OVER 200,000 AMERICAN JEWS TRAINED AND ONLY 4,000 SERVE
According to the Department of Defense, only 4000 Jews serve in the American military. Over 200,000 American Jews have been trained at US expense by the IDF in Israel but only a handful defend Israel in the current wars in the military of the country of their birth, the United States of America. 40% of the world’s Jews live in Israel. 40% of the world’s Jews live in the United States with 2.2 million residing in New York City alone. If any nation has been the homeland of the Jews, it has been the United States.
It is a prerequisite for public service in the United States or command rank in our military to accept protection of Israel as equal to protection of the United States. This is as close to a loyalty oath as the United States has. American soldiers who swear “to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” also know they are saying “and the State of Israel” without a doubt. Why then, with American in a decade of wars clearly fought to defend Israeli interests if not their security, are American Jews so disinclined toward service to America?
The last war Jews participated in, as American soldiers in any real numbers, was Vietnam. 269 Jews died in Vietnam. Though this was less than one forth of other religious or ethnic groups, statistically, it is endlessly higher than today’s figures, bordering on “nil.” 20% of American troops, by Defense Department figures, are Hispanic, with the majority serving in combat related specialties. There are no “Hispanic related” or “Mexican security” issues in the current Middle East conflicts. What does this tell us?
Phil Shulman of the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles wrote, in 2003,
“Only some 3,000 out of 1.4 million active duty servicemen and women are Jewish, about two-tenths of one percent. When it comes to Marines, the numbers are even more startling. It’s one out of 1,000. One-tenth of one percent.”
Reasons can be many, as American Jews may be unlikely to accept stories of the 9/11 attack or war on terror as plausible. Still more Jews have complained about the military itself, saying it openly discriminates against Jews. Debra Nussbaum Cohen in The Jewish Daily writes:
Admiral Harold Robinson, a Reform rabbi and director of the Jewish Welfare Board’s Jewish Chaplains Council, “The military is like high school on steroids. Being Jewish doesn’t help you fit in…. Some kid from Alabama says, ‘Jesus loves you; you ought to come to chapel services with us.’ You’re living with 120 other people who know everything about you. Being Jewish can be one more source of pressure or conflict. It’s much better than it was 30 or 40 years ago, but we still have all kinds of incidents where young people act out.”
At the Air Force Academy in 2005, Jewish and Christian students said that evangelical Christian officers were aggressively proselytizing them. An academy graduate filed suit against the Air Force, but the suit was dismissed in 2007.
Rabbi Irving Elson, a Navy captain and chaplain, “Jews in the military are underserved, have largely been ignored by the American Jewish community, and these amazing young men and women need rabbis…of over 900 Navy chaplains, only 8 are Jewish.”
Thus, we are confronted with a conundrum. 85% of the members of congress have signed documents, not only openly supporting Israel, but the majority support an immediate attack on Iran including the use of nuclear weapons on populated areas based on intelligence information from Israel that has proven to be, not only inaccurate but totally falsified. A study of America’s “liberal press” shows, without question, control by the Israel lobby with majority direct ownership of all media holdings in the US in the hands of Israeli citizens or American Jews actively involved with pro-Israel organizations. It must be recognized, however, that a significant number of American Jews, none employed any longer by major media outlets, hold positions counter to those of FOX, CNN, WSJ, Washington Post, ABC, NBC and the dozens of other highly biased organizations.
With American Jews “less than patriotic” and Israel, spoken of as an American ally, technically a misnomer as there are no written agreements with Israel, has the “special relationship” with Israel always been for public consumption only, propaganda, manipulated press, pop culture mythology, all covering “business as usual?”
COMPULSORY MILITARY SERVICE FOR “TRAINED” AMERICAN JEWS?
A possible solution for the obvious inequities in Jewish participation as patriotic Americans would be compulsory service for all IDF trained men and women holding American passports or resident in the United States. The assumption could be made that, as the United States funded their military training, they are the defacto equivalent of National Guard and reserve troops and should be subject to call up. You can’t turn on a TV in America without seeing Jews prominently featured as American soldiers, something statistically inaccurate, in fact, simply propagandization. An accurate depiction of a typical battalion would include one Jew and 200 or more Hispanics. Admittedly, the chances of the Jew being a “stand up comedian” are better than average but the obvious misrepresentations made by the media are pure race prejudice. TV already has every police department in the country run by an African American female.
