“embracing the goals of people openly committed to one’s destruction is a form of madness”
“The Jew Flu: The strange illness of Jewish anti-Semitism”
So last night I saw a term I had not heard before, “The Jew Flu.”
I’m not sure how I found the column from Haaretz on that topic. Someone may have tweeted the link, but regardless, it talks about what I’ve noticed regarding the obsession of the Jewish left with demonizing Israel beyond all rational thought.
How is it that so many progressive Jews are happy to break bread with Islamists and other assorted Jew haters, but can only find harsh things to say about Israel?
The Haaretz column was by Uzi Silber from 2009, but it rings true today when I see the Jews put out ahead of the BDS movement as cover.
Here’s an excerpt, The Jew Flu: The strange illness of Jewish anti-Semitism:
Diagnosis
The 1930s Labor Zionist leader Berl Katznelson asked “Is there another People on Earth so emotionally twisted that they consider everything their nation does despicable and hateful, while every murder, rape, robbery committed by their enemies fill their hearts with admiration and awe?”
This is Jew Flu – the virus of Jewish Anti-Semitism, and its Jewish Anti- and Post-Zionist mutations, afflicting a small but inordinately loud minority of Hebrews.
Its modern symptoms are a rejection of Israel’s identity as a Jewish state and a dismissal of its right to defend itself militarily, while embracing the goals of its nihilistic Arab enemies. Those infected with the virus wildly inflate Israeli sins real or imagined, while excusing or rationalizing Palestinian anti-semitism and outrages against Jews.
Those afflicted with Jew Flu often view the notion of Peoplehood as an artifice, which implies a rejection of Jewish national self-determination and acceptance of the 90-year-old Palestinian Arab contention that Jews are not a nation but merely members of a religion, and as such don?t merit a national home of their own.
Silber then goes on to describe some historical, sociological and psychological research on the subject, which I have no way of evaluating on medical grounds, but was interesting to read.
Regardless of cause, here’s his conclusion:
The intriguing research out of Haifa suggests that Jews may very well be inherently altruistic. But while exhibiting more sensitivity to another group’s pain is one thing, embracing the goals of people openly committed to one’s destruction is a form of madness.
So here’s my ultimate theory for the cause of this nefarious virus: Jew Flu is a condition in which being “more sensitive to pain suffered by members of a group other than (one’s) own metastasizes into a malignant emotional and moral identification with people committed to (one’s) annihilation.”
Like any other virus, Jew Flu is contagious but containable. Yet ultimately incurable.
Ronn Torrossian at Algemeiner brought the theory forward with this 2012 update, “Jew Flu”: With Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemies .
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
I’ve always felt it was a result of some people wanting to fit in with larger society. Jews are a minority and have been that way in every place they’ve lived for a couple millennia. Even Jews in Israel now often see themselves in international standards and thus see themselves as a minority. To get along and, more importantly, to feel they fit in with everyone else, they attack their own and accept the enemy. There were some Jews who did this during slavery in Egypt, during the Biblical kingdoms when other nations exerted power, during Roman times, in Exile, and now in the struggle for Israel’s security.
I would venture that most, if not all, of these people have American flu as well.
The kook in the box looks Jewish to me.
I believe many are rejecting the perceived constraints of religion. Israel is the physical manifestation of that religion. Rejecting Israel is a rejection of the Ten Commandments for Modern Moral Relativism ie. if it feels good do it.
The Jews have always had the Jew Flu.
Read the Old Testament. Then read the New Testament; you know, the part where they demand the crucifixion of the Messiah.
How many covenants did G-d make with these people across history? How many warnings in prophecy have been ignored.
Forget about it.
That was not all Jews. It was the Sanhedrin, their paid crowd, and those who were genuinely disaffected by some of Jesus’ hard sayings. A healthy portion of the people who followed the Messiah, like Peter, ran out of fear. We are here because those Jews who ran out of fear, like Peter, were later called Christians.
There will always be a percentage of any society that hates the society to which it belongs and seeks its destruction. A rational society will put those poeple away where they cannot hurt themselves or others, but mostly others.
I think we have to be careful here as part of this is human psychology common to everybody – to identify with whoever is perceived to be influential or trendy. Doesn’t every minority group have some form of this?
But there are a large numbers of liberal secular Jews in this country who are not standing up for Israel out of misinformation and a lack of understanding. Many of these individuals know very little about their own religion in the liberal moral relativism of “pick and choose”, and that has degraded their connection to authentic Judaism. Some may feel (incorrectly) that their American identity may be called into question if they stand up for Israel, some feel very threatened by religion especially when the Israeli rabbinate refuses to recognize them as Jews for the purposes of marriage etc etc. I truly feel that most of these individuals are reachable with education and the help of a leadership that doesn’t shy away from the challenges. They would be aghast if they truly understood how their stance hurts Israel and themselves.
Secular Jews is an oxymoron, as much so as secular Christian. The Israeli rabbinate is quite right to treat them as non-Jews. When it comes to religion, there is no fence straddling; it’s an either-or. They live in Israel and often look down their noses at the religious and won’t take the time to find out about Judaism. A lot of these people are quite educated and even capable of rational and analytical thought. So, why is it that they cannot see what their anti-Israel stance does? Why would they be “aghast” if they knew?
These people are basically cowards who tell themselves by being anti-Israel, anti-Jewish that they won’t be burned if/when the fire comes because “everyone knows their stance, doncherknow!” They’ll tell themselves that ______ knows who they are and would be appalled at what is happening to them. In sum, it is about self-preservation, and those type of tactics have never worked for Jews. For, when the anti-Semites come, they check for the covenant all mark or ask a question and take life accordingly. Ask Daniel Pearl.
If you skim this extensive Pew survey, “A Portrait of Jewish Americans”, you will see some interesting data about how Jews see themselves.
http://www.pewforum.org/files/2013/10/jewish-american-survey-full-report.pdf
Over 90% of Jews say they take pride in being Jewish, but 22% say they have no religion. I suspect that most non-Jews find that a rather confusing finding. I always thought that religion, as passed down from one generation to the next, is what defined a Jew as a Jew.
Scroll forward to page 55 of the survey and see what Jews say are “essential to being Jewish”. Of the non-religious Jews, only 23% say caring about Israel is essential. Even among religious Jews, only 49% say caring about Israel is important.
So, almost a quarter of Jews apparently consider themselves to be atheists and almost half don’t care much about Israel. It doesn’t look good going forward for the rest of Jewish culture (Hebrew, customs, Jewish laws, etc.)
I’m a non-Jew and I find it sad. I’ve been amazed that Jews have kept the Hebrew language alive and maintained the rich religious culture and customs for thousands of years despite being a tiny minority in every country in which Jews have lived (aside from Israel, of course). All that looks like it may be at risk of being lost. But, hey, according to the survey, “justice/equality” is now essential to being Jewish for 56% of the respondents.
And a sense of humor for 42%.
“I’ve been amazed that Jews have kept the Hebrew language alive and maintained the rich religious culture and customs for thousands of years ”
Those were not the oxymoronically named “atheistic Jews” who did that. It was the religious, the Zionists, which is a word that speaks of relationship to God and then land, as a mark of the former. Left to the secularists/atheists, Hebrew would be like ancient Egyptian. It was the rabbinate who kept it alive and those who believed in Zionism, the giving and ownership of the land as part of covenant and promise, who ensured that Hebrew survived.
I’m surprised that the secularists even want to or speak God’s language–as it is called in some seminaries.
social justice is a concept everybody can agree on. It sounds good and who could be against justice? Asking people to observe traditions that make no logical sense to them in a modern world is seen as an imposition of their individual freedom. It demands effort and commitment to turn up to synagogue and pray, to keep kosher, to learn the Hebrew language. In a liberal world nobody wants to offend anybody else by setting standards so the cultural degeneration self-perpetuates and the only thing left is the goal of justice/equality. This is indeed a noble goal but in a world of moral relativism it can by hijacked by the entity who screams the loudest about their perceived injustice.
