The origin of the term "Jewish self-hatred" begins in the mid-nineteenth century feuding between German Orthodox Jews of the Breslau seminary and Reform Jews, secular and atheist. Each side accused the other of betraying Jewish identity, the Orthodox Jews accusing the Reform Jews of identifying more closely with German Protestantism and German nationalism than with Judaism.
Theodor Herzl appears to have introduced the phrase
"anti-Semite of Jewish origin" in his 1896 book, Der Judenstaat (The Jews' State), which launched political Nationalistic Zionism and his vision to create a secular and socialist Jewish state in the Ottoman Turkish Empire in the area referred to in the modern Christian context as "Palestine".
Herzl's phrase "
anti-Semite of Jewish origin" was referring to "
philanthropic Zionists" Jewish "
parvenu" who did not support Herzl's political project for a Jewish state.
The majority of Reform Jews of Central Europe came to be "
anti-Zionists" mainly because these thoroughly assimilated wealthy Jews desired to remain in their home countries and had no desire to leave. They felt "safe" because they were not living in fear, discomfort and misery from pogroms and acts of violence as the Jews of the
"Pale of Settlement" in the Russian Empire were.
Most Jews who wished to escape the anti-Jewish measures instituted in Russia after the assassination of Alexander the Second, on the 13th of March 1881, there existed the question where to emigrate to?
In the first half of the 19th century, no foreigners were allowed to purchase land in Palestine. This was official Ottoman policy until 1856 and in practice until 1867.
However, in 1881 the Ottoman governmental administration (the Sublime Porte) decreed that foreign Jews could immigrate to and settle anywhere within the Ottoman Empire, except in Palestine and from 1882 until their defeat in 1918, the Ottomans continuously restricted Jewish immigration and land purchases in Palestine.
In 1882, Jews were banned from their Four Holy Cities and in 1891, after briefly allowing some Jewish immigration three years earlier, the Turkish rulers tried to again close the empire to Russian Jews.
In 1892, the Ottoman government decided to prohibit the sale of land in Palestine to Jews, even if they were Ottoman citizens.
Nevertheless, during the late 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, many successful land purchases were made through organizations such as the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association (PJCA), Palestine Land Development Company and the Jewish National Fund.Jewish acquisition of land in Palestine from the 1880s until the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 by Jews. Because of this, nearly 25,000
Jews did manage to immigrate to Eretz Yisrael between 1882 and l903. This was the largest single steady influx of Jews since the Expulsion decree from
Spain.
This wave of immigration is usually described
as the First Aliyah but in fact it consisted of two main waves: l882-84 and
l890-9l.
Many of the immigrants were conspicuously Zionistic and they had come
under the influence or auspices of the Bilu and the Chovevei Zion and were workers of the land. The great
majority, however were simply refugees from Czarist oppression and where from
religious backgrounds that were intent upon spending their years in yeshivot
studying and praying. All but five percent of the new immigrants settled in the
five major towns of Yerushalim (Jerusalem), Tzfat (Safed), Hebron, Tiberius and Haifa. A few opened stores or workshops. Others
subsisted on "Chalukka" or stipends.
The Central European and German Reform Jews felt that the Jewish "mission" had evolved to become
universalistic and identified themselves as citizens of their country who happened to practice the Jewish faith.
Most Jews of Western and Central Europe had gained immensely from the largest of Napoleon Bonaparte during the First French Empire in 1806. It was Napoleon who had enacted laws that emancipated European Jews from old laws restricting them to ghettos, as well as the many laws that limited Jews' rights to property, worship, and careers.
Napoleon even convened a council, which he termed with biblical grandeur the Sanhedrin. Two famous Rabbis admired him; Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav and Rabbi Menahem Mendel of Rymanov.
In France, Jews wrote Hebrew prayers to praise Napoleon during services and called him “
Helek Tov” in Hebrew or “good portion” (bona-parte), as Ronald Schechter discussed in “
Obstinate Hebrews: Representations of Jews in France, 1715-1815.”
