Greenwald has previously cited the wit and wisdom of the extremist MIT professor, and now is evidently devoting significant space in his new book to explaining how Chomsky’s “exclusion” from mainstream political debate represents a good example of how “media systems” restrict “alternative” views.
Greenwald argues, thusly:
Nobody has been subjected to…vapid discrediting techniques more than Noam Chomsky. The book on which I’m currently working explores how establishment media systems restrict the range of acceptable debate in US political discourse, and I’m using Chomsky’s treatment by (and ultimate exclusion from) establishment US media outlets as a window for understanding how that works. As a result, I’ve read a huge quantity of media discussions about Chomsky over the past year. And what is so striking is that virtually every mainstream discussion of him at some point inevitably recites the same set of personality and stylistic attacks designed to malign his advocacy without having to do the work of engaging the substance of his claims.
Greenwald further complains that Chomsky has been smeared with horrible slurs, such as the claim that he is an antisemitic (self-hating) Jew, “due to defending some 35 years ago the right to free speech of a French professor who was later convicted [in a French court] of Holocaust denial”.
However, the French “professor” Chomsky defended, Robert Faurisson, wasn’t merely a Holocaust denier, but also “a proponent of Nazi-style bigotry and apologist for Hitler’s regime who had also written for neo-Nazi publications and spoken at neo-Nazi meetings”.
Additionally, as Paul Bogdanor observed:
The petition [which Chomsky signed] dignified Faurisson’s writings by (a) affirming his scholarly credentials (“a respected professor” of “document criticism”); (b) describing his lies as “extensive historical research”; (c) placing the term “Holocaust” in derisory quotation marks; and (d) portraying his lies as “findings.”
Chomsky not only defended Faurisson but offered the following views about those who engage in Holocaust denial:
“I see no antisemitic implications in denial of the existence of gas chambers, or even denial of the holocaust.”
As Bogdanor argued, denying the existence of gas chambers and the Holocaust “was the brainchild of antisemites and neo-Nazi activists” and “a propaganda tactic of antisemitic and neo-Nazi individuals and movements all over the world.”
Additionally, arguing that the Holocaust is a myth is necessarily antisemitic, as it suggests an elaborate global Jewish conspiracy which, over the course of nearly seven decades since the end of WWII, popularized a grand historic “fiction”: that Nazis systematically murdered six million Jews.
Further, this wasn’t a one-off for Chomsky. Here are other quotes from the esteemed radical professor on Jews, Zionism and Israel.
On American Jews:
“Jews in the US are the most privileged and influential part of the population… privileged people want to make sure they have total control, not just 98% control. That’s why antisemitism is becoming an issue.”
On Zionism:
“Hitler’s conceptions have struck a responsive chord in current Zionist commentary.”
On Judaism:
“In the Jewish community, the Orthodox rabbinate imposes its interpretation of religious law… Were similar principles to apply to Jews elsewhere, we would not hesitate to condemn this revival of the Nuremberg laws.”
‘Comment is Free’ analyst Michael Cohen seems to be cut out of the same ideological cloth asGlenn Greenwald, imputing enormous power to the ‘Israel lobby’ – an evidently quite dangerous network of Americans who are more concerned about the interests of a foreign country than those of the United States.
The lobby’s use of smears and intimidation to coerce the US Congress into towing the pro-Israel line explains, for Cohen and his fellow political travelers at the Guardian, the difficulties Chuck Hagel has experienced during confirmation hearings in the Senate over his nomination to be Defense Secretary.
Cohen, who’s been contributing to CiF since December, 2012, has already pennedtwopieces at CiF on the Hagel nomination, and the alleged hold the pro-Israel lobby has exerted on the process. And, in his most recent post, ‘Chuck Hagel’s confirmation and the orthodoxy of US debate on Israel‘, Feb. 14, Cohen positively cites the sage analysis of Stephen Walt, who noted that the Hagel row proved ‘the lobby’s iron grip on Congress – an influence which grossly distorts the debate over important foreign policy debates.
Cohen writes the following:
“Part of what is going on here is obviously politics. As Harvard Professor Stephen Walt has repeatedly argued, this is demonstrative of the extraordinary power that the Israel lobby holds over Congress and official Washington.”
Walt, in the Feb. 1 post linked to by Cohen, crows that the Hagel debate proves the wisdom of what he wrote – in a book on the ‘Israel Lobby’ – when he warned “that AIPAC…has an almost unchallenged hold on Congress“.
So, is it true that Hagel’s troubles during the confirmation hearings prove AIPAC’s suffocating control over congress?
Interestingly, Cohen, in the very next line of his CiF essay, does a 180.
“But in the case of Hagel, the strongest pro-Israel lobby, Aipac, has been silent on the nomination.”
So, Cohen, over the course of two consecutive sentences in the same passage, approvingly cites Walt’s argument on AIPAC’s power over the Hagel process, and then makes an admission which completely contradicts Walt’s thesis.
How can an organization which has been “silent on the [Hagel] nomination” concurrently be exercising an “unchallenged hold” on the process?
Since it is uncertain, based on the passage, whether Cohen thoroughly read the short blog post which he cited, my guess is that he’s likely also unaware that Walt has defended John Mearsheimer, the co-author of his book on the Israel lobby, from charges of endorsing antisemitism.
Of course, the “smears” against Mearsheimer are based largely on his endorsement of a quite well-known Nazi sympathizer and Holocaust denier:
Perhaps critics of the ‘Israel lobby’ would cause pro-Israel Jews a bit less “anguish” if they would not impute such a farcical degree of power to Americans who support the Jewish state and, at the very least, studiously avoid associating with those so clearly compromised by such deep-seated Judeophobic antipathies.
