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There was nothing especially interesting about Guardian columnist Hadley Freeman’s recent essay, “Running for president or for an Oscar – which is the bigger waste of money?”.
Freeman cheekily, if cynically, compared the vast sums of money spent on both the Oscars and the U.S. Presidential Campaign, conjuring “shadowy menacing puppet masters” controlling both outcomes – Harvey Weinstein, Karl Rove, the Koch Brothers, Super PACs, etc. – as if to ask “why bother paying attention to either contest”?
Freeman’s commentary elicited a few sober, if satirical, comments beneath the line, inspiring the Guardian journalist to cheerfully comment, “Thanks everyone! What nice comments so far. 2012 is starting off very kindly on CiF, I must say.”
Alas, the decency level soon declined, as one commenter felt the need to respond to the erstwhile humorist, thusly:
Of course, it would be easy to dismiss the reader’s Israel ‘Obsessive Compulsive Disorder’ as just a stray ‘off-topic’ comment, except that, as you can see, the comment received 50 “Recommends” by fellow Guardianistas (in a post which has thus far only generated 59 comments), and hasn’t been deleted. So, presumably, it isn’t deemed unrelated to Hadley’s commentary by CiF Moderators.
Moreover, any good student of CiF America knows, per two recent commentaries (here and here) on the undue influence of one American “Israel-Firster” named Sheldon Adelson, precisely what kind of “shadowy puppet master” controls the U.S. political system.
The degree to which some CiF readers are capable of explaining so many unpleasant political dynamics, in either the Middle East or the U.S., in a manner which imputes maximum malice to Jews, Zionists or Israel can be nearly comical, but is often not unrelated to the Guardian’s continuing legitimization of such obsessions.
Guardian commentators know their audience’s biases, they know them well, and they continually aim to please.
In politics it’s typically known as “playing to your base”.
A guest post by AKUS
Adam Levick has already demonstrated the prevalence of typically anti-Semitic language and themes that form the core of the disgusting article by Arun Kundnani, Newt Gingrich’s agenda-setting big donor, with its implication of “Jewish money” setting the agenda for the US elections, and the twinned article by Paul Harris, The Secrets of the billionaire bankrolling Gingrich’s shot at the White House, with its juicy hint of a secretive Jewish donor manipulating the Republican nomination campaign.
Arun Kundnani claims that Adelson is “setting the agenda” for Gingrich by donating money to a Super-PAC that supports Gingrich’s candidacy.
This, of course, is nonsense. A PAC does not “set the agenda” for a candidate. All PACs promote the agenda of candidates they find consistent with their donors’ views by placing advertizing in the media. Kundnani basically admits as much:
Of course, like all private funding of politics, there is no way of knowing with certainty what the Adelsons expect to achieve with their money.
Precisely. There is no way to know what donors expect other than they hope their preferred candidate will win the nomination and will, therefore, implement polices the donors support – but do not control. The idea that because Adelson is Jewish (and even worse – a Jew who loves and supports Israel) he must be setting Newt’s agenda is clearly a reversion to the age-old theme that “Jewish money” controls politics (among other things).
Money is flooding into the coffers of all candidates now that the Supreme Court has (foolishly, I believe) opened the doors to corporate donors. The Sunlight Foundation has been tracking Super PAC money, and it reveals that although the pro-Gingrich Super PAC that Adelson supports, Winning Our Future, has spent $8,511,433, the pro-Romney Super PAC, Restore Our Future, has outspent Gingrich’s Super Pac by more than 2:1 – $17,485,657.
PACs supporting other candidates have spent or raised amounts in the $1 million to $4 million range, including, by the way, a PAC that supports perennial Guardian favorite, the anti-Israeli Ron Paul.
Yet we do not see an investigative piece in the Guardian that tries to tie Romney’s donors to powerful and wealthy Mormons, or Ron Paul’s PAC to – well, some lunatic fringe Texan, I suppose who hopes to “achieve something with his money” such as restoring the US to the gold standard.
In fact, while Adelson might support Gingrich because Gingrich supports Israel is very likely true, it is apparently not necessarily true that Gingrich is supporting Israel to court “Jewish money”. Even the virulently anti-Israeli Guardian journalist, Chris McGreal, has dropped his blinkers long enough to note what everyone else already realized some time ago – that Newt’s real audience is the vastly greater evangelical voting bloc:
But Gingrich’s vocal support of Israel has less to do with support from the Jewish community than the votes of a much larger group: Christian evangelicals, who are strongly supportive of Israel for theological reasons
McGreal went on to cite a person claiming that the evangelicals are to the right of Netanyahu’s government when it comes to the Israeli-Arab conflict. Nevertheless, he also could not avoid bringing Adelson into the mix, even though he is only one of Gingrich’s donors and we have no way to know how he compares with other donors – for example, to donors to Romney’s far greater Super PAC. For those interested, it is worth noting that Jeffrey Katzenberg has donated $2 million to Barak Obama’s Super PAC, but the Guardian editorial pool does not seem to feel that this donation raises the specter of “Jewish money” at work distorting the electoral process.
Harris article, The Secrets of the billionaire bankrolling Gingrich’s shot at the White House, was typical of the worst of the Guardian’s feeble attempts at investigative reporting. In more than 2,000 words, Harris revealed “secrets” that a few milliseconds on Google would turn up. The gist, of course, was that as a result of the Adelsons’ support, heavily outspent Gingrich “…suddenly has an outside chance of becoming president”. Perhaps to put this whole affair in perspective, take a look at the billions spent by lobbying companies listed at OpenSecrets.org.
It is the delicious conjunction of “Adelson” – “Jewish” – “Israel”- Abe Foxman” – “AIPAC” and, of course, “money” that makes the whole issue of Adelson’s very public “secrets” so interesting to Harris and the Guardian. The Guardian even foolishly added the sub-header claim, ludicrous to every sane observer of the Republican nomination process, that is being debunked even as I write this, that “Sheldon Adelson is not running for office – but his cash could swing Tuesday’s Florida primary”.
