Ultimately, the philanthropists and Jewish leaders who pull the rug out from under pro-Palestine activists and seek to destroy the Palestinian homeland are the very same Zionists who support the efforts to eradicate White Australia and weaken White homelands around the world. It functions as one and the same operation and, minus the use of military force, the methods are identical: dehumanisation, institutional silencing, deconstruction of identity, encouraging foreigners to settle on their land, funding pro-immigration groups, inflicting conditions of life on White Australia calculated to bring about its physical destruction, and declaring all opposition to the aforementioned tactics to be hate or terrorism.

Jewish writers and leaders were not wrong when they declared that the surprise raid on Israeli territory launched by Hamas on the morning of the 7th of October 2023 changed the direction of world affairs. At first the linguistic elevation of a calendar date into a distinct phrase in the English lexicon seemed melodramatic; “October Seven”, as if to imply an earth-shattering moment, a cynical attempt by Zionists to link the events of the day to 9/11. The intervening year has proven that the date does indeed signpost a point of departure from a prior state in global politics.

War is the locomotive of history, as a famous Bolshevik once said, and the war in Gaza has certainly brought many rapid changes. Military escalations once considered inconceivable have become reality, war looms between world powers, and supporters of Israel are on the defensive against condemnation by the civilised world. The reverberations of the strike masterminded by Yahya Sinwar rapidly reached the far shores of the Antipodean continent. Here, Australian Jewry is reeling from the outbreaks of sympathy for the Palestinian people that have resulted from a war that has claimed the lives of more than 13,000 children.

In turn, the impacts on Australian politics are profound. The year 2024 was one of the more difficult and confusing years to be on the Australian Left. After a lifetime of being taught to stand up for the oppressed, to fight for the rights of colonised people and oppose ethnic cleansing, members of Australia’s artist and activist class found out the hard way that their leaders and benefactors have somewhat different rules when it comes to the state of Israel. Allies they once thought they had in the Jewish community have rushed to sever support for creatives who speak out against the destruction being inflicted on Gaza.

Reflecting on the period since October 7, we see a community in tactical retreat, fearful of its position and overplaying its hand. The organs of Australian Jewry initiated heavy interventions into public life in order to put out the fires started by Hamas halfway around the world, interventions that they would otherwise have preferred not to undertake. Across the country, major changes are occurring in the Australian cultural and political realm as the organised Jewish community reorganises and re-calibrates.

Visible for the first time in a generation is the true scope of Jewish power and the extent of their privileged status, their ability to lock down the choke-points in Australian society. October 7 has shown that Jews enjoy political agency to a degree that defies all conventional explanation, whereas Muslims, who outnumber the Jewish community in Australia by a factor of 10 to 1 and act as representatives of nearly a quarter of the world’s population, struggle to get politicians to even listen to them.

As detailed in this essay, chaos in the Middle East and its local political repercussions have revealed the networks of money and influence that once hid behind the scenes in the world of philanthropy and at Australia’s universities and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), as well as the key role Jewry plays in governing discourse in Australian life.

Follow the money

Contrary to crude stereotypes of miserly Jews, Jewish money freely flows across the Australian cultural landscape — or at least it used to. Australia’s wealthiest Jews have long made up a large proportion of the funding streams for Australian artistic endeavours, through the issuing of lavish endowments and regular multi-million-dollar donations. Alongside their financial contributions to Jewish hospitals or programs monitoring ‘hate speech’, billionaire families like the Besens, Gandels, Schwartzes, Pratts and Smorgons channel their wealth into local art galleries, stages and theatres, universities, human rights groups, and other non-profit organisations.

These family-run philanthropic foundations (a selection of which are seen in the image above) are undoubtedly familiar names to those in the Australian arts and non-profit sector. Jewish-led peak bodies like Philanthropy Australia (currently chaired by Jewish lawyer Amanda Miller) and Australians Investing in Women (founded by Eve Mahlab and Jill Reichstein) advise corporate donors on the worthy causes and direct funding from prospective donors who do not own foundations. In addition, Jews are an ever-present feature on the boards of the largest gentile-originated philanthropies: the Paul Ramsay Foundation and the Ian Potter Foundation. Ultimately, money talks and donations always come with the condition that donors be allowed a say in an organisation’s agenda, oftentimes through securing positions on boards or executive roles.

The scale of this philanthropic support and an exact accounting of where all the funds end up is difficult to establish, though no cause is too small or too obscure to warrant their attention. The Besen family, who support the land-grab settlement projects of the Jewish National Fund, also donate money to anti-racist documentaries like Bukal Bukal, a film about an Aboriginal woman struggling with the effects of colonial dispossession who attempts to reclaim a family artefact held by the British Museum. In 2023, the Gandel Foundation partnered on the Quill Award for Reporting on Multicultural Affairs and Media, a minor journalistic award issued by the Melbourne Press Club. The resulting partnership position on the selection panel allowed Gandel Foundation chairman Graham Goldsmith to issue the award to journalists who ‘debunked’ stories about African [Sudanese] Gangs terrorising the suburbs of Melbourne.

