Postville, Iowa

A reader sent me a long write-up on the illegal immigration scandal at the Lubavitcher slaughterhouse in a small town in Iowa, which I'll post below. This business run by New York ultra-Orthodox Jews first became notorious a number of years ago when a Jewish academic named Stephen Bloom exposed how the newcomers were treating the Iowans. From the review in Amazon.com:

"The enterprise was a huge international success, with its kosher meats exported even to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The Jewish population grew to 150, and they were rich. The town was saved, and the people were grateful. All's well that ends well? Not quite. The Hasidim kept to themselves, did things their own way, and basically had no interest in integrating into Postville. And why would they? Their laws are strict, their mission clear, their community defined by race and religion. They are not interested in watermelon socials or coffee klatches at the diner. Their little boys do not swim with their little girls, are not educated together, and do not go on play dates with goyim. Small-town Iowans, on the other hand, are very friendly. They know each other's news, they support each other's businesses, they wish each other Merry Christmas, they want you to feel at home. They don't like that the new townspeople stomp up the street hunched over, talking in a foreign language and looking straight through them when greeted. They really don't like it when one of the newcomers drives around town with a 10-foot candelabra strapped to his car playing music at full volume for eight consecutive winter nights."

The point is not to pick on the business practices of ultra-Orthodox Jews. The bigger issue is that this kind of in-group morality is not at all restricted to Lubavitchers. In-group morality and sharp elbowed business practices are the norm among mercantile minorities across large swathes of the world, the great majority of them non-Jewish. (In fact, many are notoriously anti-Semitic.)

It's the nature of low trust societies: you have the peasants and you have the business people, and never the twain shall marry. An American-style society where it's not surprising when a farm boy like Henry Ford or Philo Farnsworth goes on to big things is a rarity in this world. (Here's Tom Wolfe on Robert Noyce of Intel, co-inventor of the silicon chip, who grew up in Grinnell, Iowa, a small town much like Postville -- except now it has an extremely rich college, due to getting in early on the companies started by Noyce and another Midwestern boy named Warren Buffett.)

Not surprisingly, lots of mercantile minorities want to emigrate to the rich pickings in America. What's in it for Americans is less clear.

There has been a giant immigration raid in Postville, Iowa, a town that has been taken over by a Hasidic Jewish sect, the Lubavitchers, and the third world illegal workers from Mexico and Eastern Europe that they have imported to work at their meat processing plant and are dumping on the community:

Des Moines Register

KMEG Channel 14

There is so much more to the story easily available on the internet. Rabbi Rubaskin, Crown Heights, Brooklyn, the Lubavitchers, Federal Prison, arson in Pennsylvania (see Failed Messiah, below), Secret PETA video tapes, fraudulent kashering, attempted bribery of the police, non-assimilation in America, self-isolation of Jews, Man! The story has everything. Read reviews of Stephen Bloom's book, "Postville: A Clash of Cultures in the Heartland" in which he challenges the melting pot ideology of the open borders crowd.

Failed Messiah a Jewish blogger, has blog entry after blog entry on the crookedness of the Rubashkin family and how they screw the gentiles and the Jews, including articles on Federal prison time for defrauding their gentile workers:

Here is a two-year-old article from the Jewish Daily Forward on the exploitation of third-world workers:

This is a "clean" interview with Stephen Bloom on his book about Postville and the Lubavitcher invasion:

This is Luke Ford's long unexpurgated interview with Stephen Bloom. Positively scathing and well worth a read.

Here is a bogus suckup article by the Jewish womens group called "Hadassah" on the wonderful diversity and multiculturalism of Postville:

Hallmark did a ditzy show called "The Way Home: Stories of Forgiveness" about the (nonexistent) touching reconciliation of the Postville locals and the third world illegals and Lubavitchers that took over ... It was narrated by Glen Close.

" In Postville, Iowa, residents were forced to reevaluate their way of life after the local meat packing plant closed, only to be reopened by Hasidic Jews from Brooklyn, N.Y. The Hasidic Jews' value of a tight-knit community seemed to clash with the openness of many in Postville. The town's story continued when workers from Mexico and Eastern Europe flocked to Postville to take advantage of the plant's ample job opportunities, and residents faced further challenges embracing diversity. Gradually the communities came to understand and respect each other's differences."

But the Rubashkins who run the Postville facility [aren't so nice] to their fellow Jews as well. Brutal animal slaughter is a way of life at the Lubavitcher Jewish plant in Postville. It is so nasty (ripping the tracheas out of cows) that many Jews won't even eat the food because it is a violation of Jewis shechita (ritual slaughter rules). The slaughter is so brutal that [the famous high-functioning autistic animal sciences professor] Temple Grandin (her fascinating life story is worth a read, too!) condemned the practices several years ago when shown the PETA tape. [She's a leading designer of animal slaughter yards.]

This is what Stephen Bloom, the author of Postville (see the Luke Ford review above) has to say about the feel-good sales pitch of happy-diversity that Hallmark and the Jewish media are pimping:

"The [Hallmark] video is an embarrassment. It's contrived. It's an audio-visual Hallmark card. It's cheery, upbeat, positive.

"Ever since Postville has come out, I've been interested in what the Japanese call Wa -- how Japanese society is run. It means harmony. In Japan, Wa is very important. It's rare in Japan for a vote in a corporation or the parliament that is not unanimous. All the differences are aired in private. By the time the public is clued in, everyone is on board, even the most vociferous critics.

"It's most important to live in a harmonious society where disagreement is eliminated. In America, journalism is generally opposed to the Wa. We journalists look at issues and we don't say, 'George Bush is doing a great job.' That is not a news story. We say, 'George Bush is screwing up big time.'

"There seems to be a tremendous attempt by the Jewish community, as prompted by the Hadassah piece, JTA, Forward, and this Hallmark presentation, to say that two different communities can flourish in America today. Postville is an example of that. There's a tremendous sense that readers and viewers need to come away with a feel good response. 'That stuff that Stephen Bloom did is water under the bridge. That was a long time ago. That was terrible. But now there's been forgiveness, reconciliation and harmony.' That's what the [Hallmark] show is all about.

"They make up a story line that when the Gentile head of the slaughter house, Donald Hunt, who's in my book, I call him a Caesar Romero lookalike, died about a year ago. His death brought together the distinct factions in Postville and began to heal the wounds. There's footage of Hunt's funeral and locals as well as Lubavitchers at the funeral. They use that as a point of entry for establishing a premise that things are going along just great.

"The people I talk to in Postville say things are not going along great.

"This latest skirmish is the slaughter house dumping some 30 tons of salt a week into the aquifers of ground water... There seems to be a journalistic mandate to remind everyone that Postville has reached Wa status. That's not what journalists do. Journalists are supposed to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer