Cross posted by Mark Gardner at the blog of the CST.
Swapping “Zionist” or “pro-Israeli” for “Jewish” is not opposing antisemitism. It is, at best, a lazy linguistic complacency that camouflages antisemitic ways of thinking: making antisemitism harder to expose and fight. An unusually explicit example of this can be clearly seen in the footage of a meeting at London journalist haunt, the Frontline Club.View it here (but read the below first).
The meeting, on 12 June 2013, used a book by British Islamist, Ibrahim Hewitt, as the basis for discussion about the media’s approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict. The discussion, between Hewitt, ex-BBC Middle East correspondent Tim Llewellyn, and Guardian foreign leader writer David Hearst, was chaired by Mark McDonald, a founder of Labour Friends of Palestine & the Middle East.
Under the title, “Anti-Zionism: the Frontline”, CST Blog had already warned what might happen at this meeting. We related some of the overblown anti-Zionist conspiracy theory and imagery that Hewitt’s group, MEMO, had previously published. We noted that Llewellyn might be worse than Hewitt. We recalledHearst’s silencein the Guardian after a judge had found against Sheikh Ra’ed Salah’s denials of having made a blood libel speech. (The judge still granted Salah his appeal.) We asked, without optimism, if Hearst or McDonald might intervene if either of their fellow Frontline speakers strayed into territory occupied by antisemitism.
The footage shows that Hewitt did not repeat the wilder material from MEMO, and that Llewellyn was indeed worse than him. Hearst explained things calmly and without resort to conspiracy theory, but does not seem to have directly rebutted either Hewitt or, especially, Llewellyn. If anything, Hearst surely normalised his fellow speakers to the mainly young audience – rather than undermined them.
The footage also shows that there was only one intervention against a speaker who took things too far. This was against Llewellyn, when Hewitt pulled him up for saying“the Jewish Lobby”: whereupon the meeting chair, Mark McDonald, said that it should be “the Zionist Lobby” or “pro-Israel Lobby” instead.
Any serious objection to antisemitism must go far deeper than swapping “Zionist” for“Jewish”. Otherwise, it simply becomes an exercise in how to swap an antisemitic conspiracy theory for an ‘anti-Zionist’ one. The anti-Zionist left claims, furiously, to oppose antisemitism, but swapping “Zionist” for “Jew” is advising upon camouflage, not anti-racism.
The salient moment occurs approximately 30 minutes and 45 seconds (30:45) into the footage, when Tim Llewellyn asks David Hearst to explain why he says that newspaper editors “wilt under pressure”. Llewellyn:
Is it because. I can see it in the BBC. They’re frighten’, these people are quite aggressive, right. The Jewish Lobby is not much fun. They come at you from every direction.
Off camera, Hewitt says “no”, then, “its the pro-Israel lobby”. It is not exactly clear who says what after this, but it includes McDonald talking over Llewellyn, stating:
I mean that’s a very important thing to say, that it’s not a Jewish lobby. Can I interrupt a second. It’s not a Jewish lobby. It might be a Zionist lobby. It may be a pro-Israel lobby.
But Llewellyn won’t give it up. He retorts:
Yes, but they use Jewish connections to get you.
McDonald’s anti-racism intervention now wilts. He wants consensus, not a discursive analysis on the meaning of “they use Jewish connections to get you”. So, he lamely replies:
Yes, but it’s not necessarily a Jewish lobby, as in
McDonald’s words trail off. He does not say ‘its not necessarily a Jewish lobby as in the way that antisemites allege Jews run the media and politics, via intimidation, money and power’. Llewellyn gives an inch:
Alright, it’s an Israeli lobby. A friends of Israel lets say. Lets not be too polite about them, because they’re not very polite about us.
Llewellyn continues, asking why “we are afraid of them”:
Why are we afraid of them. That’s what I don’t understand. You know, I mean, we’re all British…I may be Welsh, but I’m British.
Nobody intervenes. Nobody asks Llewellyn to clarify if he is meaning to say that these lobbying, connected Jews are somehow not British. There are no more anti-racist interventions, not even half-hearted ones.
And so the meeting goes on, showing how easily anti-Zionist conspiracy can be normalised when people are willing to sit alongside it and treat it with respect. In particular, Hearst and McDonald treat Llewellyn’s interventions as if they are entirely normal and legitimate. They are not merely bystanders in this, they facilitate it. The audience takes it all in.
Contemplate the following low points and note that all of them were treated as being entirely normal:
06.20 Ibrahim Hewitt stresses England football manager Roy Hodgson was right to visit Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, but asks about his not visiting the nearby remains of Palestinian village, Deir Yassin.
08.57 Hewitt says that Abraham Foxman (of the Anti Defamation League) is the only person “guaranteed” to get their letters published in the New York Times.
11.30 Hewitt says he enjoys reading the obituaries in the Guardian. Llewellyn interrupts, “any day now”.
21.55 Llewellyn asks “a deeper question” about BBC reporting:
why is it like this?…is it a sinister conspiracy…a lazy way of looking at, you know, the fact that the Israeli lobby is very powerful in all three of our main political parties. Is it the BBC being very fearful?
40.44 Hewitt’s curious use of the word “diaspora”: “one of the paradoxes…that the media in Israel is often more lively and robust on this issue than the media in the so-called diaspora in New York and Europe”.
41.11 Llewellyn jokily tells Hewitt, “learn to write in Yiddish”, to get his letters published in Israeli media. Someone (from the audience) says “Hebrew”, Llewellyn counters, “No, Yiddish”.
