Is Citizenship a Jewish Issue?

November 01, 2018  /  Gilad Atzmon

By Eve Mykytyn

Aviya Kushner’s piece in The Forward, “Why Trump’s Callous Call to End Birthright Citizenship is a Jewish Issue,” is a bizarre attempt at victimhood especially after a group of Jews have just experienced real victimhood. Mr. Trump has made no secret of his desire to stop illegal immigration from the south, and Jews may rightly be incensed that he is using immigration as a campaign tactic, particularly demonising Hispanics, but Ms Kushner fails to show how this is a Jewish issue rather than an issue for the United States as a whole.

Ms Kushner begins by raising the alarm that Trump has threatened to strip American-born citizens of their citizenship. First, as Matt Flegenheimer and Jonathan Martin point out in the New York Times, the president’s threat rings hollow. Like his promise of a 10% tax reduction, this seems a campaign line with little chance of success.  Second, his threat, although it is difficult to discern its precise terms, did not seem to be meant to apply retroactively. Third, it is generally accepted that the 14th Amendment, although intended to confer citizenship on former slaves, clearly states that citizenship in the United States is given to all born here. The words are clear.

 “All persons born or naturalised in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Trump has stated erroneously that no other country grants citizenship by birth, once again dissing our neighbor to the north. He is generally correct however, most countries including all of Europe, do not grant citizenship by place of birth alone. So if  citizenship by place of birth is a problem, it is not uniquely a Jewish problem or even an American problem.

Ms Kushner recites a number of places and times that Jews were denied citizenship and/or expelled. She ends this list  with the confusing line that, “Citizenship also means the right to leave. To flee, life intact. By the late 1930s, it became virtually impossible for Jews to find shelter elsewhere.”  While it is true Jews had trouble finding refuge during World War II, the problem was that citizenship did not protect them. In the context of the holocaust, citizenship was irrelevant. If anything, the Nuremberg Laws stripping Jews of their citizenship, encouraged Jews to find safety elsewhere.

“President Trump’s comments that he could override the Constitution and remove citizenship, at will, should send alarms throughout the Jewish community…History says so.”  Actually, there may be many reasons to disagree with President Trump, but perhaps the alarm in the Jewish community should come from incorrectly positing themselves as victims.

Again with Antisemitism

Hussein Samawarchi

One of the most used terms of the modern world is “Anti-Semitic.” Maybe, describing it as misused would be more precise. Abused also works when discussing the way this word has been increasingly utilized during the past few decades.

Innocent people have been branded as anti-Semitic all over the globe; people from all walks of life. To be accused of being anti-Semitic could get you terminated from a job or, at the very least, may cause you to be treated with extreme prejudice. Artists who share their opinions regarding “Israeli” war crimes are battled in Hollywood; others who refuse to perform in concerts on the Palestinian raped land lose future contracts almost instantly. Even American politicians who decline to sign a document pledging allegiance to the Zionist entity are automatically branded as anti-Semitic and are made to lose elections.

You know you are branded as an anti-Semitic, according to the Zionist dominated media, if you are one of the following:

– A German who thinks it unfair that he or she still needs to act apologetic for the acts of Nazis 80 years ago

– A Polish who believes his country holds the natural right to pass a legislation dealing with domestic issues

– An American who wants his government to stop giving ludicrous amounts of his or her tax money to “Israel” instead of investing it towards national education and health institutions

– A Lebanese who fights against constant “Israeli” infringements of his sovereign country’s border and airspace

– A Syrian demanding the withdrawal of “Israeli” occupying forces from his country

– An Iranian contesting “Israel’s”, almost daily, threats against his country

The above examples are but a small fraction of what could put you in the anti-Semitic category if you were to make your stance public regardless of what nationality you hold.

It is also known to nominate you for the title of ‘anti-Semitic’ if you consider investigating certain historical events or texts. Employing your natural human tendency to question statements is a thought crime according to those throwing anti-Semitism accusations left and right.

You are a horrible person if you try to look into whether Palestine is actually the biblical “promised land” when interpretations based on geographical indications in the holy book lead to think it should be further towards the middle of the Arabian Peninsula. You are a worse person if you do simple calculations of the number of Jews before World War II and after; you are simply not allowed to question why the change in number does not correspond to the general claim of six to eight million fatalities. You are also despicable should you want to understand why the main building for exterminating Jews at Auschwitz has had the roof restructured with new ducts for dropping Zyklon-B on victims after the war ended and its remaining occupants freed.

The Zionist media will stick so many defaming titles on anyone who tries to use the freedom of thought to tackle their stories. Some of these titles will get you imprisoned and fined.

Challenging Zionist statements is not the only way to be branded anti-Semitic, though. You may never mention “Israel” but still find yourself becoming a victim of slander and antisemitism charges by simply criticizing their allies and puppets.

For instance, if you question why the so-called Arab alliance is practicing ethnic cleansing against Yemenis, you are an anti-Semitic because what Saudi Arabia is actually leading is a termination of the inhabitants of a country that believes in the rights of Palestinians.

Try holding a conference that advocates the unity of the Arab people through cultural practices like arts and poetry. The “Israeli” media will report it as a conference of antisemitism although Arabs are, themselves, Semitic.

So, killing Semitic people is an act of antisemitism? In that case, “Israel” would be the winner of every prize that there is for that practice. The Zionists staging this farce are not so ignorant. They do, however, assume that the rest of the world doesn’t know about the ancient Aramaic language and its evolution process or the definition of the word SEMITE. Their low regard for the intelligence of others doesn’t come as surprising; after all, any person who does not belong to one of their tribes is a lesser human; if human at all to begin with.

At the moment, “Israel’s” and the Zionist movement’s loudest horn is a compulsive liar who is a war criminal by international standards and a corrupt politician by his own people’s standards. Benjamin Netanyahu, with all his dark record in every possible domain, tries to portray the Islamic Republic of Iran as an anti-Semitic state.

If, for argument’s sake, we were to limit the term Semitic to Jews only, then Iran is the only regional nation whose government has actually never treated its Jewish nationals with prejudice. And, if we were to take the word in its true definition, then Iran has been paying dearly in terms of sanctions over the past forty years for supporting none-Persians around the world – for upholding their rights to dignified lives.

