Anti-Semites hold many erroneous beliefs about Jews including that they control the financial system or even the entire economy. Bizarre as such beliefs may at first sight appear, a powerful case can be made out for them. The roster of Jewish names associated with banking, particularly “international banking”, is so long that it is embarrassing: Goldman, Lehman, Loeb, Seligman, and of course Rothschild, to name but five. Jewish names are well-represented in commerce too: H. Samuel the jewellers, Amstrad (owned by Alan Sugar), and Marks & Spencer, Britain’s largest (and most respected) retailer. Several hundred names could be added to this list, but impressive though it is, it is an illusion that Jews in any sense monopolise or even dominate the economy. (1)
The anti-Semitic fantasy is that Jewish commercial hegemony is the result of a conspiracy; the reality is that the Jews are more successful in the free market largely because they are better at satisfying their customers’ demands. After all, nobody has to buy from Jews.
The fact that there are so many wealthy and successful Jews is obviously good news for them, but it is bad news for the Jewish poor, who have to a large extent been forgotten because many people don’t realise they exist. The reality is very different. Over the years, surveys have shown that the Jewish poor are with us every bit as much as the Gentile poor, and in some cases more so.
A 1974 American study revealed that the South Beach area of Miami Beach had 40,000 poor residents, four fifths of them over 65 and 85% of them Jewish. (2) Most striking though was poverty among Hassidic Jews, of all ages, largely because of the special problems their way of life creates for them in the modern world.
One of these problems is unemployment. As one writer puts it, “What insurance company wants to hire a man with side curls to sell its policies? What businessman is going to dismiss an employee at noon on Fridays so that he can hurry home to prepare for his Sabbath when he can’t even make up the time on Saturday?” (3) There are 25,000 Hassidic Jews in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Another reason there are so many poor American Jews is that they missed out on the “war on poverty”, which was aimed at other ethnic minorities in the 60s. Again, everyone – at least everyone in authority – seems to have assumed that there were no poor Jews. (4) But one does not have to travel to the United States to find poor Jews.
In Stamford Hill, the site of Britain’s largest Hassidic colony, there are large numbers of poor Jews, many of whom are unemployed. In fact, if you scratch the surface you will find poor Jews everywhere Jews live.
Another claim anti-Semites frequently make is that Jews look after their own kind. If this is meant to be an insult, then it is one that every Jew should be proud of. In fact, Jews do – on average – give more generously to charity than Gentiles, probably because charity is considered an obligation by Judaism. There
are many Jewish charities doing good work for the poor in Britain. (5)
In 1982, scholar Harold Pollins wrote, “The Jewish Welfare Board (in the early 70s) was assisting 2,500 elderly people.” And that in 1974, the Board claimed in an appeal for funds that in London and the
South-East “one in every ten Jewish families comes to us for help.” (6)
At the same time, “The Norwood Homes for Jewish children were looking after more than one thousand children.” (7) Indeed, to this day, the Norwood Homes regularly runs appeals in the Jewish Chronicle.
If Jewish charity has been generous at home, it has been even more generous abroad, particularly towards the State of Israel. Since its founding in 1948, Israel has received literally billions of dollars from the Jewish communities throughout the Diaspora and billions more in “aid” from the United States. Indeed, even before its founding, Israel was the receipt of Jewish largess; two hundred million dollars were sent to Palestine in the years 1939-48. (8)
American Jews, British Jews and Jews throughout the Diaspora continue to send enormous sums of money to Israel and to lobby their governments on its behalf. They do this out of idealism, because they believe that the State of Israel is symbolic of the struggle of the Jewish people throughout the ages and because they feel an emotional attachment to it. Any Jew who does not support Zionism fervently runs the risk of being condemned by Zionist organisations as un-Jewish or even as anti-Jewish. Zionism and Judaism are inseparable is their message. In reality though, Zionism and Judaism couldn’t be more different, for whereas Judaism is the Mother of all religions and the source of our code of morality, Zionism is a philosophy purely of self-aggrandisement, a vicious, egocentric, nationalistic movement far worse than either apartheid or Nazism. It is in fact nothing less than a well-organised and quite insidious international criminal conspiracy which is responsible for the oppression, torture and murder of the Palestinian people and the expropriation of their land.
The picture the media paints of Israel is one of a defenceless, democratic country surrounded by a swarm of bloodthirsty Arabs hell-bent on its destruction. This is a blatant lie. Israel was born in blood and almost from the beginning, the Zionists committed outrages against the largely defenceless and peaceful Palestinians with arms purchased by money raised by American Zionist groups or stolen from the British, who ruled Palestine under the Mandate. (9)
Israel has fought a series of wars against its Arab neighbours, and because the Israelis are heavily outnumbered, the Zionists and their powerful friends have been able to portray the Israelis as David to the Arabs’ Goliath. In reality though the Arabs are neither unified nor as well-armed as the Israelis, so they have never been a match for them.