50.04 A well spoken English woman cites Moses, her ‘them and us’ style is a classic of the genre:
AIPAC, America’s Jewish Israeli lobby, they are sooooo well organised. And we’re too nice. Whether we’re the Palestinians, or the British, we are awfully nice, we, as you say, go make a cup of tea. They don’t make cups of tea…they are desperately tough…Moses said that they were a hard-necked people. They are. And they are so well organised…
58.40 Llewellyn adds more about what “troubles” him. He objects to Europeans regarding Israelis as being like themselves, whereas Palestinians are not seen that way. He says “the Jewish lobby”, interchangeably with “the Israeli lobby”:
We talk about the Jewish lobby, the Israeli lobby, the friends of Israel. There is this people like us thing…
1.01.20 Llewellyn brings the lobby’s political power into the BBC equation:
The BBC is pressured because its part of a Governmental system. There’s no question about the friends of Israel are big in each three political parties, right.
1.14.08 Hewitt reveals his theory about the “sleepers” that the Israelis are now allegedly activating in media positions of power around the world:
It’s very telling that…the Israeli Foreign Ministry actually issued a directive to the hasbara people, the propaganda people, around the world, start placing articles…so they were very confident that they had the ability, the people in place to be able to do that…said a lot, if they can just basically give this directive and all these sleepers all of a sudden wake up and start doing things. There are clearly people in positions of influence who are able to do this.
1.32.06 Finally, the last word at the meeting went to Tim Llewellyn:
The editor of the Guardian who said that comments were free and facts were sacred: was the biggest Zionist who ever lived.
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, includedan exchange with Liberal Conspiracy blogger (and Indy contributor) Matt 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:
@cifwatch @ggreenwald Just read this. There’s not a shred of anything resembling anti-semitism here. You should be embarrassed.
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 tropesindistinguishable fromclassic 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 termwhich 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.
The Guardian’s associate editor Seumas Milne – who, in case it needs reminding, worked for the pro-Stalinist communist publication ‘Straight Left’ earlier in his career – was kind enough to Tweet a link to a piece in Foreign Policy Magazine by Stephen Walt.
The essay itself, written by the co-author of a book widely condemned for its shoddy scholarship and for arguing that Jews wield too much power in Washington, D.C., is unintentionally quite comical – a kind of ‘Western Guilt-Driven Guide to the Universe for Dummies’ – and includes, as #1, the following:
You frequently find yourself advocating that the United States send troops, drones, weapons, Special Forces, or combat air patrols to some country that you have never visited, whose language(s) you don’t speak, and that you never paid much attention to until bad things started happening there.
Whilst I don’t speak fluent academic-ese like the esteemed Harvard professor, I have become adept at deciphering an even more obscure dialect – the language of the Guardian Left.
So, in the spirit of Walt’s mockery of those who ‘unknowingly’ are compromised by a deep-seeded imperialism lurking in their subconscious, here is CiF Watch’s own ‘Top 10 warning signs you may be a Guardian Leftanti-Semite‘ – a list, per the links below, inspired by real life Guardianistas!)
2. You claim to condemn racism at every opportunity yet are strangely silent or seriously downplay even the most egregious examples of antisemitic violence.
6. You condemn the Holocaust yet alsoobsessivelycondemn living Jewsfor their alleged ‘inhumanity’ and even argue that Jews haven’t learned the proper lessons from the attempt to annihilate their co-religionists from the planet.
10. You champion diversity and multiculturalism of all kinds, yet suggest that Jewish particularism represents an inherentlytribal, ethnocentric and racistidentity.
I’m sure there are more than ten – so please feel free to add to our list in the comment section below.
(This post was revised at 15:15 EST to correct a mistake concerning Seumas Milne’s work at Straight Left.)
The following 40-minute documentary about antisemitism, which aired on Israeli Channel 2 on the eve of Yom HaShoah, April 7, features interviews with Richard Millett, Abe Foxman, Howard Jacobson, and Alan Dershowitz – and includes clips of severalfigures who will be familiar to CiF Watch readers, includingLauren Booth, Jenny Tonge, and Ken O’Keefe.
Much of the show is in Hebrew, but many of the interviews are in English. You can jump to Millett’s segment by forwarding to the 17:15 mark. The other commentators noted above follow Millett.
Today, pending an investigation, the Labour Party suspendedBaron Ahmed, a member of the House of Lords and the first male Muslim peer in the UK, for claiming that his prison sentence several years ago for dangerous driving resulted from pressure placed on the court system by Jews “who own newspapers and TV channels”.
He reportedlysaid the following during a TV interview last year.
“My case became more critical because I went to Gaza to support Palestinians. My Jewish friends who own newspapers and TV channels opposed this.”
Ahmed was imprisoned for 3 months in 2008 after sending text messages while driving.
Today, on Twitter, as news of Ahmed’s suspension was reported, there was this exchange between veteran Guardian journalist Michael Whiteand Daniel Finkelstein, a journalist for The Times.
@dannythefink I agree it’s a stinker and typical of double standards. Pity about the illegal settlements though. Best wishes
A reporter for The Times expressed surprise that news of a Labour Party investigation into racism against a member of Parliament was not in BBC radio news summaries.
A Guardian journalist, noting that Finkelstein was Jewish, immediately engaged in an ad hominem and completely irrelevant attack, raising the topic of settlements in the state of Israel.
The Guardian reporter’s ugly response to Finkelstein’s Tweet represents the classic antisemitic “reflex” of holding Jews collectively responsible for the perceived sins of the state of Israel – a bigoted associationhe’s made on at least one other occasion in a column at the Guardian.
Daniel Finkelstein is not an Israeli.
He happens to be a Jew but is no less British than Michael White.
“THE UNIVERSITY HAVE RESTRICTED THE EVENT TO MIDDLESEX STUDENTS & STAFF ONLY…PLEASE EMAIL MIDDLESEX UNIVERSITY TO SEEK THEIR JUSTIFICATION FOR THIS UNPRECEDENTED RESTRICTION.”
The event was the Free Palestine Society’s The Case for Boycotting, Divesting, and Sanctions against Israel held last night. The speakers were Lauren Booth, John Rees and Asghar Bukari. The location was Middlesex University in Hendon, a highly Jewish populated suburb of London.
