I've been studying, lately, a number of high-profile, egregious anti-semitic and anti-Jewish displays from the American right. My last post in this vein concerned an anti-Jewish book mailed out by a Jerusalem-based Christian Zionist ministry, in 2004, to perhaps 1/2 million Jewish-Americans. The book stated that New York City "may be the leading center in the world regarding perversion and hedonism" and then proceeded to ask why the greatest urban concentration of Jews on Earth could be found there (no answer/s were suggested). It also appeared to invoke the myth of Jewish ritual sacrifice of children. Today, I'm turning my focus to the most prominent anti-Semitic white-supremacist Orthodox Jewish activist you've never heard of.

It's hard to know how to characterize David Yerushalmi and so I won't even try except to describe him as "sui generis"... For several months now I've been wandering through the labyrinth of anti-Semitism and Holocaust studies, and part of that involved watching the most notorious anti-Jewish film ever made, the Nazi-produced "The Eternal Jew" and transcribing the text of the English translation of the film because I couldn't locate a transcription on the Net. Then, about one week ago, a lucky combination of Internet search engine terms brought me to a phenomenon I wouldn't have believed could possibly exist - an Orthodox Jewish white-supremacist anti-Semite, of some note, who espoused ideas that were very similar to those to be found in "The Eternal Jew".

Keeping in mind David Yerushalmi's accusations against Jews I've just mentioned, let's then turn to my transcript of that infamous Nazi anti-Jewish propaganda film, "The Eternal Jew":

"The Jews are a people without farmers or workers, a race of parasites. Wherever the body of a nation shows a wound, they anchor themselves and feed on the decaying organism. They make business out of the sickness of the nations and therefore endeavor to deepen and prolong all conditions of sickness.... Wherever rats turn up they carry destruction to the land by destroying mankind's goods and nourishment, and spreading diseases and plagues such as Cholera, Dysentery, Leprosy, and Typhoid fever. They're cunning, cowardly, and cruel and usually appear in massive hordes. They represent the elements of sneakiness and subterranean destruction among animals, just as the Jews do among mankind. The parasite nation of Judah is responsible for a large part of international crime. In 1932, the Jews, who made up only 1% of the World's population, accounted for 34% of the World;s dope peddlers and 47% of robberies. 47% of crooked games of chance. 82% of international crime organizations. And 98% of dealers in prostitution. The most expressions in the jargon of International gangsters and criminals stem from Hebrew and Yiddish words.

Returning to David Yerushalmi's text:

Jews of the modern age are the most radical, aggressive and effective of the liberal Elite. Their goal is the goal of all "progressives:" a determined use of liberal principles to deconstruct the Western nation state in a "historical" march to the World State... ...one must admit readily that the radical liberal Jew is a fact of the West and a destructive one.

Then turning back to "The Eternal Jew" :

...other Jews represented the radical line against law and order. In the guise of selfless humanitarianism they offered the German masses castles in the sky, incited them against civic order. Unrestrained personal freedom and self indulgence for the individual. Rejection of all ideals and higher values. Submission to the basest life of material pleasures. Criticism of all that is sacred, revolt against everything. Incitement of the young, class warfare, and terrorism. it's no accident that this doctrine of destruction of nations sprang from the Jewish mind of Karl Marx... ...Although they were a small minority, they knew how to terrorize a great, tolerant nation.

Recently. Yerushalmi's attitudes towards Jews became a point of controversy because of his participation in a group that opposes the creation of a New York City magnet school with an Arabic cultural and linguistic focus, especially when Jewish Week picked up the story.

