Second Fundraising Appeal: Why support The Occidental Observer?

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Kevin MacDonald: The United States is headed for a political crisis. Patrick Buchanan wonders “Is this how democracy ends?”  Debt is skyrocketing and it is politically impossible for the Democrats or Republicans to deal with it — at least partly because of the rage of the tea partiers. These are the middle and lower middle class Whites who feel that the country is being taken away from them.

On the other hand, while rage builds among the middle and lower middle class Whites, the message has not reached educated Whites. George Will points out that the Republican Party “recently has become ruinously weak among highly educated whites.”

The Republican Party can’t win without their populist base, and yet it’s virtually certain that the Republicans will do nothing to give them what they really need. The Beltway Conservatives don’t even mention immigration as an issue, even though, as the Center for Immigration Studies tells us, wherever immigrants settle the percentage of the vote going to Republicans has declined. The Republican Party has become a White party. Whatever short term successes they have — and they figure to do well this year by milking the rage and the money of the tea partiers, they are doomed to electoral defeat in the long run.

American politics has become racialized. The United States and the rest of the Western world are undergoing an existential crisis. Our culture is coming under intense pressure with the rise of multiculturalism and continuing high levels of non-White immigration. We can see the changes all around us, and yet discussion of public policy related to these issues in the mainstream media is contained within a hopelessly narrow space.

We at The Occidental Observer are determined to change this. In this, our second fundraising appeal, we are asking readers to contribute financially to TOO’s success and increased visibility. It is important to get our message out in the most professional manner possible.

Western societies have become cauldrons of competing ethnic groups where only one group — White people of European descent — may not explicitly assert their interests.  The tea partiers want something like the America they grew up in, but they may not say this because they will be tagged as racists by the media. These people are being pushed out economically and politically. They are less able to avoid the costs of multiculturalism: They can’t move to gated communities or send their children to all-White private schools. Their unions have been destroyed and their jobs either shipped overseas or performed by recent immigrants, legal and illegal.

But without direction and leadership, this movement will not be effective. The fact is that the domination of the mass media and the academic world by elites that are hostile to White identity and interests makes it very difficult for educated Whites to sign on to a White ethnonationalist movement. Such people are often vulnerable to economic pressures where they work, and, as college-educated people, they have a respect for mainstream academic and media institutions. Having been treated fairly in general, they trust the integrity of the basic institutions of the society. They identify with its basic ideology — America as emerging from its long dark night of evil into the glorious goodness and virtue of the multicultural future.

The Occidental Observer occupies a unique space on the Internet because it attempts to appeal to educated Whites. There is simply no other outlet that discusses the full range of issues related to White survival and interests with the same level of intelligence and intellectual honesty that can be found here. All of the theory and the data are on our side. There is no reason at all why educated Whites cannot be persuaded to see the world as we do and to explicitly advocate for a White identity and for White interests.

It is no secret that many of our articles deal with Jewish power and influence. Jews have become a financial, media, and academic elite, and the organized Jewish community is a pillar of the multicultural left that has transformed Western societies. The multicultural left has abandoned the White middle and working classes in favor of promoting policies that will completely eclipse the people and culture of traditional America. An important theme of many of our articles  has been that Jewish influence in the media has resulted in the denigration of all of our cultural traditions, especially the strong Christian religious traditions of our people. It has resulted in invidious portrayals of White people and their accomplishments that have become internalized among a very large number of our people.

Educated Whites must realize that whatever their current prosperity, their long term prospects for themselves and their children are going to be severely compromised in multicultural America. It makes no sense whatever for these people to ally themselves with the looming non-White majority and against the great majority of their own people.