Well, it may not. Romney is trouncing Gingrich in the Florida primary polls.
If it is inappropriate for wealthy people to support Gingrich, why is it not inappropriate for Romney to raise at least twice as much money, and far more than twice as much before the Adelsons stepped forward with their donation or donations? There is really only one answer, and it runs like a shameful thread through all three articles. It is because Adelson is Jewish and a supporter of Israel, and Newt has been more outspoken in his support of Israel than Romney (but less, by the way, than former candidate Michele Bachman, for example).
The Guardian moderators were out in force shredding comments BTL to Kundani’s article. One of the comments deleted was this one, and I would say that SantaMoniker only got it half right:
The fact is, there was nothing “wink, wink, nudge, nudge” about the articles by Kundnani and Harris, in particular. They were blatant invocations of the age-old anti-Semitic idea that “Jewish money” controls politicians. The Guardian has been slipping more and more frequently into the sewer of anti-Semitism, and this time was in it up to its neck.
But the Republicans of Florida will vote, and it appears that Romney will trounce Gingrich.
Will we then see a shame-faced retraction by the Guardian? Of course not.
Related articles
Inspired by Arun Kundnani’s scare story about the toxicity of Jewish money (“Newt Gingrich’s agenda-setting big donor“, Jan. 27) were a few predictable reader comments.
The text in quotes below are from another reader comment which “beachbear2012″ was responding to. Please note the final passage of the comment by “beachbear2012″, which helpfully fleshes out the full scope of the conspiratorial plot. And, when reading, remember, it’s Zionists he/she hates not Jews.
But, the following “truth-telling” comment about Jewish subterfuge (which received 12 “Recommends” before being deleted), posted under Paul Harris’s piece on Adelson, “Secrets of the billionaire backing Gingrich’s shot at the White House“, serves to make “beachbear2012″ seem downright philosemitic.
CLICK TO ENLARGE
Related articles
- Why is an essay on alleged Israeli racism in the “Jewish Belief” section of ‘Comment is Free’? (cifwatch.com)
- Arun Kundnani, & a Guardian dog-whistle about the injurious effects of a wealthy American Zionist (cifwatch.com)
- Why weren’t these deleted? CiF essay about Rosh Hashana elicits antisemitic comments (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian’s Ewen MacAskill sees Obama’s Israel support, in State of Union, reflecting need of Jews’ money (cifwatch.com)
- Gilad Atzmon takes aim at CiF Watch, accusing us of running “a Jewish supremacist site”! (cifwatch.com)
Arun Kundnani at Islamic Human Rights Commission Event
The 2012 Presidential Republican Primaries have just gotten started, and the Guardian has found their villain:
A ”secretive”, pro-Israel, bullying, racist Jewish billionaire exercising a nefarious influence on the American political process.
His name is Sheldon Adelson, and, in nearly 3000 words in two separate Guardian reports (both published on Jan. 28,), Paul Harris and Arun Kundnani have played to their Guardian base with the unmistakable evocation of the injurious effects of (Zionist) Jewish money on the American body politic.
Harris’s “The Secrets of the billionaire bankrolling Gingrich’s shot at the White House“, warning of a Jewish billionaire attempting to purchase the outcome of the U.S. elections, contains tropes similarly found in Arun’s piece, but Arun‘s account of Adelson, in ”Newt Gingrich’s agenda-setting big donor“, represents a far more egregious polemical assault on pro-Israel American Jewry.
Arun begins his critique of Adleson’s substantial donations to the Gingrich campaign by attempting to explain his motives, complaining that the New York Times and others in the MSM have been less than direct, and even coy, about Adelsons’ political views.
Writes Arun:
[The NYT] ignored the fact that the Adelson [family] uses their wealth to fund rightwing groups in Israel and anti-Muslim campaigns within the U.S.
Adelson is a friend of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu… [and] has also funded the leading pro-Israel lobby group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)…known for its strong and effective advocacy of Israel’s interests.
Arun’s caricature of Adelson couldn’t be clearer: A wealthy American Jew attempting to manipulate the U.S. political system to promote not American but, rather, Israel’s interests.
He continues:
[Adelson] also reportedly supports the Clarion Fund, which produces scare-mongering films advancing the conspiracy theory that Muslims seek to impose sharia law in America.
One of the Clarion Fund’s films, “Obsession“, which I’ve seen, at odds with Arun’s characterization, does not contain anti-Muslim racism, and certainly does not trade in conspiracy theories. The film opens with a very clear explanation that their focus is not on the overwhelming majority of Muslims in the world, but merely on Islamists who espouse radical and violent views.
Indeed, the video largely consists of clips of Islamists on Arab TV (in their own words) advancing hate and inciting their followers to launch a global Jihad.
The suggestion there’s something bigoted about warning of the very real threats posed by radical Islam is one of the moral signatures of the Guardian Left – those who genuinely seem more concerned with the “agenda” of Zionist Jews than with proponents of a reactionary, violent, and theocratic movement inherently at odds with progressive values.
Arun continues:
While Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum have also declared their strong support for Israel, only Gingrich has embraced a vision of civilizational conflict between the west and Islam – a convenient narrative for the right in Israel, which fears growing international support for the human rights of Palestinians, and would prefer Americans to think of Israel as a bastion of western values threatened by Islamic barbarism.
Right out of the Guardian commentary playbook, Arun sows doubt on the morally intuitive understanding that Israel is indeed a bastion of liberal democratic values and human rights in a region awash in repression and religious totalitarianism.
Is it even debatable that the “human rights of Palestinians” continue to be abrogated by their decidedly reactionary Islamist leaders in Gaza?
What possible defense could Arun mount to evidence that the rights of women, gays, political dissidents and religious minorities are routinely violated in the Palestinian Territories?
Interestingly, Arun, a Soros fellow, has appeared at events about Islamophobia sponsored by the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC).
