Why Not Question “the Holocaust” in Schools?

  OCTOBER 26, 2021

By Philip Giraldi

Source

There has been major pushback against a Texas state education official who said that if schools are adhering to a new state law that mandates teaching alternative points of view on controversial issues having a course and a book on the holocaust, for example, would suggest providing material that reflects other interpretations of that historical event. The comment came from a Texas school district administrator named Gina Peddy in the Carrollton Independent School District in Southlake, which is in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, who was in a training session explaining to teachers her directive regarding which books can be available in classroom libraries. She told teachers that if they have books about the Holocaust in their classrooms, they should also have books that offer “opposing” or “other” viewpoints on the subject.

Reportedly a staff member who was present secretly made an audio recording of the training session which was then shared with NBC News, which broke the story.

The Texas law was and is intended to lessen the impact of the current “woke” campaign by progressive educators to rewrite American and international history to reflect the dark side, notably by emphasizing issues like slavery and oppression of minorities. Texas legislators insist, not unreasonably, that presenting an essentially negative view of American history as envisioned by Critical Race Theory (CRT) must be balanced by having a curriculum that also includes discussion of the many positive achievements of the United States of America. In the recording, Peddy, the school district’s executive director of curriculum and instruction, told the teachers that the new law applies to any “widely debated and currently controversial” issues. She was quoted as saying “And make sure that if you have a book on the Holocaust, that you have one that has an opposing, that has other perspectives.”

Predictably, on such a hot wire issue Peddy has had little or no support from her peers either locally or in the education establishment. The school district Superintendent Lane Ledbetter posted on Facebook an “apology regarding the online article and news story.” He said Peddy’s comments were “in no way to convey that the Holocaust was anything less than a terrible event in history. Additionally, we recognize there are not two sides of the Holocaust. We also understand this bill does not require an opposing viewpoint on historical facts.”

Clay Robison, a spokesman for the Texas State Teachers Association, responded “We find it reprehensible for an educator to require a Holocaust denier to get equal treatment with the facts of history. That’s absurd. It’s worse than absurd. And this law does not require it.” Republican state Senator Bryan Hughes, who wrote the bill that became the law, denied that anyone should come up with alternative views on what he called matters of “good and evil” or to remove books that offer only one perspective on the Holocaust.

Jews in Peddy’s school district and elsewhere in both Texas and nationally have inevitably also risen to the bait, denouncing any attempt made to challenge what they view as an issue fundamental to their understanding of their place in the world and in history. One Jewish former student Jake Berman asserted that “The facts are that there are not two sides of the Holocaust. The Nazis systematically killed millions of people.”

Ledbetter, Robison and Hughes should perhaps consider that they are suggesting that their new law should only apply on “controversial” racial issues, not on other historical developments and it is curious that educated people should consider a multi-faceted transnational historical event that has inter alia a highly politicized context a “fact.” The holocaust narrative in and of itself is the creation of men and women after the fact with an agenda to justify the creation and support for the State of Israel and should be subject to the same inquiry as any other facet of the Second World War and what came after.

The tale of “the holocaust” is essentially a contrived bit of history that serves a political objective wrapped up in what purports to be a powerful statement regarding man’s inhumanity to man. Jewish groups generally speaking consider the standard narrative with its highly questionable six million dead, gas chambers, extermination camps, and soap made from body fat to be something like sacred ground, with its memorialization of the uniqueness of Jewish suffering. Serious scholars who have actually looked at the narrative and the numbers and sequences of events are not surprisingly skeptical of many of the details.

As a first step, it is helpful to look at controversial Professor Norman Finkelstein’s carefully documented book The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering. Finkelstein, to be sure, believes there was something like a genocide of European Jews and even lost some family members due to it. He does not, however, necessarily believe many of the details provided by the standard narrative and official promoters of that story to include the numerous holocaust museums. In his view, powerful interests have hijacked “the Holocaust,” and use it to further their own objectives. He wrote “Organized Jewry has exploited the Nazi holocaust to deflect criticism of Israel’s and its own indefensible policies. Nazi genocide has been used to justify criminal policies of the Israeli state and US support for these policies.”

And there is also a money angle, as there often is. Per Finkelstein, Jewish organizations in the US have also exploited the situation of the dwindling number of aging holocaust survivors to extort “staggering sums of money from the rest of the world. This is not done not for the benefit of needy survivors but for the financial advantage of these organizations.”

As taking courses in the holocaust are mandated in the public school systems of twenty states (and soon to be more due to pressure from local Jewish groups) and is used to validate the billions of US taxpayer dollars given annually to the state of Israel it would seem that supporters of the narrative should have the confidence as well as sufficient integrity to defend their product. But that is, of course, not the case. They would prefer to have their chosen narrative unchallenged, raising the usual claims of anti-Semitism and “holocaust denial” to silence critics. One of the “textbooks” frequently used in public schools that mandate holocaust education is Night by Elie Wiesel, whom Finkelstein has dubbed “the high huckster of the holocaust.” “Night” claims to be autobiographical but is full of errors in time and place. It is at least in part a work of fiction. Similarly, the “Diary of Anne Frank” was published after editing by her survivor father and parts of it have been challenged.

As a general rule, contentious issues where advocates attempt to silence opponents by claiming that what they are promoting is based on fact and cannot be challenged should be challenged. In Europe, powerful Jewish constituencies have even made it illegal to criticize or deny the holocaust narrative. In America, that day may soon be coming as Jewish groups increasingly seek to criminalize questioning of the factual basis of the holocaust as well as any criticism of Israel.

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The Nakba and the Polish Law

 JULY 04, 2021 BY GILAD ATZMON

by Gilad Atzmon

Source: Almayadeen.net

Israel seems upset by a new Polish law that sets a 30-year deadline for Jews to recover seized property. The legislation is yet to be approved by Poland’s senate, yet Israeli officials already refer to it as the “Holocaust law.” They insist that it is ‘immoral’ and ‘a disgrace.’

Last week Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Yair Lapid insisted that the bill “is a disgrace that will not erase the horrors or the memory of the Holocaust.”

I fail to see which part of the legislation interferes with the memory and the horrors of the holocaust. I actually think that the crude attempt to squeeze billions of dollars from Poland in the name of a human tragedy may have a detrimental impact on this historical chapter and the way it is memorized.

The Poles didn’t approve of the Jewish ‘State’ interfering with their internal affairs. On Friday, Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki hit back at Lapid, stressing, “I can only say that as long as I am the prime minister, Poland will not pay for German crimes: Neither zloty, nor euro, nor dollar.”

Poland’s Minister of Foreign Affairs echoed Morawiecki’s position, arguing that Lapid’s comments were misguided. “Poland is by no means responsible for the Holocaust, an atrocity committed by the German occupant also on Polish citizens of Jewish origin.”

During the weekend, the crisis seemed to escalate. On Sunday, Poland and Israel summoned the other’s ambassador for meetings as the rift between the two countries didn’t seem to subside.  

I am not in a position to judge what is right and who is wrong on restitution matters. Suppose the Polish new legislation is “a horrific injustice and disgrace that harms the rights of Holocaust survivors and their heirs,” as Lapid says. In that case, we should also expect Lapid to vividly support the Palestinians, their right of return, and their right to be compensated for the colossal crimes committed against them in 1948 and thereafter. 

In 1948, more than 700,000 Palestinians (the vast majority of indigenous Palestine) were ethnically cleansed by the newly born Jewish State. This catastrophic racially driven crime (that included a long list of massacres) is called the Nakba. It took place less than four years after the liberation of Auschwitz. 

During the 1948 war and shortly after, young Israel wiped out Palestinian cities and villages. It then used legislation to prevent Palestinians from returning to their homes and applied any possible means to plunder their properties, dispossessing those few Palestinians who clung to their land. Yet, Israel never admitted its original sin of ethnic cleansing. 

Applying to a moral cause, Israel claims to represent Jewish demands for restitution in Poland. I wonder, shouldn’t the same rule be applied to the Palestinians? Shouldn’t Israel put the same moral law into play and acknowledge the Palestinians’ right to their land, villages, cities, fields, and orchards?

While in Poland, it was Nazi Germany that brought a disaster on the county’s Jewry. In Palestine, young IDF and Jewish paramilitary groups committed colossal crimes against the indigenous population. While Nazi Germany ceased to exist in 1945, the IDF is still with us. The Labour party (which formed the first Israeli government directly) is still active and is even a member of the current governing coalition. The Likud Party, being the offspring of the Irgun and the Stern Gang (both complicit in some of the most brutal massacres in Palestine), is, by far, the biggest party in the Israeli Knesset. The Israeli and Zionist institutions that were responsible for the 1948 crime have never ceased to exist. They have never owned their crimes, let alone repented. 

Holocaust survivors have been compensated by different means for the crime that was committed against them by Europeans. Israel benefitted from a large reparations deal with the German government. The Palestinians, however, are still living in open-air prisons and refugee camps, subject to blockades and constant abuse.    

The time is ripe for Israel to own up to its horrendous past. By now, Israel should accept that the Palestinian cause is not fading away or evaporating into thin air. If Israel seeks to reconcile with the region, it must first apply to itself that moral code that it demands Poland to follow. 

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Defamation (השמצה‎‎) anti-Semitism

Posted May 30, 2021

Source

Must Watch

Documentary examines anti-Semitism, and its affect on Israeli and U.S. politics.

Defamation (השמצה‎‎) is a 2009 documentary film by award-winning filmmaker Yoav Shamir. It examines antisemitism and, in particular, the way perceptions of antisemitism affect Israeli and U.S. politics. Defamation won Best Documentary Feature Film at the 2009 Asia Pacific Screen Awards.

See also

“I’m hopeful now, and I haven’t been hopeful in a long time. What’s happening now is putting a check on Israel. They have a problem now.”

Jewish-American political analyst Dr Norman Finkelstein speaks to MEE about his views on Israel’s latest offensive in #Gaza pic.twitter.com/Xw3ZOwT7on— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) May 16, 2021

Now it’s ‘antisemitic’ to say that Israel practices ‘apartheid’

Jonathan Cook: Jewish groups that aid Israel’s war crimes can’t deny all responsibility for those crimes

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The Jewish Takeover of Canada: The Case of Arthur Topham

 By Lasha Darkmoon –

October 10, 2014

Has Canada been taken over by Jews? It would seem so, if the relentless persecution
of Canadian patriot and freedom fighter Arthur Topham is anything to go on.

. . . by Lasha DarkmoonIT’S TOO LATE TO CRY — IT’S ALREADY HAPPENED

Canadian patriot and freedom fighter Arthur Topham is to be hauled before the Canadian courts next year on trumped-up charges. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Arthur is an innocent man. His trial date has now been set. He will appear in court on 26 October, 2015, and his trial will last for two weeks until 6 November.

If found guilty, this man who has said and done nothing that you and I have not said or done a thousand times, will be torn from the embrace of his wife, his family and his friends and be thrown into prison. It will be a major miscarriage of justice if this should occur.

The forthcoming trial of Arthur Topham (pictured) is therefore much more than the trial of one man. Canadian justice will itself be on trial.

What is Arthur’s alleged crime? Arthur’s only crime is that he is a political dissident who has chosen to exercise his democratic right to free speech. He has spoken out eloquently about the war crimes of the state of Israel and published books on his website which are regarded as offensive to many Jews. To criticize this privileged ethnic group in Canada or to question its cherished assumptions, is, it seems, strictly taboo. This is classified as “hate speech”.

At no time has Arthur advocated breaking the law. He has never incited anyone to violence. He has merely utilized his pen to express his political views in a rational and civilized way as any political dissident anywhere in the world would do.

If Arthur had been an American or British citizen, he would not be facing a possible prison sentence right now, and this is because whatever Arthur has said or done is not regarded as a crime in the United States or Britain.If Arthur is to be condemned in a Canadian court for “hate speech”, it will only be because Canada has now fallen under the dominant influence of a powerful ethnic group who have somehow managed to turn Canada into an Israelified police state.

Yesterday I received an email from an old friend of mine. His name is Felix Dean. He is a retired Canadian professional who dearly loves his country, just as Arthur Topham does. Unlike Arthur however, Felix can no longer bear to live in Canada. He feels that Canada has rapidly morphed into a police state under the malign influence of organized Jewry. So Felix now resides in self-imposed exile within “the civilized confines of Europe,” to quote his own words.

This is what Felix has to say about his Canadian compatriot Arthur Topham:

“To the best of my understanding, Arthur Topham’s cardinal sin is not what he said, but the fact that he PUBLISHED it. There is an individual by name of Richard Warman, the rabid Zionist attack dog whose only reason for living is to destroy truth tellers like Arthur. Warman is actually of German ancestry, not a Jew as far as I know, but he is a classical cult zombie, someone so thoroughly brainwashed and programmed for bloodshed that I cannot but regard him as little better than a Manchurian candidate of the worst sort.”

Strong words, friend Felix. It distresses me to know that Canadian justice is now apparently relying on the evidence of Manchurian candidates. Has it really come to this?

It would appear that this man Richard Warman (pictured), an ardent Zionist with a reputation for being a “serial complainant”, has a personal grudge against Arthur Topham and would like to see him go to prison.

Though non-Jewish himself and with no official position, Warman is constantly to be seen filing complaints against critics of Big Jewry. It was he who tried to get David Icke into trouble recently, accusing Icke of unspecified “hate crimes”. Apparently mentioning “Jews” in the same breath as “lizards” is deeply disturbing to Mr Warman and could indirectly lead to a second Holocaust.

Needless to say, Warman is relatively small fry: a pest and a nuisance rather than a serious threat to champions of free speech. Arthur’s main adversary is a powerful Canadian Jew, Harry Abrams, British Columbia representative of B’nai B’rith Canada. It was he who in 2007 registered a section 13 complaint against Arthur as follows:

“This concerns a complaint filed with the Canadian Human Rights Commission seeking relief for discriminatory publication under prohibited grounds caught by Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. The premise of this complaint is a contention that Arthur Topham of Quesnel, British Columbia, Canada, and his internet publication known as Radicalpress.com contrive to promote ongoing hatred affecting persons identifiable as Jews and/or as citizens of Israel.”

Cut out the legal jargon and it boils down to this: Arthur is a criminal because he has given offense to the Jews.

In 2012, Harry Abrams filed a second complaint against Arthur with the British Columbia “Hate Crimes” unit, alleging that:

“Roy Arthur TOPHAM, between the 28th day of April, 2011 and the 4th day of May, 2012, inclusive, at or near Quesnel, in the Province of British Columbia, did by communicating statements, other than in private conversation, wilfully promote hatred against an identifiable group, people of the Jewish religion or ethnic origin, contrary to Section 319(2) of the Criminal Code.”

Impressive legal jargon reducible to the age-old whine: “This man is saying bad things about Jews and must be stopped!”

This is the charge Arthur is now fighting, and this is the question the Canadian courts must decide: is it permissible to contradict a Jew in any way, thereby hurting his feelings, and will you be sent to prison if he complains about you?

An instrument of oppression
and a serious threat to free speech in Canada

A few more quotes from the email of my Canadian friend Felix will help to fill in the picture:

“Arthur had a brave and noble defender in his lawyer, Douglas Christie, who originally defended Ernst Zundel and other political dissidents. Christie unfortunately succumbed to liver cancer a few years ago, a true hero in every sense of the word.

Consider that all these guys are real Canadians, whose ancestors were the original pioneers and frontiersmen of our beloved country. These great Canadians earned combat medals, they fought and died in wars on behalf of Canada, and then what happens? These troublesome Jews show up and proceed to grind all our Canadian patriots to dust and ashes, as if they owned the world and all the surrounding planets.

No part of Canadian history holds any value for these alien interlopers. They respect none of our traditions. It is thoroughly disgusting.

You and I have said things that are hundreds of times more offensive to “the Jews” than Arthur Topham has, and yet no one is threatening to throw us in prison! So why do they pick on Arthur? It’s because Arthur has made a name for himself (through Christie) in the mainstream press. Ordinary Canadians know all about him and therefore he must be made a very public example of — his head must be paraded through the streets on a spike!

Arthur most certainly needs defending. In fact, I believe his wife is Jewish. Not that this will help him in any way.”

I was deeply moved by this eloquent email from my friend Felix, himself a Canadian citizen, as I say, who has chosen to leave Canada and live abroad because of the takeover of his country by an increasingly obnoxious, in-your-face Jewish minority. This natural aversion to being bossed around by pesky Jews naturally means that Felix is now regarded as an “anti-Semite” — a term which, according to B’nai B’rith Canada, can now be applied to four million Canadians.

