Tag Archives: Jewish Conspiracy

Jun 28 2012

The Guardian ideology: Where reporting Iranian antisemitism is counter-revolutionary

What precisely would it take for the Guardian to report a story about antisemitism on the part of Iranian leaders?

While every Israeli policy conceivably affecting its Arab citizens, or the Palestinians, is scrutinized (by their ideological DNA experts) for trace amounts of racism, nowhere on the Guardian’s Iran page, for example, will you read that a website with close ties to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khomenei recently outlined why it would be religiously acceptable to kill all Jews in Israel.

This doctrine details why such genocide would be legally and morally justified and in accordance with Islamic law.

More recently, the Guardian failed to report a hideously antisemitic speech given by Iran’s vice president Mohammad-Reza Rahimi, delivered on Tuesday, June 26th 2012, at an international anti-drug conference – a story which was reported widely in the mainstream media and by wire services.

Iran’s Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi holds hands with Hamas Leader Ismail Haniyeh during a welcome ceremony at Sa’abad complex in Tehran, Feb. 10

Rahimi charged that the Talmud was responsible for the spread of illegal drugs around the world in a speech which reportedly even shocked European diplomats in attendance.

Rahimi, second in line to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, also charged that Jews “think God has created the world so that all other nations can serve them” and that the Talmud teaches to “destroy everyone who opposes the Jews so as to protect an embryo in the womb of a Jewish mother.”  The New York Times also quoted Rahimi as saying Zionists ordered gynecologists to kill black babies and that the Russian Revolution of 1917 was started by Jews although none died in it.

The Guardian’s failure to report on such extreme antisemitism, delivered by an Iranian leader at an international forum, is not unrelated to the their consistent record defending the Islamic Republic against its critics, especially in the context of Iran’s nuclear aspirations.

Here is a sample of some of the polemical interference the Guardian has run for the mullahs in Tehran. 

  • A Guardian editorial warning Israel against saber-rattling against Iran and arguing that the Jewish state should just learn to live with a nuclear armed Iran (Iran, bolting the stable door, November 9th, 2011).
  • Saeed Kamali Dehghan’s warning against covert actions by the West and Israel to prevent Iran from acquiring nukes, which will “ruin any chance of dialogue with Tehran” (The covert war on Iran is illegal and dangerous, January 11th, 2012).

But the Pravda award for great achievements in passing off simply absurd political theories as serious thought goes to their veteran journalist Brian Whitaker, who actually served as the Guardian’s Middle East editor for seven years.

In a ‘Comment is Free’ piece on November 9th, 2011 titled “Why do the US media believe the worse about Iran?”, Whitaker not only ignored the most recent IAEA report - available on the Guardian website - which stated that Iran has carried out “a structured program to develop an explosive nuclear device”, but suggested that the clandestine program may not be nuclear at all: merely a project to manufacture nanodiamonds.

As proof for this alternative and simply bizarre explanation – which has somehow eluded intelligence agencies, nuclear watchdog groups, and the international monitoring agency – Whitaker linked to a fringe site called “Moon of Alabama“. 

But such comical obfuscations seem necessarily related to the Guardian’s failure to report about Iranian leaders who draw upon classic  antisemitic conspiracy theories to justify their desire to rid the world of the “cancerous tumor” known as the Jewish state.

Indeed, it seems that much of the Guardian’s editorial resources are devoted towards arguing that an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites would be madness because, at the end of the day, the Iranians are rational political actors who will behave rationally even if they become a nuclear power.  Such a theory is in itself a symptom of the paper’s broader belief that there are no moral differences between such Islamist states and the democratic West – a habit of mind characterized by Richard Landes as “Liberal Cognitive Egocentrism“.  

As such, evidence demonstrating that Iranian values are necessarily hostile towards not just Israel but Jews as such, represents supremely inconvenient truths and would run counter to the Guardian’s broader cause.  

If Israel is seen as correctly perceiving a nuclear armed Iran as a threat to the lives of millions of Jews – as well as the state’s very survival – then the Guardian’s long campaign against military intervention (as with their broader anti-Zionist narrative) is seriously undermined, and indeed would strain credulity.

The Guardian’s seemingly unlimited capacity to deny, or at least ignore, Islamist antisemitism is informed as much by an indifference to the political aspirations of Jews as it is by a broader refusal to allow for information which would contradict their most cherished beliefs.

Related articles
Jun 13 2012

My email exchange with a critic of Israel, a state losing its “Holocaust inspired sympathy”

The following represents my reply to an email we received from an Australian at the “contact us” email address at CiF Watch, which was quite critical of Israel.  We receive more than few such emails but as this one seemed representative of the criticism Israel and (often) Jews are subjected to in the West, I decided to spend a bit of time on it and get to the heart of his concerns. 