There is certainly enough money within the Jewish community to make things happen. The Australian Financial Review Rich List, a yearly publication that charts the top 250 wealthiest Australians, shows that Jews make up somewhere between 15–18 percent of Australia’s multi-millionaires. This figure is even more lopsided when one considers the upper echelons of this list. Jews regularly account for between 10–13 entrants on the top 30 wealthiest Australians, oftentimes taking out the number 1 spot if their investment portfolios made good returns over the prior year. Jews are similarly over-represented in the AFR’s Philanthropy 50 List, again skewed towards the most charitable entrants.

Many of these wealthy Jews chose to downplay their financial contributions and settle for their names merely appearing on a discreet plaque placed on a building or hidden in an annual report; other families make a show of their philanthropic largess. Since arrival in Australia, the members of the Besen family, who built a fortune from the rag trade, have collected entire galleries worth of Australian modern art, displayed in sprawling private museums such as the TarraWarra Museum of Art.

The works of artists that fled National Socialist Germany for engaging in ‘degenerate art’ adorn the public spaces adjacent to Australian cultural venues, their placement made possible by wealthy Jewish benefactors. The sculpture “Forward Surge” designed by German-Jewish artist Ingeborg King — a series of oversized metal shavings — graces the park wedged between the Arts Centre in Melbourne and concert venue Hamer Hall.

“Forward Surge” (1981) by Inge King

Since October 7, Jewish philanthropists and donors around the country have been quietly pulling funds and boycotting Australian artists. Wealthy Jewish families are said to be “in despair” at the level of anti-Zionist sentiment rampant at the institutions they bankroll:

A quiet revolt against bullying and anti-Semitic rhetoric — used by some pro-Palestinian activists               including publicly subsidised artists — has seen Jewish donors withdraw or redirect their funding deals         with environmental, women’s or arts groups…The list of leading arts companies from which Jewish          donors or board members have withdrawn in recent times is growing and includes the Melbourne and      Adelaide writers festivals, Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre, Sydney Theatre Company, the National         Association for the Visual Arts and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Arts[1]

High profile defections first hit the board of the Sydney Theatre Company. Funding was pulled by prominent Jewish donors after actors wore keffiyeh scarves during a stage production in December 2023. Later the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra came under fire; musicians issued a vote of no confidence in board members of the MSO who had, in response to donor pressure, cancelled performances by pianist Jayson Gillham due to his outspoken pro-Palestine views. The legal firm of Mark Leibler (ABL), which widely represents clients in the arts work, has withdrawn services from groups like the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) – the peak body for visual arts in Australia — over statements they issued condemning Israeli conduct in Gaza.

The Melbourne ‘Rising’ festival, the city’s yearly arts festival, faces a trimmed-down 2025 lineup since the Besen Family Foundation withdrew funding. The Adelaide Festival, another marquee event on the arts calendar, revealed a deficit for financial year 2024; unidentified “major sponsors” pulled out over the inclusion of Palestinian artists in the festival lineup. Financial shortfalls in the funding streams of organisations as diverse as Opera Australia and the Queensland Ballet have also recently seen instability result on their boards of directors as they struggle to account for lost operating income. Art galleries and literary associations around the country have publicly and privately issued statements of impartiality in order to prevent the loss of crucial funds from Jewish donors.

For artists and activists on the Australian left, the financial and organisational chaos that has erupted around them is cause for bewilderment. Why, they ask, are these powerful allies, whom are otherwise steadfast in their support for human rights, equality and justice for Indigenous Australians, not supporting the plight of all oppressed peoples and how is it possible that we are being silenced for speaking out about ethnic cleansing and genocide? Writers cancelled by the State Library of Victoria for thier pro-Palestine views sputter in disbelief at its CEO Paul Duldig. How a man who publicly defends LGBTQ+ rights and freely allows ‘Drag Queen Story Hour’ events to take place within the library premises can possibly make such a rapid heel-turn when it comes to the suffering of the Palestinian people is a question they have no good answer for.

These Jewish donors and board members, happy to support every conceivable artistic insult, political attack, and cultural subversion directed against the Australian people shrivel up at the first sighting of a keffiyeh or a Palestinian flag. Absent the Jewish presence, the donation habits of Australia’s philanthropies would look far more like that of mining billionaire Andrew Forrest, who has pledged $40m in aid to Gaza. Forrest’s donation through the Minderoo Foundation (which he and his wife have full organisational control of), includes $5 million earmarked for the World Central Kitchen, a non-profit food relief group targeted by Israeli forces in November 2023, resulting in the killing of an Australian citizen.

Campus Hate and NGO Silence

The political machinations against Palestinian solidarity are being felt not just within arts groups or at literary festivals, but also deep within the heartlands of the organised left. No longer is the university campus or the NGO the ‘safe space’ it once was. Australia’s power-brokers have declared that if the space is not safe for Zionism, then it cannot be allowed a space at all.

