Can Collectivism Liberate the Individual?
In which Diaspora Jews need Zionism to liberate them from Israeli Nationalism
We needed Israel because only a Jewish state could protect the Jews after the Shoah. — Joshua Leifer
If Israel alone could protect the Jews after the Shoah, then why couldn’t the Jewish state offer protection to Holocaust survivor and Zionist rescue worker Rezső Kasztner?
In fact, I would argue the Jewish nation state targeted Kasztner and persecuted him, scapegoating him in some collective survivors’ trauma bond that hijacked the country’s national ideology and secular identity and caused a left wing government to fall.
I would further argue that being in the Jewish homeland might have afforded Kasztner less protection than other Holocaust survivors, Otto Frank in Holland for instance. The Jewish homeland failed, also, to protect Kasztner’s wife Elizabeth and his daughter Zsuzsi, both of whom suffered in the wake of their husband and father’s cruel persecution by the Jewish nation state he believed in and even served in the capacity of spokesperson for the Ministry of Trade.
Rezső Kasztner survived the Shoah without becoming a victim and he moved to the Jewish homeland, where he became a victim — his life was destroyed and cut short. The Jewish homeland punished a Holocaust survivor for his work of saving Jews from Nazi extermination. The Jewish homeland demonised a Jewish Holocaust hero in a smear campaign, a judge accused him of selling his soul to the devil, and a right wing terrorist cell assassinated him.
That’s some protection the Jewish homeland afforded a Zionist who saved more Jews from Nazi extermination that any other Jew, isn’t it?
Reader, this insults the intelligence. Yes, I feel bitter and cynical about this betrayal.
Question. What happens to disobedient or wrong-thinking or maverick Jews, then, if Zionism is now in service of Israeli nationalism?
Answer. They cannot sit at the Israeli nationalist table.
Ask Leo Franks about that. Apparently Jews who oppose illegal settlements in Judea Samaria and who participate in anti-government protests are the wrong kind of Jews for the Jewish homeland — the right wing Israeli government considers any anti-government protests vis a vis Judea Samaria a challenge to its sovereignty.
I have questions.
Who is Jewish enough for citizenship in the Jewish state that supposedly provides the only physical place on earth where a Jew can live safely?
How can the country who willingly released recidivist terrorist serial killer Butcher of Khan Yunis Yahya Sinwar for a ransom demand possibly consider itself the safest place on planet earth for Jewish people? Sinwar went on to mastermind the worst pogrom of Jews since WW2, and today we received official confirmation of the youngest victims of the pogrom, a pogrom planned by Sinwar, and carried out by his militants and their civilian helpers in Gaza.
How can the only country in the world who willingly releases 737 recidivist Jew hating terrorists and killers as part a hostage deal ransom negotiated with compulsive liars and psychopaths to free 33 captives, possibly be the safest place on the planet for Jews?
How can a place populated by an obnoxious extreme right wing who weaponises the Shoah against wrong-thinking Jews possibly be the safest place on earth for a Jew?1
Who liberates the Jews from a Jewish state who seeks to punish or marginalise them, or worst, make them a target of a cruel smear campaign?
Who liberates Jews in Canada from a volatile explosion in antisemitic hate that erupted in Canada on the heels of the October 7th massacre in Israel?
Who liberates Jews from deranged figures like Dr. Edy Cohen, whom The Jerusalem Post describes as a one-man hasbara machine with 409K Arab Twitter followers, and who thinks the Elders of the Protocols of Zion are a real thing?
And what on earth does this collectivist ideology dominating Israeli society have with Yaakov who is also Yisrael, one who wrestles with g-d?
Cohen’s bio from Tablet: Dr. Edy Cohen grew up in Lebanon and served for 15 years in the Israeli intelligence community. He is a researcher at the BESA Center and specializes in inter-Arab relations, the Arab-Israeli conflict, terrorism and Jewish communities in the Arab world. Dr. Edy Cohen posted the deliberate lie below about Vivian Silver, using the image taken by Anat Saragusti of Israeli journalist Sarit Yishai-Levi, picured below in an interview with Yassar Arafat.