John,

We received your email and, as managing editor of CiF Watch, a Jew, and a citizen of Israel, I’ve decided to spend a bit of time replying to your critique of Israel. I’ll focus on your main arguments.  

You write:

“Australia and Australians have a generally positive, sympathetic disposition towards Israel and Jewish people.”  

I don’t deny this about Australians. 

You write:

“As I’ve matured though, I am sorry to say that I’ve become aware that in more modern times, Israel is not necessarily as deserving of sympathy as the Jewish people were in WW2.”

It is a little difficult to answer this point because you don’t really expound on why precisely Israel is not deserving of sympathy. What are the sins we’re accused of? And were Jews only deserving of sympathy while we were victims of Nazi genocide?

Moreover – just to be clear – it is not sympathy we demand, but equal treatment. We do not aspire to be the object of your pity but, merely, to be granted the rights afforded to every other nation in the world, which are typically understood to be axiomatic and unreserved.

You write:

“In saying that, I am doing something that I consider crucial but which I suspect you would not like:  discriminating between “Jews” and “Israel”.  I do that because in the public debate here, often the label of “anti-american” or “anti-jewish” is used if people say something negative about the behaviour of Israel or the US.  I am sure some people are simply racist and their arguments stem from that.  Those people are easy to write-off.  The problem however is that there are plenty of people who are not racist who disagree strongly with Israeli behaviour.  To characterise them as anti-semitic is incorrect at best, willfully ignorant in the middle and egregiously aggressive at worst.” [emphasis added]

This is a straw man. 

I dare you to find more than a few isolated examples of mainstream Jews and Zionists who accuse Israel’s critics of antisemitism merely for criticizing her policies. As antisemitism has historically been defined by the tendency to hold Jews to standards no other group is held to, I think it’s reasonable to impute antisemitism to those who similarly hold the Jewish state to such higher standards. 

The current session of the United Nations Human Rights Council has passed 50% of its condemnatory resolutions against Israel (more than twice the number which have been passed against Syria).  I think it is not unreasonable to consider antisemitism as a possible motivation. When Israel’s very right to exist – unlike the other 192 nations in the world – is constantly questioned, I similarly think that antisemitism can be considered a likely cause. 

And, especially when Zionists’ enemies employ tropes about the dangers of Jewish power, or question the loyalty of Jews (who live outside of Israel) to their own nation, or worry about Jews’ control of the media and finance, I again think it’s reasonable to suspect their motivation is Judeophobia.  

But moreover, are you honestly concerned that Israel does not receive its fair share of criticism in the media and on the world stage? 

You write:

“Aside from the very real threats that I know you face, I think there is a deeper, in some ways greater two-part threat looming: that of cutting off from listening to any criticism, even from friends, with the detachment from reality that can lead to.  I’m going to share something personal:  I have a friend who was abused and neglected as a child and then developed drug problems as a young adult.  Even now, she can’t handle criticism, even when she’s making bad decisions and hurting those around her, particularly family.  She’s had an insight into what people are capable of but she now sees threats around her at times when they don’t exist.”

I must admit to thinking that attempts to psychoanalyze Israel and/or the Jewish people assume quite a bit of hubris. What professional background grants you the expertise necessary to understand the hopes, fears, aspirations (and even pathos) of six million Israeli Jews (and fourteen million Jews worldwide)?  

Again, you make your case through abstractions, so it is difficult to reply with the necessary political and intellectual rigor that I’m used to when fisking a Guardian essay or report, but the expansive nature of your charge does demand that I attempt a serious response.

First: What are the bad decisions Israelis are making? I’ll take a wild guess and assume you’re referring broadly to issues concerning the Palestinians.

If so, this a much longer conversation but, as is the case with so many of Israel’s critics, you no doubt would never consider writing a similar letter to the ‘contact us’ section of a Palestinian blog, asking them why their leaders are making bad decisions and hurting those around them. 

Am I wrong? 

Perhaps you can forward an email you’ve sent to the Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade – the terrorist brand of the political party currently controlling the PA – asking why they engage in supremely cruel terror attacks on innocent Jewish men, women and children.  Or maybe you can forward an email you’ve sent to PA President Mahmoud Abbas asking him why his government continues to glorify terrorists and indoctrinates their children to hate Jews and reject a two state solution. 

Additionally, maybe you could forward an email you’ve sent to Abbas asking him why he rejected an offer of a contiguous Palestinian state in 2008, which included land equal to 100% of the West Bank, Gaza and a Capital in East Jerusalem (an offer confirmed by then U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice). 

My guess is that such emails won’t be forthcoming because you have never thought to send them.

As far as these “phony threats” to Israel you evoke: I guess I could chalk up your callousness to living in Australia and possessing a failure of empathy informed by not having any real security concerns, but I don’t think I’m prepared to let you off the hook that easily. 