This is a very difficult topic to discuss fairly and honestly. A large part of the problem is that even well-argued, factually-based discussions of Jewish power and influence are typically labeled “anti-Semitic” and are banned from mainstream discussion. The occasional lapses from this public decorum are aggressively policed by an imposing array of well-financed activist organizations. These organizations have no scruples about ruining careers or doing whatever else they see as necessary to maintain the status quo. They typically operate by creating moral panics aimed at shutting down any discussion of Jewish power and any discussion of the Jewish role in the decline of Whites in America and other Western societies.

Prior to the Internet, it was possible to relegate all discussions of Jewish power and influence to the fringes of the culture. But that is no longer the case. The Occidental Observer has a place on the web that is just as accessible as the New York Times or the Washington Post.

It doesn’t take billions or even millions of dollars to develop a presence in this new medium. But it does require a sound financial foundation. We have set up TOO on a shoe-string budget. The great majority of the writing and all of the technical work have been done as a labor of love by people who are self-motivated to contribute to this effort.

We have posted some exceptional material within these constraints. But volunteer labor can only go so far. Good writers are a rarity. For the reasons discussed above, It is difficult to find writers with the requisite expertise and commitment to the historical American nation and the West. It is only natural that writers would appreciate some compensation — even if it is far less than they would need to earn a living. Quite simply, they need the money.

Huge numbers of readers are not critical for our success. The anti-White revolution that has so far triumphed in America has been a top-down phenomenon. The next revolution will also likely be a top-down phenomenon in which ideas that are completely outside the mainstream are disseminated and gradually take hold among people who can make a difference, whether because they have money, writing ability, or skills in the political arena. 

The point is not how many people are reading TOO, although we are certainly growing in readership. (This pdf file of readership from February, 2009 through January 2010 shows that around 2500 unique users per day in the most recent month — over twice the readership of a year ago.)

The point is that some of the people reading it may be able to make a difference in the future.

I ask for your support on behalf of The Occidental Observer’s dedicated writers.

A significant number of small donations make a huge difference. Realize that at this time we are not a 501C3 tax-deductible organization.

At present, we have several ways to make donations. Click on this link.

Thank you.

Kevin MacDonald, Editor

Kevin MacDonald (Email him) is Editor of The Occidental Observer and is Professor of Psychology at California State University–Long Beach.

Charles Dodgson’s “For God and the Reconquest of the West!”

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Charles Dodgson’s current TOO article is a particularly well-articulated comment on Christianity as a vehicle for ethnic interests. Dodgson is certainly not blind to the failings of contemporary Christianity:

In the face of diversity’s many sins, not one major Christian denomination stands with the majority of Westerners in opposing mass Third World immigration. Nor do they defend voluntary reciprocal segregation in multi-ethnic societies or criticize the elites that are forcing diversity on an unwilling but leaderless public.

Dodgson provides an excellent point about “the truth of Christian universalism. … Just as the Church protects parental rights and the autonomy and dignity of families, so it should defend national rights. It would be wrong for Chinese bishops to promote mass foreign immigration to China, or for Japanese monks to undermine Japanese homogeneity. ”

But his main point is that we have to think historically. And in that regard, there is no question that the Christianity has had a vital role in the development of the West. Here Dodgson goes into a great many positive aspects of the Christian legacy of which the following is only a partial listing:

Not for nothing was the West known as Christendom. The Church acted to save bodies and posterity as well as souls. It blessed new knights in the ceremony of knighthood, sanctified the new code of chivalry that forbade harming civilians and enacted the first codified rules of war. War was justified when it advanced Christendom — an ethnic-friendly legitimization that reduced or at least regulated fighting among Christians and culminated in the Crusaders’ attempt to wrest Near Eastern lands of the Eastern Roman Empire back from the Arabs. The Church defended the ordinary man from a parasitic aristocracy. It helped forge nations with responsible governments. It protected the mass of the people from enemies without and within. The English Church promoted the expulsion of Jews — who had become a predatory financial elite — from the country in 1290 as a pastoral duty, also a trend elsewhere in Western Europe. Throughout Europe the Church was Gentiles’ repository of sophisticated culture, of literacy and record keeping. It was indispensible for governance, advising kings and educating princes. It prevented the Jews from monopolizing the niche of trans-generational literary group strategy. It underwrote the earliest stirrings of modern science. The university, one of the greatest creations of the West, was founded under the Church’s auspices. Professors were priests of learning. Gregor Mendel was an ethnic German monk!

