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Jew and Me
by Adam Engel
www.dissidentvoice.org
November 22,
2003
Well,
it's one thing to detest the Zionists for the Nazi-like racists that they
are. It's even plausible to hate the Jews in general, at least those living
in America, for not doing everything in their power to stop the Israeli War
Machine. If I were a Palestinian, I would not distinguish between an IDF
soldier and the "Israel Uber Alles" American Jew who supports him morally
and financially. If I were a Palestinian I would indeed be an
"anti-Semite."
But while I'll take seriously any accusation that the Jews are to blame for the Palestinians' woes, and that to distinguish between "Jews" and "Zionists" is a stretch, since nearly every Jew I've ever known – not including writers on the web – has been a "supporter" of Israel and its land-grabbing, people stomping ways, I won't take shit from yahoos who could give a damn about the Palestinians, but just want to "get in on the act" by indulging in a little Jew-baiting of their own. As pointed out by several authors in Cockburn and St. Clair's The Politics of Anti-Semitism, it's a tricky issue. Is one yelling "anti-Semite" merely because his opponent doesn't support an Apartheid "Holy Land," or because one's opponent is actually an anti-Semite taking advantage of the fact that people are waking up to Israeli Supporters' crying "Wolf" all of these years and claiming to be victims while they in fact are aggressors. (Kind of like Jackie Gleason on "The Honeymooners:" I know that you know that I know that you know that I know that you're an anti-Semite!)
I believe that 99 percent of those labeled "anti-Semites" are merely people who, struggling for the human rights of Palestinians, are attacked by Zionist bullies both in the media and out. On the other hand, there's that 1-percent (could be more or less, I'm just throwing out numbers) who really do hate Jews, even secular Jews such as myself who are about as "Jewish" as far as religion goes, as the Dalai Lama, and are using the current opportunity of "terminological confusion" to throw verbal rocks, like Chicken Hawks miles away from the real fight (Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz etc.) tend to do.
It's one thing to blame current Jews, whether they live in Israel or not, for not doing enough to stop the Israeli destruction of Palestinian life, it's another to dredge up every mercenary, court Jew from the biblical Joseph to the money changers of Shakespeare's time (or Dickens') as relevant evidence of Jewish greed and perfidy that led to the Zionist enterprise. While a comparison of IDF soldiers in Jenin to Nazi soldiers in Warsaw is warranted, blaming a rich 17th century German Lutheran for 20th century Nazism because he made his money off the exploitation of poor Catholics, would merely display an irrational prejudice toward German Lutherans.
I received a most enlightening email recently about the rich, cowardly, corrupt Jew, David Sassoon's, involvement in the 19th century Chinese Opium trade. I find it so interesting and chock full of relevant history, I will quote it in full:
"Hong Kong and The Sassoon Opium Wars
"The 99 year British lease on Hong Kong
expired in July allowing the Red Chinese to take over. Hundreds of
newspaper stories and TV reports have covered this event but not one
revealed how England first gained control of Hong Kong! The truth lies
buried in the family line of David Sassoon, "The Rothschilds of The Far
East," and their monopoly over the opium trade. Britain won Hong Kong by
launching the opium Wars to give the Sassoons exclusive rights to drug an
entire nation!
"David Sassoon was born in Baghdad, Iran in 1792. His father, Saleh
Sassoon, was a wealthy banker and the treasurer to Ahmet Pasha, the
governor of Baghdad. (Thus making him the "court Jew" - a highly
influential position.) In 1829 Ahmet was overthrown due to corruption and
the Sassoon family fled to Bombay, India. This was the strategic trade
route to interior India and the gateway to the Far East. In a brief time
the British government granted Sassoon "monopoly rights" to all manufacture
of cotton goods, silk and most important of all - Opium - then the most
addictive drug in the
world!
"The Jewish Encyclopedia of 1905, states that Sassoon expanded his opium
trade into China and Japan. He placed his eight sons in charge of the
various major opium exchanges in China. According to the 1944 Jewish
Encyclopedia: "He employed only Jews in his business, and wherever he sent
them he built synagogues and schools for them. He imported whole families
of fellow Jews. . . and put them to work."
