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To quote Eric Hoffer

Submitted by Roanman on Tue, 06/15/2010 - 06:37

 

I had forgotten about Eric Hoffer.

Shame on me.

I first read Eric Hoffer because a girl I wanted to do, wanted me to (read the book, not necessarily the other thing).

I was 19 ... shut up!

As an aside, to this day, some of the stuff I do for the Little Wiffer, I do for exactly the same reason.

Anyway .....,

Eric Hoffer to my way of thinking, was arguably one of the greatest essayists of the 20th Century, if not the entire history of American thought.

The self educated longshoreman, published his first book "The True Believer" in 1951, a book that is almost universally considered to be a classic in the study of mass movements and fanaticism.

 He was awarded the Presidential Medal Of Freedom for Literature in 1981.

He published many of his 10 books and hundreds of newspaper columns while keeping his day job as a longshoreman at the Port of San Francisco.

He finally retired from the docks in the middle 60's at the age of 65.

This excerpt from an LA Times column he wrote after that retirement published May 26, 1968

 

Israel's Peculiar Position 

The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews.
 
Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people and there is no refugee problem.
 
Russian did it, Poland and Czechoslovakia did it, Turkey threw out a million Greeks, and Algeria a million Frenchman.
 
Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese-and no one says a word about refugees.
 
But in the case of Israel the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees.
 
Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab.
 
Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis.
 
Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms.
 
But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace.
 
Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world.
 
Other nations when they are defeated survive and recover but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed.
 
Had Nasser triumphed last June he would have wiped Israel off the map, and no one would have lifted a finger to save the Jews.
 
No commitment to the Jews by any government, including our own, is worth the paper it is written on.
 
There is a cry of outrage all over the world when people die in Vietnam or when two Negroes are executed in Rhodesia.
 
But when Hitler slaughtered Jews no one remonstrated with him.
 
The Swedes, who are ready to break of diplomatic relations with America because of what we do in Vietnam, did not let out a peep when Hitler was slaughtering Jews.
 
They sent Hitler choice iron ore, and ball bearings, and serviced his troop trains to Norway.
 
The Jews are alone in the world.
 
If Israel survives, it will be solely because of Jewish efforts. And Jewish resources.
 
Yet at this moment Israel is our only reliable and unconditional ally.
 
We can rely more on Israel than Israel can rely on us.
 
And one has only to imagine what would have happened last summer had the Arabs and their Russian backers won the war to realize how vital the survival of Israel is to America and the West in general.
 
I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us.
 
Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us.
 
 
Thanks again to David Michaels for sending this one through.