On her blog Booth quotes Gilad Atzmon’s anti-Semitic rhetoric extensively and tries to back him up. For example:
“No Jews do not run the world. They get others to do it for them.’”….This argument is not without example. In 2001 Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, made unguarded comments, about relations with the United States and the peace process.
“I know what America is,” he told a group of terror victims, apparently not knowing his words were being recorded. “America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won’t get in their way.”
And she directly implicates British Jews in what she sees as Israel’s “crimes” when she writes:
“What must also continue, freely and without hindrance are debates into the British Jewish communities role in funding the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and East Jerusalem via such bodies as the Jewish National Fund.”
Bukhari is the founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee. MPAC was banned from university campuses in 2004 after being branded anti-Semitic by the National Union of Students and Bukhari, himself, supported and financedHolocaust denier David Irving.
Rees has, inter alia, reportedly identified with the Mahdi Army, a terror cell responsible for the deaths of thousands of Iraqis.
We did email Middlesex University to ask why concerned members of the public were banned, but the response bore no relation to the question. Middlesex University responded:
“This is a Students’ Union supported society event which is open to students and staff at the University. As a University we have a responsibility to protect freedom of speech within the law and support the rights of our students to meet and discuss issues that matter to them. The University hosts a wide range of events, presenting many different views, and we would not seek to prevent them or influence the content unless there are very strong grounds to do so.”
When I contacted Sam Spindlow, of Corporate Communications at Middlesex University and who was responsible for disseminating the statement, even he agreed that the statement did not explain why the public was banned, but said he could go no further than that.
The reality is that ata similar event at Middlesex University last year Ken O’Keefe compared Jews to Nazis, and Jenny Tonge said that “Israel won’t be here forever” for which she was chucked out of the Liberal Democrats.
Middlesex University’s new policy seems to be to allow hate speech to go virtually unopposed. Concerned members of the public are to be banned from anti-Israel events, although whether this policy is legal is open to question with Middlesex University being a taxpayer funded institution.
A few defiant members of Middlesex University’s Jewish Society did attend last night. One walked out in disgust at what was being said about Israel. She said that a pro-Israel question was asked during the Q&A but was dismissed by Lauren Booth as being “too Zionist a question to take seriously.” Another member of the Jewish Society handed out pro-Israel leaflets afterwards.
Jonathan Hoffman and I weren’t allowed in so we waited outside till the end and engaged in discussion with the students as they exited the room. We didn’t get very far though. We were told we were “child killers” and as I left a student shouted at me “Go back to Golders Green*.”
That kind of vile racism has now become the norm at anti-Israel events, but Middlesex University dangerously continues to look away.
*Golders Green is another highly Jewish populated suburb of London. ** Thanks to Stand For Peace for its research on Booth, Bukhari and Rees.
Jonathan Hoffman and security outside last night’s Free Palestine Society event at Middlesex University.
The empirical probability that reader comments in response to Israel-related content at the Guardian and ‘Comment is Free’ will quickly devolve into anti-Zionist vitriol is as good as the likelihood that the specific epithets used by commenters will be consistent with the Guardian Left narrative.
Both are near certainties.
While we’ve often posted about reader comments which are more explicitly antisemitic, the following thread effectively illustrates the manner in which the debate over Hagel’s nomination for Defense Secretary has been framed at the Guardian – where a conservative Republican has engendered the sympathy of the Guardian Left due largely to the political orientation of those aligned against him.
“Insulting religions, faiths, or religious symbols cannot in any way be a part of freedom of belief or freedom of expression.”
Religious lesson in official PA daily:
“The struggle between truth and falsehood is as ancient as life upon this earth… The conflict between us and the Jews is not a conflict about land and borders, but rather a conflict about faith and existence.”
In response to the film depicting Islam’s prophet Muhammad negatively, using terms like “child molester” and “murderous thug,” Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas “condemned the insult to [Islam's] prophet” and added that he rejects “freedom of belief or freedom of expression when it comes to criticizing religion.”
Mahmoud Abbas’ condemnation of the defamation of Islam contrasts the PA policy of defamation of Judaism, demonization of Jews and promotion of Antisemitism, all of which are integral messages expressed by PA leaders and transmitted through the structures under their control.
Recent examples of this policy can be found in all areas of PA expression. The moderator at a Fatah ceremony demonized Jews as “the descendants of the apes and pigs.” A PA TV narrator said that Jews praying at the Western Wall are “sin and filth.” Senior PA official Jibril Rajoub referred to Jews as “Satans” and “Zionist sons of bitches” on PA TV. The PA Mufti and other religious leaders have defined Jews as the “enemy of Allah,” even preaching the following Hadith in PA TV sermons: “The Prophet says: ‘You shall fight the Jews and kill them.’” Indeed, what these and many other examples document is that in the PA, not only is demonization of Jews and Judaism common practice, it is also sometimes promoted as a religious Islamic imperative.
Significantly, the PA’s promotion of hatred of Jews is not limited to religious leaders and PA officials. PA TV featured young girls on children’s programs saying that Jews and Christians are “inferior and smaller, more cowardly and despised” and that “our enemy, Zion, is Satan with a tail.” Following classical European Antisemitism, a history program on PA TV taught that “Jews are hated in every society in which they have lived, because of their behavior relating to their great love of money.” The official PA daily on Israel’s independence day said Israel’s goal was to turn a “Jewish monarchy in Palestine into a basis for their [the Jews'] eternal rule over the world, that others, ‘goyim’ [non-Jews], must submit to their will.” (See details and many more sources below.)
The hypocrisy of the PA is evident. Abbas condemns the recent video about Muhammad and states that “insulting religions, faiths, or religious symbols” is not protected “freedom of expression.” At the same time, his own government’s policy is to indoctrinate Palestinians to hate Jews and to defame Judaism.
