Bill Gladstone: Jewish hate literature

Bill Gladstone: Jewish hate literature

With the anti-Ukrainian tradition being reinforced in formal rituals every Saturday, and then given a three-week booster every summer, it is little wonder that the first impulse that some Jews experience upon talking to a Ukrainian is to flagellate the Ukrainian for the imagined sins of Bohdan Khmelnytsky.

Why not suppress Jewish hate literature as well? Frequent calls are heard, appearing to come predominantly from Jewish sources, advocating the suppression of hate literature, particularly on the Internet. However, these calls never acknowledge the existence of Jewish hate literature, and thus never include Jewish hate literature as falling into the category of literature needing to be suppressed. And yet, Jewish hate literature does exist, and in fact rather than being rare, showers down upon the heads of its victims, particularly upon Ukrainian heads, and may even be unequalled in volume to the hate literature of any other group in Western society.

A two-part definition of hate literature. For a piece of literature to be categorized as hate literature, it must (1) devalue some group, and it must (2) deceive.

Devaluation is a better criterion than emotion. Whether a piece of literature actually elicits the emotion of hate should play a secondary role in the definition of hate literature. Consider these five examples:

(1) Perceived arrogance may elicit irritation and not hate. Readers of a piece of literature may come away erroneously thinking that members of the target group are arrogant and obnoxious. If it were true that the members of the target group were on the average arrogant and obnoxious, then the literature would no more than express a sociological fact; if knowingly false, then the literature would be hate literature even if the emotion elicited toward the target group tended to be irritation rather than hate.

(2) Perceived lack of intelligence may elicit pity and not hate. Readers of a piece of literature may come away erroneously thinking that the members of the target group are unintelligent. If it were true that the members of the target group were on the average unintelligent, then the literature would no more than express a sociological fact; if knowingly false, then the literature would be hate literature even if the emotion elicited toward the target group tended to be pity rather than hate.

(3) Perceived sadism may elicit fear and not hate. Readers of a piece of literature may come away erroneously thinking that the members of the target group are violent and sadistic. If this were true, then it would be no more than a sociological fact; if knowingly false, then it would be hate even if the emotion elicited toward the target group tended to be fear rather than hate.

(4) Perceived ridiculousness may elicit ridicule and not hate. Readers of a piece of literature may come away laughing at the target group. If the laughter was elicited by a knowingly false characteristic of the group, then the literature would be hate even if the emotion elicited toward the target group tended to be ridicule rather than hate.

(5) Perceived virtue or accomplishment may elicit hate and not admiration. Conversely, even when a target group is not being devalued or denigrated or deprecated � even when it is being appreciated and praised � some people will still respond with the emotion of hatred toward that target group. This presents us with yet another case demonstrating the inadvisability of basing a definition of hate literature upon the emotions elicited.

The labelling of emotions is subjective. When we learn the names of colors, others around us are able to correct us when we describe any color incorrectly because they can see that color along with us, but when we learn the names of emotions, others around us cannot tell us that we are describing any emotion incorrectly because they can't feel our emotion along with us. For that reason, the verbal labels we attach to colors tend to be objective, while the labels we attach to our emotions are highly idiosyncratic, and so the question of whether we are feeling hate or not is not answerable with the same dependability as the question of whether we are seeing blue or not.

Emotions are volatile. An object that is blue can be depended upon to stay blue, and so can be said to have the characteristic of being blue. But what about a piece of literature? Does the ability to elicit the emotion of hate attach to it with the same permanency? The answer must be no. Not only will there be disagreement from one person to another as to whether a piece of literature elicits the emotion of hate, but the same person will differ in his emotional reaction from one reading of that piece of literature to the next. Perhaps because of the reader's mood, or the aspect of the literature that captures his attention upon a particular reading, he may be led to feel hatred toward the target group upon one reading, impatience upon a second reading, and pity upon a third reading.

For reasons such as the above, elicited emotions should play only a secondary role in the definition of hate literature. What is essential is the devaluation of the target group no matter what emotion is incidentally elicited alongside that devaluation. The essential quality is devaluation, and it is possible for a piece of literature to produce devaluation while eliciting a wide range of emotions, and even while eliciting no emotion at all.

And of course, for a piece of literature to be categorized as hate, it must also deceive. In the absence of deception � if all that is being said is the truth � then any negative evaluation or emotion that is incited should be designated as antipathy or revulsion or righteous indignation, but not hate. Hate � for purposes of defining hate literature � is devaluation (which may or may not be accompanied by antipathy or revulsion or indignation) that is based on misconception or misinformation, or � to not mince words � that is based on lies. The second part of the definition is needed in order to protect the telling of truth, which inevitably shifts attitudes either in the positive direction or the negative toward some group, and so which might be accused of inciting hatred, and might be targeted for suppression, by any group which is the object of a negative shift.

Jewish hate literature. According to the above definition, the Gladstone article reproduced at the bottom of the present page does qualify as Jewish hate literature:

The Gladstone article is Jewish. I take the article to be Jewish in origin, because it appears in the periodical, The Wanderer: Magazine of Jewish Heritage & Travel.