THE AMERICAN DREAM IS MOSTLY A JEWISH AMERICAN DREAM
Jews used to make up 3% of America’s population. They are now only 1.4% but control well over 40% of America’s wealth. It doesn’t take a genius or a “Smedley Butler” fan to figure out that the root cause of all war is economic gain and that American Jews have gained the most by America’s wars. With our ”volunteer army” increasingly becoming less “volunteer” and more “feudal” in nature with Americas burgeoning population of poor and unemployed, many of them from non-Jewish ethnic minorities becoming “over-represented” among those in combat, those who have benefited most from the American dream, America’s Jewish population, our wealthiest and most powerful sector, also have the most to be thankful for.
American Jews are also the only group with military training, claimed to be the highest quality in the world, who are opting not to serve America during wartime while family after family of poor Americans are being destroyed by endless combat deployments to keep Israeli interests secure.
REFORMING THE AMERICAN MILITARY SO JEWS CAN SERVE WITH RESPECT THEY DESERVE
America’s military claims to be “conservative” politically, especially the officer corps. I would go further and state that the officer corps of the American military is clearly right wing extremist. Though political conservatives outside the military are powerful advocates of Zionism and defenders of Israel, there is a nasty duplicity afoot. These same groups that, when they are looking for support from the Jewish controlled press, talk about their loyalty to Israel or their tolerance of Jews, in fact these same groups have been anti-Semites for decades. Anti-Semitism has always been at the root of the Republican party, the same party that, this week, offered a resolution in the House of Representatives, advocating an immediate invasion of Iran.
The officer corps in the American military, how do we describe them in the “post Rumsfeld/Cheney era? What would Admiral Hyman Rickover, father of the nuclear navy, say of them? I shudder to think.
This is insane.
We have two issues here. One obvious one, American Jews care less and less about the United States as time goes on and as Israel has become a safe haven, subject to no real threat from the Arab world. American Jews all know that the continual whining about the safety of Israel is to dupe Americans out of billions in aid, furnishing a socialist welfare state at American taxpayer expense for Jews in Israel. Each year, the Pentagon “stores” billions worth of advanced weapons in Israel, weapons Israel is allowed to sell. We unload them and they load them back up.
The ships seem to have no trouble finding their way to North Korea.
But there is a dark side, despite all the rhetoric about being pro-Israel, real anti-Semites are at the root of America’s right. The Tea Party, secretly financed under the guise of thinly veiled prejudice against African Americans and Hispanics, financed, publicized and guided by “game theory” political experts in the Israel lobby, is at the heart of America’s anti-Semitism. No Israeli is so stupid as to believe that an American “Christian Zionist” who supports Israel because of imagined biblical prophesy actually would live next door to a Jew.
The American military does have a strong representation of “Tea Party” patriots. Nobody can claim they don’t join or that they don’t fight. What they can’t claim is that they love Jews, not by a long shot.
CONSERVATIVE ANTI-SEMITISM IN THE AMERICAN MILITARY
In 2007, Jason Leopoldin broke the story of a 35 year old Rabbi, Canadian born, who “deserted” the US Army after being subjected to bizarre and almost ritualistic anti-Semitism at Fort Stewart, Georgia. Rabbi Goldman claims the army listed him as a deserter in retaliation for demanding prosecution of three Christian Evangelist Chaplains.
According to documents obtained by Truthout, an investigation by the Army Inspector General into Goldman’s claims of anti-Semitism shows that in May 2001, Captain Robert Nay, a Christian chaplain at the Fort Stewart Army base, hung Nazi uniforms and swastikas on the wall of the officers’ club at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Georgia, during a May 23, 2001 interfaith prayer breakfast Goldman was ordered to attend. In an interview, Goldman said seeing the Nazi uniforms did not entirely surprise him. A month earlier, Nay had informed Goldman that he thought it would be “funny” if he dressed up soldiers in the Nazi uniforms on Holocaust Memorial Day, a time when the world memorializes the six million Jews who were slaughtered by the Nazis during World War II.
When contacted for comment, Nay hung up the telephone. A public affairs official at Fort Stewart would not comment for this story, nor would he disclose his name.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation, headed by Mickey Weinstein, said this of the Goldman case:
Rabbi Goldman’s civil rights were perniciously raped in a literally mind-boggling, intentional manner. The Army retaliated against him for speaking out. The army refused to lift a finger to address Rabbi Goldman’s complaints despite documentary evidence that supports his claims. And now the Army is going to find itself in a lawsuit our organization will file on behalf of Rabbi Goldman for grossly violating his civil rights.”
In fact, rather than being an isolated incident, incidents like these are typical with chaplains at major military bases such as Fort Levenworth, Kansas, openly teaching anti-Semitic religious doctrine. Rabbi Goldstein was asked to submit to a polygraph examination. The results showed the Rabbi to be totally truthful yet the three “Evangelist” anti-Semites and hundreds more like them are still in control of the Chaplain Corps that ruled military life during the Bush administration.
SATANISTS AND PEDOPHILES, OFFSHOOTS OF THE ARMY’S “CHRISTIAN-NAZI” NEXUS
During the 1980s, at American military facilities such as Offutt Air Force Base, near Omaha, Nebraska, The Presidio (now closed) near San Francisco, Ft. Bragg, home of the JFK Special Warfare Center, North Carolina and Bolling Air Force Base, home of the Defense Intelligence College, near Washington DC, groups with ties to Satanism (Temple of Set), Evangelical Christianity and Nazi occult practices, groups also tied r schools of advanced psychological warfare and special operations were accused of child molestation, kidnapping and a bizarre pattern of ritual abuses.
During the February 5 hearing, Noreen Gosch stunned the court with sworn testimony linking U.S. Army Lt. Col. Michael Aquino (ret., Military Intelligence, U.S. Army, Special orces, Civil Affairs, and Defense Attaché, graduate of the Command and General Staff College, the National Defense University,the Defense Intelligence College, and the State Departments’ Foreign Service Institute)to the nationwide pedophile ring. Her son, Johnny, then 12 years old, was kidnapped off the streets of West Des Moines, Iowa on September 5, 1982, while he was doing his early-morning newspaper deliveries. “We have investigated, we have talked to so far 35 victims of this said organization that took my son and is responsible for what happened to Paul, and they can verify everything that has happened,” she told the court.
Then, the Aquino bombshell: “Well, then there was a man by the name of Michael Aquino. He was in the military. He had top Pentagon clearances. He was a pedophile. He was a Satanist… continued: “They used these kids to sexually compromise politicians or anyone else they wish to have control of.
ARE JEWS UNPATRIOTIC OR IS OUR MILITARY UNFIT FOR JEWS TO SERVE?
There is no question that Jews are choosing not to serve to protect the United States. There is also a serious question about the political alliance between Israel and the conservative movement in America responsible for anti-Semitism in the military. How do the people of Israel reconcile that their closest allies are also those who also admire Adolf Hitler and his teachings?
Could Israel be an entire nation suffering from “Stockhold syndrome,” a nation that has come to admire the policies and practices of those who were responsible for the holocaust?
As for American Jews and military service, it is difficult to reconcile sending America’s poor to fight wars in the Middle East when IDF trained Americans shirk military duty en masse. The only answer would be to require service, making IDF membership and US Army reserve membership one in the same. It is also clear that the US Army must deal with its failures to address the needs of Jewish soldiers, when and if this policy can be enacted.
Gordon Duff is a Marine Vietnam veteran. A 100% disabled vet. He has been a featured commentator on TV and radio including Al Jazeera and his articles have been carried by news services around the world. He has been a UN Diplomat, defense contractor and is a widely published expert on military and defense issues. This article first appeared in Veterans and Foreign Affairs Journal.
