Polar Bear: Wikipedia:
“Goldfinger (the Bond film) was banned in Israel after it was revealed that Fröbe (actor who played Goldfinger) had been a member of the Nazi Party. However, he left the party before the outbreak of World War II. After several years, the ban was lifted, as it was found that Fröbe likely saved the lives of two Jews by hiding them in his basement during the war.”
I think Israelis are straight shooters, and some Jewish stereotypes may not apply to them. As a Jewish Nazi character said referring to Israelis: “Those aren’t Jews.”
They are straight shooters. And I respect them for that. They tell it like it is! There is something special about Israelis, and much as I despise them, I have to respect them for that. It’s like they are capable of taking the long view or actually seeing things in perspective, above and beyond politics, especially in regard to Jewish matters.
Notice how a fair number of Israelis took the long view, recharged their ancestral memories, and turned on Ukrainians. A fair number of Israelis actually support Russia in that war – maybe 23
I have seen Israeli TV programs where prominent Israelis attack Zelensky as a “capo” for allying with Nazis. And they are not afraid to talk about the Nazi collaborationist history of the Ukrainians. Almost no US Jews talk about how Ukrainians were Nazi collaborators and Jew-killers. All of the major US Jewish organizations are covering up for the Ukrainians and denying that they’re Nazis.
You see? With US Jews, first, they are not nearly as sophisticated as Israelis, and second, like all Westerners, everything is run through a cheap Western propaganda filter before it exits their mouths. Israelis are part of the West and then again, they are not. They are part of the Middle East whether they like it or not. And in another way they are not part of either the West or the Middle East – they are simply a part of the Jewish people, who are not a part of either one.
If you read the Israeli press, they go after the Jews. Their critique of Jews would be called antisemitism if I or any other Gentile said it. But they get away with it because they can criticize themselves but others can’t. And if you can read Hebrew, the Hebrew language press goes after the Jews ferociously.
This is good of course, as self-critique is great. When was the last time you heard US Jews engage in self-critique? Never. They can’t. They get called self-haters right away if they do. So internal debate among the Jews of the West is shut down before it starts by emotional hypersensitivity and, frankly, insecurity.
Notice that they don’t say Russians are antisemites. You can call Russians antisemites all you want, but one thing Russians are not is Nazis. Ukrainians are a lot worse antisemites than Russians, especially nowadays. Russian antisemitism has always been weird anyway. Zhirinovsky was said to be an antisemite, but it later came out that he was Jewish. He was informed of that, agreed it was true, and moved on.
You see, in the example above, only an Israeli Jew would have had the kindness of heart to forgive this man Fröbe and rehabilitate him. Western or American Jews would have canceled the guy forever.
Israelis have a sense of nuance that is missing from Western Jews, where everything is an emotional hair-trigger and anything that comes out of their mouth first goes through the political bullshit filter and then gets revved up to hysteria by the emotional outrage filter. Western Jews just can’t see anything, much less their own kind, with any kind of nuance or “long view.” Perhaps the word I am looking for is holistic.
Israeli Jews are a bit jaded, and they seem to have this attitude that humans in general aren’t that great, and Jews are no exception. They think people make mistakes and have a right to be forgiven, which is almost a Christian POV. They rehabilitated this guy when they found out that even though he’d been a party member, he quit before WW2 and incredibly enough, he risked his life to save two Jews during the war!
There’s no way American Jews would have ever forgiven and rehabilitated that man. Cancel culture doesn’t do nuance. Israeli Jews have been through and seen it all, and this leaves one a bit world-weary but also tempers down normal human hysteria into more of a philosophical weighing of choices by flawed men.