Much like in America, Australia’s university system in the aftermath of October 7 has been the scene of confected claims of an outbreak of anti-Semitism on campus. University vice-chancellors, previously comfortable to let Trotskyist radicals and all manner of anti-white groups protest to their hearts content, are responding to pro-Palestine demonstrations with an uncharacteristic firmness. Campus encampments, flyers, chalk drawings, bake sales and protest meetings — standard fare for any other political issue that university radicals take an interest in — are now hateful events deserving of police monitoring and disciplinary processes.

Over the course of 2024, police moved in to dismantle encampments and arrest protesters at Australia’s leading Group of Eight (Go8) universities. Far-reaching protest restrictions or outright bans on the construction of encampments on university grounds now apply for any future demonstrations envisaged by students, pro-Palestine or not. In a twist of irony, rhetorical accusations and legal complaints otherwise beloved by the left like ‘marginalisation’ or ‘psycho-social harm’ are successfully being turned against the campus radicals by Jewish student unions and university administrators, bypassing rights to academic freedom and political expression. The latter concept is found in Workplace Health and Safety Acts throughout the country. Used to define unsafe work environments, it plays a role in regulating all manner of ‘woke’ ideas on race and gender.

On the political level, an inquiry into anti-Semitism at Australian universities by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights is currently underway in Canberra, launched in October 2024 by Jewish Attorney General Mark Dreyfus. A report inquiring into the “prevalence, nature and experiences of antisemitic activity at universities” is due by next March. Expected outcomes of the inquiry are recommendations for the widespread adoption of the IHRA definition and strengthened anti-Semitism reporting procedures on campus, as well as new federal laws directly targeting anti-Semitic speech, laws likely to be incorporated into the pending hate speech bill sitting before the Attorney General.

Submissions were received from all the peak Jewish bodies and Zionist organisations, as well as from Australia’s small but loud network of anti-Zionist Jews, whose leaders have ingratiated themselves within pro-Palestine groups.[2] A submission from the Australasian Union of Jewish Students singled out the University of New South Wales (UNSW) for being “notably effective, particularly in managing protests and ensuring Jewish students’ safety during these events”, whilst also condemning the University of Sydney for maintaining a veneer of freedom of speech. Worth noting of course, is who currently occupies the role of UNSW Chancellor — David Gonski — thus making the UNSW the only member of the Go8 with outright Jewish leadership.

The situation looks even more bleak for the university radical in his or her future career pathway at a non-governmental organisation. Dripping out from left-wing Substack blogs and posts on X/Twitter are accounts of internal revolts and widespread frustration from lower-level activists working within Australia’s human rights and climate NGOs. Desperate for action on Palestine as they watch the slaughter unfold online, employees motivated to speak out have found institutional blockages placed in their way by higher-ups. Many note the near-silence of Australian NGOs on the plight of people in Gaza despite these same institutions issuing loud statements of support for Indigenous reconciliation and opposition to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Common to these accounts, such as the following opinion piece in Overland criticising the lack of Palestine solidarity at climate NGOs, are revelations of pressure coming from the leadership levels and above.[3]  Executives fearful of incurring the wrath of donors are cracking down on employee support for Palestine, even for acts as insignificant as wearing a Palestine flag t-shirt at work:

Several people shared their experience and knowledge of one-on-one calls, emails and text messages                from donors and climate leaders to CEOs and organisational executives discouraging people from         speaking out in support of Palestine. I also understand a number of funders indicated that they would       withdraw funding if groups took a public stance and that several organisations have already been       advised their funding is at risk.[4]

A mass resignation hit the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) over its Zionist leadership and its willingness to cancel activists with pro-Palestine views at the urging of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. Leaders of Climate Action Network Australia (CANA), the umbrella group representing Australia’s climate organisations, refused to undersign a Gaza ceasefire statement issued by their parent international group, citing an inability of skills or resources to properly “resolve the issue” with the  ‘committed members’ who fund CANA. Reviewing CANA’s committed members, which includes the Climate Council chaired by Carol Schwartz and the Jewish Climate Network, makes it clear where their concerns originated from. Activists even traced the silence on Palestine at Australia’s largest mental health organisations (Orygen and Headspace) to their Jewish funding streams and links with Israel.

Regardless of whether or not these human rights leaders or university Vice-Chancellors are Jewish themselves, the message being communicated through them is clear: give no quarter to support for Palestine.

Labor under Fire

Since the defeat of the Voice to Parliament referendum, which occurred under the shadow of news coverage of October 7, the prospects of re-election for the governing Australian Labor Party have been diminishing by the day. Failure to arrest extreme levels of immigration and address the cost-of-living crisis rank high on causes for this political collapse, but undoubtedly Labor’s indecisive position on the conflict in the Middle East has played a central role in the crashing fortunes of the current Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

The tone of the overall political debate in Australia was set soon after October 7, when Jewish groups disseminated their own local version of the ‘40 beheaded babies’ hoax. At a pro-Palestine protest held on steps of the Sydney Opera House on the 9th of October, observers from the Australian Jewish  Association claimed they heard the phrase “gas the Jews” chanted by participants. After months of obsequious media coverage[5] and bipartisan outrage, full video recordings eventually showed no evidence of the phrase being uttered. Smeared with false accusations, pro-Palestine forces in Australia were on the back foot from the very start.

