Thoughts About Shalom Freedman's "Life as Creation" and About the Root Causes of Antisemitism

Shalom Freedman's 1993 book Life as Creation: A Jewish Way of Thinking About the World presents 780 aphorisms divided into six sections, with each section containing 10 chapters of 13 aphorisms each. The sections are "Mankind in Creation," "Jewish Creation," "God and Creation," "Creation and Everyday Moral Life," "Creation and the Life of the Mind," and "Literary Creation." In "An Additional Word to the Reader" (p. xv), Freedman explains, "The reader can begin anywhere, with any subject or entry that is of interest. But a line of argument does run through the work, and therefore the reader is advised to attempt a consecutive reading. Wisdom literature of this type does not lead itself to swift-paced, once-over-lightly reading. This is the kind of work that challenges the reader to interpretation and rereading."

The "line of argument" is that God created humans to emulate Him by creating freely. Humans can create in several ways, including partnering with God in realizing "the divine plan for the world," creating in the moral realm by "doing justice and mercy," and producing great creative works in philosophy, literature, science, and other fields. Part of the divine plan requires believing that "present evil is transient and that, of all evils that have been, there will come a compensation in greater redemption for the injured innocent" (p. 4).

It is inspiring to believe that we humans can partner with God both by "doing justice and mercy" and by using our individual gifts to create works of enduring value, but it is disturbing and puzzling that evil is so prevalent, even if we believe (or merely hope) that evil is "transient."

"Transient" means something much different to God--who by definition exists outside the boundaries of time and space--than it does to humans. Antisemitism is an evil that has existed for millennia, and has become more prevalent in recent years. The virulent persistence of antisemitism is as disturbing as the survival of the Jewish people against long odds is remarkable; antisemitism does not seem transient in Auschwitz' gas chambers, nor does it seem transient to those who narrowly escaped such a fate but mourn the loss of family members and friends. 

In chapter 17 of the "Jewish Creation" section, Freedman provides 13 aphorisms under the heading "Jewish Creation and Hatred of the Jews":

1 God chose the Jews even though He knew this would make them the most hated people in the history of mankind. No people wants to know that it is less valued, less loved, than another.

2 Jewish physical weakness, combined with spiritual greatness and later intellectual distinction, created the conditions by which evil hatred could lead to repeated efforts at the Jews' physical destruction.

3 The hatred and resentment the Jews experienced from other peoples helped them to create mechanisms of survival and adaptability that frequently worked. But there was no way to use these devices to escape from the systematic destruction devised for them by the European people, which prided itself on being supreme in all things--and was surely supreme in one--the doing of evil.

4 Christianity and Islam each has its own separate tradition of repaying with evil those who provided them with their first understanding of God.

5 The price the Jews have had to pay for being loved so strongly by God has been being hated so strongly by humanity.

6 It is natural to resent those who are more successful than us, those who do better than us. But the wish to destroy them comes only when we sense they are depriving us of our own world. Thus, the closer the Jews came to being at the center of creation in various European societies, the more strongly they were hated.

7 The Christian son accuses the Jewish father of having tried to murder him so he can justify his own desire to be rid of the father's conscience.

8 Not only do other peoples envy the Jews, the Jews also envy other peoples. This has played a part in Jewish creation, in the Jewish learning to take upon themselves the character of other peoples. Time and again the Jews have known how to imitate and become the others in the effort to belong to worlds they eventually discovered were not their own.

9 Most peoples consider themselves chosen at some point in their history. How difficult it must be for a people to relate to a prior claim of chosenness, especially one based not on position or power but on closeness to God.

10 The Christians envied the Jews for what no people in antiquity would have thought to envy: their suffering.

11 Envy of the Jews appears to be a constant theme of human history that will not disappear until the messianic age when all know God is One.

12 The projection of one's own forbidden impulses upon the scapegoat is the simple psychological device of much hatred of the Jews. The Jews are frequently accused of everything the others inwardly know is wrong with themselves.

13 The effects of others' hatred of the Jews is also expressed in desperate efforts on the part of Jews to re-create themselves as others. In other words, hatred of the Jews also leads to that cowardly kind of Jewish response known as assimilation, the sacrifice of one's true self for a promised self that will never be completely real.  

It must be emphasized that the Jewish belief in being the "Chosen People"--which is referenced in Freedman's first aphorism--is a very misunderstood and misrepresented concept; this has nothing to do with Jews believing themselves to be superior or believing non-Jews to be inferior: it is a core Jewish belief that the Jewish people were chosen by God to have additional responsibilities involving not only the observance of 613 Biblical commandments (non-Jews are only bound by the seven Noahide laws) but also being a "light unto the nations" (in the words of the prophet Isaiah).

Freedman's first aphorism does not explain antisemitism other than suggesting that antisemitism's existence is somehow part of the divine plan, without indicating why antisemitism is a necessary part of the divine plan. 

It is true, as suggested by the second aphorism, that the combination of collective Jewish physical weakness and significant spiritual and intellectual achievements by Jews created the necessary preconditions for antisemitism to develop and spread. 

Freedman's third aphorism is correct that during nearly 2000 years of exile the Jewish people developed many different collective and individual survival techniques; it is a cruel paradox that the very techniques that were at least somewhat successful for so many centuries were woefully inadequate--and, in fact, counterproductive--in the face of the Nazis' overwhelming technological power paired with genocidal intent. Enemies of the Jewish people prior to the Nazis did not possess the technological means to kill every Jew, and most of those enemies preferred to degrade and terrorize Jews as opposed to annihilating the Jewish people. Negotiation, ransom paying, and acceptance of discriminatory laws without overt rebellion enabled the Jewish people to survive two millennia of Christian antisemitism rooted in the notion that the Jews should suffer "perpetual servitude" but not total annihilation--but the only way to survive the Nazis was to escape or fight, because any form of accommodation merely delayed the inexorable genocide.

Freedman's fourth aphorism highlights the sad reality that Christianity and Islam--two religions with deep Jewish roots--both have long histories of virulent antisemitism (and those histories have not ended, particularly regarding Muslims but also regarding significant numbers of Christians as well).

The fifth aphorism rephrases the first aphorism.

The sixth aphorism addresses the heart of the matter: a major root cause of antisemitism is envy.

The seventh aphorism speaks a blunt truth that is painful for Christians of good conscience to hear, but it must be stated: organized Christianity (in varied forms, including but not limited to the Catholic Church and various Protestant denominations) promoted (and, in many instances, still promotes) antisemitism based on the Christ-killer slander. The historical reality is that the Jew known as Jesus of Nazareth was executed by Roman authorities, not by the Jewish people who were occupied and oppressed by the Romans. Jews could not order Romans to execute or not execute someone in the Roman Empire, just like Jews could not order Nazis to execute or not execute someone; to suggest otherwise is bizarre and ahistorical.

The eighth aphorism delves into the psychology of Jewish people responding to antisemitism by trying to be more like non-Jewish people, without realizing that antisemites will never let Jews assimilate; some of the worst outbreaks of antisemitic violence take place against Jewish communities with high rates of assimilation/secularization. Nazi Germany is the most obvious example, but it should also be noted that a large number of the victims of Hamas' October 7, 2023 mass casualty terrorist attack were Leftist, assimilated Jews.

The ninth aphorism alludes to envy of the Jewish people because of the Jewish people's perceived or actual closeness to God, echoing and amplifying the sixth aphorism; one of the root causes of antisemitism is the belief/fear that Jews are special.

The 10th and 11th aphorisms discuss suffering and envy. Christianity focuses a lot on suffering--starting with Jesus' agonizing death on the cross--and it is not surprising that collectively Christians envy Jewish suffering, because Jesus is supposed to be the supreme example of suffering but history shows that the Jewish people have suffered (and continue to suffer) immensely. 

We often see examples of the 12th aphorism in both traditional media outlets and social media platforms, as Israel's enemies who attempt genocide against the Jewish people falsely accuse Israel of committing genocide. 

The 13th aphorism reinforces the eighth aphorism and summarizes the psychological impact of antisemitism: many Jews respond to relentless hatred by suppressing or denying their identity.