Maybe they were too busy bemoaning the state of Israel’s democracy to do any actual reporting, but the mainstream news media [as well as the Guardian] completely ignored a report by Freedom House, an independent watchdog group dedicated to the expansion of freedom around the world, that rated Israel as the only free country in the Middle East.
As we noted in a post on Jan. 22, predictions by Guardian journalists, analysts and commentators that Israel’s democracy was in decline – and that the Jewish state was lurching towards an extreme right political abyss – were proven wildly inaccurate.
CAMERA continues:
In the 2013 edition of its annual report, “Freedom in the World,” the organization wrote: “Israel remains the region’s only Free country. In recent years, controversies have surrounded proposed laws that threatened freedom of expression and the rights of civil society organizations. In most cases, however, these measures have either been quashed by the government or parliament, or struck down by the Supreme Court.”
In other words, Israel’s democracy works. By contrast, both Gaza, under Hamas, and the West Bank, under the Palestinian Authority were rated “Not Free,” as was Jordan. Lebanon and Egypt ranked as merely “Partly Free.”
To look at a map of world freedom, click on this link. You’ll have to enlarge it quite a bit to see the sliver of green freedom that is Israel in the sea of yellow (“partly free”) and purple (“not free”) that is the Middle East and North Africa.
Here’s a snapshot of the Freedom House political freedom map, with a red arrow pointing to the sliver of democracy in the Middle East.
CAMERA adds:
Given the hyper-focus on Israel by the press, one might expect news outlets to at least mention this positive evaluation of the Jewish State. However, although Israeli and Jewish outlets reported the Freedom House study, CAMERA could not locate any mainstream news media that covered it. More embarrassing still, even Egypt’s Daily News wrote: “Egypt is now one of six countries in the Middle East that is classified by Freedom House as “partly free”. Eleven are classed as “not free”, while Israel is the region’s only “free” country.“
A newspaper in a country that has only recently been upgraded to “partly free” covered Israel’s “free” ranking but news outlets in “free” countries did not.
…
One has to ask, why the hesitancy to report something positive about Israel’s democracy?
While there are many factors which explain why the Guardian ignores evidence of Israel’s clear democratic advantages in the region, one of the most central is the ideological orientation of the Guardian Left which typically reduces complicated political phenomena down to a binary David vs. Goliath paradigm.
Such framing nurtures coverage of the region which routinely characterizes Israeli leaders, even in the context of fair and free democratic elections, as extremely “right-wing”, while avoiding such pejorative depictions of even the most reactionary Palestinian leaders.
Indeed, as Simon Ploskerobserved, such a political orientation inspired the Guardian to describe Mahmoud Abbas, in one editorial, as the “most moderate Palestinian leader”. Abbas is similarly framed as a “moderate” by Guardian journalists and CiF commentators despite the fact that the Palestinian President is currently serving the 8th year of a 4 year term, has engaged in Holocaust denial, and leads a government which promotes martyrdom and antisemitic incitement, andseverely oppresseswomen, gays, religious minorities, critical Palestinian journalists and political opponents.
Further, it simply strains credulity to imagine that a new independent Palestinian Arab state in the West Bank would be truly democratic, any more liberal, or nominally respect the human rights of its citizens.
However, as long as Israeli politics are myopically viewed through the ideologically skewed filter of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, even the most intuitive evidence regarding the extreme right political center of gravity within Palestinian society on one hand, and the Jewish state’s liberal, democratic advantages on the other, will continue to be downplayed or ignored.
On Jan. 16 we posted about a Guardian reader whose commenting privileges were not suspended despite the fact that he made racist remarks, including the promotion of Holocaust denial, beneath a Guardian story about Holocaust education in the UK. We additionally noted how peculiar it was that his user profile remained at ‘Comment is Free’ despite the fact that it contained a link to a white supremacist site called ‘British Resistance‘.
We identified the right-wing extremist – who uses the online moniker of ‘CorshmCrusader’ – as Mark Kennedy, a Nazi sympathizer who is actually the deputy editorof ‘British Resistance’, and asked CiF Watch readers to consider contacting ‘Comment is Free’ editors to inquire why he hadn’t been banned.
Today we finally learned that ‘CorshmCrusader’s profile has indeed been removed by ‘Comment is Free’ editors.
On Jan. 16 we posted about a Guardian reader whose commenting privileges were not suspended by the editors, despite the fact that he promoted Holocaust denial in the comment section under aGuardian story (on Jan. 14) about Holocaust education in the UK, and the fact that his user profile contained a link to a white supremacist site called ‘British Resistance‘.
We asked our readers to consider emailing the Guardian’s ‘Comment Editor’ asking for an explanation regarding why someone who clearly violates ‘Comment is Free’ “community standards” has not been banned.
Today we were contacted by a fan of our blog, a Holocaust educator and author named Dan Hennessy, copying us on the email he sent to the Guardian.
Here it is, with Mr. Hennessy’s permission:
To the editors:
As a Holocaust educator, it is disturbing that you treat the individual using the moniker “CorshmCrusader,” who is known to be a white supremacist, as you would any other “contributor” to your periodical; and yet, you [ban others] who obviously disagree with you. Who is allowed freedom of speech in your domain? Everyone? Or just those who toe the line with regard to your ideological bias?
I just taught 1984 by George Orwell in an upper division secondary English class. Your decisions in this regard seem quite in line with Ministry of Truth standards.
~ Daniel Hennessy
Again, here’s the email for the Guardian editor if you also want to inquire about the status of CorshmCrusader.
