Jnui: The Jews, Nationalism, and the Universalist Ideal

By Joshua David

The Jews, Nationalism and the Universalist Ideal examines the rise of contemporary globalism, as well as it’s historical predecessors from the past, as parts of a common historical ideological whole which seeks to replace ethnic nationalism with internationalism. A mission which is termed universalism in this book.
Both ancient and contemporary, this is the back story of an ideology which has had a monumental impact upon the development of human civilization.
The book tells the history of the Jewish people intertwined with memoirs from the author’s life and seamlessly weaves in eye-opening historical references.
It’s a thought-provoking look into the struggles of nationalism and universalism.
It’s a history lesson with a bold message.
Do you find yourself baffled, frustrated, or shocked by current events in the world today?
Then this book is for you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9781663244710

Joshua David

Who am I? As the famous Zionist thinker, Asher Ginsberg, called himself, I am merely ahad ha’am. My family’s story resembles many other Jewish families who found themselves in Europe in the beginning of the 20th century, tempest-tost. Around our 1980s seder table sat a number of elders who seemed to come from another planet. The Yiddish speaking uncle who knew no language fluently except for Yiddish. Who exited Siberia with the Anders army and fought the Germans in North Africa under Montgomery. My own Romanian grandparents among others. As for the story of my own life, if it was ordinary it would simply put you to sleep and if it was extraordinary it would come off as bragging. In truth, it’s probably a little of both and so I will choose to say nothing about it. I have included my own memoirs in the book only inasmuch as it contributes to supporting my ideas and never or as little as possible for the sake of writing about myself. I would hope the strength of the ideas in the book are powerful enough to stand on their own. I realize the futility in most cases of attempting to affect the status quo yet that is exactly what I desire. Either way, the work, even before publishing yet, has already been a rewarding and satisfying endeavor.

Book preview

Copyright © 2022 Joshua David.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

844-349-9409

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Excerpts from MEIN KAMPF by Adolf Hitler. Copyright (c) 1939, 1943 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6632-4470-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-4471-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022916077

iUniverse rev. date: 12/09/2022

Heaven lasts long, and the Earth

abides.

What is the secret of their

durability?

Is it not because they do not

live for themselves

That they can live so long?

Therefore, the Sage wants to

remain behind,

But finds himself at the head

of others;

Reckons himself out,

But finds himself safe and

secure.

Is it not because he is selfless

That his Self is realized?

-Tao Te Ching, Translated

by John C. H. Wu

CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter 1 The Overrated Jewish Intellectual Tradition

Chapter 2 Universalism in Canada

Chapter 3 Universalism in Israel

Chapter 4 Christian Universalism

Chapter 5 Communism and the Rise of Adolf Hitler

Chapter 6 The Campaign of Incitement against Israel that Began in the Fall of 2000

Chapter 7 Theodor Herzl

How to Advance the Jewish Cause

About the Author

PROLOGUE

Those who learned about the Warsaw Ghetto uprising during the second half of the twentieth century would have heard of the ZOB; the left leaning Hashomer Hatzair led military organization headed by Mordechai Anielewicz. Since that time and into the twenty-first century, it has been revealed that the right leaning revisionists, Betar, also participated in the uprising; the Betar military faction in the Warsaw Ghetto is known in English as the Jewish Military Union. The ZZW.

The left leaning post-war Jewish establishment completely wrote their political opponents out of history. I can attest, along with anyone who learned about the Warsaw Ghetto uprising during the late twentieth century, that the right-leaning Betar faction was never ever discussed, not even pejoratively. They simply didn’t exist.

And so it is, that while anyone with a cursory knowledge of those events will have heard of Mordechai Anielewicz; the name of David Wdowinski is remarkably obscure.

David Wdowinski was a political leader of the Jewish Military Union, the ZZW, during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. He was twice the age of Anielewicz at the time of the uprising and had long been affiliated with the Revisionist Zionist Party. He was a veteran Zionist politician.

In Prague, during the Summer of 1933, Wdowinski attended the eighteenth World Zionist Congress. He wrote, Here, united by a threat to our people unparalleled in our entire history … was an opportunity…So it seemed to us, the Revisionists, …it also became obvious this was not clear to all…petty party politics superceded the fate of millions of Jews even then, at the stroke of doom.¹

In his description of the failed opportunities at the congress and up to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising he wrote, Jewish leadership suffered …from…confusion in political orientation. …The confused political orientation was largely due to the fact that many Jewish leaders were reared in the spirit of the Russian Revolution, and they thought they could translate the ideas of the class struggle into Zionist terms. What they failed to grasp was that the primary need of the Jewish people…was first and foremost to establish a Jewish homeland. Vladimir Jabotinsky constantly reiterated the concept that we cannot serve two gods, Zionism and Socialism.²

He continued with an example, "…Joseph Schlossberg, a leading voice in Poale Zion circles (the counterpart of Mapai in diaspora), …went into a lengthy explanation of why he did not support a boycott of Nazi Germany…in the thirties.

`All of you have only one people in Germany, the Jews. I have two: the Jews and organized labor. And while the Jews in Germany are being oppressed, which hurts me as it does all other Jews, organized labor is being destroyed in Germany. That is a pain for me…’"

Wdowinski exclaimed, It is incredible to contemplate that a Zionist leader could equate the total annihilation of his people with the suppression of the rights of organized labor.³

Such was the success of the Socialist ideology among the pre-World War II Jewish leadership that, apart from the Revisionists, during the first decades of the twentieth century the various political factions were more or less divided between the pure Communists who hated Zionism for luring the Jewish people away from the broader International Socialist Cause and the Zionists who sought to combine the two ideologies.

To what end? What was their objective?

Universalism is an ideology which seeks to replace ethnic nationalism with internationalism. It has preoccupied a number of significant historical personages across a broad span of history. Furthermore, a number of countries and empires on varied occasions across a long span of history have been preoccupied with universalism. Among the Jews, it has at different times withdrawn to the cover of assimilation, only to re-emerge at another time in history, collect a growing base of support, reach its zenith, and then disappear only to re-emerge again at another time. In the late nineteenth century, it took the form of International Communism and then resurfaced after the Second World War as Globalism.

Albert Einstein wrote, I became thirty-five years of age, as it were, without knowing that I was a Jew. Only in retrospect do I realize that . . . my closest friends were Jews.⁴

Didn’t former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright say something to that effect?

Oftentimes, among the Jews, universalism is not only well supported when It’s in its throes, but the adherents are not even fully aware of what it is they are engaged in. This is because universalism operates under a near hermetic seal of total cult-like domination over its adherents, who are expected to pay homage to the universalist ideal at all times and circle back all subjects, even those very remote in context, to the universalist ideal.

As I mentioned, universalism withdraws to the cover of assimilation at times. Assimilation has nothing to do with this.

What I intend to prove is that universalism is anti-Semitism. Furthermore, I hereby declare that universalism is an anti-Semitic cult which operates within some of the most significant Jewish communities around the world including the State of Israel.

But I won’t be making this effort alone. History will be my ally and the various narrative threads of a number of historical personages both remembered and forgotten will aid me in this effort.

In times of peace, universalism dominates the social discourse and becomes the fashionable ideal of the Jewish community. It dominates education, arts and culture, and politics. Suddenly, it disappears as if it was never there.

This book will illustrate the recurring universalist movement by presenting three historically important attempts to universalize nationalities. The ancient beginnings of Christianity, the rise of communism, and contemporary globalism. All of which have had a monumental impact upon human civilization.

When Theodore Herzl wrote of the nature of anti-Semitism he wrote, I believe that I can see what elements there are in it of vulgar sport, of common trade jealousy, of inherited prejudice, of religious intolerance, and also of pretended self-defence.⁵ He wrote that there are those that believe that division between people will end, by means of the ultimate perfection of humanity. He continued, Is it necessary to point out the sentimental folly of this view? He who would found his hope for improved conditions on the ultimate perfection of humanity would indeed be relying upon a Utopia.⁶

To belatedly answer Herzl’s question: No Sir, it is not necessary. And if it is necessary than something else is going on here. People are usually more than precision calibrated when it comes to self-interest; they tend to be delusionally in favor of their own cause. Furthermore, the suggestion that a large group of people are exhibiting symptoms of a mass outbreak of super-morality is a more than a little far-fetched.

It’s self-deception at work when a person or group of people choose obvious folly. As Herzl pointed out, a political position based on the ultimate perfection of humanity is pure folly.

But what are they hiding from?

For otherwise intelligent people to place their strategies for international relations upon the premise of the ultimate perfection of humanity. The answer is there hiding in plain sight: The Jewish cause.

Once that point becomes clear, so many seemingly baffling actions taken by members of the Jewish community will suddenly make a lot more sense.

Some examples: During the 1930s, when Germany began persecuting the Jewish community there, a Boycott Germany campaign was undertaken by various individuals and groups within the Jewish community. The Jewish War Veterans of the United States launched a poster campaign that stated For Humanity’s Sake! Boycott German Industry… When I first saw that poster, I was baffled that they wouldn’t have gotten any more specific in defending the Jewish people beyond general humanity. However, upon understanding the implications of the consummate stranglehold universalism had upon the Jews in North America it makes sense. Defending the Jewish people with the same surgical precision used by the enemies of the Jewish people in attacking them simply wasn’t on their menu of options. Therefore, they followed through on a thoroughly ineffective campaign that was doomed from the start. I don’t believe the Jewish War Veterans of the United States were anti-Semites, but their hands were tied by the anti-Semitic ideology, which was the status quo in their community.

