Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Honkeys

Kevin MacDonald writes:

Jewish commitment to liberalism in the West has been all about ethnic hardball, not about high-flown moral values. Jewish liberalism is the cutting edge aimed at displacing previously dominant WASP elites and their culture. It is not motivated by a moral universalism of human rights — a philosophy that is utterly foreign to the Jewish tradition. Rather, it is motivated by fear and loathing of the traditional peoples and cultures of Europe — and the desire to become a dominant elite.

Peter Beinart writes:

When he probed the students’ views of Israel, he hit up against some firm beliefs. First, “they reserve the right to question the Israeli position.” These young Jews, Luntz explained, “resist anything they see as ‘group think.’” They want an “open and frank” discussion of Israel and its flaws. . . . Most of the students, in other words, were liberals, broadly defined. They had imbibed some of the defining values of American Jewish political culture: a belief in open debate, a skepticism about military force, a commitment to human rights. And in their innocence, they did not realize that they were supposed to shed those values when it came to Israel. The only kind of Zionism they found attractive was a Zionism that recognized Palestinians as deserving of dignity and capable of peace, and they were quite willing to condemn an Israeli government that did not share those beliefs.

MacDonald would be a better Jewologist if he accepted the controversial-in-some-circles theory that Jews are human. In other words: conflicted, evolving, malleable. Not like it will change any minds, but here's an excerpt from an article on some of those non-existent traditional Jewish universalists.

Isaac Ber Levinsohn:

Levinsohn proposed a new concept of relations between Jews and Gentiles, presupposing the harmonious coexistence between Judaism and Christianity. . . .

Thus a Gentile who fulfills the seven Noachide commandments is called a hasid and has a share in the World to Come. For this reason, according to Levinsohn, one may claim that a Christian fulfills the major part of Moses' commandments. In addition, the Torah contains certain commandments applicable only to the Jewish people, such as those concerning the Exodus and the related festivals and fast-days. As the Gentiles were not implicated in the sins committed by the Jews in the desert, they have no reason to fast for this. Thus, according to Levinsohn, Christians are "brothers of Israel" and have a share in the World to Come.

Abraham Isaac Kook:

According to Rabbi Kook, the brotherly love of Esau and Jacob, of Israel and Isaac, will eventually overcome the animosity and hostility brought about by evil, transforming it into light and compassion. Rabbi Kook was always grieved by the isolationism which developed within the Jewish people. Jews have too often concentrated only upon themselves, forgetting that it is their mission to live within broader human society, bringing to it their own contribution while being enriched by it. . . .

Religions can serve one another as stimuli, as models for creative competition and mutual evaluation. In a fundamental way, each religion is part and parcel of a given national historical experience. Beliefs imposed upon another nation against its will thus remain alien to its life.

Shmuel Aleksandrov:

Aleksandrov propounded a mystical theory of the relationship between Jews and Gentiles, containing deep roots in the Kabbalah. There were two trees in the Garden of Eden: the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge. The Tree of Life is an exclusively Jewish possession, i.e., Torah, while the Tree of Knowledge belongs to the Gentiles. Among its fruits are scientific-technical progress, philosophy, art, etc. Our historical proximity to Messianic times is manifested in the mystical exchange of the fruits of both trees. By giving to the world the fruits of the Tree of Life, Jews consecrate the Gentile world, while receiving from it vital knowledge and ideas.

Abraham Hen:

He quotes the Midrash that, when the ministering angels wished to sing a song of praise to the Creator after the Jews safely crossed the Red Sea, God prohibited them from doing so, saying "the works of my hand are drowning in the sea and you wish to sing songs?" Thus, the dying Egyptian soldiers who had attempted to prevent the Exodus, so rebelling against God's will, are seen as the object of Divine compassion. Rabbi Hen afterwards cites the words of the Midrash stating that the same gates of salvation are open to Gentiles as well as to Jews: "The Creator does not reject any creature. He accepts all. The gates are always open, and he who wishes to enter, will enter. As it is said: 'Open the gates that the righteous goy (Gentile) may enter' (Isa. 26:2). It does not say there: 'priests, Levites and Israelites,' but 'the righteous Gentile.'"

Of course counter-examples can be found. But for those not insistent on the self-fulfilling prophecy of life as a Darwinian race war, perhaps universalist trends should be engaged with instead of dismissed as prevarication or ipso facto non-existent.