Philanthropic Woes: Australian Jewry in the wake of October 7

December 31, 2024/33 Comments/in Featured Articles, Jewish Moral Particularism/by Jason Cannon

Ultimately, the philanthropists and Jewish leaders who pull the rug out from under pro-Palestine activists and seek to destroy the Palestinian homeland are the very same Zionists who support the efforts to eradicate White Australia and weaken White homelands around the world. It functions as one and the same operation and, minus the use of military force, the methods are identical: dehumanisation, institutional silencing, deconstruction of identity, encouraging foreigners to settle on their land, funding pro-immigration groups, inflicting conditions of life on White Australia calculated to bring about its physical destruction, and declaring all opposition to the aforementioned tactics to be hate or terrorism.

Jewish writers and leaders were not wrong when they declared that the surprise raid on Israeli territory launched by Hamas on the morning of the 7th of October 2023 changed the direction of world affairs. At first the linguistic elevation of a calendar date into a distinct phrase in the English lexicon seemed melodramatic; “October Seven”, as if to imply an earth-shattering moment, a cynical attempt by Zionists to link the events of the day to 9/11. The intervening year has proven that the date does indeed signpost a point of departure from a prior state in global politics.

War is the locomotive of history, as a famous Bolshevik once said, and the war in Gaza has certainly brought many rapid changes. Military escalations once considered inconceivable have become reality, war looms between world powers, and supporters of Israel are on the defensive against condemnation by the civilised world. The reverberations of the strike masterminded by Yahya Sinwar rapidly reached the far shores of the Antipodean continent. Here, Australian Jewry is reeling from the outbreaks of sympathy for the Palestinian people that have resulted from a war that has claimed the lives of more than 13,000 children.

In turn, the impacts on Australian politics are profound. The year 2024 was one of the more difficult and confusing years to be on the Australian Left. After a lifetime of being taught to stand up for the oppressed, to fight for the rights of colonised people and oppose ethnic cleansing, members of Australia’s artist and activist class found out the hard way that their leaders and benefactors have somewhat different rules when it comes to the state of Israel. Allies they once thought they had in the Jewish community have rushed to sever support for creatives who speak out against the destruction being inflicted on Gaza.

Reflecting on the period since October 7, we see a community in tactical retreat, fearful of its position and overplaying its hand. The organs of Australian Jewry initiated heavy interventions into public life in order to put out the fires started by Hamas halfway around the world, interventions that they would otherwise have preferred not to undertake. Across the country, major changes are occurring in the Australian cultural and political realm as the organised Jewish community reorganises and re-calibrates.

Visible for the first time in a generation is the true scope of Jewish power and the extent of their privileged status, their ability to lock down the choke-points in Australian society. October 7 has shown that Jews enjoy political agency to a degree that defies all conventional explanation, whereas Muslims, who outnumber the Jewish community in Australia by a factor of 10 to 1 and act as representatives of nearly a quarter of the world’s population, struggle to get politicians to even listen to them.

As detailed in this essay, chaos in the Middle East and its local political repercussions have revealed the networks of money and influence that once hid behind the scenes in the world of philanthropy and at Australia’s universities and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), as well as the key role Jewry plays in governing discourse in Australian life.

Follow the money

Contrary to crude stereotypes of miserly Jews, Jewish money freely flows across the Australian cultural landscape — or at least it used to. Australia’s wealthiest Jews have long made up a large proportion of the funding streams for Australian artistic endeavours, through the issuing of lavish endowments and regular multi-million-dollar donations. Alongside their financial contributions to Jewish hospitals or programs monitoring ‘hate speech’, billionaire families like the Besens, Gandels, Schwartzes, Pratts and Smorgons channel their wealth into local art galleries, stages and theatres, universities, human rights groups, and other non-profit organisations.

These family-run philanthropic foundations (a selection of which are seen in the image above) are undoubtedly familiar names to those in the Australian arts and non-profit sector. Jewish-led peak bodies like Philanthropy Australia (currently chaired by Jewish lawyer Amanda Miller) and Australians Investing in Women (founded by Eve Mahlab and Jill Reichstein) advise corporate donors on the worthy causes and direct funding from prospective donors who do not own foundations. In addition, Jews are an ever-present feature on the boards of the largest gentile-originated philanthropies: the Paul Ramsay Foundation and the Ian Potter Foundation. Ultimately, money talks and donations always come with the condition that donors be allowed a say in an organisation’s agenda, oftentimes through securing positions on boards or executive roles.

