Tag Archives: Gilad Atzmon

May 23 2013

Glenn Greenwald, Matt Hill and Pat Buchanan’s ideological convergence on ‘Jewish control’

CiF Watch engaged in a series of Twitter conversations yesterday – based on our post earlier in the day about ‘Guardian Left’ antisemitism – which, in addition to a few interesting Tweets by Rosanne Barr over her endorsement of Gilad Atzmon, included an exchange with Liberal Conspiracy blogger (and Indy contributor) Matt Hill.

hill

Hill – who we posted about last month when CiF Watch prompted Indy editors to remove his wild and completely false accusation, in an April 16 essay about Israel’s 65th anniversary, that Israel engaged in “forced sterilisation” of Ethiopian women – engaged with us over our Tweets last night challenging him to acknowledge the antisemitism of, among other Guardian contributors who we cited, Glenn Greenwald.

Here is his reply:

The link which Hill opened was a Times of Israel piece I wrote which included several examples of Greenwald advancing antisemitic narratives.

As I noted in my CW post yesterday, being a Guardian Left anti-Semite is partially defined by the belief you are a champion of progressive politics  and yet often use (or at least defend) terms and tropes indistinguishable from classic right wing Judeophobia - such as the argument that Jews are too powerful, use their money to control politics, and are not loyal citizens.

Before we get to Greenwald’s quotes, which, again, Hill claimed were free of antisemitism, here are a few quotes from a right-wing paleoconservative racist by the name of Pat Buchanan.

  • “Israel and its Fifth Column in this city [Washington, D.C.] seek to stampede us into war with Iran. Bush should rebuff them, and the American people should tell their congressmen: You vote for 362, we don’t vote for you.”
  • “They charge us with anti-Semitism…The truth is, those hurling these charges harbor a ‘passionate attachment’ to a nation not our own that causes them to subordinate the interests of their own country and to act on an assumption that, somehow, what’s good for Israel is good for America.”
  • “Who would benefit from these endless wars in a region that holds nothing vital to America-save oil…Who would benefit from a ‘war of civilizations’ with Islam? Who other than these neoconservatives and Ariel Sharon? Indeed, Sharon was everywhere the echo of his American auxiliary….”
  • “We charge that a cabal of polemicists and public officials seek to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America’s interests. We charge them with colluding with Israel to ignite those wars and destroy the Oslo Accords. We charge them with deliberately damaging U.S. relations with every state in the Arab world that defies Israel or supports the Palestinian people’s right to a homeland of their own. We charge that they have alienated friends and allies all over the Islamic and Western world through their arrogance, hubris, and bellicosity.”“A list of the Middle East regimes that Podhoretz, Bennett, Ledeen, Netanyahu, and the Wall Street Journal regard as targets for destruction includes Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, and ‘militant Islam.’ “Cui bono? For whose benefit these endless wars in a region that holds nothing vital to America save oil, which the Arabs must sell us to survive? Who would benefit from a war of civilizations between the West and Islam? “Answer: one nation, one leader, one party. Israel, Sharon, Likud.” What these neoconservatives seek is to conscript American blood to make the world safe for Israel
  • “There are only two groups that are beating the drums for war in The Middle East – the Israeli Defense Ministry and its amen corner in the United States.”
  • “Capitol Hill is Israeli occupied territory.”

Now here is Greenwald:

  • “So absolute has the Israel-centric stranglehold on American policy been that the US Government has made it illegal to broadcast Hezbollah television stations.”
  • “Not even our Constitution’s First Amendment has been a match for the endless exploitation of American policy, law and resources [by the Israel lobby] to target and punish Israel’s enemies.”
  • “The real goal [of the Israel lobby], as always, was to ensure that there is no debate over America’s indescribably self-destructive, blind support for Israeli actions. [Charles] Freeman’s critics may have scored a short-term victory in that regard, but the more obvious it becomes what is really driving these scandals, the more difficult it will be to maintain this suffocating control over American debates and American policy.”
  • “The point is that the power the [Israel lobby] exercises [is] harmful in the extreme. They use it to squelch debate, destroy the careers and reputations of those who deviate from their orthodoxies, and compel both political parties to maintain strict adherence to an agenda that is held by a minority of Americans; that is principally concerned with the interests of a foreign country; and that results in serious cost and harm to the United States. In doing so, they insure not only that our policies towards Israel remain firmly in place no matter the outcome of our elections, but also that those policies remain beyond the realm of what can be questioned or debated by those who want to have a political future.”
  • “Anyone who has argued that a desire to protect Israeli interests plays too large of a role in our foreign policy has been subjected to some of the most vicious and relentless smears. Ask Juan Cole about that, or John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. Those tactics have, as intended, prevented a substantive debate on this question, as most people have feared even approaching the topic.”
  • “If you don’t…pledge your loyalty to our policies toward Israel and to Israel, what will happen to you is what just happened to Charles Freeman. You’ll be demonized and have your career ended.”
  • “Large and extremely influential Jewish donor groups are the ones agitating for a US war against Iran, and that is the case because those groups are devoted to promoting Israel’s interests.”
  • “Those [American Jews] who favor the attack on Gaza are certainly guilty…of such overwhelming emotional and cultural attachment to Israel and Israelis that they long ago ceased viewing this conflict with any remnant of objectivity.”
  • “The dominant narrative among neocons and the media is that, deep down in his heart, [Obama] may be insufficiently devoted to Israel to be president of the United States. Has there ever been another country to which American politicians were required to pledge their uncritical, absolute loyalty the way they are, now, with Israel?”
  • “[Charles] Freeman is being dragged through the mud by the standard cast of accusatory Israel-centric neocons (Marty Peretz, Jon Chait, Jeffrey Goldberg, Commentary, The Weekly Standard’s Michael Goldfarb, etc. etc., etc.).”

And, finally, (though not included in my ToI essay), here’s a case of Greenwald using the term “Israel-Firster” to characterize a Jewish American politician, a term which ignited a row last year involving MJ Rosenberg and other bloggers associated with the Center for American Progress. 

  • “Meanwhile, one of the many Israel-Firsters in the U.S. Congress — Rep. Anthony Weiner, last seen lambasting President Obama for daring to publicly mention a difference between the U.S. and Israel — today not only defended Israel’s attack

Matt Hill evidently sees nothing morally problematic about such attacks on American Jews. 

As I’ve argued elsewhere, Even before the birth of the modern state of Israel, Jews have stood accused of not possessing sufficient loyalty to the nations where they reside.  Its contemporary manifestation however almost always centers around the notion of dual loyalty – a charge that Jews are more loyal to Israel than their own nation.  Often, such charges of dual loyalty are infused with a narrative imputing enormous power to Jewish communities which typically represent a tiny fraction of the population. 

Such a synthesis of disloyalty and exaggerated power allows the accuser to charge the Jewish community of working to undermine the nation – often alleging that such Jews are dangerous aliens who represent nothing short of a Fifth Column.

It’s remarkable that, while in much of the 20th century such tropes about Jewish power and dual loyalty were associated with the xenophobic and nativist far right, there’s been an ideological evolution such that these toxic ideas have gained popularity among self-styled ‘progressives’ – some of whom believe as a matter of faith that Jews exercise too much power in the US, put “Israel first” over their own country and even control US foreign policy.

This blog devotes a good deal of space to monitoring Glenn Greenwald because he, perhaps more than any other columnist at the site, represents the most egregious example of a popular and putatively liberal commentator who advances Judeophobic narratives seemingly without the least bit of concern about the racist ideological tradition which inspires his prose.

Our efforts to combat antisemitism at the Guardian and ‘Comment is Free’ is premised on the understanding that there is nothing even remotely liberal (yet alone “brave”) about engaging in ad hominem, scurrilous and bigoted attacks against Jews.

Genuine liberals, it certainly seems, would intuitively understand this.

Related articles
Sep 21 2012

Conspiracy theory about Jewish donors funding anti-Islam film is variation on ancient theme.

A version of this essay, written by Joseph Weissman, was published at The JC.


On the eleventh anniversary of 9/11, the American diplomat to Libya Chris Stevens was murdered by Islamists in Libya. Coincidentally, protests flared throughout many Muslim-majority states in protest at a film trailer “The Innocence of Muslims” which insulted Mohammed and the Muslim faith, casting both in a negative light. 

The murder of Mr Stevens has since been shown to have been pre-planned, and therefore separate from the protests surrounding the fourteen-minute-long YouTube video. Yet this past week, many within the mainstream media and within social media apportioned heavy blame for the murder of Ambassador Stevens, to the apparent provocation of The Innocence of Muslims.

Attention turned from the motives, background and identity of the murderers, to the motives, background and identity of the filmmaker. The YouTube user had uploaded his video using the name “sambacile”.

Hours after the murder in Libya, “Sam Bacile” identified himself to reporters as an Israeli Jew, claiming that his film project had been enabled by one hundred Jewish donors, who had contributed five million dollars to the film collectively. The Wall Street Journal – a usually balanced and trustworthy news source on the Middle East – first presented Bacile as an Israeli Jew.

