Zionist Conspiracy

Collaborators in the War Against the Jews: Marc H. Ellis
By: Steven Plaut

http://frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=36028

Collaborators in the War Against the Jews: Marc H. Ellis
By: Steven Plaut
Monday, August 24, 2009

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This is the first in a series of articles about collaborators in the
Islamic war against the Jews.
Some of the individuals waging an all out war on American college campuses
against Israrel and the Jews are themselves Jewish. Some have called them
"non-Jewish" or "self-hating" Jews. What is undeniable is that in the
role they have chosen, these individuals are collaborating, often openly
and without apology, with groups such as Hamas and Hizbollah and states
such as Ahmadinejad's Iran that call for a new genocide. Over the next
few weeks, Frontpage will profile some of these Jewish collaborators in
the war against Israel and the Jews and show how they give and and comfort
to the Islamist enemy -- The Editors.

The campus war against Israel and the Jews is led by a group of
anti-Semites, many of them faculty members, who have made a career for
themselves by traveling from one university to another supporting Arab
terrorism. They invariably pretend that they are promoting peace. But in
the Orwellian bubble where they live, Arab aggression and terror become
self-defense and Israeli self-defense becomes aggression and terror.
Israeli democracy is apartheid, while Arab genocide is liberation.
One of the most bizarre aspects of this campus war against the Jews is how
common self-hating anti-Semitic Jews are in the ranks of the movement to
achieve the annihilation of Israel. For reasons that only a psychiatrist
could fully understand, these people use their birthright to give
authenticity to the campaign of delegitimizing and demonizing Israel.
Today the leading promoters of .divestment. and of boycotting Israel are
academic Jewish leftists, some of them from Israel itself. In a few
extreme cases, this detestation of Israel is combined with a fawning
courtship of Islamic terrorists, American and European Neo-Nazis, and even
Holocaust Deniers.

One of the most public of these Jewish collaborators in the Arab war
against Israel.s survival is Marc H. Ellis, a Jewish .professor of
theology. and director of the Center for American and Jewish Studies at
Baylor, a Baptist University in Waco, Texas. For most of the academic
world, especially the world of Jewish scholarship, Ellis is a bigot
residing in the lunatic fringe. But in the eyes in the eyes of Holocaust
Deniers and Arab terrorists, he is a distinguished theologian. The racist
Reverend Jeremiah Wright is a fan of Ellis. books and often recommends
them.

The theology that Ellis teaches is the theology of Jewish evil. Ellis is
essentially a Norman Finkelstein look alike. Unlike Finkelstein, who was
fired from DePaul University because his .scholarly. books were
Jew-baiting propaganda in disguise, Ellis has a job. But, in fact, there
are surprisingly few differences between the ranting anti-Semitism for
which Finkelstein was fired and the "scholarly work. for which Ellis has
been rewarded. Indeed, the two have a long history of collaboration. They
appear at one another's conferences and on one another's web sites,
standing together in a sort of anti Semitic mutual assistance pact.

Like Finkelstein, Ellis is honored and cited as a Jewish anti-Jewish and
anti-Israel authority who helps debunk the "myth" that there ever was a
Holocaust of Jews by neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers, notably on the web
site of recently deported Canadian Nazi Ernst Zundel, by the Neo-Nazi
"Institute for Historical Review" or

Ellis has hosted Finkelstein in Texas on numerous occasions, and the two
sit together on the boards of a number of pro-jihad anti-Israel propaganda
organizations such as the Deir Yassin Remembered Organization, which also
includes among its members such notables as Saudi-financed Paul Findley,
Swedish Neo-Nazi Israel Shamir, PLO spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi, and Israeli
convicted spy and traitor . the communist Mordecai Vanunu who recently
spoke at the York University anti-Semitic conference calling for Israel to
be exterminated.

Ellis has publicly endorsed not only Finkelstein's The Holocaust Industry,
but also Finkelstein's scurrilous attacks on Nobel Prize winning writer
and concentration camp survivor Elie Wiesel. Ellis and Finkelstein are
listed together in Gabriel Schoenfeld.s review of Holocaust
pseudo-scholarship in The Return of Anti-Semitism.