The scale of this philanthropic support and an exact accounting of where all the funds end up is difficult to establish, though no cause is too small or too obscure to warrant their attention. The Besen family, who support the land-grab settlement projects of the Jewish National Fund, also donate money to anti-racist documentaries like Bukal Bukal, a film about an Aboriginal woman struggling with the effects of colonial dispossession who attempts to reclaim a family artefact held by the British Museum. In 2023, the Gandel Foundation partnered on the Quill Award for Reporting on Multicultural Affairs and Media, a minor journalistic award issued by the Melbourne Press Club. The resulting partnership position on the selection panel allowed Gandel Foundation chairman Graham Goldsmith to issue the award to journalists who ‘debunked’ stories about African [Sudanese] Gangs terrorising the suburbs of Melbourne.

There is certainly enough money within the Jewish community to make things happen. The Australian Financial Review Rich List, a yearly publication that charts the top 250 wealthiest Australians, shows that Jews make up somewhere between 15–18 percent of Australia’s multi-millionaires. This figure is even more lopsided when one considers the upper echelons of this list. Jews regularly account for between 10–13 entrants on the top 30 wealthiest Australians, oftentimes taking out the number 1 spot if their investment portfolios made good returns over the prior year. Jews are similarly over-represented in the AFR’s Philanthropy 50 List, again skewed towards the most charitable entrants.

Many of these wealthy Jews chose to downplay their financial contributions and settle for their names merely appearing on a discreet plaque placed on a building or hidden in an annual report; other families make a show of their philanthropic largess. Since arrival in Australia, the members of the Besen family, who built a fortune from the rag trade, have collected entire galleries worth of Australian modern art, displayed in sprawling private museums such as the TarraWarra Museum of Art.

The works of artists that fled National Socialist Germany for engaging in ‘degenerate art’ adorn the public spaces adjacent to Australian cultural venues, their placement made possible by wealthy Jewish benefactors. The sculpture “Forward Surge” designed by German-Jewish artist Ingeborg King — a series of oversized metal shavings — graces the park wedged between the Arts Centre in Melbourne and concert venue Hamer Hall.

“Forward Surge” (1981) by Inge King

Since October 7, Jewish philanthropists and donors around the country have been quietly pulling funds and boycotting Australian artists. Wealthy Jewish families are said to be “in despair” at the level of anti-Zionist sentiment rampant at the institutions they bankroll:

A quiet revolt against bullying and anti-Semitic rhetoric — used by some pro-Palestinian activists including publicly subsidised artists — has seen Jewish donors withdraw or redirect their funding deals with environmental, women’s or arts groups…The list of leading arts companies from which Jewish donors or board members have withdrawn in recent times is growing and includes the Melbourne and Adelaide writers festivals, Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre, Sydney Theatre Company, the National Association for the Visual Arts and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Arts[1]

High profile defections first hit the board of the Sydney Theatre Company. Funding was pulled by prominent Jewish donors after actors wore keffiyeh scarves during a stage production in December 2023. Later the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra came under fire; musicians issued a vote of no confidence in board members of the MSO who had, in response to donor pressure, cancelled performances by pianist Jayson Gillham due to his outspoken pro-Palestine views. The legal firm of Mark Leibler (ABL), which widely represents clients in the arts work, has withdrawn services from groups like the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) – the peak body for visual arts in Australia — over statements they issued condemning Israeli conduct in Gaza.

The Melbourne ‘Rising’ festival, the city’s yearly arts festival, faces a trimmed-down 2025 lineup since the Besen Family Foundation withdrew funding. The Adelaide Festival, another marquee event on the arts calendar, revealed a deficit for financial year 2024; unidentified “major sponsors” pulled out over the inclusion of Palestinian artists in the festival lineup. Financial shortfalls in the funding streams of organisations as diverse as Opera Australia and the Queensland Ballet have also recently seen instability result on their boards of directors as they struggle to account for lost operating income. Art galleries and literary associations around the country have publicly and privately issued statements of impartiality in order to prevent the loss of crucial funds from Jewish donors.