Sometime in 2003 while visiting the Tel Aviv apartment of a guy I had gone to high school with I met a young Jewish woman there from the United States who had come to Israel to make a documentary about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict from the angle that Israel is the offender. I suggested to her that the international popular interest in the conflict was fueled by anti-Semitism. She admitted to me that while attending a pro-Palestinian rally in the U.S. she saw placards depicting a pig with the Star of David emblazoned on it, but she didn’t know what to make of that. A young woman like herself would react to far lesser antagonisms if they were against a cause that was her own. She wouldn’t not know what to make of it and carry on; and here she was in Israel, to harass Israelis in the name of the Palestinian cause.

Another example: I read a while ago that the author of the comic novella ‘Maus’, Art Spiegelman, called Israel a sad, failed idea.⁷ Not failing. Failed. During the same interview Spiegelman offered up this alternative to Israel, If I’d been around in 1948, I would have said, ‘Can’t we all just go live in Montana?’

His book is about his father’s experiences during the Holocaust in Poland. I’m sure he doesn’t consider himself an anti-Semite. But how then is the State of Israel a failed idea? By what standard has a country that’s a success by almost every standard measure, GDP, life expectancy, science and technology, agriculture, failed?

By the standard of the ultimate perfection of humanity. Of course, Spiegelman doesn’t hold that standard against other countries, just the homeland of his own people. It would be frustrating if not for the understanding that universalism is anti-Semitism. Suddenly it makes a lot of sense.

In terms of religion, in North America, the Pittsburgh Platform of 1885 established the position of the Reform stream of Judaism by stating among other things: We recognize, in the modern era of universal culture of heart and intellect, the approaching of the realization of Israel’s great Messianic hope for the establishment of the kingdom of truth, justice, and peace among all men. We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state.⁸

Is there any other nation on Earth that has ever declared itself a non-entity?

When I was a child the Jewish leadership at our synagogue taught us that the Jewish cause was universalism, and that universalism was the Jewish cause. If we were to support the Jewish cause in a typical national format that would be un-Jewish they taught us. This formula was cemented upon us in no uncertain terms.

However, universalism is not just tragic self-deception. There is an immediate reward for the Jewish people both as a polity and as individuals for supporting the universalist ideology. There must be, otherwise people wouldn’t go along with it.

The immediate reward of universalism is first and foremost the fastest personal escape route from the conflicts of the Jewish cause. At first glance, there’s almost nothing to gain from aligning with the Jews, but there’s plenty to gain from abandoning them. Furthermore, upon abandoning nationalism, there is a complete and unfettered access to the cutting-edge innovations of the day. Nationalism holds us back from innovation; it’s rooted in the past. The universalists give themselves over entirely to the innovations of the day. However, combined with the innovations of the day, intertwined with the zeitgeist of any time, is the destructive. But the implications of what’s destructive manifest and conclude later.

Anyhow, while the newest innovations in many categories, such as science and technology, immediately replace their predecessors, nationalities cannot be remade and replaced in that way. Nationalities change only very slowly over centuries.

There were many Jews in Herzl’s time who saw the approaching utopia in Socialism. Among ordinary people I believe the sentiments behind most of today’s universalist Jews are similar to those of Herzl’s time. There are the do-gooders who are motivated by the expectations of moral supremacy placed upon the acolytes of universalism: The desire for a better world, a genuine love, understanding and connection to the other peoples of our planet, and a commitment to international equality.

On the other hand, there is also the justification for a sovereign life of consummate self-interest: absolutely zero support for the Jewish cause, a devotion to another country or ethnicity if necessary or expedient, a life of righteous self-interest.

It’s all justified by the morality of universalism: We are all human beings; so I’m on everyone’s side equally.

However, along with all of this, there is a real ignorance regarding the nature of nationalism and ethnic politics. Universalism thrives in that no man’s land.

This book will examine Jewish national history from the perspective of establishing stronger relations between Jews and other nationalities, and in a greater sense, to provide some perspective to national conflicts worldwide.

But what are the core tenets of universalism?

The most concise definition I can give of the universalist outlook is the view that the world is essentially made up of random individuals and that the concept of a national, ethnic identity is archaic. The universalist insists that progress intrinsically leads us to a united humanity of individuals; nay, that our time is perpetually on the cusp of a new era. The official agenda of the universalist is to actively assist in the transition. Central to their ideology is the assertion that their politics is morality. Competing political positions are derided as immoral and the universalist is adamant that there is