Much has been written and said about the underlying causes of antisemitism. Freedman's aphorisms attribute antisemitism to a combination of collective Jewish physical weakness, envy, and projection of one's own forbidden impulses. Antisemitism is often described as a puzzling or even mystical phenomenon, but antisemitism can be understood in simple terms: antisemitism is rooted in a combination of fear and shame. Antisemites simultaneously reject Jewish values and feel shame after rejecting those values, as I explained in The Fear and Shame at the Heart of Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism:

Freud once wrote that Jews are not really hated because of the Christian accusation that the Jews killed God but rather because the Jews created the concept of God by giving humanity the monotheistic idea. Freud argued that, subconsciously, people prefer to live like cave dwellers--without any strictly defined moral code--and thus people do not want to hear about a God who admonishes that you shall not kill, you shall not steal, you shall not covet. Freud believed that Jews are hated for being the messengers of God's moral code.

Adolf Hitler's private conversations with associates, as reported in Hermann Rauschning's book The Voice of Destruction and quoted in Adam A. Winston's article "Criteria for the Distribution of Unclaimed Assets" (published in the September/October 1999 issue of Midstream), support and amplify the viewpoint of antisemitism functioning as a rejection of Jewish values. Hitler is quoted is saying the following:

"Conscience is a Jewish invention. It is a blemish, like circumcision."

"Providence has ordained that I should be the greatest liberator of humanity. I am freeing men from the restraints of an intelligence that has taken charge: from the dirty and degraded self-mortifications called conscience and morality, and from the demands of a freedom and personal independence, which only a few can bear."

"Thou shalt not steal? Wrong! All life is theft."

"Against the so-called Ten Commandments, against them we are fighting."

It is worth noting in this context that even when Nazi Germany was losing on the battlefield to the Allies, Hitler refused to divert the resources being used to exterminate the Jews to bolster the war effort; for Hitler, killing as many Jews as possible was more important than winning the war on the battlefield. 

This is an example of why the scapegoat theory does not adequately explain the persistence and virulence of antisemitism. Yes, the Jewish people are often used as scapegoats for a host of ills, but that is a result of antisemitism and not the root cause of antisemitism. As Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin put it in their book Why the Jews?, "Antisemitism was not a vehicle for the Nazis; Nazism was a vehicle for antisemitism" (p. 74).

The fear aspect of antisemitism stems from the fact that the Jewish people and Jewish history are not normal. The Jewish people have not merely survived in the face of overwhelming obstacles; they have thrived, making significant contributions to art, literature, science, and many other human endeavors. How is it possible for a tiny, persecuted minority to not only produce so many successful individuals but also to rebuild their homeland nearly two millennia after being exiled? The powerful Roman Empire destroyed the Second Jewish Commonwealth, but today the State of Israel lives long after the Roman Empire disappeared--and, unlike the rebirth of Jewish nationhood, the Roman Empire will never rise again. 

The Leftist version of history that has conquered large swathes of academia--thanks in no small part to Qatari funding--classifies individuals and nations as either "oppressors/victimizers" or as "oppressed/victims," with those categories strictly defined, usually by race; the Jewish people do not fit neatly into this paradigm, and Israel's rebirth in the 20th century refutes the notion that it is impossible for oppressed people to overcome their dire circumstances, forcing the Left to either reject their preferred narratives or else classify Jews as "oppressors/victimizers." Tragically--for both Jews and for those who are really being oppressed but are ignored as the Left relentlessly slanders Jews and Israel--the Left has chosen to classify Jews and Israel as "oppressors." I discussed this in The Fear and Shame at the Heart of Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism: 

Israel has accomplished so much in just a few decades despite being surrounded by large, hostile neighbors who have repeatedly attacked Israel with the stated goal of destroying Israel--and several of the countries in the region still actively finance and foment terrorist attacks against Israel and against Jews around the world. 

Why has Israel been so spectacularly successful while so many other former British colonies are mired in poverty and ruled by totalitarian regimes? Israel's neighbors--and developing countries around the world--too often do not look at Israel as a role model, but rather as a success story that they fear, and that makes them feel ashamed at their own failures. As a result, many have decided to demonize Israel and to discount Israel as an illegitimate country whose successes are not the product of hard work and ingenuity. Israel has become the personification of the Jew in the world. The irrational fears that many people have about the disproportionate success of individual Jews have now also been directed against the disproportionate success of the Jewish State. 

In the February 1988 issue of Commentary, Hilton Kramer noted that deep-seated hostility toward Israel often emanates from "the political culture of the international Left. It is based on, among other things, that lethal combination of guilt, fear, cynicism, and sentimentality toward the Third World that is now one of the most destructive and disabling issues in world affairs--destructive and disabling, that is, to the democracies (It is a boon, of course, to totalitarianism.). As a model of post-colonial democratic government, Israel is a standing reproach to the ongoing political debacle of the Third World. That isn't the only reason Israel has become a target of the international Left, but it is one of the primary reasons."

It is not a coincidence that antisemitism and anti-Zionism are connected to anti-American sentiments, because those who hate America are often jealous of America in much the same fashion that those who hate Jews and/or Israel are jealous of Jews and/or Israel: "Jealousy is a powerful human emotion. Hatred is a tremendous emotional release. Blame is cathartic. At this time in history, the United States is humane, free, and powerful. The Arab Islamic world is just the opposite. Our success is infuriating to people who value their own culture, who love their traditions even though they no longer work, and who look at our enormous success with inchoate envy...In the future, we'll get around to recognizing the neuroses, if not psychoses, that are far too prevalent within the Arabian heartland of the Islamic world...The transition from women as property to women as full participants in society has been the greatest revolution in human history, and its reverberations will be felt for centuries. Repressive cultures are horrified by it because it calls into question their most fundamental biological, sociological, and religious ideas. However, the oppression of women anywhere is not only a human rights violation, it's a suicide pact with the future" (Ralph Peters, "The Shah Always Falls," interviewed by Fredric Smoler in the February/March 2003 issue of American Heritage).

It has become fashionable for antisemites to assert that they only hate Zionists, not Jews, but, as I noted in Anti-Zionism is Antisemitism, "It is important to emphasize that Anti-Zionism is Indistinguishable From Antisemitism Because Israel is the Jewish Homeland. It is absurd to assert that a person can hate Israel and deny Israel's right to exist but not hate Jews. Further, the denial of a nation's right to exist is a unique form of hatred directed only at the Jewish State and not at any other nation no matter how heinous that nation's actions."

Antisemitism threatens not only Jews but it also threatens the stability of the nations that foment such hatred. Nations that welcome Jews tend to be free and prosperous, but nations that persecute Jews tend to be tyrannical and unsuccessful (or heading in those directions, away from freedom and prosperity, as their persecution of Jews increases); it is not pleasant for anyone to live in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, or any nation shackled by the harsh dictates of Sharia. 

Therefore, antisemitism is not merely a Jewish problem; it is a problem for humanity--perhaps humanity's ultimate problem if one considers that disproportionate energy fueling antisemitism at the United Nations, in academia, in media outlets, and in the streets. This hateful, wasted energy could be channeled toward addressing suffering around the world that is ignored or minimized because it does not fit the convenient narrative of "If it's Jews, it's news." If I were a Nigerian Christian or a Uyghur Muslim in China, I would be very disheartened that my real suffering is ignored while false genocide accusations are hurled at Israel.

Appeasement and Isolationism Are Dangerously Misguided Ideologies

Speaking about the infamous 1938 Munich Agreement in which British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain agreed to give part of Czechoslovakia (the Sudetenland) to Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany, Otto Strasser--an early member of the Nazi party--told historian John Toland in the 1970s, "He (Hitler) would have broken every promise, every signature, because these are not obligations for him. He had no moral connections. He was the most amoral man I ever have seen. And I believe this was one of the reasons for his success."

Chamberlain's inability or unwillingness to recognize Hitler's true nature set the world on a path toward oblivion. Chamberlain declared that he had delivered "peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time." Winston Churchill, who later became Prime Minister and helped lead the Allies to victory over Nazi Germany during World War II, retorted, "You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war."

