopold Weiss, aka Muhammad Asad (1900-1992), an Austro-Hungarian Jew who converted to Islam in his 20s.

Back in 2012, I published here a note on the curious phenomenon of the "self-hating Jew" extrapolating from an op-ed written by Giulio Meotti, a Jewish Italian journalist who has some remarkably perceptive commentary on the subject (in, for example this essay, "Why I Loathe the Israeli Elite").

My note discussed some of the broader implications for the West and for the problem of Islam.  Today, I only provide a couple of additional facts to ponder in this regard.

Consider, for example, Sidney Blumenthal, well-known journalist (and former aide to President Clinton) and his son Max, an up-and-coming author and pundit:

Sidney Blumenthal recently hosted a launch party for his son Max’s latest book, which makes extensive comparisons of Israel to Nazi Germany.

Then, referring to the recent mass murder of elderly Jews in Kansas by Frazier Glenn Cross who, it was subsequently learned, was an admirer of Max Blumenthal's self-hating Israel-bashing:

Max Blumenthal responded to the murder spree carried out by one of his admirers by attacking Israel, discussing on the hate site Mondoweiss the similarities between Zionism and Frazier Glenn Cross’s white supremacism.

Let’s try to unravel this schizophrenic mess: A self-hating Leftist Jew (Max Blumenthal) promotes murderous hatred of Israel (and his father enthusiastically supports him); a supposed “right wing” extremist murders Jews in the name of murderous hatred of Israel; the aforementioned self-hating Jew uses this mass murder to link the putatively “right wing” extremism of the killer with the Israel he murdered Jews over… This isn’t just strange bedfellows; it’s lunatics having a grotesquely tragicomic orgy.

When Hymen V. Blumenthal, le Grand-Père (i.e., Max Blumenthal’s grandfather and Sidney’s father) died in 2003, the obituary noted that:

“In lieu of flowers, contributions to the Israel Emergency Campaign-JUF…”

One wonders whether Hymen is revolving in his grave over the fact that his son and grandson are using their not inconsiderable sociopolitical influence to actively demonize Israel as “Nazi”.  On browsing through the JUF website, however, we bump uncomfortably into a dresser, credenza or dusty piano we half-expected might be there before we let in the light from the venetian blinds; such as this note by staff contributor to their news section, Aaron Cohen:

I spent two weeks in Turkey in late October with an interfaith group from Chicago, sponsored by the Niagara Foundation. I want to acknowledge and thank our host on the trip, my friend Hakan Berberoglu, for his energy and open-mindedness.

Niagara is a Chicago-based organization linked to the Fethullah Gulen movement, which stresses Islamic values according to the teachings of Gulen, and drinks from the fountain of Mohammed Jelaladin Rumi—perhaps, after King David, the greatest religious poet the world has known.


Oh dear.  Fethullah Gulen, one of the more sinister stealth jihadists of our time, showing yet again for the umpteenth time, that "stealth works" when you have the eyes of naive fools to pull the wool over.  And so, since apparently it was among the dying wishes of Grand Old Hymen Blumenthal to have proceeds to his funeral sent to JUF,

Then more recently there was a Jihad Watch report about a Jewish convert to Islam, Joseph Cohen (now Yousef al-Khattab) who has lived in Brooklyn, New York, and Israel.  According to that report Cohen is on record boasting that he watched the video of the beheading of Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl while eating popcorn, and posted a message asking Allah to punish Jewish people using “liquid drain cleaner in their faces” and by making “their fingers and brains stick on cafe walls from impact.”

The self-hating neurosis of a Blumenthal has, in Cohen, morphed into a veritable psychosis, reminiscent of the leading character in the excellent 2001 movie The Believer, about a young Jewish man in New York City whose troubled learning curve about his own Jewish faith becomes seriously deformed by a growing self-loathing, leading him to become a skinhead neo-Nazi who engages in petty terrorism against fellow Jews.

The essay by Giulio Meotti noted above includes some startling details about Jews in Israel who seem to be somewhere between the neurosis and the psychosis:

Zeev Sternhal, a leading expert on fascism, once suggested that destroying the “settlements” with IDF tanks would be salutary for the nation and advised terrorists to aim at "settlers" rather than other Israelis.

And artist Yigal Tumarkin proclaimed that “when I see the black-coated hareidim with the children they spawn I can understand the Holocaust”.