Some of this touches on themes of anti-Semitism in Ch. 4 of Separation and Its Discontents:

The Church was at the apogee of its power over secular affairs during the 13th century, and an important aspect of the economic policy of the Church was to remove Jews from the economic life of Christendom. “It was not sheer accident” (Cohen 1982, 41) that both the Dominicans and the Franciscans developed a Christian theology of commerce and trade or that St. Francis was often described as the patron saint of merchants.  Jordan (1989, 27) describes the efforts of the Church to remove Jews from the economic life of France in the 12th through the 14th centuries as an aspect of its program to develop a corporate Christian economic community by pushing Jews out of occupations and professions they formerly engaged in. Similarly, in England the Christianization of national life excluded Jews from public administration, trade, and agriculture (Rabinowitz 1938, 37). This suggests that the rise of gentile middle classes in Western Europe was facilitated by the exclusion of Jews by the medieval Church as an exclusionary, collectivist entity (see also PTSDA, Ch. 8). Houston Stewart Chamberlain apparently held a similar view. When asked to propose a Jewish policy for Romania, Chamberlain noted that the exclusion of Jews from England from 1290 to 1657 had, according to Field’s (1981, 222n) paraphrase, “enabled a strong, vigorous British race to grow and sustain itself.”

King Louis IX of France (Saint Louis), who lived like a monk though one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in Europe, was a particularly zealous warrior in carrying out the Church’s economic and political programs. Louis attempted to develop a corporate, hegemonic Christian entity in which social divisions within the Christian population were minimized in the interests of group harmony. Consistent with this group-oriented perspective, Louis appears to have been genuinely concerned about the effect of Jewish moneylending on society as a whole, rather than its possible benefit to the crown—a major departure from the many ruling elites throughout history who have utilized Jews as a means of extracting resources from their subjects. [In order to finance his first crusade Louis ordered the expulsion of all Jews engaged in usury and the confiscation of their property.]

The important point that expulsion of the Jews allowed for the formation of a native middle class is elaborated in the section “Is Ethnic Conflict Rational? Historical Data” in this article which also comments on the predatory lending practices of Jews during  the Middle Ages:

Loans made at interest rates common in the Middle Ages (oftentimes 33%–65%) are simply exploitative, and there is little wonder that they caused hatred on the part of ruined debtors and deep concern on the part of the Church. Moneylending under these circumstances did indeed benefit moneylenders and their aristocratic backers, but, as with loan-sharking today, it simply resulted in destitution for the vast majority of the customers—especially the poorer classes—rather than economic growth for the society as a whole. Loans were made to the desperate, the unintelligent, and the profligate rather to people with good economic prospects who would invest their money to create economic growth; they were made [citing Parkes]  “not to the prosperous farmer…but the farmer who could not make ends meet; not the successful squire, but the waster; the peasant, not when his crops were good, but when they failed; the artisan, not when he sold his wares, but when he could not find a market. Not unnaturally, a century of such a system was more than any community could stand, and the story of Jewish usury is a continuous alternation of invitation, protection, protestation and condemnation.”

This is important, and we shouldn’t forget it. Hence the cover photo of my book Cultural Insurrections: Notre Dame, which was being built during the reign of Saint Louis.

Race Bias and Conception Risk: Implicit and Explicit Whiteness in Action

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A recent article in a top psychology journal (“Race Bias Tracks Conception Risk Across the Menstrual Cycle” shows that women have more race bias when they are most at risk for conception. Further, it shows that race bias is even stronger if the woman feels more vulnerable to sexual coercion.

The study once again shows a difference between implicit and explicit race bias. Implicit bias is unconscious. Implicit bias was shown by subjects taking longer to associate negative words like ‘horrible’ or ‘evil’ with photos of Whites than with photos of Blacks. (You can take a similar test here to see if you have implicit biases toward Blacks; around 80% of Whites do)  The study is saying that White women are more likely to have unconscious negative thoughts about Blacks when they are ovulating and this is especially the case if they think they are vulnerable to being raped.

Explicit bias, on the other hand, is assessed by rating how strongly subjects endorse negative racial stereotypes of Blacks (e.g., ‘‘Generally, Blacks are not as smart as Whites’’; ‘‘It is likely that Blacks will bring violence to neighborhoods when they move in’’). People tend to give more socially acceptable answers on race bias items compared to their unconscious, implicit attitudes.

Usually the differences between conscious and unconscious race bias are very large — especially for liberals. Liberals are supreme hypocrites when it comes to race. My favorite is the White affirmative action officer at a university who was horrified to find that she had strong unconscious biases toward Blacks.  Unconscious biases have been shown to have subtle effects on behavior.

What was surprising here was that these White women were also more likely to explicitly endorse negative stereotypes of Blacks when they were ovulating. The effect was weaker than for unconscious attitudes, but it was in the same direction and nearly as strong as for unconscious attitudes — what statisticians call a trend.

In other words, the hormones that make them ovulate are also making them less politically correct. Their unconscious negative attitudes about Blacks are more likely to leak out in their conscious opinions. The primitive brain wins out over the politically correct censor in the higher part of the brain, so that they become more conscious of their negative attitudes toward Blacks. They would therefore be better able to consciously plan ways to avoid them.

The other two tests of race bias were also quite explicit. In fact, the strongest single predictor of conception risk was explicitly stated fear of Black males. The subjects rated how “scary” photos of Black men and White men were. In general, these White women found photos of Black men scarier around the time they are ovulating — especially if they feel vulnerable to rape.

This shows that despite all the propaganda to the contrary, White women retain defensive attitudes — both consciously and unconsciously — about Blacks as potential rapists. The authors suggest that this psychological mechanism may work by being sensitive to the stereotype that Blacks are dangerous. In other words, White women’s evolutionary psychology is making them behave adaptively based on the stereotype that Blacks are more likely to rape. It works by making them avoid Black men, especially if they are ovulating and especially if they are in a situation where there is a danger of rape. And it is making them more conscious of the real threats posed by Black men and less likely to suppress these attitudes in order to be socially acceptable.

Of course, the stereotype has more than a grain of truth: The 2005 FBI Uniform Crime Report show that though Blacks are only 12.4% of the US population, they commit 33.6% of the rapes of White females.

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Trudie Pert on Birthright Israel

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Trudie Pert’s current TOO article “Birthright Israel: A Model Ethnic Charity” shows once again that, despite being pillars of multicultural righteousness, the laws of political correctness do not apply to the organized Jewish community. As noted in the article, Charles Bronfman, one of the largest funders of Birthright, obviously has a deep attachment to Jewish DNA. Birthright has successfully raised the percentage of Jews who marry Jews to 72%. Given that the program will reach one third of young Jews and given that a lot of Jews who don’t go are from the more conservative wings of Judaism who are not in need of a program like this or have already been to Israel, it suggests a major effect on retaining the ethnic basis of Judaism in the Diaspora. It reminds us that for the early Zionists, the main reason for establishing Israel was to preserve Jewish DNA:

[These] Jewish racial Zionists, such as Arthur Ruppin … were motivated by the fear that Diaspora Judaism would lose its biological uniqueness as a result of pressures for intermarriage and assimilation.

