David Yerushalmi replied to the charges leveled against him here and in Larry Cohler Esses’ article in Jewish Week. He doesn’t deny that he opposes democracy in Israel and the U.S. But he clarifies his meaning:
…Your “journalists” lead the story with the statement that I oppose “democracy” in the US and Israel, without any hint of an explanation of what that means in context.
…There is a clear distinction between raw or radical democracy and what we in the US adopted at our founding: a constitutional republic based on federalism…The founding fathers themselves of course opposed “democracy” in its simple form and created a wonderfully elaborate system to shield government from mass democracy (you of course are aware that neither the president, the judiciary, or even senators were elected by the direct vote under our Constitution [note the 17th Amendment]).
He expands on his rejection of “raw democracy” in another passage:
Mr. Yerushalmi criticizes…raw or radical democracy where all men and all ideas and all cultures are deemed equal and given equal voice. That is of course the agenda of the Left (and often blindly supported by “conservatives”) which attempts at every turn to destroy national sovereignty with a One World Government.
There you have it. David Yerushalmi doesn’t believe in the 17th amendment and prefers returning to the Constitution circa 1789. You see, we’ve allowed too many of the unwashed masses like former slaves and Arab-Americans to enter into our democratic processes. Even we Jews have infected the body politic with our leftist notions. They shouldn’t vote for U.S. senators nor even for president. Best to return to that time in history when Blacks equalled 3/5 of a white person and Southern whites got to increase their voting power by subsuming that 3/5 into their own voting bloc.
To be fair, we should allow David Yerushalmi to reply to my own attack on him. Note the honeyed tones of pseudo graciousness which are applied to those who call him out for what he is:
Dear Mr. Silverstein:
I find it interesting that you would attack me so viciously without first reaching out to dialogue since you have done so with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
To label someone a Supremacist or racist is fine as long as the facts would support it. Rather than just take quotes out of context, I would have thought that a man so devoted to peace and dialogue would have at least extended to me the courtesy to inquire of me whether your understanding of my views was in fact correct.
Then, you could have said that indeed went right to the source and have determined that Yerushalmi is x, y, z. That you drew conclusions of this sort without any such effort speaks volumes, does it not?
All the best,
David Yerushalmi
Keep in mind this guy thinks I’m a member of the extreme left, a traitor to all he holds dear, and dangerous for the Brave New World he’s planning. Keep in mind that he has a plan for what he’d do for people like me (and probably you) and it probably involves incarceration at places like Guantanamo and a little electric current running under the fingertips. Why he thinks I would find it useful to dialogue with him is beyond me. But he’s welcome to participate here as long as he can keep a civil tongue in his mouth.
One point that Yerushalmi raises that is valid is his discussion of Israeli democracy. He is right in the limited sense that there is an outright contradiction in the way Israel currently balances its commitments to democracy and being a Jewish state. To Yerushalmi’s way of thinking there is no possible way to bridge the divide and Israel must shed democracy in order to hold true to its real mission as a state of the Jewish people. This would include eliminating (by expulsion or perhaps more extreme measures) those Arab citizens who could not accept Israeli supremacism and Arab subjugation.
A racist Jewish state like the one Yerushalmi envisions precludes the possibility that Israel could be a state that guarantees equality to ALL its citizens while protecting the religious and political rights of all as well. My vision would be a different Israel than the current system which Yerushalmi correctly notes discriminates against its non-Jewish citizens. It might be a system closer to our own with a constitution guaranteeing equal rights to all citizens and specifying what those rights are and how they are to be protected. And it would be a BETTER Israel both for its Jewish and non-Jewish inhabitants.
not sure if you’ve seen this article on the loony mapping shari’a project:
http://muslimlinkpaper.com/mybo2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1049&Itemid=0
The imam I referred to in my earlier post WAS Imam Johari. His friend, the D.C. lawyer I mentioned told me about the infiltration attempt but I hadn’t read anything in any detail about it. It sounds like stupid Keystone Cops stuff. I’m not sure why Tariq Nelson focuses so much on white supremacy w/o noting the Jewish nature of SANE. I can’t be sure but perhaps all of the SANE crew are Jewish. Their ideology IS curiously like white supremacy even though it’s a Jewish group. Very odd.
What do you mean by “the Jewish nature of sane?” I briefly looked through SANE’s website (which I heard of for the first time now including Yerushalmy”) and couldn’t find anything “Jewish” about it. Yerushalmy is Jewish but the other members: Snodgrass or Gaubetz, (from the “about us” page) is there any reason to believe they are? I couldn’t find anything “Jewish” in their mission satement page or their “what we do” page. Again, these are the pages I checked, I didn’t the websites entire contents.
You’re right in the sense that I should’ve clarified what I meant. The Jewish aspect of SANE’s message isn’t all that easy to ferret out. But you should look through the site’s Judeo-Christian section for a start. Also, Yerushalmi, in his bio at the site makes a point of noting his tight connection with an Israeli uber capitalist free-trade, anti-Arab group, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies. At SANE, Yerushalmi links quite frequently to Campus Watch and Jihadwatch groups beloved of Jewish neocons and the Israeli nationalist camp. It is quite clear that Yerushalmi’s hatred of Islam derives both fr. his understanding of Jewish history and his Kahanist Israeli politics.
Yerushalmi’s defense of himself in light of the Jewish Week story which is published at the SANE site and which I linked to above, goes into quite a bit of detail about his ideas on Israeli democracy and American Jewry; among them this doozy:
And you are right that the SANE “staff” is not all Jewish. I should’ve been more careful when I wrote that it might be. I don’t know about Gaubatz, but Snodgrass clearly isn’t.
That’s a rather poor basis for calling SANE a Jewish website or even a Jewish affiliated website. Tariq Nelson was correct in not mentioning this in his article. Their is a stronger basis to calling communism, neoconservatism (the Jewish cabal running the current administration) or even Hollywood – Jewish. People who do so are often called anti-semites.
The appointment of U.S. Senators by state legislatures was meant to be a check on the power of the federal government. Note today that the federal government regularly dumps ‘unfunded mandates’ on the states, and you can see why the states would want to have a say in this, or even put a stop to it if at all possible. So a rollback of the 17th Amendment (you seem to be confusing it with the 15th Amendment, which gave the franchise to blacks) is not nearly as daft as you make it out to be.
That’s an awfully snarky way of calling me an anti-Semite w/o actually doing so. Besides, the statement is ridiculous on its face.
If you don’t want to accept the fact that David Yerushalmi & everything he does political is deeply informed by his twisted relationship with, & understanding of Jewish history & Israeli politics including SANE that’s yr problem not mine. I’ve given you the evidence. Did you read all the articles at his site with Jewish themes? Why don’t you do a Google search at his site of the terms Israel or Jewish & see how many scores if not hundreds of results you get?
The guy admits that his guru is an Israeli so-called right-wing pseudo academic of some type and his life’s work, besides promoting Arab hate, seems to be bound up with this Israeli economic-political institute, IASPS.
And you don’t believe his hatred for Islam, the entire raison d’etre of SANE, is informed by his Jewish identity & the sense that Islam threatens both Jews & Israel? C’mon. You’re being ridiculous, but if you want to be that’s your prerogative.
That comment was a quote from Yerushalmi, not me. He’s the one confusing the amendments. Though he seems to be obsessed with the emancipation of Blacks as the beginning of the downfall of the Republic, so he has that on his brain as well.
A person may fall into the same traps an anti-semite falls into, without actually being an anti-semite. “And you don’t believe his hatred for Islam, the entire raison d’etre of SANE, is informed by his Jewish identity & the sense that Islam threatens both Jews & Israel?” Possibly. And also because it threatens the USA. Anyway, there were/are a large number of Jews among communists, neoconservatives and Hollywood. I am certain that this is no coincidence and has to do with their Jewishness or a responce to being Jewish (and wanting to shake off their Jewishwess by replacing it with a universal ideology such as communism). That doesn’t mean that every article that critiques these topics need to include this in their critique. Remember I responding to your comment about Tariq not including this in his article.
About the fifteenth and seventeenth amendment. The quote you brought has nothing to do with blacks having the right to vote. Yerushalmy wasn’t confused at all. Read about the 17th amendment in wikipedia. It was ratified in 1913. Before this, state legislatures elected the senators (but not the representatives who were directly elected by the people – thus the name representatives I presume). The amendment brought the election of the senate directly to the people. And this is what it says in the quote you provided “you of course are aware that neither the president, the judiciary, or even senators were elected by the direct vote under our Constitution [note the 17th Amendment”. Many libertarians favor repealing the amendment but also Zell Miller and Alan Keyes.
Such views are about as germane to contemporary political discourse as the first wheel ever invented is to the F-16. I’ve never heard of anyone advocating such a view before but then again I don’t spend as much time as you apparently do following neocon/libertarian ideology. I do hope they’ll keep following their inclinations to try to make this a big issue as it will seal their fate as utterly irrelevant to American politics.
All you say about the amendment & its subject is no doubt true. But Yerushalmi DOES believe giving the right to vote to Blacks and women was an utter disaster which should be undone. Imagine what Yerushalmi’s views must be of giving Israeli Arab citizens democratic rights!! I bet he’d just as soon expel them en masse which, btw, is what he advocates for ALL illegal immigrants and all Muslim non-citizens (regardless of whether they are legal residents or not) living in this country.