The Gladstone article does encourage a negative evaluation. The Gladstone article does invite a negative view of Ukrainians (and incidentally does incite such negative emotions as fear and contempt and hate). The article claims that Ukrainians are virulently anti-Semitic, that they were the perpetrators of the first anti-Jewish Holocaust, that they are stupid and sadistically cruel, and that the Khmelnytsky rebellion of 1648 resembles, and set a precedent for and thus even helped set into motion, the Jewish Holocaust of WW II.

The Gladstone article does deceive. And the Gladstone article does contain egregious untruths, the chief of which are the following:

(1) The Gladstone article posits mental illness as the cause of the Khmelnytsky rebellion. Gladstone posits that the cause of the Khmelnytsky rebellion is anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is a variety of mental illness. Therefore, according to Gladstone, the Khmelnytsky rebellion was caused by mental illness suffered by the Ukrainian Cossacks.

However, this makes as much sense as saying that the Spartacus rebellion of gladiators against the Romans was caused by a mental illness suffered by the gladiators. Or it makes as much sense as saying that the Nat Turner rebellion of black slaves against their white masters was caused by a mental illness suffered by the black slaves. When sufficient causes of a rebellion are observed, and when no objective indication of mental illness is observed, it does not make sense to ignore the observed causes and restrict attention to imaginary causes.

(2) The Gladstone article ignores Polish-Jewish oppression as the cause of the Khmelnytsky rebellion. The degree of oppression that was the fundamental cause of the uprising is captured in the statement � well worth memorizing and reciting to others � "utter serfdom, hardly distinguishable from outright slavery and certainly the worst in Europe":

[There was a] debasement in the position of the Polish peasants (who had been free in the early Middle Ages) to the point of utter serfdom, hardly distinguishable from outright slavery and certainly the worst in Europe. ... The situation in the "eastern" lands of Poland (Byelorussia and the Ukraine) ... was worst of all.

Israel Shahak, Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years, Pluto Press, London and Boulder Colorado, 1994, p. 61.

Within this system, Jews were the immediate instruments of oppression, holding life-and-death powers over Ukrainians:

[L]easeholding was frequently linked with the exercise of certain legal powers: the right to adjudicate the people of a given estate or town and to pass even a death sentence was sometimes transferred from the owner to the leaseholder. This served to identify the Jew with the Polish landlord whom he represented.

Bernard D. Weinryb, The Hebrew Chronicles on Bohdan Khmel'nyts'kyi and the Cossack-Polish War, Journal of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1(2) June 1977, pp. 158-159.

Gladstone, however, makes no mention of "oppression" as such, but rather makes mention once only of "perceived oppression," thus dismissing oppression as a cause; thus conveying that the oppression existed not in reality, but only in the minds of the Cossacks, which paints quite a different picture from Israel Shahak's contrasting statement that the oppression was "utter serfdom, hardly distinguishable from outright slavery and certainly the worst in Europe".

(3) The Gladstone article misrepresents Hanover. If Gladstone had been writing a faithful summary of Hanover and not hate literature, he would have recounted that even Hanover � biased against Ukrainians though he was � acknowledged that the Khmelnytsky rebellion was motivated by Polish-Jewish oppression:

Hanover was the only Hebrew chronicler to analyze the reasons for the Ukrainian Cossack revolt. He believed that these were two: the oppression of the Greek Orthodox Ukrainians, and the role of Jews as tax-farmers and estate managers. The latter, he claimed, "ruled in every part of Rusia [the Ukraine], a condition which aroused the jealousy of the peasants and resulted in the massacres." He believed that religious oppression was responsible for the impoverishment of the masses: "they were looked upon as lowly and inferior beings and became the slaves and handmaids of the Polish people and the Jews." Hanover wrote that, except for the Cossacks, "the Ukrainians were a wretched and enslaved lot, servants of the dukes and the nobles. The nobles levied heavy taxes upon them and some even resorted to cruelty and torture." His assessment of the causes for the Cossack uprising is, of course, very similar to what others were saying, including the Ukrainians.

Bernard D. Weinryb, The Hebrew Chronicles on Bohdan Khmel'nyts'kyi and the Cossack-Polish War, Journal of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1(2) June 1977, pp. 170-171.

(4) The Gladstone article suggests that the Khmelnytsky rebellion was genocidal in intent, and was thus an early Holocaust. However, the Khmelnytsky rebellion was motivated by a desire to overthrow Polish oppression which was being implemented locally by Jews. Thus, Jews were targeted incidentally as the instruments of Polish oppression. In addition, Jews traded with the Khmelnytsky rebels, worked for them, and even enrolled as Cossacks, as has been documented by historian Bernard Weinryb � all of which is incompatible with the notion that the Khmelnytsky rebellion was a genocidal attack upon Jews. The Khmelnytsky rebellion was no more a genocidal attack upon Jews than the Spartacus rebellion was a genocidal attack upon Romans, or than the Nat Turner rebellion was a genocidal attack upon whites. In the words of Israeli writer Israel Shahak, Bill Gladstone appears to belong to those Jewish circles who view an "enslaved peasant" is a "racist monster", so long as "Jews profited from his state of slavery and exploitation":

What is the position of true progressives � and, by now, of most ordinary decent educated people be they Russian, German or French � on these rebellions? Do decent English historians, even when noting the massacres of Englishmen by rebellious Irish peasants rising against their enslavement, condemn the latter as 'anti-English racists'? What is the attitude of progressive French historians towards the great slave revolution in Santo Domingo, where many French women and children were butchered? To ask the question is to answer it. But to ask a similar question of many 'progressive' or even 'socialist' Jewish circles is to receive a very different answer; here an enslaved peasant is transformed into a racist monster, if Jews profited from his state of slavery and exploitation.