Among the Zionists, the racialists won the day. Ruppin’s ideas on the necessity of preserving Jewish racial purity have had a prominent place in the Jabotinsky wing of Zionism, including especially the Likud party in Israel and its leaders—people like Ariel Sharon, Menachem Begin, and Yitzhak Shamir. (Here’s a photo of Sharon speaking to a Likud Party convention in 2004 under a looming photo of Jabotinsky.) Jabotinsky believed that Jews were shaped by their long history as a desert people and that the establishment of Israel as a Jewish state would allow the natural genius of the Jewish race to flourish, stating, for example: “These natural and fundamental distinctions embedded in the race are impossible to eradicate, and are continually being nurtured by the differences in soil and climate.”  As Geoffrey Wheatcroft recently pointed out, at the present time Israel “is governed by [Jabotinsky’s] conscious heirs.”

Israel is obviously living up to its intended function of preserving Jewish DNA — not only in Israel, but via Birthright, in the Diaspora as well.

The other important point about Pert’s article is the complete lack of this sort of thinking by wealthy White philanthropists. Bill Gates gives billions to non-Whites and actually excludes Whites — even poor Whites — from applying for his aid programs. Gates and other wealthy Whites are behaving according to conventional attitudes of multicultural America, reaping the public acclaim in the media and doubtless feeling morally righteous. (Again, George Gilder’s sense of moral righteousness comes to mind.) We have to change all that.

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Tom Sunic: Announcing Postmorten Report: Cultural Examinations from Postmodernity

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Author: Tomislav Sunic
Foreword: Kevin MacDonald
Title: Postmortem Report: Cultural Examinations from Postmodernity (Collected Essays)
ISBN: 978-0-9561835-2-1
Pages: 224
Imprint: The Palingenesis Project
Publication: 11 February 2010
List Price: £14.99
Edition: Paperback
Publisher’s Webpage
Amazon Webpage
 
Tomislav Sunic is one of the leading scholars and exponents of the European New Right. A prolific writer and accomplished linguist in Croatian, English, French, and German, his thought synthesizes the ideas of Oswald Spengler, Carl Schmitt, Vilfredo Pareto, and Alain de Benoist, among others, exhibiting an elitist, neo-pagan, traditionalist sensibility. A number of themes have emerged in his cultural criticism: religion, cultural pessimism, race and the Third Reich, liberalism and democracy, and multiculturalism and communism. This book collects Dr. Sunic’s best essays of the past decade, treating topics that relate to these themes. From the vantage point of a European observer who has experienced the pathology of liberalism and communism on both sides of the Iron Curtain, Dr. Sunic offers incisive insights into Western and post-communist societies and culture. Always erudite and at times humorous, this highly readable postmortem report on the death of the West offers a refreshing, alternative perspective to what is usually found in the cavaderous Freudo-Marxian scholasticism that rots in the dank catacombs of postmodern academia.

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The Kvetcher, the ADL, and David Duke

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Patrick Cleburne over at VDARE.com has done a great job publicizing the Kvetcher’s comments on the enthusiasm of the organized Jewish community for displacing Whites. The oddity here is that Kvetcher is not only Jewish but rather blatantly Jewish.  Kvetcher gets it — he understands that people who advocate for Whites have absolutely normal human concerns about their future and that the ADL and the HIAS are pushing a hostile and aggressive Jewish ethnic agenda that should be abhorrent to every White person in America.

The ADL advertizes this quote from Duke as symptomatic of Duke’s vicious hatred:

As America is transformed from a 90 percent European American nation, as it was in the 1960s, to one where we will soon be a minority, should we not ask some pertinent questions? Is this racial diversity enriching, or will it be damaging to our social fabric?

The Kvetcher writes:

How is this not a good question? What does this say about the ADL and its donors that they cite this as a proof of how evil David Duke is?

Is this about “fighting anti-semitism,” or is this about the ADL’s attempt to smear anyone who questions the ADL’s fanatical goal of a white minority (as soon as possible) as a white supremacist?