The assertion that the director and his benefactors were rich Jews, rapidly spread across the internet. There were many obvious problems with this theory. The trailer began depicting a slaughter of Christians. Crosses featured prominently throughout the film.

A huge wooden cross was used as a backdrop, to a key scene involving an actor portraying Mohammed. It was not possible that the film should have cost five million dollars to make, given the obvious use of cheap backdrops, the poor acting, and the farcical dubbing. The trailer consisted of key parts of different scenes linked together, without any voiceover, textual effects or music which would really make it look like an actual trailer.

All this prompted a Channel 4 reporter to quip that the film was so poor, that if they existed, the Jewish donors might want their money back.

Whilst these mysterious donors – always alleged and never confirmed – continued to be mentioned amongst the images of burning effigies, the angry rioters, and obituarial clips of Ambassador Stevens, it became evermore unsettling to see how readily Bacile’s lie was believed.

It seems incredible, now, that people could possibly have thought that the film project and its  director were Jewish, and that rich Jews would spend so much money-making this film, which seemingly led to so much chaos. Why would news outlets as lofty as the BBC, repeat Bacile’s unsubstantiated claims? There were so many clear signs that the Jewish link was untrue.

The film looked like it cost a few thousand dollars to make, at most. Yet people believed that it cost millions, because of the added detail of the Jewish donors. Unfortunately, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that, if you removed the Jewish donors, no-one would believe it cost five million dollars. This is because there is an unsettling assumption lurking in some parts of Western society, which casts Jews as rich, politically powerful, and highly motivated to push their own agendas, to the detriment of others. Jewish avarice and obsession with money can be a casual topic of humour in Britain.

Through these jokes, we get an insight into how some people perceive Jews.

If we hear such a joke, we might be tempted to think nothing of it. But when we see people readily believing that Jews could spend thousands of pounds on pamphlets, or millions on amateur Youtube films, we realise that we are dealing with an issue that goes way beyond humour. We should remember that antisemitic ideas about Jews being rich or obsessed with money, have existed for centuries. It would be dangerous to assume they have disappeared suddenly.

To do so would be to ignore a mountain of concerning evidence.

For its part, The Guardian carried a headline labelling Bacile an “Israeli director”, again mentioning the omnipresent “Jewish donors” within its article. When Bacile was shown to have Coptic rather than Jewish connections, The Guardian did not alter its headline.  Why would The Guardian hold to a false idea, even when it has been proven to be false?

Just days earlier, The Guardian had made claims about Jewish donors in a different setting. In a news piece about the Democratic convention re-affirming its support for Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, published on September 6th, you could read matter-of-factly: “Jewish donors, particularly in New York, and pro-Israeli lobby groups are generous supporters not only to Obama but to individual senators and members of the House, who are also facing election in November.”

There are donors of all colours and creed to American politicians, so it is remarkable that The Guardian should choose to focus on the Jews. If unaware of political donors of other ethnic and religious backgrounds, readers might conclude from this article that rich Jews act as a hidden hand behind American politics.

So when “Sam Bacile” began to spin yarns of a hundred rich Jewish donors financing his project, the idea struck a chord with those who tacitly accept theories about rich Jewish money leading to unrest in the Middle East.

It is tempting to feel incredulous, and to laugh and mock the absurdity of educated people so readily believing a lie about Jews. Yet there is a clear enough pattern emerging, which ought to concern us more than it amuses us. 

Earlier this year, the Anglican Church voted at their annual Synod to support the anti-Israel religious and political group Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI), which is run by the World Council of Churches. Duly, Jewish deputies and community leaders expressed their concerns to the Synod.

In doing so, they were met with accusations from vicars, of “powerful lobbies” seeking to influence the Synod. Significantly, the proposer of the pro-EAPPI motion John Dinnen, claimed that an unremarkable A4 protest leaflet “must have cost £1,000”. The unspoken assumption was clear. The fingerprints of collective Jewish financial and political efforts were evidence that the case against the EAPPI motion was corrupted in its origin. Clearly the leaflet did not cost a thousand pounds, just as the Innocence of Muslims film trailer did not cost five million dollars.

When Ken Livingstone campaigned to become London mayor back in May, he expressed his belief that Jews would not vote for him because they are rich, and the rich vote for the Tories.

In the end, Livingstone lost by just over 60,000 votes. In the aftermath, some gleefully suggested that if Ken had not alienated so many with his unfair comments about Jews being rich, he might have run Boris Johnson far closer. However, it seemed unfathomable as to why Livingstone would deliberately risk upsetting voters, just to make his point about Jewish money.

In a documentary commissioned by Channel 4, Peter Oborne asked who funded the website CiF Watch, which holds the Guardian to account over its coverage on Israel. CiF Watch is a blog about a specialist subject, and to that extent, it is unremarkable. Bloggers set up blogs on all sorts of specialist subjects, from football teams, to musicians they like, to political causes. 

Set to sinister music, Oborne imagined CiF Watch to be part of an organised Israel lobby exercises “financial muscle” that holds sway over the BBC and Parliament. It was not enough that a few “mysterious” bloggers could just be people with a particular interest, but Oborne had to tell us that one of the CiF Watch bloggers lived in New York, and that he had upset a Guardian journalist by explaining what he thought was anti-Semitism.

When free-to-run blogs are seen as part of a collective financial project to undermine British politics, it is clear how absurd the lie about rich Jews really is.

In the wrong hands, the lie can prove fatal. 24-year-old Ilan Halimi was kidnapped in 2006, in France. Halimi’s kidnappers tried to extort money from his family. They thought that the young Jew was rich, as he was from a Moroccan Jewish family. However, Halimi’s family was of the same wealth as the families of kidnappers. When no ransom money could be provided, he was tortured to death and murdered.

The infamous Hamas charter asserts that the Jews, “with their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press […] they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein […] they formed secret societies [..]for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests.”

When we see Westerners march in solidarity with Hamas, we should not assume that they do so whilst ignoring these unsavoury parts of the Hamas charter. It is far more likely, that Hamas accusations about Jewish money chime with something about Jews that many educated people quite readily believe.

In this context, surely the media has a responsibility not to sustain prejudices, but rather to challenge them. Yet in recent years, we have seen a more subtle version of this concept, slowly creeping into mainstream political thinking.

The respectable version of the theory that Jews are rich and that their influence poisons politics, is that there is an “Israel lobby”, which seeks to sway leaders in the USA into taking pro-Israel positions.

This was the theory of American academics Mearsheimer and Walt, which quickly became popular amongst many left-wing British academics. So when John Mearsheimer expressed support for Gilad Atzmon by endorsing his book, and then defending his decision on Stephen Walt’s blog, it seemed shocking. Atzmon’s writings were overtly anti-Semitic.

He had claimed that modern Jews were the living embodiment of Fagin and Shylock, and that the Jews had effectively caused the Second World War by declaring war on Nazi Germany and seeking to boycott Nazi products. Mearsheimer had supported Atzmon’s writings, as if they were respectable. All of a sudden, the gap between intellectual Leftist anti-Zionism, and crude, aggressive antisemitism seemed infinitesimally small.

We will have to come to terms with the uncomfortable and distressing fact that in the twenty-first century, ludicrous claims about Jewish money and influence are a fact of life. The conspiracy theory about a hundred Jewish donors is the latest variation on this theme.

 Media outlets are only tempted to publish wild ideas about Jewish money, because they are readily believed within wider society. The longer this vicious circle continues, the more Jews will be forced into a corner, bound and trapped by the stereotypes which are readily thrust upon them.

Related articles
Jul 25 2012

My ‘Times of Israel’ essay: ‘Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian and the anti-imperialism of fools’

The following was published at Times of Israel

The Guardian’s most egregious moral blind spot – especially in light of the media group’s claim to represent anti-racist values – pertains to their editors’ licensing of commentators who possess an antipathy towards Jews and routinely advance tropes indistinguishable from what is normally associated with far-right Judeophobia.

Such polemicists (who are granted the media group’s progressive kashrut license) are typically of the radical Islamic variety – those who espouse values which are incompatible with even the broadest understanding of progressivism yet are given a moral pass by virtue of their cynical use of the language of human rights. (Richard Landes refers to such political posers as “demopaths.”)

Indeed, Guardian editors often grant members of terrorist groups, or their supporters, space at the Guardian’s blog, ‘Comment is Free‘.

However, the Guardian-approved socially acceptable anti-Israel brand of reactionary politics isn’t limited to those of the Islamist persuasion.

Ben White, who penned an appalling apologia for anti-Semitism for the extremist publication CounterPunch, is routinely published at “Comment is Free” – and given a platform to advance his malign obsession with the Jewish state.

The Guardian even offered space, in their letters section, to Alison Weir - accurately characterized as one of the few modern-day promoters of the ancient anti-Semitic blood libel.

Gilad Atzmon, who has literally endorsed the conspiracies advanced in the Elders of the Protocols of Zion that Jews are indeed trying to take over the world, has been the subject of quite laudatory profiles at the Guardian – and also had a letter published.

More recently, it was announced that Salon.com blogger, Glenn Greenwald, will be moving to the Guardian.