For artists and activists on the Australian left, the financial and organisational chaos that has erupted around them is cause for bewilderment. Why, they ask, are these powerful allies, whom are otherwise steadfast in their support for human rights, equality and justice for Indigenous Australians, not supporting the plight of all oppressed peoples and how is it possible that we are being silenced for speaking out about ethnic cleansing and genocide? Writers cancelled by the State Library of Victoria for thier pro-Palestine views sputter in disbelief at its CEO Paul Duldig. How a man who publicly defends LGBTQ+ rights and freely allows ‘Drag Queen Story Hour’ events to take place within the library premises can possibly make such a rapid heel-turn when it comes to the suffering of the Palestinian people is a question they have no good answer for.

These Jewish donors and board members, happy to support every conceivable artistic insult, political attack, and cultural subversion directed against the Australian people shrivel up at the first sighting of a keffiyeh or a Palestinian flag. Absent the Jewish presence, the donation habits of Australia’s philanthropies would look far more like that of mining billionaire Andrew Forrest, who has pledged $40m in aid to Gaza. Forrest’s donation through the Minderoo Foundation (which he and his wife have full organisational control of), includes $5 million earmarked for the World Central Kitchen, a non-profit food relief group targeted by Israeli forces in November 2023, resulting in the killing of an Australian citizen.

Campus Hate and NGO Silence

The political machinations against Palestinian solidarity are being felt not just within arts groups or at literary festivals, but also deep within the heartlands of the organised left. No longer is the university campus or the NGO the ‘safe space’ it once was. Australia’s power-brokers have declared that if the space is not safe for Zionism, then it cannot be allowed a space at all.

Much like in America, Australia’s university system in the aftermath of October 7 has been the scene of confected claims of an outbreak of anti-Semitism on campus. University vice-chancellors, previously comfortable to let Trotskyist radicals and all manner of anti-white groups protest to their hearts content, are responding to pro-Palestine demonstrations with an uncharacteristic firmness. Campus encampments, flyers, chalk drawings, bake sales and protest meetings — standard fare for any other political issue that university radicals take an interest in — are now hateful events deserving of police monitoring and disciplinary processes.

Over the course of 2024, police moved in to dismantle encampments and arrest protesters at Australia’s leading Group of Eight (Go8) universities. Far-reaching protest restrictions or outright bans on the construction of encampments on university grounds now apply for any future demonstrations envisaged by students, pro-Palestine or not. In a twist of irony, rhetorical accusations and legal complaints otherwise beloved by the left like ‘marginalisation’ or ‘psycho-social harm’ are successfully being turned against the campus radicals by Jewish student unions and university administrators, bypassing rights to academic freedom and political expression. The latter concept is found in Workplace Health and Safety Acts throughout the country. Used to define unsafe work environments, it plays a role in regulating all manner of ‘woke’ ideas on race and gender.

On the political level, an inquiry into anti-Semitism at Australian universities by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights is currently underway in Canberra, launched in October 2024 by Jewish Attorney General Mark Dreyfus. A report inquiring into the “prevalence, nature and experiences of antisemitic activity at universities” is due by next March. Expected outcomes of the inquiry are recommendations for the widespread adoption of the IHRA definition and strengthened anti-Semitism reporting procedures on campus, as well as new federal laws directly targeting anti-Semitic speech, laws likely to be incorporated into the pending hate speech bill sitting before the Attorney General.

Submissions were received from all the peak Jewish bodies and Zionist organisations, as well as from Australia’s small but loud network of anti-Zionist Jews, whose leaders have ingratiated themselves within pro-Palestine groups.[2] A submission from the Australasian Union of Jewish Students singled out the University of New South Wales (UNSW) for being “notably effective, particularly in managing protests and ensuring Jewish students’ safety during these events”, whilst also condemning the University of Sydney for maintaining a veneer of freedom of speech. Worth noting of course, is who currently occupies the role of UNSW Chancellor — David Gonski — thus making the UNSW the only member of the Go8 with outright Jewish leadership.