Exactly. For the ADL, David Duke is the supreme bogeyman. The very first move that Jewish activists (including the ADL’s Abe Foxman) made in their campaign to discredit Mearsheimer and Walt was to solicit Duke’s approval of their writing — and Duke’s approval was then dutifully published throughout the mainstream media, from the Washington Post to the New York Sun and the Wall Street Journal.

It’s simply ridiculous to go after Duke because he deplores the fact that a powerful set of interests like the organized Jewish community has a fanatical goal of displacing Whites. But using Duke is doubtless very effective as a fundraising tool for the ADL and the $PLC.

The pathetic thing is that we get excited when we find a Jew who has the temerity to stand up to his own community on an issue like immigration, much less race. Non-Jews are well aware of the very powerful forces that will come down on them if they advocate for the interests of Whites or defend anything that Duke has ever said. The vast majority of Whites tremble at the very thought of challenging anything the ADL says for fear of being branded a racist or anti-Semite and then having to wonder if they will have a job next week. Kvetcher presumably doesn’t have to worry about that.

It’s good that the Kvetcher is writing like this, but he obviously has a very long way to go to really change things in the organized Jewish community.

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Birthright Israel: A Model Ethnic Charity

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Taglit-Birthright Israel, a Zionist charity that provides free 10 day trips for young Jewish adults to visit Israel, celebrated its tenth anniversary in January.  Shortly before the creation of the charity, American Jewish college students were asked to name the top 20 countries they would most like to visit.  Israel did not make the list at all and prominent American Jews became alarmed. Too few young Jews seemed to care much about Israel, and about religious observances, and too many of them married non-Jews.  Also of concern was the lack of growth in the Jewish population worldwide — stagnant between 1970 and 2000, at 13 million.

Birthright was created to correct these problems. One of the co-founders of Birthright, Michael Steinhardt, stated at the initiation ceremony of the organization, “We are at a crucial juncture in the history of the Jewish people, a time when we must do everything possible to strengthen young people’s connection to their culture and religion.”

In the 10 years since its creation, over 250,000 young Jews from 52 countries of the Jewish Diaspora have visited Israel through the Birthright program.  Seventy five percent of them have been American.  The organization hopes to bring 27,000 young people to Israel this year, a 20% increase from previous years.  It is estimated that at current rates 1/3 of American Jews born since 1995 will go on Birthright trips by their 27th birthdays.  The program is open to all young Jewish adults, ages 18 to 26, who have never traveled to Israel, or lived there past the age of 12.  Participants must have at least one Jewish parent and not be practicing another religion.  Its founders hope that the trips will inspire those who are non-observant and in danger of assimilation to strengthen their identification with Judaism, to discourage intermarriage, to create a stronger Jewish community worldwide, and to increase allegiance to Israel.”Taglit” is Hebrew for discovery, and young Jews are supposed to discover their racial and religious essence through contact with the land of Israel.  “Birthright,” refers to the right of each Jew to belong to the tribe and the right to settle in the land of Israel.

The deep concern about the ethnic basis of Judaism can be seen in this statement by Charles Bronfman, a main sponsor of Birthright Israel, on why encouraging Jewish identification and Jewish marriage is so important: “You can live a perfectly decent life not being Jewish, but I think you’re losing a lot—losing the kind of feeling you have when you know [that] throughout the world there are people who somehow or other have the same kind of DNA that you have.”(Washington Post, Jan. 17, 2000).

The elite trips are organized by various private Israeli companies accredited by Taglit-Birthright, which sets the educational and security standards. Tours vary according to age, degree of religiosity, and interests of the participants. One of the required features of the trip is a 5–10 day encounter with Israeli peers, especially soldiers serving in the Israeli Defense Forces, who join the tours. Over 30,000 Israeli soldiers have taken part in the program, disseminating a strong Zionist message.