"Sassoon's sons were busy pushing this mind-destroying drug in Canton,
China. Between 1830 - 1831 they trafficked 18,956 chests of opium earning
millions of dollars. Part of the profits went to Queen Victoria and the
British government. In the year 1836 the trade increased to over 30,000
chests and drug addiction in coastal cities became endemic.
"In 1839, the Manchu Emperor ordered that it be stopped. He named the
Commissioner of Canton, Lin Tse-hsu, to lead a campaign against opium. Lin
seized 2,000 chests of Sassoon opium and threw it into the river. An
outraged David Sassoon demanded that Great Britain retaliate. Thus, the
Opium Wars began with the British Army fighting as mercenaries of the
Sassoons. They attacked cities and blockaded ports. The Chinese Army,
decimated by 10 years of rampant opium addiction, proved no match for the
British Army. The war ended in 1839 with the signing of "The Treaty of
Nanking." This included provisions especially designed to guarantee the
Sassoons the right to enslave an entire population with opium. The "peace
treaty" included these provisions: "1) Full legalization of the opium
trade in China, 2) compensation from the opium stockpiles confiscated by
Lin of 2 million pounds, 3) territorial sovereignty for the British Crown
over several designated offshore islands.
" Sassoon's Use British Army to Drug An Entire Nation
British Prime Minister Palmerston wrote Crown Commissiner Captain Charles
Elliot that the treaty didn't go far enough. He said it should have been
rejected out of hand because: "After all, our naval power is so strong that
we can tell the Emperor what we mean to hold rather than what he would
cede. We must demand the admission of opium into interior China as an
article of lawful commerce and increase the indemnity payments and British
access to several additional Chinese ports." Thus, China not only had to
pay Sassoon the cost of his dumped opium but reimburse England an unheard
sum of 21 million pounds for the cost of the war!
"This gave the Sassoon's monopoly rights to distribute opium in port
cities. However, even this was not good enough and Sassoon demanded the
right to sell opium throughout the nation. The Manchus resisted and the
British Army again attacked in the "Second Opium War fought 1858 - 1860.
Palmerston declared that all of interior China must be open for
uninterrupted opium traffic. The British suffered a defeat at the Taku
Forts in June 1859 when sailors, ordered to seize the forts, were run
aground in the mud-choked harbor. Several hundred were killed or captured.
An enraged Palmerston said: "We shall teach such a lesson to these
perfidious hordes that the name of Europe will hereeafter be a passport of
fear."
"In October, the British besieged Peking. When the city fell, British
commander Lord Elgin, ordered the temples and other sacred shrines in the
city sacked and burned to the ground as a show of Britain's absolute
comtempt for the Chinese. In the new "Peace Treaty" of Oct.25, 1860, the
British were assigned rights to vastly expanded opium trade covering
seven-eights of China, which brought in over 20 million pounds in 1864
alone. In that year, the Sassoons imported 58,681 chests of opium and by
1880 it had skyrocketed to 105,508 chests making the Sassoons the richest
Jews in the world. England was given the Hong Kong peninsula as a colony
and large sections of Amoy, Canton, Foochow, Ningpo and Shanghai. The
Sassoons were now licensing opium dens in each British occupied area with
large fees being collected by their Jewish agents. Sassoon would not allow
any other race to engage in "the Jews' business." However, the British
government would not allow any opium to be imported into Europe!
"Sassoon "Monopoly Rights" Wrecked Lancashire - England's Textile Industry
- Made Roosevelt Wealthy
Sir Albert Sassoon, the
eldest of David Sassoon's sons took over the family "business" empire. He
constructed huge textile mills in Bombay to pay slave labor wages. This
expansion continued after World War One and ended up putting mills in
Lancashire, England out of business with thousands losing their jobs.
This did not stop Queen Victoria from having Albert knighted in 1872.
Solomon Sassoon moved to Hong Kong and ran the family business there
until his death in 1894. Later, the entire family moved to England because
with modern communications they could operate their financial empire from
their luxurious estates in London. They socialized with royalty and Edward
Albert. Sassoon married Aline Caroline de Rothschild in 1887 which linked
their fortune with that of the Rothschilds. The Queen also had Edward
knighted. All 14 of the grandsons of David Sassoon were made officers during
World War One and thus most were able to avoid combat.
"Franklin D. Roosevelt's fortune was inherited from his maternal
grandfather Warren Delano. In 1830 he was a senior partner of Russell &
Company. It was their merchant fleet which carried Sassoon's opium to
China and returned with tea. Warren Delano moved to Newburgh, N.Y. In 1851
his daughter Sara Married a well-born neighbor, James Roosevelt - the
father of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He always knew the origin of the
family fortune but refused to discuss it.
" The Sassoon opium trade brought death and destruction to millions and
still plagues Asia to this day. Their company was totally operated by
Jews ONLY!
"The corrupt British monarchy honored them with privilege and knighthood
- to the disgrace of the Crown! To this day the Sassoons are in the
history books as "great developers" of India but the source of their vast
wealth is never mentioned!"
Now, this is all interesting stuff, especially the fact that Sassoon's company "was totally operated by Jews ONLY!" But out of context, it doesn't seem to make much sense, except as an isolated historical tid-bit, or to show us what degenerate, mercenary leeches the Jews are (and FDR had JEW MONEY in his family; those Republicans were right all along!). I mean, we already knew they killed Elvis and fixed the first Frazier-Ali fight, but what did it have to do with the issue at hand, Zionism, and why was this person, Mr. XX, sending this to me? Also, as my friend, Mike, who lives in Japan, wrote to me:
"[Mr. XX's] letter about the Opium Wars, I understand; but I don't "get it." After I read his story I thought a few things: Me, being half-Japanese (and therefore considering all Asians coming from the same place in spite of what "pure-blooded" Asians would say), I would have stopped reading his letter on the first sentence and thrown it into the trash. "The 99 year British lease on Hong Kong expired in July allowing the RED CHINESE to take over"!? Red Chinese? WTF?... Right there I wanted to stop reading the entire thing. (I won't get into how democracy/communism/whatever is merely a name for a political system - you already know that). But that word right there: RED CHINESE turns me off immediately. It's a "red flag" (pardon the pun) for me, pal."
But the Chinese, like the Palestinians (who
are never mentioned in the above letter) are beside the point for
truth-seeking intellectuals such as Mr. XX. Though I suppose I
"over-reacted" when I wrote back:
"What am I supposed to say to this? Publish a list stating that Karl Marx, Emma Goldman, Rosa Luxemborg, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Franz Kafka, William Kunstler, Noam Chomsky, Ed Herman, Bob Dylan, Allen
Ginsberg and a list of progressive, leftist, socialist Jews dating from
Jesus (nee Joshua) to myself should be blamed for the crass, evil
machinations of a bunch of capitalists and Zionists who have nothing the
fuck to do with us? How about Adam Smith, Adolph Hitler, Stalin, Nixon and
George W. Bush heading off a list of non-Jews whose lives have meant
nothing but pain and suffering for the world? How about asking the 150
million dead Native Americans about who killed more of them, Jews, Dutch,
Spanish, French, or English?
:
"True, I despise all religions and consider the brain-washing of children
under 16 with religious dogma, of any variety, to be a form of child abuse.
And if it weren't for Hitler, on one side, and the wacko murderous Zionists
on the other, I wouldn't give Judaism or any other "ism" except perhaps
Deism, a second thought.
"But at the same time I'm not gonna sit back and watch a bunch of fools
wasting time looking up fun facts about all the Bad Jews in history when
they should be damning all religions, especially Christianity and Judaism,
for the sorry-assed state of the planet, and directing their ire against the
Zionist Israelis and their American Jewish "supporters," the Fundamentalist
Muslim Saudis, the Fundamentalist Christian Americans, and other lower forms
of life for helping to make this, or possibly the next, one the last
generations of humans this Planet will ever know before it shrugs us off
like the parasitic microbes we are and begins anew?"
I dunno. I might have over-reacted, but it's bad enough to know "the truth" in context. To receive a toe-nail of the truth out of context, kicking you in the butt cause you're stupid enough to have a published email address is a pain in the ass. Literally. Also, the atmosphere, what we can breath of it, is pretty tense. And the esteemed Mr. XX made no mention of Zionists, or Israel, much less the PALESTINIANS in his letter. All I was certain of was that a bunch of nasty JEWS messed up India and China selling their damned opium. But alas, I was a fool. Another paranoid Jew. I totally misinterpreted what XX was babbling about. He answered me thus:
"Sorry. Didn't think you'd react paranoid. In
strictly logical terms, what you have done is erect a straw man, lay out
an argument I nowhere advanced, and proceed to demolish it.
"I do apologize: I took you for an anti-Zionist. Maybe it would be easier
to grasp the pt I was making, why I find the Sassoons so fascinating, were
you to acquaint yourself with the work of Lenni Brenner? Maybe also Lee
O'Brien's little book?
"My attention was on the $$, on the Class Factor as it intertwines with the
zionist colonial project, on the possibility that one of the factors in
play at the time of the issuance of the Balfour Declaration was the
gambling & horserace debts of Ed VII & Geo V which had, it is rumored, been
picked up by the Mssrs Sassoon, David & Sir Victor respectively. (It is on
record that Sir V loaned His Majesty large sums; whether gambling was
involved is so far unclear.) But your reaction is not unusual; I should not
have assumed you'd grasp my intent.
"It must be hard not to see hostility in a letter such as mine, given all
the oppression and misery to which you are daily subjected as a member of a
ground-down, persecuted minority in the USA in this new Millemimeminum
[sic]."
Sooooo. Now I got it. He finally mentioned Zionism, so I could put his rant about Sassoon in context! Not only that, he had the good grace to point out that I was "paranoid" and I'd been mistaken for "an anti-Zionist" (which most of the people who know me and have read my work would easily mistake me for) because I had no idea what the hell this 19th Century Sassoon guy had to do with the price of tea in China (excuse pun). Also, I hate to admit it, but I'm rather on the dim side, for, as Mr. XX pointed out, my "reaction is not unusual; I should not have assumed you'd grasp my intent."
What intent? Please, if anyone is reading this, tell me what intent I was suppose to grasp in that first email about a drug-dealer whose great great grandchildren sold over-priced denims? Well, I didn't want the savvy Mr. XX to think I was so stupid as to not know that, even though he didn't mention a word of it, his intention was " on the $$, on the Class Factor as it intertwines with the zionist colonial project, on the possibility that one of the factors in play at the time of the issuance of the Balfour Declaration was the gambling & horserace debts of Ed VII & Geo V which had, it is rumored, been picked up by the Mssrs Sassoon, David & Sir Victor respectively."
Though even here, in his second letter, where he points out – finally -- the one possible connection between his first letter and utter mishegas, that Sassoon won the Balfour Declaration for the Zionists because he knew how to play the horses, might not have been relevant after all, for "whether gambling was involved is so far unclear."
Anyway, I wrote again to the wily Mr. XX:
"No, that's not the point. I'm anti-Zionist through and through. I just did an interview with Lenni Brenner that should be published in CP next week. Also, if you do a search on me and my writing you'll see plenty of anti-Zionist sentiment that implies I might "grasp" whatever point you were attempting to make. Zionism is close to Nazism in my book, and comes from the same 19th century romantic/colonial/racist roots. Also, the CounterPunch book, The Politics of Anti-Semitism is right on the mark.
"'I do apologize: I took you for an anti-Zionist. Maybe it would be
easier to grasp the pt I was making, why I find the Sassoons so
fascinating, were you to acquaint yourself with the work of Lenni Brenner?
Maybe also Lee O'Brien's little book?'
"What does the fact that Sassoon was as much a court Jew as Wolfowitz or
Perle have to do with the Zionists spoken of by Brenner? You mentioned
Zionism not once. If you were to argue that some Jews grew rich by
exploiting working classes and sucking up to Capitalist big-wigs in
government, I'd have no argument with your point. But I saw no point
relating to Capitalism, class conflicts or Jews, other than dredging up the
history of one Jewish bastard.
" 'My attention was on the $$, on the Class Factor as it intertwines with
the Zionist colonial project, on the possibility that one of the factors in
play at the time of the issuance of the Balfour Declaration was the gambling
& horserace debts of Ed VII & Geo V which had, it is rumored, been picked up
by the Mssrs Sassoon, David & Sir Victor respectively. (It is on record
that Sir V loaned His Majesty large sums; whether gambling was involved is
so far unclear.) But your reaction is not unusual; I should not have assumed
you'd grasp my intent.'
"You've got to be kidding me. You come up with a cockamamie theory
about gambling debts of the English aristocracy playing a significant role
in the racist undertaking by Zionists in the first (and second) half of the
20th century and into the 21st, and expect me (or
anyone else) to 'get it,' then slip in a snide intimation that I'm
sympathetic to the Zionists or even the Israel Uber Alles dumb-ass American
Jews with your 'But your reaction is not unusual; I should not have
assumed you'd grasp my intent'
'It must be hard not to see hostility in a letter such as mine, given all
the oppression and misery to which you are daily subjected as a member of a
ground-down, persecuted minority in the USA in this new Millemimeminum'
"This bit of heavy-handed sarcasm makes me wonder indeed about your true
intent. I'd say 99 percent of the targets of Zionists and American Power
Jews' cries of "anti-Semitism" are victims of thugs crying "Wolf" while
they act as aggressors and pretend to be victims.
"The other 1 percent just hate Jews and hide behind the rightful anger and
hatred of the millions of people (some, but alas only a fraction of them,
Jews themselves) who see the Zionist aggressor/murderers for what they are."
Well, Mr. XX sent me another letter stating that, even though his Sassoon story came to me out of context and his next letter was full of snide innuendo, I was a paranoid, Zionist sympathizer and even the mention of a rich Jew sent me into paroxysms of anti-anti-Semitic rage and – oh well. If you want to read more of Mr. XX's wisdom, I'll send you a copy of his "Protocols of the Elders of Disneyland.".
Really, I blame this whole thing on the Zionists. If it weren't for them I wouldn't have to deal with weasels such as this Mr. XX guy, who send thoroughly irrelevant stories of individual Jews using the armies of the rich to rob from the poor, then expect me to guess what the hell it has to do with the current situation in Palestine; otherwise I'm, you know, one of those paranoid, defensive, Israel-loving Jews.
If I were a Palestinian, I would be an "anti-Semite" and I would certainly be able to tell you exactly what the actions of Israelis, Jews and American Fundamentalist Christian Zionists have to do with my daily suffering, but I would be hard pressed indeed to connect a 19th century drug dealer with 20th century Zionism, unless it was explained to me in thorough, scholarly detail, which ones such as Mr. XX, whose agendas are such that they don't even name the people they're allegedly supporting (and probably care as much about 21st century Palestinians as 19th Century Indians) cannot or will not do. They have other Gefilte fish to fry.
Adam Engel uses the blood of Gentile Children to bake Christmas Cookies shaped like Uzi's. He can be reached at bartleby.samsa@verizon.net, right between his statues of Theodore Herzl and Barbara Streisand.
Other Stuff by Adam Engel
*
The
System Works
*
A Washington Lefty in King George's Court: A Conversation in Medieval
America with Progressive Review Editor Sam Smith
*
Raising JonBenet: A Review of Cowboy's
Sweetheart by Walter Davis Plus an Interview With Walter Davis
* I Hope My Corpse Gives You The Plague
* MAN Talk
* U.S. Troops Outta Times Square
*
Gravity’s End Zone
*
Towers of Babel, Woodstock and the Word
*
Uncle Sam is YOU
*
Flag in the Rain
*
We Possessed
*
American Bulk (SPAM and Ideal)
*
Video Judas Video
*
Wal-Mart & Peace