Israel Shahak, Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years, Pluto Press, London and Boulder Colorado, 1994, p. 73.

(5) The Gladstone article portrays Khmelnytsky as the first Hitler. Although economic and political and religious oppression was the underlying cause of the Khmelnytsky rebellion, among the immediate causes were injustices inflicted upon Khmelnytsky himself � his estate had been raided, plundered, and confiscated by a Polish nobleman, who managed in the process to also kill Khmelnytsky's son and abduct his betrothed. Khmelnytsky patiently tried to win redress through legal channels, and meeting with no success, only then turned to rebellion. This does not appear to parallel Hitler's story at all, and Gladstone fails to specify what similarities he sees between Khmelnytsky's biography and Hitler's. More appropriate would have been to dub Khmelnytsky the Second Spartacus, or the First Nat Turner. To imply that Khmelnytsky was the First Hitler does not serve truth; it serves only to spread hatred.

Indeed, this is the most offensive, and most unjustified aspect of the Gladstone hate piece � the identification of the Khmelnytsky rebellion as resembling the Jewish Holocaust, an identification which starts with Gladstone's title, The Holocaust of 1648, continues through vague comparisons to the Nazis, and is underscored in the final words of the article:

And some historians assert that Yeven Metzulah has acquired a new relevance as a result of the Shoah. "The brutality of Chmielnicki made the work of the Nazis that much easier," Helmreich writes. "As we read Hanover's description of the atrocities committed by Chmielnicki and his hordes, it becomes clear that Hitler's torture chambers were only technological refinement � the precedent had already been set."

(6) The Gladstone article exaggerates the number of Jewish fatalities at least tenfold. Gladstone states that "By conservative estimates, at least 100,000 Jews were slaughtered; according to Hanover, Jewish losses were much higher." This, however, is a tenfold exaggeration, if not more. Had Gladstone been writing a truthful article and not a piece of hate literature, he would have mentioned that:

Hanover, apparently the most well-informed of the six chroniclers, knew no mathematics. Hence, it is not surprising that in referring to groups of people the chroniclers used biblical metaphors such as "thousands and tens of thousands" or "as many as the grains of sand on the seashore," and that the figures they do mention are often meaningless.

Bernard D. Weinryb, The Hebrew Chronicles on Bohdan Khmel'nyts'kyi and the Cossack-Polish War, Journal of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1(2) June 1977, pp. 165-166.

Weinryb gives several examples supporting the conclusion that Hanover's figures are not to be trusted, and gives the following illustration of Hanover's ignorance of arithmetic:

It seems that Hanover was generally inexperienced in handling large numbers: for him 18 times 100,000 became 18,000,000, rather than 1,800,000.

Bernard D. Weinryb, The Hebrew Chronicles on Bohdan Khmel'nyts'kyi and the Cossack-Polish War, Journal of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1(2) June 1977, p. 175.

Historian Yaroslaw Pelenski proposes that the number of Jewish fatalities is in the vicinity of one-tenth that offered by Gladstone: "an approximate minimum/maximum figure of 7,000 to 13,000 and a median figure of 10,000 Jews killed in the Khmelnytsky revolution."

In whose interests is Bill Gladstone working when he multiplies the number of Jewish fatalities by ten? In his own, and only his own, in that hyperbolizing Jewish casualties increases the sales of his magazine. And what about the interests of the Jews? By writing his article, Gladstone invites the conclusion that Jews are a people with so little regard for truth that they multiply their casualties tenfold. The gain to Gladstone is that he sells a few more copies of The Wanderer, and so makes a few dollars. The loss to Jews is that they suffer a decline in credibility. Putting the two together, we might say that for the pay of a few dollars, Gladstone is willing to lower Jewish credibility.

(7) Nathan Hanover was an early Stephen King. Nathan Hanover was not a dispassionate historian writing for a peer-review journal. He was an impecunious refugee desperate to make a buck.

Hanover's psychological and socioeconomic situation at the time he wrote and published the booklet may be gauged by the end of his introduction. Although he had found some temporary shelter in a private "house of study," he may have been needy, for he advertises his "commodity" and asks the public to purchase his work. He writes: "I dealt at length on the causes which led to this catastrophe, when the Ukrainians revolted against Poland and united with Tatars, although the two have always been enemies. I recorded all the major and minor encounters ... also the days on which those cruelties occurred, so that everyone might be able to calculate the day on which his kin died and observe the memorial properly... I have written this in a lucid and intelligible style and printed it on smooth and clear paper. Therefore buy ye this book at once, do not spare your money so that I may be enabled to publish [another book]" (Hanover, Hebrew, pp. 16-17; English, p. 25).