Though the Liberal Party remains as firmly locked into a pro-Israel position as ever, the Labor Party’s relationship to Israel has historically been anything other than steady — a fact Jewish leaders are well aware of. Initially, Israel drew its firmest Australian supporters from the left, and the Chiffley Labor government quickly recognised the Jewish state in 1949. Since then, former Labor Prime Ministers range from Zionist sycophants like Bob Hawke (Prime Minister from 1983–1991) and Julia Gillard (2010–2013), to Zionist critics like Kevin Rudd (2007–2010, 2013) and Gough Whitlam(1972–1975). Political ententes fostered by Zionist leaders and Jewish MPs and vast donations to the Labor party like those made by Trump-supporting billionaire Anthony Pratt have, since the most recent breakdown in relations during the Rudd-era,[6] ensured pro-Israel sentiment remains at the forefront.

Since October 7, Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong sit somewhere in the middle of this spectrum, pleasing neither side of the debate. Australia’s formal response to Israel liquidating the cities of Gaza has been to timidly seek a resolution to the conflict under the strictures of international law, whilst also affirming support for Israel as a supposed Western democracy and respecting its ‘right to defend itself’. Though this once may have been considered a reasonable if not muddled approach to take on the Israel-Palestine conflict during peacetime, it has become politically untenable now that organised Jewry is lashing out at any deviation from full-throated support of Israel’s military efforts. In turn the disillusioned left accuse the government of complicity in genocide, pointing out that Australia continues to provide military aid and defence exports to Israel.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaking at a Synagogue

Attempts by Albanese to calm Zionist anger have so far failed to stop the Israeli foreign minister and Australia’s peak Jewish bodies from thundering against Labor for abandoning Israel. Appointing a ‘special envoy to combat anti-semitism’, donating money to Jewish museums, banning Roman salutes, or declaring a fire at a synagogue to be a terrorist attack before authorities had even established a suspect, let alone a motive, does not appear to make up for the Australian government voting in favour of Palestinian statehood or ceasefire resolutions at the United Nations general assembly. Furthermore, Australia has thus far resisted U.S. and Israeli pressure to outright condemn the authority of the International Criminal Court, which Australia has been a party to since 2002.

In the state of Victoria, the governing Labor Party provides the counter to the woes of federal Labor. Evidently showing firm support for Israel and acquiescing to the hysterical demands of the Jewish community leaves your government in a far more stable position. For years former Premier Daniel Andrews fostered strong connections with the Jewish community in Victoria, the largest in the country. As a symbol of appreciation, Andrews was recently awarded the Jerusalem Prize from the World Zionist Organisation and used his speech to urge Jewish philanthropists to double their  existing efforts in defunding critics of Israel.[7]

Now a patron of Labor Friends of Israel, Andrews’ years in government saw collaborations to strengthen hate speech laws, the creation of mandatory holocaust education courses in schools, memorandums of understanding between Victoria and the Israeli Defence Ministry, and the furthering of trade connections. Premier Jacinta Allen, who took over the position in late September 2023, continues in the tradition set by her mentor and predecessor. The latest furore over anti-semitism has prompted the Victorian Government to promise further draconian crackdowns on civil liberties and the right to protest. The envisioned laws banning masks, designated symbols and protest implements have been criticised by unions, antifascists, libertarians, and nationalists alike but will likely make no dent in Victorian Labor’s electoral prospects

Elsewhere on the political front, the efforts of the Teals, a group of semi-independent politicians who unseated Liberal Party members in previously safe conservative seats in the 2022 election, have also taken a hit. In April, The Australian revealed that Naomi Milgrom (née Besen) withdrew funding from Climate 200 (the financial pot that supplies the Teal movement) due to Teal MP’s Kylea Tink and Sophie Scamps voting with the Greens on a parliamentary motion condemning Israeli strikes on Gaza.[8]

In the end, it takes more than just pressure from a ‘lobby group’ to transform the likes of Anthony Albanese from a university radical and a founding member of the Parliamentary Friends of Palestine into a defender of Israel. Whether its genuine belief or pure cynicism, somewhere along the path to power Albanese learnt that to be an Australian prime minister, it’s necessary to don a kippah and make concessions to the powers that be.

2025 and beyond?

“If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.” — Sun Tzu

With funds seemingly freed up from left-wing causes, the question now is, where will all the money go instead. Will Jewish philanthropists permanently disassociate from those that have pledged support for Palestine and refocus on the Zionist right by crowing about “the end of woke.” Or has it all been just a temporary lull, with cash-starved artists set to crawl back with promises to stay tight-lipped on Gaza? Whilst it is tempting to speculate on the revived fortunes of conservative political forces and the finances behind the recent launch of an Australian arm of Yoram Hazony’s ‘National Conservatism’ project, only time (or the release of the next batch of Australian Electoral Commission donation returns) will provide a clearer picture.

Meanwhile the Palestine solidarity movement, as it exists in its current form, appears destined to relive the political defeats of 2024. Taught from childhood by Judeo-centric history syllabuses that the holocaust is the ultimate expression of evil, rank-and-file members still can’t wrap their minds around how the direct descendants of those that fled to Australia from National Socialist Germany are able to support the barbarism on display in Gaza. Taking their cue from Jewish intellectual trends by framing the issue as one of ‘white supremacy’, sprinkling in some class reductionism, and then announcing ad-nauseam that it is incorrect to conflate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism leaves them unable to articulate a true critique of Jewish power. It’s far from coincidence that the only “woke” political cause in Australia that is impotent, the one that utterly fails where all others — be it LGBTQ+ rights, indigenous reconciliation or gender equality — succeed in strides, just so happens to be the one organised Jewry doesn’t support.

The brightest note of pro-Palestine efforts — one in fact condemned by anti-Zionist Jews — occurred at the start of the year and made headlines around the world. Enterprising activists exposed a WhatApp group chat filled with hundreds of prominent Australian Jews busily developing strategies to attack and silence critics of Israel. The release included a spreadsheet with the names, images and social media accounts of chat participants, in a form similar to the treatment meted out to pro-Palestine activists on the website Canary Mission, which “documents people and groups that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews”. Members of the chat rushed to the press to complain they had been ‘doxxed’ and forced the federal government to push through new criminal offences on the dissemination of personal data, despite not a single email, private address or phone number being revealed in the releases. Discovering, in real time, incontrovertible evidence of a ‘Jewish conspiracy’ plants the seeds of true dissent in the way that a thousand newspaper articles cannot.

Ultimately, the philanthropists and Jewish leaders who pull the rug out from under pro-Palestine activists and seek to destroy the Palestinian homeland are the very same Zionists who support the efforts to eradicate White Australia and weaken White homelands around the world. It functions as one and the same operation and, minus the use of military force, the methods are identical: dehumanisation, institutional silencing, deconstruction of identity, encouraging foreigners to settle on their land, funding pro-immigration groups, inflicting on White Australia conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction, and declaring all opposition to the aforementioned tactics to be hate or terrorism.

Perhaps it will click in the minds of the honest Palestine supporter that so much of what they understand as human rights advocacy is just a fig leaf created by Zionists to cover their true intentions, that this support for diversity and multiculturalism in Australia has always gone hand-in-hand with violent and oppressive ethnic particularism in Israel. Something other than mere concern for humanity is going on when Jews fund the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre and Indigenous ‘blak art’ collectives whilst simultaneously declaring justice for the people of Gaza off-limits.

When Hersch Lauterpacht, Jacob Robinson and René Cassin set the framework for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and developed the language of international human rights law at the Nuremberg Trials, they had in mind not universalism or left-wing ideals of utopia, but an international system that would advance Jewish national self-determination and ensure the security of the Jewish people. Henceforth, whenever this system has gone rogue and come into conflict with the military or political aims of Zionism, Jewish leaders attack and declare it is failing in its true purpose. Whether it’s the United Nations, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, Amnesty International or the International Criminal Court, no institution that speaks out is left unscathed.

Forced to play their hand by the events in Palestine, Australian Jewry exposed their position to those who were paying attention. To make an appeal for White Australia to the bulk of Palestine supporters is probably a lost cause. But for those open-minded individuals who watched the philanthropic retreat and the institutional chaos unfold in the year and three months since October 7 2023, it can only have opened their eyes to the true nature of politics in Australia.

[1]Neill, R & Bashan, Y 2024, ‘Facing hate from those they fund, Jewish donors walk away in despair’, The Australian, September 2, retrieved from: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/jewish-donors-are-pulling-and-redirecting-their-funds-as-they-despair-at-rise-of-antisemitism/news-story/48507627d50a44f96738c62cb75f38ba

[2]Jordana Silverstein, executive member of the Australian Palestine Advocacy Network and figures like Sarah Schwartz, Max Kaiser (the grandson of Walter Lippmann) and others grouped around the newly created Jewish Council of Australia.

[3]Statements on Gaza issued elsewhere by the editors of Overland and literary journal Meanjin denounce October 7 as an act of terrorism and baulk at supporting militant resistance by Hamas.

[4]Kelly, A 2023, ‘Where is the Australian climate movement’s solidarity with Palestine?’, Overland, December 3, retrieved from: https://overland.org.au/2023/12/where-is-the-australian-climate-movements-solidarity-with-palestine/

[5]For a discussion on the Jewish role in Australian media and its general pro-Zionist slant, see my previous TOO piece ‘Moulding the Australian Mind.’

[6]Also the conflict centred around Bob Carr’s brief term as Foreign Minister; see Brendon Sanderson, ‘Mark Leibler: Power Broker for Australia’s Jewish Plutocracy‘. h

[7]Other political recipients of the Jerusalem Prize are Labor Prime Ministers Bob Hawke and Julia Gillard and Liberal Party PMs John Howard and Scott Morrison.