Antisemitism allegations have become almost as boring as Netanyahu’s theatrics thanks to their excessive usage by Zionists against anyone who does not agree with the apartheid nature of their illegal ‘state’. Should standing up against genocide, for instance, the one committed daily against the Palestinian people, constitute a basis for labeling you as such, then the overwhelming majority of the citizens of Earth are anti-Semitic.

Source: Al-Ahed

Netanyahu’s “Turquzabad” comment ridiculed in social media

Jeremy Corbyn, Jewish Assimilation and the Lobby

August 21, 2018  /  Gilad Atzmon

By Gilad Atzmon

Although the following quotation is from an old text that refers to an earlier era and different geo-political conditions, it provides an impeccable analysis of the current Zionist campaign against Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party and the false alarm of antisemitsm.

“The ghettoized Ashkenazim (both in their Communist and their Zionist organizations) were inspired to obstruct emancipation by every possible device (including assassination in the last resort) while the story of their persecution was hammered, as an intimidatory warning, into the consciousness of the Western Jews and, as a rightful claim for succour, into that of the Christian West.

The Gentile politicians of the West presented these fictions to their peoples as truth, for they had found that powerful Jews, in all countries, were able to assist parties favoured by them with money, press support and votes; the return they required was support for the cause of the “persecuted” Jews in Russia and for the ‘return’ to Palestine. In effect this meant that politicians who sought these favours had to subordinate national interest to two causes ultimately destructive of all nation-states: the revolution (communism) and the ambition to acquire territory for the dominant race (Zionism).”* Douglas Reed 1955.

According to Douglas Reed the threat of antisemitism is designed primarily as a means to prevent Jewish assimilation. In The Wandering Who? I show that the fear of assimilation is not exclusive to Zionism, the Jewish political left and Jewish anti Zionism serve the same objective. By giving a place in the Jewish world to ethically inclined Jews they prevent such Jews from integrating with humanity as equals. The mechanism is straight forward: ‘You do not have to become a Goy in order to oppose Israeli criminality, you can just join JVP and oppose Israel ‘as a Jew.’ Similarly, you don’t have to oppose Corbyn’s detractors as an ordinary Labour member, you are better off celebrating your Jewish privilege and support Corbyn as a member of Jews for Jeremy or Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL).

Exclusively Jewish ‘dissenting’ bodies serve another crucial purpose: they operate to exclude gentiles from sensitive Jew-related discourse. Palestine solidarity has been dominated by Jewish ‘anti’ Zionist political bodies for more than a decade. These bodies have never been interested in solving the Palestinian plight; they have never echoed the Palestinian core demand for the right of return. Instead they have called for the ‘end of the occupation (practically legitimizing the Jewish State within pre 67 lines),’ the ‘Two States Solution,’ and BDS measures against Israel. Instead of fighting for the Palestinians’ right to return to their land, they have produced a noisy exchange between Zionists and the so-called ‘anti’s’ over Jews’ right to BDS. Thanks to the Jewish solidarity groups the discourse of the oppressed has been shaped by the sensitivities of the oppressor.

The same dynamic has been affecting Corbyn’s support campaign. Britain’s NO 1 anti racist doesn’t need a ‘kosher certificate’; from a supportive Jewish lobby. He doesn’t need the ‘as a Jew, I believe in Jeremy’ declarations. The same dynamic that obliterated the Palestinian Solidarity movement has so far had a disastrous effect on Corbyn’s supporters. They foolishly positioned  the ‘good Jews’ at the forefront of their campaign and let the campaign for the leader of the largest British national party be reduced to an internal Jewish spat in a greater Judeo-centric battle against assimilation.

Reed continues, “The Gentile politicians of the West presented these fictions (of Jewish persecution)  to their peoples as truth.” This is an unfortunately apt description of Home Secretary Sajid Javid’s call for Corbyn’s resignation over the ‘antisemitism’ crisis. Our PM, Therea May, also accused Jeremy Corbyn of allowing anti-Semitism to ‘run rife’ in Labour.  But why do they openly act this way? Do they really believe that antisemitism is ‘rife’ in the UK?

Back in 1955, decades before AIPAC was formed and the Conservative Friends of Israel was exposed as Israel’s long arm, Reed provided a possible explanation of current British political maneuvering.  They do it because they “found that powerful Jews, in all countries, were able to assist parties favoured by them with money, press support and votes.” Reed argues that Western politicians who accept the lobby’s favours scarify their national interests. This observation from 1955 explains why Britain and the USA have been fighting Zio-con wars and the prospect of world peace is progressively fading away.

When Douglas Reed died in 1976 his entire prolific career as a journalist and a commentator was dismissed. The Times‘ obituary condemned him as a ‘virulent anti-Semite.’  During my intellectual career I have learned that too often it is the so called ‘bigots,’ ‘anti-Semites’ and ‘racists’ who understand the world and its meaning better and ahead of anyone else. I guess that the take home message is: when they attempt to burn a book, make sure that this text is at the top of the pile next to your bed. If they attempt to silence a voice, attend to this voice before you do anything else. Because Jewish power is the power to obliterate the discussion on Jewish power.

* The Controversy of Zion – Douglas Reed pg. 177 to upload pdf of Reed’s book click here

To support Gilad’s legal cost

DONATE

Jews, Logic and Corbyn

August 18, 2018  /  Gilad Atzmon

By Gilad Atzmomn

According to the Transitive Axiom if A=B and B=C then A = C (If any two items are equal to the same third item then the two are equal to each other).

I mention the Transitive Axiom because it is a straightforward way to understand that if Corbyn (A) = existential threat to Jews (B) and Hitler (C) = existential threat to Jews (B) then Corbyn (A) = Hitler (C).

Every day British Jewish community leaders tell us that it will pose an “existential threat” to British Jews if Corbyn ends up in 10 Downing Street. It seems some British Jewish leaders are either delusional or stupid enough to believe that Corbyn and Hitler are one and the same. A few weeks ago, the three main British Jewish papers joined forces to deliver this humorous message in a single voice: ‘Corbyn poses an existential threat to our community.’

Today, Jonathan Goldstein, head of the Jewish Leadership Council repeated the same message in an interview with the Times of Israel.

“We are nervous about this man (Corbyn) becoming prime minister. We see the possibility of a Labour government led by this group as an existential threat to our community. These are unprecedented times.”

Jewish religion and culture are saturated with purported ‘existential threats.’ Jews are advised to “remember Amalek” the archetypical Biblical existential threat. Purim, the most joyous Jewish holiday, is a celebration of the Jewish victory over Haman, who was another existential threat. The holiday commemorates the killing  of Haman as well as the massacre of 75.000 of his associates. Even Jesus is perceived by some rabbinical sects as not only an arch enemy but an existential threat as well. Yeshu, the Hebrew name used for Christ , is an acronym for the formula Y’mach Sh’mo V’Zichro meaning ‘may his name and memory be obliterated’– a term reserved for the bitterest enemies of the Jews (Hitler, Amalek, etc.).  A few years back, yours truly was an existential threat in the eyes of the delusional Alan Dershowitz  

I hope that the Zionist campaign against Corbyn is not going to mature into a jubilant Jewish holiday or, God forbid, a Purim spirited lethal attack on his many supporters. I point at the absurdity of the Zionist zeal because judging by the language used by British Jewish community leaders, they see Corbyn as up there with Amalek, Haman and Hitler.

This is probably the right time to remind ourselves and British Jewish leaders of another fundamental mathematical axiom, namely the Symmetric one — If a = b then b = a.

If Corbyn = Hitler then we can assume that Hitler = Corbyn.  This could be a dangerous path for British Jews, especially considering the fact that despite the relentless Zionist campaign against him, Corbyn is still leading in the polls. In other words, if Hitler = Corbyn and Corbyn is supported by a majority of Brits who see him as an anti-racist and a humanist, some Brits may begin to  entertain the possibility that maybe Hitler was only just as bad as Corbyn. I guess that this is what many Jews regard a ‘holocaust denial.’ But, as things stand, they have only themselves to blame — it is the British Jewish leadership that introduced this absurd equation and has foolishly continued to push it on a daily basis.

Jeremy Corbyn Faces Attacks by UK’s Pro-israel (Apartheid State) Lobby

Jeremy Corbyn Faces Attacks by UK’s Pro-Israel Lobby

 

14 Aug  1:59 AM

Frontrunner for England’s Prime Minister spot Jeremy Corbyn has been at the center of controversy over his criticism of the state of Israel, specifically for refusing to adopt certain provisions of a new definition of Anti-Semitism that extends to what he sees as genuine criticism over Israel’s policies.

This debate is centered around an idea known as the ‘New Anti-Semitism’, purporting that criticism of Israel and even criticism of imperialism, in its broadest terms, can be used to demonize the Jewish people as a whole.

Many people such as Jeremy Corbyn see New Anti-Semitism as a means of chilling dissent over policy that disenfranchises Palestinians or dissent by accusing strategic allies to Israel of being accessories to the military occupation against the Palestinian people.

This criticism of New Anti-Semitism has been staunchly fought by leading members of Jewish communities around the world who say that Jews have the same right as everyone else to sovereignty and that the existence of Israel is not a racist act.

Governments that have accepted the New Anti-Semitism stance have found pressure to condemn genuine criticism of Israel as hate-speech. In England, the annual Israel Apartheid Week has been condemned, by lobbyists and affiliated MPs, as hate speech, under the IHRA’s new definition of Anti-Semitism.

“Our government was one of the first to adopt the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism,” said British MP Matthew Offord. “However, university vice-chancellors across the UK are simply ignoring its provisions. They are allowing Israel Apartheid Week events to take place in campuses that are funded by taxpayers and that is not only unacceptable, it breaches both the PSED and the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism.”

Many see another factor of influence at play in the flack against Jeremy Corbyn. Much like the American Gun Lobby, Israeli corporations have a Pro-Israel Lobby that can pressure political candidates when they are outspoken critics of Israel’s practices.

By creating political pressure against Jeremy Corbyn, members of the Pro-Israel Lobby and other groups can dissuade political action against Israeli injustices, such as the annexation of land in the occupied West Bank.

The Pro-Israel Lobby in the UK is in a unique position that allows them to avoid disclosing their donor base, making it difficult to understand who is holding the greatest stakes in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

According to the PNN, the New Arab reported a call for greater transparency within the Israeli Lobbying organizations. But, until that comes, we can only wonder whether Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters will be able to decide based on media coverage like Al Jazeera’s investigation of the Israeli Lobby in the UK, instead of blanket accusations of Anti-Semitism by other media outlets.

Israel running campaign against Jeremy Corbyn

Source

Asa Winstanley

Jeremy Corbyn has been under pressure from the Israel lobby once again. (Chatham House/Flickr)

An app operated as part of an Israeli government propaganda campaign issued a “mission” for social media users to make comments against Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, accusing him of anti-Semitism.

This is the latest evidence of an Israeli campaign of psychological warfare against the UK’s main opposition party.

The Act.IL app on Sunday falsely accused Corbyn of comparing Israel to Nazi Germany in a 2010 meeting which had been resurfaced by The Times last week.

The “mission” was documented in this Tweet by Michael Bueckert, a Canadian researcher who has been monitoring the app since last year.

The reality is very different from the app’s claims.

As my colleague Adri Nieuwhof explains, Corbyn hosted a meeting titled “Never Again – For Anyone” with Hajo Meyer, a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp and an anti-Zionist who spoke out strongly for Palestinian rights.

Meyer passed away in 2014.

The Act.IL app asks users to comment on Facebook in response to a Huffington Post UK story about Corbyn’s alleged “anti-Israel remarks,” which it claims are “often a way to hide anti-Semitism.”

The “mission” directs users to click “like” on a comment by Facebook user “Nancy Saada,” and write their own comments echoing her criticisms of Labour.

“Nancy” has posted elsewhere on her Facebook profile a photo of herself in an Israeli army uniform posing on an armored vehicle draped with an Israeli flag.

Israeli sabotage

As The Electronic Intifada reported earlier this year, the Act.IL app is a product of Israel’s strategic affairs ministry.

That ministry directs Israel’s covert efforts to sabotage the Palestine solidarity movement around the world.

Its top civil servant is a former army intelligence officer and the ministry is staffed by veterans of various spy agencies whose names are classified.

The Act.IL “mission” is another piece of evidence of the Israeli campaign of psychological warfare against Labour.

It is part of a long-running influence operation by Israel and its lobby groups to smear Corbyn, a veteran Palestine solidarity activist, and to label the party he leads “institutionally anti-Semitic.”

The operation also aims to push Labour, where there is strong support for Palestinian rights among the grassroots, in a more pro-Israel direction.

A covert element of the effort revealed last year by the undercover Al Jazeera documentary The Lobby involved attempts by the Israeli embassy to set up a grassroots pro-Israel organization for Labour youth.

The campaign has found support among the declining Labour right, including many of the party’s lawmakers, some of them involved with pro-Israel groups.

The Jewish Labour Movement, an anti-Palestinian group deeply linked to the Israeli government, has been at the forefront of the effort.

The group is run by Ella Rose, a former Israeli embassy officer.

Rose has privately admitted that as JLM director, she maintained close links to Shai Masot, the Israeli embassy spy forced to leave the country last year after the Al Jazeera investigation exposed him plotting to “take down” a senior UK government minister.

Masot was also spearheading the effort to manufacture a grassroots pro-Israel organization within the party, a tactic known as astroturfing.

JLM demands

Adam Langleben, the Jewish Labour Movement’s campaigns officer, issued his group’s latest demands on Corbyn on Monday.

These included that Labour adopt “unamended” the controversial IHRA definition of anti-Semitism which would define it as anti-Semitic to accurately describe the Israeli state as a “racist endeavor.”

The Israel lobby group is also demanding that Labour drop Chris Williamson – a leading leftist – as a lawmaker.

Instead of shutting down these claims as the bad faith attacks that they clearly are, Corbyn has continued a strategy of concession after concession that has only fueled the attacks.

He has rolled back his position on important matters of principle, like BDS – the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement for Palestinian rights.

In a Guardian opinion piece on Friday, Corbyn offered “dialogue with community organizations, including the Jewish Labour Movement” to discuss their demand that the IHRA document be adopted in full, even as he acknowledged that some of its provisions have “been used by those wanting to restrict criticism of Israel that is not anti-Semitic.”

It is unclear what Corbyn hopes to achieve in “dialogue” with a group that has close ties to a hostile foreign power committed to manipulating his party from within.

Not surprisingly, the JLM immediately dismissed Corbyn’s opinion piece as “another article bemoaning a situation.”

In his list of demands, the JLM’s Langleben admits that any concession Corbyn makes will not be enough.

“These measures would have been welcomed, and maybe even celebrated, two years ago,” he writes of his demands.

But now Langleben claims that matters have “reached the point of no return.”

“Decisive and significant actions, not words, are the only thing that can bring us back from the brink,” Langleben states.

He doesn’t say who must take this action, or what the action is.

This is certainly open to the interpretation that the Jewish Labour Movement expects the party to take the action of ousting its leader.

As for that “brink,” I warned in a widely shared Twitter thread last month that the Labour right and the Israel lobby may be planning a damaging split from the party.

Since I made that prediction, there are more signs that this could be coming to pass.

The most common response to my prediction on social media was to welcome their departure.

But be warned: Mainstream media which have fueled sensational and often baseless smears will falsely portray any combined exit of right-wing lawmakers and anti-Palestinian activists as an “exodus of Jews” from the Labour Party. And yes, columnists supporting them will probably even use the same hackneyed biblical allusion.

Bizarro Zionism: Zionists Call Human Rights Supporters Racist

Source

By Yves Engler | Dissident Voice | August 3, 2018

What to call someone who claims to oppose racism, except for that directed against Palestinians?

Judge someone by what they have done and continue to do. Consider the source. These thoughts ran through my mind as I struggled to write about Bernie Farber’s standing among some Left/liberals.

After Israel recently solidified its apartheid regime, a Facebook friend posted an opinion by illustrious pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim titled “Today, I Am Ashamed to Be an Israeli.” While expressing opposition to its recent entrenchment of Jewish supremacism, the story effectively denied the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by claiming, “the founding fathers of the State of Israel who signed the Declaration [of independence] considered the principle of equality as the bedrock of the society they were building.”

More than this sop to colonial history, my leftist Facebook friend’s post piqued my ire because it highlighted that the article came from Farber, who worked at the now defunct Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) between 1984 and 2011. In response to my complaint about citing the former CJC CEO approvingly, Farber wrote, “I will continue to work for mutual understanding and do my best to see all sides. You will of course see what you wish from your one-sided pedestal and be critical of anyone who remains a progressive Zionist which I am.”

From the “pedestal” on which I observe Farber, I see an individual who has repeatedly labelled supporters of Palestinian rights as racist. After the Canadian Union of Public Employees (Ontario) passed a 2009 motion in support of the Palestinian led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement Farber claimed, “anti-semitism is once again amongst us.” For Farber the resolution was “bigoted and discriminatory and anti-Jewish” because only one country was targeted. “The sole target is Jews, is Israel,” he said.

In a 2010 letter to the Toronto Star denouncing Israeli Apartheid Week CJC’s CEO wrote, “Anything that promotes the destruction, demonization and delegitimization of Israel, the world’s only Jewish state, is inherently anti-Semitic. To falsely accuse Israel, and by extension the vast majority of the world’s Jews who support the Jewish state, of ‘apartheid,’ is a form of anti-Semitic bullying.”

When the Israeli military killed 1,400 Palestinians (including 345 children) over 22 days in 2008-09 Farber denounced those protesting the slaughter across the country for their purported “vile, disgusting, hateful rhetoric of the kind that should be absolutely frightening to Canadians.” Further stoking anti-Arab/Muslim sentiment, he labeled the protests “uncivil, un-Canadian, that demonize Jews and Israelis.” Farber called on the police to investigate the burning of an Israeli flag and a small number of individuals with signs deemed “pro-Hamas” or comparing Israel’s actions to the Nazis.

In 2003 Farber lobbied for noted Islamophobe and anti-Palestinian activist Daniel Pipes to speak at York University. “It would have set a very, very unacceptable precedent to cancel it because of students who didn’t like or what he had to say,” said the then executive director of CJC Ontario. In 1996 Pipes asserted that Islam “would seem to have nothing functional to offer” and six years earlier said: “Western European societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene … All immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than most.” The year before speaking at York University Pipes launched Campus Watch, which created “dossiers” on professors and academic institutions viewed as critical of Israel and more recently, wrote a piece titled “How 99 Percent of ‘Palestine Refugees’ Are Fake.”

Farber certainly didn’t support Pipes as a principled defender of free speech. In fact, Farber repeatedly promoted hate speech restrictions and a few years later the CJC pressured the York administration against holding an academic conference entitled Israel/Palestine: Mapping Models of Statehood and Paths to Peace. Farber also applauded the Stephen Harper government’s 2009 move to block former British MP George Galloway from speaking in Canada, writing: “George Galloway enables terrorism.”

After Adbusters juxtaposed photos of the World War II Warsaw Ghetto with images of Gaza, Farber penned a National Post op-ed titled “Selling anti-Semitism in the book stores”. It urged people to complain to stores selling the Vancouver-based magazine and a week later Shoppers Drug Mart told Adbusters it would no longer sell its magazine.

Aligning himself with Doug and Rob Ford, in 2010 Farber called on Toronto Pride to ban Queers Against Israeli Apartheid from its parade. In an over-the-top Toronto Staropinion piece he (co)wrote, “you’ve got to hand it to the organizers of Toronto’s annual gay pride parade. With their cowardly volte face in allowing Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) to march, organizers have pulled off the PR nightmare hat-trick: bowing to the bullying of political correctness; violating their own core philosophy by readmitting a group rooted in hate and demonization; and shifting media focus off their main objective.”

As executive director of CJC Ontario Farber joined US Jewish groups’ campaign to suppress the 1998 publication of A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth, which was a rebuttal of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s widely distributed Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. The Norman Finkelstein-led project included an expanded version of an article by Ruth Bettina Birn, chief historian for Canada’s Nazi war crimes unit. Farber claimed that Birn was lending her name to Finkelstein’s “anti-Israel outbursts“, which were “an insult” to Jews. The CJC tried to intimidate the longstanding Nazi hunter through her government employer.

In another attempt to punish those in any way associated with Finkelstein, Farber threatened to take the York Region education board to the human-rights commission if it did not dismiss a Palestinian-Canadian from its race relations committee. Farber was angry that Bader Abu Zahra distributed a review of Finkelstein’s The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering at a teachers’ conference to discuss including “Holocaust and Anti-racist education in History, English and Social Science courses.”

When former Assembly of First Nations (AFN) head David Ahenakew made anti-Semitic comments in 2002 Farber (correctly) criticized them. But he also used Ahenakew’s abhorrent comments to smear Palestine solidarity activists. Alluding to the September 2002 protest against Benjamin Netanyahu at Concordia University and support for the second Palestinian intifada, Farber claimed Ahenakew “felt comfortable at the time to say what he’s been thinking for a long time.” Farber then used Ahenakew’s anti-Semitic comments to push AFN leaders to support a state stealing indigenous Palestinians’ land. As part of AFN/CJC rapprochement Grand Chief Phil Fontaine participated in a CJC organize tour to Israel.

Farber attacked the United Church of Canada for supporting Palestinian rights and Independent Jewish Voices (IJV). “It almost sends shivers down our spine that the United Church of Canada won’t speak out against documents which on their face are anti-Semitic,” said Farber, regarding a number of Palestine solidarity resolutions submitted to its 2009 national meeting. Amidst an aggressive campaign targeting the United Church, the CJC head opined, “that a mainstream Christian faith group would provide funding to create an anti-Zionist, and anti-Jewish group is absolutely astounding.”

Farber has repeatedly denigrated IJV, which supports the Palestinian civil society’s callto put economic and diplomatic pressure on Israel. He called IJV a “small, radical rump group”, “a rump on the edge of Jewish society”, a “fringe group” that spews “vile, anti-Zionist” rhetoric, “a minuscule, fringe group” that backs the “anti-Semitic” claim that Israel practices apartheid, etc.

At the same time that he disparaged IJV, Farber gave political cover to the Jewish Defence League (JDL), which recruited in Jewish high schools and participated in Toronto’s Annual Israel Walk. According to Andy Lehrer, JDL head Meir Weinstein spoke glowingly of Farber. After being asked to do so for years, Farber finally distanced himself and the CJC from the JDL in 2011. Highlighting the tension between those who back its anti-Palestinian posture, but oppose the JDL’s alliances with fascist/white supremacist organizations, Farber denounced the group after it rallied in support of Britain’s extremist English Defence League.

In response to my posting some of the above information on Facebook Farber complained that, “I haven’t worked at the CJC for over 7 years. And you have no idea of my work since then.” While Farber is no longer a leading proponent of the idea that expressing support for Palestinians is “anti-Semitism”, now challenges some of the Islamophobia he previously stoked and is offside with the JDL, it would be a stretch to say he’s broken from his CJC past. In 2015 Farber’s Mosaic Institute co-hosted an event with the Consulate of Israel in Toronto and last year he supported the exclusion of IJV and the United Jewish People’s Order from an Ontario anti-Semitism committee he co-led. In February Farber was a spokesperson for a JSpace Canada press release calling on the NDP convention to oppose a resolution that called for boycotting products from illegal Israeli settlements.

Despite this anti-Palestinian activity, many left/liberals partner with him. Alt weekly Toronto Now regularly publishes Farber’s articles; anti-racist journalist/activist Desmond Cole spoke with him at a recent forum put on by Farber’s Mosaic Institute; Judy Rebick, Sandy Hudson, Jerry Dias and others co-authored an op-ed with Farber calling on “Progressive Voters To Rally Around Andrea Horwath”; A slew of individuals have supported the new Farber-chaired Canadian Anti-Hate Network; the Treyf podcast interviewed him twice last year; the Torontoist quoted him in an article titled “Toronto’s Jewish Left is Alive and Well and Resisting Extremism.”