The Guardian’s attempt to provide a thoughtful and appropriate article about a praiseworthy attempt by UK footballers to provide schools with a serious and sensitive Holocaust educational film documenting what they learned from a trip to Auschwitz (‘England’s football stars feature in Holocaust educational video film for schools, Jan. 14), was quickly hijacked, as we noted earlier, by Holocaust deniers.
The first comment on the thread was a plea that the footballers’ efforts (and, presumably, reader comments) not be hijacked to demand “equal time” for other atrocities:
Despite SantaMoniker’s plea anticipating what was to follow, in addition to the subsequent Holocaust denial comments CiF Watch captured which were eventually deleted, for one person simply denying the Holocaust wasn’t not enough. He demanded (comment now deleted) that the educational authorities invent a new one to provide some balance to the murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazis.
Yes – if English children are to learn about the Holocaust that actually happened, at least one reader, whose comment garnered recommendations, demanded that they learn about the non-existent Palestinian Holocaust.
For this commenter, and those recommending his comment, as part of the campaign against Israel it is necessary to create a myth about a Palestinian history to reinforce the lethalnarrative that the Jews, “who should know better”, have killed millions of Palestinians.
Visiting the thread now, about 12:40 pm UK time, the moderators have removed most of the presumably inappropriate comments. But the striking lack of empathy remains at least in this one, the last at the time this is written, which has been there for over an hour:
Apparently for some people it will remain a mystery why “the jews will bang on forever about their persecution, because they are under the impression no one as suffered like they have”. For some it is too difficult to comprehend that this mass murder was so horrific that the special term “Holocaust” had to be created to refer to it and in which modern technology was used to eliminate an entire people by killing as many as 6 million of them – and why the annoying survivors keep “banging on about it”.
It is also worth noting that while holocaust-denying comments remained on the thread for hours, beneath Rachel Shabi’s tendentious and morally pretentious commentary alleging Islamophobia by the “the power-brokers of Hollywood”, comments which didn’t abide by the Guardian Left script were quickly deleted.
The appearance of both articles on the same day, and the totally different level of comment moderation, demonstrates the bias of Guardian editors and those they employ to moderate the threads.
On Jan. 14, the Guardian published at report by Peter Walker titled ‘England’s football stars feature in Holocaust educational video film for schools‘, about Premier League footballers teaming up with the FA to produce a film for UK schools in which players discuss the impact of their recent tour of Auschwitz – part of a broader program by the Holocaust Educational Trust.
The report includes a short film explaining the context of the Holocaust before detailing the events and their impact on Europe’s Jews.
Though the report didn’t elicit too many reader comments, it did attract the attention of a few Holocaust “skeptics”.
More people need to see “passed” [sic] the Holocaust propaganda.
Truth teller
“Holohoax” Crusader
Though this comment by ‘CorshmCrusader’ was eventually deleted by moderators (along with the two others) it remained at the Guardian for roughly four hours, and garnered 118 expressions of support from fellow readers.
More interestingly, the user profile of CorshmCrusdader is still up and his user privileges do not seem to have been suspended – which is interesting in light of CiF editors’ decision to ban other users who evidently ran afoul of the Guardian’s “community standards”.
Here’s the profile:
This profile evidently wasn’t flagged by editors despite the URL listed, which takes you to the site of a white nationalist group so extreme they have accused the BNP of being soft on Jews:
The CiF commenter appears to be the Deputy Editor of the extremist site, who goes by the name of Mark Kennedy.
He even has his own graphic on the sidebar:
The graphic links to hisYouTube Channel, where you can enjoy the following videos:
To those still not convinced, apost on the site of ‘British Resistance’ on Jan. 15, by the site’s Editor (who posts using the moniker ‘Green Arrow’), bitterly complained about the deletion of the same comment by CorshmCrusader shown above, and clearly revealed the author’s identity.
“In an article written by a piece of human excrement with a fetish for people who wear Lycra, known as Peter Walker, The Guardian today published a story and a video on how the Jews, through the Holocaust Memorial Trust were intending to brainwash young British children by sending every single English secondary school a DVD containing a seven and half minute video about the Holohoaxand other “teaching” materials.
…
“…our Deputy Editor, the Corsham Crusader, was onto the comments section quicker than a terrier on a rat and left a rather good post revealing the truth about the Holohoax and advising people who did not believe what he said, to simply go and do their own research.”
Consider sending a respectful email to Guardian editors requesting that the white supremacist using the moniker CorshmCrusader be banned.
According to the Guardian’s Thomas Blaser, ‘We let them starve‘, Oct. 5, Jean Ziegler, a Swiss author and politician, and formerUN Special Rapporteur for Food, is a “prolific writer” who has boldly “taken on the cause of the developing world…and against injustice.”
The Guardian author helpfully adds the following to assist readers in understanding Ziegler’s politics:
“His combative and at times polemical style has earned him much admiration, but also vilification…particularly from Switzerland‘s liberal-conservatives, closely related to big business, and of course the major Swiss banks, for denouncing their hiding away of stolen funds such as those of former dictator Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, [and those from] Jewish people who perished in the holocaust.
…
He is also a vocal critic of global capitalism’s effects on the developing world, especially Africa.
So, Ziegler, as framed by the Guardian, seems like a decent enough fellow, and a genuine humanitarian.
He’s opposed to ‘big business’ and greedy bankers.
He’s against injustice and exploitation.
He’s an advocate for the poor and downtrodden.
He fights those who continue to exploit Holocaust victims.
Well, unfortunately, the Guardian left out quite a bit of information on the European ‘human rights activist’.
Jean Ziegler actually has a record of cozying up to dictatorswho violate human rights, and has shamefully abused and exploited Holocaust memory.
He has praised Robert Mugabe, once claiming that the Zimbabwean dictator has “history and morality with him.”