The itineraries include visits to historical, religious and cultural sites around the country. The required sites are chosen for their emotional pull to Jewish historical memory as a long history of persecution: the Western Wall (the remnant of the Temple destroyed by the Romans), Yad Vashem (the Holocaust memorial), and Masada (the last stronghold of Jews battling against the Romans in 73 AD). There are five central themes: contemporary Israel, the narrative of the Jewish people, their values, their arts and culture, and the Jewish calendar (most importantly, the Sabbath).  Completion of the trips is celebrated by a huge “Mega event.”

This year’s Mega event brought together young Jews from 52 countries, musicians, Israeli luminaries, and benefactors. (Mega event highlights can be viewed at:  www.BirthrightIsrael.com ) The music is hip, the attractive young soldiers are dancing, and the audience participation is loudly enthusiastic.  With great emotion, Israeli President Simon Perez tells the enormous crowd that they are in “a family reunion of Jewish youth. Each of you is so precious, and we don’t have enough of you!” He states that it is “difficult to be a Jew, but it’s great” and points out that “we are always struggling. He concludes by saying, “let’s be together forever.” Also speaking are the largest benefactors of the charity: Michael Steinhardt, Charles Bronfman, and Lynn Schusterman.  Forbes Magazine includes all three in its yearly listing of billionaires.

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An additional speaker at the most recent Mega event was Natan Sharansky, former world chess champion, who once served ten years in a Soviet Siberian labor camp for treason and spying for the US.  Because the Americans considered him a human rights spokesman, he was awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush and the Ronald Reagan Freedom Award by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation. (Present at that ceremony were Joe Lieberman, Dianne Feinstein, and Cindy McCain.)  Thereafter, Sharansky became a pillar of the political right in Israel, opposing plans to withdraw from the settlements in Gaza and taking a hard line on the Palestinians.  He has made Jewish Peoplehood a priority and is director of the Israeli Diaspora Museum, a required stop on the 10 day Birthright Israel trip. According to him, “Birthright is one of the brightest ideas in Jewish history.”

Judging by the responses of some of the participants who were interviewed at the Mega event, Sharansky seems to be right.  Typical responses include: “It made me feel like I was taking part in something bigger than myself.” “Too many times during the trip, I found myself speechless, and by the end of the trip, I found myself connected to the State of Israel and even more a Jew.” “Coming to Israel and learning more about why being Jewish was special really changed my view of myself and my life. A year ago I would have never believed that I would be on a program like this — or be wanting to marry a Jewish girl — my whole perspective on life and on Judaism has changed because of Birthright”.

A study released at the same time as the 10 year Birthright celebration is the first to describe the long range impact of the program.  The results are quite spectacular. The report by the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University is based on responses of interviews with 1,223 participants of the program between 2001 and 2004. The study found that of those who are now married 72% had a Jewish spouse, compared to 46% of married non-participants. 73% said that Birthright was a “life changing” experience.” Participants were 23% more likely to say that they felt “very” connected to world Jewry.  And those on campus were much more likely to come to Israel’s defense in student and class discussions.

Steve Cohen, a sociologist who specializes in American Jewish life, described the current situation for Jews as “a race between intermarriage and Birthright.” The study found that 52% of intermarried Birthright participants said that raising their kids as Jews is “very important,” compared to 27% of inter-married non-participants. Birthright participants are 12% more likely than non-participants to have a special meal on the Sabbath (an important indicator of “Jewishness”). 

These figures are quite astonishing if one considers that they pertain mainly to secularized Jews.  Devout Jews from observant families who have traveled to Israel were not eligible for the trip because many have participated in post-high school year-in-Israel yeshiva programs and are not in need of assistance to prevent assimilation.  For the great majority of secular young Jews, however, Birthright Israel is an inspired idea which has been enormously successful in promoting Jewish identification.