You see, in the age of the internet you merely need to go online and go to a credible site which can bring you up to speed on the ideologies of state and non-state actors which surround our tiny polity. I speak mainly of Hamas and Hezbollah: Iranian sponsored, funded and trained Islamist militias possessing thousands of missiles – both of which are quite explicit in their desire to murder millions of Jews. Is it really possible you don’t already know this?  

Do you also not know that the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood – perhaps the most popular Islamist group in the Middle East – per a Wikileaks Cable asked Allah to kill “every last Jew on earth” in a sermon delivered to thousands of followers?

Were you also unaware that Iran’s supreme spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khomenei recently outlined why it would be acceptable to kill all Jews in Israel – a doctrine, as reported by the Mail Online, which details why the destruction of Israel and the slaughter of all its people would be legally and morally justified, and in accordance to Islamic doctrine?

Are these the non-existent threats of which you speak?

Finally you write:

“A slow conversion of people with valid, specific criticisms of Israeli government behaviour into invalid, overgeneralised criticisms of Jewish people: I’m sure this is happening and while inherently an unreasonable process, as time goes on I think it will occur more and more.  Holocaust deniers are clearly idiots but as generations pass, the collective sympathy regarding the holocaust will naturally diminish and Israel will increasingly appear to be acting inappropriately.”

It is quite interesting that you have failed to offer even one specific criticism of Israeli government policy. Why is that? Do you have a good working knowledge of the politics of the region?

I doubt you do.

Because if you understood the modern Jewish state and its neighbours with anything approaching objectivity, you would marvel at its liberal democratic prowess in a region awash in tyranny and intolerance.  You’d see a nation which excels in science, medicine and technology and is not only economically self-sufficient, but increasingly exports lifesaving technology to much poorer countries around the globe. 

My tiny Jewish state is, by any credible measure, a social, political and economic success story.

As an Israeli who understands that being a Jew has, throughout history, almost always meant continually being judged, I will simply not grant you the privilege to sit on this jury.

I choose not to grant you that power.

Jews are masters of their own fate for the first time in thousands of years and we have no intention of relinquishing this hard-fought right.

Finally, here’s my proposal.

I am completely fine if your sympathy for the Holocaust completely ceases. Really: I am not concerned with your genocide condemnations and platitudes about concerns for survivors, your Shoah memorials, museums, or days of remembrance.  

However, what I do ask (what even the broadest understanding of universal morality demands) is that you maintain a steadfast, fierce and unyielding resistance to the modern day ideological heirs to Nazi antisemitism: those who carry on the legacy of Hitler, Goebbels, Streicher, Goring, and Himmler. Those heirs are adherents to a malign ideology known as radical Islam (Islamism), many of whom just happen to surround the Jewish state, and whose names are Haniyeh, Nasrallah, and Qaradawi. 

That is, what I’m suggesting is that true philo-semites are those whose imaginative sympathy are inspired by the fate of living Jews, not those who have been dead for over 65 years.

The fact that 40% of those living Jews happen to dwell in Israel is something you may wish to consider.

Related articles
Jun 1 2012

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

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

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

Elliott continued:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is Elliott’s contact info:

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

Related articles
May 7 2012

CiF reader comment of the day: How the Israel lobby defeated Ken Livingstone

H/T Margie

Call it Israel Derangement Syndrome, or Reductio ad Israelum, or what you will, but the capacity of Israel’s critics to find a Jewish/Zionist connection to any political phenomenon they find displeasing is constantly on display below the line at ‘Comment is Free’.

Dave Hill’s CiF commentary (So, Boris Johnson remains mayor and it’s not all Ken Livingstone’s fault, May 4) elicited over six hundred comments, many of which touched on Livingstone’s relationship with the UK Jewish community.  

The following, by a commenter using the moniker “brothermacdub“, was deleted by moderators, but you can see text from the post cited by “Kawtara1″ (which begins, “Typical response from the lobby” and ends,”swing an election”.), quoted before offering his/her response.  

So, London’s Jews, who are more loyal to a foreign power than the UK, singlehandedly defeated the former mayor who should nonetheless be proud that he didn’t give in to the “hateful Israel lobby”.  

Interestingly, the suggestion that Jews swung the mayoral election for Boris Johnson was advanced in a letter published by the Guardian today, albeit by someone seemingly friendly to UK’s Jews.

At the very least, the letter represents a rather curious editorial decision. 

Related articles
Apr 10 2012

Why is the ‘liberal’ Guardian still rooting for a reactionary antisemitic Islamist named Raed Salah?

The Guardian’s infatuation with Raed Salah is not new. When the story of his arrest in the UK  broke last year, the paper produced a plethora of articles, all eerily similar in their support for Salah and his British patrons and in the whitewashing of who Salah is (the various articles  uniformly described  him as a ‘Palestinian activist’) and what he stands for.

