Jews and the Military: Draft-Evasion and Jewish Hyperethnocentrism

Andrew Joyce
Occidental Observer
February 11, 2014

In my review of Derek Penslar’s Jews and the Military: A History, I noted that there remains a pressing need for more thorough analysis of Jewish responses to the military demands placed by nations on their citizens, as well as an analysis and contextualization of the broader implications of these responses. In this short article, I can only hope to scratch the surface of what even summary research has revealed to be a much larger story, but the primary aims of this essay are as follows: to demonstrate that Jewish draft-evasion is not a phenomenon limited in time or geography (in essence, to broaden our appreciation of this aspect of Jewish behavior beyond nineteenth-century Eastern Europe); to go into more detail about the highly uniform nature and tactics of Jewish draft-evasion; and to explain this behavior with reference to the idea of Jews as a hyperethnocentric people. Although our dear friends at the Anti-Defamation League, and a veritable sea of Jewish academics, would like us to believe that the accusation of Jewish draft-evasion is nothing but a malicious and groundless canard, I draw the attention of readers to my use of purely mainstream scholarly works.

Since ancient times, military service has been regarded as the touchstone of true citizenship and patriotism and it has always been a useful backdrop against which Jewish identity and its hierarchy of loyalties might be seen more clearly. Indeed, Jewish resistance to military service is itself ancient. It is, however, important to state at the outset that this Jewish resistance to military service is not rooted in the passivity or cowardice of the Jews as a people. To be sure, I am certain that there have been Jewish cowards, as there are cowards of all races or ethnicities.

However, as Kevin MacDonald has helpfully explained, if anything Jews are a highly aggressive (26ff) people—as seen, for example, in the project of the organized Jewish community to alter the demographic profile of the United States to the detriment of White Americans. Penslar himself states that “the Hebrew Bible glorifies the wars by which the Israelites conquered Canaan and defeated their enemies, particularly the Philistines” (19).

The openly aggressive nature of Judaism changed only with the destruction of the Second Temple, and the failure of the first- and second-century revolts against Rome. In the context of crushing defeat at the hands of the Romans, Rabbinic Judaism emerged with a considerably greater emphasis on more passive forms of aggression, and it was during this period that Judaism adopted self-pity and the status of the victim to an astonishing degree.

Underlying written proclamations about the sanctity of life, however, aggression characterized almost every aspect of Jewish culture. As Penslar states, “in late antiquity Talmudic study was verbally highly aggressive and employed the language of battle, of feint and charge, as a Jew faced off against his study partner cum opponent (20). Penslar also describes an aggressive and “militant stream of Jewish thought that developed in medieval and early modern Europe and North Africa” (20). The celebrated rabbi Judah Lowe of Prague (1520–1609), justified the collective slaughter of any enemy (non-Jewish) nation (21). and the Jewish historian Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson characterized the thoughts of Judaism’s “great thinkers” as amounting to the desire “to cast off the yoke and to overturn the rule of those who humiliate the Jews. (21) Penslar states that “this sort of thinking stimulated Jewish fantasies, and occasional acts, of vengeance against Gentiles in medieval and early modern Europe” (21).

Aggression can also be seen in the centuries of disdainful, exploitative and clearly vindictive Jewish economic warfare against the European peasantry, and, even more importantly, in some of the extraordinarily violent measures taken against the Eastern European peoples by the Jewish leaders of Bolshevism.

Despite this level of aggression, and the placement of militant hatred at the heart of the “finest” Jewish cultural and religious texts, Jews have been reluctant to put this aggression at the service of the host state since ancient times. In The Jews Under Roman Rule (1976, 128), E. Mary Smallwood states that Jews persistently refused to serve in the armies of the Roman Empire, and secured exemptions and special status through the patronage of certain influential figures in the Roman elite, the most famous of them being Julius Caesar who granted exemption from military service to all Jews, rather than only those with citizenship.