[8] The Australian 2023, ‘Rich-lister’s rethink on Teal support’, retrieved from: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/margin-call/richlister-naomi-milgrom-rethinks-support-for-teals-libs-cashed-up-in-cook/news-story/bc6f0b6171b1b51f89b312a081188c92

Jewish History, Jewish Religion
Israel Shahak
Pluto Press, 1994

For a thorough airing of Jewish dirty laundry, one cannot do much better than Israel Shahak’s  Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years (JHJR). First published in 1994, JHJR, represents a humanist critique of classical and modern Judaism which extends to the pervasive anti-gentile attitudes of Jews throughout history. Much of Shahak’s critique leads to his condemnation of Israel’s current treatment of the Palestinians, but he also offers the gentile’s perspective whenever discussing historical conflicts between Jews and gentiles. Most importantly, however, Shahak underscores the blatant hypocrisy, the niggling legalism, and the chauvinistic ethnocentrism behind classical Judaism, as expressed in the Talmud and other post-biblical writings. While he focuses his ire on the fanatical rabbis—mostly in Israel—who still adhere to these antiquated doctrines and exert influence in the Israeli military, modern dissidents can implement Shahak’s historical and Talmudic analysis whenever countering the historical complaints Jews continually levy against gentiles, especially the white ones.

Shahak begins by demonstrating how the Jewish state of Israel exists to serve the interests of Jews first and foremost. Jews are protected and encouraged by the law in ways that non-Jews are not, especially when it comes to residency and commercial discrimination. Shahak recognizes that many of these discriminatory laws go unenforced in Israel, but they remain on the books. And some are enforced, or at least were as of the book’s publication. Shahak offers the example of Jews—but not gentiles—being legally allowed to lease an orchard from a Jew for harvest. He also describes the financial incentives Israel provides for its Jewish citizens to return to Israel after they leave, while not making similar offers to its non-Jewish citizens in similar circumstances. Further, Kibbutzes exclude Arabs and require that all non-Jews convert before joining. Underlying these double standards is what Shahak calls “the ideology of redeemed land.” Israeli land is considered “redeemed” when it belongs or is sold to a Jew. The same land in gentile hands would be considered “unredeemed.” The logical extension of this, as Shahak points out, is the ultimate redemption of all Jewish land. As of the 1990s at least there was debate as to how far outside Israeli’s current borders unredeemed Jewish land actually stretches.

Shahak connects this double standard to the closed society many religiously zealous Jews want Israel to be. Despite having great knowledge of Judaism, Shahak laments this, and wishes Israel be an open society. But achieving this will require some painful decisions on the part of Jewish Israelis. The following passage, I think, sums up his intentions with JHJR:

A Jewish state, whether based on its present Jewish ideology or, if it becomes even more Jewish in character than it is now, on the principles of Jewish Orthodoxy, cannot even contain an open society. There are two choices which face Israeli-Jewish society. It can become a fully closed and warlike ghetto, a Jewish Sparta, supported by the labour of Arab helots, kept in existence by its influence on the US political establishment and by threats to use is nuclear power, or it can try to become an open society. The second choice is dependent on a honest examination of its Jewish past, on the admission that Jewish chauvinism and exclusivism exist, and on a honest examination of the attitudes of Judaism towards non-Jews.

And if there are any positive attitudes towards non-Jews in Judaism, Shahak studiously does not mention them.

One of Shahak’s main contentions regarding classical Judaism is its totalitarian nature. He mentions how eighteenth-century Jews burned books, persecuted dissidents, banned non-Jewish education, and were absorbed in mysticism. Tolerance was not part of the equation, and Shahak quite cheekily points out how at times even unfriendly gentile societies were kinder to the Jews than the Jews were to themselves. He states bluntly that when Jews were liberated or emancipated throughout the nineteenth century, they were in many cases freed from “the tyranny of their own religion” rather than from any gentile oppression. He offers as an example the Metternich regime in Austria in the 1840s, which actually enforced laws protecting Jews from being murdered. Shahak makes a similar point regarding Tsar Nicholas I:

Nicholas I of Russia was a notorious anti-Semite and issued many laws against the Jews of his state. But he also strengthened the forces of ‘law and order’ in Russia—not only the secret police but also the regular police and the gendarmerie—with the consequence that it became difficult to murder Jews on the order of their rabbis, whereas in pre-1795 Poland it had been quite easy.

Shahak characterizes pre-emancipated Jewish societies as “sunk in the most abject superstition, fanaticism and ignorance” and describes how in the first Hebrew work on geography (published in 1803), the authors complained about how a great many rabbis were still denying the existence of America. He even cracks a joke about how these classical Jewish societies prohibited the study of secular material—except while on the privy:

One can imagine that those few Jews of that time who – no doubt tempted by Satan—developed an interest in the history of the French kings were constantly complaining to their neighbours about the constipation they were suffering from.

Shahak stresses how official Jewish histories of this period which ignore or deny any of this “bear the unmistakable marks of their origin: deception, apologetics or hostile polemics, indifference or even active hostility to the pursuit of truth.” As evidence of this duplicity, Shahak describes how before emancipation, rabbis continually subverted Christian censorship whenever Christians became aware of virulently anti-gentile passages in the Talmud and other writings. For example, terms such as “non-Jew” or “gentile” would be replaced with seemingly less offensive terms such as “idolator” or “Samaritan” which then served as euphemisms for the goyim. Shahak calls these efforts “a calculated lie” since once the rabbis felt secure enough in Israel centuries later, the original anti-gentile passages reappeared in modern editions of their holy books.

And as for anti-gentile language, there is a lot of it, and not just in the Talmud. The Hebrew word shaqetz refers both to unclean animals and to gentile children. In a work known as The Book of Knowledge, Jews are instructed to exterminate gentiles with their own hands (a passage wholly expunged from the book’s English translations). In the Hasidic text known as Hatanya, gentiles are considered Satanic creatures. The Halakhah, which outlines the legal system of classical Judaism and springs from the Babylonian Talmud, openly approves of war crimes (i.e., the killing of ostensibly good gentile civilians during war). In Maimonides’ Guide to the Perplexed, Blacks and some other nomadic races are likened to “mute animals” and “are not on the level of human beings.” (In the 1925 American translation, editors obfuscated this embarrassing detail by replacing the Hebrew word Kushim, meaning Blacks, with the nonsensical  “Kushites”). There is a morning prayer in which Jews thank God for not making them gentiles. In another prayer, the worshipper declares, “and may the apostates have no hope, and all the Christians perish instantly.” Devout Jews are enjoined to utter a curse whenever passing a gentile cemetery or upon seeing a large gentile population. The fourteenth-century work called The Book of Education reinterprets seemingly universalist verbiage from the Bible into chauvinistic, pro-Jewish exhortations. For example, according to The Book of Knowledge, the verse “Thou shalt love thy fellow as thyself,” really means “Thou shalt love thy fellow Jew as thyself.” Finally, according to the Talmudic Encyclopedia, the intricacy of the law regarding adultery with gentile women reveals that, to devout Jews, all gentile women, even the ones who convert to Judaism, are presumed to be whores.

Keep in mind that while devout Jews were praying for the death of gentiles and while Jewish leaders were fully aware of the hidebound aspects of their own religion, they pressured the Catholic Church during the mid-20th century to remove the line about God forgiving Jews in one its Good Friday prayers; because, of course, to say such a thing would be anti-Semitic.

Perhaps the most astonishing aspect of JHJR is how petty and legalistic Shahak reveals Judaism to be. It seems that Judaism, as interpreted and re-interpreted over the centuries in the Talmud and other texts—down to the most trivial details—has provided the evolutionary bottleneck through which the Jews have become the world’s heavyweight champions of lawyers. In some cases, it’s as if God laid down the law in the Torah, and it’s up to His chosen people to find ingenious loopholes around these very laws—as if the All-Powerful Creator of the Universe were too obtuse to notice.

On the proscription against milking cows on the Sabbath, Shahak writes—hilariously—that according to Zionist rabbis:

the forbidden milking becomes permitted provided the milk is not white but dyed blue. This blue Saturday milk is then used exclusively for making cheese, and the dye is washed off into the whey. Non-Zionist rabbis have devised a much subtler scheme (which I personally witnessed operating in a religious kibbutz in 1952). They discovered an old provision which allows the udders of a cow to be emptied on the Sabbath, purely for relieving the suffering caused to the animal by bloated udders, and on the strict condition that the milk runs to waste on the ground. Now, this is what is actually done: on Saturday morning, a pious kibbutznik goes to the cowshed and places pails under the cows. (There is no ban on such work in the whole of the Talmudic literature.) He then goes to the synagogue to pray. Then comes his colleague, whose ‘honest intention’ is to relieve the animal’s pain and let their milk run to the floor. But if, by chance, a pail happens to be standing there, is he under any obligation to remove it? Of course not. He simply ‘ignores’ the pails, fulfills his mission of mercy and goes to the synagogue. Finally a third pious colleague goes into the cowshed and discovers, to his great surprise, the pails full of milk. So he puts them in cold storage and follows his comrades to the synagogue. Now all is well, and there is no need to waste money on blue dye.

This is funny. But when rules are laid down and then interpreted to not only benefit Jews but also to necessarily harm gentiles, it’s not funny. In Chapter Five, “The Laws Against Non-Jews,” Israel Shahak wrote it all down.

According to Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, the Talmudic Encyclopedia, and R. Yo’el Sirkis’ Bayit Hadash, Jew-on-Jew murder is a capital sin, but Jew-on-gentile murder is not, and is therefore not punishable by any Jewish court. R. David Halevi declares in his seventeenth-century text Turey Zahav which comments on the Shulhan ‘Arukh that a Jew must not directly harm a gentile, but he allows for indirect harm of gentiles. Maimonides himself proscribes Jewish doctors treating gentiles. Basically, a gentile life must not be saved. For example, a Jew would not be allowed to shove a gentile down a crevice, but if the gentile is already in the crevice, the Jew is under no obligation to pull him out. Indeed, if there is a ladder which could facilitate the gentile’s rescue, the Jew may also remove the ladder.

Unless, of course, such indirect harm would then bring hostility upon the Jews as a whole. Then, and only then, would a Jew not be permitted to indirectly harm a gentile. This, I call “the hostility exception,” and Shahak brings it up a lot. Jews respect power, and this power more than any universal set of values informs their jurisprudence. When gentiles (or heretic Jews) are weak, they are afforded no mercy in the law. However, when gentiles are strong, then Jews are required to do the very minimum to not increase their hostility. One crass and recurring example of this was how Jewish doctors would be encouraged to treat wealthy gentiles, including kings, nobles, lords, and the like. But poor gentiles, never. Obviously, such self-serving codification defies any absolute sense of Right and Wrong—moral particularlism at its most egregious, and is one of the aspects of classical Judaism that Shahak finds so offensive.

This next one might be the worst of them all. According to the virulently anti-gentilic Maimonides in his “Prohibitions on Sexual Intercourse” (emphasis mine):

If a Jew has coitus with a Gentile woman, whether she be a child of three or an adult, whether married or unmarried, and even if she is a minor aged only nine years and one day—because he had willful coitus with her, she must be killed, as is the case with a beast, because through her a Jew got in trouble.

Get that? According to one of greatest Jewish scholars of all time, a Jew has license to murder, rape, and molest children as long as the victim is a gentile. And of course, the sanctity of gentile marriages amounts to nothing.

Here are a few more anti-gentilic laws, all of which adhere to the “hostility exception” described above:

1. Gentiles are forbidden to bear testimony in rabbinical courts, since all gentiles are presumed liars.
2. Jews must not offer gifts to gentiles.
3. Jews must exact interest when lending money to gentiles.
4. Jews must never return items lost by a gentile.
5. Jews shall not deceive other Jews in business, but may practice “indirect deception” when doing business with a gentile.
6. Jews shall not steal without violence from anyone, gentiles included. However, there are certain circumstances under which they may steal with violence from gentiles under their control.
7. Jews are forbidden to sell unmovable property (i.e., structure and land) to gentiles in Israel.

Towards the end of JHJR, Shahak bluntly states something that most counter-Semites know as fact:

It must be emphasized that the explanations quoted above do represent correctly the teaching of the Halakhah. The rabbis and, even worse, the apologetic ‘scholars of Judaism’ know this very well and for this reason they do not try to argue against such views inside the Jewish community; and of course they never mention them outside it. Instead, they vilify any Jew who raises these matters within earshot of Gentiles, and they issue deceitful denials in which the art of equivocation reaches its summit.

Shahak states further that Judaism is imbued with both hatred and ignorance of Christianity, and that this is largely independent of any Christian persecution of the Jews. Thus, he often takes the gentile perspective when reviewing Jewish history in JHJR. He makes it clear that even the poorest Jews were better off than serfs. He also points out that Jews, as agents of kings or nobility, often exploited the peasantry, especially in Poland. He doesn’t deny that European peasants triggered anti-Jewish uprisings throughout history, but he also lists historical peasant uprisings that had nothing to do with Jews. Clearly then, what Jews call “anti-Semitism” is not inherent to European peasants. Shahak says the quiet part out loud when concluding that Jewish influence declines when gentile nations assume a more nationalistic (read: ethno-nationalistic) attitude and have a greater political connection between the rulers and the people—what it now termed populism in American political culture. There is a long history going back at least to the 1930s of Jewish anti-populist writing (Chapter 5 of The Culture of Critique)—writing that eventually penetrated American academic and media culture with the rise of Jewish power.

Most damningly, Shahak states:

Before the advent of the modern state the position of the Jews was socially most important, and their internal autonomy greatest, under a regime which was completely retarded to the point of utter degeneracy.

In other words, Jews readily made alliances with oppressive, degenerate non-Jewish elites and participated with these elites in exploiting the non-Jewish population.

Certainly, viewing the Jewish Question through the lens Israel Shahak provides us in JHJR makes things much clearer. He provides cogent reasons why gentiles oppressed Jews in the past or evicted them from their nations. Still, we should remember that Shahak was no fellow traveler of the Dissident Right. Like any good liberal humanist, he opposed all race-based policies, laws, and nations. He opposed ethno-nationalism in toto and often chided Jews (for example, Rabbi Schneurssohn of New York city) for having anti-Black attitudes—the same anti-Black attitudes that many race-realist White dissidents have today. White people founding pro-White nations would have been just as odious to him as the Zionists who had founded Israel. Most questionably, Shahak on multiple occasions in JHJR expresses a high regard for the ideas behind the French Revolution without mentioning any of its concurrent chaos and atrocities. This should give a clear indication of where he stands as a pollical thinker.

Most importantly, we should keep in mind that Jewish History, Jewish Religion does not condemn modern Jews for the overt racism of their classical religion (excluding those instances when classical Judaism informs their treatment of the Palestinians). Nor should it—since no people is without historical sin. However, the best take from this important and fascinating book is the underscoring of the present sin being committed by most Jews today; that is, blaming gentiles, especially the white ones, for bad things in their past, while astutely ignoring similar bad things in the Jewish past.

A critical mass of Jews who stop doing this will do much to lift the burden of three thousand years.