In 1986, Ziegler was an adviser to Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, found guilty of genocide in 2006, and helped draft his one-party constitution.
Ziegler has also defended Fidel Castro, and once expressed “total support for the Cuban Revolution”.
Ziegler co-founded, co-managed, and eventually won the Muammar Qaddafi International Prize for Human Rights.
The prize, established in 1989, has been awarded to such tireless anti-racists as Fidel Castro, notorious antisemite Louis Farrakhan, former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Bin Muhammad—who claimed that Jews control the world – and the late French Holocaust denierRoger Garaudy.
In 1996, Ziegler wrote a letter of support for Garaudy, who was convicted in a French court for denying Hitler’s genocide, defending his Holocaust-denying tract for its “rigor” and the author’s “unwavering honesty.”
Here’s an informative video by UN Watch, on Ziegler’s extremism, from 2008.
The certainly don’t make ‘progressives’ like they used to.
In 1979 the Iranian regime, newly under the control of Ayatollah Khomeini, initiated the annual marking of ‘Al Quds (Jerusalem) Day’ on the third Friday of the month of Ramadan as a means of expressing the support of Iran and the Arab-Muslim world for the Palestinian ’cause’ and the ‘liberation’ of Jerusalem. The original declaration includes these words:
“Israel, the enemy of mankind, the enemy of humanity, which is creating disturbances every day and is attacking our brothers…, must realise that its masters are no longer accepted in the world and must retreat. They must give up their ambitious designs, their hands must be severed from all the Islamic countries and their agents in these countries must step down.
Quds Day is the day for announcing such things, for announcing such things to the satans who want to push the Islamic nations aside and bring the superpowers into the arena.
Quds Day is the day to dash their hopes and warn them that those days are gone.”
Since then, these events – which are inevitably a stage for anti-Israel and anti-Western incitement – have taken place annually in many locations all over the world, including the United Kingdom, where they are organised primarily by the Islamic Human Rights Commission. This year’s event will take place on August 17th in central London.
Speakers at last year’s London rally (August 21st, 2011) included Lauren Booth and a representative of Hizb ut Tahrir Britain, Abdul Wahid, both of whom called for surrounding countries to launch an all-out war on Israel. Participants carried signs advocating the destruction of the State of Israel and many expressed support for theproscribed Iranian-backed terror organisation Hizballah. An additional speaker also made racist statements regarding President Obama.
Al Quds Day, London, 21st August 2011
The organization of an event which promotes – year after year – racism, incitement to racial hatred, support for terror organizations and incitement to violence should, in theory at least, be at odds with the Islamic Human Rights Commission’s status both as a registered charity in England and Wales and a body with special consultative status at the United Nations Economic and Social Council. It should, in theory, have disqualified the IHRC from being considered a worthy partner for the British Police Force’s anti-terror unitsand the British Parliament.
However – to date – it has not.
Background:
Founded in 1997, the mission statement of the Islamic Human Rights Commission on its Charity Commission web page claims that its aim is “To promote human rights and equality and diversity (in particular good race relations) throughout the world for the benefit of the public.“ The style and content of the IHRC’s annual ‘Al Quds Day’ events, along with much of its additional campaigning, suggest that “good race relations” are in fact far from being its true aim.
The Charity Commission’s guidelines on charities and terrorism include clauses which would appear to be at odds with many of the activities of the IHRC and its officials.
“If an organisation is proscribed, it is illegal for it to operate in the UK. It is a criminal offence for a person to belong to or invite support for a proscribed organization. It is also a criminal offence to arrange a meeting in support of a proscribed organization or to wear clothing or to carry articles in public which arouse reasonable suspicion that an individual is a member or supporter of the proscribed organisation.”
“Any links between a charity and terrorism are totally unacceptable and corrosive of public confidence in charities. Trustees must be vigilant to ensure that a charity’s premises, assets, staff, volunteers and other resources cannot be used for activities that may, or appear to, support proscribed organisations.”
Whilst UK law proscribes only the ‘military wing’ of Hizballah, there is no separate flag for its political wing, meaning that the abundance of Hizballah flags at Al Quds Day rallies can certainly be viewed as ‘reasonable suspicion’ of support for a proscribed terrorist organisation, particularly when viewed in the context of other material present and the speeches made at those rallies.
Hizballah military parade, Al Quds Day 2002, Nabatiyeh, Lebanon.
The repeated organisation of rallies at which Hizballah flags are carried and worn (including by IHRC officials and employees) along with placards stating “We are all Hizballah” and the collaboration with known members and sympathisers of Hamas, leaves little room for doubt as to the IHRC’s active support for those proscribed organisations.
Massoud Shadjareh, chair of the IHRC, wearing a Hizballah scarf – Al Quds Day rally London, 2002.
Al Quds Day Rally, London, August 21st 2011
Al Quds Day Rally, London, August 21st 2011
The Charity Commission of England and Wales has to date not seen fit to take action either on these annual blatant displays of support for terrorism or on the subject of the IHRC’s incitement to violence and racial hatred. Neither, it seems, has the Charity Commission paid much attention to the nature of the less public activities and connections of some of the IHRC’s founders, officials and functionaries and the question of whether such people are appropriate as part of a government-recognised and approved body – again despite itsown recommendations.
“..even indirect or informal links with a terrorist organisation pose unacceptable risks to the property of a charity and its proper and effective administration. Even if the link or association did not amount to a criminal offence, it is difficult to see how a charity could adequately manage the risks to the charity and find a way in which the trustees could properly discharge their charity law duties and responsibilities.”
Activities and Personalities:
In June 2005 the IHRCorganised a conferenceentitled “Towards a New Liberation Theology: Reflections on Palestine” at SOAS inLondon, in collaboration with the Tehran-basedNEDA Institute for Scientific Political Research & Studies. The director of NEDA, Jawad Sharbaf, made something of a name for himself in December 2005 by writing to Holocaust denier Roger Faurisson to express his commiserations at the UN decision to designate International Holocaust Memorial Day (the correspondence can be viewed on Faurisson’s site here).
Among the speakers at that IHRC/NEDA organised conference (in 2009 the addresses were later published as a book by the IHRC, with Sharbaf as editor) was Hizballah member Rima Fakhry, who was interviewed by the Guardian during her visit to London.
Mrs Fakhry said her group believes in the destruction of Israel and expulsion of tens of thousands of Jews: “This is a hope, a long-term strategy.”
“Israelis don’t have a right to stay in Palestine, the state of Israel is an illegal state.”
“One day the Palestinians will destroy Israel and return to their land.”
Other speakers included one of the IHRC’s founders – Saied Reza Ameli – and two members of its advisory board – Muhammad Al Asi and Achmad Cassiem.
Achmad Cassiem:
Achmad Cassiem is head of the South African Islamist group ‘Qibla‘ (which was categorised as a terrorist organisation by the US State Department) and its offshoot PAGAD, as well as head of the Islamic Unity Convention. According to the South African government, members of Qibla have trained in Libya and Pakistan and some have fought with Hizbollah in Lebanon. The group seeks to establish an Iranian-style Islamic regime in South Africa and Cassiem has visited Iran.
“… Armed struggle is of course essential because in the Quran armed resistance, armed struggle is ordained by Allah – the first time armed struggle is made permissible for Muslims is in Surah Hajj -surah 22 ayat 39, Allah says ‘permission is given to you to fight because you have been wronged’ – that principle essentially means that the only people in the world who have the sole justification for resorting to armed struggle, to violence, to force are the oppressed people – nobody else has that right or justification.
But more importantly it is immoral, irrational, it is obscene for an oppressor to tell the oppressed how they should respond to oppression, so if there are two principles that we should teach all oppressed people then it is those two principles”
*****
“A major principle has evolved through centuries of armed, struggle against oppressors worldwide; that it is irrational, illogical, and obscene for the oppressors to tell the oppressed how they should respond to their own oppression. We endorsed that principle here in South Africa, and we endorse it on behalf of the Palestinian people. This means that the Zionist Regime, its lackeys and supporters cannot, may not and should not be allowed to propose any solutions. This would specifically exclude the idea of a two-state solution: that is, a Zionist State and a Palestinian State existing side by side on the land of the Palestinian people. Tova Herzl [israeli ambassador] frequently mentions that the Zionist State is only the size of the Kruger National Park; our position is that even if the Zionist State is the size of a postage stamp it has no right to exist.
Occupied Palestine must be decolonized, deracialized and restored to the Palestinian people as a single sovereign state. In plain English, the Zionist State must be dismantled.”
At an ‘anti-war’ rally in Trafalgar Square in London on September 19th 2005, Cassiem urged the crowd to adopt the slogan “one oppressor – one bullet”. (Note the introduction by Anas Al Tikriti of the Muslim Association of Britain and the Cordoba Foundation, with IHRC chair Massoud Shadjareh standing close by, draped in what appears to be a Hizballah flag).
“We have a psychosis in the Jewish community that is unable to co-exist equally and brotherly with other human beings. You can take a Jew out of the ghetto, but you can’t take the ghetto out of the Jew. And, this has been demonstrated time and time again in Occupied Palestine. And, now they have American diplomats and politicians and decision makers and strategists in their pocket because they have the money.”
This quote from 2002 appears – like many others – to suggest that Al Asi is less than committed to finding peaceful solutions to the Arab-Israeli conflict:
“If the only thing the Israelis and their mentors, and their sponsors and their superiors in Washington DC are going to understand is the use of force, than that’s the language we’re going to communicate with, we’re going to use force. And whatever was taken by force can only be retrieved by force.”
At a 2007 event held in London by the IHRC to celebrate its 10th anniversary, Al Asi – speaking on the subject of Islamophobia – said: (all errors in the original)
“I think any attempt at speaking about islamophobia by omitting the zionist factor is almost useless. In other words if I was to become very simplistic and we were all to assume that there is no zionist israeli occupation of Palestine of the Holy Land I don’t think we would be here today, honestly! I don’t think islamophobia would have been an issue. The world would still have its problems, we would probably still have our disagreements and agreements, the ebb and flow of them as they have been through out history, we’ve always have had these types of issues. But the chronic stage we have reached in today’s world I think can be traced directly and bluntly to the zionist usurpation and occupation of the Holy Land.”
Saied Reza Ameli:
IHRC founder Saied Reza Ameli is also a former director of the Institute of Islamic Studies and co-founder of the Islamic Centre of England (ICEL) which was established in 1996 by Ayatollah Mohsen Araki – Khamenei’s representative in Britain at the time – and acts as a ‘support organisation’ to the IHRC in the organization of the annual Al Quds Day events. The ICEL also organizes conferences and events promoting the Iranian regime and its ideology.
Ameli often lends a supposedly ‘academic’ view to the anti-Israel campaign. He presented a paper on the subject of ‘The United States’ Virtual Colonialism’ at the 2011 ‘International Conference of Global Alliance against Terrorism’ organized by the Iranian regime. The conference’s closing statement included predictable anti-Israel messages:
“We condemn the state terrorism against the oppressed Palestinian nation, and other nations by the Israeli regime and its allies.”
Ameli has written for the ‘Palestine Internationalist’ (which formerly included the IHRC’s director of research Arzu Merali on its editorial team) and appears frequently at IHRC-organised conferences such as the one mentioned above.
‘Prisoners of Faith’:
The IHRC also engages in campaigning for so-called ‘prisoners of faith‘. One of its ongoing campaigns involves Omar Abdel Rahman – currently serving a life sentence in the United States due to involvement in the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing plot.
In its early days, the IHRC campaigned on behalf of ‘prisoner of faith’ Ibrahim al Zakzaky– head of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria(IMN); an Iranian backed and financed Shi’ite Islamist group modelled on Hizballah which has been implicated in various acts of violence. Zakzaky is virulently anti-Western and anti-Semitic and the IMN website contains much in the way of anti-Semitic material and conspiracy theories. Sheikh Zakzaky considers Jews to be “the lowest of creatures on earth” and the “children of monkeys of pigs (sic)”. Here he is on the subject of 9/11:
“And how are we sure that the September 11 was not also the work of CIA and FBI? They dodge the question each time you ask them. They said that before the September 11 a lot of terrorists removed their money from the banks and sold their stocks, but they didn’t give us the list of those terrorists. We know that they’re the people who did it, they were living within America and they withdraw their money from banks, and they sold their stocks. And we also know that nobody denies the fact that in the World Trade Center, it is known that about 5000 Jews worked in the center. On that faithful Tuesday 11th September, not a single Jew was there. Was it by accident? Not a single Jew was killed or have you heard them mention any Jew being a victim of the September 11 tragedy. Not a single Jew died! And you know it was not a busy Tuesday and the job of the Jews is bold. Was it a coincidence that, that fateful Tuesday all of them failed to go to work?”
Zakzaky is a memberof the International Assembly of Ahlul Bayt – the Iranian organisation which promotes Shi’ite Islam and Khomeinist ideology around the globe. According to this document, Zakzaky is also an advisor to the Islamic Human Rights Commission.
Sheikh Ibrahim Al Zakai (far right) at an IHRC-organised seminar in London in October 2010 together with (R to L) Saied Reza Ameli (co-founder IHRC, Tehran University), Massoud Shadjareh (co-founder and chair IHRC), Mohideen Abdul Kader.
Massoud Shadjareh:
Were one to look for proof of the fact that the IHRC is just one of several Iranian support groups at work in the UK rather than an actual ‘human rights’ organization as it claims to be (and upon the basis of which it was allotted both Charity Commission recognition and UN consultative status), one need look no further than the IHRC’s co-founder and chair Massoud Shadjareh – seen here at the 2010 Al Quds Day event – who, when asked about the very real human rights abuses in Iran, can only reply “I don’t know what you’re talking about”.
In contrast, Shadjareh is an active campaigner for Aafia Siddiqui, (sentenced to 86 years of imprisonment in 2010) who he claims is being “oppressed by non-Muslims”.
The Islamic Human Rights Commission under Shadjareh’s leadership is – as mentioned above – just one of several pro-Iranian organisations operating in the UK. Like all of them, it takes a virulently anti-Western and anti-Israeli stance, of which the annual Al Quds Day march is but one small part. Like many others, it is also involved in attempts to boycott Israeli goods, anti-Israel campaigning, propaganda and delegitimisation.
The above represents just a small taste of the activities of the IHRC and the personalities involved with that organization: the annual Al Quds Day march is just the tip of a very large iceberg. The difference between the IHRC and other elements of the Iranian support network in the UK is that it has Charity Commission approved status, has been courted by the British government and holds consultative status at the UN.
The continuation (or not) of that current state of affairs rests ultimately in the hands of the British government which can, if it so wishes, act to alter the current status quo in which the term ‘human rights’ is being used and abused by a group of sympathisers with and activists for one of the most repressive, abusive, discriminatory, terror-enabling regimes plaguing the modern world – with the UK government’s rubber stamp.
The British Prime Minister David Cameron recently stated that his country will do “everything it can” to help track down the perpetrators of the murders of Israeli holiday-makers in Bulgaria. If he is serious about combatting terror both at home and abroad, then he will no longer be able to tolerate the situation in which, on the one hand, his government passes legislation and invests resources to prevent terrorism but yet at the same time permits supporters of the world’s worst terror-nurturing regime to glorify and promote Iran’s terror proxies on London’s streets.
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 joinedthe 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, arguingabout the document that “it is impossible to ignore its prophetic qualities and its capacity to describe” later Jewish behavior.
Counterpunchpublished 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 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.
Today’s ‘ Comment is Free’ piece “Open Letter: We are all Greek Jews” of May 28th, signed by Benjamin Abtan, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Elie Wiesel, Amélie Nothomb and others called on Europe to reject the Greek neo-Nazi party,Golden Dawn, which entered the Greek parliament this month.
Golden Dawn’s leader Nikos Michaloliakos
The letter warns that “the [neo-Nazi Greek Golden Dawn] party is the lineal heir of the German national-socialist party that led Europe and the world into chaos and bloodshed.”
The specter of a resurgent neo-Nazi movement in Europe would seem, at first glance, an anomaly and almost reads as fiction. However, as the open letter notes:
“Greece is not the only country threatened by this revival of Nazi ideology. In Latvia this year, the president of the republic has for the first time supported the annual former Waffen SS march.
In Austria the FPÖ, an extreme right organisation that nurtures Third Reich nostalgia, is favourite in the polls for the next parliamentary elections. In Hungary, the Hungarian Guard Movement, descendant of The Arrow Cross party – the former militia responsible for the extermination of Jews and Gypsies – terrorises Jewish populations and holds direct responsibility for provoking deadly attacks against Roma people.”