Since that date, Jewish involvement in the military affairs of the host nation has changed very little in character. Penslar states that “Jews in medieval Christendom were rarely soldiers” (22). Jacob Katz, in Out of Ghetto: The Social Background of Jewish Emancipation, 1770-1870 (1978, 170), writes that pre-emancipation European Jewry enjoyed “particular privileges such as special jurisdiction and exemption from military service.”

Only when Jews bargained for increased rights at the end of the eighteenth-century were they once more seriously confronted about the issue of their non-participation in the military affairs of the host nation. Indeed, the question of military service was often thrust into the heart of the emancipation debate. In Prussia in 1781, bureaucrat Wilhelm Dohm wrote that “the most serious reason for asserting that Jews cannot obtain equal rights with the rest of the citizens is that…they should not ask for equal rights in a society which they decline to defend in need.”[1]

The abolishment of Jewish exemptions in the wake of emancipation triggered a series of confrontations between Jews and the state throughout Europe. On June 4^th 1788 Joseph II, ruler of the multinational Habsburg Empire, issued a court decree extending military conscription to Jews in all his provinces. Within weeks petitions flooded in from Galician Jewry requesting that every single Jew be exempt from military obligations altogether.”[2]

Essentially, Jews were asking for rights without wanting any of the obligations attached to them. Joseph responded that since Jews demanded to be treated as any other citizen “without any further considerations, the Jew as a man and as a fellow citizen will perform the same service that everyone else is obligated to do.”[3] Joseph’s response was echoed almost exactly by Tsar Nicholas I in 1827, in his Statutes Regarding the Military Service of Jews. Faced with the same problem, Nicholas decreed that “upon being called to military service, Jews shall fulfil their obligation in a manner identical to that of other citizens who are members of that class which is required to serve in the armed forces.”[4]

The problem, of course, was that Jews wanted to be seen as full citizens only when it came to the point of taking from the state. Giving to the state, particularly in the form of placing one’s life on the line, was simply out of the question.

The results of these confrontations with the state were uniform, widespread and have persisted to the present: petitions, protests, violently attacking press gangs, subterfuge, self-mutilation, avoiding the frontlines, and flight into neighboring countries.

• In the nineteenth-century, Jewish attempts to evade military service included a bizarre attempt by the Jews of Alsace to use “magic rituals” in order to avoid the draft lottery.[5]
• In Iraq in 1914, “prosperous Jews dangled bribes before the Turkish authorities, hoping to get their sons out of active military service and into administrative positions in the telegraph office or the military stores.”[6]
• Touching upon the subject in Separation and It’s Discontents (2004), Kevin MacDonald noted that draft-evasion was rife among Russian Jewish immigrants in England during World War I. A Home Office report indicated that in the city of Leeds, only 26 of 1,400 eligible Jewish aliens had joined the armed forces, with a much higher number fleeing to Ireland to avoid conscription.[7]
• Draft-evasion by Jews was also rife in the United States during the same period. Even Jewish ethnic activist Louis Marshall, bitter opponent of Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent and founder of the American Jewish Committee, “admitted that Jews were avoiding the draft in large numbers.”[8] After reviewing thousands of exemption cases Marshall remarked, privately I might add, that there was “a strong slacker spirit on the part of our people.”[9]
• Unsurprisingly therefore, David Aberbach, Professor of Jewish Studies at McGill University, has concluded that “the Great War exposed more clearly than any other event in the 1789–1939 period the weaknesses of Jewish patriotism in the modern state.”[10]

The evasion of military service by Jews on such a scale of course provoked ill-feeling among local populations. During the Polish-Soviet war in 1920, in Bialystok (Poland) conscription was resisted strongly by the large Jewish community, causing “considerable anger and resentment among the local population.”[11]