The main reason that history repeats itself is that very few people learn and apply the lessons that history teaches. One might think that the Jewish people, who suffered so greatly during the Holocaust in the wake of Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler, would have learned the lesson that appeasement is not an effective policy toward countries and terrorist groups that openly state their genocidal goals, but--sadly--Israel has often chosen dishonor over war. For example, in 2011, Israel foolishly released more than 1000 terrorists in exchange for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli solider illegally kidnapped and held captive by the terrorist group Hamas. More than a decade later, Hamas is still launching terrorist attacks not just against Israel but against Jews worldwide. Israel's appeasement strengthened and emboldened Hamas, other terrorist groups, and Hamas' sponsor state Iran.

Many world leaders have been far too slow to understand or accept the danger posed by Vladimir Putin, whose grandiose goal to build a Russian Empire is very similar to Hitler's goal to conquer Germany's neighbors to provide lebensraum ("living room") for the so-called master Aryan race.

On March 10, 2015, I wrote Garry Kasparov Lambastes West's "Weak" Response to Vladimir Putin's Tyranny, quoting Kasparov's warning about the dangers by Putin: 

We have been facing this problem for quite a while. And so many mistakes have been made. These mistakes created an impression for Putin and his cronies and also his clients like Assad and others in the world. Iranian Ayatollahs. The West is weak. The West is not willing to get engaged. So the West will give them anything they want. Before we talk about the right strategy, what the leaders of the free world must do, let's talk about what they must not do. You cannot project weakness. Yes, I know that America will never consider seriously boots on the ground in Ukraine. Why are you talking about it? Why do you say publicly that you will not do that?

I concluded my article with these prophetic words: 

Hitler took whatever he could take through negotiation and then sought to conquer the rest through war. Putin's Russia and Iran's jihadist regime are following that same blueprint today. Hitler did not have legitimate grievances nor could he be reasoned with or placated. Hitler had strategic goals and he made those goals very clear in his writings and in his speeches. The world was foolish to ignore his words.

When will the West wake up to the dangers posed by today's tyrants, who also speak quite clearly about their ultimate goals? When will a modern-day Winston Churchill or Harry Truman emerge?

Neville Chamberlain was wrong about Adolf Hitler and Chamberlain's mistakes precipitated World War II. President Obama is wrong now about Putin's Russia and about Iran. We can only hope that the consequences of President Obama's mistakes will not be as severe. 

We now see those consequences every day in the form of headlines about Russia's invasion of Ukraine, resulting in immense suffering and loss of life. President Joe Biden, who funds the PLO's "Pay for Slay" program to kill Jews and whose defining moment is the triumph of the Taliban after his retreat from Afghanistan, is unlikely to enact policies to mitigate those consequences and curb the impact of Putin's tyranny. 

Appeasement and isolationism are two sides of the same tarnished coin. The United States should not appease tyrannical regimes, nor should the United States pretend that what happens in other parts of the world is of no consequence to the American people. Declaring that "war is not the answer" may sound great, but the reality is that in many instances there is not a peaceful way to deal with tyrannical regimes. Non-violent non-cooperation is a very effective strategy for dealing with injustices within a free, open society: it worked for Mahatma Gandhi's followers in opposition to the British, and it worked for Dr. Martin Luther King's followers in opposition to American discrimination against Black people. However, as I noted in Violence, Non-Violent Non-Cooperation, and Human Nature, "Gandhi's public assertion that European Jewry should accept without resistance whatever fate Hitler's executioners delivered is not only absurd but it is obscene. As Rabbi Shmuley Boteach explains, 'What Gandhi failed to realize is that when dealing with moral or at least somewhat humane governments, nonviolent resistance has its place. But when dealing with murderous barbarians such as ISIS or the Nazis, no level of nonviolent resistance will ever change their minds. Gandhi's philosophy would only guarantee that they take over the world.'"

Appeasement was a fatally flawed strategy in 1938, and it remains a fatally flawed strategy today. War is awful, but--as Churchill sagely noted--dishonor followed by war is even worse. If Putin's Russia, Iran, and other tyrannical regimes are not stopped today, it will become more costly (both in terms of human suffering and money) to stop them later.

"In Our Own Hands" Tells the Heroic Story of the Jewish Brigade

The 1998 documentary "In Our Own Hands: The Hidden Story of the Jewish Brigade in World War II" describes and shows how Jewish soldiers organized into their own distinct units within the British military not only contributed to the Allied war effort during World War II but also provided hope for and help to Jewish Holocaust survivors. Jewish Brigade soldiers wore a yellow Star of David insignia, turning the Nazis' symbol of hatred, persecution, and murder into a symbol of Jewish pride, Jewish strength, and Jewish survival.

Chuck Olin, Chuck Cooper, and Matthew Palm produced the documentary. Cooper's cousin Burt Guttmann served in the Jewish Brigade and used to tell family members about the Jewish Brigade's exploits. When Cooper realized that most people had never heard of the Jewish Brigade, he became determined to produce a movie to fill that information void. After Cooper connected with Chicago producer Olin, the pair attended the Jewish Brigade's 50th anniversary celebration in Israel in 1994, which provided them the opportunity to do many interviews with surviving members. In a 1998 Jerusalem Post article, Moshe Kohn declared that the movie "will remind you what Israel is about, and it will cause you to feel good about it and to continue to work toward that original dream."

"In Our Own Hands" connects the dots between the Jewish Brigade's experiences during World War II and the work conducted by Jewish Brigade veterans after the war ended. Some Jewish Brigade members sought justice/revenge against Nazi war criminals who eluded the legal system, but the primary post-war focus of the Jewish Brigade was helping Jewish refugees escape to Israel, and rebuilding Jewish national sovereignty in the Jewish homeland. 

The Nazis killed six million Jews during the Holocaust, wiping out two thirds of Europe's Jewish population, but after the Allies defeated Nazi Germany the displaced persons' camps throughout Europe did not recognize the Jewish people as a nation. Therefore, the Allies determined that each displaced person would be sent back to his or her country of origin, which meant that Jewish refugees who had survived the Nazi extermination camps would be sent back to Poland, Hungary, Romania, and other countries where Jews had not only been massacred--often with the enthusiastic participation of their non-Jewish neighbors--but the entire infrastructure of the Jewish communities had been destroyed. One scene in "In Our Own Hands" recounts that the commander of a displaced persons camp stated simply to a member of the Jewish Brigade that on his board was a list of countries, Jews don't appear on that list, and therefore there are no Jews in his camp. 

The Jewish Brigade conducted covert (and illegal) operations to help Jews escape from the displaced persons' camps and emigrate to the Land of Israel, and the Jewish Brigade continued this important humanitarian work until the British disbanded the Jewish Brigade. Eventually, the Allies acknowledged that the Jewish people should have their own displaced persons' camps, but the British--who controlled the Land of Israel under the terms of the Palestine Mandate--refused to permit Jewish immigration (in violation of the solemn British promise to facilitate the creation of a Jewish State) until the British withdrew their forces from the Land of Israel, after which the Jewish people had to withstand devastating attacks from neighboring Arab states in order for the nascent Jewish State of Israel to survive. Israel would not have won her War of Independence without the bravery (and the military training) of the members of the Jewish Brigade.

Nazi Germany was an apartheid state that tried to exterminate the Jewish people. The spiritual heirs to Nazism are the Arab and Islamic states that openly admire the Nazis and that seek to emulate the Nazis by murdering Jews. It speaks volumes that the Nazis killed Jews specifically because they were Jews, and then the Allies denied that the Jewish people even exist as a distinct entity. It should be obvious why the rebirth of the Jewish State is not only important, but necessary. John Lennon may have dreamed of a world with no countries, but unless/until that world exists each national group around the world must have its own homeland as a place of refuge.

Modern viewers who are familiar with the tactical acumen and the bravery under fire displayed by the Israel Defense Forces over the past few decades may be surprised to learn that the British officers who commanded the Jewish Brigade were skeptical that Jews could fight effectively. The soldiers of the Jewish Brigade proved that they were brave and intelligent warriors; many members of the Jewish Brigade became high ranking officers in the Israel Defense Forces, including Shlomo Shamir, who eventually served as the commander of the Israeli Navy and then as the commander of the Israeli Air Force. After World War II ended, many members of the Jewish Brigade fought in Israel's War of Independence as the Jewish people restored sovereignty in their homeland nearly 2000 years after the Roman Empire conquered the last independent Jewish state in the land of Israel. It is unfortunate that many of the most prominent media outlets ignore the Jewish people's connection to the land of Israel. 

This is the history that the "Squad" and other self-proclaimed "progressives" not only deny but invert when they term Israel's creation to be a "catastrophe" and when they slander Israel as an "apartheid state." 

The Holocaust is a uniquely horrific event in human history, and the emergence of Israel as a world leader in science, technology, and other fields is a uniquely impressive event in human history. What other nation has been cast into exile for two millennia before not only being reborn but making significant positive contributions to the world community? Israel's unparalleled success has led to much consternation, confusion, and fear because that success refutes many popular notions, as I noted previously in The Fear and Shame at the Heart of Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism:

Israel has accomplished so much in just a few decades despite being surrounded by large, hostile neighbors who have repeatedly attacked Israel with the stated goal of destroying Israel--and several of the countries in the region still actively finance and foment terrorist attacks against Israel and against Jews around the world. 

Why has Israel been so spectacularly successful while so many other former British colonies are mired in poverty and ruled by totalitarian regimes? Israel's neighbors--and developing countries around the world--too often do not look at Israel as a role model, but rather as a success story that they fear, and that makes them feel ashamed at their own failures. As a result, many have decided to demonize Israel and to discount Israel as an illegitimate country whose successes are not the product of hard work and ingenuity. Israel has become the personification of the Jew in the world. The irrational fears that many people have about the disproportionate success of individual Jews have now also been directed against the disproportionate success of the Jewish State. 

In the February 1988 issue of Commentary, Hilton Kramer noted that deep-seated hostility toward Israel often emanates from "the political culture of the international Left. It is based on, among other things, that lethal combination of guilt, fear, cynicism, and sentimentality toward the Third World that is now one of the most destructive and disabling issues in world affairs--destructive and disabling, that is, to the democracies (It is a boon, of course, to totalitarianism.). As a model of post-colonial democratic government, Israel is a standing reproach to the ongoing political debacle of the Third World. That isn't the only reason Israel has become a target of the international Left, but it is one of the primary reasons."

An ideology focused not on promoting equal opportunity for all but rather on the (impossible) goal of creating equitable outcomes for all will inevitably take a dim view of a nation that in just a few short decades has accomplished more than so many other older and more established nations. People on the political Right who hate the Jews and Israel typically do so for the same xenophobic reasons that they hate other minority groups, but people on the political Left who hate Jews and Israel first designate Jews and Israel as oppressors to justify their hatred. In short, Neo-Nazis and their fellow travelers deny that Jews can be classified as white people, while self-proclaimed "progressives" insist that Jews not only are white but are part of a majority group that is oppressing people of color around the world. The reality that a Jewish person can be any race--and that many Israeli Jews are not white and are not of European descent--is ignored by both groups of antisemites. Media members tend to focus on right-wing antisemites because media members tend to support (and thus justify) left-wing causes, and because right-wing antisemites tend to be more direct in their hate speech while left-wing antisemites cloak their hatred in superficially attractive rhetoric that does not withstand close attention.

Both forms of antisemitism must be condemned and fought against. One step in that direction is to celebrate the inspiring story of how the Jewish Brigade proved that Jewish people can fight for their freedom and can rebuild their ancient nation into a thriving modern state.

The 2022 China Olympics Should Go Down in Infamy Alongside the 1936 Nazi Olympics

All that is missing from the 2022 China Genocide Olympics are the Chinese versions of Leni Riefenstahl's "Olympia" and "Triumph of the Will," but there is little doubt that the Chinese Communist Party is working on their own homegrown propaganda to match what Riefenstahl created to whitewash the atrocities of Nazi Germany as Adolf Hitler and his minions hosted the 1936 Olympics. The international community cast a blind eye to China's horrific policies by giving China the opportunity to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, and it is sadly evident that the international community has not grown a backbone or found a conscience in the intervening 14 years.

At least we can count on self-proclaimed "progressives" and groups like Amnesty International to speak out on behalf of the estimated 1 million Uyghurs who are being "reeducated"--corruption of language is the first step toward destruction of people--by the Chinese government.

Oh, wait--Amnesty International is too busy libeling and demonizing the only democracy in the Middle East to have much time to shine light on China's ongoing atrocities, and self-proclaimed "progressives" are too busy with promoting their own narrow-minded agendas to have much time to focus on real world issues and problems. Far too many people do not understand one of the major problems with false historical narratives: you might think that it does not matter to you if Amnesty International attacks Israel, because you are not Jewish and feel indifferent toward Israel and the Jewish people--but this is precisely what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. meant when he declared, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." An attack against Israel and the Jewish people not only menaces Israel and the Jewish people, but it also diverts attention and energy from people whose suffering demands action before it is too late.

Sadly, self-proclaimed "progressives" have a singular obsession with ostracizing Israel/berating Jews, and this obsession renders them unwilling and/or incapable of helping people who really need help.

It should have been eye-opening when Chamath Palihapitiya, a minority owner of the Golden State Warriors, declared, "Nobody cares about what's happening to the Uyghurs, OK. You bring it up because you care, and I think it's nice that you care. The rest of us don't care. I'm just telling you a very hard, ugly truth. Of all the things that I care about, yes, it is below my line." Palihapitiya has been justifiably criticized for what he said and how he said it, but few people are willing to admit that his blunt words spoke a deep truth about the NBA, a league that pats itself on the back for being "progressive" but in reality mainly cares about profits and, as I previously noted, adjusts its public stances on a variety of issues based on profits, not principle:

If the NBA thought that it could make more money by having someone read excerpts from The Communist Manifesto before each game then the NBA would do it in a heartbeat; if the NBA thought that paying customers did not care about the National Anthem then the NBA would drop the National Anthem in a heartbeat.

For now, playing the National Anthem is a better financial decision than not playing the National Anthem. 

There is no principle at work here other than maximizing profits. There is nothing inherently wrong with maximizing profits--provided that no laws are broken and no people are harmed--but it is obnoxious when a multi-billion dollar business repeatedly makes money-centered decisions while at the same time touting how progressive it is.

The NBA does not care about genocide in China, because doing business with China is a significant revenue source that the NBA is determined to maintain and grow.

Have you ever asked yourself why is there an international movement for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) directed against a tiny country that is the only democracy in the Middle East, but yet the self-proclaimed "progressives" who are so active in BDS make no effort to help the Uyghurs? Why do members of the obnoxious "Squad" constantly issue statements attacking Israel but say nothing about China? 

If you analyze behavior carefully and objectively, and place actions in historical context, then you figure out that the "Squad" could not care less about human rights, much less the rights of Muslims in general or Palestinian Arabs in particular; the "Squad" has an obsessive, unhealthy focus on attacking Israel. China's persecution of Muslims does not even register to the "Squad" and to other self-proclaimed "progressives" because going after China (1) could hurt their own self-interest in various ways and (2) does not advance their antisemitic and anti-Zionist goals. It is not possible to fully understand the self-proclaimed "progressives" without acknowledging how deeply intertwined their thoughts and actions are with antisemitic thoughts and actions.

