The Lies They Tell
Page 35
The Jews here love him for that. And they applaud at the mere mention of his name.
This conference is called HaaretzQ, where the “Q” stands for question, but nobody is questioning anything. Everybody here has the answers, all the answers. And they talk. The forty-niners say, for example, that Jewish Voice for Peace, whose activists I met while in DC and by whom I was told that I’m a fat, filthy Jew, is an exemplary organization.
All in all, it is bizarre to watch. Every time someone says that the Jews are horrible, are criminals and thieves, one thousand American Jews applaud.
When I met Abe Foxman, over six months ago, he talked to me about the Jews who wouldn’t produce shows or films about Israel and other Jewish issues. But this belongs in the past. Today’s American Jewish liberals speak loud and clear about Israel and the Jews: they would love both to disappear. What’s “liberal” in this? I have no idea. I think it’s the opposite of anything liberal.
An Austrian Jew, now living in New York and active in liberal causes, tells me that he’s enjoying every moment of being here. What’s here to enjoy? Every speaker says that the Jews are horrible, and you are enjoying it? I ask him. “I’m a masochist,” he replies.
If I am to believe what the people here say, then the Jewish state is made of ruthless killers and sadistic butchers. Yes, as simple as that: Jews are sadistic butchers. Period.
I’m not going to pass judgment but if this is true, Adolf Hitler was right and it’s too bad that he didn’t finish the job.
Samantha: What exactly are you doing here?
When an administration joins in the self-destruction of its citizens – be it the self-killing of the black, the self-hatred of the Jew or the self-rape of the Native American – it automatically becomes an accomplice to their annihilation.
Hello, Samantha, do you hear me?
• • •
The America I find is not the America I wished to find. It is racist, it is hateful and its citizens are bound to destroy themselves. Be they blacks and some Spanish who have nothing better to do with their time than shoot each other in the head; be they Jews who are possessed by a terrifyingly psychotic illness of self-hate; be they Indians who have given up any semblance of spirituality in exchange for acres and casinos; or be they all the others: whites, the rest of the Spanish, Muslims, Mormons and others who live in fear of one another.
What about diversity?
Yes, American society is diverse, but this does not mean that Americans are not segregated; they are. The “melting pot” of America has been quite successful in forcing individuals to forsake their ancestors’ cultures, but it has given them nothing worthwhile in return. Through the process of forcibly dumping its citizens into a giant boiling pot of diversity and shaming them if they are not proud of it, America’s democracy succeeded in instilling fear in the minds of its citizens and effectively created a stench of segregation that reaches the highest heavens.
One side effect of this process, which only outstanding psychologists will be able to explain, is the high degree of patriotism found within this country’s borders. These American patriots, by a strange psychological coincidence, convince themselves that they are the only true guardians of culture and morality and therefore it is their duty to invade and bombard foreign countries that do not abide by their sense of morality and ethics. Knowingly or not, they rush to commit and undertake every failed deed ever committed by the Europeans.
A telling effect of the forced melting pot is the majority of Americans who are afraid to share their political and religious views with strangers. In the Land of the Free, the Brave are quiet.
There is a component of the melting pot that often bewilders me: people who passionately argue that America is not a “melting pot” but a “mosaic” of cultures or, as others prefer to call it, a “multicultural” society. Those people have, however, been so thoroughly melted that for the life of them they can’t identify a single part of their mosaic or one unique culture of the “multi” – no matter how many times you ask them.
I’m no authority on climate change, as I have said, but from a social perspective America is definitely getting warmer, melting in the blazing fires of its own making.
Sometimes, I must admit, as I drove around meeting people I had this feeling that America is one huge Ponky Shmonk, a kindergarten otherwise known as the USA. Like misbehaving little kids, Americans are ever worried that somebody out there will “out” them one day and tell everybody what they really think. But the problem is that Americans are not children; they have huge bombs and sometimes they like to drop them. America is also one of the strongest economies in the world, and at times the strongest of them all, but can humanity rely on this country?
I wouldn’t.
My observations, needless to say but I will say anyway, are based on my experiences and apply to the majority of Americans, but not to all of them. Not “all” Americans, just like any other grouping of people, are the same.
• • •
As I write this, the Greek parliament has just voted to recognize Palestine. Forget the economic austerity, the financial hardships and the suffering of its own people. Who cares? What’s important is Palestine.
Yeah.
President Joachim Gauck of Germany delivers his Christmas address. Speaking of the refugees whom Germany welcomed into its borders this year, he brags that “we have shown what’s in us.”
Yeah!
Here in the USA, the Wall Street Journal reports that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been eavesdropping on the Israeli prime minister, on American Jewish leaders and then on some American lawmakers. Why? Well, firstly because the NSA had nothing better to do this year, and secondly because President Obama wanted to know everything that’s cooking around the world with his Iran deal adversaries.
When I want to know something like this I use my driver’s license. President Obama uses the NSA.
That’s democracy, in case you didn’t know what to call it. A deeper understanding is this: now that Homeland Security has pulled the plug on rentboy.com and America is getting ever safer, it’s time for the NSA to sniff around American lawmakers and make sure that they aren’t engaging in dirty talk.
And thusly, on this dubious high note, we are about to end the year.
I fly to Britain, America’s old mama.