The mechanisms by which Jews orchestrated the evasion of military service also deserve attention. During the final year of World War II, the Frankfurt School famously undertook its study of “Anti-Semitism Among American Labor” at the behest of the Jewish Labor Committee. The goal of the study was to examine the allegedly entrenched anti-Semitism of the American working class, and to tackle some of the “myths” and “canards” they accepted. One of the main pillars of the study was an examination of the beliefs of those working in munitions factories. According to the Frankfurt School “scientists,” these workers were adamant that Jews evaded the draft, and had “undue influence on draft boards.”[12] Jews were also identified as seeking “soft jobs” in administration instead of engaging in combat duty. Workers saw Jewish draft-evasion as a “symbol of Jewish social and political power.”[13] Workers also argued that Jews had an ability to ‘overrun’ draft boards, especially with Jewish doctors, and one worker gave a lengthy statement on the large number of physically fit Jews declared, “inexplicably,” 4Fs.[14]

Awareness of what Jews were doing was fairly widespread. In 1941, 33% of respondents to a national survey named Jews as particularly likely to dodge the draft,[15] and in a 1943 poll almost one-fifth of Detroit respondents stated their belief that Jews were dodging the draft.[16] Wartime ditties, circulated in servicemen’s tavern leaflets (example here), expressed popular anger at Jewish draft-evasion and board influence, and did much to arouse the passions and enmity of Jewish ethnic activists. The most famous was that of the so-called “First Man”:

First man to sink an enemy battleship – Colin Kelly
First man to set foot on enemy territory – Robert O’Hara
First woman to lose five sons – Mrs. Sullivan
First son of a bitch to get four new tires from the rationing board – Nathan Goldstein

Although the Frankfurt School presented these beliefs as “canards” and malicious fictions, we in fact have an abundance of evidence proving their veracity. For example, the influence of Jewish doctors on draft boards had already been felt in the United States during World War I when, as Christopher Sterba explains, “a noticeably high percentage of Jews were exempted for medical reasons.”[17] The process by which Jews “overran” draft boards has also been explored and proven. Marc Lee Raphael, Chair of Judaic Studies at William and Mary College, in The Columbia History of Jews and Judaism in America, writes that Jews utilized their tendency to reside in ethnic clusters to concentrate voting strength and contributions. This in turn led to “Jewish seats on school boards, city councils, and later draft boards” even though they were a tiny minority of the population.[18] By such methods, even the draft board of little Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma, found itself under Jewish chairmanship.

Generally speaking, Jewish draft-evasion during World War II is an open secret. Writing in GI Jews: How World War II Changed a Generation (2006), Deborah Moore states that “regular military duty dismayed Jews.”[19] Jews in Brooklyn were seen as “quintessential draft-dodgers” by other citizens, and one Professor at City College famously quipped that “The battle hymn of the Jews is ‘Onward Christian Soldiers, We’ll make the uniforms.”[20] Moore further states that there were “elaborate efforts to avoid a uniform…studying medicine was an attractive alternate path to wartime if one had the aptitude.”[21] Robert Kotlowitz, a now-deceased Jewish media executive, once recalled with candor that Jews flooded pre-med courses because “it was a respectable way of evading the draft.”[22]

Even when they were drafted, Jews tended to find ways to avoid combat duty. Penslar uses Canadian government data to show that during World War II, Canadian Jews were “overrepresented in administrative as opposed to combat positions and underrepresented in the infantry.”[23] In the Red Army, Jews clustered “disproportionately” in those branches of service that held little prospect of frontline action.[24] According to Penslar, Jews have managed to inflate their records of service and sacrifice by “artfully” reworking casualty figures “sometimes combining Jewish communities in separate states, or the killed and wounded, into a single category.”[25]