Anti-Zionism is irrational not only because it is based on lies, but because if the anti-Zionists achieved their goal of destroying Israel this would not help the people they supposedly are trying to help: if Israel disappeared tomorrow, there is not one Muslim or Arab on Earth whose day to day living conditions would improve; in fact, the day to day living conditions of Muslim and Arab citizens of Israel would immediately worsen, because they would fall under the control of Hamas, the PLO, and/or the Iranian/Syrian axis. In contrast, if the Chinese government were replaced by a democratic government then the lives of over 1.4 billion Chinese people would improve (with, perhaps, the narrow exception of Chinese Communist Party functionaries who have become wealthy by exploiting their country's people and resources--those CCP functionaries are the true role models for many American self-proclaimed "progressives" who dream of reshaping our country's economic and political systems while, of course, helping themselves to what they consider their fair share of the pie by taking from those who they consider to be unworthy). 

The next time you hear a politician or a social justice "warrior" attack Israel, even if you don't care at all about Israel think about China and the Uyghurs, and ask yourself why the person who is speaking refuses to focus on real life and death issues. This is not just about the self-proclaimed "progressives," either, and it is important to heed the wise words spoken by Garry Kasparov in a recent interview: 

During the interview, Kasparov made a very insightful comment about the sad state of American political discourse. America used to be about striving for excellence, he explained, but the last two Presidential elections have been about choosing the lesser of two evils. Kasparov rejects both the American Left's embrace of socialism and the American Right's embrace of Donald Trump, and he implores our country to get back on the path of providing leadership to the Free World, which he notes was a bipartisan goal from 1945-1991. Kasparov asserts that during that period Democrats and Republicans disagreed about methods but not goals, but that since the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War the two parties no longer agree about goals, which has set America adrift and threatens our leadership role in the world by damaging our moral authority.

The American public should not face a binary choice between self-proclaimed "progressives" and Donald Trump. We deserve better from our leaders, but we must demand better from our leaders.

The Complete Story of the 1941 Farhud (Pogrom) in Baghdad

In The Truth About Mideast Genocide, I quoted from Joseph Samuels' firsthand account of the 1941 Farhud (pogrom) committed by Nazi-sympathizing Arabs/Muslims against the Jewish community of Baghdad, an atrocity that foreshadowed the dislocation and destruction of Iraq's 2500 year old Jewish community.

The Dramatis Personae Behind The 1941 Farhud Pogrom In Baghdad – And Personal Recollections Of The Events by Dr. Nimrod Raphaeli documents the deep and intimate connections between Arab nationalism and Nazism. The comparison of Israel to Nazi Germany is odious and offensive not only because it is false, but also because it is an inversion of the historical fact that Arab nationalism from its early days to the present cannot be separated from the ideologies and policy goals that the movement shares with the Nazis. 

Not mentioned by Dr. Raphaeli but worth noting is that after Nazi Germany's defeat in World War II many high ranking Nazis were given sanctuary by Arab countries and actively participated in those countries' efforts to destroy Israel:

Intelligence officers, SS generals, propaganda specialists and even Holocaust functionaries went to Egypt after the collapse of the Third Reich to continue to persecute Jews.

Geraldine Schwarz, who has made a film on the subject called Exile Nazi: The Promise of the Orient, said the covert recruitment drive was the brainchild of Egypt’s King Farouk I.

"He commissioned a confidant to build a new army," she told Die Welt newspaper. The king's man was Adel Sabit, entrusted to build the anti-Israel force along with former Afrika Korps Lieutenant General Artur Schmitt. "The Arab League wanted it so," she said...

Egypt's neighbour Syria hired 50 Nazis between 1948-9, including many former SS soldiers, to help mould its army and intelligence service to rival Israel's. One of the men it brought to Syria was Walter Rauff.

Rauff was, at the war's end, the SS security chief for northern Italy, a wanted war criminal who helped develop mobile gas-wagons to kill Jews and other enemies of the regime.

"Allah in Heaven, Hitler on Earth" was a common slogan in Syrian capital Damascus [during World War II]...

It is not difficult to find information about the connections between Arab nationalism and Nazism. For example, consider the facts contained in a 2014 Daily Beast article titled "Hitler’s Henchmen in Arabia":

In fact, the list of some habitués of Cairo in the 1950s and the 1960s reads like a who's who of Nazi Germany, featuring as it did the rescuer of Mussolini, Otto Skorzeny; the ace Stuka pilot Hans-Ulrich Rudel; the leader of a notorious SS penal unit, Oskar Dirlewanger; and the particularly odious and violently anti-Semitic stooge of Goebbels, Johannes von Leers.

What made the relationship between these former Nazis and the Egyptians and Syrians so successful was that it was a genuinely two-way deal. The Arabs offered the Nazis a haven, as well as a market for all their nefarious dealings in arms and black market currency. The Nazis, meanwhile, were able to provide technical and military experts, as well as the knowhow of establishing the instruments of repression.

However, below the back scratching lay a deep and dark underpinning to the relationship between the crescent and the swastika. That was, of course, a hatred of the Jews, and in particular, a desire to see the eradication of Israel.

That shared exterminationist desire had been born during the war itself, when the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husayni, had made his home in the luxurious Hotel Adlon in Berlin in 1941, and had impressed Hitler with his hatred of the Jews. The Mufti lobbied the Nazis hard to kick the British out of the Middle East, and he was instrumental in raising recruits for a largely Muslim unit of the SS called the 13^th Armed Mountain Division of the SS Handschar.

In addition, throughout the war in North Africa, German intelligence had worked closely with the Egyptians, and the Mufti is thought to have been a key intermediary between King Farouk and Hitler himself. If further evidence were needed [of the] roots of the Nazi-Arab affair...then it is worth considering the fact that both Nasser and his successor, Anwar Sadat, had been wartime agents for the Germans.

Anyone who speaks out about the Middle East--let alone anyone who has a role in shaping America's Middle East policies--must know this history, but it is particularly important that self-proclaimed "progressives" are educated about these facts and events; people who claim to be "antiracist" and then denounce Israel while praising Israel's enemies must be informed in no uncertain terms that such pronouncements represent an endorsement of genocide against Jews past, present, and future, and are thus a repudiation of the principles that self-proclaimed "progressives" purport to uphold. Further, media outlets that perpetuate the notion that Israel has committed and/or is committing genocide are not only slandering Israel but, in so doing, they are giving aid and comfort to the true heirs of Nazi Germany's genocidal ideologies and policies.

Violence, Non-Violent Non-Cooperation, and Human Nature

Violence is an inescapable reality of life. It is not possible to survive without committing violence and, indeed, one's ability to survive is directly proportional to one's capacity to both withstand and deliver violence. If you doubt this premise then just consider how you obtain food, water and shelter: none of those essential commodities can be procured without committing violence against other life forms, from tiny microbes to large plants and animals. Killing is an essential part of living.

Non-violence is an aspirational ideal for human beings interacting with other human beings, but elevating non-violence as the highest ideal can sometimes endanger the most innocent and vulnerable among us. The truth of that seemingly paradoxical statement can be seen by closely examining the concept of non-violent non-cooperation. Mahatma Gandhi's campaign of non-violent non-cooperation is credited with ending the British Empire's rule over his native India. Gandhi instructed his followers to not fight the British militarily, but to refuse to cooperate with the British through boycotts and other measures. Gandhi's goal was to highlight the inequities inherent in British control over the Indian people. Gandhi did not view the British as inherently evil; rather, he sought to expose the evil inherent in colonial rule, and thus exercise moral suasion over British society to end such colonial rule.

Gandhi's ideal of non-violent non-cooperation worked in India because Britain, while flawed, was a nation built on the rule of law. Similarly, when Dr. Martin Luther King adopted Gandhi's principles as cornerstones for the Civil Rights Movement in America, he operated under the basic assumption that non-violent non-cooperation would force the American people to see the evil inherent in Jim Crow laws/segregation, and thus exercise moral suasion over American society to end Jim Crow laws/segregation. Britain and America did not seek to annihilate the Indian and Black people respectively, and thus it was possible to awaken the collective consciences of those countries to the injustices inherent in the way those countries treated Indian and Black people respectively. 

Non-violent non-cooperation can be very effective in open, democratic countries that have racist laws and/or racist subcultures. Non-violent non-cooperation is much less likely to be effective in closed, non-democratic countries that consider mass extermination to be an acceptable policy choice. Failing to distinguish between open, democratic countries, and closed, non-democratic countries is to engage in what Vladimir Nabokov termed "poshlost," for which he gave the following explanation: "Poshlost speaks in such concepts as 'America is no better than Russia' or 'We all share in Germany's guilt.' ...Listing in one breath Auschwitz, Hiroshima, and Vietnam is seditious poshlost."
 
Although violent and murderous acts were committed by both British and American forces, it is inconceivable that either country would have made a policy decision to kill every Indian or to kill every Black person. Violence was used as a method of repression and subjugation, with the goal of control, not genocide. Faced with the realization that violence was not effective--and that violence was increasingly viewed by the larger population as immoral and unjust--Britain ultimately ended colonial rule over India, and America ended legally sanctioned segregation.

Non-violent non-cooperation was not a viable strategy when confronting Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, regimes that had no reservations about murdering millions of people. Nazi Germany developed an Endlosung ("Final Solution") policy that prescribed the murder of every Jewish man, woman, and child under Nazi rule. The Nazis meticulously catalogued the Jewish population of Europe, including specific classifications of full-Jews, half-Jews, and so forth, and then relentlessly enacted this policy, even to the extent of diverting personnel and materiel from the war effort to kill as many Jews as possible; the 1942 Wannsee Conference documented the goal of murdering 11,000,000 European Jews under this policy, including the Jewish populations not just of countries currently under Nazi rule, but also the Jewish population of Britain, and the Jewish populations of neutral countries such as Sweden and Switzerland. The Wannsee Protocol meticulously describes how the Nazis planned to implement "the final solution of the European Jewish question" by genocide conducted in various stages and through various specific means. Although the document is filled with euphemisms for genocide, these chilling passages clarify the ultimate goal of the Endlosung program (emphasis added):

Under proper guidance, in the course of the final solution the Jews are to be allocated for appropriate labor in the East. Able-bodied Jews, separated according to sex, will be taken in large work columns to these areas for work on roads, in the course of which action doubtless a large portion will be eliminated by natural causes.

The possible final remnant will, since it will undoubtedly consist of the most resistant portion, have to be treated accordingly, because it is the product of natural selection and would, if released, act as a the seed of a new Jewish revival (see the experience of history.)

In the course of the practical execution of the final solution, Europe will be combed through from west to east. Germany proper, including the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, will have to be handled first due to the housing problem and additional social and political necessities.

Had Nazi Germany succeeded in conquering the world, there is every reason to believe that the Endlosung policy would have been extended world-wide with the goal of killing every Jewish person.

Therefore, Gandhi's public assertion that European Jewry should accept without resistance whatever fate Hitler's executioners delivered is not only absurd but it is obscene. As Rabbi Shmuley Boteach explains, "What Gandhi failed to realize is that when dealing with moral or at least somewhat humane governments, nonviolent resistance has its place. But when dealing with murderous barbarians such as ISIS or the Nazis, no level of nonviolent resistance will ever change their minds. Gandhi's philosophy would only guarantee that they take over the world."

Rabbi Shlomo Riskin explains that to overcome certain forms of oppression one must understand that sometimes violence is necessary to survive:

This is certainly a major reason for Moses' ability to lead the Jewish people: he was raised in the palace of Pharaoh, without the fear of a slave, devoid of a slave mentality. Slavery is a tragedy, and one of its consequences is how the victim ends up internalizing the accusations made against him, believing himself to be a worthless parasite, incapable of fighting for his rights. Indeed, Moses learns this lesson after he slays the Egyptian task-master, an act he had probably hoped would incite and inspire the Hebrew slaves to rise up against their captors and demand their freedom. The very next day, when he tries to break up a fight between two Hebrews, they taunt him for having killed the Egyptian; instead of hailing Moses as a hero because he risked his own life to save a fellow Jew, they throw his actions back into his face. Moses now realizes ". . . the incident is known.." (Exodus 15:2). If he wants to save his life, he must flee at once. Slavery corrupts captor and captive alike.

There is yet another issue. Power may corrupt, absolute power may corrupt absolutely--but powerlessness corrupts most of all. A magnificent post-Holocaust Australian play, "The Edge of Night," has a former Kapo declare: "There were no heroes in Auschwitz, there were only those who were murdered and those who survived." And a slave feels impotent, uncertain of his ability to obtain food, and becomes almost obsessed with the desire for a piece of bread--almost at any cost. From this second perspective, the desert possesses not only a stark landscape but also a stark moral message concerning the transformation of an enslaved Hebrew into a freed Hebrew. The manna, which descended daily from heaven, was intended to change the labor camp mentality of greedy individuals in Egypt into a nation in which "...the one who had taken more did not have any extra, and the one who had taken less did not have too little. They gathered exactly enough for each one to eat..." (Exodus 16:17-18)

Moses understood that non-violent non-cooperation was not a viable option in Pharoah's Egypt, even if many of his Hebrew countrymen had been dragged down by the slave mentality to the point that they could not imagine resisting their oppressors. Sometimes, survival means nothing less than kill or be killed.

Unfortunately, many people are either unwilling or unable to discern the true nature of the world; there is a facile tendency to put the most positive spin on even the most horrifying events, a tendency that Cynthia Ozick excoriated in her October 6, 1997 New Yorker essay titled "Who Owns Anne Frank?" Ozick ruefully notes that the signature quote from Anne Frank's diary--"I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart"--does not at all capture the overall tone of Frank's writing. Ozick asks, "Why should this sentence be taken as emblematic, and not, for example, another?" Ozick then quotes from Frank's May 6, 1944 diary entry: "There's a destructive urge in people, the urge to rage, murder and kill." Ozick comments, "These are words that do not soften, ameliorate, or give the lie to the pervasive horror of her time. Nor do they pull the wool over the eyes of history."

Anne Frank's story has been sanitized for public consumption, but the true, complete story is not uplifting or positive. Anne Frank was a young girl whose family was forced into hiding solely because they were Jewish; Anne, her sister Margot and her mother Edith were murdered in Nazi concentration camps as a result of the Endlosung policy described above. Three weeks before Anne and her family were captured by the Nazis--after being betrayed for the equivalent of about one dollar per person--Anne wrote, "I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness. I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions...In the meantime, I must hold on to my ideals. Perhaps the day will come when I'll be able to realize them." A few months earlier, Anne wrote, "I've asked myself again and again whether it wouldn't have been better if we hadn't gone into hiding, if we were dead now and didn't have to go through this misery...Let something happen soon...Nothing can be more crushing than this anxiety. Let the end come, however cruel."

Reading those passages, it is easy to understand why Ozick declares, "The diary is not a genial document, despite its author's almost vividly satiric exposure of what she shrewdly saw as 'the comical side of hiding.' Its reputation for uplift is, to say it plainly, nonsensical." Ozick adds that the diary cannot be considered Anne's story in total because "A story may not be said to be a story if the end is missing. And because the end is missing, the story of Anne Frank in the fifty years since The Diary of a Young Girl was first published has been bowdlerized, distorted, transmuted, traduced, Americanized, homogenized, sentimentalized; falsified, kitschified, and, in fact, blatantly and arrogantly denied."

The story of Anne Frank ends with an emaciated girl dying at Bergen-Belsen, one victim out of the six million Jews the Nazis murdered. Ozick says that inspirational blurbs--such as the one calling the diary "a lasting testament to the indestructible nobility of the human spirit"--are "no more substantial than any other display of self-delusion. The success--the triumph--of Bergen-Belsen was precisely that it blotted out the possibility of courage, that it proved to be a lasting testament to the human spirit's easy destructibility. 'Hier ist kein Warum,' a guard at Auschwitz warned: here there is no 'why,' neither question nor answer, only the dark of unreason. Anne Frank's story, truthfully told, is unredeemed and unredeemable."