Bernard D. Weinryb, The Hebrew Chronicles on Bohdan Khmel'nyts'kyi and the Cossack-Polish War, Journal of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1(2) June 1977, p. 166.

Nathan Hanover realized then what Stephen King realizes today � that the more sensational and lurid his writing, the more it sells. Hanover's writing should be re-categorized from history to historical fiction. Gladstone misrepresents Hanover as a methodical historian instead of the hysterical polemicist that he truly was.

(8) Gladstone identifies the Cossacks as a collection of Dr. Mengeles. Of course no inculcation of hatred toward Ukrainians is complete without some graphic reference to sadistic tortures, and Gladstone's magazine does make reference to

atrocities that were on a par with almost anything the Nazis would later devise. The Cossacks indulged in the most bestial forms of sadism and, as if taking a page from Mengele, performed crude and tortuous "medical experiments" on pregnant women and others. "There was no cruel device of murder in the whole world that was not perpetrated by the enemies," Hanover writes.

In the above we see that Bill Gladstone does more than allude to tortures, he accuses the Khmelnytsky Cossacks of "medical experiments" which resembled those of Dr. Joseph Mengele during the Holocaust. Here indeed is a comparison which is as invidious as it is gratuitous. This is the first that I have heard that the Cossacks had any counterpart of Dr. Joseph Mengele, or that any of them had medical training, or that any of them were desirous of conducting medical research upon Jews or upon anyone else, or that they found time in the midst of their rebellion to pause to conduct medical experiments.

(9) The warfare was two-way. Conveniently, Gladstone does not mention that the warfare was two-way, and that the atrocities committed against the Ukrainians were � and here we come to three words by Israel Shahak that should also be committed to memory � "even more horrible":

This typical peasant uprising against extreme oppression, an uprising accompanied not only by massacres committed by the rebels but also by even more horrible atrocities and "counter-terror" of the Polish magnates' private armies, has remained emblazoned in the consciousness of east-European Jews to this very day � not, however, as a peasant uprising, a revolt of the oppressed, of the real wretched of the earth, nor even as a vengeance visited upon all the servants of the Polish nobility, but as an act of gratuitous antisemitism directed against Jews as such. In fact, the voting of the Ukrainian delegation at the UN and, more generally, Soviet policies on the Middle East, are often "explained" in the Israeli press as "a heritage of Chmielnicki" or of his "descendants."

Israel Shahak, Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years, Pluto Press, London and Boulder Colorado, 1994, pp. 64-65, emphasis added.

It follows, therefore, that if Gladstone were depicting Cossack atrocities fairly, then he should have placed them side by side with the "even more horrible" atrocities committed by the Polish-Jewish side. Gladstone promotes the image of Ukrainians attacking unarmed civilians unable to fight back. The reality is that a state of war existed between two parties, and the Polish-Jewish ruling class was supported by the awesome military might of the Polish kingdom.

(10) The bulletproof maiden. Gladstone repeats Hanover's story of the beautiful Jewish maiden from a wealthy family who is forced to marry a Cossack, but prior to consummation commits suicide by telling him that she possesses a magic such that no weapon can harm her, and adding, "If you do not believe me, just test me." The Cossack, "in his simplicity," and apparently wanting to put her claim to an empirical test, shoots her, one supposes in the chest, and she dies. Thus, tell us both Hanover and Gladstone, the Ukrainian Cossack was violent beyond reason and stupid to the point of retardation, and the Jewish maiden was virtuous and true to her people to the point of self-sacrifice. We're good, they're bad. We're smart, they're stupid. We're peace-loving, they're violent. We're ravaged, they ravage. End of story.

Hatred creates gullibility spanning three centuries. For Nathan Hanover to have made up this silly story and published it testifies to the gullibility of his readership in the 1600s, and for Bill Gladstone to have repeated it testifies to the gullibility of his readership in the 1900s. The readership, in both cases, appears so committed to hatred that they accept any story which rationalizes their existing hatred, and which intensifies it, no matter how fantastic that story is. They never pause to consider the many incongruities which demonstrate that the story is myth.

Ukrainian Cossacks in 1648 were not unlike us. A less Peter-Panish view is to assume that, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, people are remarkably similar the world over, and over the course of time as well, such that even Ukrainians, and even three centuries ago, do not differ appreciably from the people around us that we are familiar with today. And so today, if a US Marine were to be told by any maiden that she was magic and that no weapon could harm her � he would disbelieve the maiden, and would not test her claim by firing at her chest. In the same way, neither would a Ukrainian Cossack in 1648. The Cossack would have been a cavalryman who knew his weapons, who was familiar with the damage they inflicted, who had seen no miracles in his time, and so did not readily believe that the laws of physics were casually suspended. During the course of his life having seen no other magic people who were impervious to being wounded, he would tend to doubt the claim that he was seeing one now. In the unlikely eventuality that he did want to put the maiden's claim to a test, he would have preferred a test that protected the value of his asset � the asset being the beautiful maiden herself � and so would have chosen a test that caused less damage, as for example pricking her shoulder with a dagger instead of sending a bullet into her chest.