The Guardian’s Ian Black went so far as to describe the organisation its cause celebre heads in the following anodyne terms:  

“The Islamic Movement campaigns for the rights of those citizens who refer to themselves as the “Arabs of 1948″ – those left behind while 700,000 others became refugees when Israel was founded. It fights discrimination and campaigns for the right of Palestinian refugees to return, as well as against house demolitions and expulsions in Jerusalem.”

Notably, the Guardian failed to report the fact that Raed Salah lost an appeal against the deportation order in October 2011.

Now however, in the wake of the recent decision by the UK immigration tribunal judge, the Guardian is back on the case, with two articles (so far) on the subject in one day.  Along the way, the Guardian did not miss the opportunity to lash out once again at the CST, quoting David Miller and apparently having learned little from the last time it relied upon information provided by that known purveyor of outlandish conspiracy theories .

There are many reasons why a newspaper which likes to describe itself as both ‘Left’ and ‘liberal’ should not be trumpeting the cause of the leader of a religious ultra-nationalist movement which practices ethnic separatism, sex segregation and suppression of the rights of homosexuals, women and religious and ethnic minorities.

One of those reasons is that Raed Salah and his Northern Islamic Movement stand for everything which the liberal Left supposedly abhors. But the Guardian’s puerile ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ stance means that it is dazzled by the fact that Salah is feted in anti-Israel circles as a leading ‘activist’, and so it is prepared to sell out its once firmly held Leftist and liberal principles and avoid exposure of Salah’s real background and agenda at all costs.

In 2003 the Or Commission – appointed by the State of Israel to investigate the riots of October 2000 in which 12 Arab Israelis, one Jewish Israeli and one Palestinian were killed – published its report.

 ”..thousands of demonstrators paralyzed the country, destroying Jewish property and attacking Jewish citizens on Israel’s main roads. In a number of instances Jewish citizens were just inches from death at the hands of an unrestrained mob.” One elderly Jewish man, Jan Bechor, was stoned to death as he sat in his car at an intersection on one of Israel’s main roads. The report also documented the use of firebombs, gunfire, rocks, and slingshots against both Israeli citizens and police.”

The report noted the incitement within the Arab sector which preceded the deadly riots:

“On September 18, 2000, two weeks prior to the outbreak of violence, more than 35,000 Israeli Arabs attended the seventh annual Northern Islamic Movement “peace” rally on the theme: “Al Aksa [Mosque] is in Danger,” hosted by Um el Fahm Mayor Sheikh Raed Salah. ”

“Salah reportedly told the crowd, “the Islamic world has exclusive rights to all the holy sites in Jerusalem and Israel has none.” The crowd responded with the chant, “In spirit and blood, we shall redeem Al Aksa.” Islamic affairs expert Dr. Guy Bechor noted that the entire rally took place as an act of incitement against the very existence of the State of Israel.”

The Or Commission did not recommend legal action against Raed Salah – a move which was severely criticized across the Israeli political spectrum.

“Former Meretz MK Amnon Rubenstein noted that “the Or Commission’s credibility was damaged by its refusal to recommend action against Arab MKs Abdel Malick Dehamshe, Azmi Bishara, and Um el Fahm Mayor and Northern Islamic Movement leader Raed Salah for inciting the Arab sector.”

“Former Defense Minister Moshe Arens wrote in Ha’aretz, ”It is difficult to believe that the Or Commission ignored the rapid rise of subversive activities and incitement against the state that occurred among a part of Israel’s Arab community since the Oslo Accords.” Druze MK Ayoub Kara said, “Israel must stop ‘touching up’ an ugly picture: the Israeli Arabs engaged in a civil rebellion to demonstrate their national solidarity with the Palestinians.”

Far from being the type of ‘human rights’ or ‘civil liberties’ movement as Ian Black suggested in his article quoted above, the Northern Islamic Movement is in fact the Muslim Brotherhood’s branch in Israel.

In 1997 it created controversy by attempting to build an unauthorized mosque on church-owned land outside the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth. A year later it gained control of the local council and Christian residents of the city and visitors to it are still confronted by Islamist propaganda as they approach their holy sites. 

Like its sister organization Hamas – also a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood – the Northern Islamic Movement rejects the existence of Israel completely and advocates the establishment of an Islamic state run on Sharia principles in its place.

Raed Salah’s ‘activism’ must be examined by any objective observer in that context, rather than in the cherry-picking manner adopted by those who choose to present him merely as a pro-Palestinian activist.  Their support of Salah and, by extension, his movement’s aims is in fact support for an aspiring non-democratic theocratic regime with in-built persecution of minorities and discrimination against numerous sectors, not least moderate Muslims.

As cited in the Or Commission report, Raed Salah is well known for his ability to incite violence, conflict and unrest either through his signature rabble-rousing speeches or by other – sometimes imaginative – methods. Here he is speaking at a rally after his participation in the Mavi Marmara flotilla, glorifying ‘martyrdom’.

Salah’s support for Hamas and its genocidal aims is not, however, confined merely to inflammatory rhetoric and boat trips. Its practical side includes the Northern Islamic Movement’s links to terror attacks.

“Nonetheless, three terrorist attacks have been carried out during the past decade by members of the Islamic Movement, primarily by its radical faction: The murder of soldiers near Kibbutz Gal-Ed in 1992; the murder of an Israeli couple in the Meggido Forest in August, 1999; and the explosions of the bomb-carrying cars in Tiberias and Haifa in September, 1999.”

Whilst the Northern Islamic Movement may not have provided the logistic support for these terror attacks (that apparently came from Hamas) it certainly did provide the background atmosphere to them.

“Members of the extremist faction maintain contacts with HAMAS in the Territories. Dr. Saliman Aghbariyya, an activist in this faction from Um el-Fahm, has been arrested more than once for having financial connections with HAMAS. Sheikh Ra’id Salah, leader of the extremist faction, is a member of the board of governors of the Islamic University in Gaza; the most important stronghold of the HAMAS in terms of organization and education. Sheikh Ra’id rushed to Jordan, at the head of a mission, to congratulate Khaled Mash’al for surviving an attempt on his life by Israel’s Mossad in September 1997. Similarly, he and his supporters went to Gaza to congratulate Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the leader of HAMAS, upon his return home after being released from prison in Israel.”

As is well known, Raed Salah has spent time in prison in Israel due to his role in the transferal of funds to Hamas. That, of course, is no coincidence: Salah has been named as sitting on the board of trustees of Yusuf Qaradawi’s ‘Union of Good’, the raison d’etre of which is to provide financial support for Hamas. On the basis of that support to a terrorist organisation, the ‘Union of Good’ was outlawed by the United States and by Israel – along with its various supporting charities.  

Several of those supporting charities are based in Britain and, despite repeated public pressure, continue to function openly; rubber stamped by the Charity Commission of England and Wales.

Raed Salah’s 2011 speaking tour of the UK (cut short by his arrest) was promoted by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and the Palestinian Forum in Britain. The advertisements show that it was also a fundraiser for ‘Human Appeal International’ which is one of the members of the ‘Union of Good’. 

‘Human Appeal International’ was named in the trial of Ahmed Salatna of the Jenin Zakat Committee as one of the organisations via which funds were transferred for Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist activities.

Raed Salah’s supporters (the Guardian included) in the UK have tried very hard throughout the entire affair to confine discussion of the case to semantic wrangling over his anti-Semitic statements and A-level English Literature-style dissections of his ‘poetry’. In that, they appear to have largely succeeded. 

That ‘victory’ should, however, send chills down the spines of any genuine members of the liberal Left remaining in the UK. By focusing the public and legal discussions on the various interpretations of Raed Salah’s sermons and writings, interested parties have managed to create a smoke-screen of ‘Jewish over-reaction’, with an added measure of anti-Semitic conspiracy theory-style ‘untoward Jewish influence’, adding fuel to the fire of an already intimidating atmosphere as perceived by many British Jews and non-Jews alike.

But the ins and outs of British immigration law and Salah’s so-called poetry should – in theory at least – be of far less interest to Left liberal commentators than the fact that there are groups within their own society (some with members in very high places) who laud and support a man whose beliefs and ideas are the antithesis of the values of liberty, equality and human rights which Western liberals claim to embrace.

It is possible to agree or disagree with the principle behind Salah’s banning from the UK, but there is certainly no reason for any genuine liberal to invest as much energy as the Guardian has done into trying to disguise the fact that the aim of his visit was to spout his incitement, promote his ideas of theocratic-based separatism and do a bit of round-about fundraising for a terror organisation on the side.

The Guardian’s treatment of the whole protracted Salah affair shows how meaningless a term ‘Left liberal’ has become in the ‘progressive’ circles it inhabits. But that writing was on the wall right from the beginning of the saga when a Guardian editorial on the subject informed us that “[i]f the home secretary is unwise enough to start applying her “prevent” policy to all Palestinian activists Israel has a problem with, Britain will face a backlash in the Arab world.”

And that is precisely the trouble with the Guardian’s Israel obsession: it blinds it from seeing the world – and its own little corner of it – in focus and causes it to sell out the principles to which it – and too much of the liberal Left – used to once adhere. 

Related articles
Mar 21 2012

Global March to Jerusalem organizer fails Aaron Klein’s $50,000 challenge

On his WABC Radio show, Aaron Klein offered $50,000 to Frank Romano, an organizer of the upcoming Global March to Jerusalem, if the activist could name one city in the Middle East outside of Israel that has more freedom than Jerusalem. 