Of course, one could argue there is nothing wrong with interviewing someone you disagree with, partnering on an issue even if you differ on other subjects or citing a former pro-Israel activist to highlight that country’s eroding support.

But, ask yourself this: Would a pro-union publication give voice to a prominent union-basher? And if that union-basher claimed to have changed, wouldn’t the pro-union publication question him/her about the reasons for the change and their current opinion regarding unions?

It seems to me that supporters of Palestinian rights must, at a minimum, ask Farber similar questions before giving him voice as a “progressive” and “anti-racist”.

---

Yves Engler is the author of A Propaganda System: How Canada’s Government, Corporations, Media and Academia Sell War and Canada in Africa: 300 Years of Aid and Exploitation . To help organize an event as part of the fall tour for my forthcoming book Left, Right: Marching to the Beat of Imperial Canada please get in touch at yvesengler [at] hotmail.com

The Holocaust and its Deniers

August 02, 2018  /  Gilad Atzmon

By Gilad Atzmon

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, some Jewish intellectuals and humanists expressed the thought that ‘after Auschwitz Jews have to locate themselves at the forefront of the battle for humanity and against all forms of oppression.’

This is a principled and heroic ideal, but the reality on the ground has been somewhat different. Just three years after the liberation of Auschwitz, the Jewish state ethnically cleansed the vast majority of indigenous Palestinians. Two years later, in 1950, Israel’s Knesset passed the Law of Return, a racist law that distinguishes between Jews who have the right to ‘return’ to someone else’s land and the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees that were expelled by force from their villages and cities.

In the seven decades since, the Jewish State has committed every possible human rights abuse. It made Gaza into the biggest open-air prison in human history and has repeatedly dropped bombs on the most overpopulated place on earth. Recently the Jewish State deployed hundreds of snipers against unarmed Gazans who were protesting at the border. Israel killed dozens and wounded more than 13,000 Palestinians, the majority severely, with over 1,400 struck by three to five bullets.

If the Holocaust left Jews with a mission to fix the world, the Jewish State has done the opposite. Its crimes against humanity can be seen as a complete denial of the Holocaust’s message.

Some Jews who survived the Holocaust did dedicate their lives to a universal battle for a better world. Among these heroes was Hajo Meyer, a Dutch Auschwitz survivor who, for the obvious reasons, saw the similarities between his own suffering and the Palestinian plight.

In 2003 Meyer wrote The End of Judaism, accusing Israel of usurping the Holocaust to justify crimes against the Arabs. He participated in the 2011 “Never Again – For Anyone” tour. He correctly argued that Zionism predated fascism, and he also reiterated that Zionists and Fascists had a history of collaboration.

Meyer exemplified the Jewish post-Shoah humanist promise. After Auschwitz he located himself at the forefront of the fight against oppression. He fought Israel.

On Holocaust Memorial Day 2010, Meyer was invited to an event at the British Parliament which included MP Jeremy Corbyn. At the event Meyer compared Israeli racial policy to the Nuremberg laws. At the same event, Haidar Eid, a Palestinian academic from Gaza, pointed out that “the world was absolutely wrong to think that Nazism was defeated in 1945. Nazism has won because it has finally managed to Nazify the consciousness of its own victims.”

Eid didn’t ‘compare’ Zionism with Nazism, he described an ideological continuum between Nazi ideology and Israeli policy. He maintained that the racial discriminatory ideology of the Nazis was picked up by the Jewish state and has been rife in the Jewish State since then.

Yesterday MP Jeremy Corbyn was attacked by the Jewish lobby for being present at that meeting that explored these universal ethical positions. Our Labour candidate for prime minister anemically recalled that at the event in question views were expressed which he did not “accept or condone.” Corbyn even apologized “for the concerns and anxiety that this has caused.” I wonder why my preferred candidate has to express regret for being in the presence of a humanist exchange. I wonder why our next PM feels the need to disassociate himself from people who advocate ‘for the many, not the few.’

The message for the rest of us is devastating. The battle for a better world can’t be left to Corbyn alone. Needless to say, the Jewish State and its Lobby haven’t located themselves at the forefront of humanity. It is actually the Palestinians who have been pushed to the front of that frustrating struggle. Not to see that is to deny their holocaust.

Jews on the Moon

July 11, 2018  /  Gilad Atzmon

planet Earth has become too dangerous…

Satire by Gilad Atzmon

Jews around the world are so excited this week! On Tuesday, Israel announced that it will launch its first mission to the moon in December 2018.

Most Jewish organization have accepted that planet Earth has become too dangerous for the sons and the daughters of Israel. The decision to launch a spacecraft to the moon was triggered by an online poll conducted by the Global Campaign Against anti Jewish Bigotry (CAAJB). It revealed that one in six Jews (17%) reported feeling unwelcome on Earth. The online poll also found that 31.8% of world Jews had considered moving to another planet, preferably the moon, a rise from 28.2% recorded in last year’s CAAJB’s poll.

Various Zionists organisations have welcomed the new Jewish cosmic adventure. Zionists promised to make Jews into ‘people like all other people.’ Israel vowed to bring to life a new Hebrew, to eradicate the ghetto wall, to make the Israelite loving and beloved. However, the images of hundreds of Israeli snipers shooting unarmed Palestinian youngsters don’t reflect well on the Jewish State. The walls Israel surrounded itself with also suggest that Zionism didn’t really solve the Jewish problem, it just moved it to a new location.

A new Jewish planet in outer space provides new hope for people who have suffered throughout their history.  For the first time, Jews will be astronauts like all other cosmonauts.

Jewish Voice for Peace and the three other Jewish anti Zionists from Brooklyn were also thrilled by the announcement of the Israeli space program. “A planet with no people for people who control the senate ” read the headline of JVP’s press release yesterday. 

The Israeli mission’s first task will be to stick an Israeli flag on the moon. Once this mission is accomplished the space craft will plant pine trees all over the moon to remind the Hebrew newcomers of the Mount Carmel forest they left behind. The pine trees were similarly planted in Mount Carmel to remind early Zionists of the East European shtetles they left behind.

The expedition will be launched by rocket from Elon Musk’s SpaceX firm this December, and it’s expected to land on the moon in February, just a few days ahead of Purim.