♣

It is amazing to think that even a man with a Jewish wife such as Arthur Topham should be regarded as a dangerous anti-Semite by B’nai B’rith Canada. Consider this sobering fact: not a SINGLE Canadian citizen has been named as a victim of Arthur Topham’s political activities. Who has complained to the police about Arthur Topham? Only TWO individuals out of 36 million Canadians: one a non-Jewish serial complainant, Richard Warman, already mentioned above, and the other a powerful Jew representing B’nai B’rith Canada, Harry Abrams. It is Harry Abrams who is currently leading the witch hunt against Arthur Topham.

The glib assumption that B’nai B’rith Canada, spear-headed in the British Columbia region by Jewish commissar Harry Abrams, represents Jewish interests in Canada and speaks for all Canadian Jews, is an assumption that cannot be granted. There is one Jew who certainly does not feel that B’nai B’rith Canada speaks for all Jews, and that is Arthur Topham’s Jewish wife.

I venture to say that Arthur’s Jewish wife is only one among thousands of Jews in Canada who are utterly appalled by the flagrant war crimes committed by the Jewish state in Gaza only quite recently. These Jews do not feel that B’nai B’rith Canada, with its undeviating loyalty to Israel, represents their interests in any way.

---

For the record, Arthur Topham’s Jewish wife is totally aware of Arthur’s political activities and is behind her husband 100 percent of the way in whatever he has said or done. Raised in a secular household of Russian Jews, Topham’s wife has no time for Zionism. She is a practicing spiritual healer, with clairvoyant abilities, who uses traditional medicines in her healing ministry. Ever since she was a child, I am told, “she has followed the Red path of the Native American Indians and never could relate to her Jewish background.”

Naturally, Arthur’s Jewish wife does not, unlike B’nai B’rith Canada, regard it as a crime that Arthur should have published The Protocols of the Elders of Zion on his site.

That B’nai B’rith Canada should actually go to the absurd length of suggesting that Arthur Topham should be sent to prison for, among other things, publishing the Protocols on his website—a book that anyone can buy anywhere—is a sure sign of desperation as well as malevolent overkill.

Apart from the Protocols, there are other books Arthur has published on his website which, according to B’nai B’rith Canada, he should not have published and which mark him out as a dangerous criminal who is a threat to Canada’s 375,000 Jews. These are books widely available not only on the internet but in major libraries and specialist bookshops, e.g., Eustace Mullins’ The Biological Jew and Elizabeth Dilling’s The Jewish Religion: Its Influence Today.

Elizabeth Dilling’s book, incidentally, happens to be a meticulously researched exposé of the Babylonian Talmud, revealing in quotation after shocking quotation the bizarre mindset of Talmudic Jewry. Here are a few examples of what will be found in the Jews’ holiest book:

(1) “When a Jew murders a gentile, there will be no death penalty. What a Jew steals from a gentile he may keep.

(2) “A Gentile girl who is three years old may be [sexually] violated.”

(3) “If a Jew is tempted to do evil, he should go to a city where he is not known and do the evil there.”

(4) “Jesus is in hell, being boiled in hot excrement.”

B’nai B’rith Canada is naturally incensed that the official Jewish hatred of non-Jews should be so openly revealed. They would prefer to see their hatred of the non-Jewish majority kept carefully under wraps. It follows that this highly repressive Jewish organization would not only like to see Dilling’s book banned, but they would also like to see Arthur Topham given a stiff prison sentence for daring to draw attention to the book on his website.

The unbelievable chutzpah of B’nai B’rith Canada was perhaps even more flagrantly on display when they raised objections to Arthur Topham’s republication on his site of Theodore N. Kaufman’s hate-filled 1941 book Germany Must Perish! Written by a mentally deranged American Jew, this disreputable book called for the TOTAL EXTERMINATION OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE BY FORCIBLE STERILIZATION OF EVERY SINGLE GERMAN MALE!

In order to highlight the enormity of what this psychotic Jew was actually suggesting, Arthur employed the ingenious device of republishing the book on his website with a few significant alterations. First, he changed the title to Israel Must Perish! Then he substituted the word “Israel” for “Germany”, “Jew for “German”, and “Netanyahu” for “Hitler”. This at once transformed Kaufman’s hateful book into a Swiftian satire.

The point Arthur Topham was making was unmistakable. If it is permissible to call for the mass extermination of the GERMAN people by enforced sterilization of every single GERMAN MALE, then it was equally permissible to call for the extermination of the JEWISH people by the enforced sterilization of every single JEWISH male. The logic was impeccable.

Such perfect logic, however, was displeasing to B’nai B’rith Canada, Driven to desperation, this Jewish organization then resorted to dirty tricks. First it alleged, falsely, that Arthur had actually published a real, hard copy book called Israel Must Perish! He had done no such thing.

Secondly and even more egregiously, it made out that Arthur was himself advocating the genocide of the “whole Jewish population.” He was doing no such thing. It was Detective Constable Terry Wilson of British Columbia Hate Crimes Unit who told Arthur in person that B’nai B’rith Canada was attempting to make this defamatory and unprovable allegation.

Kaufman’s “hate-filled screed titled German Must Perish! [Arthur reveals on his website] “was promoted by the most prestigious mass media publications in the USA when it appeared in 1941 prior to America’s entry into the conflict. Magazines like Time and newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post lauded the idea of absolutely destroying the German nation and the German race as a whole, referring to this grotesquely contemptible concept as a “SENSATIONAL IDEA!”

The implacable Jewish hatred for the German people, oozing from every line of this nauseating book and easily demonstrated by its hysterical call for the mass “castration” of every single German male in the world by sterilization, was, you will regret to learn, not confined to one or two crazy Jews in Brooklyn. It was official government policy in an America already to a large extent dominated by its Jews.

In September 1944, the savagely vindictive Morgenthau Plan for Germany was unveiled. The evil brainchild of two Jews in the American administration, Harry Dexter White and Henry Morgenthau, this malevolent plan for postwar Germany amounted to little more than the mass castration of the German people—humiliation and punishment ad infinitum.

As the German propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels put it, “Hate and revenge of truly old-testament character are clear in these plans dreamed up by the American Jew Morgenthau. Industrialized Germany should be literally turned into a huge potato field.” This comment has naturally been dismissed as contemptible nonsense by the court historians and their Jewish mentors, given that Goebbels said it. Therefore to quote it as an indictment of Morgenthau is—you guessed it—”anti-Semitic”.

However, US Secretary of War Harry Stimson is not so easy to dismiss. Stimson’s final assessment of the Morgenthau Plan was that “it is Semitism gone wild for vengeance.” Morgenthau, he added, “was so biased by his Semitic grievances that he really is a very dangerous advisor to the President.” In his diary he wrote tersely: “Objective of punishment is prevention but not vengeance. Reason why Jew is disqualified.” (See here)

Needless to say, Stimson has himself been dismissed as an anti-Semite for saying this. De Judaiis nil nisi bonum.

Both Roosevelt and Churchill were to put their initials to the revengeful Morgenthau Plan. Helpless puppets of the powerful Jews who jerked their strings, it seems that neither world leader had much choice in the matter. Both lived to to regret their actions. Roosevelt later said “he had no idea how he could have initialled this.” Churchill was to parrot his words, “I had not time to examine the Morgenthau Plan in detail. I am sorry I put my initials to it.” (See here)

In his 1956 book The Controversy of Zion, Douglas Reed was to refer to the Morgenthau Plan as “The Talmudic Vengeance.” (Title of Chapter 42). An apt description, which perhaps helps to explain why Douglas Reed is another writer whose works organized Jewry would like to see banned, along with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Elizabeth Dilling’s exposé of the Talmud, The Jewish Religion.

Conclusion

To summarize: Arthur Topham has said nothing that you or I have not said repeatedly, day in and day out. If Arthur is guilty of “hate speech”, then we are all guilty of hate speech. If Arthur is to be consigned to a Canadian prison for his views, then we all deserve to join him there and be allocated adjoining cells.

If Arthur is guilty of speaking out against the state of Israel, especially after its recent war crimes in Gaza, then we are ALL guilty—for there is not one of us who has not cried out in revulsion against the wanton mass murder and maiming of Palestinians, most of them women and children, whose only crime is that they happen to own the land the Jews covet.

Let this be noted: Canada, now almost completely under the Jewish yoke, would like to criminalize EVERY SINGLE CRITICISM OF THE JEWISH STATE. Merely to give offense to a Jew, to hurt his feelings by disagreeing with him, will soon earn you a stiff fine or a prison sentence. Here is what B’nai B’rith Canada would like to see incorporated into Canadian law:

“We must repeat again and again these basic facts — TO BE ‘anti-Israel’ IS TO BE ANTI-SEMITIC. TO BOYCOTT ISRAEL, ISRAELI PROFESSORS and ISRAELI business, these are not political acts, these are acts of hate, acts of anti-Semitism! Anti-Israel hysteria is anti-Semitic hysteria. They are one and the same.”

The above statement was made in 2009 by Yuli Edelstein, Israeli Minister of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs, The capital letters are his. (See “Criminalizing Criticism of Israel in Canada”)

Dare to express pity for this little girl and demand the punishment of the Israeli soldier guilty of doing this to her
and you will soon face criminal proceedings in Canada

Here is the picture of an Israeli woman, an atrocity tourist who claims that the sight of Palestinian children being killed gives her exquisite pleasure, almost bringing her an orgasm:

Dare to criticize this sexually perverted Jewess
and you will soon be accused of “anti-Semitism” by B’nai Brith Canada and sent to prison

Can Canadian justice sink any lower? Do Canadian citizens really want to live in a totalitarian police state run by Jews? I don’t think so. Canadian justice must not be used as an instrument of oppression by a rabid and out-of-control Jewish minority.

B’nai B’rith Canada clearly does not represent the interests of most Canadian Jews, as it mendaciously claims. I know many Jews in Canada who totally reject being represented by this hate-filled organization. One such Jew is Arthur Topham’s beloved wife. If B’nai B’rith Canada has its way, her husband will be thrown into prison on trumped-up charges.

The witch hunt against Arthur Topham by B’nai B’rith Canada must stop.

If you are concerned for Arthur Topham
and would like to see him treated fairly
PLEASE SIGN THIS PETITION

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Antisemitism Claims Mask a Reign of Political and Cultural Terror across Europe

 December 14, 2020

The German Parliament passes a resolution that designates the BDS movement as antisemitic. (Photo: File)

By Jonathan Cook

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz has run a fascinating long report this week offering a disturbing snapshot of the political climate rapidly emerging across Europe on the issue of antisemitism. The article documents a kind of cultural, political and intellectual reign of terror in Germany since the parliament passed a resolution last year equating support for non-violent boycotts of Israel – in solidarity with Palestinians oppressed by Israel – with antisemitism.

The article concerns Germany but anyone reading it will see very strong parallels with what is happening in other European countries, especially the UK and France.

The same European leaders who a few years ago marched in Paris shouting “Je suis Charlie” – upholding the inalienable free speech rights of white Europeans to offend Muslims by insulting and ridiculing their Prophet – are now queuing up to outlaw free speech when it is directed against Israel, a state that refuses to end its belligerent occupation of Palestinian land. European leaders have repeatedly shown they are all too ready to crush the free speech of Palestinians, and those in solidarity with them, to avoid offending sections of the Jewish community.

The situation reduces to this: European Muslims have no right to take offense at insults about a religion they identify with, but European Jews have every right to take offense at criticism of an aggressive Middle Eastern state they identify with. Seen another way, the perverse secular priorities of European mainstream culture now place the sanctity of a militarized state, Israel, above the sanctity of a religion with a billion followers.

Guilt by Association

This isn’t even a double standard. I can’t find a word in the dictionary that conveys the scale and degree of hypocrisy and bad faith involved.

If the American Jewish scholar Norman Finkelstein wrote a follow-up to his impassioned book The Holocaust Industry – on the cynical use of the Holocaust to enrich and empower a Jewish organizational establishment at the expense of the Holocaust’s actual survivors – he might be tempted to title it The Antisemitism Industry.

In the current climate in Europe, one that rejects any critical thinking in relation to broad areas of public life, that observation alone would enough to have one denounced as an antisemite. Which is why the Haaretz article – far braver than anything you will read in a UK or US newspaper – makes no bones about what is happening in Germany. It calls it a “witch-hunt”. That is Haaretz’s way of saying that antisemitism has been politicized and weaponized – a self-evident conclusion that will currently get you expelled from the British Labour party, even if you are Jewish.

The Haaretz story highlights two important developments in the way antisemitism has been, in the words of intellectuals and cultural leaders cited by the newspaper, “instrumentalized” in Germany.

Jewish organizations and their allies in Germany, as Haaretz reports, are openly weaponizing antisemitism not only to damage the reputation of Israel’s harsher critics but also to force out of the public and cultural domain – through a kind of “antisemitism guilt by association” – anyone who dares to entertain criticism of Israel.

Cultural associations, festivals, universities, Jewish research centers, political think-tanks, museums, and libraries are being forced to scrutinize the past of those they wish to invite in case some minor transgression against Israel can be exploited by local Jewish organizations. That has created a toxic, politically paranoid atmosphere that inevitably kills trust and creativity.

But the psychosis runs deeper still. Israel, and anything related to it, has become such a combustible subject – one that can ruin careers in an instant – that most political, academic and cultural figures in Germany now choose to avoid it entirely. Israel, as its supporters intended, is rapidly becoming untouchable.

A case study noted by Haaretz is Peter Schäfer, a respected professor of ancient Judaism and Christianity studies who was forced to resign as director of Berlin’s Jewish Museum last year. Schäfer’s crime, in the eyes of Germany’s Jewish establishment, was that he staged an exhibition on Jerusalem that recognized the city’s three religious traditions, including a Muslim one.

He was immediately accused of promoting “historical distortions” and denounced as “anti-Israel”. A reporter for Israel’s right-wing Jerusalem Post, which has been actively colluding with the Israeli government to smear critics of Israel, contacted Schäfer with a series of inciteful emails. The questions included “Did you learn the wrong lesson from the Holocaust?” and “Israeli experts told me you disseminate antisemitism – is that true?”

Schäfer observes:

“The accusation of antisemitism is a club that allows one to deal a death blow, and political elements who have an interest in this are using it, without a doubt… The museum staff gradually entered a state of panic. Then of course we also started to do background checks. Increasingly it poisoned the atmosphere and our work.”

Another prominent victim of these Jewish organizations tells Haaretz:

“Sometimes one thinks, ‘To go to that conference?’ ‘To invite this colleague?’ Afterward, it means that for three weeks, I’ll have to cope with a shitstorm, whereas I need the time for other things that I get paid for as a lecturer. There is a type of ‘anticipatory obedience’ or ‘prior self-censorship.’”

Ringing off the Hook

There is nothing unusual about what is happening in Germany. Jewish organizations are stirring up these “shitstorms” – designed to paralyze political and cultural life for anyone who engages in even the mildest criticism of Israel – at the highest levels of government. Don’t believe me? Here is Barack Obama explaining in his recent autobiography his efforts as US president to curb Israel’s expansion of its illegal settlements. Early on, he was warned to back off or face the wrath of the Israel lobby:

“Members of both parties worried about crossing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Those who criticized Israeli policy too loudly risked being tagged as ‘anti-Israel’ (and possibly anti-Semitic) and confronted with a well-funded opponent in the next election.”

When Obama went ahead anyway in 2009 and proposed a modest freeze on Israel’s illegal settlements:

“The White House phones started ringing off the hook, as members of my national security team fielded calls from reporters, leaders of American Jewish organizations, prominent supporters, and members of Congress, all wondering why we were picking on Israel … this sort of pressure continued for much of 2009.”

He observes further:

“The noise orchestrated by Netanyahu had the intended effect of gobbling up our time, putting us on the defensive, and reminding me that normal policy differences with an Israeli prime minister – even one who presided over a fragile coalition government – exacted a political cost that didn’t exist when I dealt with the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, Canada, or any of our other closest allies.”

Doubtless, Obama dare not put down in writing his full thoughts about Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu or the US lobbyists who worked on his behalf. But Obama’s remarks do show that, even a US president, supposedly the single most powerful person on the planet, ended up blanching in the face of this kind of relentless assault. For lesser mortals, the price is likely to be far graver.

No Free Speech on Israel

It was this same mobilization of Jewish organizational pressure – orchestrated, as Obama notes, by Israel and its partisans in the US and Europe – that ended up dominating Jeremy Corbyn’s five years as the leader of Britain’s leftwing Labour party, recasting a well-known anti-racism activist almost overnight as an antisemite.

It is the reason why his successor, Sir Keir Starmer, has outsourced part of Labour’s organizational oversight on Jewish and Israel-related matters to the very conservative Board of Deputies of British Jews, as given expression in Starmer’s signing up to the Board’s “10 Pledges”.

It is part of the reason why Starmer recently suspended Corbyn from the party, and then defied the membership’s demands that he be properly reinstated, after Corbyn expressed concerns about the way antisemitism allegations had been “overstated for political reasons” to damage him and Labour. (The rightwing Starmer, it should be noted, was also happy to use antisemitism as a pretext to eradicate the socialist agenda Corbyn had tried to revive in Labour.) It is why Starmer has imposed a blanket ban on constituency parties discussing Corbyn’s suspension. And it is why Labour’s shadow education secretary has joined the ruling Conservative party in threatening to strip universities of their funding if they allow free speech about Israel on campus.

Two Types of Jews

But the Haaretz article raises another issue critical to understanding how Israel and the Jewish establishment in Europe are politicizing antisemitism to protect Israel from criticism. The potential Achilles’ heel of their campaign are Jewish dissidents, those who break with the supposed “Jewish community” line and create a space for others – whether Palestinians or other non-Jews – to criticize Israel. These Jewish dissenters risk serving as a reminder that trenchant criticism of Israel should not result in one being tarred an antisemite.

Israel and Jewish organizations, however, have made it their task to erode that idea by promoting a distinction – an antisemitic one, at that – between two types of Jews: good Jews (loyal to Israel), and bad Jews (disloyal to Israel).

Haaretz reports that officials in Germany, such as Felix Klein, the country’s antisemitism commissioner, and Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, are being allowed to define not only who is an antisemite, typically using support for Israel as the yardstick, but are also determining who are good Jews – those politically like them – and who are bad Jews – those who disagree with them.

Despite Germany’s horrific recent history of Jew-hatred, the German government, local authorities, the media, universities and cultural institutions have been encouraged by figures like Klein and Schuster to hound German Jews, even Israeli Jews living and working in Germany, from the country’s public and cultural space.

When, for example, a group of Israeli Jewish academics in Berlin held a series of online discussions about Zionism last year on the website of their art school, an Israeli reporter soon broke the story of a “scandal” involving boycott supporters receiving funding from the German government. Hours later the art school had pulled down the site, while the German education ministry issued a statement clarifying that it had provided no funding. The Israeli embassy officially declared the discussions held by these Israelis as “antisemitic”, and a German foundation that documents antisemitism added the group to the list of antisemitic incidents it records.

Described as ‘Kapos’

So repressive has the cultural and political atmosphere grown in Germany that there has been a small backlash among cultural leaders. Some have dared to publish a letter protesting against the role of Klein, the antisemitism commissioner. Haaretz reports:

“The antisemitism czar, the letter charged, is working ‘in synergy with the Israeli government’ in an effort ‘to discredit and silence opponents of Israel’s policies’ and is abetting the ‘instrumentalization’ that undermines the true struggle against antisemitism.

Figures like Klein have been so focused on tackling criticism of Israel from the left, including the Jewish left, that they have barely noted the “acute danger Jews in Germany face due to the surge in far-right antisemitism”, the letter argues.

Again, the same picture can be seen across Europe. In the UK, the opposition Labour party, which should be a safe space for those leading the anti-racism struggle, is purging itself of Jews critical of Israel and using antisemitism smears against prominent anti-racists, especially from other oppressed minorities.

Extraordinarily, Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, one of the founders of Jewish Voice for Labour, which supports Corbyn, recently found herself suspended by Starmer’s Labour. She had just appeared in a moving video in which she explained the ways antisemitism was being used by Jewish organizations to smear Jewish left-wingers like herself as “traitors” and “kapos” – an incendiary term of abuse, as Wimborne-Idrissi points out, that refers to “a Jewish inmate of a concentration camp who collaborated with the [Nazi] authorities, people who collaborated in the annihilation of their own people”.

In suspending her, Starmer effectively endorsed this campaign by the UK’s Jewish establishment of incitement against, and vilification of, left-wing Jews.

Earlier, Marc Wadsworth, a distinguished black anti-racism campaigner, found himself similarly suspended by Labour when he exposed the efforts of Ruth Smeeth, then a Labour MP and a former Jewish official in the Israel lobby group BICOM, to recruit the media to her campaign smearing political opponents on the left as antisemites.

In keeping with the rapid erosion of critical thinking in civil society organizations designed to uphold basic freedoms, Smeeth was recently appointed director of the prestigious free speech organization Index on Censorship. There she can now work on suppressing criticism of Israel – and attack “bad Jews” – under cover of fighting censorship. In the new, inverted reality, censorship refers not to the smearing and silencing of a “bad Jew” like Wimborne-Idrissi, but to criticism of Israel over its human rights abuses, which supposedly “censors” the identification of “good Jews” with Israel – now often seen as the crime of “causing offense”.

Boy Who Cried Wolf

The Haaretz article helps to contextualize Europe’s current antisemitism “witch-hunt”, which targets anyone who criticizes Israel or stands in solidarity with oppressed Palestinians, or associates with such people. It is an expansion of the earlier campaign by the Jewish establishment against “the wrong kind of Jew”, as identified by Finkelstein in The Holocaust Industry. But this time Jewish organizations are playing a much higher-stakes, and more dangerous, political game.

Haaretz rightly fears that the Jewish leadership in Europe is not only silencing ordinary Jews but degrading the meaning – the shock value – of antisemitism through the very act of politicizing it. Jewish organizations risk alienating the European left, which has historically stood with them against Jew-hatred from the right. European anti-racists suddenly find themselves equated with, and smeared as, fledgling neo-Nazis.

If those who support human rights and demand an end to the oppression of Palestinians find themselves labeled antisemitic, it will become ever harder to distinguish between bogus (weaponized) “antisemitism” on the left and real Jew-hatred from the right. The antisemitism smearers – and their fellow travelers like Keir Starmer – are likely to end up suffering their very own “boy who cried wolf” syndrome.

Or as Haaretz notes:

“The issue that is bothering the critics of the Bundestag [German parliament] resolution is whether the extension of the concept of antisemitism to encompass criticism of Israel is not actually adversely affecting the battle against antisemitism. The argument is that the ease with which the accusation is leveled could have the effect of eroding the concept itself.”

The Antisemitism Industry

It is worth noting the shared features of the new Antisemitism Industry and Finkelstein’s earlier discussions of the Holocaust Industry.

In his book, Finkelstein identifies the “wrong Jews” as people like his mother, who survived a Nazi death camp as the rest of her family perished. These surviving Jews, Finkelstein argues, were valued by the Holocaust Industry only in so far as they served as a promotional tool for the Jewish establishment to accumulate more wealth and cultural and political status. Otherwise, the victims were ignored because the actual Holocaust’s message – in contrast to the Jewish leadership’s representation of it – was universal: that we must oppose and fight all forms of racism because they lead to persecution and genocide.

Instead, the Holocaust Industry promoted a particularist, self-interested lesson that the Holocaust proves Jews are uniquely oppressed and that they, therefore, deserve a unique solution: a state, Israel, that must be given unique leeway by western states to commit crimes in violation of international law. The Holocaust Industry – very much to be distinguished from the real events of the Holocaust – is deeply entwined in, and rationalized by, the perpetuation of the racialist, colonial project of Israel.

In the case of the Antisemitism Industry, the “wrong Jew” surfaces again. This time the witch-hunt targets Jewish left-wingers, Jews critical of Israel, Jews opposed to the occupation, and Jews who support a boycott of the illegal settlements or of Israel itself. Again, the problem with these “bad Jews” is that they allude to a universal lesson, one that says Palestinians have at least as much right to self-determination, to dignity and security, in their historic homeland as Jewish immigrants who fled European persecution.

In contrast to the “bad Jews”, the Antisemitism Industry demands that a particularist conclusion be drawn about Israel – just as a particularist conclusion was earlier drawn by the Holocaust Industry. It says that to deny Jews a state is to leave them defenceless against the eternal virus of antisemitism. In this conception, the Holocaust may be uniquely abhorrent but it is far from unique. Non-Jews, given the right circumstances, are only too capable of carrying out another Holocaust. Jews must therefore always be protected, always on guard, always have their weapons (or in Israel’s case, its nuclear bombs) to hand.

‘Get out of Jail’ Card

This view, of course, seeks to ignore, or marginalize, other victims of the Holocaust – Romanies, communists, gays – and other kinds of racism. It needs to create a hierarchy of racisms, a competition between them, in which hatred of Jews is at the pinnacle. This is how we arrived at an absurdity: that anti-Zionism – misrepresented as the rejection of a refuge for Jews, rather than the reality that it rejects an ethnic, colonial state oppressing Palestinians – is the same as antisemitism.

Extraordinarily, as the Haaretz article clarifies, German officials are oppressing “bad Jews”, at the instigation of Jewish organizations, to prevent, as they see it, the re-emergence of the far-right and neo-Nazis. The criticisms of Israel made by the “bad Jew” are thereby not just dismissed as ideologically unsound or delusions but become proof that these Jews are colluding with, or at least nourishing, the Jew-haters.

In this way, Germany, the UK and much of Europe have come to justify the exclusion of the “wrong Jew” – those who uphold universal principles for the benefit of all – from the public space. Which, of course, is exactly what Israel wants, because, rooted as it is in an ideology of ethnic exclusivity as a “Jewish state”, it necessarily rejects universal ethics.

What we see here is an illustration of a principle at the heart of Israel’s state ideology of Zionism: Israel needs antisemitism. Israel would quite literally have to invent antisemitism if it did not exist.

This is not hyperbole. The idea that the “virus of antisemitism” lies semi-dormant in every non-Jew waiting for a chance to overwhelm its host is the essential rationale for Israel. If the Holocaust was an exceptional historical event, if antisemitism was an ancient racism that in its modern incarnation followed the patterns of prejudice and hatred familiar in all racisms, from anti-black bigotry to Islamophobia, Israel would be not only redundant but an abomination – because it has been set up to dispossess and abuse another group, the Palestinians.

Antisemitism is Israel’s “get out of jail” card. Antisemitism serves to absolve Israel of the racism it structurally embodies and that would be impossible to overlook were Israel deprived of the misdirection weaponized antisemitism provides.

An Empty Space

The Haaretz article provides a genuine service by not only reminding us that “bad Jews” exist but in coming to their defense – something that European media is no longer willing to do. To defend “bad Jews” like Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi is to be contaminated with the same taint of antisemitism that justified the ejection of these Jews from the public space.

Haaretz records the effort of a few brave cultural institutions in Germany to protest, to hold the line, against this new McCarthyism. Their stand may fail. If it does, you may never become aware of it.

Once, the “bad Jews” have been smeared into silence, as Palestinians and those who stand in solidarity with them largely have been already; when social media has de-platformed critics of Israel as Jew-haters; when the media and political parties enforce this silence so absolutely they no longer need to smear anyone as an antisemite because these “antisemites” have been disappeared; when the Jewish “community” speaks with one voice because its other voices have been eliminated; when the censorship is complete, you will not know it.

There will be no record of what was lost. There will be simply an empty space, a blank slate, where discussions of Israel’s crimes against Palestinians once existed. What you will hear instead is only what Israel and its partisans want you to hear. Your ignorance will be blissfully complete.

– Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). Visit his website www.jonathan-cook.net. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.

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