In contrast to the Jews of Western and Central Europe, those Jews of the Russian Empire were confined to old backward Orthodox Judaism. They were brutally oppressed and were at the mercy of their non Jewish neighbors who fell upon them at the slightest whim.
So when there was a slight relaxing of restrictions many who came from poor impoverished backgrounds took the opportunity to seek "
Enlightenment". These Jews of the "
Haschlah" movement of the 19th Century adopted the communal values expressed by Karl Marx and Fredric Engels to build a more Utopian society with Socialistic values. It was these young Zionist Jews who because of their poverty found sustenance in the development of communal farms or Kibbutzim like Kibbutz Degania in Ottoman Turkish Palestine in the beginning of the 20th century.
The Western European Jews, specifically those of the new Germanic Empire were totally confident of their assimilation acceptance into mainstream society that they did not fear the ancient anti-Semitism that lay dormant in the New German Empire.
The Reformed and "Enlightened" Jews of Europe prior to the rise of Hitler and the Holocaust, clung to the false belief that they would eventually be accepted de facto and not only de jure. Many went out of their way to appease their “fellow countrymen” by fully assimilating by converting to Christianity and marrying Christians. They raised their children as Catholics or Lutherans and they served in the German and Austrian armies in disproportionate numbers during World War I. Tens of thousands had died in that conflict, laying down their lives for the Kaiser and the Emperor. A large number of Jews rose to officer ranks, especially in the Austrian army. Thousands of Jews, in both armies, were decorated for bravery with the highest honors. Service in the armed forces, during World War I, had been a way for the Jew to gain access to greater acceptance, opportunity and to prove their loyalty to everything Germanic. None of this helped them or their offspring when the Nazis took full control over Germany and enacted the Nuremberg Laws.
In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws created two new "racial" categories: the half-Jew (Jewish Mischling first degree), and the quarter –Jew (Jewish Mischling second degree)."The word Mischling means ‘half-caste, mongrel or hybrid"
A half-Jew had two Jewish grandparents; a quarter –Jew had one. Since Nazi racial policy declared anyone of the Jewish religion a full Jew regardless of ancestry, most were by definition Christians."
In 1940, Unteroffizier Dieter Bergmann wrote to his Jewish grandmother, Elly Landesberg nee Moackrauer:
"Don’t you realize how much I’m with my whole being rooted in Germany. My life would be very sad without my homeland, without the wonderful German art, without the belief in Germany’s powerful past and the powerful future that awaits Germany. Do you think that I can tear that all out of my heart?...Don’t I also have an obligation to my parents, to my brother who showed his love to our Fatherland by dying a hero’s death on the battlefield….Someday, I want to be a German amongst Germans and no longer a second-class citizen only because my wonderful mother is Jewish."
"Under traditional Jewish law, a child born to a Jewish mother, no matter whom the father may have been, is Jewish…. I am confused…. Who is a Jew? What is a Jew? When are you a Jew? What if you do not want to be a Jew? Can we choose?" William Rabinowitz
It was the reality of vile anti-Semitism in 19th Century Europe that was revealed during the trial of Louis Dreyfus and the vicious outburst of French anti-Jewish hatred that gave birth to Theodore Herzl's Jewish Nationalistic movement -
Zionism.
It was a German Jew named Theodore Lessing, who in his 1930 book entitled
Juedischer Selbsthass “Jewish self-hatred”, who coined the term to identify hedonistic assimilated anti-Zionist Jewish academics who had wished to curry favor with their non-Jewish friends.
"A Jew who expresses self-hatred will dislike everything specifically Jewish, for he will see in it that which keeps him away from the majority for which he is longing. He will show dislike for those Jews who are outspokenly so, and will frequently indulge in self-hatred" (Kurt Lewin, Resolving Social Conflicts. p. 164).
Regarding the Phenomenon of Jewish Self-Hatred Albert Einstein is alleged to have once stated;
“The reason we Jews survive is that the cowards leave us.”