As Martin Amis put it in the Afterword to his novel Time's Arrow, "The National Socialists found the core of the reptile brain, and built an autobahn that went there." While the systematic, brutal efficiency of the Holocaust is unique, violence is a universal part of the human condition. It is unpleasant but important to note that American history is drenched in blood. In The Shocking Savagery of America’s Early History, Ron Rosenbaum summarizes historian Bernard Bailyn's book about the dark side of the pre-Colonial era:

Bailyn has not painted a pretty picture. Little wonder he calls it The Barbarous Years and spares us no details of the terror, desperation, degradation and widespread torture—do you really know what being "flayed alive" means? (The skin is torn from the face and head and the prisoner is disemboweled while still alive.) And yet somehow amid the merciless massacres were elements that gave birth to the rudiments of civilization—or in Bailyn's evocative phrase, the fragile "integument of civility"--that would evolve 100 years later into a virtual Renaissance culture, a bustling string of self-governing, self-sufficient, defiantly expansionist colonies alive with an increasingly sophisticated and literate political and intellectual culture that would coalesce into the rationale for the birth of American independence. All the while shaping, and sometimes misshaping, the American character. It's a grand drama in which the glimmers of enlightenment barely survive the savagery, what Yeats called "the blood-dimmed tide," the brutal establishment of slavery, the race wars with the original inhabitants that Bailyn is not afraid to call "genocidal," the full, horrifying details of which have virtually been erased.

It is remarkable that from such beginnings a society emerged in which Dr. King's strategy of non-violent non-cooperation proved to be effective--but it would be naive to state that such a strategy would have been effective in pre-Colonial America.

It cannot be emphasized enough that violence is not limited to one race, one society, or one culture. Violence is a fundamental human characteristic. For example, Joshua Hammer notes that Napoleon Chagnon discovered that violence is at the heart of Yamomamö culture:

Challenging Rousseau's romantic notion that man in his natural state is altruistic and peace-loving, Chagnon described the Yanomamö as a violent tribe whose males derive status--and women--from killing rivals. His groundbreaking 1968 work, Yanomamö: The Fierce People, sold one million copies, became a standard university text--and made him an outcast among anthropologists.

Chagnon based his findings on copious research. He traveled to dozens of remote Yanomamö villages, cultivated informers and interviewed killers. He asserted that the territory was in a chronic state of war. Tribal groups often abducted females from other villages, prompting acts of retaliation and nomohori, or "dastardly tricks," to lure rivals to their deaths. He also asserted that one-quarter of adult Yanomamö men were murdered by other Yanomamö, and that murderers were highly respected and produced more children than those who didn’t kill. "The whole purpose and design of the social structure of tribesmen," he writes in his memoir, "seems to have revolved around effectively controlling sexual access by males to nubile, reproductive-age females."

Chagnon's work is considered "politically incorrect" by some critics, and his conclusions have been savagely attacked, but his work has not been refuted scientifically; that does not prove that he is right--science correctly done is an ongoing search for truth, not a declaration of inviolable principles--but that means that someone will have to do some very thorough research to prove him wrong.

It is often suggested that human beings are the only species that engages in unprovoked violence against their own kind, but this is not true; dominant elephants bully other elephants:

Researchers often describe female elephants as living in "fission-fusion" societies. But the implication is that the fission dynamic--the forces pulling the groups apart--is passive, that somehow the optimal number of elephants that forage and survive together is achieved when extended families slowly develop looser connections and become more distantly associated.

I was now starting to realize that the dynamic might be active, possibly following the direct bloodline of the matriarch, where only the highest-ranking, or "queen," elephant and her direct descendants are welcome to hold court around the best water. Others are pushed away, forced to splinter off into separate groups.

 -----

While violence is an intrinsic part of nature in general and human nature in particular, nature and human nature both also possess a tremendous capacity for compassion and resiliency. Hope for humanity's future must be based not on denying the facts described above, but rather on finding a way collectively to move forward in a manner that nurtures our best and most noble traits. One inspiring example is Jane Goodall's description of how a tree at Ground Zero survived the 9/11 attack:

Just over ten years after 9/11, on a cool, sunny April morning in 2012, I went to meet a Callery pear tree named Survivor. She had been placed in a planter near Building 5 of the World Trade Center in the 1970s and each year her delicate white blossoms had brought a touch of spring into a world of concrete. In 2001, after the 9/11 attack, this tree, like all the other trees that had been planted there, disappeared beneath the fallen towers.

But amazingly, in October, a cleanup worker found her, smashed and pinned between blocks of concrete. She was decapitated and the eight remaining feet of trunk were charred black; the roots were broken; and there was only one living branch.

The discovery was reported to Bram Gunther, who was then deputy director of central forestry for the New York City Parks Department, and when he arrived he initially thought the tree was unsalvageable. But the cleanup workers persuaded him to give the tree a chance, so he ordered that she be sent off to the Parks Department’s nursery in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx.

Ron Vega, now the director of design for the 9/11 Memorial site, was a cleanup worker back then. "A lot of people thought it was a wasted effort to try to rescue her," he recalled. "So she was taken out of the site almost clandestinely--under the cover of night."

Richie Cabo, the nursery manager, told me that when he first saw the decapitated tree he did not think anything could save her. But once the dead, burned tissues had been cut away, and her trimmed roots deeply planted in good rich soil, Survivor proved him wrong.

"In time," said Richie, "she took care of herself. We like to say she got tough from being in the Bronx."

In the spring of 2010 disaster struck Survivor again. Richie told me how he got news that the tree had been ripped out of the ground by a terrible storm that was raging outside, with 100 mile per hour winds. At once he rushed there with his three young children. They found the roots completely exposed, and he and the children and the other nursery staff worked together to try to rescue her.

At first they only partially lifted the tree, packing in compost and mulch so as not to break the roots. For a long while they gently sprayed the tree with water to minimize the shock, hoping she'd make it. A few weeks later they set to work to get Survivor completely upright.

"It was not a simple operation," Richie told me. "She was 30 feet tall, and it took a heavy-duty boom truck to do the job."

Again, Survivor survived.

It wasn't until six years after Ron Vega witnessed the mangled tree being rescued from the wreckage that he heard Survivor was still alive. Immediately he decided to incorporate her into the memorial design--and with his new position he was able to make it happen. She was planted near the footprint of the South Tower. "For personal accomplishments," Ron said, "today is it. I could crawl into this little bed and die right there. That's it. I'm done....To give this tree a chance to be part of this memorial. It doesn’t get any better than that."

As we walked toward this special tree, I felt as much in awe as though I were going to meet a great spiritual leader or shaman. We stood together outside the protective railing. We reached out to gently touch the ends of her branches. Many of us--perhaps all--had tears in our eyes.

As Survivor stood proudly upright in her new home, a reporter said to Richie, "This must be an extra-special day for you, considering it’s the ten-year anniversary of the day you were shot."

Before he started working at the Bronx nursery in the spring of 2001, Richie had been a corrections officer at Green Haven maximum-security prison in New York. He left the job after nearly dying from a terrible gunshot wound in the stomach, inflicted not at the prison, but out on the streets when he tried to stop a robbery in progress.

Until the reporter pointed it out, Richie hadn't even realized the date was the same. He told me that he couldn't speak for a moment. "I could hardly even breathe," he said. And he thought it was probably more than coincidence--that the tree would go home on that special day. "We are both survivors," he said.

While overseeing the design, Ron made sure that the tree was planted so that the traumatized side faces the public. Some people, Ron told us, weren't pleased to have the tree back, saying that she "spoiled" the symmetry of the landscaping, as she is a different species from the other nearby trees. Indeed, she is different. On the tenth anniversary of 9/11, when the memorial site was opened to survivors and family members, many of them tied blue ribbons onto Survivor's branches.

One last memory. Survivor should have been in full bloom in April when I met her. But, like so many trees in this time of climate change, she had flowered about two weeks early. Just before we left, as I walked around this brave tree one last time, I suddenly saw a tiny cluster of white flowers. Just three of them, but somehow it was like a sign. It reminded me of a story I read in a newspaper. In the aftermath of the horrifying tsunami and Fukushima nuclear plant disaster in Japan, a TV crew went to document the situation. They interviewed a man who had just lost everything, not only his house and all his belongings, but his family also. The reporter asked him if he had any hope.