The Cossack believing the maiden's claim would necessitate his ignoring countless incongruities. Upon first hearing the maiden's claim, the Cossack would have instantly sensed that if such a magic maiden existed, then she would have been of such immense fame that the whole world would have heard of her. He would have instantly sensed that if such a magic maiden existed, then she would have been of such immense value that the Jews would never have exposed her to the possibility of capture. He would have instantly sensed that if such a magic maiden existed, then he would have seen evidence of this earlier, particularly during the violence surrounding her capture. He would have instantly sensed that if such a magic maiden existed, then there was some chance that she had more than that one magic power, and so should have been able to use these several powers to extricate herself from her captivity. He would have instantly sensed that even if this maiden did have any magic power, she nevertheless had no apparent motive to disclose this to him as she was doing, and no apparent motive to goad him into firing at her as she was doing. He would have instantly sensed that if the Jews had learned how to produce one individual magically impervious to injury, they would have learned to produce a whole army magically impervious to injury, and therefore should have been invincible in battle.

Who witnessed this event? Hanover's recounting of the event depicts a Cossack alone with the Jewish maiden. But if the maiden is killed during the incident, then the Cossack would have been the only witness to the event, and his description of it would not have been the description that we hear from Hanover, which was highly sympathetic toward the Jewish maiden and highly unsympathetic toward the Cossack. And if witnesses had been present, then they would have urged the Cossack to not go ahead with his empirical test of the maiden's claim.

Why did the Jewish maiden marry the loathsome Cossack in the first place? If I am not mistaken, a Christian wedding requires some expression of assent from both bride and groom. If this was true in Ukraine around 1648, then the Jewish maiden had the opportunity to refuse to marry the Cossack � and yet she did marry him, from which I infer that she must have publicly voiced her assent. But why would she have done so? If she prefers death to dishonor, then why not refuse cooperation with dishonor at the outset? In undergoing a Christian marriage, she was already betraying her faith. The worst that her refusal to marry would have achieved might have been to get her killed on the spot (this � for the sake of argument � going along with the picture of Ukrainian Cossacks as bestial sub-humans), but getting herself killed seemed to be what the maiden preferred anyway. Or maybe instead of being killed for her refusal to marry, she might have been held captive, which would not have been much different from marrying the Cossack. In fact, being held captive was better than being dead because as a captive, there is always some chance of escape or rescue or redemption.

Why didn't the clever Jewish maiden use the Cossack's stupidity to save her life? We are painted a picture of a clever Jewish maiden who finds herself recently married to a Cossack whose evident simple-mindedness borders on severe mental retardation. She comes up with a scheme of avoiding violation by getting herself killed. But if the Cossack was as credulous as she could see that he was, then the Jewish maiden could have told him some other story which would have allowed her to escape, or would have at least delayed the feared consummation. For example, she could have told the Cossack that she was magic in such a way that unless he delayed consummation for one week, his penis would wither up and fall off. If he was capable of believing the first story, he would have been capable of believing this one. If the Jewish maiden elaborated her story convincingly, and the Cossack was as stupid as we are told that he was, she might have won for herself not just a week's respite, but a month's, during which time she would have further opportunity to practice on the Cossack's credulity to her further advantage.

And in order to save herself, the Jewish maiden need not have invented any fantastic story, and need not have depended upon marrying a Cossack simple-minded enough to believe her story � it might have been enough for her to have pointed out to the Cossacks her high value if held for ransom, according to the Tatar tradition, and to have convinced them further that her value would collapse if she were deprived of her virginity.

Recounting the bulletproof maiden story today is administering a test of intelligence. The story of the Cossack killing the Jewish maiden could well be an item from an intelligence test, with those unable to see its incongruities scoring low. For children, the Stanford-Binet IQ test shows a picture of a man whose shadow stretches toward the setting sun. What's wrong with this picture? The test shows another picture of a settler about to be brained by an Indian with a raised tomahawk, but who is aiming his rifle right past this Indian at a distant Indian. What's wrong with this picture? The children with the higher intelligence are able to identify the incongruities. The children with the lower intelligence can't see anything wrong. In the same way, readers with higher intelligence are able to identify the incongruities of the bulletproof maiden story. Those who accept the story either can't think, or upon being presented with another justification for their treasured hatred, prefer not to think.

Gladstone is a con artist fleecing the simple-minded. The conclusion that the bulletproof maiden story draws us to, then, is that the story is directed at less intelligent Jews in an effort to increase their fear and hatred of Ukrainians, and in this way to induce those Jews to part with some of their money. Hanover told the story three centuries ago to simple-minded Jews to increase sales of his Abyss of Despair. Gladstone tells the story today to simple-minded Jews to increase sales of his The Wanderer. Two hucksters make a buck, and the people they find it easiest to make their buck from are the simple-minded of their own ethnic group. Gladstone, then, is revealed as a con artist preying on the weakest of his own people. Gladstone attempts to line his own pockets at the expense of the well-being of his fellow Jews. That's the only way that I can account for Gladstone dragging this laughable story of the bulletproof maiden onto the pages of his heritage and travel magazine.