PA Chairman Abbas condemned defaming Islam and religion:
“President [Mahmoud Abbas] again condemned the insult to [Islam's] prophet Muhammad. He said… that from a religious, human, and moral point of view we cannot accept this insult, since it is a blatant attack on the entire belief system and the sensitivities of more than a billion Muslims in the world. President Abbas added that insulting religions, faiths, or religious symbols cannot in any way be a part of freedom of belief or freedom of expression…”
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Sept. 17, 2012]
PA defames Judaism and Jews:
PMW has collected 25 representative examples of this hate speech from PA and Fatah leaders, spokespeople, children’s programs and official media. Most are from 2012 and 2011.
These examples appear first as short quotes and are followed by their full contexts and sources.
Additional documentation can be found on PMW’s website, including hate speech during the PA terror campaign (the Intifada 2000-2005), when PA religious leaders repeatedly called for thekilling of Jews as an Islamic demand.
Young girl on PA TV children’s program
“Jews and Christians are “inferior and smaller, more cowardly and despised.”
Moderator at Fatah ceremony
“Our war with the descendants of the apes and pigs (i.e., Jews) is a war of religion and faith.”
History program on PA TV
“The Jews are hated in every society in which they have lived, because of their behavior relating to their great love of money… This is how they harmed the societies that embraced them.”
PA TV narrator, on Jerusalem
“The light rain [in Jerusalem] cleanses the steps of the foreigners [Jews] so that the feet [of Muslims] in prayer will not step on impurity.”
Official PA daily’s religious lesson by Sheikh Ishaq Feleifel
The Jews’ “evilnature is drawn from Adam’s first son [who murdered his brother].”
PA TV Friday sermon
“These new Mongols…the Jews, the enemies of Allah and of His Messenger, the enemies of Allah and of His Messenger! Enemies of humanity in general, and of Palestinians in particular… Our enmity with the Jews is a matter of faith, more than an enmity because of occupation and the land… Even if donkeys would cease to bray, dogs cease to bark, wolves cease to howl and snakes to bite, the Jews would not cease to harbor hatred towards Muslims. … The Prophet says: ‘You shall fight the Jews and kill them.’”
PA TV narrator, documentary on Jerusalem
“From the balcony of our home, look out over [Islamic] holiness (visual: Western Wall) and on sin and filth (visual: Jews praying at the Western Wall).”
PA Mufti Muhammad Hussein
“The enemies of Allah [the Jews], who have violated all faith and religious laws, and even deviated from their humanity.“
Official PA daily columnist on religion Sheikh Taleb Al-Silwadi
“Allah’s enemies, the children of Zion.”
Young girl on PA TV children’s program
“Our enemy, Zion, is Satan with a tail.”
Senior PA official Jibril Rajoub
“We are prepared to bring the Executive Committee in helicopters… so they will see no Jews, no Satans, no Zionist sons of bitches.”
PA Mufti Muhammad Hussein
“The Hour [of Resurrection] will not come until you fight the Jews. The Jew will hide behind stones or trees. Then the stones or trees will call: ‘Oh Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’”
Official PA daily:
“There is no limit to the greed of the Jews.”
Fatah official on PA TV
“The Jews were murderers of prophets.”
Official PA daily’s religious lesson by Sheikh Ishaq Feleifel
“The conflict between us and the Jews is not a conflict about land and borders, but rather a conflict about faith and existence.”
Official PA daily on Israel’s Independence Day
“Zionism is an extreme religious ideology whose aim is political hegemony and the transformation of a Jewish monarchy in Palestine into a basis for their eternal rule over the world, that others, “goyim” [non-Jews], must submit to their will.”
PA daily quotes children’s march-chant:
“Jews, Jews! Your holiday is the Holiday of the Apes.”
Palestinian actor in PA TV interview
“The Jew doesn’t have a bent nose, and isn’t cowardly, and is not interested only in accumulating money. Of course, he is interested in accumulating money – the Jews throughout history, and in the religions, and the Quran tells us about the Jews and their worry over money.”
Official PA daily
“The rabbis of death and the promoters of pagan Zionist thought have continued to spew their poison among the Jews, in order to stir up and rouse feelings of animosity and hatred against the Palestinians.”
Chief Justice of PA Religious Court
“Concerning the Jews, the Holy Quran says that they lack understanding, are void of wisdom, know nothing, violate agreements, etc. However, the Jews were known – it was known about them throughout history – that they make false claims, lies, forgery, slander, and fabrications.”
Additional examples of PA’s Antisemitic hate speech and sources of all items cited in brief above:
Jews /Israelis are “Allah’s enemies”
Sheikh Taleb Al-Silwadi, columnist on religious affairs in the official PA daily:
“One of the established facts is that the voice of falsehood does not rebel [against the truth] except where those who hold the truth [Muslims] forego their truth. Then there becomes room for falsehood, such that it can kill, behave violently, spill blood, and desecrate sacred things. That is what Allah’s enemies, the children of Zion, are doing before the eyes and ears of the entire world.”
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, June 1, 2012]
PA children taught to hate Jews and Christians: Jews and Christians are “inferior and smaller, more cowardly and despised”
Girl: Christians and Jews “are inferior and smaller, more cowardly and despised. They are remnants of the [Christian] crusaders and Khaibar (i.e., Jewish village destroyed by Muslims in 629)…”
[PA TV (Fatah), May 11 and June 2, 2012]
PA children taught to hate Jews
Young girl Lina: ”Our enemy, Zion, is Satan with a tail…”
[PA TV (Fatah), May 8, 2012]
PA children taught to hate Jews
Young girl Laila: ”Our enemy, Zion, is Satan with a tail…”
[PA TV (Fatah), April 7, 2012]
Senior PA official Jibril Rajoub says Jews are “Satans” and “Zionist sons of bitches”
“We are prepared to bring the Executive Committee in helicopters… so they will see no Jews, no Satans, no Zionist sons of bitches.”
[PA TV (Fatah), May 17, 2012]
Moderator at Fatah ceremony: Jews are “descendants of the apes and pigs”
“Our war with the descendants of the apes and pigs (i.e., Jews) is a war of religion and faith. Long Live Fatah!”
[PA TV (Fatah), Jan. 9, 2012]
PA Mufti Muhammad Hussein:
“The reliable Hadith (tradition attributed to Muhammad), [found] in the two reliable collections, Bukhari and Muslim, says: “The Hour [of Resurrection] will not come until you fight the Jews. The Jew will hide behind stones or trees. Then the stones or trees will call: ‘Oh Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’”
[PA TV (Fatah), Jan. 9, 2012]
Official PA daily: “There is no limit to the greed of the Jews”
“Anyone with eyes in his head sees that there is no limit to the greed of the Jews… The nibbling away at the body [land] by the Jews continues at all levels.”
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Dec. 30, 2011]
PA TV documentary on Jerusalem: Rain cleanses Jerusalem of Jews’ impurity so Muslims can pray
“The golden dome [of the mosque] shines with colors of the sky, with the white of clouds, while the joyous holiday [Eid Al-Adha] is good to the residents. The light rain cleanses the steps of the foreigners [Jews] so that the feet [of Muslims] in prayer will not step on impurity.”
[PA TV (Fatah), Nov. 6, 2011]
Kids’ hate speech against Jews at PA Arafat memorial broadcast 3 years in a row
Girl: ”He [Arafat] was our former president… The Jews poisoned him and I hate them very much. Allah will repay them what they deserve.” Boy: ”He [Arafat] died from poisoning by the Jews. Well, I don’t know what he died from, but I know it was by the Jews.”
Fatah official: Jews are “murderers of prophets,” so Jews are prone to murder
Secretary of Fatah branch in Jerusalem, Omar Shalabi, about the killing of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin: Shalabi: ”If the Jews were murderers of prophets, why shouldn’t they murder a Prime Minister who signed a peace agreement?!”
[PA TV (Fatah), Nov. 11, 2011]
Op-ed in official PA daily: “The hatred towards Israeli Jews is not related to racist discrimination” – it’s because they deserve it
“The hatred towards Israeli Jews is not related to racist discrimination, and there is no nation, people, or country which started any hatred against them. It is the Jews who have always started every struggle and hostility; they view themselves as better than all the nations and more honored than all the peoples (since they are God’s Chosen People). They call everyone else ‘goyim’ [lit. 'nations'], who are below them in every respect. Moreover, they view themselves as deserving of all the goodness, glory and power on earth, and believe that they should attain ownership of the property of every non-Jew, in every way. Therefore, in every country where they live, we see that they seek to distinguish themselves from its inhabitants. They are concentrated in their own neighborhoods, and want everyone who lives with them to become their supporters. One of the things which stir up the nations against the Jews and plants [feelings] in their hearts against them is their tricks, which people understand…”
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 2, 2011]
Official PA daily’s religious lesson: Judaism is a “distorted, corrupted, falsified religion”
Sheikh Ishaq Feleifel teaches religion:
“The struggle between truth and falsehood is as ancient as life upon this earth… yet the mighty Islam, from the breaking of its dawn and the spreading of its light up until our time, has been targeted by its enemies… the enemies have announced in a clear and provocative manner their despicable and terrible plot. Sixty-three years ago, the Israeli Prime Minister, Ben Gurion, stood at the UN after the entire world granted recognition to the malignant cancerous growth known as the State of Israel… The Prime Minister of this destructive cancerous growth stood up to declare the religion of the Jews in Palestine to the entire world. I hope that the [Islamic] nation will study this faith in order to know with certainty that the Jews talk, in conferences and in negotiations, only through their distorted, corrupted, falsified religion… The conflict between us and the Jews is not a conflict about land and borders, but rather a conflict aboutfaith and existence.”
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, June 3, 2011]
Official PA daily’s religious lesson: “[The Jews'] evil nature is drawn from Adam’s first son” who murdered his brother
Sheikh Ishaq Feleifel teaches religion:
“In this lesson I wanted to talk about Cain and Abel – that’s the first story on earth, whose victim was Abel, at the hands of his brother Cain – because this story shows a similarity to the Jews and their crimes… The Jews, by throwing off their yoke, followed in the footsteps of the first person on earth who threw off the yoke of Allah. Their [the Jews'] evil nature is drawn from Adam’s first son [who murdered his brother].”
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 13, 2011]
Official PA daily on Israel’s Independence Day: Zionism is a religious Jewish plan to rule over the non- Jewish world, and “Goyim [non-Jews] must submit to their will”
“The source of the name ‘Zionism’ is ‘Mount Zion’, one of the four mountains upon which the city of Jerusalem was founded. The Jews believe that their God lives there. Zionism is an extreme religious ideology whose aim is political hegemony and the transformation of a Jewish monarchy in Palestine into a basis for their eternal rule over the world, that others, “goyim” [non-Jews], must submit to their will, which is drawn from thewill of God.”
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 15, 2011]
Official PA daily quotes children: “Jews, Jews! Your holiday [Passover] is the Holiday of Apes”
“The spring carnival has retained its [Palestinian] flavor in towns such as Bethlehem, Beit Sahour and Ramallah… with the demonstrations of the Scouts, songs, dances, and popular Palestinian hymns about Christian-Islamic unity and internal Christian unity. These hymns carry meaningful messages, in response to the Israeli prohibition [to enter Jerusalem], as seen in the calls of the youth who lead the procession of light, waving swords and not caring if anyone accuses them of Antisemitism: … ‘Our Lord, Jesus Christ, Christ redeemed us, with his blood he bought us, and today we are joyous while the Jews are sad,’ and, ‘Jews, Jews! Your holiday is the Holiday of the Apes, while our holiday is the Holiday of the Christ.’”
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 19, 2011]
Palestinian actor in PA TV interview: Quran says Jews worry over money
Abd Al-Rahman Abu Al-Qasem, Palestinian actor living in Syria:
“Thirty or forty years ago, we presented the Jew in the theater as someone with a bent nose who lends [money] with interest and who understands nothing except money matters, and is cowardly, ugly, interested only in collecting money and controlling the people around him. However, this is not accurate or correct: The Jew doesn’t have a bent nose, and isn’t cowardly, and is not interested only in accumulating money. Of course, he is interested in accumulating money – the Jews throughout history, and in the religions, and the Quran tells us about the Jews and their worryover money.”
[PA TV (Fatah), Feb. 27, 2011]
Official PA daily’s headline: “Zionism reproduces the Holocaust”
“Day by day, Zionist racism is becoming more firmly and clearly entrenched in Israeli society… The rabbis of death and the promoters of pagan Zionist thought have continued to spew their poison among the Jews, in order to stir up and rouse feelings of animosity and hatred against the Palestinians, since the European and American forces of evil facilitated for them the [fulfillment of the] idea of the ‘national home’, in order to be rid of them and to remove from the European [social] fabric the results and implications of the Holocaust which they carried out against the Jews of Europe in Nazi Germany.”
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 19, 2011]
History program on PA TV: Jews’ money lending “Shylock” behavior caused Antisemitism
Jordanian academic Arafat Hijazi:
“150 years ago, when there were no Jews in Palestine, the Jews were in Europe, in Eastern Europe, but the Jews suffered from persecution by the European nations. The reason was that they [the Jews] would harm the people of the lands in which they lived. They had a problem: Wherever they went, they were expelled, and were imprisoned.”
Jordanian academic Muhammad Dohal:
“The Jews are hated in every society in which they have lived, because of their behavior relating to their great love of money. Their behavior led to [Shakespeare's] famous story, the story of Shylock about money lending, which clings to the Jews. This is how they harmed the societies that embraced them, including the Palestinian society, the Arab-Palestinian society.”
[PA TV (Fatah), Oct. 17, 2010]
PA TV: Jews praying at the Western Wall is “sin and filth” – broadcast 2 years in a row
PA TV narrator: ”They [Israelis] know for certain that our [Palestinian] roots are deeper than their false history. We, from the balcony of our home, look out over [Islamic] holiness and on sin and filth [Jews praying at the Western Wall].”
[PA TV (Fatah), Sept. 10, 2010 and Aug. 10, 2011]
PA Mufti: Jews are “enemies of Allah” who “deviated from their humanity”
Muhammad Hussein, Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine:
“The Al-Aqsa Mosque is threatened by the plans of the enemies of Allah [the Jews], who have violated all faith and religious laws, and even deviated from their humanity.“
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, June 26, 2010]
PA TV: Don’t threaten kids with monsters, demons and Jews
PA cleric: ”Bringing up children with fear, anxiety and panic, scaring them when they cry – once by mentioning a monster, another time a scarecrow or a thief, and some other time a Jew, a demon, or the sound of the wind and other things, in order to silence them. Then the child grows up as a coward.”
[PA TV (Fatah), April 23, 2010]
Jews are “enemies of Allah,” “enemies of humanity,” and “the Prophet says… ‘fight the Jews and kill them’”
The following are excerpts of a PA TV Friday sermon from a mosque that was broadcast on PA TV: “The loathsome occupation in Palestine – its land and its holy places – by these new Mongols and what they are perpetrating upon this holy, blessed and pure land…The Jews, the enemies of Allah and of His Messenger, the enemies of Allah and of His Messenger! Enemies of humanity in general, and of Palestinians in particular… Our enmity with the Jews is a matter of faith, more than an enmity because of occupation and the land… Oh Muslims! The Jews are the Jews. The Jews are the Jews. Even if donkeys would cease to bray, dogs cease to bark, wolves cease to howl and snakes to bite, the Jews would not cease to harbor hatred towards Muslims. The Prophet said that if two Jews would be alone with a Muslim, they would think only of killing him… The Prophet says: ‘You shall fight the Jews and kill them, until the tree and the stone will speak and say: ‘Oh Muslim, Oh servant of Allah’ – the tree and the stone will not say, ‘Oh Arab,’ they will say, ‘Oh Muslim’. And they will not say, ‘Where are the millions?’ and will not say, ‘Where is the Arab nation?’ Rather, they will say, ‘Oh Muslim, Oh servant of Allah – there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’…”
[PA TV (Fatah), Jan. 29, 2010]
PA Chief Justice of Religious Court: Quran says Jews are evil
Dr. Tayseer Al-Tamimi, PA Chief Justice of Religious Court, and Chairman of Supreme Council of Islamic Law: “Concerning the Jews, the Holy Quran says that they lack understanding, are void of wisdom, know nothing, violate agreements, etc. However, the Jews were known – it was known about them throughout history – that they make false claims, lies, forgery, slander, and fabrications, in order to justify their aggression, land theft, defilement of holy sites, appropriation of land, destruction of homes, murder of children, women, and the elderly.”
[PA TV (Fatah), June 9, 2009]
Official PA daily: Jews are sadists and liars
“[In his lecture, Dr. Yunes Amr, President of Al-Quds Open University] addressed the subject of ‘Jerusalem, capital of Arab culture,’ the characteristics of the Jews – their lies and their sadism.”
Tom Gross wrote the following, in a recent post, about the non-existent “Israeli Jew” backed by non-existent “rich Jewish financiers” responsible for the YouTube video clip called the “Innocence of Muslims.”
Even after most Western news outlets corrected themselves last Thursday, a small minority of Western news columnists with a track record of attacking Israel continued to state that an Israeli Jew was behind the film.
Unsurprisingly, the media in the Arab world and Iran have continued this theme…blaming Jews for the anti-Islam film “Innocence of Muslims.”