The following is a recent interview with Nikos Michaloliakosis – the leader of Greece’s Golden Dawn movement which will occupy 21 seats in the Greek parliament after winning 7% of the vote in the May 6 elections.
While this blog has often argued that Guardian readers are much more comfortable condemning right-wing antisemitism than the Islamist variety, note that the following comment, greatly downplaying even the former, garnered 113 ‘Recommends’.
Stunning, really: a reader who questions the antisemitic bona fides of an extremist European movement which possesses a swastika-inspired emblem, enforces a Hitlerian salute, references Mein Kampf, endorses racist ideology, and trades in Holocaust denial.
It makes you wonder what precisely it would take for some Guardian readers to see the hideous Jew hatred squarely in front of their face.
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 Johnsonpoints 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 ofregional 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 editorialalso 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.
An exquisite convergence of anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism appeared in ‘Comment is Free’ today, written by Mark Weisbrot, perhaps the most prolific among CiF’s core of extreme left commentators.
Weisbrot’s sophistication and erudition, when expounding upon the U.S war against sadistic Taliban terrorists, was on display in his previous CiF entry, where he thriftily and pithily summed up the US campaign as “soldiers pissing on corpses [and] drones slaughtering civilians”.
He characterized the U.S. war against terrorism more broadly as arguably indicative of “a crusade against the Muslim world” – agitprop which seems to slip off Weisbrot’s tongue with the ease of someone schooled in the Noam Chomsky school of tyranny apologetics.
And, as I noted previously, Weisbrotquite explicitly accused the U.S. of committing a “Holocaust” in Iraq, accusing critics of such a characterization as guilty of “Holocaust Denial”.
Naturally, as part of his broader anti-American ideological package, Weisbrot is necessarily as hostile to Israel as he is sympathetic to Arab despots.
While the broader narrative, mocking American democracy promotion in the Arab world is itself a work of political sophistry worthy of scrutiny, the following passage about Israel is a much repeated, if banal, narrative within Guardian-Left circles, and represents yet another casual assault on the Jewish state’s legitimacy.
Write’s Weisbrot:
Nowhere is [the hypocritical U.S. claim to promote democracy] more obvious than in the Middle East, where the US government’s policy of collaboration with Israel’s denial of Palestinian national rights has put it at odds with populations throughout the region. As a result, Washington fears democracy in many countries because it will inevitably lead to more governments taking the side of the Palestinians,
The notion that the Arab world, which continues to be defined by increasing intolerance towards religious and ethnic minorities, extreme antisemitism, and the denial of basic human rights – in stark contrast withIsrael’s unique and enduring democratic prowess - possesses any moral credibility in denouncing the U.S. is a political inversion of the first order.
Arabs of Palestinian origin, whose rights are systematically denied throughout the (non-Jewish) Middle East, have become the propaganda tool of choice for far left ideologues such as Weisbrot – activists who similarly fail to mention the absence of such democratic values in Palestinian ruled territory.
The reason why Western liberals fear the upheavals in the Arab world is the increasingly clear slouch towards Islamist political movements which are, by definition, decidedly reactionary and illiberal, and at odds with true democratic values.
The romaticization of the Arab Spring, the edifice of a “democratic” revolution, is becoming increasingly difficult for those who claim intellectual integrity to maintain.
The Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists in Egypt, the Enhada Party in Tunisia, or major parties vying for power in Libya, can largely be defined (or may likely, one day, be defined) by a greater adherence to (in spirit or letter) Sharia law, and an atavistic, ideological antisemitism which bears little if any connection to the plight of the Palestinians.
As a report on antisemitism in the Arab world in the context of the ‘Arab Spring”, written by scholars at the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at Tel Aviv University,noted:
[While] the popular uprisings in the Arab world do not represent a general change in attitude towards Israel, Zionism and the Jews it seems the anti-Semitic discourse and incitement have become more extreme and violent,”
Charges of an international Jewish conspiracy have been a central motif in the anti-Semitic propaganda that has accompanied the Arab Spring uprisings. This motif has been emphasized in each of the countries especially by way of pointing a blaming finger towards Israel, Zionism and Jews conspiring against Arabs and Muslims
Of course, the continuing Arab antipathy towards Jews is not at all surprising to those who study the politics of the region, and the habitual denial of this endemic Judeophobic dynamic by Guardian reporters and commentators is documented continually on the pages of this blog.
But the mere ubiquity of voices like Weisbrot, at ‘Comment is Free’, who are willfully blind to the most malign anti-Jewish racism, makes it no less deserving of critical scrutiny, nor, especially, any less morally repugnant.
The following piece by Ben Cohen, published atCommentary Magazine, is one of the more thoughtful meditations on contemporary antisemitism I’ve read in a while, and strongly recommend following the link below to read the essay in full.
A blurb on a book jacket would seem an unlikely vehicle for the introduction of a new and sinister tactic in the promotion of an ancient prejudice. But in September 2011, a word of appreciation on the cover of The Wandering Who launched a fresh chapter in the modern history of anti-Semitism. And when the dust had settled—what little dust there was—on the events surrounding the blurb, it had become horrifyingly clear that the role of defining the meaning of the term anti-Semitism did not belong to the Jews. It may, in fact, belong to anti-Semites.
The flattering quotation came from John Mearsheimer, the University of Chicago professor and co-author, with Harvard’s Stephen Walt, of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. Mearsheimer’s 2007 bestseller, which contends that Israel’s American supporters are powerful enough to subvert the U.S. national interest, has been controversial for its adoption of anti-Semitic tropes—tropes Mearsheimer danced around cleverly. But in endorsing The Wandering Whoand its Israeli-born author, Gilad Atzmon, Mearsheimer crossed the boundary.
The man whose book Mearsheimer called “fascinating and provocative,” a work that “should be widely read by Jews and non-Jews alike,” is an anti-Semite, pure and simple. A saxophone player by trade, Atzmon was born and raised in Israel but subsequently moved to London. He proclaims himself either an “ex-Jew” or a “proud self-hating Jew” and was quoted approvingly by Turkey’s Islamist prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, at the Davos conference in 2009: Denouncing Israel in vociferous terms before a horrified Shimon Peres, Erdogan quoted Atzmon as saying, “Israeli barbarity is far beyond even ordinary cruelty.”
Atzmon fixates upon the irredeemably tribal and racist identity he calls “Jewishness.” The anti-Gentile separatism that compels Jews to amass greater power and influence is manifested, he preaches, in any context where Jews come together as a group. The Wandering Who finds Atzmon on territory well-trodden by anti-Semites past and present: Holocaust revisionism (one chapter is entitled “Swindler’s List”), the rehabilitation of Hitler (he argues that Israel’s behavior makes all the more tempting the conclusion that the Führer was right about the Jews), the separation of Jesus from Judaism (Christ was the original proud, self-hating Jew, whose example Spinoza, Marx, and now, Atzmon himself, have followed).
One would think this was categorically indefensible stuff. Yet, when the blogger Adam Holland e-mailed Mearsheimer to ask whether he was aware of Atzmon’s flirtation with Holocaust denial, as well as his recital of telltale anti-Semitic provocations, Mearsheimer stood by his endorsement of the book. Holland duly published Mearsheimer’s response: “The blurb below is the one I wrote for The Wandering Whoand I have no reason to amend it or embellish it, as it accurately reflects my view of the book.” A number of prominent commentators—among them Jeffrey Goldberg, Walter Russell Mead, and even Andrew Sullivan, up to that point a dependable supporter of Mearsheimer—rushed to confront and condemn the professor. But Mearsheimer maintained in various blog posts that Atzmon was no anti-Semite and those who said otherwise were guilty of vicious smear jobs. He wrote on the Foreign Policy magazine blog of his co-author, Stephen Walt: “[Jeffrey Goldberg’s] insinuation that I have any sympathy for Holocaust denial and am an anti-Semite . . . is just another attempt in his longstanding effort to smear Steve Walt and me.”
And that was that. No affaire Mearsheimer unfolded.
The fact that a controversy did not erupt, that the endorsement of a Holocaust revisionist by a prominent professor at a major university did not lead to calls for his dismissal or resignation or even a chin-pulling symposium in the pages of the New York Times’s “Sunday Review,” represents an important shift in the privileges that anti-Semites and their sympathizers enjoy. Now, it appears, anti-Semites are being given additional power to define anti-Semitism by stating that it is something other than what they themselves represent—before rising in moral outrage to denounce anyone who might say different. Their views are not offensive, not anti-Semitic; no, it is the opinions of those who object to their views that should be considered beyond the pale.
I do not consider myself an anti-Semite, yet I can also understand why some are. There are, in fact, a number of reasons. One is the state of Israel, its ideology of racial supremacy and its subsequent crimes committed against the Palestinians. It is because Zionists have always sought to equate their colonial project with Judaism that some misguidedly respond to what they see on their televisions with attacks on Jews or Jewish property.
And he further linked the rise of antisemitism with “the widespread bias and subservience to the Israeli cause in the Western media”.
But, equally as pernicious was this:
[There was a] controversy in Germany over alleged anti-Semitic remarks made by Jürgen Möllemann, the deputy leader of the FDP party, when he compared the Israeli government’s actions to those of the Nazi regime. Since his remarks Jewish groups have taken to the streets to call for Mr Möllemann’s resignation.
Comparisons between the Israeli government and the Nazis is unwise and unsound, since the Israelis have not (at the time of going to press) exterminated in a systematic fashion an enormous percentage of the Palestinians. Cold-blooded killings, beatings, house demolitions, vandalism, occupation, military assaults, and two historical pushes at ethnic cleansing–yes. Full fledged genocide–no.
However, the comparison is not anti-Semitic. It does not make racist assumptions, nor does it smack of bigotism.
Regarding the Israel-Nazi analogy, White has also employed language which at least evokes this political parallel, such as in the following passage from an essay posted on his website:
“Palestinians, who, in the name of a ‘social-democratic experiment’, had to endure massacres, death-marches, and ethnic cleansing…”
In addition to such comparisons being intellectually unserious, such morally obscene comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany are codified as antisemitic by the EU Working Definition.
The row began after White posted an essay at Liberal Conspiracy, titled “Mensch to speak at ‘extreme’ Israeli conference“, which criticized Mensch’s upcoming appearance at a Stand With Us conference, and leveled simply unserious accusations that StandWithUs “donors accused the group of having “a web of funders who support organisations that have been accused of anti-Muslim propaganda.”
There was, of course, quite a bit of vitriol below the line, which included defenses of the Israel=Nazi Germany comparison after one commenter brought attention to White’s defense of this view.
Here is a snippet from the Twitter exchange which followed.
So, the Guardian’s Shariatmadari evidently finds it morally relevant whether or not White was defending comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany broadly (not as bad), or whether there was a specific charge that Israel exterminates Palestinians in Auschwitz-like concentration camps.
Did Mensch really have to Tweet this morally intuitive argument to the Guardian’s ‘Comment is Free’ deputy editor?
Further, Shariatmadari’s grave concern about Ben White’s “reputation” speaks volumes about a media group who continually licenses commentators who may possess a liberal veneer but are morally compromised by an undeniable antipathy towards Jews.