Greenwald (who blogs at Salon.com) advances a brand of anti-imperialism, much in the tradition of Guardian Associate Editor Seumas Milne, informed by a palpable loathing of America, a nation he sees as a dangerous force of evil in the world. Greenwald’s anti-Americanism is so intense he once compared the US overthrow of Saddam Hussein to the Nazi conquest of Europe.

As is often the case with Guardian-brand commentators, Greenwald’s anti-imperialist ideological package includes a vicious anti-Zionism, and a corresponding belief on the injurious influence of organized US Jewry on American foreign policy in the Middle East.

Here’s a sample of his musings on the villainy of organized Jewry.

  • “So absolute has the Israel-centric stranglehold on American policy been that the US Government has made it illegal to broadcast Hezbollah television stations.”
  • “Not even our Constitution’s First Amendment has been a match for the endless exploitation of American policy, law and resources [by the Israel lobby] to target and punish Israel’s enemies.”

Read the rest of my essay, here.

Related articles
Jul 24 2012

Guardian’s Jewish problem: Paper praises extreme antisemitic site CounterPunch as ‘progressive’

Mainstream left-wing antisemites do not, typically, explicitly accuse Jews of engaging in global conspiracies.

They do not, typically, explicitly advance the narrative of the duplicitous money-grubbing Jew.

They do not, as such, advance the ancient antisemitic blood libel.

And they typically do not, per se, warn their readers of the injurious effects of Jewish power on society.

Nor do they deny the Holocaust.

However, as this blog is continually demonstrating, the most egregious antisemitic sin of far left broadsheets such as the Guardian is their legitimization – even praise – for antisemites who do advance such racist calumnies about the Jewish people.

The Guardian’s recent editorial in praise of Alexander Cockburn (In praise of the Cockburns, July 23rd) represents a perfect example.

In the editorial, the Cockburns (Alexander and his father and brother) are characterized as “…aristocratic radicals” who “have been pillars of progressive journalism for decades.” Here’s the editorial in its entirety. 

“When distinguished sons and daughters follow distinguished parents it is easy to mutter about charmed circles. Yet there are genuine family talents that span the generations. The Huxleys and Freuds are examples, and the death of Alexander Cockburn is a reminder that the Cockburns are another. These radical aristocrats – or aristocratic radicals – have been pillars of progressive journalism for decades. Claud Cockburn, although not without some blind spots, battered at received wisdom in the 1930s. His sons, Alexander and Andrew, continued the tradition in the United States, Alexander indicating that continuity by calling one of his columns Beat the Devil, from the title of his father’s novel. Here, Patrick Cockburn has been for years one of the best Middle East reporters and analysts. Alexander’s writing has been praised as the key to “a life of joyful and creative resistance” – a fine phrase that could well be applied to them all.” [emphasis added]

To be begin with, Claud Cockburn joined the Communist Party and “worked closely with the Soviet agents who orchestrated both acts of violence against the anti-Stalinist left and the propaganda which whitewashed those acts.”  He could easily be characterized as an “intellectual hatchet man for Stalin”.  (Note that in 1936, Harry Pollitt, then General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain, asked Cockburn to cover the Spanish Civil War.  ”Harry Pollitt” would later become the nom de guerre of Seumas Milne – prior to joining the Guardian – in his days working for the pro-Stalinist paper, Straight Left.) 

Regarding Alexander Cockburn’s site, that paragon of progressive thought known as CounterPunch:

  • Counterpunch has repeatedly run articles by prolific antisemite, Gilad Atzmon. Briefly, Atzmon has questioned whether the Holocaust occurred, while simultaneously arguing that, if Hitler’s genocide did occur, it can partly be explained by Jews’ villainous behavior.  Atzmon also explicitly charged that Jews are indeed trying to take over the world, and has endorsed the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, arguing about the document that “it is impossible to ignore its prophetic qualities and its capacity to describe” later Jewish behavior.
  • Counterpunch published an article by Alison Weir which alleges that the blood libel, (the charge that Jews ritually murdered gentiles), is true and is related to the false  reports, in 2009, regarding Israeli thefts of human organs from Palestinians.
  • CounterPunch’s Alexander Cockburn has advanced the argument that Jews have a stranglehold on the U.S. media. 
  • CounterPunch published a rant by Jennifer Loewenstein, about a “Gazan Holocaust”, which included a passage referring to Israelis as “Neo-Jewish Masters” who used the Gaza war as a “pretext to carry out mass murder of the Arab Untermenschen.”

As Adam Holland observed, specifically regarding the Alison Weir blood libel charge, but also serving as relevant understanding of the ideology of CounterPunch and Cockburn:

“It is outrageous that they would present the anti-Semitism of the middle ages as progressive…portraying [Jews] as intrinsically reactionary and criminal. In doing this, Counterpunch has turned the definitions of “progressive” and “reactionary” on their heads.”

I can’t think of a better characterization of the Guardian Left: an institution which continually turns definitions of “progressive” and “reactionary” upside down. 

Finally, at times we’re asked why precisely we charge the Guardian with promoting antisemitism. We are also similarly challenged by well-meaning commentators who suggest that we may, at times, overstate the case regarding the institution’s Judeophobic sympathies.

Well, if you are among such critics, the Guardian’s characterization of CounterPunch – whose unapologetic vilification of Jews is simply part of their ideological DNA – as “progressive” should serve as a poignant illustration of the Guardian Group’s Jewish problem and, indeed, a vindication of the mission of this blog.

Related articles
Jun 11 2012

Islamism, and the Guardian left’s moral complicity with antisemitism

“In the Middle East, [antisemitism] has taken on a particularly dangerous, toxic and potentially genocidal aura of hatred…

Islamist anti-Semitism is thoroughly soaked in many of the most inflammatory themes that initially made possible the atrocities of…the Holocaust.

For example, the pervasive use of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion with its perennial theme of the “Jewish conspiracy for world domination;” or the medieval blood-libel imported to the Muslim world from Christian Europe; or the vile stereotypical image of the Jews as a treacherous, rapacious, and bloodthirsty people engaged in a ceaseless plotting to undermine the world of Islam”. – Professor Robert Wistrich

It is time to take seriously the question asked by the prolific Robin Shepherd  in the June 8th edition of The Commentator – following the publication at ‘Comment is Free’ of an essay by Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh - Is the Guardian the most bigoted newspaper in Britain?

Shepherd writes:

“Which of these propositions do you think is correct; and can you identify a moral distinction between them?

The Guardian newspaper has just run an article by someone advocating that black people be returned to the status of slaves.

The Guardian newspaper has just run an article suggesting that landlords be allowed to put up notices saying that Irish people and dogs need not apply for housing.

The Guardian newspaper has just run an article by a political leader whose foundational charter advocates the murder of Jews and promotes conspiracy theories that would not have looked out-of-place in Nazi Germany.

No prizes for guessing that the third of those propositions is correct on a factual basis. The morality? It’s a race to the bottom.

But given that anti-Semitism gave rise to the greatest single crime in human history, and that the Holocaust was the culmination of a series of horrific crimes that shame every civilisation that has been a party to it… well, you make up your own mind.

On Friday, the Guardian ran a piece in its opinion section by none other than Ismail Haniyeh, leader of Hamas in Gaza and now, it appears, a perfectly acceptable room-mate for the leading voice in Britain’s Liberal-Left.

Let’s not even get into the question of Hamas‘s attitude to gays and women – they support hanging the former and suppressing the latter. (By the way, it’s the gay pride festival today in Tel Aviv, and of course Gaza – no, sorry that last bit was a joke, a sick one, but not as sick as the Guardian editors who commissioned Hamas to write a piece for them.)” 

Shepherd’s question is an urgent one and it demands seriousness of mind.

Here is our case, based on evidence accumulated over the last several months (but certainly consistent with similar coverage of the Guardian, and its blog, Comment is Free, since the launch of CiF Watch in 2009).

The Guardian has published multiple essays by leaders of Hamas: a group which advocates genocidal antisemitism. 

As I noted in my post in reply to Haniyeh’s CiF essay (The Guardian and Hamas: Willing dupe and immutable victim), June 8th, this is not a Guardian one-off. In fact, since 2011 the broadsheet which aspires to be the “world’s leading liberal voice” has published essays by the Islamist terror group’s head of international relations (Osama Hamdan), its ‘advisor‘ (Azzam Tamimi), and the deputy head of Hamas’s political bureau (Musa Abumarzuq).

As Shepherd noted, the Guardian – by publishing articles by Hamas members – is in essence endorsing, as consistent with liberal thought (insofar as they oppose Zionism), a highly reactionary, religious extremist and violent political movement which advocates the murder of Jews and promotes conspiracy theories about the dangers of world Jewry in a manner indistinguishable from history’s most lethal antisemitic movements.

The Guardian ‘Live Blog from Gaza’ included a Palestinian blogger who advocates violence against Israelis and writes for an extreme right antisemitic Palestinian publication.

Their recent Live Blog from Gaza included a piece by Nader Elkhuzundar (whom the Guardian describes as a ‘Young Gaza blogger’) on Jun 8th.  

As Harry’s Place noted, Elkhuzundar maintains a blog called Sleepless in Gaza, which (in one entry) suggests Palestinians should “kill a Zionist“. 