Here are a handful of the hateful cartoons in the Arab media, echoing these false accusations about the film, which didn’t inspire Jews to riot, engage in violence, nor the storm embassies of countries where such antisemitic depictions were sanctioned.
United Arab Emirates paper, Al-Bayan, Sept. 16, 2012: The caption reads “A joint vision of the production”
Aftermath: No riots, no injuries, no deaths.
The Qatari paper Ar-Raya, Sept. 16, 2012. Note the stars of David on the filmmaker’s shirtsleeves. The caption reads: “The Killing of the US Ambassador in Libya.”
Aftermath: No riots, no injuries, no deaths.
The Omani paper, Al-Watan, Sept. 18, 2012: The movie clapboard says: “The film: Innocence of Muslims; Produced by The devil,” and the Jew is saying “Action”
Aftermath: No riots, no injuries, no deaths.
The official PA daily published this cartoon on Aug. 23 that depicts Israel as a demonized religious Jew holding a knife dripping with blood. Obama to Jew holding a knife dripping with blood: “Don’t be afraid. There are no pictures or articles about you.”.
Aftermath: No riots, no injuries, no deaths.
Iran’s Fars News Agency, Sept. 2012. Jewish devil
Aftermath: No riots, no injuries, no deaths.
Fars News Agency, Sept. 2012. The Jewish serpent is being led by Satan.
Aftermath: No riots, no injuries, no deaths.
Finally, going beyond the current controversy over ‘The innocence of Muslims”, here are a couple of Arab “classics”.
Blood-drinking Jews are frequently portrayed in the Arab media. Shown here is one published in the Egyptian paper, Al Ahram in April 2001, showing an Arab placed into a flattening mill by two Israeli soldiers. Arab blood pours out & two Jews drink the blood laughingly.
Aftermath: No riots, no injuries, no deaths.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is shown drinking from a goblet labeled “The Palestinian Children’s Blood.”
Aftermath: No riots, no injuries, no deaths.
This cartoon, with text in English designed for a foreign audience, was posted on the official website of the Palestinian Authority State on April 6, 2003
Aftermath: No riots, no injuries, no deaths.
As Joel Kotek wrote in an essay published at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs:
The main recurrent motif in Arab cartoons concerning Israel is “the devilish Jew.” This image conveys the idea that Jews behave like Nazis, kill children and love blood.
Palestinian cartoonists often place emphasis on the anti-Semitic accusation of “ritual murder” of children. This is underscored by their claim that Israelis target Palestinian children. To dehumanize Jews, Arab cartoonists often depict them as malevolent creatures: spiders, vampires or octopuses.
Here’s one last cartoon, which is cruel beyond words.
This cartoon, of Hitler and Anne Frank, was published in 2006 on the website of the Arab-European League (AEL), founded by Dyab Abou Jahjah, a Lebanese born Belgian Muslim leader
Aftermath: No riots, no injuries, no deaths.
Finally, these cartoons are anything but anomalies.
There are thousands upon thousands of such hideously antisemitic depictions of Jews in the Arab media (in newspapers, magazines, and books), many of which can be found at the sites of Palestinian Media Watch,MEMRI andADL.
The Guardian, as with most of the “mainstream” media, all but ignores such expressions of extreme hatred towards Jews in the Arab world.
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.
Glenn Greenwald’s latest outrage is inspired by commentary by some in the media – in response to riots and violence in Egypt, Libya and elsewhere – expressing surprise that Muslims in those nations are not grateful to the US for backing Mubarak’s ouster and initiating military action to topple Gaddafi.
Greenwald, in ‘US media angrily marvels at the lack of Muslim gratitude‘, Sept. 15, cites “decades of arming, funding and general support [for Mubarak] from the US” and the civilian death toll from the Libya operation as reasons why citizens in both countries are rightfully far from grateful to America.
He then lambastes those, such as NBC correspondent Richard Engel, who argue that the “primary reason these Muslims have such animosity toward the US is because their heads have been filled…with crazy conspiracy theories about how the US and Israel are responsible for their woes”.
Greenwald writes:
“…to act as though Muslim anger toward the US and Israel is primarily the by-product of crazy conspiracy theories is itself a crazy conspiracy theory. It’s in the world of reality, not conspiracy, where the US and Israel have continuously brought extreme amounts of violence to the Muslim world, routinely killing their innocent men, women and children.
Listening to Engel, one would never know about tiny little matters like the bombing of Gaza and Lebanon, the almost five-decade long oppression of Palestinians, the widely hated, child-killing drone campaign, or the attack on Iraq.” [emphasis added]
While Greenwald’s narrative about U.S. responsibility for Muslim anger is entirely predictably – an expression of American self-flagellation over every conceivable problem afflicting non-Westerners which is popular within a segment of the American left – his implication that Muslim anti-Zionist hatred is justifiable given Israel’s ‘oppression of Muslims’ is ahistorical and morally unserious.
“deaths in the Arab-Israeli conflict [number] 51,000 [since 1950] in all. Arabs make up roughly 35,000 of these dead and Jewish Israelis make up 16,000.
These figures mean that deaths in Arab-Israeli fighting since 1950 amount to just 0.06 percent of the total number of deaths in all conflicts in that period. More graphically, only 1 out of about 1,700 persons killed in conflicts since 1950 has died due to Arab-Israeli fighting.
In a different perspective, some 11,000,000 Muslims have been violently killed since 1948, of which 35,000, or 0.3 percent, died during the sixty years of fighting Israel, or just 1 out of every 315 Muslim fatalities. In contrast, over 90 percent of the 11 million who perished were killed by fellow Muslims.
(Adding the 11,000 killed in the Israeli war of independence, 1947-49, made up of 5,000 Arabs and 6,000 Israeli Jews, does not significantly alter these figures.)
Examples of Muslim on Muslim violence since 1950 include the Iran-Iraq War, the Algerian Civil War, the Syrian massacre in Hama, Jordan’s killing of Palestinians (Black September ), Saddam Hussein’s mass murder of Shiites, Kurds and others, and the ethnic cleansing in Darfur. The list goes on.
