Last month, uber-Zionist commentator Martin Kramer openly argued (Youtube here) the “political aim” of Israel’s sanctions on Gaza is
- to break Gaza’s runaway population growth… That may begin to crack the culture of martyrdom, which demands a constant supply of superfluous young men.
He also claimed there that there is “some evidence” that this anti-natalist campaign was succeeding.
(What on earth evidence is he talking about? When I was in Gaza last November, the UN folks there told me that in the first ten months of 2009, 43,000 babies had been born to Gaza’s population of 1.5 million. Kramer is just plain wrong, as well as deeply immoral… What a pathetic “analyst” he is, eh?)
There has been considerable discussion (e.g. from Abunimah, Cole, Silverstein) as to whether what Kramer said constituted genocidal incitement, support for the racist “eugenics” concept, or just plain old racism. Regardless of which it was, it was disgusting and racist.
Kramer was also accusing “the west” of “providing pro-natal subsidies for Palestinians with refugee status”. What??
Now, it’s true that UNRWA– like the UNHCR, which provides relief services to refugees everywhere else around the world– does not cut off the food support it gives to women, if they become pregnant. Both agencies also provide special nutritional support, as needed, to nursing mothers; and once children are weaned both agencies put them onto the rolls to receive the appropriate amount of nutritional support– and public-health and educational services, as required, as well.
Why would that shock anyone?
Do we want the UN’s refugee agencies not to do that?
Or is it only UNRWA that Kramer wants to stop providing such services? Someone should ask him if it is Palestinian refugees against whom, uniquely, he wants to discriminate… or whether refugees from Congo, Cambodia, Nepal, Somalia, Afghanistan, and everywhere else from which there are refugee flows should also be subjected to his “eugenicist” plan.
This issue does raise, of course, a couple of related subjects that Martin Kramer might prefer not to talk about. One is that in every situation of prolonged inter-group conflict, the communities that are party to that conflict tend to adopt extremely pro-natal policies. This has certainly been the case in Rwanda, over many decades. There, as in Israel/Palestine, leaders of both the competing communities judge that the conflict will eventually be resolved either through fighting or through the ballot-box. Either way, numbers are an asset…
A second thing Kramer might prefer not to talk about is the fact that Jewish Israelis– and in particular the religio-nationalists who form the heart of the settler movement in the West Bank– are certainly huge beneficiaries of a whole series of extremely pro-natalist governmental policies and subsidies (which are underwritten by the US government’s economic aid to Israel, at a rate considerably higher than the rate the US government dribbles out aid to UNRWA.)
Shall we talk about large families among ultra-orthodox Jews, in Israel and around the world?
Here’s a piece in the February 18 New York Times about the recent death of Mrs. Yitta Schwartz of Kiryas Joel, NY, who when she died last month at age 93,
- left behind 15 children, more than 200 grandchildren and so many great- and great-great-grandchildren that, by her family’s count, she could claim perhaps 2,000 living descendants.
Did the NYT reporter, Joseph Berger, take Mrs. Schwartz to task for the effect her fecundity might have on Mother Earth? No, he described it instead as “a thumb in the eye of the Nazis.”
To be fair to Mrs. Schwartz and the particular Hasidic group she was a member of, the Satmar, I should note that (1) She was born in Hungary and during WW-II was sent, along with her husband and her then-six children to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they lost one child, and (2) the Satmars are mostly anti-Zionists, which is why Mrs. Schwartz and most of her 2,000 descendants now live in New York state, rather than the occupied West Bank.
However, there are now numerous other communities of Hasidic Jews who follow social/marital injunctions from their rebbes that are every bit as pro-natalist as the Satmars’, but that are Zionist, or that anyway take advantage of the many wonderful subsidies and incentives that the Israeli government provides in order to have them go and settle in the West Bank.
I also note the significance of that throwaway line from the NYT reporter, to the effect that Mrs. Schwartz’s fecundity was “a thumb in the eye of the Nazis.” On this reasoning, why would having a large family, for Palestinians, not equally be seen– especially in the context of the still-continuing conflict– as “a thumb in the eye of the Zionist expropriators”?
… Either way, I certainly think that for Mother Earth’s sake, all excessive procreation, whoever engages in it, needs to be brought sensitively, sustainably, and rapidly to an end. I submit, though, that this is highly unlikely to be achieved in situations of prolonged inter-group conflict, so long as the conflicts themselves are not resolved (for the reasons given above.)
So to me, this adds yet another reason– let’s call it an environmental reason– why this conflict between Israelis and Palestinians needs to be speedily ended.
But so long as it isn’t ended please let’s not beat up disproportionately on the Palestinians for pursuing something like the same kind of pro-natalist instincts that the Israeli government is certainly very aggressively promoting, on the Jewish-Israeli side.
Kramer is evidently a fascist. History suggests that when they boast of their crimes, we should take them seriously: currently there are reports from Gaza of an unusual number of children being born with unusual health conditions. And of many miscarriages. It is feared that these may be related to the weaponry Israel employed in its attacks.
Add to these reports the famous IDF tee-shirt illustrations and Kramer’s sub-human vapourings leave on wondering who would want to be associated with such a man.
Not too long ago you wrote that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. Now you acknowledge that 43,000 have been born there. The two claims are not consistent.