Elkhuzundar is also a writer for the Palestine Telegraph; a racist paper known for praising Gilad Atzmon’s “courageous” new book, publishing an antisemitic video by former KKK grand wizard David Duke, as well as running an article claiming that World Wars 1 and 2 were both Jewish plots.

The Guardian’s advocacy for antisemitic Islamists: charge of ‘supremacy’ against the UK Jewish community at ‘Comment is Free’.

The Guardian produced a plethora of articles - all eerily similar in their support for an antisemitic Islamist extremist named Raed Salah (the various articles  uniformly described  him as a ‘Palestinian activist’) – despite undeniable evidence of Salah’s support for Hamas, reciting a poem advancing the antisemitic medieval  blood libel and propagating the antisemitic conspiracy that  the attacks on 9/11 were an Israeli plot (i.e., Jews were warned not to go to work at the World Trade Center on that day).

Further, after his hearing in the UK, Salah took a moral victory lap on the pages of ‘Comment is Free’ where he accused Zionists and their Jewish supporters in the UK of subscribing to the doctrine of ‘supremacy’: Britain’s duty to the Palestinian people, April 19th 2012.

Despite the hideous antisemitic pedigree of the charge that Jews are supremacists (which, as we noted in several emails to Guardian readers editor Chris Elliott, represents the ideas of David Duke and Gilad Atzmon), the passage remains on the pages of CiF to this day.

The Guardian refused to acknowledge the antisemitic motives of Islamist murderer of Jews in France.

In an official Guardian editorial - published after the Islamist background and antisemitic motivation of the Toulouse murderer Mohammed Merah (a self-styled al Qaeda jihadist) became known – the word “antisemitism” was not used, nor was the Jewish identity of four victims mentioned. It should be noted that it was widely reported in the press that Merah admitted antisemitic motivations, and said he attacked the Jewish school to avenge Palestinian children, stating “The Jews kill our brothers and sisters in Palestine.”

A pattern of the Guardian burying evidence of Palestinian/Islamist antisemitism. 

All of the recent stories represent a clear pattern. There exists a ubiquity of Islamist antisemitism in the Middle East which scholar Robert Wistrich has compared to Nazi Germany at its worst:

Wrote Wistrich:

“The scale and extremism of the literature and commentary available in Arab or Muslim newspapers, journals, magazines, caricatures, on Islamist websites, on the Middle Eastern radio and TV news, in documentaries, films, and educational materials, is comparable only to that of Nazi Germany at its worst.”

A six month study of the Guardian’s ‘Palestinian territories’ page, published here, for example, demonstrated that there was not one article published on the subject of Palestinian antisemitism. (Though this blog has limits in terms of our capacity for research, my working assumption is that a much longer survey would produce similar findings on the paucity of reports by Guardian reporters on rampant Jew hatred in the region.)

In addition, nowhere on the Guardian’s Iran page, for instance, will you find mention of the fact that a website with close ties to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khomenei, had outlined why it would be religiously acceptable to kill all Jews in Israel – a doctrine, as reported by the Mail Online, which details why the destruction of Israel and the slaughter of all its people would be legally and morally justified and in accordance to Islamic doctrine.

Also not reported by the Guardian: per a recently released WikiLeaks cable:

‘[In] January [2009], during a sermon broadcast on Al Jazeera Arabic, [Muslim Brotherhood Spiritual Leader] Imam Yousef Al-Qaradawi condemned Jews for spreading “corruption in the land,” and for victimizing the Muslim people. He said “We wait for the revenge of Allah to descend upon them, and, Allah willing, it will be by our own hands…Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them, down to the very last one.” [emphasis mine]

In conclusion, the Guardian’s faults of commission and omission, include: 

  • Licensing Islamist terror movements which openly seek the murder of Jews and advance antisemitic conspiracy theories.
  • Framing as ‘progressive”, and often as victims, Islamists who support the anti-Zionist cause while ignoring their clear record of Judeophobic rhetoric.
  • Burying even the most undeniable evidence of antisemitic Islamist motivation for violence in Europe.
  • Failing to report on antisemitism in the Middle East, hatred which would could serve to better contextualize, for the Guardian’s readers, the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

So why does the Guardian choose not to see Islamist antisemitism and how can it continue to frame adherents to this dangerous movement as victims (and often protagonists) even when engaging in the most cruel, racist and reactionary political behavior against Jews?

Is it due to a political orthodoxy, informed by Western guilt, which sees Israel and the Middle East through a facile post-colonial (and morally pre-assigned) victim-perpetrator paradigm?

To some degree such questions of ideological ‘first causes’ are moot.
 
For whatever reasons, by failing to report (to their enormous liberal readership) the political pathologies of the Middle East – those whose malign obsession with Jews represent the central address of antisemtism in the modern era – the Guardian, and all who legitimize this media institution, are morally complicit with anti-Jewish racism.
 
One simply cannot claim the mantle of passionate opposition to racism whilst turning a blind eye to its Islamist variety.
 

The bottom line is that the Guardian consistently enables, covers for, excuses, and (mostly) ignores, Islamist Judeophobia.  By framing Ismail Haniyeh, Raed Salah and Shiekh Yousef Qaradawi - the intellectual heirs to Streicher and Goebbels - not as would-be  homicidal Jew haters but as the oppressed and downtrodden, the wretched of the earth – “activists”, liberals and reformers – the Guardian is engaged in a dangerous cognitive assault on the Jewish people.

Islamism is the most dangerous antisemitic movement in the world today, and it pains me that it pains so many to read those words. The Third Reich was defeated sixty-seven years ago and it is time for true liberals to fight the good fight and not cower in the face of a supremely politically inconvenient – yet enormously dangerous – enemy.  

In the classic ‘fight or flight’ instinct which history records with merciless accuracy often years too late, the Guardian represents the instinct to succumb to intellectual fads and enforced political orthodoxies over serious moral thought and urgent action. Cowardliness in the face of danger: life’s ultimate moral and intellectual abdication.

Those who understand the stakes, fancy themselves liberals, and consider themselves unabashed friends of the Jews, should not have to think hard when pondering the danger Islamism represents in the context of the age old battle against antisemitism (from antiquity to the modern day).

And, finally:

It should not be mentally taxing to understand intuitively that it is never Islamophobic to be unapologetically philo-Semitic.

The Guardian has failed miserably to comprehend these vital truths – are indeed hostile, and stand athwart, from the actions they demand – and so the institution should rightfully be seen as representing, to the Jewish people and their allies, an enemy in our midst. 

 
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Jun 1 2012

Request to CiF Watch readers: Ask Guardian to remove Raed Salah’s ‘Jewish supremacism’ smear

In a quasi mea culpa which, appearing to vindicate the work of CiF Watch, but now seems less serious with each passing day, Guardian readers’ editor Chris Elliott, in a post titled ‘On averting accusations of antisemitism“, published on Nov. 6, 2011, sought to address the following complaints about the Guardian:

“…that [the paper] is carrying material that… lapses into language resonant of antisemitism or is antisemitic”, citing “organisations monitoring the Guardian’s coverage” which “examine the language in articles – and the comments posted underneath them online – as closely as the facts.” [emphasis mine]

Elliott continued:

“Two weeks ago a columnist used the term “the chosen” in an item on the release of Gilad Shalit, which brought more than 40 complaints to the Guardian, and an apology from the columnist the following week. “Chosenness”, in Jewish theology, tends to refer to the sense in which Jews are “burdened” by religious responsibilities; it has never meant that the Jews are better than anyone else. Historically it has been antisemites, not Jews, who have read “chosen” as code for Jewish supremacism.” [emphasis added]

Here, Elliott was referring to Deborah Orr’s mocking use of the phrase “the chosen”, in an essay she published in the Guardian on Nov. 21  (to evoke the notion that Jews are inherently racist).  However, Elliott’s last passage was an admission not only that such pejorative uses of “the chosen” are code words used by antisemites, but, additionally, that the idea of “Jewish supremacism” is understood to be necessarily, indeed by definition, antisemitic.

The idea of Jewish supremacy is an explicitly antisemitic narrative, one which was popularized by David Duke and Gilad Atzmon, and is indeed similar to the ‘chosen people’ canard, suggesting that Jews are racist (as is the Jewish faith itself) and see themselves as a superior race.

 Along comes Raed Salah (the leader of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel), who publishes a CiF piece, “Britain’s duty to the Palestinian people“, on April 19.  His essay represented a moral victory lap of sorts, in the institution which had obsessively  championed his cause since he  prevailed in a series of appeals following his arrest by UK Immigration due to his history of hate and extremism.

His record on this account includes: Imprisonment for funding Hamas, reciting a poem advancing the antisemitic medieval  blood libel, and propagating the antisemitic conspiracy that  the attacks on 9/11 were an Israeli plot (i.e., Jews were warned not to go to work at the World Trade Center on that day).