Ellis has been a full-time basher of Israel for decades. He holds a PhD
from Marquette University, a Jesuit institution in Milwaukee which has
never distinguished itself as a serious research center on Jewish thought.
His first position after graduation was at Maryknoll School of Theology, a
Catholic school in New York that it is evidently not accredited as a
research university, although it has had its fair share of "liberation
theologists. He moved to Baylor University in 1998 as a full professor
and now directs "Jewish Studies,. by himself, the sole faculty member at
the .Center of American and Jewish Studies.. The Center web site lists
endorsements by a "Christian feminist theologian," by Noam Chomsky and a
few other anti-Semites, but not by a single scholar of Judaism.

Ellis has a publication record that consists almost exclusively of
anti-Israel propaganda tracts. These all largely promote liberation
theology1 mixed with his thoughts about the Holocaust and Israel's endless
track record of "inhumane crimes..2 Most of these works are published
with "Fortress Press,. a non-academic church publisher associated with the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Ellis sits on the editorial board
of Tikkun, a far-leftist, anti-Israel, Sixties-fixated magazine, which
touts Marxism and New Age liberation theology dressed up in some nominally
Jewish emblems and slogans. Ellis is a regular on the Bash-Israel lecture
circuit, especially before Muslim audiences, and is a speaker in demand
for the "Palestine Solidarity. events that have become central part of the
anti Israel, anti Semitic displays on American college campuses.

The centerpiece of Ellis. crusade against Israeli survival is a warped
view of the Holocaust that rivals Norman Finkelstein.s. He has authored a
number of books that claim to be .Holocaust scholarship,. including Ending
Auschwitz: The Future of Jewish and Christian Life (Westminster John Knox
Press, 1994), O, Jerusalem: The Contested Future of the Jewish Covenant
(Fortress Press, 1999), and Israel and Palestine: Out of the Ashes (Pluto
Press, 2003), the latter two purporting to extract some "lessons of the
Holocaust" for use in resolving the Arab-Israeli war.

Ellis summarizes his ambivalence about the Holocaust in these words: "To
speak of the Holocaust without confessing our sins towards the Palestinian
people and seeking a real justice with them is a hypocrisy that debases us
as Jews. Surely, the ultimate trivialization is the use of memory to
oppress others and this, rather than the `industry', is responsible for
the difficulties facing those who seek to communicate the historic
suffering of European Jews."

A central assertion in Ellis. campaign against Israel is his insistence
that Jews have abandoned "Prophetic Ethics.. But there is little in his
books to indicate that he has the slightest idea of which ethics the
Prophets of the Bible really promoted, nor even that he has ever bothered
to read those books of the Bible. He evidently is willing to take Tikkun
editor Michael Lerner's word on what they contain.3

Ellis' idea of defending the ethics of the Hebrew Prophets is to write
Israel-bashing pieces for the same al-Ahram Egyptian daily that regularly
prints blood libels about Jews and cites the "Protocols of the Elders of
Zion" as an authoritative source.4 Industriously, if somewhat
mysteriously, Ellis finds sources in the Books of the Prophets for the
Palestinian "Right of Return,. which he so passionately endorses,5
although (or perhaps because) it means an end Jewish national existence.
Ellis thinks that Jews should turn their High Holidays into days of
mourning for their "crimes" against "Palestinians."6

One of Ellis.s recent books is called Judaism does not Equal Israel, and
he has touted it in numerous talks on and off the Baylor campus. Its
theme is that Israel is not just an evil threat to the region but to
Judaism itself. It features a foreword praising Ellis. negative take on
Judaism written by fellow Israel-basher Archbishop Desmond Tutu. (The
fact that Ellis could not find a Jewish theologian to praise his .take. on
Judaism is significant.)

Another work in which he reiterates his insistence that the Holocaust
needs to be converted into a weapon against Israel's survival is Israel
and Palestine: Out of the Ashes (Pluto Press, 2003.) The first hint one
has of the real orientation of this atrocious little book, which purports
to be a theological re-examination of what it means to be Jewish after the
Holocaust, is that the only people Ellis and his publisher could find to
endorse the book on the jacket are Edward Said, Noam Chomsky, and others
favoring Palestinian terrorism. Pro-terror and Islamist web sites have
given the book rave reviews. So has the PLO's web site. The leftist
publication The Nation recently praised the book's call for Israel to be
eliminated, although expressing dislike for the fact that Ellis thinks
religion still has some positive roles to play in the 21st century.

The only thing of value that Ellis thinks Jews should derive from their
experiences during the Holocaust is a duty to unambiguously denounce
Israel and to support the demands and agenda of the Palestinian
terrorists. He denounces all Jewish denominations and all rabbinic
institutions for their failures to endorse Palestinian violence
unreservedly. He is as hostile to the Jews of America as he is to those
of Israel: "We as Jews come after the Holocaust, but we also come after
the illusory promises of Israel and America. And we cannot find our way
alone, only with others who realize that the promises they have been
handed are also illusory."