Part 1:

Part 2:

Related articles
Mar 12 2012

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

H/T Al

A quick summary:

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

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

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

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

Wrote Elliott:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Removing a book lends an unjustified cachet to it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Of course not.

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

Related articles
Mar 8 2012

How to become an anti-Zionist martyr on the pages of the Guardian: Jenny Tonge edition

The way to become an anti-Zionist martyr is simple.

First, lend support for the end of the “Zionist project”, support terror against Israel or engage in implicit or explicit antisemitism.

Then, you suffer a mild rebuke, face social opprobrium, are asked to apologize, or pay some professional cost for expressing, legitimizing or condoning Judeophobia.

You then flagrantly misrepresent your views, and claim you were merely being critical of Israel.

The final step is easy, and requires no effort on your part: Just wait for the Guardian to publish reports, commentaries, or letters characterizing you as a victim of Israeli or Zionist power/control/villainy.

Baroness Jenny Tonge attended an event at Middlesex University in February where she expressed her belief that the end of the Jewish state would come and be a just outcome (as the Jewish state would merely be reaping what they have sown).  She also sat there in silence as an antisemitic extremist, Ken O’Keefe, compared Jews to Nazis and opined that 9/11 was an Israeli/Mossad conspiracy.   

She then resigned from her role within the Liberal Democrats after refusing to apologize.

First, it was longtime Guardian journalist Michael White who offered an apologia for Tonge. 

More recently, the Baroness was even more passionately defended on the Guardian’s Letters page, “Letters: Israel, Clegg and Tonge’s loss of Lib Dem Whip“, March 6.

Among the letters was one by former CiF commentator Tony Greenstein - an anti-Zionist who has legitimized comparisons between Nazism and Zionism – and one by former Liberal Democratic parliamentary candidate Edward Hooper, both of which complained that Tonge was forced to resign merely for stating the obvious about Israel’s future.

There was also a letter by Ghada Karmi, CiF contributor, endorser of the Global March to Jerusalem, and Palestine Solidarity Campaign patron who has called for “the end of a Jewish state in our region”. 

Here’s a passage from her Guardian letter:

No one could have objected [to Tonge's remarks], except the hysterical supporters of Israel who came to attack her, and the Lib Dem leaders too craven to stand up to them. [emphasis added]

There was also a letter by Tim Llewellyn, the former BBC Middle East correspondent who has advanced the idea, not least in the Guardian, that the BBC is tainted by pro-Israel bias. He is also an advocate for Hamas and Hizbollah, believes that Zionism is a “calamity”, and has occasionally written obituaries for terrorists in the Guardian.

Here’s the winning passage from his Guardian letter:

What is more sinister than the reactions of Israel’s representatives and placemen to Jenny Tonge is that, in this third intervention against her over her candid remarks in recent years, the leaders of the Lib Dems, encouraged by senior figures in the two other main political parties, have disempowered a British parliamentarian under pressure from the backers of a foreign state – Israel. 

The candid remarks of Tonge which Llewellyn is referring to include her comments sympathetic to Palestinian suicide bombing, her call for Israel to “investigate” the IDF in light of charges they were stealing organs in Haiti, and this especially odious comment:

The pro-Israeli lobby has got its grips on the western world, its financial grips. I think they’ve probably got a grip on our party

Read Llewellyn’s language again – arguing that the Liberal Democratic party was coerced to intervene and “disempower” Tonge due to “pressure from the backers of a foreign state” – which closely mirror Tonge’s very own sentiments on the dangerous power the pro-Israel lobby wields.

As I noted in my recent piece about Chris McGreal, narratives regarding the injurious influence of the Israel/Zionist lobby on US foreign policy is something approaching conventional wisdom at the Guardian, so it’s not surprising that they would publish letters in support of Tonge which parrot such a classic antisemitic canard. 

It’s a troubling commentary that someone like Tonge, who has advanced tropes which are indistinguishable from the poisonous Judeophobic narratives on the far-right, inspires sympathy from those purportedly on the left side of the political spectrum. 

Related articles
Mar 7 2012

Chris McGreal Tweets away any possible claim to “liberalism” or journalistic integrity

No, the blurring of news and opinion is not exclusively a Guardian phenomenon.

However, the recent report, on March 5, by Chris McGreal (the Guardian’s Washington correspondent, and former Jerusalem correspondent) contained a headline which is a perfect example of the capacity to contort any news in a way consistent with a journalist’s political sympathies. His headline was:

“Barack Obama tells Israel conference: too much loose talk of war”.

Of course, if you read Obama’s nearly 3500 word speech, a meager 86 words were employed to counsel against such unnecessary ”bluster”, while the overwhelming majority of his address focused on his unequivocal resolve in preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, including, if necessary, the use of US military force against the Islamist state.

