Jewish superiority

Jews are good at lots of things. But I don't know if there is any competition for the self-hatred prize. Jewish self-hatred is unique.

A stunning example:

Israeli sociologist condemns Israeli soldiers for NOT raping Palestinian women during battles. A sign that the Israelis are so racist that they think Palestinian women are not good enough to rape...

No, I am not kidding.

HT to Pajamas Media.

On the other hand.

I am interested in how groups survive and how they dissolve or are conquered or replaced.

Part of what has kept Jews a surviving and separate group is their own internal religious laws and the hatred of their neighbors. Halakha and anti-Semitism. In a place like America, most Jews gave up observance, and the benevolent attitudes of this country have produced a massive amount of intermarriage with Gentiles and consequent weakening of Jewish identity.

I watched a documentary called A Life Apart, about Hasidic Jews in America. I used to live in Brooklyn, right on the line between a Puerto Rican and Hasidic neighborhood, so a lot of the images were familiar. I thought the documentary was pretty respectful of the Hasidim, but a few contrary voices were included, of course. What struck me was that the items that outsiders found unappealing were probably crucial to the continuance and cohesion of this religious group: an unapologetic sense of specialness and superiority. It's not fun to be on the receiving end of this kind of smug attitude*, but that's too bad, I suppose. A small value compared to the continuance of a people who were almost wiped out the last century.

Some folks wanted the Hasids to get off their high horse and mix with everyone else. Well, what appears to be egalitarianism (and is) is also a crypto-superiority, the way in which general culture asserts its own specialness precisely by denying it.

One of my big and sad impressions about the West is that we have lost our instinct, our unapologetic sense of our right to be who we are. We do not assert ourselves without explanation. This indicates a deeper loss of will and self-regard. It will be an irony of history that a culture which became obsessed with teaching its children individual self-esteem lost all sense of value as a group.

What groups in history have long survived and thrived without the assumption that they are special and superior?

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*Mostly pro-Jew that I am, I would still say that Jews have to realize that this necessarily either creates or increases dislike of them by non-Jews. It seems an inescapeable problem: give up your sense of chosenness and you disappear; keep it, and you'll be disliked.