To those unaware about the IHRC’s understanding of human rights, here’s Douglas Murray, former director of the Centre for Social Cohesion:
[The IHRC] campaigns for imprisoned extremists such as the “Blind Sheikh”, Omar Abdel Rahman, currently serving a life sentence in the US for his part in the first blowing-up of the World Trade Centre in 1993. The IHRC’s chairman, Massoud Shadjareh criticised the prosecution of Abu Hamza in 2006, claiming that the conviction created “an environment that can only further alienate the Muslim community”. Shadjareh has called Zionism a racist ideology, and, in a 2006 demonstration in London, called for support for Hezbollah. The IHRC also organises the annual al-Quds day parade in London – an event instituted by that well-known champion of human rights, Ayatollah Khomeini.
Arun also appeared in 2006 UK forum titled “Racism, Liberty and the war on terror”, whose co-panelists included a who’s who of Islamists and their supporters, including Moazzam Begg, former Taliban supporter and al-Qaeda member, and Salma Yaqoob, the former vice-chair, of the Respect Party who described the 7/7 terror attacks as reprisal attacks against American aggression.
Arun is an editor at the journal, ‘Race and Class’, which frequently publishes essays by those opposed to Israel’s existence, including one by Hilary and Steven Rose which championed the virtues of a complete cultural and academic boycott of Israel.
Arun has also, in an interview, spoken favorably of Islamist thinkers like Hassan al-Banna (founder of the Muslim Brotherhood), Tariq Ramadan (a proponent of Islamism who happens to be the grandson of al-Banna) and Sayyid Qutb (the Islamist writer who’s been credited with inspiring the ideology of Islamist groups like al-Qaeda).
Moreover, in the Marxist-inspired, ideological spirit of Guardian Associate Editor Seumas Milne, Arun has derided the West’s war against Islamist terrorism as nothing more than another form of “neo-colonialism“.
Finally, and arguably the most chilling passages in his ’Comment is Free’ piece, Arun concludes:
The number of Americans holding [Adelson's pro-Israel anti-Islamist] views [are] declining. One index of this shifting mood was the that the standing ovation Netanyahu received at Congress was “bought and paid for by the Israel lobby”, implying that money rather than shared values underlies the special relationship. Yet there remains a reluctance to fully discuss these issues for fear of fueling the old hate libels about Jewish money controlling world events. This is a real concern: antisemitism continues to be central to much far-right ideology in the US and Europe. Equally, though, we should not be discouraged from properly scrutinising the millions of dollars being spent to advance the career of a politician who promotes conspiracy theories about a Muslim takeover of America and is running for the presidential nomination while espousing a Greater Israel agenda. [emphasis added]
Arun here is marveling, indeed celebrating, the American lurch towards the mainstreaming of classic antisemitic tropes; seeing its resurgence as a hopeful, indeed progressive, indicator of the changing political climate: The fear of American Jews loyal not to their own country, but to a “greater Israel”.
Arun is speaking truth to power, bucking the politically fashionable concerns of a resurgent antisemitism.
But, perhaps Arun’s greatest conceit, and most deceitful narrative, involves the suggestion that antisemitism “continues to be central to much far-right ideology in the US and Europe”.
Is there really anyone who’s intellectually and morally serious who believes that Judeophobia is an ideological vice primarily found on the right?
Can anyone aware of the malign, often annihilationist, anti-Jewish rhetoric emanating from the Middle East – in their media, popular culture, and during sermons delivered in mosques located in Cairo, Damascus, Riyadh, Gaza City, and Ramallah – honestly suggest that the the most serious, pervasive and endemic antisemitism in our day lay not in the Islamic world?
Arun’s profound moral obfuscation about Islam’s Jewish problem, couched in an essay itself laden with classic Judeophobic tropes regarding the corrosive effects of Jews’ money, represents a supremely cynical moral inversion.
Yet, Arun’s polemical assault on the motives and loyalties of American Jews represents the kind of bigoted propaganda continually, and audaciously, couched in progressive terms at the ideological space known as the Guardian Left.
Related articles
As I’ve noted previously, merely characterizing Gilad Atzmon as antisemitic doesn’t do him justice. Atzmon advances hateful, demonizing rhetoric about Jews which is on par with the most vile Judeophobic charges ever leveled, and which is often as crude and malevolent as what would be heard at a meeting of neo-Nazis or Islamist extremists.
In brief, he repeatedly refers to Judaism as “supremacist“‘ faith, a term popularized by David Duke. And, Duke, the former grand wizard of the KKK, has strongly praised Atzmon’s writings.
Atzmon also has questioned whether the Holocaust occurred, while simultaneously arguing that, if Hitler’s genocide did occur, it can partly be explained by Jews’ villainous behavior. On this latter note, he claimed that Hitler’s views about Jews may one day be proven right.
Atzmon also explicitly charges that Jews are indeed trying to take over the world, and has endorsed of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, arguing about the document that “it is impossible to ignore its prophetic qualities and its capacity to describe” later Jewish behavior.
The Guardian has brief history with Atzmon, which includes; a 2009 review of his music (Atzmon is an Israeli born Jazz artist now living in the UK), which barely touched on, as the Guardian’s John Lewis so carefully put it, Atzmon’s ”provocatively anti-Jewish rhetoric”. Additional reviews of Atzmon’s music in the Guardian, in pieces published in 2011, 2006, 2004, 2003 and 2001 virtually ignored his politics altogether.
Then following a CiF essay by Andy Newman last September which included Atzmon in his (rather mild) criticism of leftist antisemitism, the Guardian published a letter by Atzmon in response, defending the ideas in his book, The Wandering Who? – a work which the CST has characterized one of the most antisemitic book published in the UK in years.
Shortly after that incident, CiF Watch discovered and subsequently posted about the fact that the Guardian’s online bookstore was selling Atzmon’s book, which included this chilling synopsis:
“An explosive unique crucial book tackling the issues of Jewish identity Politics and ideology and their global influence.“
Evidently embarrassed, and unable to defend their decision to carry and promote such hate, the book was removed form their site within 24 hours of our post.
The latest incident involving Atzmon involved an essay at CiF by Khaled Diab published last week which positively cited an Atzmon observation in the context of what Diab characterized as Israeli surprise over the alleged Saudi hacking of computers at El Al and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.
Here’s this passage:
Some commentators went even further. “The Jewish state is pretty devastated by the idea that a bunch of ‘indigenous Arabs’ are far more technologically advanced than its own chosen cyber pirates,” Israeli jazz musician Gilad Atzmon observed wryly on his blog.
After we objected to Guardian editors about both the positive reference to Atzmon, as well as his specific pejorative reference to Jews as “chosen” – which, per the Deborah Orr affair, they had acknowledged was antisemitic – the piece was amended and the passage removed, noting that the language was inconsistent with their standards.
Well, sometime after the piece was amended, Atzmon learned of the incident and wrote about it in his blog, beginning:
Two days ago, I discovered that CIF Watch, a Jewish supremacist site interested solely in cleansing British press of any criticism of Israel and Jewish power, was boasting that the Guardian surrendered to their pressure and removed an Atzmon passage [which included the "chosen" comment]. [emphasis added]
Interesting. While we now only typically check our blog’s rankings in Technorati’s world politics category (where we’ve been consistently ranked within the top 25), it looks like we’d now be wise to similarly check our listings in the evidently new category of “Jewish supremacist blogs” – a blog niche I must admit that I never previously considered!
Atzmon continues:
Shocking but typically, the Guardian surrendered immediately to the Zionist’s demands.
Yes, Guardian editors consistently, and cravenly, succumbing to Zionist demands! What only appears to the untrained eye as a media group viscerally hostile to the Jewish state is, in fact, yet another institution bullied by Jews into Zionist subservience.
Turning to his book, Atzmon writes:
The book attempts to grasp the bizarre continuum between Israeli barbarism…the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign surrender to rabid Zionist bodies and the ‘Guardian’s regulation’. [emphasis added]
In conclusion, Atzmon writes:
I’m not one bit surprised by the surge of Jewish power. I wrote a book about it. But, being intimately familiar with Jewish history, I know exactly where it will lead. Jewish political arrogance has always proved to be, above all, devastatingly dangerous for Jews.
For the sake of peace, both Jews and gentiles must confront the prominence of Jewish identity politics. We should never be afraid to question ideologies and lobbies that impose a threat to peace, our value systems, freedom of thought, humanity and humanism. [emphasis added]
In that comically gratuitous passage lay the rhetorical thread which runs through much of the hardcore antisemitic bravado through the ages – their belief that they are not just criticizing Jews and Judaism, but speaking truth to power, and boldly defending civilization from a dangerous, yet furtive, Jewish onslaught.
CiF Watch may appear to be merely a media watchdog blog, but Atzmon’s piercing intellect sees us for who we really are: a threat to freedom of thought, world peace and humanity itself.
On a shoestring budget, and a group of dedicated volunteers, we have managed to become larger than ourselves:
Grassroots pro-Israel activism no more.
The Protocols of the Elders of CiF Watch Zionists have arrived!
Related articles
- CiF piece critical of Gilad Atzmon elicits storm of antisemitic reader comments, including organ theft libels (cifwatch.com)
- Following our post & complaint, Guardian amends Khaled Diab’s CiF essay: Removes Atzmon passage (cifwatch.com)
- At the Guardian’s online bookshop, antisemitism is shipped within 24 hours! (cifwatch.com)
- Within 24 hours of CiF Watch post, Guardian removes Gilad Atzmon’s book from their online shop. (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian publishes letter by supporter of Gilad Atzmon, refuses to publish rebuttal (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian, Khaled Diab and the Gilad Atzmon antisemitism test (cifwatch.com)
- Jew hatred as liberal commentary: Guardian provides platform to vicious antisemite, Gilad Atzmon (cifwatch.com)
- Gilad Atzmon vs Tony Greenstein, in “Battle of the self-hating Jews” (cifwatch.com)
What was being called a “car protest” was staged today by Palestinian activists in the West Bank to protest security restrictions on some roads enacted to protect Israeli citizens residing in nearby from terrorist attacks.
However, the protest (which Joseph Dana declared over about 25 minutes ago) didn’t generate much if any interest in the media (even, at the time of this post, at the Guardian!), which prompted one frustrated Twitter #carprotest activist to Tweet the following.
Sorry, I’ve seen a lot of complaints that Israel/Jews control the media, but I think this is the first time I’ve seen it suggested that even the Islamic Republic of PAKISTAN is under the Zionist grip!
Related articles
- Guardian buries and distorts story about US Ambassador’s excuse for Muslim antisemitism (cifwatch.com)
- Antisemitism without Jews: What Egyptian soccer fans’ pro-Holocaust chants say about the ‘Arab Spring’ (cifwatch.com)
- His name is Yaakov: How the mainstream media dehumanizes Israeli Jews (cifwatch.com)
- What the Guardian won’t report: Palestine will be Jew-free (cifwatch.com)
- The continuing notoriety of Guardian journalist Deborah Orr’s perverse antisemitic logic (cifwatch.com)
- Tyranny of victimhood: Why the Guardian gives a free ride to reactionary Palestinian movement (cifwatch.com)
Recently, we were followed on Twitter by a Mr. Lee Barnes.
Who is Lee Barnes?
He’s the former Legal Director of the racist, extreme right British National Party, and currently a member of the BNP inspired ‘British Freedom Party‘,
Lee Barnes
Per Harry’s Place:
Barnes is…utterly obsessed with supposed Zionist conspiracies, which he exposes with the help of information taken from anti-Semitic hate sites, Holocaust denial outfits, and other extremist websites including Socialist Worker.
Titles of his blog posts include:
June 7th: ‘Israel and the 911 cover up’.
June 8th: ‘911 is exposed as an inside job’.
Further:
[In a] July 2nd [blog post]: Barnes cites a Press TV article and claims:
“Now we know what the take over of the Greek nation means, its surrender to the power of global capitalism and the Zionists. The Greek nation is now a nation of debtors and Zionist whores abasing themselves before the US and Israel.”
It certainly didn’t take long for Barnes to attempt to get our attention.
We heard from him shortly after we Tweeted the following about Iranian PressTV:
Barnes, evidently seeing our anti-PressTV Tweet as a chance to pounce, immediately came to the defense of the brave, crusading Iranian broadsheet.
Yes, I think the right wing extremist, Mr. Barnes, has ‘Comment is Free’ contributor Ben White just about right.
White certainly would never be accused of “abasing himself before the Zionists and their cabal of cronies, crooks and arse lickers”.
Lee Barnes, meet Ben White. Ben White, meet Lee Barnes. I’m sure the two of you have a lot to talk about!
Recommended Links:
Lee Barnes and the Psychedelic Revolution (Harry’s Place)
The following is an essay by Professor Robert Wistrich, the director of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and author of: A Lethal Obsession: Antisemitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad.
Essenweinstrasse Synagogue in Nuremberg, Germany, is in ruins after Kristallnacht in 1938.
Seventy-three years ago, on Nov. 9, 1938, the murderous Nazi onslaught against the German Jews began with a nationwide pogrom that smashed the fabric of their existence. Known euphemistically as “Kristallnacht” (“Crystal Night”), this state-organized orgy of violence happened in peace time. It involved the systematic burning of hundreds of synagogues, the destruction of approximately 7,500 Jewish businesses, the murder of nearly 100 Jews and the deportation of another 30,000 male Jews to German concentration camps.
It was a crucial turning-point in Hitler’s “war against the Jews,” a major signpost on the road leading to World War II, which Nazi Germany would initiate less than a year later. Already, Nazi propaganda openly warned about the imminent annihilation of Jewry through “fire and sword,” though few in the West took these threats too seriously.
Today, there is no immediate danger of a new Kristallnacht in the western world, although levels of anti-Semitism (hiding under the more acceptable mask of hostility towards Israel) have reached levels unprecedented since 1945. But in the Middle East, the hatred of Jews burns much more fiercely — both in Iran and in the Arab world. Islamist anti-Semitism, in particular, is soaked in some of the most inflammatory motifs that made the Kristallnacht atrocities possible in Nazi Germany and only three years later provided the rationale for the mass murder of European Jewry.
For example, there is the pervasive exploitation in Arabic of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, with its insistence on the reality of the “Jewish conspiracy for world domination”; there is a revival of the medieval Christian blood-libel against Jews, transplanted from Europe to the contemporary Arab-Muslim Middle East; and the mass diffusion of stereotypes about the Jews as cruel, treacherous and bloodthirsty colonialists seeking to destroy the identity and beliefs of the Muslim peoples.
The NYTreported the Nazi-inflicted damage durng Kristallnacht.
To this, one must add the slanderous but widely popular identification of Zionism with Nazism and apartheid and the “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians — a Goebbels-like propaganda lie that has also found a growing audience in the West. However contradictory it may appear to some, the Zionism-is-Nazism fabrication co-exists in the Middle East today with Holocaust denial on a broad scale.
Indeed, in Ahmadinejad’s Iran, Holocaust denial has become a state-sponsored weapon in the regime’s efforts to win over the Arab street and indoctrinate its own people with anti-Jewish toxins.
The increasingly entrenched anti-Semitism in the Arab world has not, unfortunately, been diminished by the “Arab Spring.” Earlier this year, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, one of the most authoritative religious leaders of the Sunni Arab world (and especially esteemed by the Muslim Brotherhood), told a million Egyptians assembled in Tahrir Square that he hoped their mission would be to complete Hitler’s work.
Al-Qaradawi, an immensely popular cleric, publicly insisted that the esteemed German Führer had been sent by Allah as a “divine punishment for the Jews.” Not long before, CBS foreign correspondent Lara Logan had been sexually assaulted and brutalized in the heart of Cairo by a mob of Egyptian men screaming “Jew, Jew, Jew.” Logan is not, in fact, Jewish.
But this aspect of her ordeal was, typically enough, very much downplayed by both the American and European media.
Read the rest of the essay, here.
H/T Israelinurse
The official Twitter account of the UK Foreign Office, deciding to weigh in on hip hop, linked to a video by an anti-Zionist British political rapper named Shadia Mansour.
Here’s the Tweet:
Mansour is widely known for her role in the production of Lowkey’s ‘Long Live Palestine’ (and has collaborated with Lowkey on other projects).
The video consists of hateful anti-Zionist propaganda, through both lyrics and images, and includes still frames of cartoons from the notorious Carlos Latuff suggesting that Israel is a Nazi like states which intentionally targets Palestinian children.
As Harry’s Place has commented, the video further asserts that the profits from various non-Israeli global companies (who were founded or believed to be currently run by Jews) goes directly to Israel, evoking conspiracy theories about international Jewish domination:
‘Every coin is a bullet, if you’re Marks and Spencer,
And when you’re sipping Coca-Cola,
That’s another pistol in the holster of them soulless soldiers,
You say you know about the Zionist lobby,
But you put money in their pocket when you’re buying their coffee,
Talking about revolution, sitting in Starbucks’
It claims that Israel is a genocidal state:
‘How many more children have to be annihilated
Israel is a terror state, they’re terrorists that terrorise,
I testify, my television televised them telling lies,
This is not a war, it is systematic genocide’
And it further states that:
‘We curse every Zionist since Theodore Herzl’
‘Nothing is more anti-Semitic than Zionism.’
Here’s the video:
Turning to Lowkey, here are some 9/11 conspiracies of his, published by the StWC:
One day I was running from the truth,
To speed me up they gave me these shoes,
So tie my feet with Nike’s,
Tell me lies about the 11th of September,
…
It was the planes.
Not controlled demolition,
The BBC didn’t report the explosion of Building 7,
20 minutes before hand, on my television,
They found passport’s and plane flying manuals belonging to terrorists in the rubble.
