A fly falls into a cup of coffee and… The Italian – throws the cup, breaks it, and walks away in a fit of rage. The German – carefully washes the cup, sterilizes it and makes a new cup of coffee. The Frenchman – takes out the fly, and drinks the coffee. The Chinese – eats the fly and throws away the coffee. The Russian – drinks the coffee with the fly, since it was extra with no charge. The Israeli – sells the coffee to the Frenchman, sells the fly to the Chinese, sells the cup to the Italian, drinks a cup of tea, and uses the extra money to invent a device that prevents flies from falling into coffee. The Palestinian Arab – blames the Israeli for the fly falling into his coffee, protests the act of aggression to the UN, takes a loan from the European Union to buy a new cup of coffee, uses the money to purchase explosives and then blows up the coffee house where the Italian, the Frenchman, the Chinese, the German and the Russian are all trying to explain to the Israeli that he should give away his cup of tea to the Palestinian Arab.

..tips to Paul Fleming

This is the Intro to Yuri Slezkine’s “The Jewish Century”

I just found it to be a compelling observation.

The Modern Age is the Jewish Age, and the twentieth century, in particular is the Jewish Century.  Modernization is about everyone becoming urban, mobile, literate, articulate, intellectually intricate, physically fastidious, and occupationally flexible.  It is about learning how to cultivate people and symbols, not fields and herds.  It is about pursuing wealth for the sake of learning, learning for the sake of wealth, and both wealth and learning for their own sake.  It is about transforming peasants and princes into merchants and priests, replacing inherited privilege with acquired prestige, and dismantling social estates for the benefit of individuals, nuclear families, and book-reading tribes (nations).  Modernization, in other words is about everyone becoming Jewish.

Some peasants and princes have done better than others, but no one is better at being Jewish than the Jews themselves.  In the age of capital, they are the most creative entrepreneurs; in the age of alienation, they are the most experienced exiles; and in the age of expertise, they are the most proficient professionals.  Some of the oldest Jewish specialties-commerce, law, medicine, textual interpretation, and cultural medication-have become the most fundamental (and the most Jewish) of all modern pursuits.  It is by being exemplary ancients that the Jews have become model moderns.

The principal religion of the Modern Age is nationalism, a faith that represents the new society as the old community and allows newly urbanized princes and peasants to feel at home abroad.  Every state must be a tribe; every tribe must have a state.  Every land is promised, every language Adamic, every capital Jerusalem, and every people chosen (and ancient).  The Age of Nationalism, in other words, is about every nation becoming Jewish.

In nineteenth-century Europe (the birthplace of the Age of Nationalism), the greatest exception was Jews themselves.  The most successful of all modern tribes, they were also the most vulnerable.  The greatest beneficiaries of the Age of Capitalism, they would become the greatest victims of the Age of Nationalism.  More desperate than any other European nation for state protection, they were the least likely to receive it because no European nation-state could possibly claim to be the embodiment of the Jewish nation.  Most European nation-states, in other words, contained citizens who combined spectacular success with irredeemable tribal foreignness.  The Jewish age was also the Age of anti-Semitism.

Anti-Semitism continues to prove to be the most adaptive hatred as well as the oldest.  Its most recent incarnations have drifted more to the left. This is a relatively recent development, spurred by the closer affection the Christian evangelical community has developed for both Israel and the more conservative part of the political spectrum.

A few years ago evangelical leader John Hagee made one of the most impassioned speeches in support of Israel I have ever heard at a national AIPAC meeting.  The American evangelical movement has largely (but not totally) moved away from the Jew as an object of scorn or heresy to be saved and converted, to a people to be respected.  There was Ann Coulter’s comment about the view of Jews as ‘unperfected Christians’ or Pat Buchanan’s references to a conspiratorial nature of Jews that supposedly got us involved in the war in Iraq.  These were both offensive and factually incorrect.  Jews and Israeli affiliates went out of their way to avoid any semblance of influence in the run up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Ambassador Dore Gold (at that same AIPAC meeting) commented that while they saw Iraq as a problem they felt Iran was the bigger threat. Israel had unilaterally destroyed the Osirik nuclear reactor in Baghdad in 1981.

But the transgressions from the right that were anti-Semitic in nature have become increasingly dwarfed by the anti-Semitic outpourings from the left for years.   This is hard to explain as mere sympathy for the underdog status of the Palestinians since the 1967 war.  Israel is far more socially liberal than its neighbors who seek to destroy it.  Israel offers far greater free speech, women’s rights, gay rights, and religious freedom than any of its neighbors.  Its contribution to the arts, sciences and commerce dwarfs the rest of the combined Arab world. Yet it remains the only country in the world where threats to its very existence is tolerated in international circles and especially from the floor of the United Nations.

Modern anti-Semitism masquerading as anti-Zionism has become much more tolerated on the left.  Every Israeli act to defend itself is condemned as disproportionate or inhuman.  Just days before her infamous comment Helen Thomas was working from her respected seat in the White House Press Corps and referring to Israel’s ‘massacre’ of  innocents on one boat out of several of the Gaza flotilla. She made no comment about the 41 South Korean sailors that were ‘massacred’ weeks earlier intentionally by a North Korean gunboat.  I doubt the North Koreans were armed with paintball guns.

Her contemptuous dismissal that the Jews should return to Germany and Poland ignores the basic fact that more Israelis came from the Middle East- ejected from the lands they inhabited for thousands of years- than from Europe. But as we continue to observe, such hatreds do not listen to reason or fact, they only seek excuses.

Jewish Women from Yemen

Helen Thomas’ venom for Israel has been typical of many from the media and the left for years.  I have often wondered if there was line where even the left would not cross when it came to Israel.  Well apparently there was and Helen Thomas found it.

Her comment was as offensive as suggesting that black people should be shipped back to Africa. To their credit there was no defense of her comment from the left. In fact they were quick to reject her comments.

Statistically there is a significant and important difference between saying that many anti-Semites are liberal and saying that most liberals are anti-Semites. Perhaps we can even thank Helen Thomas for drawing a line that even liberals cannot ignore. While it may be politically fashionable to criticize Israel, at least Jews may now be recognized as having a right to be in the land they have built and defended as a state for over sixty years; but as a homeland for thousands of years.

Perhaps in this case an extremist has served to draw a rational line.

Jews not only monopolized money-lending prior to the fourteenth century, when Christian prohibitions against usury broke down.  The dispersion of Jews throughout the know world, east and west, also gave them international advantages in global trade and finance because family and tribal linkages were maintained on an international scale.  The earliest terrible pogroms against the Jews occurred in northern Europe after the year 1000, the year of the “millennium,” when Christians (but not the Jews) believed the world would come to an end with the second coming of Christ.  As the year approached, more and more Christians tended to become debtors and Jews creditors, Christians naturally believing they would not have to pay off loans after 1000.  Additionally, Christians tended to give their wealth to the church, hoping to secure favorable positions in the afterlife, while Jews continued to pass their wealth on to their children.  When the world did not end in 1000 A.D., economic tensions were inevitable, and for the following three centuries Jews were slaughtered throughout Europe in Crusades and pogroms.

The fact that the Jews throughout the ages have been a mighty force behind the expansiveness of the global economy has in no small way contributed to their survival.  In no less a way has this Jewish instinct for survival through promotion of general economic growth  contributed to the survival of Christianity, as in the Middle Ages.  For while Christianity is not intrinsically biased on the economic issue, neither does it provide a counterforce.  In other words, during contraction the Christian impulse is wholly redistributive, which does nothing to arrest the contraction and turn the economy once again toward expansion.

From The Way the World Works by Jude Wanniski

In Israel and Its Liberal Friends WSJ columnist Bret Stephens asks what if the standards of friendship Israel’s ‘friends’ claim is the source of their criticism was applied to the Palestinians as well.

an excerpt

Finally there’s the fact that liberalism has become a politics of easy targets. Liberals have no trouble taking stands against abstinence educators, Prop 8 supporters or members of the tea party. But when it comes to genuine bigots and religious fanatics—and Hamas has few equals in those categories—liberals have a way of discovering their capacity for cultural nuance and political pragmatism.