(11) The savior of the Jews was a Ukrainian. Gladstone encourages the simple-minded view that participants on the two sides divided cleanly along ethnic lines � Ukrainians together with Tatars attacked Jews together with Poles. The reality, however, is that people of all nationalities participated on all sides, the most noteworthy example being that of Polonized Ukrainian Count Jeremi Wisniowiecki, of the Ukrainian family, Vyshnevetsky:

Hanover's account of Count Jeremi Wisniowiecki's activities at this time must have been an exaggeration, for he gives the impression that Wisniowiecki made rescuing the Jewish population his principal endeavor:

Count Jeremi Wisniowiecki was a friend of Israel ... with him escaped some five hundred Jews. He carried them as on the wings of eagles until they were brought to their destination [reported as Wisniowiecki left for Lithuania].

Later we are also told that after the Nemyriv onslaught Wisniowiecki set out with a command of 3,000 men to revenge the Jews. Clearly, Hanover considered Wisniowiecki the greatest of generals, one who should have become commander of the Polish army.

Bernard D. Weinryb, The Hebrew Chronicles on Bohdan Khmel'nyts'kyi and the Cossack-Polish War, Journal of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1(2) June 1977, p. 168.

The recognition that historical events were marked by mixed loyalties and mixed participation weakens the justification for hatred, and so is expunged from hate literature such as Gladstone's.

(12) Gladstone fails to convey the characteristics of the culture of the Jews who oppressed Ukrainians. What was the nature of the Jewish culture in Poland at the time of Khmelnytsky? The question is relevant because it bears on the question of the provocation which ignited the Khmelnytsky rebellion, and thus of the legitimacy of the rebellion. The statement below indicates that Jewish culture at the time of Khmelnytsky is best described by such words as superstitious, fanatical, stifling, exploitative, and oppressive:

In the period of 1500-1795, one of the most superstition-ridden in the history of Judaism, Polish Jewry was the most superstitious and fanatic of all Jewish communities. The considerable power of the Jewish autonomy was used increasingly to stifle all original or innovative thought, to promote the most shameless exploitation of the Jewish poor by the Jewish rich in alliance with the rabbis, and to justify the Jews' role in the oppression of the peasants in the service of the nobles.

Israel Shahak, Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years, Pluto Press, London, 1994, p. 63.

For partial substantiation as to why such a harsh description appears warranted, please consult my more detailed citing of Israel Shahak available in my letter of 27Sep1997 to Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich, "Khmelnytsky Reconsidered"; and for a more complete substantiation, please consult the Israel Shahak book itself which can be ordered through the UKAR Amazon book store.

(13) Gladstone represents Hanover as a historian, when in fact he was a writer of fairy tales. From Hanover's description of the Khmelnytsky siege of Zamosc, judge for yourself into which category Hanover deserves to be placed:

And it came to pass when they had been there a long time, that the enemy contrived a scheme. By the use of witchcraft they let a viper soar in the sky, and they took unto themselves as a sign: "If the viper will turn his face toward the city, we will subdue it before us, and if he will turn his face toward us we will flee before them. And it came to pass at midnight, when they saw the viper ascending skyward, and he remained suspended for about a half hour with his face toward the city. After that he turned toward the camp of the Cossacks and the Tartars. They realized that this was an evil omen for them and that evil was before their faces.

Nathan Hanover, Abyss of Despair (Yeven Metzulah), Transaction Books, New Brunswick (U.S.A.) and London (U.K.), 1983, pp. 90-91.

Jewish hate literature indeed! Thus, as the Gladstone article does appear to be Jewish in origin, and as it does appear to incite a negative evaluation of Ukrainians and negative emotions toward Ukrainians, and as it does contain numerous and palpable untruths, then it follows that it does appear to qualify as Jewish hate literature. One sees, incidentally, the cost that hate literature imposes upon anyone who takes the time to refute it � it is ten times the work to write a minimal refutation as it took to dash off a facile, glib, thoughtless piece of distortion like Gladstone's.

Hating Ukrainians is part of Jewish culture. As has been pointed out, the Ukrainian Archive is dedicated to refuting anti-Ukrainian calumny, and it incidentally is observed that anti-Ukrainian calumny originates predominantly from Jews. On top of that, we have seen indications of how Jews inculcate anti-Ukrainian hatred and a predisposition to anti-Ukrainian calumny. Their repetition of the Hanover Calumny is one example, of which Bill Gladstone's article, with his own distortions added on, is an instance. Gladstone does make a contribution to clarifying our understanding by explaining to us that it is not merely every three centuries that the Hanover Calumny is recited � in some communities it is recited every summer, over the course of three weeks no less, and upon special occasions as well:

So popular did Yeven Metzulah become, according to historian William Helmreich, that in some communities of Eastern Europe it was customary to read it annually during the traditional "three weeks" in summer. New editions would appear after each new wave of persecution including the Ukrainian pogroms that occurred during and following WWI.

And to top that off, we have earlier seen Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich insisting that a Khmelnytsky prayer is recited every Saturday not only in synagogues all over the world, but most especially by himself right in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. Wishing to ascertain whether this Khmelnytsky prayer might not in reality be a Khmelnytsky curse, I asked Rabbi Bleich for a copy, but he has so far neglected to respond to my request, or indeed to any of the questions that I have put to him in any of my letters.

