Weirdest news story of the week, followed by why it’s not so weird:
Tel Aviv District Court Judge Zvi Gurfinkel sentenced the teenagers, aged 16 to 19, to between one and seven years in prison for a “shocking and horrifying” year-long spree of attacks that targeted foreign workers, ultra-Orthodox Jews and homeless men.
The court said the group also planned to attack Arabs.
The eight teenagers were immigrants to Israel from the former Soviet Union and court documents cited social adjustment difficulties as a factor behind their involvement in the gang, which posted pro-Adolf Hitler video clips on the Internet.
One of the teenagers was the grandson of Holocaust survivors.
The Star
Most people are going to get hung up on the idea of Jewish Nazis because hey, those are opposites. It’s like Black republicans still get a snicker when mentioned among Democrats. But here’s why Jews and Nazis are coming together: they’re both nationalists.
Let me explain.
In 1896, a lawyer and political writer, Theodor Herzl, formulated his theory of Zionism. It went basically like this: every nation has a demographic majority. Any group that is not of that majority will come into conflict with it, and thus begins the cat and mouse game until they destroy each other or one comes out on top.
The Jewish question persists wherever Jews live in appreciable numbers. Wherever it does not exist, it is brought in together with Jewish immigrants. We are naturally drawn into those places where we are not persecuted, and our appearance there gives rise to persecution. This is the case, and will inevitably be so, everywhere, even in highly civilised countries—see, for instance, France—so long as the Jewish question is not solved on the political level. The unfortunate Jews are now carrying the seeds of anti-Semitism into England; they have already introduced it into America. ~ Theodor Herzl
About twenty years later, an apocalyptic “war to end all wars” began. Today we call it World War I. The conflict that started this war is hard to distill, but one of its linchpins was the conflict between nations — formed of one ethnic group — and the empires that tried to lash together several nations for greater political and demographic power. The big empires went to war to keep themselves together and to keep control of their overseas colonies, and the result was that everyone lost.
Only after this did the Nazis (NSDAP, or National Socialist German Worker’s Party) come about. Their big theory was that socialism only works when it has some value higher than money to aspire to, or it becomes either communism or corrupt tyranny. As a result, they bonded nationalism — or love of the ethnic-nation — to socialism and made from it a new form of government. Its political goals were to stop communism and resist liberalism.
When you look at it this way, both Zionists and Nazis are bonded by the same goal: nationalism. It is a travesty of history that they ended up fighting and killing each other instead of good allies, and this travesty is repeated when young Jewish youth turn to Hitler worship instead of Herzl-worship.
However, a few from the Nazi camp are starting to wake up to this possibility, especially as Israel comes under increasing criticism for alleged apartheid policies toward Palestinians:
“Stop the hatred of the Jewish people,” the Web site reads. “The Jews are a healthy, strong nation.”
The organization – whose members have yet to reveal themselves to the public – claims that Israel’s right to exist is anchored in the principles of social Darwinism, the same principles which the Nazis adopted prior to the Second World War.
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These unusual statements on the internet compliment the group’s other public campaigns, including the dissemination of bumper stickers. One of the stickers features a picture of Reinhard Heydrich, the senior Nazi official who chaired the Wansee Conference where the Final Solution was hatched. Underneath the photo reads: “As a Nazi, I’m a Zionist.”
Another sticker shows a photo of Israel Defense Forces soldiers during the Second Lebanon War under the heading: “2,000 years of struggling to survive – respect to those worthy of it.”
In terms of the group’s attitude towards the Holocaust, the organization says: “We must view what is referred to as ‘the Holocaust’ within the context of acts of self-defense undertaken by nations under threat.” It added, however, “that there is no justification for it.” Instead, the Nazis ought to have supported the Zionist cause, the group states.
Haaretz
You can read more on the group’s website, National Socialists for Israel. It makes for interesting reading and a curious insight into nationalism these days — instead of attacking each other, nationalists seem to be agreeing to separate and support each other’s right to do so.