The situation looks even more bleak for the university radical in his or her future career pathway at a non-governmental organisation. Dripping out from left-wing Substack blogs and posts on X/Twitter are accounts of internal revolts and widespread frustration from lower-level activists working within Australia’s human rights and climate NGOs. Desperate for action on Palestine as they watch the slaughter unfold online, employees motivated to speak out have found institutional blockages placed in their way by higher-ups. Many note the near-silence of Australian NGOs on the plight of people in Gaza despite these same institutions issuing loud statements of support for Indigenous reconciliation and opposition to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Common to these accounts, such as the following opinion piece in Overland criticising the lack of Palestine solidarity at climate NGOs, are revelations of pressure coming from the leadership levels and above.[3] Executives fearful of incurring the wrath of donors are cracking down on employee support for Palestine, even for acts as insignificant as wearing a Palestine flag t-shirt at work:

Several people shared their experience and knowledge of one-on-one calls, emails and text messages from donors and climate leaders to CEOs and organisational executives discouraging people from speaking out in support of Palestine. I also understand a number of funders indicated that they would withdraw funding if groups took a public stance and that several organisations have already been advised their funding is at risk.[4]

A mass resignation hit the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) over its Zionist leadership and its willingness to cancel activists with pro-Palestine views at the urging of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. Leaders of Climate Action Network Australia (CANA), the umbrella group representing Australia’s climate organisations, refused to undersign a Gaza ceasefire statement issued by their parent international group, citing an inability of skills or resources to properly “resolve the issue” with the ‘committed members’ who fund CANA. Reviewing CANA’s committed members, which includes the Climate Council chaired by Carol Schwartz and the Jewish Climate Network, makes it clear where their concerns originated from. Activists even traced the silence on Palestine at Australia’s largest mental health organisations (Orygen and Headspace) to their Jewish funding streams and links with Israel.

Regardless of whether or not these human rights leaders or university Vice-Chancellors are Jewish themselves, the message being communicated through them is clear: give no quarter to support for Palestine.

Labor under Fire

Since the defeat of the Voice to Parliament referendum, which occurred under the shadow of news coverage of October 7, the prospects of re-election for the governing Australian Labor Party have been diminishing by the day. Failure to arrest extreme levels of immigration and address the cost-of-living crisis rank high on causes for this political collapse, but undoubtedly Labor’s indecisive position on the conflict in the Middle East has played a central role in the crashing fortunes of the current Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

The tone of the overall political debate in Australia was set soon after October 7, when Jewish groups disseminated their own local version of the ‘40 beheaded babies’ hoax. At a pro-Palestine protest held on steps of the Sydney Opera House on the 9th of October, observers from the Australian Jewish Association claimed they heard the phrase “gas the Jews” chanted by participants. After months of obsequious media coverage[5] and bipartisan outrage, full video recordings eventually showed no evidence of the phrase being uttered. Smeared with false accusations, pro-Palestine forces in Australia were on the back foot from the very start.

Though the Liberal Party remains as firmly locked into a pro-Israel position as ever, the Labor Party’s relationship to Israel has historically been anything other than steady — a fact Jewish leaders are well aware of. Initially, Israel drew its firmest Australian supporters from the left, and the Chiffley Labor government quickly recognised the Jewish state in 1949. Since then, former Labor Prime Ministers range from Zionist sycophants like Bob Hawke (Prime Minister from 1983–1991) and Julia Gillard (2010–2013), to Zionist critics like Kevin Rudd (2007–2010, 2013) and Gough Whitlam(1972–1975). Political ententes fostered by Zionist leaders and Jewish MPs and vast donations to the Labor party like those made by Trump-supporting billionaire Anthony Pratt have, since the most recent breakdown in relations during the Rudd-era,[6] ensured pro-Israel sentiment remains at the forefront.