That all makes perfect sense
Naturally, a Guardian Music review of rap artists, in Nov. 2010, included this commentary by Kieran Yates:
For current UK sounds, I’d go for the political punch of Lowkey’s Long Live Palestine.
Related articles
- “See Britain through my eyes” (Hadar Sela at Harry’s Place)
- Fight or flight? CiF Watch, David Yehuda Stern & Ben White (cifwatch.com)
- The Tweets +972′s Joseph Dana didn’t want you to see (cifwatch.com)
- Lauren Booth on “Jewish supremacism”, why antisemitism is justified, & the wisdom of Gilad Atzmon (cifwatch.com)
- Yvonne Ridley, Palestinian terrorist attacks, and peanut allergies (cifwatch.com)
- Anti-Zionist blog attacks CiF Watch and defends racist depiction of Obama by Carlos Latuff (cifwatch.com)
- CiF piece critical of Gilad Atzmon elicits storm of antisemitic reader comments, including organ theft libels (cifwatch.com)
- Jews, Israel, & the Atavistic British Left: A response to Bob from Brockley (cifwatch.com)
The following is a MEMRI translation of an Egyptian TV Broadcast by Egyptian presidential candidate Tawfiq Okasha which aired on Al-Faraeen TV , a station Okasha owns, on October 31, 2011:
While his eight minute campaign speech included tried and true classic antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories regarding Jewish control of the monetary system (in conjunction with Global Freemasonry naturally), and indeed the world, I guess such hate emanating out of the Arab world ceases to shock anymore, and the gallows humor of his no doubt empirically driven data on the percentage of Jews in the world who he’d classify as supernaturally evil gave me a rise.
Don’t worry, he also morally breaks down the remaining 40% for us.
Click on image to view video
I think you’ll agree that his bold belief in the far less than absolute evil of the Jewish people makes him a genuine Egyptian moderate.
See video here, or by clicking the above image, and see transcript here.
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Evidently, there’s a new edition of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the notorious antisemitic forgery which warns of a secret plot by Jews to take over the world, and is available at Amazon.com for under $15 (and may be eligible for super-saving free shipping).
While, in fairness, Amazon.com is a mega online shop which sells political books ranging from the extreme left to the extreme right, and is further protected by the U.S. First Amendment to continue doing so, some of the reviews (and publisher book description) are worth noting.
First, look at how the book cover incorporates Zionism into the equation, though the book was first translated into Russian, in its current form, in 1872, 25 years before the First Zionist Congress.
Amazon does includes, just below the product image, this message from the Anti-Defamation League:
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, circulated by the Czarist secret police at the turn of the 20th century, is plainly and simply a plagiarized forgery. “The Protocols” has been a major weapon in the arsenals of anti-Semites around the world, republished and circulated by individuals, hate groups and governments to convince the gullible as well as the bigoted that Jews have schemed and plotted to take over the world.
But, following the ADL quote, there is this publisher synopsis:
When the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion were first discovered, Freemasons and Zionist Jews everywhere screamed and complained that these 24 Protocols are a hoax, a forgery, even a blood taint against the Jews. But then came the brutal and barbaric Communist Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and its captive republics, led by covert Masonic Jews Lenin, Trotsky, Kaganovich, and others. The cruel and sinister crimes of the crypto-Jew revolutionaries seemed to have jumped off the pages of the Protocols. The Red Terror, with its torturous massacres of innocent people, its monstrous gulag concentration camps, and the setting up of a Jewish dictatorship, also followed the agenda of the Protocols as did the persecution everywhere of Christians and churches. The entire world witnessed horrors that were a direct result of the heinous prescriptions laid out earlier in the Protocols. Find out how the Protocols are still being worked in our day and how our freedoms, even our very lives, are in jeopardy.
Then we get to the reader reviews, such as these contrasting view points. Note which one garners more favorable reviews.
First, there’s this comment which 10 of 13 people found helpful.
Click on image to read full review
This comment was critical of the book, and only garnered one positive remark.
As the positive reviews are thus far leading considerably over the negative reviews, we ask that you consider visiting this Amazon page and offering a negative review of the book.
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- +972′s Joseph Dana successfully freed himself from the “Zionist Indoctrination Program” (cifwatch.com)
I’m not sure which is more interesting, the very notion of the Guardian giving national security advice to Israel “Israel is unwise to raise the nuclear stakes“, Nov. 6, or the following passage in the editorial which represents one of the most surreal understatements I’ve read in a long time.
The Guardian, after sternly lecturing Israel on the folly of even considering a preemptive attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, writes:
“It is true that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has voiced a profound antipathy for Israel, which has been interpreted in many quarters as threatening the existence of the Jewish state.”
So, Ahmadinejad has voiced an “antipathy” towards Israel “which has been interpreted…as threatening the existence” of Israel”?!
In fact, Ahmadinejad has repeatedly and quite explicitly called for its destruction, has engaged in crude antisemitism, and called the Holocaust “a myth”.
Here are just a few examples:
General hatred, antisemitism, and Holocaust Denial:
Aug. 2, 2006, as reported on Iranian state TV
“Are they human beings?… They (Zionists) are a group of blood-thirsty savages putting all other criminals to shame.”
July 6, 2006, as quoted by Iranian News Agency
“The Zionists think that they are victims of Hitler, but they act like Hitler and behave worse than Genghis Khan.”
March 21, 2007, New Year’s message aired on Iranian TV
“It is quite clear that a bunch of Zionist racists are the problem the modern world is facing today. They have access to global power and media centers and seek to use this access to keep the world in a state of hardship, poverty and grudge and strengthen their rule.”
Feb. 28, 2007, to a meeting of Sudanese Islamic scholars in Khartoum
“The Zionists are the true manifestation of Satan…”
Sept. 23, 2008, address to the UN
“The dignity, integrity and rights of the American and European people are being played with by a small but deceitful number of people called Zionists. Although they are a miniscule minority, they have been dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centers as well as the political decision-making centers of some European countries and the US in a deceitful, complex and furtive manner.”
Sept. 18, 2009 Al Quds Day rally in Tehran
“They (the Western powers) launched the myth of the Holocaust. They lied, they put on a show and then they support the Jews…. If as you claim the Holocaust is true, why can a study not be allowed? … The pretext for establishing the Zionist regime is a lie… a lie which relies on an unreliable claim, a mythical claim…”
August 7, 2010, Televised conference in Tehran
No “Zionists” were killed in the World Trade Center, because “one day earlier they were told not to go to their workplace.”
Israel should be destroyed:
Oct. 25, 2006, in an address to 4,000 students at a program titled, ‘The World Without Zionism’:
“Israel must be wiped off the map … The establishment of a Zionist regime was a move by the world oppressor against the Islamic world . . . The skirmishes in the occupied land are part of the war of destiny. The outcome of hundreds of years of war will be defined in Palestinian land.”
Dec. 12, 2006, comments to Iran’s Holocaust Conference
“Thanks to people’s wishes and God’s will the trend for the existence of the Zionist regime is downwards and this is what God has promised and what all nations want…Just as the Soviet Union was wiped out and today does not exist, so will the Zionist regime soon be wiped out.”
Nov. 13, 2006
“Israel is destined for destruction and will soon disappear. Israel is “a contradiction to nature, we foresee its rapid disappearance and destruction.”
Feb. 5, 2010, at a news conference in Damascus with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad
“With Allah’s help the new Middle East will be a Middle East without Zionists and Imperialists.”
And, of course, the following image has been “interpreted” by some as calling for the end of Zionism:
In fairness, the Guardian does allow for the possibility that Israel may be justified in defending itself, and carefully tutors the state’s leaders on the ethical guidelines required to thwart a potential Iranian attack:
“To have any justification for its use, it requires an immediate and proximate threat, as existed when Israel was faced with Egyptian tank divisions manoeuvring on its borders to the loud drum beat of war, which persuaded Israel to attack first in the 1967 Six Day War…”
However, they subsequently argue that there may even be a bright side to the possibility that Iran will acquire nuclear arms:
“The reality is that Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons is seen as a threat for reasons partly of Israel’s own making – foremost its absolute reliance on a policy of military supremacy and deterrence to underpin security. A nuclear-armed Iran would hole that policy below the waterline, making it far more difficult, for instance, to launch the kind of war it waged against Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006.”
Yes, the progressive end result: A nuclear Iran will deter Israel from defending itself against the likes of Hezbollah and Hamas!
Finally, in disgust, the Guardian lashes out at the stubborn Zionists who will likely be unmoved by the advice provided by the sage commentators in London who clearly understand what’s best for Israel.
“If that is Netanyahu’s aim – to use the threat of war to leverage diplomatic effect – it is the behaviour of a tinpot state, not the mature democracy Israel claims to be.”
While we’ll never know who wrote this particular editorial, there are tropes which evoke the following passage from a 2009 CiF essay:
“[To] the western media…Ahmadinejad is nothing but a Holocaust-denying fanatic. The other Ahmadinejad, who is seen to stand up for the country’s independence, expose elite corruption on TV and use Iran’s oil wealth to boost the incomes of the poor majority, is largely invisible abroad.”
This was written by Guardian Associate Editor Seumas Milne in 2009.
Straight Left – the pro-Stalinist UK Communist Party paper where Milne served as “business manager” – may have perished with the collapse of the Soviet Union, but its spirit of stoic resistance in the face of imperialism lives on.
The Guardian is not a newspaper in any real sense of the word, but a theoretical journal of far left thought intent on arranging the news in a pattern consistent with a rigid ideological agenda.
Whether the editorial is informed simply by the unimaginable naiveté of not understanding that the only thing standing in the way of Israel’s destruction is the credible threat of force against her enemies, or a visceral hostility to the “tin pot” Jewish state – or, more likely, a combination of the two – their chiding of what they see as a petulant Israel makes one thing crystal clear.
The fundamental moral imperative of Zionism – the historical understanding that never again will Jews allow their freedom, their fate, indeed their very existence, to be contingent upon the benevolence of others – continues to be vindicated both by the words and actions of Israel’s enemies, and by the pseudo-intellectual musings of their enablers in the West.
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A guest post by AKUS
Something quite bizarre is going on in Britain, and the Guardian is in full cry against several leading Jewish figures.
For those of us not up to speed on British politics, here is a synopsis of the action. Liam Fox is – or was until a day or so ago – Britain’s Defence minister (who knew?). The fuss is apparently because he allowed someone called Adam Werritty to travel overseas in first class with him and attend some meetings, using business cards embossed with the Commons portcullis logo (a no-no) that described him accurately it would seem as an “adviser to Rt Hon Liam Fox MP”. He got paid for his efforts by some “donors” – remuneration for work being, apparently a cardinal sin for anyone below managerial level at the Guardian.
Werritty is described in his wiki bio as follows. “Born in Kirkcaldy, Werritty was raised in St Andrews, Fife, and went to Madras College, where he played rugby in the 1st XV”. Seems like a sound chap, probably not Jewish or a Zionist.
Even the Guardian seems to have no idea what was going on or why this is really a scandal but sniffs a conspiracy of some sort:
Politics Live blog: Liam Fox report published (Guardian, Oct. 18)
6.58pm: Here’s an evening summary.
• MPs are going to get the chance to question a minister about the Liam Fox affair tomorrow following the publication of a 10-page report that criticised Fox for falling “short of the standards of conduct required in the ministerial code” but failed to explain why donors were so willing to pay for his friend Adam Werritty to travel with him abroad.
(I have underlined the phrase with its heavy hint of a [Jewish – wink, wink, nudge, nudge] conspiracy to all those following the names of donors – see the “Unanswered Questions” article referenced below).
The Guardian continues:
In response, Fox said: “I accept that it was a mistake to allow the distinctions between government and private roles to become blurred.” But Labour’s Jim Murphy said: “This report only scratches the surface of potential wrongdoing. This is a murky business and it has not yet been resolved.” My colleague Rupert Neate has identified the key questions that remain unanswered.
We find in the Liam Fox report: The unanswered questions (Guardian, Oct. 18th)
1 Did Werritty benefit financially from his close relationship with Fox?The report says Fox did not benefit financially from the relationship. But it has not answered whether Werritty profited from Fox allowing foreign leaders and businessmen to assume that Werritty was his official adviser.
The O’Donnell report has named all of the donors to Werritty’s Pargav Ltd company. We already knew about four: Jon Moulton, a Tory donor and private equity tycoon who bought Reader’s Digest; Good Governance Group (G3), a private investigations company staffed by former MI6 officers; Tamares, an investment company owned by Tory donor Poju Zabludowicz; and Michael Lewis, the boss of Oceana Investors and a former chairman of Bicom, an organisation that lobbies on behalf of Israel.
The report added two new funders Mick “the miner” Davis, the boss of Xstrata, the FTSE 100 mining company is also a funder and chair of the trustees of the Jewish Leadership Council. The other is International Resources Group (IRG) Ltd, a lobbying company which has worked in Afghanistan and is owned by L3, a communications company that is part owned by Michael Hintze’s hedge fund CQS. Hintze has already been identified as big donor to Fox and Werritty’s Atlantic Bridge charity.
The Guardian actually repeats the same paragraphs for good measure in its “response” to the next unanswered question.
Suddenly, it’s all about Israel and, presumably, the global if not galactic Jewish/Zionist conspiracy to take over Britain, as reported in the next article, which actually appears on the Israel page (!) even though this is a British scandal – if scandal it is:
Adam Werritty bankrolled by three pro-Israel business tycoons (Guardian, Oct. 1)
“Three of the six donors who funded pro-Israel business figures.”
So three of the six were not pro-Israel business figures, helping a business man live a “jetset lifestyle” because – goodness gracious – he actually took plane trips overseas for business reasons.
Note that the caption under the picture of (I imagine) Fox and Wrritty ONLY references the three Jewish, Israel-supporting donors.
The non-donor business activities of the owner of Readers Digest (!) and a group made up of ex-MI-6 officers (!), and finally as, a hat-tip to conspiracy theorists, the last donor, “International Resources Group (IRG) Ltd, a lobbying company which has worked in Afghanistan (!) and is owned by L3, a communications company that is part owned by Michael Hintze’s hedge fund CQS” are never revealed, or investigated, or whatever term one wishes to ascribe to the not very well concealed attempt to turn this affair into a Zionist plot. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hintze for a bio of this brilliant Christian scion of a family that fled the Bolsheviks, now among the 1,000 richest men in the world, and notice how his religion and his wife’s multiple charitable interests are not mentioned by the Guardian).
The Independent has its own set of “Unanswered Questions” , which all seem to have pretty innocuous non-answers – e.g.:
Who is Adam Werritty?
The report says he is “not a lobbyist” and that he has a private firm, Todiha Ltd, but does not say what it does.
Was he making money from his relationship with Fox?
The report says Fox made no money from knowing Werritty, and that Werritty did not lobby the MoD on behalf of donors, but does inquire into how he made a living.
What on earth is going on here? Where’s the beef? Why is the Guardian so obsessed with Werritty’s Jewish donors but not the others?
Is the Guardian simply promoting another Dreyfus-style (dual loyalty related) anti-Semitic conspiracy theory in alignment with their obsessive anti-Zionist crusade?
Hawkeye
Omar2
WellofSense
Medusa
The Alchemist
Louise
Tosca
Maimon
Telling the Truth
Israelinurse
Adam Levick
Margie in Tel Aviv
Guest/Cross Post
Hadar Sela
Guardian readers skew conversation about UK, U.S. & Iran in a decidedly Semitic direction
February 4, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, Berchmans, Comment is Free, Guardian, Jewish Conspiracy, Obsession, Seumas Milne, Stop the War Coalition | by Adam Levick | 2 comments
As David T of Harry’s Place observed about Guardian Associate Editor Seumas Milne.
So, it didn’t come as a surprise to see Andrew Murray, of StWC, publish an essay at ‘Comment is Free’, “An attack on Iran must be stopped“, opposing a UK or U.S. attack on Iran to prevent the Islamist regime from attaining nuclear weapons.
What was a bit surprising however, was that Murray, whose essay warns of the threat posed by “Anglo-American aggression addicts” who are “gearing up for yet another crack at winning a senseless war in the Middle East,” didn’t once, in a nearly 700 word essay, mention the word “Israel”. Rather, Murray argued against a war with Iran in the context of what he sees as the folly of the West’s broader war on terror, and U.S./UK military involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Of course, the mere omission of the words “Jews”, “Israel”, “Zionism” or “Lobby” didn’t prevent ‘Comment is Free’ readers to not so gently move the narrative away from military decisions made by UK and U.S. political leaders, and pivot to a more desired target.
Powerful Jewish lobbies in U.S. and UK are pushing Obama to war against Iran (29 Recommends)
Jewish lobby used the Holocaust as an excuse to give Israel the bomb, and developed anti-Islamic ideology to justify aggression against the Arab world. (11 Recommends)
Further, after reading many of the 286 comments in the thread, and noticing a characteristic fixation, I decided to have some fun with the web site Wordle.
The beauty of Wordle is that it allows you to quantify the degree to which comments beneath the line, in any given CiF essay, slant in one particular direction.
Wordle was fed every word from each of the reader comments posted after Murray’s piece and, excluding commonly used words like “the” (and the word “Iran”, because, well, that was what the topic the essay was supposed to address!), churned out the following graphic of the most used words – represented in a size proportional to the frequency of their usage:
Note the enhanced size of Israel (a word used 220 times by CiF commenters), in contrast to words “U.S.” and “UK”.
In fact the words “Jew” “Jews”, or “Jewish” were used more times (42) than the words “U.S.” or “United States” (33).
And, finally, and quite ironically given the following CiF commenter’s malign obsession with the Jewish state, note the moniker above the gigantic “S” in the over-sized word “Israel”. Yup, Berchmans!
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