The new Moonrael anthem is already here (Mel Brooks’ Jews in Space) : 

We’re Jews out in space
We’re zooming along
protecting the Hebrew race

We’re Jews out in space
If trouble appears
we put it right back in its place

When goyim attack us
We give ’em a smack
we’ll slap them right back in the face

We’re Jews out in space
We’re zooming along
protecting the Hebrew race (Stavro Arrgolus)

To support Gilad’s legal costs…

DONATE

Chief Rabbi Vs. Labour Party

July 17, 2018  /  Gilad Atzmon

Reported by Gilad Atzmon

The BBC reports this morning that Britan’s chief rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has said Labour will be “on the wrong side” of the fight against racism unless it toughens up its anti-Semitism code of conduct.

Rabbi Mirvis said Labour’s new anti-Semitism definition sent “an unprecedented message of contempt to the Jewish community”.

Apparently the Chief Rabbi is not alone. The J Post reports this morning that “Sixty-eight British rabbis signed an open letter decrying antisemitism in the country’s labor Party and calling on the party to accept the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism.”

Labour has defended its new code as the most “comprehensive” of any party.

But one may wonder, why do we need a special definition for antisemitsm? Is a general and universal denouncement of racism, bigotry and discrimination of all kinds not sufficient?  Are Jews somehow special?

The new Labour code does endorse the IHRA’s working definition of anti-Semitism and includes behaviours it lists as likely to be regarded as anti-Semitic – yet Jewish critics point out that it leaves out four examples from that definition:

*  Accusing Jewish people of being more loyal to Israel than their home country

*  Claiming that Israel’s existence as a state is a racist endeavour

*  Requiring higher standards of behaviour from Israel than other nations

*  Comparing contemporary Israeli policies to those of the Nazis

Far from being surprising, Corbyn’s Labour see Israeli criminality as a problem and insists upon the right to criticise the actions of the Jewish State and its lobbies in political, cultural and historical contexts.

Rabbi Mirvis attacked the omission of these examples by the Labour and said it was “astonishing that the Labour Party presumes it is more qualified” to define anti-Semitism than the Jewish community.

The Rabbi could be slightly confused here.  Jews are more than welcome to define antisemitsm, as they like, but the labour party has the duty to define what it regards as an anti Jewish bigotry in accordance to its own alleged universal values.

Mirvis said Labour risked being on the “wrong side of the fight” against racism and intolerance

I would argue however that the Labour party, Rabbi Mirvis and most British Jewish institutions are on the wrong side of history here. If racism and Bigotry are defined as the discrimination of X for being X (X=woman, Jew, Black, Muslim, Gay, White etc.), then for Britain to move forward and to sustain the spirit of the common law, it must oppose all forms of racism and bigotry all together and equally.  

To fight racism we need to follow one simple universal guideline rather than looking for the specific demands of one group or another.

To support Gilad’s legal costs…

 Donate

In Memory of Philip Roth

May 26, 2018  /  Gilad Atzmon

Introduction by GA: I wrote the following  book review a decade ago. 10 years later, Israel and its subservient English Speaking Empire are still mounting pressure on Iran,  the Middle East is bleeding and peace looks like a remote fantasy. Pre TSD is the medium in which we operate and a prospect of a better future seems like a delusional dream. A decade ago I concluded this review wiring that “the current plot isn’t just against America. It is a plot against humanity and human dignity.” Sadly, nothing really changed.

The Plot Against America – a book report and a reality check

by Gilad Atzmon

…Roth is no doubt an astonishing writer but somehow he has always failed to convince me. I always had the feeling that Roth is just too aware of his enormous talent; something that made him slightly technical and pretentious at times. Being a prolific writer, Roth can be slightly impersonal to my taste and yet, in his latest book he is free from that. No literary imposed tactics or strategies can be traced. In his latest book, Roth is overwhelmingly personal. Astonishingly enough, the fictional reality he conveys is so convincing that I found myself totally captivated from beginning to end. So enthralled was I, that I even managed to forget how depressing the world is out there. I avoided the anti-Iranian media blitz. I switched it off for three days and let the international community attack the Iranian president in a single Judeified voice.

‘The Plot Against America’ is a fictional tale that unwinds like a historical document enriched with personal detail. Its theme is: what would have happened if ace pilot Charles Lindbergh, the man who made the first solo transatlantic flight in 1927, the man who later called Hitler ‘a great man’, and was decorated by the Führer for his services to the Reich, had run for the American presidency against Roosevelt in 1940 and managed to win? Lindbergh’s message to the American nation is a classic Republican isolationist one. ‘No more war! Never again will young Americans die on foreign soil’. The year is obviously 1940 and Lindbergh is referring to Europe and the Pacific rather than Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria or Iran. In Roth’s book, instead of Roosevelt being elected for an unprecedented third term, Lindbergh wins in a landslide victory. He then signs non-aggression treaties with Germany and Japan. Soon enough the charismatic Lindbergh is cheered by American society as a whole. Every American loves him except of course the Jews who are far from being happy with a ‘peace loving’ president who happens to make business with the enemies of the Jewish people. But in fact this isn’t entirely true, a single prominent liberal Rabbi named Bengelsdorf positions himself right behind the new president.

The narrator is Philip Roth himself, a seven-year-old Jewish Ghetto boy from Newark, New Jersey. He tells a story of a Jewish family encountering a major disastrous political shift. Young Phil is telling the story of father Herman, mother Bess and brother Sandy. It is a story of collective fear, a story of a Jewish family’s reaction to the rise of anti-Semitism. However, throughout the book it is very hard to determine whether anti-Semitism constitutes a real objective threat or rather something the Jews bring on themselves. This very confusion is in my opinion the greatest literary asset of the book.

Roth is sketching a very deep and complex narrative in which each family member responds differently to the ‘devastating’ historical circumstances. Once again, Roth managed to convey an interesting image of the difficult amalgam of the Jewish identity both psychologically and sociologically. Like most American Jews, Herman the father is overtly pessimistic from the very beginning. He wouldn’t give Lindbergh even a single day of mercy. However, he is a proud patriotic American. He demands his civil rights. Were he in our midst, he would criticise the emerging catastrophic reality applying to the American liberal ideology. The mother Bess is far more practical, she tries to maintain the family’s sanity, behaving as if life must go on. More than anything else, she must calm down her righteous husband. Phil’s brother Sandy is a gifted painter and assumes a very interesting role. In the summer he disappears for an “apprenticeship” with a tobacco farmer in Kentucky. In a way he makes it into the heart of America. Later he is joining a new assimilation scheme by encouraging Jewish city boys to follow his example. This program is put together by Rabbi Bengelsdorf, the devoted supporter of Lindbergh. Sandy is doing very well, eventually he is invited to a reception at the White House. This is obviously far more than Herman can take. For Herman, the democratically elected American president is nothing but an enemy of the Jews and he refuses to give his son permission to go to Washington. The tension between family members threatens the stability of the family itself, which is on the brink of falling apart. However, all that time,  America has been kept out of the war. American boys aren’t dying in a far away country. American people are very happy but somehow the Jewish Americans aren’t.

All the way through the book father Herman is portrayed as a paranoid Ghetto Jew. He is totally single minded in interpreting reality, he is overly tragic. But he isn’t alone in his obsession. Alongside his Newark Jewish Ghetto neighbours he draws a lot of support from the famous Jewish journalist and broadcaster Walter Winchell who is spreading his anti-Lindbergh poison to the nation. It doesn’t take long before Winchell is stripped of his positions as a journalist, first in the printed press and later in his prime time radio slot. But Winchell won’t surrender; once he loses his job, he decides to run for the presidency. Winchell, the Jew, decides to reshape the American future. In other words, he is determined to take America into war in Europe. Within a short time into his campaign, Winchell is assassinated. Again, the reader may wonder whether the assassination is an anti-Semitic act or rather a punishment Winchell and the Jews insist upon bringing on themselves.

All the way through most of the book I couldn’t make up my mind whether the plot against America is a Jewish or rather a Nazi one. Clearly most of America into war that may serve their cause or if it was Hitler who employs an agent in the very centre of the American administration as the mastermind behind the plot. When time is ripe, young Phil provides us with a shadow of an answer.

Towards the very end of the book Lindbergh disappears with his private fighter plane without leaving a trace. Mysteriously, the wreckage of his plane has never been found. No forensic evidence can suggest what happened to him. Foreign governments volunteer their versions: the Brits blame the Nazis for kidnapping the president, the Nazis suggest that it was ‘Roosevelt and his Jews’ who abducted the American hero. These suggestions are all highly charged, unfounded gossip that are there to serve an international political cause. However, Roth deliberately decides to leave us with a very personal account. We hear Rabbi Bengelsdorf’s account told by his wife Evelyn who happens to be Philip’s aunt. Brilliantly, Roth’s historical narrative takes the shape of modern ‘Jewish history’. History is then reduced to a mere personal account in the shape of gossip devoid of any factual or forensic reference.

Following Rabbi Bengelsdorf’s account, we are entitled to assume that Lindbergh was indeed a Nazi agent. Anyhow, this is the time to remind us that Roth’s President Lindbergh is a fictional character. In fact Lindbergh, the real man, was an American hero, a man who ended the Second World War as a P38 combat pilot at the age of 42. ‘The Plot Against America’ is a fictional tale, Lindbergh wasn’t a traitor, he was an American patriot who happened, like many others, to have admired Hitler for a while. Lindbergh was an American nationalist who loved his people and truly believed that his country should stay out of the ‘Jewish War’. Roth’s Lindbergh is indeed imaginary, but the Jewish collective paranoia isn’t. It is very real. Moreover, the Jewish intent upon shaping American reality is more than real.  Most importantly, while the Nazi plot to run America is totally fictional, the Jewish Plot to run America is now more vivid than ever. Nowadays, when the American army is acting as an Israeli mission force in the Middle East, when Syria and Iran are just about to be flattened by Anglo-American might, it is rather clear what the real meaning of the ‘Plot Against America’ may be.

I read Philip Roth’s book while the entire international community was standing shoulder to shoulder behind the war criminal Sharon. While in Roth’s book the Herman Roths and the Walter Wichells were expecting  America to sacrifice its best sons on the Jewish altar, we are now watching the entire world joining the Jewish war against Islam. It is rather depressing to see our Western politicians enthusiastically adopting the most corrupt version of Jewish morality: a totally blind worldview based on supremacist endorsement of the justice of the stronger. Clearly, there is no isolationist Lindbergh to save us all. Unfortunately, there is not even a single Rabbi Bengelsdorf to suggest an alternative friendly human Jewish morality.

By the time I put Roth’s book down, the storm around the Iranian president subsided somehow. The Jewish world and the Jewish state had another great victory to be cheerful about. The UN’s General Assembly has passed a resolution designating 27 January as the annual ‘Holocaust Memorial Day’ throughout the world.

Why the 27th of January? Because this is the day Auschwitz was liberated. The resolution also rejects any denial that the Holocaust was a historical event in which the mass murder of six million Jews and other victims by Nazi Germany during World War II took place. Seemingly, the UN has a new role, while for years it has been engaged in securing world peace, now it is mainly concerned with securing Jewish history.  No doubt, a very nice present for the Jewish state, a state that holds the highest record for failing to comply with UN resolutions.

By the time I put Roth’s book down I am more or less ready to learn my lesson. Once again I failed to acknowledge that suffering is an exclusive, internal Jewish affair. No one is allowed entry, neither the Palestinians of Gaza’s concentration camp, nor the massacred inhabitants of Fallujah and Tikrit. One million victims of Rwanda are obviously out, three million in Vietnam are out as well, so are the innocent civilians of Hamburg, Hiroshima, Dresden and Nagasaki and millions of others who were killed in the name of democracy. By the time Roth’s ‘Plot Against America’ finds its way onto my bookshelf, I agree with myself at least: A young Rabbi Begelsdorf is long overdue. If we are being Judeified, we may as well take the best of Judaism rather than its supremacist brutality, namely Zionism. By the time Roth’s tome is resting I realise as well that the current plot isn’t just against America. It is a plot against humanity and human dignity