He turned and pointed to a cherry tree beginning to bloom. "Look there," he said, pointing toward the new blossoms. "That's what gives me hope."

Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel observed the whole gamut of human behavior, and wrestled with how to not give up hope after processing so much suffering. Here is a quote from his book Open Heart:

"I belong to a generation that has often felt abandoned by God and betrayed by mankind. And yet, I believe that we must not give up on either...We must choose between the violence of adults and the smiles of children, between the ugliness of hate and the will to oppose it."

In another passage, Wiesel says that if he ever meets God face to face and can ask just one question he will simply ask, "Why?"

That is a profound meditation. Why does the universe even exist? Why does life of any kind exist? Why do people exist? Why is there so much suffering? Asking "Why?" without being specific means asking all of those things and more. Whether or not one believes in God does not change the profundity of this question.

Many religious people believe that such a question cannot be answered in this life on this planet by the human mind. Answers, they believe, await us in heaven. Yet, upon reflection, that point of view is not entirely satisfactory or comforting. James Woods' article "Holiday in Hellmouth" appears in the June 9/June 16, 2008 New Yorker. Woods writes:

Heaven, one of the tenderest verses in the Bible has it, is where God will wipe away all tears from our faces...In the end, it seems, Heaven is the only tenable response to the problem of evil. It is where God's mysterious plan will be revealed; it is where the poor and the downtrodden, the sick and the tortured, will be healed; it is where everything that we went through on earth will suddenly seem "worth it."

But Heaven is also a problem for theodicists who take the freedom to choose between good and evil as paramount. For Heaven must be a place where either our freedom to sin has been abolished or we have been so transfigured that we no longer want to sin: in Heaven, our will miraculously coincides with God's will. And here the free-will defense unravels, and is unravelled by the very idea of Heaven. If Heaven obviates the great human freedom to sin, why was it ever such a momentous ideal on earth, "worth" all that pain and suffering?

The difficulty can be recast in terms of the continuity of self. If we will be so differently constituted in Heaven as to be strangers to sin, then no meaningful connection will exist between the person who suffers here and the exalted soul who will enjoy the great system of rewards and promises and tears wiped from faces: our faces there will not be the faces we have here...

Heaven--because it comes next and is not now--is, as so often in religious thought, a solution that merely creates another problem. If God supposedly wipes away all tears in Heaven, why does he not do it now? Why does God not now establish paradise on earth, as the Jehovah's Witnesses believe he will do? And what is the purpose of these eighty or so years we spend on earth not having the tears wiped from our faces?

Maybe the answer will be revealed in heaven, but on this Earth when one is confronted by evil I would rather be the Hebrew slave saved by Moses than be Anne Frank praised by Gandhi. More to the point, any of us who has the opportunity to be Moses should embrace the chance to help someone who is powerless.

Garry Kasparov Lambastes West's "Weak" Response to Vladimir Putin's Tyranny

In a December 2014 Reason.com interview, former World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov did not mince words when asked to assess the West's policies concerning Russian dictator Vladimir Putin:

We have been facing this problem for quite a while. And so many mistakes have been made. These mistakes created an impression for Putin and his cronies and also his clients like Assad and others in the world. Iranian Ayatollahs. The West is weak. The West is not willing to get engaged. So the West will give them anything they want. Before we talk about the right strategy, what the leaders of the free world must do, let's talk about what they must not do. You cannot project weakness. Yes, I know that America will never consider seriously boots on the ground in Ukraine. Why are you talking about it? Why do you say publicly that you will not do that?

I could give you many examples where they violate the simplest rules of negotiation. The secret letter from Obama to the Ayatollahs, without mentioning the fact that it's an insult for Sunni allies. It's the first time that the United States and the free world had a great chance of creating a Sunni coalition to stop Sunni terror. Then stabbing them in the back by writing a letter to the Ayatollahs. By the way, they never responded. And now, at the time when the nuclear deal is about to be reached or not. He's asking them to help with ISIS. ISIS will probably be destroyed. You need more planes, maybe some soldiers, material resources. ISIS is not a global threat, it's very local. For the sake of Iranian cooperation, this relatively small issue to put at stake the global cooperation of Sunnis and also the non-proliferation policies, that's exactly what you're not supposed to do.

Kasparov's harsh and accurate words are particularly meaningful and timely considering the race to stop Iran's jihadist, expansionist regime from building nuclear weapons; this is vitally important, yet President Obama seems oblivious to the danger and downright hostile when anyone (most recently, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) points out just how catastrophic it would be if Iran builds nuclear weapons. The Middle East is ablaze with jihadist extremism and Iran is fomenting much of it. A nuclear-armed Iran would be a menace to the entire world. The damage that President Obama has done in abandoning America's allies and failing to stand up to tyrannical dictatorships will not be easy to fix.

This problem predates President Obama, though. Kasparov is equally unimpressed by Bill Clinton's administration:

Many talk about Clinton's presidency as a great success. I wouldn't doubt certain achievements in economy. But geopolitically, it was the greatest disaster among all because it's not about the final position. The game is still on. In 1992, America was all powerful. It could design the world map the way it wanted. In 2000, al-Qaeda was ready to strike. So what happened in these eight years?

Eight years of complacency, of doing nothing. Nobody formulated policies for Russia, for Soviet Union, for Islamic terrorism. It requires a global vision. The same way as Winston Churchill, Harry Truman had these policies designed in 1946, in 1947. The Marshall plan. There were plans. Plans they learned from World War II and they knew that to oppose Stalin and to oppose Communism, they needed to come up with a grand strategy and also leadership.

When I hear about potential dangers of confronting Putin today, my first question is, "Is he more dangerous than Joseph Stalin in 1948?" For 11 months, American and British planes had been supplying West Berlin besieged by Stalin's troops. And Joseph Stalin didn't shoot a single American plane. Why? Because Harry Truman already used nuclear weapons. And Stalin, as every good dictator, had an animal instinct. He knew where he could be repulsed. So he knew that Harry Truman could not play a game. It happened in 1962, when Khrushchev recognized that he pushed JFK to the ropes. And Ronald Reagan. And don't tell me that the Soviet Union in 1981, 82, 83, was less powerful than Putin's Russia today.

Harry Truman was a strong President, as was Ronald Reagan. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are not strong Presidents; they have convinced our enemies that America is weak and it will take a lot of work to disabuse America's enemies of that notion.

After Neville Chamberlain's cowardly appeasement of Adolf Hitler, Chamberlain declared that he had ensured "peace for our time." Chamberlain also said something that is eerily reminiscent of the rhetoric used by those who support President Obama's inaction while the world burns: "How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing." Instead of challenging Hitler early when Hitler's Nazi Germany was not at full strength, Chamberlain preferred to make broad concessions to Hitler, believing Hitler to be a reasonable man who had legitimate grievances that could be resolved through negotiations. Chamberlain did not think that it was worth it to fight Hitler or even to make preparations to fight Hitler merely to help "people of whom we know nothing." That short-sighted attitude persists today. Why should America intervene in far-away conflicts? Why should America care if Iran gets nuclear weapons? Isn't it true that by "imperialistically" dictating to other countries America creates enemies where none previously existed? That kind of thinking is what led to World War II and what made the Holocaust possible. Even 60 years ago, conflicts involving "people of whom we know nothing" quickly threatened the very survival of an America that felt safe because of being shielded by two big oceans.

Hitler took whatever he could take through negotiation and then sought to conquer the rest through war. Putin's Russia and Iran's jihadist regime are following that same blueprint today. Hitler did not have legitimate grievances nor could he be reasoned with or placated. Hitler had strategic goals and he made those goals very clear in his writings and in his speeches. The world was foolish to ignore his words.

When will the West wake up to the dangers posed by today's tyrants, who also speak quite clearly about their ultimate goals? When will a modern-day Winston Churchill or Harry Truman emerge?

Neville Chamberlain was wrong about Adolf Hitler and Chamberlain's mistakes precipitated World War II. President Obama is wrong now about Putin's Russia and about Iran. We can only hope that the consequences of President Obama's mistakes will not be as severe.