Massacres, of course, are still taking place in Muslim countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, and elsewhere – “extreme” Muslim on Muslim violence - and yet no citizens, other than Israeli Jews, are routinely called “blood-thirsty“, “genocidal“, “terrorist“, or “Nazi” by Muslim countries.
Click image to see video
The Muslim public’s “outrage” over Israel’s treatment of Arabs and Palestinians, as with their extreme antisemitism, is cynically exploited by the Arab media – dangerous propaganda which is often ignored, or even legitimized, by Western media elites.
While economic under-development and the continued absence of true democratic values represent the Muslim world’s greatest problem, Greenwald would have us believe that the the Muslim world’s malign obsession with Israeli Jews is somehow justified - that 1.6 billion Muslims are being oppressed by 6 millions Jews.
Yeah, really, who HASN’T heard of CiF Watch by now?!
Later, ‘CarefulReader’ left this commentexpressing concern over the high number of ‘Recommends’ under many pro-Israel comments and fleshing out his/her working theory:
So, it seems as if there’s an organized effort by Zionists, supported by the Israeli government, to keep CiF comments pro-Israel, thus eroding the “integrity” of the threads.
However, without the Guardian’s “access logs”, the CiF coven are left to merely speculate about the identities of those associated with CiF Watch and other sinister Zionist bodies. Such supremely cynical, dark and brooding souls are clearly reigning terror across the pages of CiF by using the insidious tactics of facts, reason and logic (and comment ‘Recommends’!) in trying to influence debates about Israel.
The CiF Watch-style ‘hasbarafia’ will clearly stop at nothing!
Few things are guaranteed to upset the Guardian like a US Republican presidential candidate’s visit to Jerusalem: on a fund-raiser no less!
If bookies took bets on such things, you could put your house on the paper writing a poorly worded article that risks sounding like a modern version of old antisemitic conspiracy myths. Remember this Guardian editorial from 2008?
“When a presumptive US presidential candidate arrives in Jerusalem, he willingly dons a jacket designed by Israeli tailors.”
And that was for Barack Obama, a black Democrat!
Indeed, right on cue, here comes Comment is Free with an article by Juan Cole concerning Mitt Romney’s visit to Israel, entitled:
‘Ten reasons Mitt Romney’s Israel visit is in bad taste’
The “bad taste” begins in the article’s sub-title:
Did you catch that? “Presidential hopeful…fundraiser…playing war enabler in Israel”.
The article is reasonably straightforward, consisting of 10 points against Romney’s visit.
Unlike many other articles on this risk-strewn subject, it at least stresses (in its very 1st point) that Romney is reaching out to Christian Zionists “and the minority of American Jews who would be willing to vote Republican”. So, this is no crass antisemitic slur, but it still risks hitting those nerves, particularly with its 7th point, which states:
7. Romney is promising his donors in Jerusalem a war on Iran. When George W Bush promised his pro-Israel supporters a war on Iraq, it cost the US at least $3 trillion, got hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed, destabilised the Gulf for some time, cost over 4,000 American soldiers’ lives and damaged American power and credibility and the economy. As Nancy Reagan said of drugs, so US politicians must say to constant Israeli entreaties that the US continually fight new wars in the Middle East on their behalf: “Just say no.” Instead, Romney is playing war enabler, and that abroad.
Of the 10 points in the article, this was the “war enabler” one that made the sub-title, obviously having caught the attention of the Comment is Free sub-editor.
Consider, however, exactly what this 7th point actually states. It says “Romney is promising his donors in Jerusalem a war on Iran”. Nothing more and nothing less. A war that could make Iraq look like a picnic, promised by a Presidential candidate to “his donors in Jerusalem”.
If the Guardian has proof of such a conspiracy and such a dangerous promise, then surely it should be on the front page, not buried on the CiF website with all the other dross. If the Guardian has no such proof, then this allegation should be removed immediately. The author does, however, provide a link. It is here and goes to an Associated Press report that shows differing nuanced statements made by Romney and on his behalf concerning whether or not America would back an Israeli strike upon Iran. It ends with:
“He [Romney] later clarified his comments in a written statement, saying that the candidate “believes we should employ any and all measures to dissuade the Iranian regime from its nuclear course and it is his fervent hope that diplomatic and economic measures will do so. In the final analysis, of course, no option should be excluded.”
This hardly meets the burden of proof that “promising his donors in Jerusalem a war on Iran” should require from the Guardian: even upon its journalistically subnormal CiF site.
But there’s worse than this. Double it, in fact, because the promised Iran war is immediately followed by:
“When George W Bush promised his pro-Israel supporters a war on Iraq, it cost the US at least $3 trillion, got hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed…cost over 4,000 American soldiers’ lives…US politicians must say [no] to constant Israeli entreaties that the US continually fight new wars in the Middle East on their behalf.”
So, the Iraq war was all Israel’s fault. Well, not exactly…it was the fault of President Bush’s “pro-Israel supporters” to whom he had “promised…a war on Iraq”. No link is provided for this colossal claim, nor for the even bigger succeeding one, that American wars for Israel is standard operating procedure.
Perhaps the author feels that no proof is required, perhaps this is what simply passes for received wisdom at the Guardian these days. It certainly feels that way: an impression that is not helped by senior figure, Brian Whitaker, recommending the article under the title “best blogs and analysis from the Middle East”.
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 progressivekashrut 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.”)
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, toAlison Weir- accurately characterized as one of the few modern-day promoters of the ancient anti-Semitic blood libel.
More recently, it was announced that Salon.com blogger, Glenn Greenwald, will be moving to the Guardian.
Greenwald (whoblogs at Salon.com) advances a brand of anti-imperialism, much in the tradition of Guardian Associate EditorSeumas 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 sampleof 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.”
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.