Ellis. concept of Israel is of a bunch of "bullies" riding about in
helicopters and firing senselessly at poor innocent Palestinian civilians
for absolutely no reason at all (an image repeated ad nauseum in many of
Ellis. screeds). Suicide bombers blowing up Israeli buses and other
perpetrators of mass atrocities against Jews do not interest him. Ellis'
Israel is a belligerent selfish entity, mistreating and enslaving (yes, he
uses that term) the Palestinians, as part of some sinister grand design of
the settlers in the "Palestinian" territories.

Ellis pretends never to have heard of the Oslo "peace process" and writes
about Israeli "conquest" and "occupation" of the Palestinians as being
"complete," this long after Israel turned almost all of these unfortunates
to the Hamas. and the PLO's tender rule.

The theme of Israel and Palestine: Out of the Ashes is the same that Ellis
preaches nonstop on the lecture circuit. He asserts that the Jews have
utilized the Holocaust as a gimmick to grasp power, steal property, and
oppress the poor Arabs. Further, he asserts that Israel's original sin was
to utilize the Holocaust as an excuse to occupy "Palestinian" land. The
only "massacres" of any consequence that have occurred in the long Mideast
struggle, in his view, are Jenin and Deir Yassin (neither of which was in
fact a massacre.) What the Palestinians suffered in these ambiguous
encounters was, he says, the moral equivalents of the Holocaust of the
Jews. But in the 2002 Jenin battle, less than twenty civilians died in
the midst of a military operation by Israel against terrorists hiding in
the town. And Deir Yassin was the scene of a 1948 battle in which some 100
civilians were killed, in an action immediately condemned by the
leadership of the Haganah, the Jewish community.s main paramilitary force,
and by the area.s two chief rabbis. To put these events in the scale of
atrocity with the Holocaust is simply obscene.

Ellis is openly contemptuous of any talk about Jews being in need of any
national empowerment. Such things constitute "Constantinian Judaism,"7 to
use Ellis' favorite nonsense term, a malapropism picked up - one suspects
- after spending too much time misrepresenting Judaism at Christian
theological institutions. What he means by this term is the conscripting
of religion to serve the agenda of the militarist state. (Ellis uses it
to describe Jews who support either Israel OR the United States - and of
course those evil malicious Jewish "settlers..) Jews can only fulfill
their proper ethical role in history, which - Ellis is persuaded - is to
promote socialism and leftist fads, if they are stateless and suffering.

Ellis never finds time in all his discussions of the theological
implications of the Holocaust to consider the mass murder of Jewish
children by his beloved Palestinians. Uniformed Jewish youths certainly
have no right to ride around in helicopters to prevent such things. Nor is
he willing to acknowledge that any "mistreatment" of Palestinians, such as
the assassination of some of their leading terrorists, might have anything
at all to do with the atrocities committed by Palestinians against
countless Israeli Anne Franks. In a book supposedly about the lessons of
the Holocaust for the Jews, there is not a single word about the Nazi-like
demonization of Jews by the PLO and its affiliates, nor about the daily
Islamofascist calls for genocide against Jews.

Ellis even rejects the political positions of Israel's Far Left as
insensitive, brutal, and insufficiently "progressive.. He is a passionate
supporter of the "One-State Solution," in which Israel will simply be
eliminated as a Jewish state and will be enfolded within a larger
Palestinian-dominated state that stretches from the Mediterranean Sea to
the Jordan River. (This is also known as the .Rwanda Solution. because of
the atrocity that would surely follow its implementation.) He preaches it
at conference after conference, insisting that such a fate is the ultimate
realization of the Jewish mission and the only permissible lesson that
Jews may learn from the Holocaust.

The main theological lesson that Marc H. Ellis draws from the Holocaust
and preaches wherever he goes is that Jews must stop trying to defend
themselves against violent anti-Semites and that instead "progressive
Jews" such as himself should see to it that Israel is destroyed. The only
real lesson that Ellis wishes the world to learn from the Holocaust is
that Israelis are now behaving like the Nazis who murdered six million of
their forbears and that Jews who assist the Palestinian violence in
achieving its aims are ethically equivalent to the .good Germans. who
rescued Jews in World War II from the Gestapo.