Since October 7, Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong sit somewhere in the middle of this spectrum, pleasing neither side of the debate. Australia’s formal response to Israel liquidating the cities of Gaza has been to timidly seek a resolution to the conflict under the strictures of international law, whilst also affirming support for Israel as a supposed Western democracy and respecting its ‘right to defend itself’. Though this once may have been considered a reasonable if not muddled approach to take on the Israel-Palestine conflict during peacetime, it has become politically untenable now that organised Jewry is lashing out at any deviation from full-throated support of Israel’s military efforts. In turn the disillusioned left accuse the government of complicity in genocide, pointing out that Australia continues to provide military aid and defence exports to Israel.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaking at a Synagogue

Attempts by Albanese to calm Zionist anger have so far failed to stop the Israeli foreign minister and Australia’s peak Jewish bodies from thundering against Labor for abandoning Israel. Appointing a ‘special envoy to combat anti-semitism’, donating money to Jewish museums, banning Roman salutes, or declaring a fire at a synagogue to be a terrorist attack before authorities had even established a suspect, let alone a motive, does not appear to make up for the Australian government voting in favour of Palestinian statehood or ceasefire resolutions at the United Nations general assembly. Furthermore, Australia has thus far resisted U.S. and Israeli pressure to outright condemn the authority of the International Criminal Court, which Australia has been a party to since 2002.

In the state of Victoria, the governing Labor Party provides the counter to the woes of federal Labor. Evidently showing firm support for Israel and acquiescing to the hysterical demands of the Jewish community leaves your government in a far more stable position. For years former Premier Daniel Andrews fostered strong connections with the Jewish community in Victoria, the largest in the country. As a symbol of appreciation, Andrews was recently awarded the Jerusalem Prize from the World Zionist Organisation and used his speech to urge Jewish philanthropists to double their existing efforts in defunding critics of Israel.[7]

Now a patron of Labor Friends of Israel, Andrews’ years in government saw collaborations to strengthen hate speech laws, the creation of mandatory holocaust education courses in schools, memorandums of understanding between Victoria and the Israeli Defence Ministry, and the furthering of trade connections. Premier Jacinta Allen, who took over the position in late September 2023, continues in the tradition set by her mentor and predecessor. The latest furore over anti-semitism has prompted the Victorian Government to promise further draconian crackdowns on civil liberties and the right to protest. The envisioned laws banning masks, designated symbols and protest implements have been criticised by unions, antifascists, libertarians, and nationalists alike but will likely make no dent in Victorian Labor’s electoral prospects

Elsewhere on the political front, the efforts of the Teals, a group of semi-independent politicians who unseated Liberal Party members in previously safe conservative seats in the 2022 election, have also taken a hit. In April, The Australian revealed that Naomi Milgrom (née Besen) withdrew funding from Climate 200 (the financial pot that supplies the Teal movement) due to Teal MP’s Kylea Tink and Sophie Scamps voting with the Greens on a parliamentary motion condemning Israeli strikes on Gaza.[8]

In the end, it takes more than just pressure from a ‘lobby group’ to transform the likes of Anthony Albanese from a university radical and a founding member of the Parliamentary Friends of Palestine into a defender of Israel. Whether its genuine belief or pure cynicism, somewhere along the path to power Albanese learnt that to be an Australian prime minister, it’s necessary to don a kippah and make concessions to the powers that be.

2025 and beyond?

“If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.” — Sun Tzu

With funds seemingly freed up from left-wing causes, the question now is, where will all the money go instead. Will Jewish philanthropists permanently disassociate from those that have pledged support for Palestine and refocus on the Zionist right by crowing about “the end of woke.” Or has it all been just a temporary lull, with cash-starved artists set to crawl back with promises to stay tight-lipped on Gaza? Whilst it is tempting to speculate on the revived fortunes of conservative political forces and the finances behind the recent launch of an Australian arm of Yoram Hazony’s ‘National Conservatism’ project, only time (or the release of the next batch of Australian Electoral Commission donation returns) will provide a clearer picture.

Meanwhile the Palestine solidarity movement, as it exists in its current form, appears destined to relive the political defeats of 2024. Taught from childhood by Judeo-centric history syllabuses that the holocaust is the ultimate expression of evil, rank-and-file members still can’t wrap their minds around how the direct descendants of those that fled to Australia from National Socialist Germany are able to support the barbarism on display in Gaza. Taking their cue from Jewish intellectual trends by framing the issue as one of ‘white supremacy’, sprinkling in some class reductionism, and then announcing ad-nauseam that it is incorrect to conflate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism leaves them unable to articulate a true critique of Jewish power. It’s far from coincidence that the only “woke” political cause in Australia that is impotent, the one that utterly fails where all others — be it LGBTQ+ rights, indigenous reconciliation or gender equality — succeed in strides, just so happens to be the one organised Jewry doesn’t support.

