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The Global Anti-Semitism Report: The organized Jewish community opposes free speech
It
is something of an axiom of Jewish life that “Is it good for the Jews?” remains
the litmus test of Jewish communal activity — in other words, interest over
principles. A good example is free speech. There can be little doubt that the
organized Jewish community sees free speech as a problem because it may be used
to criticize the behavior of Jewish organizations and especially Israel.
In
Canada the response of the organized Jewish community to recent demonstrations
against Israel was to attempt to invoke Canada’s restrictions on free speech in
order to silence their critics. The Canadian Jewish Congress complained that
protests against Israel’s incursion into Gaza contained images that were
"uncivil, un-Canadian, that demonize Jews and Israelis." They are asking the
police to investigate the matter for referral to the Canadian
Human Rights Commission which is in charge of enforcing laws that infringe
on free speech. Although the organized Jewish community in Canada has strongly
supported
the thought crime legislation (see below), Bernie Farber, the head of the CJC,
stated “we are
firm supporters and believers in the need to be able to demonstrate passionately
in free and democratic societies.”
Because
of the First Amendment, we are still a ways from the situation in Canada here in
the US. Nevertheless, the ADL has been in the forefront of promoting hate-crime legislation
in America, and there can be little doubt that they see the First Amendment as a
barrier to their interests in suppressing thoughts and speech critical of Israel
and other Jewish interests.
An
example of the efforts of the organized Jewish community in the direction of
thought control is the Global
Anti-Semitism Review Act of 2004. This law created an office of “Special
Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism” within the State Department, headed
by Gregg J. Rickman. The
act not only requires the State Department to document acts of anti-Semitism,
but also to “combat acts of anti-Semitism globally.”
The act does not say what the U.S. must do to combat anti-Semitism around the world. I assume combating anti-Semitism wouldn’t require any more in the way of lives and money than, say, the war in Iraq — another project spearheaded by Jewish activism on behalf of Israel. But that may be wishful thinking as the same activists are avidly promoting a war with Iran which would likely be even more disastrous.
In any case,
the office issued its most recent Contemporary
Global Anti-Semitism Report (GASR) in March of last year. The document is an
excellent example of Jewish activism that would be unremarkable except that it
is now officially ensconced at the highest reaches of the U.S. government. As we
shall see, it goes beyond criticizing anti-Jewish actions to anti-Jewish
attitudes, such as statements about Jewish influence.
The report
performs the by now familiar casuistry on Israel as a cause of anti-Semitism.
The reader is led to believe that the allegations of Israeli atrocities are
overblown propaganda — when the real question is just
how Palestinians manage to survive
at all in the occupied territories. The recent horrifying incursion into Gaza is
only the most recent example. Not only did Israel carry out a starvation-inducing
blockade during a ceasefire and an assault that finally provoked Palestinian retaliation, there
seems little doubt that Israel committed war crimes —
particularly the use of white phosphorus bombs in densely populated civilian
areas.
The report
complains that Israel’s bad behavior is singled out while nobody cares when
other governments behave inhumanely. The problem here is that because Israel’s
bad behavior is an important ingredient in enflaming the entire region, it
should interest everyone. And because of the role of the Israel Lobby in shaping
American policy, Israel’s bad behavior is even more properly the concern of all
Americans. American taxpayers are not being asked to massively subsidize other
badly behaved governments, nor are they asked to fight and die in wars designed
to advance the interests of those governments.
The report
graciously states that “responsible criticism” of Israel’s policies is
acceptable. (Thanks!) But there’s a catch: “Those criticizing Israel have a
responsibility to consider the effect their actions may have in prompting hatred
of Jews.”
This, of
course, has the effect of proscribing criticism of Israel for fear of being
called an anti-Semite. Presumably responsible criticism of Israel does not
include books like John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt’s The Israel Lobby, despite its academic
tone and masterful marshalling of evidence. Jewish
activists have routinely accused the authors of
resurrecting the Protocols and other vicious acts of
anti-Semitism.
As
the report notes, Israel is without doubt the source of most anti-Jewish words
and deeds in the contemporary world. But the report also points to traditional
Jewish stereotypes as a continuing concern: Jews as more loyal to Israel and
Jewish interests than the interests of their country of residence; and Jews as
having inordinate influence and control over media, the economy or
government. For example, according
to ADL surveys, substantial percentages of Europeans believe that Jews have too
much power in business and in international financial markets. (The percentages
range from around 20% in Germany to 60% in Hungary.)
Similarly,
ADL surveys indicate that beliefs that Jews are disloyal are common among
Europeans, ranging from 39% in France to 60% in Spain. The report notes that
“those who believe that Jews are more loyal to Israel than to their own country
tend to believe that Jewish lobbying groups and individual Jews in
influential positions in national governments seek to bend policy toward
Israel’s interests.”
In
other words, these anti-Semites are living under the illusion that organizations
like AIPAC actually have some influence. And they may even believe that highly
placed Jews like Paul Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams and Richard Perle may
have steered U.S. policy in a way that benefited Israel to the detriment of the
United States.
As
I noted in my review
of Mearsheimer and Walt,
Pro-Israel
activists such as Perle typically phrase their policy recommendations as aimed
at benefiting the United States. Perle does this despite evidence that he has a
strong Jewish identity and despite the fact that he has typical Jewish concerns,
such as anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and the welfare of Israel. Perle poses as
an American patriot despite credible charges of spying for Israel, writing
reports for Israeli think tanks and op-eds for the Jerusalem Post, and
maintaining close personal relation-ships with Israeli leaders.
Needless
to say, the GASR is not a good place to find nuanced or fair treatments of these
issues.
The
GASR also has a section deploring ethnic nationalist movements of non-Jews,
mainly in Eastern Europe, complaining that these movements are commonly
anti-Jewish. Typically the anti-Jewish sentiments of such movements stem from
the perception that Jews are an elite with considerable power and that this
elite opposes the ethno-nationalism of non-Jews—a view that certainly has some
basis in reality. (Jewish opposition to ethno-nationalism is restricted to
non-Jews in areas where Jews form a Diaspora; it does not, of course, apply
to Israel.)
For
example, the GASR singles out Roman Catholic institutions as “encouraging anti-Semitism and ethnic and
religious chauvinism.” Chief among the offenders is a conservative
Catholic radio station in Poland, Radio Maryja, cited for claiming that “Jews were
pushing the Polish government to pay exorbitant private property restitution
claims [for Holocaust reparations], and that Poland’s President was ‘in the
pocket of the Jewish lobby.’”
This
seems odd, since it would hardly be surprising if indeed Jews and Jewish
organizations were pressuring the Polish government on this issue. Indeed,
Norman Finkelstein points
out:
In
negotiations with Eastern Europe, Jewish organizations and Israel have
demanded the full restitution of or monetary compensation for the pre-war
communal and private assets of the Jewish community. Consider Poland. The
pre-war Jewish population of Poland stood at 3.5 million; the current population
is several thousand. Yet, the World Jewish Restitution Organization demands
title over the 6,000 pre-war communal Jewish properties, including those
currently being used as hospitals and schools. It is also laying claim to
hundreds of thousands of parcels of Polish land valued in the many tens of
billions of dollars. Once again the entire US political and legal establishment
has been mobilized to achieve these ends. Indeed, New York City Council members
unanimously supported a resolution calling on Poland 'to pass comprehensive
legislation providing for the complete restitution of Holocaust assets', while
57 members of Congress (led by Congressman Anthony Weiner of New York)
dispatched a letter to the Polish parliament demanding 'comprehensive
legislation that would return 100% of all property and assets seized during the
Holocaust'.
No
sign of Jewish involvement there. Clearly, Radio Marija is way out of line.
Incidentally,
Finkelstein has paid dearly for offending the Israel Lobby: blacklisted from employment in the academic world,
deported and barred from Israel, and living in a rent-stabilized apartment near
his boyhood home in Brooklyn. The Lobby clearly believes in free speech so long
as it’s in done in one’s closet and assuming the neighbors can’t hear it. (More
on this below.)
Also
related to Poland, the GASR notes that Maciej Giertych,
European Parliament Deputy, wrote a booklet “suggesting that Jews were
unethical and a ‘tragic community’ because they did not accept Jesus as the
Messiah.” The report also deplored the ADL’s finding that 39% of Polish
respondents agreed that “Jews are responsible for the death of
Christ.”
This
is truly amazing. Here we have an official U.S. government report condemning a
Polish politician and a large percentage of the Polish people for expressing
religious ideas that date from the origins of the Church in antiquity. It’s very
reminiscent of the situation in Canada where the Christian Heritage Party has been charged with promoting hatred
because they published material opposing homosexuality for religious reasons
stemming from their reading of the Bible.
Incidentally,
the GASR complains that Giertych also claimed that “Jews ‘create their own
ghettos’ because they like to separate themselves from others.” Residential
segregation, of course, was standard Jewish behavior in the Diaspora beginning
in the ancient world, and it certainly occurred in Poland well
into modern times. Indeed, it continues in many
areas of the Diaspora today. But, as with thought crimes generally, truth is
no defense.
The
GASR coyly states that “While the report describes many measures that foreign
governments have adopted to combat anti-Semitism, it does not endorse any such
measures that prohibit conduct that would be protected under the U.S.
Constitution.”
Nevertheless,
the act requires the compilation of material that would presumably be protected
by the US Constitution, in
particular “instances of propaganda in government and nongovernment media
that attempt to justify or promote racial hatred … against Jewish people.” When
one considers that a great many of the attitudes mentioned in the GASR are
either substantially factual or reflect common religious beliefs, they would
certainly seem to fall within the protections of the First
Amendment.
And
it’s pretty clear where its heart lies. Indeed, as Ezra Levant has recently
described, Jewish organizations and activists have been a major source of
support for the Canadian Human Rights Commission, intervening in dozens of cases
in favor of plaintiffs. Levant
describes the Simon Weisenthal Center as “one of the most vicious interveners in
Canadian Human Rights Commission censorship trials.” And Bernie Farber of the
Canadian Jewish Congress stated recently that “our anti-hate laws are
probably the most underused.” Levant comments: “That sounds like Ian Fine,
senior counsel for the CHRC, who
declared that ‘there can't be enough laws against hate.’ So while the rest
of the country is realizing that our government censorship has gone too far,
Farber says it goes nowhere far enough; it's underused. He wants more
censorship, more government intervention into thoughts and ideas — and the
emotion called ‘hate’.”
Clearly the office of Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism is nothing if not a Jewish activist organization. And it doubtless would love to institute the same kinds of thought control in the U.S. that have made Canada into a police state. Indeed, it would be entirely within the letter of the law that created this monster if the United States were to declare war on Poland as a means of combating anti-Semitism. At least it won’t be necessary to invade Canada.
See also: State Dept. opposition
Kevin
MacDonald is a professor of psychology at
California State University–Long Beach.
Permanent URL:
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/articles/MacDonald-GASR.html
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