The impression which all this leaves is that of a centuries-old, unrelenting inculcation of Jewish hatred of Ukrainians, primarily through the repetition of the Hanover Calumny, though more recently by the Jewish selection of Ukrainians to stand as symbols of anti-Jewish activity during WW II. The Gladstone piece of hate literature, then, can be seen to be not just an isolated event, but rather a thread within the continuous fabric of Jewish culture. With the anti-Ukrainian tradition being reinforced in formal rituals every Saturday, and then given a three-week booster every summer, it is little wonder that the first impulse that some Jews experience upon talking to a Ukrainian is to flagellate the Ukrainian for the imagined sins of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, however irrelevant to the matter at hand such a flagellation might be, as was exemplified in the frothing-at-the-mouth tirade of Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset, Dov Ben-Meir upon writing to Americans-for-Human-Rights-in-Ukraine President, Bozhena Olshaniwsky. And this is an inculcation of hatred so pervasive that it is little wonder that among the first impulses that a Jew starting a heritage and travel magazine experiences is to recount the macabre tortures that he imagines sadistic Khmelnytsky medical experimenters inflicted upon unoffending Jewish prisoners.

Might the law be perverted to prohibit Ukrainian self-defense? In view of the fact that Jewish hate literature is published and yet is never included in calls for the suppression of hate literature, the danger exists that the goal of Jewish groups is to continue publishing their own hate literature, and yet to depict any targets of their hatred who try to defend themselves as expressing a hate that needs to be suppressed. If Ukrainians do not defeat what may be a Jewish attempt to strangle Ukrainian voices, they may wake up one morning to find the law protecting Jewish calumniation of Ukrainians, even while punishing Ukrainians for defending themselves. If the Jews are to have their way, the day may come when Canadian law protects Bill Gladstone's The Holocaust of 1648 and punishes the present rebuttal.

And now, the Gladstone article. The Wanderer carries a one-paragraph introduction to the Gladstone article in its editorial section. Also, the Gladstone article is accompanied by several illustrations offered without attribution, three of which have captions. This same introductory paragraph and these same three captions are reproduced below, but the illustrations are not.

The
Wanderer
MAGAZINE OF JEWISH HERITAGE & TRAVEL • WINTER 1998/99

Excerpt from the editorial section:

EDITORIAL

From Darkness into Light

Rabbi Nathan Hanover, this issue's famous Jewish traveller, was not a traveller in the usual sense. A refugee fleeing antisemitic horrors, he moved from place to place with a self-imposed mission: to document the tragedy based on eyewitness accounts from survivors. His book Yeven Metzulah, conveys more horrible images than we wanted to bring to our readers, so anyone wanting more knowledge of these matters is referred to the original text.

� Barbara Kingstone
& Bill Gladstone

Three Captions:

Roadside Carnage: Many scenes like this one are described in Yeven Metzulah ("The Abyss of Despair"). More than 100,000 Jews perished.

Fervent Nationalist: The armies of Bogdan Chmielnicki (top) laid siege to peaceful villages.

Messianic Yearnings: Ostrog boasted a famous community of rabbis that included R. Samuel Edels (right). Edels, known as the Maharsha, was Hanover's teacher; he allegedly died in the massacres. Many religious Jews saw 1648 as the dawn of a messianic age that culminated in 1666 with the appearance of Shabbetai Tsvi (left), whom they heralded as the Messiah.

The article itself:

FAMOUS JEWISH TRAVELLERS

THE HOLOCAUST
of 1648 A TRAGEDY REVISITED

Rabbi Nathan Hanover of Ostrog left behind a thorough, gripping account of the catastrophe of 1648, as seen through Jewish eyes

STORY BY
BILL GLADSTONE

Born about 1620 in Ostrog, Volynia, Rabbi Nathan Hanover and his family were among the countless Jews in Ukraine and eastern Poland whose lives were disrupted by the Chmielnicki massacres of 1648, and the intermittent attacks that continued for several years afterwards.

Hanover travelled extensively over the region of devastation, speaking with many affected people and recording their stories with the sensitive ear of a historian. Author of several books, his most famous work by far is Yeven Metzulah ("The Abyss of Despair"), a chronicle of the atrocities which collectively stand as a 17th-century precursor to the Shoah.

One of the classic texts of Jewish martyrology, Yeven Metzulah presents a graphic and gripping account of the horrors that occurred in Ukraine and eastern Poland when Bogdan Chmielnicki led the Cossacks into attack. Tatars from the Caucaucus region joined the Ukrainians in their nationalistic rebellion against the Polish nobility and their largely Jewish landlords. By conservative estimates, at least 100,000 Jews were slaughtered; according to Hanover, Jewish losses were much higher. Many Poles were also slaughtered.

CAUGHT IN A NIGHTMARISH
'ABYSS
of
DESPAIR'

A graduate of the Ostrog yeshiva, Hanover took a wife from the nearby town of Zaslaw and moved there to continue his religious studies. Zaslaw was one of the first towns to be attacked; Hanover and his family fled but most of the town's Jews, including his father-in-law, were killed. While on the run, Hanover learned that his own father had been killed in a Cossack raid on Ostrog.

A gifted orator, Hanover supported his family as an itinerant preacher. Wandering through the countryside, he spoke with refugees from many ravished communities, recording descriptions of individual atrocities that were on a par with almost anything the Nazis would later devise. The Cossacks indulged in the most bestial forms of sadism and, as if taking a page from Mengele, performed crude and tortuous "medical experiments" on pregnant women and others. "There was no cruel device of murder in the whole world that was not perpetrated by the enemies," Hanover writes.

With a vindictiveness arising from generations of perceived oppression, the Cossacks and Tatars lead military siege to fortified towns, sometimes battling for days. In some instances the Polish peasantry befriended the invaders and invited them inside the walls to vanquish the Jews; usually, however, the Poles, especially the priests and bishops, were attacked along with the Jews. Like the Nazis, the angry hordes torched synagogues and trashed the holy Torah and other manifestations of Judaism. "Scrolls of the law were torn to pieces, and turned into boots and shoes for their feet; the straps of the phylacteries served as laces around their feet. The leather boxes of the phylacteries were cast into the streets. Other sacred books served to pave the streets. Some were used for kindling purposes, and others to stuff the barrels of their guns."

In Ostropol, Rabbi Samson exhorted the community to repent of their sins so the town would be spared from attack; the community followed his advice but "the evil decree had already been sealed." In Polannoe, thousands perished like lambs without fighting back: "A single Ukrainian invading a dwelling which housed several hundred Jewish persons would kill all of them and would meet no resistance." Hanover relates many instances of Jewish heroism and high ideals in the face of unspeakable physical and psychological torture. In Tulczyn, the Ukrainians assembled the Jews in an enclosed garden, where several rabbis exhorted the community not to abandon their faith despite the threat of death. Three times the Cossacks told the Jews, "Whoever wishes to change his faith and remain alive, let him sit under this banner." Not one Jew moved. Eventually, the Cossacks attacked and "approximately 1,500 souls perished by all sorts of terrible deaths."

In some towns, women escaped certain rape by jumping into moats surrounding the fortress-walls; many drowned or were shot or stabbed in the water. Hanover tells of a beautiful maiden from a wealthy family whom a Cossack forced to become his wife. "But before they lived together she told him with cunning that she possessed a certain magic and that no weapon could harm her. 'If you do not believe me, just test me,' she said. 'Shoot at me with a gun, and you will see that I will not be harmed.' The Cossack, her husband, in his simplicity, thought she was telling the truth. He shot at her with his gun and she fell and died for the sanctification of the Name, to avoid being defiled by him, may God avenge her blood."

As the invaders besieged one village after another (more than 700 in total), the villagers fled. "Whoever had a horse and cart travelled in it. Those who did not possess a horse and cart, even though they had sufficient money to buy them, would not wait, but took wife and children by the hand and fled on foot, casting away all belongings."

Hanover describes roads clogged for many miles with horses and carts and refugees on foot, the air charged with wild rumors and panic. "Everyone threw from his cart silver and gold, vessels, books, pillows and bed covers in order to be able to escape more quickly, to save the lives of his family. The field was cluttered with gold, silver and clothes, and no Jew paused to take them."

For centuries before 1648, Jews had been moving eastward into Poland and Turkey from Spain, Alsace and the Rhineland. After 1648, the eastward trend was reversed. Many historians have suggested that the abyss of despair into which the Jews fell set the stage for the emergence of the false messiah Shabbetai Tsvi about 1666, and for the revolutionary Hassidic movement of the next century. Seeking meaning in the tragedy, many learned Jews saw the name Chmiel (as Chmielnicki was known in Russian) as a Hebrew acronym for Chevle Mashiach Yavi L'Olam, "He will usher in the pangs of the Messiah."

In the early 1650s, Hanover went to Berlin and Amsterdam and arranged to publish his collected sermons and perhaps Yeven Metzulah as well; the date of its first publication is uncertain. Eager to forget the horrors of the past, he turned to mysticism. He joined an important kabbalisitic circle in Italy and in 1653 became the rabbi of Leghorn. He later moved to Wallachia to become rabbi in Iasi, then Focsani. In the 1670s he went to Ungarish-Brod, in Moravia, where he continued writing and publishing, and where his daughters were married.

Although Hanover emerged unscathed from the Cossack pogroms, he did not escape a violent death. In the 1680s, after the Turks marched into war against the Austrian Empire, a Hungarian army allied with the Turks attacked the Brod synagogue during morning prayers; Hanover was killed. A tombstone raised in his memory was said to be still standing in Brod earlier in this century, and a stone memorial was apparently raised to him in Focsani as well.

By far the most enduring memorial to both Hanover and the many communities whose destruction he chronicled is the literary landmark he left behind. So popular did Yeven Metzulah become, according to historian William Helmreich, that in some communities of Eastern Europe it was customary to read it annually during the traditional "three weeks" in summer. New editions would appear after each new wave of persecution including the Ukrainian pogroms that occurred during and following WWI. And some historians assert that Yeven Metzulah has acquired a new relevance as a result of the Shoah. "The brutality of Chmielnicki made the work of the Nazis that much easier," Helmreich writes. "As we read Hanover's description of the atrocities committed by Chmielnicki and his hordes, it becomes clear that Hitler's torture chambers were only technological refinement � the precedent had already been set."

HOME DISINFORMATION KHMELNYTSKY