The brightest note of pro-Palestine efforts — one in fact condemned by anti-Zionist Jews — occurred at the start of the year and made headlines around the world. Enterprising activists exposed a WhatApp group chat filled with hundreds of prominent Australian Jews busily developing strategies to attack and silence critics of Israel. The release included a spreadsheet with the names, images and social media accounts of chat participants, in a form similar to the treatment meted out to pro-Palestine activists on the website Canary Mission, which “documents people and groups that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews”. Members of the chat rushed to the press to complain they had been ‘doxxed’ and forced the federal government to push through new criminal offences on the dissemination of personal data, despite not a single email, private address or phone number being revealed in the releases. Discovering, in real time, incontrovertible evidence of a ‘Jewish conspiracy’ plants the seeds of true dissent in the way that a thousand newspaper articles cannot.

Ultimately, the philanthropists and Jewish leaders who pull the rug out from under pro-Palestine activists and seek to destroy the Palestinian homeland are the very same Zionists who support the efforts to eradicate White Australia and weaken White homelands around the world. It functions as one and the same operation and, minus the use of military force, the methods are identical: dehumanisation, institutional silencing, deconstruction of identity, encouraging foreigners to settle on their land, funding pro-immigration groups, inflicting on White Australia conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction, and declaring all opposition to the aforementioned tactics to be hate or terrorism.

Perhaps it will click in the minds of the honest Palestine supporter that so much of what they understand as human rights advocacy is just a fig leaf created by Zionists to cover their true intentions, that this support for diversity and multiculturalism in Australia has always gone hand-in-hand with violent and oppressive ethnic particularism in Israel. Something other than mere concern for humanity is going on when Jews fund the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre and Indigenous ‘blak art’ collectives whilst simultaneously declaring justice for the people of Gaza off-limits.

When Hersch Lauterpacht, Jacob Robinson and René Cassin set the framework for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and developed the language of international human rights law at the Nuremberg Trials, they had in mind not universalism or left-wing ideals of utopia, but an international system that would advance Jewish national self-determination and ensure the security of the Jewish people. Henceforth, whenever this system has gone rogue and come into conflict with the military or political aims of Zionism, Jewish leaders attack and declare it is failing in its true purpose. Whether it’s the United Nations, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, Amnesty International or the International Criminal Court, no institution that speaks out is left unscathed.

Forced to play their hand by the events in Palestine, Australian Jewry exposed their position to those who were paying attention. To make an appeal for White Australia to the bulk of Palestine supporters is probably a lost cause. But for those open-minded individuals who watched the philanthropic retreat and the institutional chaos unfold in the year and three months since October 7 2023, it can only have opened their eyes to the true nature of politics in Australia.

[1]Neill, R & Bashan, Y 2024, ‘Facing hate from those they fund, Jewish donors walk away in despair’, The Australian, September 2, retrieved from: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/jewish-donors-are-pulling-and-redirecting-their-funds-as-they-despair-at-rise-of-antisemitism/news-story/48507627d50a44f96738c62cb75f38ba

[2]Jordana Silverstein, executive member of the Australian Palestine Advocacy Network and figures like Sarah Schwartz, Max Kaiser (the grandson of Walter Lippmann) and others grouped around the newly created Jewish Council of Australia.

[3]Statements on Gaza issued elsewhere by the editors of Overland and literary journal Meanjin denounce October 7 as an act of terrorism and baulk at supporting militant resistance by Hamas.

[4]Kelly, A 2023, ‘Where is the Australian climate movement’s solidarity with Palestine?’, Overland, December 3, retrieved from: https://overland.org.au/2023/12/where-is-the-australian-climate-movements-solidarity-with-palestine/

[5]For a discussion on the Jewish role in Australian media and its general pro-Zionist slant, see my previous TOO piece ‘Moulding the Australian Mind.’

[6]Also the conflict centred around Bob Carr’s brief term as Foreign Minister; see Brendon Sanderson, ‘Mark Leibler: Power Broker for Australia’s Jewish Plutocracy‘. h

[7]Other political recipients of the Jerusalem Prize are Labor Prime Ministers Bob Hawke and Julia Gillard and Liberal Party PMs John Howard and Scott Morrison.