Since the birth of the State of Israel, and indeed before, the Zionists have been responsible for untold and unspeakable outrages against the Palestinian people. (10) All of these outrages have been funded by the American taxpayer and by “Jewish” organisations and donations.
The Zionists have consistently ignored both international law and common humanity. One of their most heinous atrocities occurred in 1982 when they sent their murderous friends the “Christian” Phalangists into the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila where they massacred as many as a thousand defenceless people, mostly women and children. The Zionists are continuing to build settlements in the Occupied Territories in defiance of international law, and continuing to oppress and murder the Palestinian people in defiance of the Torah.
Many, many allegations of torture, rape and other ill-treatment of arbitrarily arrested political prisoners have been substantiated by human rights organisations. December 1987 saw the beginning of the intifada, the spontaneous uprising of the Palestinian people against their oppressors. This consisted mainly of young people throwing stones at soldiers and in return being shot. If this had happened in Northern Ireland the British government would have had hell to pay, it may even had been brought down. But because these atrocities were committed by Israel, nothing has ever been done about them. According to one source, 400 Palestinians were killed in the first year of the intifada and 20,000 were injured! (11)
In December 1992, the Israeli government expelled four hundred and fifteen men, literally turfed them out of their homes into the desert, merely on suspicion of their having been sympathetic to a terrorist organisation. Although there were loud protests from human rights organisations and the world’s press, the Israeli government has again done exactly as it wished with total impunity.
In May 1993, the human rights organisation Amnesty International issued a press release which revealed that since then, more than 100 Palestinians have been shot and killed by the Israeli security forces, thirty of them under the age of seventeen.
Rana Abu Tuyur, an 11 year old girl, was murdered on her way to buy milk on 19th December 1992.
Maher al-Maja’ idah, aged 8, was murdered on 20th March 1993.
Ra’ edah al-Qarra, a 13 year old girl, was murdered on 8th April 1993. (12)
This is the reality of “gallant little Israel”, an island of democracy in a sea of Arab tyranny.
Terrible as all the above is, there is something even more terrible, that is the complicity of Diaspora Jewry worldwide in these outrages against humanity, and against Judaism. When you send money to Israel, you are buying bullets for the murderers of Palestinian children. Anyone who donates money to the State of Israel has blood on his hands. And, unfortunately, this is a crime the leaders of Diaspora Jewry have been guilty of since 1948 and before.
Zionist leaders, the world’s greatest hypocrites, always try to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. If by their silence Jews condone this sort of blasphemy, then frankly they deserve to be hated, but, surprising as it may seem, the Palestinian people do not hate the Jews, they do not want to push them into the sea, all they want is basic human rights, civil liberties and justice, something the Talmud makes much of.
No one is saying that you have a duty to speak out against this sort of tyranny. The Zionist octopus can and does make life extremely unpleasant for even its mildest critics. Gentile dissenters are smeared mercilessly as anti-Semitic while Jewish “renegades” are dealt with in a number of ways. But you do have a duty not to endorse the repression of a nation and the murder of its children. Don’t send money to Israel. Don’t raise money for Zionist causes, however well-meaning. Practice charity by all means, but give to your own communities. There are thousands of poor Jews in Britain and elsewhere throughout the Diaspora who deserve your charity. The State of Israel and its murderous servants do not.
As the first edition of this pamphlet went to press, Israel was paused to start yet another war in the Middle East, this time by a murderous assault on the Lebanon. As these words are written it is estimated that up to half a million people have been forced to leave their homes. The rationalisation for this – as ever – is that Israel’s security is threatened by Arab “terrorists” and that, presumably, they must be wiped out in order to avert another “Holocaust”. At the same time, a man who was alleged to have murdered Jews in a Nazi “extermination camp” has been finally acquitted after seven years in captivity – and detained in custody to face further charges. It is ironic that nearly fifty years after the end of the Second World War, Zionist leaders still agonise over the alleged Nazi exterminations of Jews and vow never again while at the same time they are busy perpetrating a Holocaust of their own. To them, only Jewish suffering matters, only Jewish deaths are important, only Jewish Holocausts count. Hopefully, you are not of the same persuasion. Again, we appeal to you: don’t send money to Israel or give the murderous thugs who control this fascist régime an iota of moral support.
They have blood on their hands; if you do not condemn them totally and utterly, you will have blood on yours by proxy.
Shortly after the first edition of this pamphlet was mailed out, the Jewish Chronicle newspaper – the Jewish equivalent of the Sun – reported that Mike Whine, who was then running the so-called defence committee of the Board of Deputies of “British” Jews, had referred it to the Attorney General. (13) Further comment would be superflous.
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