Meanwhile, Yerushalmi readily admits he's one of the few Jewish defenders of Mel Gibson's "The Passion" and Gibson's attitudes towards Jews generally, and in an August 8, 2006 piece, published at IntellectualConservative.com, in defense of Gibson Yerushalmi-- who started out with a "well, he was drunk that's all. He wasn't serious" style of defense of Mel Gibson's July 2006 drunken anti-Jewish "tirade" to a Malibu cop who had pulled Gibson over for speeding --wound up seeming to justifiy Gibson's outburst, writing:

"let's assume that Gibson looks out into the world and sees liberal Jews taking the social and political lead in all forms of World State ideologies and moral abominations... That Gibson sees Jews in an unfavorable light is only irrational if one wishes to make the argument that secular liberal Jews are not in fact the leading proponents of all forms of anti-Western, anti-American, anti-Christian movements, campaigns, and ideologies"

So, secular liberal Jews are responsible for all political ideology and all "moral abominations" [whatever those are supposed to be] ? They're the font of all "anti-Western","anti-American" and "anti-Christian" movements and ideas ?

It would be cleaner and far more direct were David Yerushalmi simply to write : "Jews are to blame. For all of it. All the bad stuff that's happened, is happening, or will happen. For eternity. It's all their fault."

He might as well go the extra mile and declare Jews, collectively, to be responsible for acne and bad breath, bad hair days and marital infidelity, mortality and flat tires, Global Warming and the comet (or bolide) strike, millions of years ago, that helped wipe out the Dinosaurs.

And, why stop there ?. Yerushalmi, while he's at it, should blame Jews for sin, death, taxes, gravity, the number Pi, the nuisance of misquitoes and fleas, flatulence or the human aging process, the very existence of time or the human handicap of being unable to perceive more than three or four dimensions. Perhaps we could even blame Jews for the coming, inevitable heat death of the universe billions of years in the future. Why be bashful ? Let's get a full accounting.

David Yerushalmi's political animus goes beyond accusations leveled at Jews ; directed towards Muslim, Arabs, and Islam it manifests in a less rhetorically toxic and more active form. Yerushalmi is very enthusiastic about the information gathering potential of state-administered torture in the American fight against terrorism. He appears to find Shari'-a centered Islam "an evil religion" and has called for a legal prohibition against practicing Islam in the US. As the "Milli Gazette", which bills itself as the leading Indian Muslim's Leading English Newspaper writes:

David Yerushalmi, has established an anti-Islam group known with the acronym SANE: the Society of Americans for National Existence. The sole objective of the group is banishing Islam from the US by making "adherence to Islam" punishable by 20 years in prison.... In February of this year, it released a policy paper that in part stated: "Whereas, adherence to Islam as a Muslim is prima facie evidence of an act in support of the overthrow of the US. Government through the abrogation, destruction, or violation of the US Constitution and the imposition of Shari'a on the American People. . .It shall be a felony punishable by 20 years in prison to knowingly act in furtherance of, or to support the, adherence to Islam." For SANE's purposes anybody who follows the teaching of the Quran and Prophet Mohammad is adhering Islam. This includes both major Muslim sects, Sunnis and Shias. On June 13, SANE unveiled its so-called "Mapping Shari'a in America Project" devoted to spying on 2,300 Islamic institutions in the United States. "The project will collect information about America's 2,300-plus mosques and associated day schools, provide information to both law enforcement officials and the public, and test the proposition that Shari'a (read Islam) amounts to a criminal conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government," the SANE project said.

According to the SANE mission statement :

America is a unique people bound together through a commitment to America's Judeo-Christian moral foundation and to an enduring faith and trust in G-d and in His Providence... America was the handiwork of faithful Christians, mostly men, and almost entirely white, who ventured from Europe to create a nation in their image of a country existing as free men under G-d. The founding fathers understood that party-led parliaments and democracy were the worse form of government and sought to resist the movement that was soon to find fertile ground in France with the French Revolution... ...at its core, SANE is dedicated to the rejection of democracy and party rule and a return to a constitutional republic... ...Any world view, ideology, or -ism that promotes directly or indirectly the elimination of national existence and the establishment of a world state is our foe. So you can know at the start that liberalism (and this includes libertarianism) and Islam are in our sights.