Epilogue
AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN MAINSTREAM MEDIA OFTEN REPORT ABOUT Jews, and related topics such as Israel, far more often than their numerical representation ought to justify. I didn’t think that I would follow the same pattern but, surprisingly to me, almost every American I met had strong feelings about Jews and the Arab-Israeli conflict. I put down what I heard and saw, parts of which are found in the preceding pages, and as the year drew to a close I presented my findings to an international gathering of Jews in Birmingham, England. I shared with them my other findings (about blacks, Indians, etc.) as well.
After I finished speaking I invited the attendees to share their thoughts with me.
Once allowed to speak, some American and English participants went ballistic: How dare you criticize the great America? How dare you say that there’s so much racism in the wonderful United States? How dare you say that many American Jews are self-hating? How dare you put down the Native Americans?
To them, America and Americans are beyond criticism, and words such as mine should not be uttered in a country as great as Great Britain. They were loud, they were hostile, and they went personal.
Emotions were high, very high. Facts, data, numbers did not matter. I slaughtered their sacred cows and this was not to be forgiven. And to make sure I got the message, I was “disinvited.” As far as they were concerned, the rotten fruit is Israel – which by this point in the conference they had lambasted back and forth for days. The United States and the United Kingdom, by contrast, are great.
Let them believe it.
I left the conference and went to my hotel, the Genting Hotel in Birmingham. Lat
e at night I went to smoke a cigarette outside. Nobody was around. But just as I was about to walk back to my room, an elegantly dressed young white couple came my way. They asked me what I was doing in Birmingham, and I told them that I had come to take part in a Jewish conference. The girl, a tall blond, took out her smartphone and asked for a selfie with me. I was her first Jew, and she wanted to have one Jew on her phone. Okay with me.
The young man didn’t want a selfie; he wanted information. “You hate Arabs, don’t you?” he asked.
No, I said; I don’t.
“You have money, don’t you?”
Not really.
“Jew!” he raised his voice, as if yelling at a dog. And then he proceeded to tickle me. Jews should be tickled, I guess.
I pulled his ears in response. This surprised him. “Jew!” he raised his voice again.
I’m no Jew, I’m a journalist, I said to him.
“What paper?”
It’s a German paper, you wouldn’t know it, but it’s something like the Guardian.
“So, you are like us!”
Yeah! I’m liberal like you!
“So you are not a Jew?”
No.
“You have blond hair. Are you Aryan?”
You bet!
I went back to my room, leaving the well-mannered English couple perplexed. Kicked by the Jews, tickled by a Brit, I returned to the USA the next day.
Across the Atlantic, in the Europe I’ve just left, some New Year’s celebrations went awry. In central Cologne, Germany, for example, hundreds of young males sexually abused hundreds of young German women and robbed them as well. Who were the males? Very hard to know, especially if you are in the habit of reading or watching German media. Some German media outlets, such as the mighty and highly respected ZDF, waited days before reporting any of these crimes.
Why? Well. According to international reports the abusers, at least a big number of them, happened to be refugees. But you can’t say this, because it’s really not nice, and democracies are all about being nice. Aren’t they?
Yeah, yeah. Didn’t you know that?
I am in New York at the moment, and I read the New York Times. Here’s a quote:
The pension board of the United Methodist Church – one of the largest Protestant denominations in the United States, with more than seven million members – has placed five Israeli banks on a list of companies that it will not invest in for human rights reasons, the board said in a statement on Tuesday.
Suddenly, after decades of Arab-Jewish infighting, the American Methodists awake from a deep sleep to realize that, oh my God, there are Jews in the world.
Pastor Kory, who declared to me that the Jews will go “to Hell,” is probably happy as hell.
Americans are trying to be European. Educated, smart, just. Like all the Europeans.
In Iowa, where the first Democratic primary takes place days before I leave the USA, Bernie Sanders almost wins against Hillary Clinton. This old and aging Jew, who would ever have believed, gets the youngest of Americans to fall in love with him. And in keeping with the American-Jewish tradition of self-loathing, he of course does his best to hide his Jewishness – whatever that is.
My journey, which has taken me longer than I expected, is now over. Next week I will be flying to Germany, where I will be with the Kindest People of today’s Europe.
I’ll miss the people I had the honor to meet. I’ll miss Robin, I’ll miss Frank, I’ll miss Joe – and many others. And I’ll miss the two of you, Ms. Captiva and Mr. Caravan!
Tuvia Tenenbom
New York City, USA
About the Author
Tuvia Tenenbom, a three-in-a-row Spiegel best seller author and a recipient of the Jüdische Rundschau’s 2016 Honest Journalism Award, is a journalist, dramatist and founder of the Jewish Theater of New York. Tuvia studied for his doctorate in English literature at St. John’s University, earned his MFA in playwriting at CUNY-Brooklyn, received his BS in mathematics and computer science from Touro, and finished his rabbinical studies in Jerusalem. He also studied Christianity and Islam in Israel and New York as well as journalism, acting, theater, and finance (at NYU). Tuvia’s articles and essays have been published in leading Western media including Die Zeit, Focus and Die Welt of Germany, Corriere della Sera of Italy, Yedioth Ahronoth, Makor Rishon and The Jerusalem Post of Israel, Fox News and the Forward of America, and is a political columnist for Zeit Online of Germany. His previous books include the best sellers Catch the Jew! and I Sleep in Hitler’s Room.