Israeli professor: UK boycott justified
Professor Rachel Giora of the University of Tel Aviv backs boycott on her colleagues with different views; ‘I support every form of open criticism against the current policies of the Israeli government,’ she says.
ynet.com
The Lobby; But Which One?
…If there is to be any systematic examination of the concept of “The Israel Lobby” — or what is more widely named as “The Jewish Lobby” — more than a particular selection of facts must be examined to arrive at a general conclusion. Since the motivation behind current U.S. State Department Near East policy is a crucial aspect of the question of what the problem is, it is first of all necessary to examine what is being examined. If the U.S.A.’s Jewish population of 2% is to be viewed alone and out of context then one may simply proceed to describe the Zionist Lobby as the dominant political voice in that nationality. One may even say its various factions have a dictatorial position in that community’s organizations. This monopoly has come about as a result of the Nazi extermination of the greater part of the Jewish Left in Europe (the non-Zionist movements such as the Jewish Bund) while at the same time the leaderships of the Jewish revolutionary tendencies were eliminated by the Stalinist regime know by the name of Communism, during the years 1926 until 1956.
If, on the other hand one examines the general context of USA political society, it is possible to focus on more than one particular Lobby that identifies with the Zionist State of Israel, since there are a number of others as well. Consequently the question becomes; which Lobby has the greater influence and in whose interests does it operate?
Many Israeli settlers would leave peacefully: poll
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Forty-four percent of Jewish settlers would be ready to leave their homes in the occupied West Bank without resistance if Israel decided to remove them, a poll published on Wednesday by an Israeli newspaper showed.
The percentage of settlers said they would evacuate was up from 25 percent last June, the poll conducted by the Geocartografia Institute showed.
The survey in the Maariv daily said a representative sample of the 240,000 settlers had been asked whether they would agree to leave under an Israeli “realignment” plan which calls for removal of some isolated settlements while strengthening others.
June 2nd, 2006 at 11:48 am
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Court_Jew
Court Jew
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Court Jew (from German: Hofjude(n), Hoffaktor) is a term for historical Jewish bankers or businessmen who lent money and handled finances of some of the Christian European noble houses. A corresponding historical term is Jewish Bailiff. See also shtadlan.
The first examples of what would be later called court Jews emerged during the Renaissance when local rulers used services of Jewish bankers for short-term loans. They lent money to nobles and in the process gained social influence.
Noble patron of court Jews employed them as financiers, suppliers, diplomats and trade delegates. Court Jews could use their family connections, and connections between each other, to provision their sponsors with, among others things, food, arms, ammunition and precious metals.
In return for their services, court Jews gained social privileges – sometimes even titles – and could live outside the Jewish ghettoes. Some nobles wanted to keep their bankers in their own courts. And because they were under noble protection, they were exempted from rabbinical jurisdiction.
Some court Jews, unlike the majority of the other Jews, amassed large personal fortune and gained political and social influence. Sometimes they were also prominent people in the local Jewish community and could use their influence to protect and influence their brethren. Sometimes they were the only Jews who could interact with the local high society and present petitions of the Jews to the ruler.
However, the court Jew had social connections and influence in the Christian world mainly through his noble patron. Due to precarious social position of Jews, some nobles could just ignore their debts. If the sponsoring noble died, his Jewish financier could face exile or execution. Many debts were also canceled during pogroms when the Jewish creditor
Positions and duties
Court Jews, called also court factors, and court or chamber agents, played a part at the courts of the Austrian emperors and the German princes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and at the beginning of the nineteenth. Not always on account of their learning or their force of character did these Jews rise to positions close to the rulers: they were mostly wealthy business men, distinguished above their coreligionists by their commercial instincts and their adaptability. Court rulers looked upon them in a personal and, as a rule, selfish light; as being, on the one hand, their favorites, and, on the other, their whipping-boys. Court Jews frequently suffered through the denunciation of their envious rivals and coreligionists, and were often the objects of hatred of the people and the courtiers. They were of service to their fellow-Jews only during the periods, often short, of their influence with the rulers; and as they themselves, being hated parvenus, often came to a tragic end, their coreligionists were in consequence of their fall all the more harassed.
The court Jews, as the agents of the rulers, and in times of war as the purveyors and the treasurers of the state, enjoyed special privileges. They were under the jurisdiction of the court marshal, and were not compelled to wear the Jews’ badge. They were permitted to stay wherever the emperor held his court, and to live anywhere in the German empire, even in places where no other Jews were allowed. Wherever they settled they could buy houses, slaughter meat according to the Jewish ritual, and maintain a rabbi. They could sell their goods wholesale and retail, and could not be taxed or assessed higher than the Christians.