Although SANE's mission statement does not expressly spell this out ( it could possibly be inferred from the text ) David Yerushalmi wants a return to the pre-Bill Of Rights Constitution and he wants to restrict the voting franchise - to landholding white males. At base, Yerushalmi doesn't much like American democracy in its current form - it's too inclusive and too directly democratic. In a exchange, last August 2007, with the formidable liberal Jewish blogger Richard Silverstein, Yerushalmi delineated his position:

[Yerushalmi rejects] "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."

Responding to Yerushalmi's clarification, the less than fully mollified Silverstein wrote:

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.

"Race", ethnicity, and immigrants --whether those be a supposedly "parasitic" Jewish "race", the rather dubious notion of a "black" race (probably other alleged racial groupings as well) or immigrants who are suposed to be somehow diluting or "poisoning" the white anglo-saxon ethnic makeup of America --figure prominently for David Yerushalmi, who asks - What's the big deal, with having an open, honest discussion on the "Troubling Question Of Race" - of dark skinned humans as "empirically the most murderous of peoples (at least in New York City)", or about "illegal immigrants as deserving of no constitutional rights" ?

There's no big deal here for David Yerushalmi, who appears to advocate a type of American volkish Christian supremacist ideology that calls for a withdrawal of the voting franchise from all but white, male landowners. In his On Race: A Tentative Discussion, Part II, Yerushalmi writes:

There is a reason the founding fathers did not give women or black slaves the right to vote. You might not agree or like the idea but this country's founders, otherwise held in the highest esteem for their understanding of human nature and its affect on political society, certainly took it seriously. Why is that? Were they so flawed in their political reckonings that they manhandled the most important aspect of a free society - the vote? If the vote counts for so much in a free and liberal democracy as we "know" it today, why did they limit the vote so dramatically?

Regardless of any controversy over his ideological views, it is hard to escape the impression that David Yerushalmi is prominent, highly effective, prolific and extremely intelligent man. As his biography, provided at the right-leaning Institute For Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (that Yerushalmi helped found) informs us:

Mr. Yerushalmi is a lawyer and businessman experienced in strategic business analysis, international business development, and business/legal/strategic/scientific risk analysis for IT companies, bio-medical projects, and international concerns. Yerushalmi's relationship with IASPS began 25 years ago as a dedicated student, and later colleague, of the Institute's president, Robert Loewenberg. After completing his undergraduate studies with a B.S. in public policy studies, summa cum laude, Yerushalmi received his Juris Doctorate from Arizona State University College of Law in 1984 as the recipient of the Most Outstanding Graduate Award. After graduation, Mr. Yerushalmi worked as a lawyer specializing in securities, banking, and business law in the Los Angeles office of the law firm of LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & Macrae L.L.P. (then known as LeBoeuf, Lamb, Leiby & Macrae). ...Yerushalmi was instrumental in establishing the Israel Export Development Co., Ltd., as an entrepreneurial policy tool to initiate radical free market reforms in Israel. Working along side fellow board members and shareholders such as Robert Tishman, Jerry Speyer, Larry Silverstein, Lawrence Tisch, Eugene Grant and Sy Syms, Yerushalmi was appointed the company's CEO and Chairman. Over a two-year period, Yerushalmi built an international sales force for marketing free zones and knowledge parks in Israel and around the world, successfully attracting $750 million in financial commitments and identifying over 20,000 high-technology jobs for Israelis... Yerushalmi continues his active involvement with IASPS by editing and writing contributions to this web site and has published several op eds in the Wall Street Journal, the Jerusalem Post, and Globes, Israel's leading business newspaper. Yerushalmi has advised and provided business, marketing, and legal risk analysis for the principles of Fortune 1000 companies and has successfully launched several innovative bio-medical and high-tech companies in the U.S. and Israel...

As a nutshell biography attached to a Yerushalmi article published by the Thinking Catholic Strategic Center tells us :

David Yerushalmi is an attorney who has been involved in international legal issues for over 25 years. He is Of Counsel and sits on the board of trustees of the Institute for Advanced Strategic & Political Studies, a policy think tank. He has published op-eds in the American Spectator, the Wall Street Journal Europe, Ha'aretz, Globes (Israel business paper), and the Jerusalem Post. David is President of Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE).