American Pravda: Oddities of the Jewish Religion, by Ron Unz - The Unz Review Original textRate this translationYour feedback will be used to help improve Google Translatehttps://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-oddities-of-the-jewish-religion/The Unz Review - MobileThe Unz Review • An Alternative Media Selection$A Collection of Interesting, Important, and Controversial Perspectives Largely Excluded from the American Mainstream Media User Settings: Version? DefaultUse DesktopUse MobileUse Tablet Social Media? 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Elements of Talmudic JudaismRon Unz • July 16, 2018 • 7,800 Words • 1,661 CommentsTweetReddit10ShareShare634EmailPrintMore644 Shares RSS Share to GabEmail This Page to SomeoneYour Name Message Included Remember My InformationHere's something interesting from The Unz Review...Recipient Name Recipient Email(s), separated by semicolons => Table of ContentsOptionsIsrael Shahak and the Middle EastThe Unusual Doctrines of Traditional JudaismThe Attitude of Judaism Towards Non-JewsThe Historical Role of Jews in Western SocietiesThe Controversial Scholarship of Ariel ToaffList of Bookmarks◄►Bookmark◄►▲ ▼Toggle AllToC▲▼Add to LibraryRemove from Library • B Show CommentNext New CommentNext New ReplyRead MoreReplyAgree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All CommentsAgreeDisagreeThanksLOLTrollThese buttons register your public Agreement, Disagreement, Thanks, LOL, or Troll with the selected comment. They are ONLY available to recent, frequent commenters who have saved their Name+Email using the 'Remember My Information' checkbox, and may also ONLY be used three times during any eight hour period.Ignore Commenter Follow Commenter Search Text Case Sensitive Exact Words Include Comments SearchClearCancel Audio Playerhttps://www.unz.com/CONTENTS/AUDIO/runz/Unz-AmPravda-JewishOddities.mp300:0000:0000:00Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume. Israel Shahak and the Middle East EPub FormatAbout a decade ago, I happened to be talking with an eminent academic scholar who had become known for his sharp criticism of Israeli policies in the Middle East and America’s strong support for them. I mentioned that I myself had come to very similar conclusions some time before, and he asked when that had happened. I told him it had been in 1982, and I think he found my answer quite surprising. I got the sense that date was decades earlier than would have been given by almost anyone else he knew. Sometimes it is quite difficult to pinpoint when one’s world view on a contentious topic undergoes sharp transformation, but at other times it is quite easy. My own perceptions of the Middle East conflict drastically shifted during Fall 1982, and they have subsequently changed only to a far smaller extent. As some might remember, that period marked the first Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and culminated in the notorious Sabra-Shatila Massacre during which hundreds or even thousands of Palestinians were slaughtered in their refugee camps. But although those events were certainly major factors in my ideological realignment, the crucial trigger was actually a certain letter to the editor published around that same time. A few years earlier, I had discovered The London Economist, as it was then called, and it had quickly become my favorite publication, which I religiously devoured cover-to-cover every week. And as I read the various articles about the Middle East conflict in that publication, or others such as the New York Times, the journalists occasionally included quotes from some particularly fanatic and irrational Israeli Communist named Israel Shahak, whose views seemed totally at odds with those of everyone else, and who was consequently treated as a fringe figure. Opinions that seem totally divorced from reality tend to stick in one’s mind, and it took only one or two appearances from that apparently die-hard and delusional Stalinist for me to guess that he would always take an entirely contrary position on every given issue. In 1982 Israel Defense Minister Ariel Sharon launched his massive invasion of Lebanon using the pretext of the wounding of an Israeli diplomat in Europe at the hands of a Palestinian attacker, and the extreme nature of his action was widely condemned in the media outlets I read at the time. His motive was obviously to root out the PLO’s political and military infrastructure, which had taken hold in many of Lebanon’s large Palestinian refugee camps. But back in those days invasions of Middle Eastern countries on dubious prospects were much less common than they have subsequently become, after our recent American wars killed or displaced so many millions, and most observers were horrified by the utterly disproportionate nature of his attack and the severe destruction he was inflicting upon Israel’s neighbor, which he seemed eager to reduce to puppet status. From what I recall, he made several entirely false assurances to top Reagan officials about his invasion plans, such that they afterward called him the worst sort of liar, and he ended up besieging the Lebanese capital of Beirut even though he had originally promised to limit his assault to a mere border incursion. The Israeli siege of the PLO-controlled areas of Beirut lasted some time, and negotiations eventually resulted in the departure of the Palestinian fighters to some other Arab country. Shortly afterward, the Israelis declared that they were moving into West Beirut in order to better assure the safety of the Palestinian women and children left behind and protect them from any retribution at the hands of their Christian Falangist enemies. And around that same time, I noticed a long letter in The Economist by Shahak which seemed to me the final proof of his insanity. He claimed that it was obvious that Sharon had marched to Beirut with the intent of organizing a massacre of the Palestinians, and that this would shortly take place. When the slaughter indeed occurred not long afterward, apparently with heavy Israeli involvement and complicity, I concluded that if a crazy Communist fanatic like Shahak had been right, while apparently every mainstream journalist had been so completely wrong, my understanding of the world and the Middle East required total recalibration. Or at least that’s how I’ve always remembered those events from a distance of over thirty-five years. During the years that followed, I still periodically saw Shahak’s statements quoted in my mainstream publications, which sometimes suggested that he was a Communist and sometimes not. Naturally enough, his ideological extremism made him a prominent opponent of the 1991 Oslo Peace Agreement between Israel and the occupied Palestinians, which was otherwise supported by every sensible person, though since Oslo ended up being entirely a failure, I couldn’t hold it too strongly against him. I stopped paying much attention to foreign policy issues during the 1990s, but I still read my New York Times every morning and would occasionally see his quotes, inevitably contrarian and irredentist. Then the 9/11 attacks returned foreign policy and the Middle East to the absolute center of our national agenda, and I eventually read somewhere or other that Shahak had died at age 68 only … truncated (92,754 more characters in archive)