Salah’s essay, titled “Britain’s duty to the Palestinian people” contains this complete lie:

“After a 10-month legal battle, I have now been cleared on “all grounds” by a senior immigration tribunal judge, who ruled that May’s decision to deport me was “entirely unnecessary” and that she had been “misled”. The evidence she relied on (which included a poem of mine which had been doctored to make it appear anti-Jewish) was not, he concluded, a fair portrayal of my views.” [emphasis added]

As we’ve  noted previously, the UK Immigration tribunal, in ruling that Salah indeed engaged in the antisemitic blood libel, wrote, in the final ruling (sec. 59):

“…we do not find this comment [by Salah] could be taken to be anything other than a reference to the blood libel against Jews and nothing said by the appellant explains why it would be interpreted otherwise from the original Arabic text or in the English text before us…”

Salah’s blatant lie, in the pages of CiF, claiming vindication, is followed by this simply risible line:

“….In reality, I reject any and every form of racism, including antisemitism.”

Ok, leaving aside his proclivity to engage in antisemitic blood libels, and advancing 9/11 conspiracy theories alleging an international Jewish plot, Salah isn’t able to contain his antipathy towards Jews for even the length of the very essay he was writing. In fact, a mere nine paragraphs later, there is this:

“The Palestinian issue can only be resolved if Israel and its supporters in Britain abandon the dogmas of supremacy…”

It’s this simple.  Raed Salah is accusing Jews of being supremacists, an accusation Elliott acknowledged was an explicit expression of anti-Jewish racism.

Either Chris Elliott was serious in his Nov, 2011, moral warning to Guardian staff or he wasn’t.  

While I’m not at liberty to reveal the details of my ongoing correspondence with Mr. Elliott regarding this matter, the exchanges suggest a failure to take Salah’s antisemitism seriously.

I ask our readers to contact Mr. Elliott and respectfully request that he consider deleting Salah’s characterization of Jews as “supremacists” from his April 19th essay.

We don’t intend to let up until this hideous passage is removed.

Here is Elliott’s contact info:

chris.elliott@guardian.co.uk, reader@guardian.co.uk

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May 7 2012

Video: BDS leader Omar Barghouti making blatantly racist remark

This is cross posted by Zach at Huffington Post Monitor.

Gilad Atzmon found this video of Omar Barghouti (who you probably know from his boycott work) putting his foot squarely in his mouth:

The video is only a minute long but there is oh so much information packed into it. For example Barghouti declares that he won’t be lectured on violence by a “white person” why? Because “the white race is the most violent in history of mankind.” Isn’t that special.

Atzmon found the video from Deliberation, which is a left-wing site. Deliberation had some uncomfortable questions as well:

“But there is also another acute question that deserves our immediate attention. Why exactly the ‘socialist’ crowd in Chicago is so exited by Barghouti’s Racist remark? Is it possible that our so-called ‘progressive’ panthers have changed their spots, are they now in favour if [sic] racism? 

“I guess that Ben White, another spokesman for the BDS movement, may have an answer to offer. In a recent New Statesman article he foolishly admitted that that BDS “is a strategy, not a principle.” 

“I guess that this is indeed very concerning about the BDS . It is not principled at all. A BDS prominent leader happens to spread racist remarks while enrolling to a ‘Zionist’ academic institute which he expects us to boycott. Another BDS prominent spokesman admits that the BDS is “not principled”. Meanwhile in the UK BDS attempts to destroy Israeli Habima theatre but does nothing to promote a Palestinian theatre from Ramallah. As the BDS buying itself a name of a dedicated book burning institution, we learn that trade between Israel and Britain grew last year by 34%. 

“If BDS is an important humanitarian call and, we in Deliberation believe it is, it better be managed and represented by people who are slightly more principled and certainly more clever and astute.

I would say of course that BDS has been racist from it’s very beginning. This latest admission by Barghouti only helps to prove it.

Related articles
May 3 2012

BDS-promoting Palestine Festival of Literature supported by British public funding.

Last December CiF Watch published an article about the Palestine Festival of Literature (or ‘PalFest’ as it is more frequently known), its origins and its connections to the Guardian. For those wishing to refresh their memories, the article is here. 

Unsurprisingly then, the Guardian’s culture section carried an article by Alison Flood on May 2nd about this year’s PalFest which is scheduled to begin this weekend in Ramallah, and then to travel to Gaza and Cairo. 

The May 5th event in Ramallah will feature, among others, Guardian employee Rachel Holmes and BBC World Service producer Bee Rowlatt. Among those appearing at the events in Gaza starting from May 6th will be PalFest founder and Guardian writer Ahdaf Soueif, Alaa Abd el-Fattah (who has also contributed to the Guardian and is Ahdaf Soueif’s nephew), Suad Amiry (whose books are available via the Guardian bookshop) and Selma Dabbagh, (who has also written for and been reviewed by the Guardian). 

The interesting parts of Flood’s article are these: (emphasis added) 

“PalFest, a festival of public events, student workshops and meetings with civil society leaders, is set to run from 5 to 9 May in Gaza, with an initial event in Ramallah on the 5 May and a finale in Cairo on the 11 May. Supported by organisations including Arts Council England and the British Council, with patrons including Chinua Achebe, Seamus Heaney and Philip Pullman, it endorses the Palestinian call for the academic and cultural boycott of Israel, and states as its mission the reinvigoration of “cultural ties between Arab countries, ties that have been eroded for too long”. Soueif is its founding chair.”

“Dr Haidar Eid, a literature professor at Gaza’s Al-Aqsa University, said the festival was “a sign of the growing solidarity across borders in our struggle against racism and oppression”.

“Intellectuals and writers played a key role in ending apartheid in South Africa; likewise, Arab cultural figures are visiting Gaza this year to show solidarity with Palestinian academics and artists in support for their call to increase the global BDS [Boycott Divestment and Sanctions] campaign against apartheid Israel,” he said. “On behalf of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, we deeply appreciate the Arab writers’ principled and consistent support for the Palestinian civil struggle for justice and peace in Palestine.” “

 The Arts Council England receives funding from the British government’s Department of Culture, Media and Sport to the tune of £350 million after the recent cuts. It also enjoys further public financial support via National Lottery funding.

The British Council received £196 million in government grants via the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 2010-11. It is a registered charity and comes under UK embassy and Consular auspices. 

The BBC World Service (Bee Rowlatt’s employer) is also publicly funded, amongst others by DFID – the Department for International Development – and at present, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.  

On the other hand, in 2008 the British Council’s CEO Martin Davidson said that:

“The British Council is firmly opposed to an academic boycott of Israeli universities. Academic boycotts are bad in principle, and would be bad in this specific case… dialogue is unlikely to be sustained without exchange between academics and academic institutions…”   

And in 2009 the British Embassy in Israel claimed on behalf of the previous government that:

“The British government is opposed to any kind of boycott of Israel.”

So which is it? For boycotts or against? 

Unfortunately, the publicly-funded Arts Council made its stance more than clear last November when, in response to criticism of its funding of an event featuring proud anti-Semite Gilad Atzmon, it issued a statement saying:

“It is not the Arts Council’s role to dictate artistic policy to a funded organisation, or to restrict an artist from expressing their views. What our policies and procedures do ensure is that we fund a wide range of organisations and individuals who, collectively, present a diverse view of world society.”

It would, however be interesting to hear what the tax-paying British public thinks about the fact that organizations and government departments which it funds even in these difficult economic times see fit to support a project such as PalFest which openly declares its aims to be contrary those expressed at least by the former British government.

It would also be interesting to hear representatives of the FCO, DFID and DCMS explain their departments’ involvement – albeit indirectly – in promoting the aims of the BDS movement and PACBI, which rejects normalization of any kind and aspires to dismantle the Jewish State.  

Until they do, many may continue to think that ambivalent British government policies, actions and statements do much to contribute to the increasingly unpleasant atmosphere on the streets of the UK as well as undermining Britain’s stance as an honest broker in the Middle East. 

 

Related articles
Apr 20 2012

Guardian’s duty to Jews on Yom HaShoah? Don’t publish accusations that we’re “supremacists”!

While you should read Hadar Sela’s superb take down of the reprehensible decision by Comment is Free editors to provide a forum, on Holocaust Heroism and Remembrance Day, to the recently released Islamist Raed Salah, (Britain’s duty to the Palestinian people, April 19) one particular passage in Salah’s claim of moral vindication deserves scrutiny.

Here’s the relevant passage:

After a 10-month legal battle, I have now been cleared on “all grounds” by a senior immigration tribunal judge, who ruled that May’s decision to deport me was “entirely unnecessary” and that she had been “misled”. The evidence she relied on (which included a poem of mine which had been doctored to make it appear anti-Jewish) was not, he concluded, a fair portrayal of my views. In reality, I reject any and every form of racism, including antisemitism. [emphasis added]

Here’s the version of the poem as cited in the recent UK Immigration Tribunal ruling:

“We are not a nation that is based on values of envy.  We are not a nation that is based on values of vengeance.  We have never allowed ourselves, and listen carefully; we have never allowed ourselves to knead the bread for the breaking [of] fasting during the blessed month of Ramadan with the blood of the children.  And if someone wants a wider explanation, then he should ask what used to happen to some of the children of Europe, when their blood used to be mixed in the dough of the holy bread.  God almighty, is this religion?  Is this what God wants?  Allah’s curse be on you: how you are deluded away from the Truth.  How dare you to lie to God?  How dare you to fabricate things on God?” [emphasis added]

However, contrary to Salah’s claim in CiF, the UK Immigration Tribunal did not vindicate the poem at all.

Here’s the text from the ruling, regarding the poem:

we do not find this [poem] could be taken to be anything other than a reference to the blood libel against Jews and nothing said by the appellant or Professor Pappe explains why it would be interpreted otherwise from the original Arabic text or in the English text before us. 

Finally, perhaps the most risible claim in Salah’s CiF essay is that he rejects antisemitism.

While we’ve commented on his undeniable record of Jew hatred on many occasions, a later passage in his own CiF essay further demonstrates how absurd his claim is.

Salah writes

Despite the Israeli policy of “transfer” – another term for ethnic cleansing – the Palestinians will not go away. The Israeli state can occupy our lands, demolish our homes, drill tunnels under the old city of Jerusalem – but we will not disappear. Instead, we now aspire to a directly elected leadership for Palestinians in Israel; one that would truly represent our interests. We seek only the legal rights guaranteed to us by international conventions and laws.

The Palestinian issue can only be resolved if Israel and its supporters in Britain abandon the dogmas of supremacy and truly adhere to the universal values of justice and fairness. [emphasis added]

As we’ve noted several times in the context of commenting on Gilad Atzmon, imputing “supremacist” ideology to Zionists and Jews is a morally hideous idea which was, unsurprisingly, popularized by David Duke, a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

And, yes, when Salah refers to “Israel and its supporters in Britain“, the supporters he’s talking about are Jews.

Guardian Readers’ Editor Chris Elliott, in his quasi mea culpa, “On Averting Accusations of antisemitism“, in Nov., wrote:

Three times in the last nine months I have upheld complaints against language within articles that I agreed could be read as antisemitic…Two weeks ago a columnist used the term “the chosen” in an item on the release of Gilad Shalit, which brought more than 40 complaints to the Guardian, and an apology from the columnist the following week.“Chosenness”, in Jewish theology, tends to refer to the sense in which Jews are “burdened” by religious responsibilities; it has never meant that the Jews are better than anyone else. Historically it has been antisemites, not Jews, who have read “chosen” as code for Jewish supremacism. [emphasis added]

Evidently Salah didn’t feel the need to even use such a code word for Jewish supremacism.

And, evidently, Guardian editors have not gotten Elliott’s memo, and continue to show themselves either incapable of recognizing, or indifferent to, even such explicit anti–Jewish racism – on Yom HaShoah, and each day the broadsheet continues in their simply comical mission of being the “liberal” paper of record.   

Related articles
Mar 20 2012

The Guardian-approved American Judeophobic Paleo-Conservatism of Glenn Greenwald

Pat Buchanan's extreme right magazine, The American Conservative

In contextualizing the Guardian daily, among the most troubling dynamics we’re continually commenting on is not, per se, their explicitly antisemitic commentary.

Rather, their supreme hypocrisy, an egregious moral blind spot in the context of their claim to represent anti-racist values, is their licensing of commentators purportedly advancing a “liberal” agenda (consistent with their left-wing political brand) who possess an unambiguous antipathy towards Jews – those who advance tropes indistinguishable from what is normally associated with far-right Jew-hatred.

Examples of the Guardian’s tendency to issue a political stamp of approval to exceedingly illiberal figures abound.

Such commentators granted the media group’s progressive kashrut license are typically of the Islamist variety – those who fully endorse values which are inherently incompatible with even the broadest understanding of progressive values yet are given a pass by virtue of their cynical use of the language of human rights in the service of demonizing Israel.

What else could explain their editorial decision to grant members of terrorist groups, or their supporters, space at ‘Comment is Free‘? 

However, the Guardian-approved socially acceptable anti-Israel brand of reactionary politics isn’t limited to those of the Islamist persuasion.

Ben White, who penned an appalling apologia for antisemitism for the extremist publication CounterPunch, is routinely published at ‘Comment is Free’ –  given a platform to advance his malign obsession with the Jewish state. 

The Guardian even offered space, in their letters section to Alison Weir - accurately characterized as one of the few modern day promoters of the ancient antisemitic blood libel.

Gilad Atzmon, who has literally endorsed the conspiracies advanced in the Elders of the Protocols of Zion that Jews are indeed trying to take over the world, has been the subject of quite laudatory profiles at the Guardian – and also had a letter published.

I’m not going to fisk Glenn Greenwald’s recent essay at ‘Comment is Free’, Afghanistan and American Imperialism, March 19, but, rather, provide a glimpse into the American blogger’s politics.

Greenwald (who blogs at Salon.com) advances an anti-imperialism, much in the tradition of Guardian Associate Editor Seumas Milne, informed by a seemingly insatiable loathing of America, a nation he sees a dangerous force of evil in the world – a malice so intense he even once compared the U.S. overthrow of Saddam Hussein to the Nazi conquest of Europe.

But, more consistent with the mission of this blog, here’s a sample of his musings on the villainy of organized Jewry.

  • “So absolute has the Israel-centric stranglehold on American policy been that the U.S. Government has made it illegal to broadcast Hezbollah television stations.”
  • “Not even our Constitution’s First Amendment has been a match for the endless exploitation of American policy, law and resources [by the Israel lobby] to target and punish Israel’s enemies.”
  • “The real goal [of the Israel lobby], as always, was to ensure that there is no debate over America’s indescribably self-destructive, blind support for Israeli actions. [Charles] Freeman’s critics may have scored a short-term victory in that regard, but the more obvious it becomes what is really driving these scandals, the more difficult it will be to maintain this suffocating control over American debates and American policy.”
  • “The point is that the power the [Israel lobby] exercises [is] harmful in the extreme. They use it to squelch debate, destroy the careers and reputations of those who deviate from their orthodoxies, and compel both political parties to maintain strict adherence to an agenda that is held by a minority of Americans; that is principally concerned with the interests of a foreign country; and that results in serious cost and harm to the United States. In doing so, they insure not only that our policies towards Israel remain firmly in place no matter the outcome of our elections, but also that those policies remain beyond the realm of what can be questioned or debated by those who want to have a political future.”
  • “Anyone who has argued that a desire to protect Israeli interests plays too large of a role in our foreign policy has been subjected to some of the most vicious and relentless smears. Ask Juan Cole about that, or John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. Those tactics have, as intended, prevented a substantive debate on this question, as most people have feared even approaching the topic.”
  • “[Eisenhower] told Israel that “we handle our affairs exactly as though we didn’t have a Jew in America” – and [this] was then likely an uncontroversial sentiment. Today, if an American politician said anything remotely like that – that American interests would take precedence over Israel’s…how many seconds would elapse before the full-scale and permanent destruction of their political career was complete?”
  • “If you don’t…pledge your loyalty to our policies toward Israel and to Israel, what will happen to you is what just happened to Charles Freeman. You’ll be demonized and have your career ended.”
  • “Large and extremely influential Jewish donor groups are the ones agitating for a U.S. war against Iran, and that is the case because those groups are devoted to promoting Israel’s interests.”
  • “Those [American Jews] who favor the attack on Gaza are certainly guilty…of such overwhelming emotional and cultural attachment to Israel and Israelis that they long ago ceased viewing this conflict with any remnant of objectivity.”
  • “The dominant narrative among neocons and the media is that, deep down in his heart, [Obama] may be insufficiently devoted to Israel to be President of the United States. Has there ever been another country to which American politicians were required to pledge their uncritical, absolute loyalty the way they are, now, with Israel?”
  • “[Charles] Freeman is being dragged through the mud by the standard cast of accusatory Israel-centric neocons (Marty Peretz, Jon Chait, Jeffrey Goldberg, Commentary, The Weekly Standard’s Michael Goldfarb, etc. etc., etc.).”
  • “It is difficult to find someone with a more psychopathic indifference to the slaughter of innocent people in pursuit of shadowy, unstated political goals than Charles Krauthammer.” 

As you read these quotes tell me one thing. How is such reactionary rhetoric dissimilar from the paleoconservativism of Pat Buchanan?

In fact, Greenwald has been published at Buchanan’s magazine several times, once on the topic of undue Jewish influence on American politics.

Glenn Greenwald, whose blog was initially called “UNCLAIMED TERRITORY,” styles himself as a bold new thinker, and a brave dissident who is willing to explore “taboos” about the national loyalty of Jews and their corrosive effects on the American body politic that others dare not go.

His narrative, however, full of poisonous, old, lethal tropes about the dangers of collective Jewry to the body politic is as ancient as the Jewish diaspora itself.

Greenwald’s toxic, Judeophobic ideological territory, absurdly framed as liberalism by the Guardian, has been claimed before.

Related articles
Mar 12 2012

Guardian changes course & (permanently) removes Gilad Atzmon’s book from their online shop

H/T Al

A quick summary:

Within 24 hours of our post in October of 2011 on the fact that the Guardian’s online bookshop was selling Gilad Atzmon’s egregiously antisemitic book, The Wandering Who?, they removed the book from their shop.

However, as we noted recently, at some point following October the Guardian placed the book back on their online shop.

Last week, however, we learned that, following an email exchange with the Guardian’s book editor by a CiF Watch reader, the Guardian reversed course and, noted that “The Wandering Who has now been removed from the Guardian Bookshop site”. They attributed the availability of the book to “a problem with [their automated] feeds.”

Yesterday, Chris Elliott, the Guardian’s Readers’ Editor, addressed the issue in “…On the inclusion of controversial titles in our bookshop“, March 11.

Wrote Elliott:

If you put the words Mein Kampf into the search function of the Guardian’s online bookshop you get two editions offered for sale…the second carries the following text:

“Hitler’s infamous political tract…contains a detailed introduction which analyses Hitler’s background, his ideology and his ruthless understanding of political power.”

It espouses a rabidly antisemitic view of the world among other things….I am entirely convinced that it is a book that should be available to be read because it has an important lesson from history; suppression would only lend an unjustified mystique. In this area waders or a wet suit are more suitable than a standard pair of wellington boots to navigate through the depths of this subject. 

Should every book legally published be available in the Guardian’s online bookshop? This is where it becomes even more difficult. Part of me says, yes. I am opposed to the suppression of books and believe in the power of readers to make rational and intelligent decisions. Bring things into the light. But even where the sale of a book is legal, there will always be a selection process. Where the Guardian is involved in that selection process, it has the right to do what all good bookshops do and select what it offers according to its own principles such as when it is publishing its own books. Where the Guardian is not involved in selecting the title, then it has a duty to tell potential shoppers that that is the case.

…Gilad Atzmon’s The Wandering Who? was removed because of the controversy it has caused. Atzmon says he is anti-Zionist but he has been accused of making antisemitic remarks, including past praise for the “prophetic qualities” of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a falsified tract purporting to show plans for Jewish domination of the world that was written by agents of Tsarist Russia. [emphasis added]

…After strong protests last November about the inclusion of Atzmon’s book in the Guardian’s online bookshop, we removed it from the electronic feed but it was later restored on our bookshop lists and therefore other newspapers’ feeds. One reason was the technological problem but the others were considered to be broader issues. At the time Guardian executives considered that:

• If a book is removed, the impression may be created that the Guardian “approves” of all the other books on the Guardian’s bookshop feed.

• Removing a book lends an unjustified cachet to it.

When the book was restored to the list, a much clearer explanation of what the list represents for the Guardian was used:

“In addition to our recommendations, our browsable selection of books also includes a feed of the top 5,000 bestselling titles through independent booksellers (not including Amazon) as supplied by Bertrams. Inclusion in this automated feed does not necessarily denote recommendation by GNM.”

Now the book is off the list again following renewed protests.  It will remain so. [emphasis added]

While I applaud their decision to remove Atzmon’s book from their shelves, it is necessary to address Elliott’s comparison with Mein Kempf.  As Elliott noted, the synopsis of Mein Kempf on their site notes, “Hitler’s infamous political tract…contains a detailed introduction which analyses Hitler’s background, his ideology and his ruthless understanding of political power.”

That is, the book is being characterized as a hateful book, whose availability is owed to its historical significance in understanding the Nazi regime’s murder of six million Jews.

The Guardian synopsis of Atzmon’s book, however, included the following:

So, the publisher’s synopsis characterized an overtly antisemitic book – by an author who has claimed that Hitler’s views about Jews may one day be proven right, and who explicitly charges that Jews are indeed trying to take over the world – as a “unique crucial book” which tackles the issues of Jewish “ideology and their global influence”. [emphasis added]

Finally, unsurprisingly, a Guardian reader wrote the following below Elliott’s post:

Yes, the Guardian cravenly caved to the weight of “pressure” exerted by groups who fight antisemitism!

As I noted in a subsequent comment on the thread, the word “censorship” refers to a government which legally prohibits certain books from being sold. What we’re dealing with here is an independent bookseller making the decision not to sell a truly vile book. That is their right. 

As I’ve argued before, if David Duke’s books (or books by the BNP, or other extremist groups) were among the top 5000 in their automated feed, would the Guardian be obligated to sell them?  

Of course not.

“Censorship” or “Zionist pressure” has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Related articles
Mar 9 2012

Economist blog accuses Israelis of fearing Iran due to “Auschwitz Complex”

Cross posted by Mark Gardner at the blog of the CST

According to an article by “M.S.” on the Economist blog, Israel and its Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu fear Iran because they suffer from “Auschwitz complex”. Furthermore, this “Auschwitz complex” supposedly links with the Jewish festivals of Purim and Passover. At its end, we are told that Netanyahu’s fears over Iran, reveal his “ghetto mentality”.    

The Holocaust, Jewish history and religion are crucial to the Israeli national psyche and the decisions of its leaders: but this is not a serious article on that multifaceted subject. Instead, this article’s lack of accuracy and sensitivity make it little more than an abuse of the Holocaust and Jewish religion in order to stick two fingers up at Netanyahu. (The Economist is perfectly entitled to criticise Netanyahu: but to do so on the premise of supposed Jewish psychological, religious and historical traits takes us into altogether different territory.)      

To begin, the article’s title, “Auschwitz complex”, belongs more on the websites of Gilad Atzmon (eg “Swindler’s List”) and David Irving (eg “Auschwitz: the End of the Line”) than it does on that of the Economist. It is a cold joke, poking fun at the Holocaust to evoke a wry grin and not a little coldness in the heart of the reader.

The article opens with an attack upon Netanyahu for telling President Obama (in the context of Iran’s nuclear ambitions) that Israel seeks to remain “master of its fate”. The author ridicules the notion that any individual country, especially one in conflict with its neighbours, can be master of its own fate in an inter-dependent world. This is a facile straw man argument that sets the tone for what follows.

Next, Israel and Netanyahu are blamed for every failure of the Oslo Peace Accords and for the ongoing conflict situation. There is nothing unusual about such condemnation, but in this context it is required by the author to justify the notion of an “Auschwitz complex”, whereby Israel’s and Netanyahu’s actions are presented as a mix of premeditated ideological malice and unwarranted paranoia. (It is possible that the title, “Auschwitz complex” was written by the Economist, not the author. Nevertheless, the article is woeful; and if the Economist chose the headline, then that is, in a sense, even more depressing.)

Having built the platform, we get the crux of the article:

Having trapped themselves in a death struggle with Palestinians that they cannot acknowledge or untangle, Israelis have psychologically displaced the source of their anxiety onto a more distant target: Iran…the notion that it represents a new Holocaust is overstated…But Iran makes an appealing enemy for Israelis because, unlike the Palestinians, it can be fitted into a familiar ideological trope from the Jewish national playbook: the eliminationist anti-Semite.

Where to begin with this? For the sake of brevity, two points:

Firstly, it is plain wrong to say that Palestinians cannot be “fitted into a familiar ideological trope from the Jewish playbook: the eliminationist anti-Semite”. Palestinian and Arab threats to destroy Israel have consistently formed an “ideological trope” in the Israeli psyche, just like today’s Iranian threat. Prior to the state’s creation, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was (and still is) reviled in this manner, just as Egypt’s President Nasser was in the 1950 and 60s. Then, Menachem Begin’s leadership of Israel (1977-1983) was marked by his characterisation of Yasser Arafat and the PLO as Nazi inheritors. Similarly, the Hamas charter bears comparison with any“eliminationist” text. 

Secondly, as the ever-excellent Professor Alan Johnson points out, “let us note that far from the concept of eliminationist antisemitism – being part of some ‘Jewish national playbook,’ it was the absence of such an orientating concept among the Jews of Europe that made the nature of the Nazi assault so difficult to understand and respond to.”

The author, “M.S.”, then draws upon Netanyahu’s presentation to Obama of the Book of Esther, which tells how a Persian king was persuaded by (the Jewish) Queen Esther to prevent the massacre of his country’s Jews. The story is read at the festival of Purim, which coincided with the Netanyahu-Obama meeting. We are then told how Passover includes the “Ve-hi she-amdah” prayer, “Because in every generation they rise up to destroy us, but the Holy One, Blessed be He, delivers us from their hands”.

The article says that Netanyahu “seems to be wooing Mr Obama and the American public just as effectively” and that this “resembles” a “doomed marriage” in which

the more stubborn and unstable partner drags the other into increasingly delusional and dangerous projects whose disastrous results seem only to legitimate their paranoid outlook.

No consideration is given to Iran’s past and present actions. No mention is made of its nuclear programme, its goal of regional domination, its leader’s apocalyptic outbursts, its denial of the Holocaust, its terrorism against Jews and Israelis. It is simply all down to Israeli delusions, which rest upon paranoid Jewish religious and Holocaust foundations. This is superior to Gilad Atzmon’s work, such as “Trauma Queen [Esther]…Pre-Traumatic Gas Syndrome…From Purim to AIPAC”, but it is still reminiscent of it. Surely the Economist ought to have far higher standards than the dross psychology and selective facts that comprise and compromise this article.

Finally, the author signs off with a couple more digs at Netanyahu, claiming his concerns over Iran (and Palestinians), and his Book of Esther gift to Obama reveal the failure to fulfil “the Zionist mission…to give the Jewish people control over its destiny”, and his being “still in” “the ‘Ghetto mentality’”.