McGreal could have led with this Obama quote:

Israel’s security is sacrosanct. It is non-negotiable. 

Or, he could have used a version of this Obama quote:

 No Israeli government can tolerate a nuclear weapon in the hands of a regime that denies the Holocaust, threatens to wipe Israel off the map and sponsors terrorist groups committed to Israel’s destruction.

Or this:

A nuclear-armed Iran is completely counter to Israel’s security interests. But it is also counter to the national security interests of the United States.

Or, McGreal could have highlighted this passage from Obama’s speech:

…the entire world has an interest in preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. A nuclear-armed Iran would thoroughly undermine the nonproliferation regime that we’ve done so much to build. There are risks that an Iranian nuclear weapon could fall into the hands of a terrorist organisation. It is almost certain that others in the region would feel compelled to get their own nuclear weapon, triggering an arms race in one of the world’s most volatile regions. It would embolden a regime that has brutalised its own people, and it would embolden Iran’s proxies, who have carried out terrorist attacks from the Levant to southwest Asia.

Or, this:

I have said that when it comes to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, I will take no options off the table, and I mean what I say. That includes all elements of American power…a military effort to be prepared for any contingency.

But, McGreal is generally not burdened by such quaint notions as fairness, balance, proportion and context. He was clearly determined to frame Obama’s speech in a way suggesting that the US President gave the pro-Israel Jewish community a tongue-lashing on their “war talk”.

However, while McGreal’s reports for the Guardian at least typically contain the veneer of journalism – rather than ‘Comment is Free’ style hyperbole – his recent Tweets on the AIPAC convention are free of even the pretense of journalistic integrity.  And, indeed, as you’ll see, McGreal’s use of 140 characters to let loose his political id make (the new NYT Israel correspondent) Jodi Rudoren’s recent Tweeting frenzy seem quite tame and sober in comparison.   

First, there was this ReTweet by McGreal, on the Jewish state’s “psychosis”, from anti-Zionist blogger Tony Karon.

McGreal also had  a series of exchanges with The Commentator:

So McGreal is mocking those who read the Jerusalem Post, which he derides for its Semitic sympathies, lacking objectivity – in contrast, are we to suppose, to the Guardian’s fair and balanced non-ideological reporting?

McGreal also Tweeted this:

This is just comical. Oh yes, those Jews and their slick videos! I imagine that other national lobby groups produce amateurish, unprofessional films (shot with cheap hand-held cameras) at their conventions.

Then this:

Again, try to remember that McGreal, who we’re to believe is a serious reporter for a major broadsheet, referred to the Israeli PM as “the President of doom”. 

McGreal also Re-Tweeted Tony Karon again.

Pro-Israel Jews (and many non-Jews) as dim-witted teenagers pumped up with testosterone – an ugly caricature of Zionists which McGreal evidently believes.  

And, there was this

As if we need to know what he’s getting at!

But, just for the fun of it, I Tweeted McGreal to request that he complete his thought, go beyond the dog whistle, and explain what precisely this is telling of, but (while we had a very raucous debate) he never came close to answering my question.

Of course, narratives regarding the injurious influence of the Israel/Jewish lobby on US foreign policy is something approaching conventional wisdom at the Guardian.  Reporters like McGreal believe, as a matter of faith, that the power of the Israel lobby explains why the US Congress is pro-Israel, despite overwhelming empirical evidence that support for Israel among Americans is overwhelming and has represented something of a political consensus over the last 45 years.

A good understanding of McGreal’s views can be gleaned from a September report he wrote for the Guardian which included the following passage:

Obama [told] American Jewish leaders that he would put some “daylight” between the US and Israel after eight years of George Bush slavishly refusing to pressure the Jewish state to move toward ending the occupation. [emphasis mine]

As the CST wrote to the Guardian, in relation to another CiF contributor’s use of the term “subservience” to characterize America’s relationship with Israel:

“Can you please explain to me how this notion that the USA is subservient / slavishly subservient to Israel is any different in its rationale to the old antisemitic myth about Jews running the world through domination of politicians, finance and media?

Shortly after McGreal’s report on the “subservient” American government, we contacted the Guardian, who upheld our complaint of antisemitic bias in McGreal’s report and they later removed the offending passage from the essay as “inconsistent with their standards”.

So, while its clear that McGreal buys into classic (historically right-wing tropes) about the dangers of Jewish power and influence on the body politic, it’s always difficult to determine what’s in someone’s heart – whether folks who engage in such classically antisemitic narratives possess a genuine antipathy towards Jews as such.