I don’t agree with social justice. In fact, contradictorily, I’m not even sure I know what it is. What I do know is that the people who keep blathering on about it are the most illiberal people who seek to oppress others or deprive them of what they’ve worked hard to earn in order to achieve some kind of parity, even as they hold to a zero sum worldview that makes social justice unattainable. Social justice seems to be a naïf’s game which dismisses the notion that all men are created equal but not all men have the same abilities or will to achieve.
re: “How is it that so many progressive Jews are happy to break bread with Islamists and other assorted Jew haters, but can only find harsh things to say about Israel?”
I should probably just shut up and be quiet, but self-restraint has never my strong suite.
Professor, I see you as an intelligent man. Methodical and learned, able to teach even the most dense (such as myself) a few things. Passionate as well, as many of your posts testify. All good attributes.
My response to your question is what you are observing is an outward manifestation of an inward deception, and the deception is NOT exactly what most would percieve it to be. From what I understand, being Jewish has two components – a genetic component and a spiritual component. Just the re-creation of Israel after 2,000 years, populated by the children of Abraham, is one of the greatest testimonies for the world to see that there really is a creator G_d active in the affairs of man. I see this as a validation for a spiritual component, far outside the scientific genetic component, that determines a person’s membership of the class of persons calling themselves Jew.
I said all of this (poorly) professor so that I might state: What you are seeing is the outward manifestation of something called spiritual warfare. War betwixt the Great Creator of the universe and His principle attacker, the fallen angel first called Lucifer – now flying the flag of the Lawless One. These genetic Jews have chosen sides, through deception and rejection, to attack Jesurun (Isa 44:2), whom the Lord has chosen. It is a spiritual battle, principally – but it carries over into the mundane. Palestinian and anti-semite hatred against the Abraham’s seed and the Land that the Lord says he has given them. Who can break the covenant that He has made? How can the waves of the sea defeat the boundry He has established? They are deceived and wasting their time – deceived and insane.
Great post! Exactly! All the roiling is spiritual and people are basically fighting against God. It’s as RuthC said, being faithful is work, and some of these guys don’t want to deal with the Chosen thing out of fear of offending others. We wrestle not against flesh and blood….
Actually this is not limited to Jews. American liberals are leaders in the blame America first game. Jew Flu and Libarrhea are the same disease.
It’s simply an example of the Stockholm Syndrome – many American Jews have been seized by anti-Israel terrorists and, to survive in their liberal/progressive circles on the Upper West Side and its wannabes in other expensive, high brow urban areas, and to placate the mainstream media, have learned to bond with their captives.
I agree with David Yotham.
I think there are two additional aspects to this phenomenon: an obsession with justice, and an inability to forgive.
If you read Plato’s Republic, in which his goal is to define what is “the just”, you discover a prototype for totalitarian dystopia. Justice is a decidedly inferior god, and the worship thereof is rank idolatry. Those who worship it become its slaves and invariably end up inflicting more injustice than justice. Justice is so terrible that God reserves it to himself.
As my dear friend says, freedom is better than justice. And forgiveness is what frees us from slavery.
For example, in claiming to see justice for indigenous peoples who were harmed by people long dead, leftist justice worshipers are happy to inflict pain on people who had nothing to do with the harm (but no harm on themselves). In their slavery, they are unable to forgive those who did the harm, and to leave justice to God.
As far as atheism is concerned, there is no such thing – the question is not whether you worship a god, but rather which god you worship.
The problem is not that they are Leftists Jews, but that they are Leftists. You see Leftist women who are adopt “feminist” beliefs that are destructive to women and Leftist Americans who despise the USA and Black Leftists who set back their own race for Leftest causes. Being on the Left is a real mental disease because you believe the Lefty lies and live in a Lefty fantasy land. Anyone who denies reality, denies their own identity and culture, who denies obvious truth (denies that there even is such a thing as truth, is living in la-la land.
You are absolutely right! This is a very helpful comment.
Although the original article is about Jews, something was stopping me from explicitly referencing Jews in my comment. You have identified what it was.