To encourage networking among its alumni Birthright Israel has begun an alumni outreach program called, “Birthright Israel Next.” According to the Executive Director of Birthright Israel Next, “behavior is only going to change through relationship building.  Young American Jews don’t feel comfortable in existing institutions like synagogues.” One of Birthright Israel Next’s ideas is to organize free Sabbath dinners. Birthright Israel Next will pay $18 per person for up to 16 people for Birthright Alumni to host a Sabbath dinner at their homes, thus encouraging young fellow Jews to continue to participate in Jewish life. Over 700 have now done so.

Not only do many of the participants in Birthright Israel become more Jewish, some of them actually become American-Israelis. The State of Israel, one of the benefactors of the charity, generally encourages Diaspora Jews to immigrate to Israel.  When the Jewish Agency, which is in charge of Israel’s relationship with world Jewry, sends officials to speak to Birthright groups, many stress the possibility of living in Israel.  In addition, all of Birthright’s tour guides are Israeli and personally support immigration.  If an American Jew decides to live in Israel (full or part time), he will not lose his American citizenship and can easily add an Israel citizenship.  Under the Israeli ‘Law of Return” an American of Jewish origin going to Israel becomes an Israeli citizen automatically unless he declines the offer.  In the future, dual citizenship for a great many Jewish Americans, even for a majority, seems inevitable.  Also inevitable will be the growing problem of divided loyalties.

As stated above Birthright Israel was designed to raise $100 million per year from a small group of donors: the Israeli government, the American Jewish Federations, and private donors. (Additional funding also comes from the German government – Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.)  In practice, the program has relied most heavily on its founders and principal donors, Michael Steinhardt and Charles Bronfman.

One ought to give credit where credit is due, and obviously Birthright is an inspired Jewish idea and its philanthropic donors most generous for a Jewish cause. Although it’s easy to find wealthy Jews who contribute to Jewish causes that strengthen Jewish identification and prevent intermarriage, this is definitely not the case with non-Jews.

Three non-Jew billionaires come to mind for their philanthropic contributions. Ted Turner has donated huge amounts to the United Nations for environmental study and population limitation.  Turner is America’s largest private landowner, owning 2 million acres — greater than the areas of Delaware and Rhode Island combined.  Bill Gates has just donated a vast sum to be used to develop vaccines for AIDS and other African diseases.  In the past, he has also set aside millions for inner city education. However, the Millenium Scholarship financed by his foundation explicitly denies eligibility to White children. Warren Buffett has donated several billion to the Gates Foundation.

Recipients of Bill Gates Millenium Scholarships

Imagine for a moment that a program were created called “Birthright Europe,” in which every young adult of the Euro-White Diaspora had the opportunity to travel to Europe for 10 days in order to visit European sites of historical, religious, and artistic significance, to befriend White Europeans, to learn to appreciate the superiority of his European culture, and thus to decide to marry only Whites.  Would Turner or Gates or Buffett give the enormous amounts necessary for great numbers of vulnerable young Whites to travel to Europe to develop pride of race and heritage?

The reason many may laugh at the improbability of this suggestion is because they cannot fathom a wealthy person of European heritage helping his own kind. Jewish philanthropists come from the tradition of taking care of one’s own, and are very influenced by the strong religious imperative for individualized charitable giving called “tzedakah.” The highest form of charity in Judaism is to help sustain a fellow Jew by offering him a substantial gift in a dignified manner before he becomes impoverished.

Birthright Israel, as its website states, is a gift to young Jews. It is a benevolence given to them before they become impoverished by assimilation. Or, as a Jewish campus organization states, “With only about 14 million Jews remaining in the world, the Jewish community has genuine fears of extinction, so there’s a certain urgency about keeping Jewish traditions alive and teaching them to the next generation.” According to a site describing the program, “the founders of Birthright felt it was their moral obligation to touch the lives of those people whom no one was touching.”

For Jews, charity begins at home. For Whites, charity is misplaced everywhere else.

Trudie Pert is a pen name.  Email her.