I saw the post below when Dr. Cohen made it on Xwitter, barely a month after the Simchat Torah Massacre on October 7th, I remember seeing right wing extremists salivate over this post, and I remember seeing Anat Saragusti come after Dr. Cohen and demand he remove his post. Cohen claimed in his post that terrorism doesn’t distinguish between left and right and that Vivian’s pro-Palestinian history did not help her with the Arabs.
Who are these extremists trying to liberate, and what vision do they have for the future of their society, and humanity, generally?
Who liberates the Jewish people from the troglodytes who show us who they are on X (formerly Twitter) thousands of times per second? Because, frankly, the hatred expressed below terrifies me, it does not comfort me in the least.
It's exactly the kind of suicidal empathy that got people like Vivian Silver. No-one wants to badmouth a dead person but she was an enemy within in the name of empathy.
Jewish liberals crying for the savages in Gaza disgust me. Can they really be that clueless and deluded? Will they embrace the people who want to kill them? At some point you need to lose your tolerance for the fools in your family. My time is now. I feel so much closer to all the wonderful gentile Zionists than the liberal Jewish turncoats. They are on their own. The Jewish people will be just fine without them.
Did I really witness an online cell of Israeli right wing הַסְבָּרָה extremists decide that peace activists and kibbutzniks such as Vivian Silver were a reasonable collective sacrificial offering for the achievement of their messianic brand of secular nationalism? Yes. Yes, I did. On many occasions. Reader, do you think these extremists who decided Vivian Silver was the enemy within and that the Jewish people will be just fine without liberal turncoat Jews, reader, do you think they care about synagogues in Vancouver or Toronto or Montreal being fire bombed or arsoned or vandalised? If you do, then I have some land to sell you.
And that, dear reader, is why the diaspora Jew needs Zionism, a grassroots movement that supports and protects local Jewish communities across Canada and wherever Jews live across the globe, a movement not co-opted by the elite, a movement for and by the everyday people, a movement not beholden to Spooks, and Technocrats, or Talking Points Gurus and Don Draper figures.
When I went to meet the Prime Minister someone pointed at me and said to Bibi, ‘Do you know that besides Shiri, both her parents were murdered?’ Bibi replied, ‘I know.’ That's it. The whole meeting I saw lips moving. I didn't care what he said. It was all nonsense. I just sat there waiting for him to apologize. To say, ‘I’m sorry. Sorry for what happened.’ There was none. No taking responsibility. It wouldn't have made me think favorably of him, but at least it would have made me feel a little like he was seeing me. I looked at him and said: ‘This zero is my prime minister.’— Dana Silberman-Sitton, sister of Shiri Bibas via Noga Tarnopolsky on Xwitter
Zionism does not serve the middle eastern superpower nation-state of Israel. Zionism is not Israeli nationalism. Zionism is for the individual Jew, and the Jewish diaspora. Zionism is for Dana Silberman-Sitton, who feels let down by the man holding the position of Prime Minister in her country, Israel. Zionism strengthens local Jewish communities, rather than weaken them. Zionism powers the light of all nations, it does not drain the light from all nations.
I can relate to Israelis who feel egregiously betrayed by their political leadership and who yearn for real change from within and who yearn for ethical and humble leadership to lead them into peaceful coexistence and away from the perpetual terror and war and the collective angst and despair of Sinat Chinam.
In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. – Friedrich Nietzsche
Guerrilla leaders spend a great deal more time in organization, instruction, agitation, and propaganda work than they do fighting, for their most important job is to win over the people. "We must patiently explain," says Mao Tse-tung. "Explain," "persuade," "discuss," "convince"—these words recur with monotonous regularity in many of the early Chinese essays on guerrilla war. Mao has aptly compared guerrillas to fish, and the people to the water in which they swim. If the political temperature is right, the fish, however few in number, will thrive and proliferate. It is therefore the principal concern of all guerrilla leaders to get the water to the right temperature and to keep it there. — from Mao Tse-tung on Guerrilla Warfare translated by Brigadier General Samuel B. Griffith, USMC (Retired).
Kahanists have an obnoxious penchant for labelling as Kapo Jew any disobedient Jews they encounter in public discourse.