Prior to the Holocaust many Orthodox Jews of that time objected to any creation of a Jewish state in Palestine before the arrival of the Jewish messiah. Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, a leader of the
Satmar Hasidism, continue to oppose Zionism and the State of Israel on religious grounds. In his book book, VaYoel Moshe,an exposition of one Orthodox position on Zionism, based on a literal form of midrash (biblical interpretation) God and the Jewish people exchanged three oaths at the time of the Jews' exile from ancient Israel:
- That the Jewish people would not rebel against the non-Jews that ruled over them;
- That the Jewish people would not return to Israel (although individual Jews could do so);
- That God would not allow the non-Jewish world to persecute the Jews excessively.
This was the position of mainstream Orthodox Jewry until the Holocaust. However as a result of the "facts on the ground", with the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 as an existing entity many Orthodox Jews, including those identified with the Agudat Israel party, accept the validity of these oaths, but have reached a modus vivendi with the State of Israel.
Today's "ethnical Liberal Jews" of JStreet and Code Pink are American Jewish pro assimilationists and anti-Zionists who accuse Israeli "Zionist Settlers" of being "Occupiers" and followers of an "Apartheid Regime", for promoting the idea of the strong Jew using rhetoric close to that of the Anarchist anti-Semites and their pro-Palestinian Minions.
Alvin H. Rosenfeld took "a hard look at Jewish authors" in his 2006 essay "Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism". He noted that their statements have now moved on to be well beyond "legitimate criticism of Israel". The New York Times reported that the essay spotlighted the issue of when "legitimate criticism of Israel ends and antisemitic statements begin." Rosenfeld's essay considered the rhetoric that called into question Israel's "right to continued existence" to be anti-Semitic in context and its use in debates about Israel has grown more frequent and more intense in the US and the UK.
On the other-hand "Israelis" and "Right-wing Zionists / Settlers" - accused their opponents of being "self-haters", for promoting retreat from the Ancestral homelands of Judaea and Shomron as well as the image of the Jew that would perpetuate his inferior position in the modern world.
These "Left-wing Liberals" of today's political spectrum, members of the so called Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Code Pink are today's version of the Jewish "apostates" whose hatred of Jews and loathing of Judaism is even more fanatical than that of their fellow "Liberal" supporters of the pro-Palestinian movement. They express virulent anti-Zionistic opposition to the existence of the State of Israel as they attempt to marginalize and demonize it in any means possible.
Some of them argue that the Jewish settlement of "Palestine" should be reversed or that Israel should be destroyed by force.
Many of these "Enlightened Liberals" of JStreet argue that Israel as a specifically Jewish state should be replaced by a secular state in which Jews and Arabs live together.
This "Kumbaya" vision of naivete is prominent in Israel among the "
Shenkin Street Losers" society in the "Greater Tel Aviv" area, many, descendants of Central European 2nd Aliyah inherited the Stalinistic Communist Style self hating "Non" Zionistic Jew view point of assimilation. These "Left-wing Liberals" of today's political spectrum, inherited the DNA of their parents who were members of the Israeli Communist "Workers" Party (
MAPAM) of the 1950's.
This collective Jewish Self-hate and loathing for Israel and Zionism can be seen in such groups as the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) or Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) who constantly organize; pro-Palestinian gatherings, BDS activities, anti-Israel speakers on College campuses, marches or staging anti-Israel public street performances in front of businesses or offices associated with Israel and Jews.
These bamboozled members of the IDS- Israel Dementia Syndrome vent their anger at Israel whose mere existence prevents their total assimilation by making demands that Israel lift the so called ‘siege’ on Gaza, make outspoken accusations alluding to Israel as an "Apartheid Regime", accuse Israel of "Occupation" and "Genocide" while totally refusing to condemn Palestinian terror.
They attempt to enforce their beliefs with lies, distortions of truth and false accusations.They vocalize their drivel at every opportunity by whiny incoherent verbiage and pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel antics, the JVP and CP Women (Witches) in Pink epitomize Jewish self-loathing and hatred.
This is a common occurrence among those self-hating Jews who suffer from IDS -Israel Dementia Syndrome. These fools continue to share their frustrations with deniers of Israel those Tragedy Tourists of Nacbahland Losers and their world wide web of bamboozled and brainwashed minions.