At the Austrian court
The Austrian emperors kept a considerable number of court Jews. Among those of Emperor Ferdinand II. are mentioned the following: Solomon and Ber Mayer, who furnished for the wedding of the emperor and Eleonora of Mantua the cloth for four squadrons of cavalry; Joseph Pincherle of Görz; Moses and Joseph Marburger (Morpurgo) of Gradisca; Ventura Pariente of Trieste; the physician Elijah Chalfon of Vienna; Samuel zum Drachen, Samuel zum Straussen, and Samuel zum Weissen Drachen of Frankfort-on-the-Main; and Mordecai Meisel, of Prague. A specially favored court Jew was Jacob Bassevi, the first Jew to be ennobled, with the title “von Treuenfeld”.
Important as court Jews were also Samuel Oppenheimer, who went from Heidelberg to Vienna, and Samson Wertheimer (Wertheimher) from Worms. Oppenheimer, who was appointed chief court factor, together with his two sons Emanuel and Wolf, and Wertheimer, who was at first associated with him, devoted their time and talents to the service of Austria and the House of Habsburg: during the Rhenish, French, Turkish, and Spanish wars they loaned millions of florins for provisions, munitions, etc. Wertheimer, who, by title at least, was also chief court factor to the electors of Mayence, the Palatinate, and Treves, received from the emperor a chain of honor with his miniature.
Samson Wertheimer was succeeded as court factor by his son Wolf. Contemporaneous with him was Leffmann Behrends, or Liepmann Cohen, of Hanover, court factor and agent of the elector Ernst August of Hanover and of the duke Rudolf August of Brunswick. He had relations also with several other rulers and high dignitaries. Behrends’ two sons, Mordecai Gumpel and Isaac, received the same titles as he, chief court factors and agents. Isaac Cohen’s father-in-law, Behrend Lehman, called also Bärmann Halberstadt, was a court factor of Saxony, with the title of “Resident”; and his son Lehman Behrend was called to Dresden as court factor by King Augustus the Strong. Moses Bonaventura of Prague was also court Jew of Saxony in 1679.
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Intrigues of court Jews
The Models were court Jews of the margraves of Ansbach about the middle of the seventeenth century. Especially influential was Marx Model, who had the largest business in the whole principality and extensively supplied the court and the army. He fell into disgrace through the intrigues of the court Jew Elkan Fränkel, member of a family that had been driven from Vienna. Fränkel, a circumspect, energetic, and proud man, possessed the confidence of the margrave to such a degree that his advice was sought in the most important affairs of the state. Denounced by a certain Isaiah Fränkel, however, who desired to be baptized, an accusation was brought against Elkan Fränkel; and the latter was pilloried, scourged, and sent to the Würzburg for life imprisonment November 2, 1712. He died there 1720. David Rost, Gabriel Fränkel, and, in 1730, Isaac Nathan (Ischerlein) were court Jews together with Elkan Fränkel; Ischerlein, through the intrigues of the Fränkels, suffered the same fate as Elkan Fränkel. Nevertheless, Nathan’s son-in-law, Dessauer, became court Jew. Other court Jews of the princes of Ansbach were Michael Simon and Löw Israel (1743), Meyer Berlin, and Amson Solomon Seligmann (1763).
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The Great Elector
The Great Elector, Frederick William, also kept a court Jew at Berlin, Israel Aaron (1670), who by his influence tried to prevent the influx of foreign Jews into the Prussian capital. Other court Jews of the elector were Gumpertz (died 1672), Berend Wulff (1675), and Solomon Fränkel (1678). More influential than any of these was Jost Liebmann. Through his marriage with the widow of the above-named Israel Aaron, he succeeded to the latter’s position, and was highly esteemed by the elector. He had continual quarrels with the court Jew of the crown prince, Markus Magnus. After his death his influential position fell to his widow, the well-known Liebmannin, who was so well received by Frederick III. (from 1701 King Frederick I. of Prussia) that she could go unannounced into his cabinet.
There were court Jews at all the petty German courts; e.g., Zacharias Seligmann (1694) in the service of the Prince of Hesse-Homburg, and others in the service of the dukes of Mecklenburg. Others mentioned toward the end of the seventeenth century are: Bendix and Ruben Goldschmidt of Homburg; Michael Hinrichsen of Glückstadt, who soon associated himself with Moses Israel Fürst, and whose son, Reuben Hinrichsen, in 1750 had a fixed salary as court agent. About this time the court agent Wolf lived at the court of Frederick III. of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Disputes with the court Jews often led to protracted lawsuits.
The last actual court Jews were Israel Jacobson, court agent of Brunswick, and Wolf Breidenbach, factor to the Elector of Hesse, both of whom occupy honorable positions in the history of the Jews.