Right. And next you are going to tell us how
Israel is responsible for this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/04/opinion/04kristof.html
(not the same David as above)
To call them “anti-Zionists” is a little misleading. They believe that the State of Israel should only be built by the messiah. The current State of Israel was built by men.
Israel forgets they are on stolen land that the man Moses said was their Holy land, not God. If the Jews are as Holy as they claim certainly have an odd way of showing it. The Jews have become the nazis of yesteryear. Perhaps they should have stayed hence they came, from Egypt, and left the Palestinians alone.
Yes, of course, it’s only the Untermenschen who have to be discouraged from reproducing; it’s quite all right for the self-appointed Herrenvolk. Zionism is an ideology of mass theft and genocide. So what else is new?
Traducteur certainly does know a lot about the Nazis, doesn’t he? And he even speaks German!
Remind me what it is that you Zionists mean by “the demographic problem”, would you? The exact meaning of the expression has slipped my mind.
I’m sorry Traducteur, I’m not getting your drift.
Could you repeat it for me in German?
“But so long as it isn’t ended please let’s not beat up disproportionately on the Palestinians for pursuing something like the same kind of pro-natalist instincts that the Israeli government is certainly very aggressively promoting, on the Jewish-Israeli side.”
Why does Cobban refer to the “Jewish-Israeli”
side as if there were no Muslims living freely in Israel? She never speaks of all Muslim-Saudi Arabia or all Muslim Syria, etc., etc.
“Inquiring”, just a few quick points:
(1) Please don’t speak about me in the third person. This is my house you’re in. Please address me directly, and courteously. Read the guidelines.
(2) I was writing about Israeli government incentives for stimulating the births of Jewish-Israeli babies. I didn’t say anything about whether there were incentives for Israeli citizens who are not Jewish. Of course I know there are many Muslims and Christians who have Israeli citizenship (they also happen to be ethnic Palestinians indigenous to the country, fwiw.) I was not writing about Saudi Arabia or Syria. If I were, I might have noted that Syria’s citizenry includes a significantly sized Christian minority. You seem unaware of that?
Something to do with too many of those dreadful subhuman goyim, isn’t it? Or so I gather from the shouts of “Exterminate ’em!” “Expel ’em!” “Castrate ’em!” emanating from Israeli Jews. It seems there are various schools of thought in the matter.
Yet Palestine continues to become more Palestinian daily. A very encouraging trend, wouldn’t you agree, chaps?
Helena:
How come you leave up all the posts that say
derogatory things about Israelis and Jews, calls them Nazis, Fascists,thugs,accuses them of genocide, baby-killing,etc.? Are you just upholding people’s rights to say anything they want or do you agree with these things? I thought
this was supposed to be a courteous site.(I know
you take the Palestinian side and can’t spend all your time policing this site,but a lot of the things I see here about Jews are just plain crazy.)
fwiw, I agree with Susan.
Some of the comments are quite nasty. It leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
I’m sorry about this Traducteur, but I gotta go along with Bill W on this one. All of us use this site accept the fact that you know a lot about the Nazis and have a great command of German, even if your Yiddish leaves a lot to be desired. So I, for one, am gonna be unwilling to respond to any of your posts until you give them to us in your native language.
Nuts! AIPAC WINS AGAIN.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1153936.html
There are reports now, from Fallujah, of an extremely unusual rate of birth defects which are thought to be linked to the weaponry used in that city during the 2004 assault.
There are also persistent rumours, from southern Iraq, of cancers being found in unusual numbers in areas where depleted uranium munitions have been used.
Whether these reports are correct we are not in a position to know.
What we can tell, from the tone of Kramer’s remarks, is that it is not improbable that those employing these weapons care very little if they turn out, like the bonblets left in Lebanon in 2006, to cause suffering, disease and deaths for many years to come.
Incidentally Susan, I call the Israeli government fascist because it is not only made up of parties which were once avowedly fascist I(as Albert Einstein pointed out) but because they act as fascists are expected to act, cynically, amorally and deceitfully. And, above all violently.
To suggest that this is an attack on Jews or even Israelis is deceptive.
Bevin, the BBC America just aired a horrific piece on congenital malformations, some too bizzarre (for BBC) to show, in Iraq. If the same is happening in Gaza, than the connection of the weapon supplier in both cases seems clear. We the citizen of this country are paying to do this.
Just in case anyone’s interested, ‘Johnny on the spot’ and ‘Bill W’ are apparently the same person, trying to distract everyone’s attention here from discussing the topic of the main post by the use of pathetic ad-hominem innuendo and sock-puppetry… I’m trying to figure out which part of the main topic it is that he doesn’t want discussed… Kramer’s ugly eugenicism, the fact of fairly high birthrates in some Palestinian communities, the fact of fairly high birthrates in some Jewish communities, or the link I asserted between pro-natalism and prolonged conflict– which provides, imho, another very serious argument for this conflict, like all others, to get fairly and sustainably resolved asap.
Isn’t little Marty getting dumped on a bit unfairly? By his own account, he’s mostly recyclin’ the neoproduct of a certain Gunnar Heinsohn,
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunnar_Heinsohn
who is a dozen times more interesting than himself.
What, for example, is the Yiddish for_Institut für vergleichende Völkermordforschung_?
Healthy days.