However, evidence on McGreal’s views towards Jews can reasonably be found in a series of reports on the alleged cooperation between Israel and S. Africa – a two-day special report in the Guardian Feb. 6th and 7th 2006 which attempted to delegitimize Israel by portraying the Jewish state as an apartheid and colonial state. But, it went much further than merely defaming Israel, and lashed out at Jews more broadly.  Wrote McGreal, in the context of comparing Jewish behavior to that of the Afrikaner S. African regime:

[Israel's Jewish] backers question how anyone can accuse them, as Jews at the end of a long line of persecuted generations, of racism, or in any way of resembling the old Afrikaner regime. But for years, much of South Africa’s Jewish population and successive Israeli governments made their own pact with apartheid – a deal that exchanged near silence by most South African Jews on a great moral issue for acceptance, and clandestine cooperation between Israel and the Afrikaner government that drew the two countries into a hidden embrace.

Of course, I likely shouldn’t have to dignify McGreal’s smear against Jews, but it needs to be noted that most S. African Jews, in fact, had actually voted against the apartheid National Party, instead casting their votes for either the Progressive Party or the United Party, and that Nelson Mandela, wrote about Jews in South Africa: “I have found Jews to be more broad-minded than most whites on issues of race and politics, perhaps because they themselves have historically been victims of prejudice.” 

Finally, being a Jew has historically meant constantly being on the defensive, and I am loath to give McGreal’s vitriol against Israel and her Jewish supporters any legitimacy, nor treat him as a respectful interlocutor.

My hope is that genuine liberals (those who are passionately anti-racist) will recognize McGreal’s ugly smears against the Jewish community, and condemn such decidedly illiberal views.

While McGreal’s Tweets have eroded any trust that he can separate his toxic political views with his responsibilities as a journalist, his past commentary should motivate others to justly name and shame the Guardian’s Washington correspondent as the bigot he is.  

Related articles
Feb 28 2012

Antisemitism below the line at CiF: Jewish control of US policy, & Jews’ insidious practice of usury

Simon Tisdall’s “Drumbeat of war with Iran has a familiar sound“, CiF, Feb. 24, included these passages:

A recent analysis of US public opinion revealed deeply ambivalent attitudes on Iran, with the majority of Americans apparently favouring diplomatic solutions. Yet as Republican presidential candidates exploit the issue, as the Israelis lobby America, and as Iranian factions manoeuvre ahead of parliamentary polls, the likelihood grows that doves and doubters will again be either converted or ignored.

Netanyahu’s belief that Israel faces an imminent, existential threat is visceral rather than fact-based.

Tisdall’s piece elicited this on the Gaza “concentration camp” and the Jewish state’s violation of the Ten Commandments. 

Ed Husain’s CiF commentary, “GOP debate foreign policy: prolific proliferators of confusion“, warned that GOP Presidential candidates’ bellicose rhetoric on the Iranian nuclear issue was evidence of an “Israel-centric” bias.

Husain’s piece elicited these:

On Israel’s manipulation of U.S. government policy, and a bonus reference to the conspiratorial belief, still popular among antisemitic sites, that Israel intentionally sank the USS Liberty.

Zionist lobbies dictate what the US believes about the Middle East.

Another commenter on Zionist control of U.S. foreign policy.

Finally, there was ‘s “The story of the Afghan Jews is one of remarkable tolerance“, Feb. 28, which included this passage:

The Afghans’ isolation from the rest of the world was a blessing in disguise for the Jewish community because being cut off from global political trends meant that ordinary Afghans were untouched by the raging, European-led, antisemitism of the early 20th century. Even at the height of the Nazi influence in Kabul of the 1930s, it was Afghan nationalism rather than antisemitism that led the government to introduce economic measures that bankrupted Jewish money-lending families.

Arbabzadah’s piece elicited this, on the Jewish practice of usury, and the Jewish domination of the financial industry.

Related articles
Feb 19 2012

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

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

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

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

Here’s the flyer promoting the event.

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

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

Lewis’ glowing profile included this passage:

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

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

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

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

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

Related articles
Feb 4 2012

Guardian readers skew conversation about UK, U.S. & Iran in a decidedly Semitic direction

As David T of Harry’s Place observed about Guardian Associate Editor Seumas Milne.

Milne’s greatest contribution to the Guardian Comment Pages has been to turn it into a soapbox for the RESPECT and Stop the War Coalition (StWC) projects: a Red-Green-Brown alliance between Stalinists, Trotskyites, and Islamists associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Milne evidently regarded his appointment to Comment Editor as an opportunity to promote the obnoxious politics of this alignment.

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!

Related articles
Feb 1 2012

Guardian Reader Comment of the Day: Israel Obsession “Rorschach Test” Edition

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”.  

Jan 31 2012

Jewish money: The Guardian leaps once more into the sewer of antisemitic conspiracies

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
Jan 30 2012

‘Comment is Free’ Reader Hate of the Day

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