By comparison, the Jerusalem Post (traditionally a somewhat more pro-Israel publication than the Economist), noted that against American advice, Israel had very successfuly declared independence (1948), launched the Six Day War (1967) and destroyed the Iraqi nuclear programme (1981). The editorial also had this to say about Netanyahu, the Book of Esther, Zionism and Iran:

That message from the Megila [Book of Esther] that encourages Jews to proactively take their fate into their own hands is also the story of the Zionist movement and the State of Israel. Refusing any longer to reconcile themselves to traditional passivity vis-à-vis the creation of a sovereign state, Jews who adhered to Zionism called to take hold of their own destiny.

…Unfortunately, they failed to achieve their goal before the Holocaust, which proved beyond a doubt Zionism’s premise that the Jewish people could not rely on the compassion of others.

…The message of the Megila is not one of militarism.

The lesson that Netanyahu wanted to impart to Obama was not that Israel must launch an attack against Iran to stop its mullahs from developing nuclear weapons.

However, the Megila does value Jewish action over Jewish passivity and recognizes that whether through ingenuity, good luck, divine intervention or a combination of them all the Jewish people, when given the chance, have managed to foil the plans of their many enemies. Let’s hope we have the same success in facing the Iranian challenge.

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Mar 5 2012

The Guardian places Gilad Atzmon’s book back on its shelves

H/T Harry’s place

While we’re, of course, not privy to the Guardian’s decision-making process, within 24 hours of our post in November about their promotion of Gilad Atzmon’s book (The Wandering Who?) on their online bookshop, the Guardian removed the title from their site.

The Guardian bookshop page displayed this when you tried to open the link:

“sorry this product is not listed”

As we’ve noted repeatedly about Atzmon, he engages in explicit antisemitism which is indistinguishable from what is found on the extreme (white supremacist) right,

In brief, Atzmon repeatedly refers to Judaism as “supremacist“‘ faith, has questioned whether the Holocaust occurred, while simultaneously arguing that, if Hitler’s genocide did occur, it can partly be explained by Jews’ villainous behavior.  (On this latter note, he claimed that Hitler’s views about Jews may one day be proven right.)

Atzmon also explicitly charges that Jews are indeed trying to take over the world, and has endorsed of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, arguing about the document that “it is impossible to ignore its prophetic qualities and its capacity to describe” later Jewish behavior.

The CST characterized ‘The Wandering Who?’ as “quite probably the most antisemitic book published in this country in recent years.”

However, at some point since November, the book was again made available on their site,

Note the synopsis.

However, the Guardian now has a disclaimer which reads:

The Guardian Bookshop makes nearly 200,000 books available to our customers with 20% discount or better available on the majority of titles. Within this wide selection, we aim to highlight a tailored selection of handpicked books in each genre that reflect the Guardian and Observer’s well-respected literary coverage and reviews. In addition to our recommendations, our browsable selection of books also includes a feed of the top 5,000 best-selling titles through independent booksellers (not including Amazon) as supplied by Bertrams.Inclusion in this automated feed does not necessarily denote recommendation by GNM.

Though a search on the website they cited (Bertrams) lists “The Wandering Who?” with a “sales rank” of 185, it’s difficult to determine whether that ranking places Atzmon’s book among the top 5,000.

But, more importantly, the Guardian online bookshop is not run by a third-party or outside contractor. They maintain editorial control and can choose to include, or not to include, whatever they wish. Their decision, following our original post on the subject, to remove Atzmon’s book from their site is proof of this. If David Duke’s book, Jewish Supremacism, was within the top 5,000 would the Guardian similarly make it available? 

Further, even if the synopsis was written by the publisher, it is certainly within the Guardian’s authority to edit such book quotes as needed, and you don’t need to be a philo-Semite to understand how insidious it is to include a blurb championing the cause of exposing the injurious influence of “global” Jewish ideology.

While I wasn’t able to locate the editor responsible for such decisions, you may wish to Tweet the Guardian @GuardianBooks and ask how they can defend selling and promoting such explicitly antisemitic material. 

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Feb 20 2012

Ali Abunimah makes UNRWA Spokesperson Chris Gunness “Giggle”

The Tweets by Chris Gunness, spokesperson for UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency), are worth following for those Twitterers amongst you interested in gleaning insights into the mind of those in the Palestinian Refugee industry. 

Gunness has nary an unkind word for Hamas, the authoritarian Palestinian leadership in Gaza representing the only government in the world led by a recognized terrorist movement, yet continually imputes guilt to Israel for engaging in efforts to stop the flow of rockets to the strip, 676 of which were fired last year from the territory.  

Here’s a quote by Gunness in a 2011 Guardian piece, which interprets Israeli efforts to prevent deadly arms from reaching Hamas as systemic cruelty, whose intent is to sow misery upon innocent civilians. 

“It is hard to understand the logic of a man-made policy which deliberately impoverishes so many and condemns hundreds of thousands of potentially productive people to a life of destitution.”

Moreover, by UNRWA’s expansive definition of what constitutes a Palestinian refugee, based on a quote from the same Guardian piece, 1.5 million Palestinians living in a Palestinian run polity in Gaza are still considered “refugees”. 

Further, as research by NGO Monitor has demonstrated, UNRWA funds (almost entirely provided by voluntary contributions from governments and the European Union) “are often used for UNRWA schools and other facilities…[which] teach hatred and encourage incitement, [and] the evidence demonstrates that UNRWA staff allowed terror related activities in its camps [in Gaza and the West Bank].”

I have found nothing Gunness has written or Tweeted suggesting he is aware or concerned about such incitement, which provides context for this recent Tweet about Ali Abunimah, co-founder of Electronic Intifada, and CiF contributor through 2009.

Boy, where to begin?

Abunimah is an American pro-Palestinian activist who opposes the Jewish state’s existence, and who has not hesitated to compare Israel to South African apartheid and even Nazi Germany - describing Gaza as a “ghetto” and a “concentration camp” and arguing that “Zionism is not atonement for the Holocaust, but its continuation in spirit.”

Abunimah has also characterized the Jewish state as “supremacist”, echoing a trope popularized by, among others, David Duke and Gilad Atzmon, and has also described Israeli policy towards Palestinians as “potentially genocidal”.

Further, Abunimah has suggested that suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism by Hamas and Hezbollah against Israeli civilians could justly be seen as legitimate to the degree such tactics resemble  ”other nationalist movements facing foreign occupation”.

So, the anti-racist Ali Abunimah is a proponent of the demise of the Jewish state – a nation which he has characterized as “supremacist”, potentially genocidal, and even Nazi-like – and has sought to justify terrorism against Jewish civilians.

If your name is Chris Gunness, it’s all apparently enough to make you giggle. 

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Feb 19 2012

‘Global March to Jerusalem’ endorsed by Guardian approved ‘saxophonist’ Gilad Atzmon

As Hadar Sela noted in her recent reports on the upcoming ‘Global March to Jerusalem’, scheduled for March 30, 2012:

The organisers are a conglomerate of people representing the ‘red-green alliance’ the world over. Radical Leftists, Muslim Brotherhood-connected Islamists, [antisemites] and representatives of and sympathisers with the Iranian regime have once more come together with the aim of engineering an event which will…advance their long-term assault on the legitimacy of the Jewish state.

So, it wasn’t surprising when I read, at Anti-Defamation Leagues’s site devoted towards exposing extremists, that an antisemite as prolific as Gilad Atzmon will be speaking in Oakland, California, on February 25, at a “benefit for the Global March to Jerusalem – North America.”

Here’s the flyer promoting the event.

As we’ve noted repeatedly, Atzmon’s musings on the threat to humanity posed by Jews is literally indistinguishable from what you’d find at websites of white supremacists, and so his common cause with Islamists and other extremists inspired by dreams of the Jewish state’s demise represents quite an intuitive ideological synergy.

Finally, note the blurb from the Guardian on the flyer, which refers to this 2009 interview of the “London saxophonist” by the paper’s literary critic, John Lewis, which included this photo of the urbane, sophisticated artist.

Lewis’ glowing profile included this passage:

It may come as a surprise to some that Atzmon is a saxophonist at all. His career as a musician has long been drowned out by the clatter of his extra-curricular activities: the furious attacks on Israel (he writes and edits for the website Palestine Think Tank); the philosophical texts on Jewish identity that get discussed by the likes of Noam Chomsky; the two comic novels that have been translated into 24 languages.

Just to be clear, Atzmon’s extreme antisemitic musings predated Lewis’ 2009 praise of Atzmon by many years.  Here’s a quote from Atzmon’s website, posted in 2003.

American Jewry makes any debate on whether the ‘Protocols of the elder of Zion’ are an authentic document or rather a forgery irrelevant. American Jews (in fact Zionists) do control the world.. So far they are doing pretty well for themselves at least.

The problem with Atzmon, wrote Lewis, later in his piece, is ”that trenchant politics often sit uneasily alongside music, particularly when that music is instrumental.”

Yes, that’s truly the problem with Gilad Atzmon: His incisive politics on Jews’ evil sits “uneasily” with his sublime artistic expression.

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