Of course the problem of Jewish draft-evasion in the United States, and elsewhere, didn’t end with World War II. In Canada’s Diverse Peoples: A Reference Sourcebook (2003), J.M. Bumsted writes that among those dodging the draft for Vietnam and fleeing to Canada, it was noted by Canadian officials that “Jews were overrepresented among the dodgers.”[26] Anecdotal evidence also supports the theory that during the Vietnam era Jewish draft-dodging on campuses was organized. In his memoirs, Mordecai Waxman recalled that the Hillel Foundation (the largest Jewish campus organization in the world) was closely involved in draft-dodging, and that at his University the Hillel Director was “a well-known campus ‘draft-avoidance’ counsellor.”[27]

Writing on numbers of Jews serving in the U.S. military in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Derek Penslar noted that Jews “were decidedly underrepresented. … American Jews and the U.S. military are still not a natural fit.”[28]

As we approach two centuries since Nicholas I’s extension of the draft to Russian Jews, Jewish draft-dodging remains endemic in Russia. In 2000, JWeekly carried an article on “Russian Jews joining the clamor to dodge draft due to Chechnya.” The article states that “even though all Russian males under the age of 27 must serve in the army, Jews are particularly reluctant to do so. … Many potential draftees are ineligible because they receive an exemption by attending university. … After graduation they become part of the reserve corps which is normally not called up for duty. Other Jewish draftees try to dodge service by “getting a medical deferral, getting a job in a strategically crucial firm or simply bribing board officials.”

Of course, these openly confessed means are precisely the same tactics that the Frankfurt School claimed were “canards” when uttered by American munitions workers in 1944.

*   *   *

Having covered Jewish draft-dodging in several countries, and listed the means by which it has been accomplished over the centuries, it remains necessary to touch briefly on some kind of explanation for Jewish resistance to the draft. One important explanation is simply that Jews are in fact a hyperethnocentric people; an important aspect of their hyperethnocentrism being moral particularism and an immunity to the appeals to universal morals that often accompany the waging of war. In basic terms, Jews are unlikely to be moved by emotional appeals to patriotism or conscience, or swayed by the “wrongs” committed by an enemy state unless those wrongs are clearly and explicitly targeting Jews or Jewish interests.

Penslar comments that Jewish resistance to military service has only “melted away” in the case of wars in which “one of the sides was clearly associated with long-standing persecution of the Jews.”[29] Even in these latter instances, evidence suggests that in the case of conventional warfare, Jews will tend to support the war effort with money and resources rather than send their sons to the frontlines.

An extension of the impact of hyperethnocentrism is the fear of having to kill Jews serving in an enemy army. Jews tend to stress in-group identification, and obligations to the kinship group to a far higher degree than other peoples. While Europeans engaged in bout after bout of fratricidal destruction, as a transnational but hyperethnocentric group Jews remained much more conscious of the harm that could result to their own ethnic group if they partook of the same conflicts. For example, even though the numbers involved were small, Penslar writes that during the Franco-Prussian War, “Jews were acutely aware of the presence of their brethren on both sides of the conflict.”[30]

Jews have also traditionally seen the military as a place which would undermine the Jewish identity of young Jewish men who join it. In essence, the military is seen as a competing collective. Like organized Jewry, the military is authoritarian, stresses submission to leadership, and encourages the sense of belonging to a unique and separate community. Interestingly, having analyzed the objections of Galician Jewry to military service in the eighteenth-century, Michael Silber concluded that “the fears of the traditional leadership focussed not on any halakhic violation of fighting an offensive war on the Sabbath, but rather on the sociology of life in the army.”[31] The concern of these Jewish deputies was that young conscripted Jews would have their Jewish identity undermined; with one deputy saying “They will mix with the Gentiles and learn their ways.”[32] There is also a level of Jewish elitism inherent in this stance. Silber states that a major resentment about conscription is that young Jews are forced “to keep the company of what were regarded as the ‘lowest masses’ of Gentile society.”[33]

As stated at the beginning, this is a topic worthy of much deeper exploration but it is hoped that this essay has provided at least a broad and reasonably in-depth introduction to the issue of Jewish resistance to military service in the Diaspora.

 

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