[8] The Australian 2023, ‘Rich-lister’s rethink on Teal support’, retrieved from: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/margin-call/richlister-naomi-milgrom-rethinks-support-for-teals-libs-cashed-up-in-cook/news-story/bc6f0b6171b1b51f89b312a081188c92

BBC staffers reveal editor’s ‘entire job’ to whitewash Jewish war crimes

December 31, 2024/3 Comments/in General/by Kevin MacDonald

Hasbara perpetrated by Jews in positions of power throughout the West

From VT Foreign Policy:

BBC editor Raffi Berg has almost complete control of the British broadcaster’s online coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza and is ensuring that all events are reported with a pro-Israel bias, according to a new report published on 28 December by Drop Site News.

“This guy’s entire job is to water down everything that’s too critical of Israel,” one former BBC journalist said.

Drop Site News spoke to 13 current and former staffers who stated that the BBC’s coverage consistently devalues Palestinian life, ignores Israeli atrocities, and creates a false equivalence in an entirely unbalanced conflict.

Another BBC journalist said Berg plays a key role in a broader BBC culture of “systematic Israeli propaganda.”

“How much power he has is wild,” said another journalist.

“There was an extreme fear at the BBC, that if you ever wanted to do anything about Israel or Palestine, editors would say: ‘If you want to pitch something, you have to go through Raffi and get his signoff,” another journalist explained.

In one case, Berg downplayed Amnesty International’s accusation that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Berg chose a headline that stated, “Israel rejects ‘fabricated’ claims of genocide,” to describe the Amnesty report and failed to post the story for 12 hours after it was written to suppress its online reach.

The journalists interviewed by Drop Site also noted that the Amnesty report was not covered on the BBC’s flagship news programs—BBC One’s News At One, News At Six, or News At Ten or its flagship current affairs program, BBC Two’s Newsnight.

“Anyone who writes on Gaza or Israel is asked: ‘Has it gone to edpol [editorial policy], lawyers, and has it gone to Raffi?’” another journalist said.

Raffi Berg, who wrote a book praising clandestine Mossad operations, wields great power to influence perceptions of Israel’s war on Gaza because the BBC news website is the most-visited news site on the internet, with over 1.1 billion visits in May alone.

Israel’s war on Gaza has killed over 45,000 Palestinians, the majority women and children, and flattened large swathes of the besieged enclave.

The pro-Israel bias imposed by Berg is evident in the language used to cover the war.

While stories “prominently” used words like “massacre,” “slaughter,” and “atrocities” to refer to Hamas, they “hardly, if at all,” used them “in reference to actions by Israel,” wrote Rami Ruhayem, a Beirut-based BBC Arabic correspondent.

In another case, the BBC published a story with a headline that hid Israel’s responsibility for killing an entire family in a missile strike.

“Israel Gaza: Father loses 11 family members in one blast,” the headline stated.

Drop Site notes that when the BBC does mention Israel as the perpetrator, it uses the caveat “reportedly.”

The BBC also uses euphemisms preferred by the Israeli army to hide its soldiers’ war crimes. For example, the BBC describes the forcible transfer or ethnic cleansing of Palestinian civilians as “evacuations.”

Aaron Maté: The US ignores its own terrorist designation of Syria’s ruling Al Qaeda veterans, all while maintaining sanctions that devastate ordinary civilians.

December 30, 2024/2 Comments/in General/by Kevin MacDonald

The US ignores its own terrorist designation of Syria’s ruling Al Qaeda veterans, all while maintaining sanctions that devastate ordinary civilians.

In his memoir of his time as a senior aide to President Obama, Ben Rhodes recalled one of the administration’s top quandaries in Syria.

Back in late 2012, the CIA was waging a multi-billion dollar covert war to help Syrian insurgents topple then-Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. By that point, Al Qaeda had established a powerful franchise in Syria known as Jabhat al-Nusra, which international actors were promptly designating as a terrorist organization.

Yet for a US government seeking regime change in Damascus, adding al-Nusra to the State Department terror list posed a problem. On the ground, Rhodes acknowledged, al-Nusra “was probably the strongest fighting force” against the Syrian government. Moreover, rather than coming into conflict with one another, it was “also clear that the more moderate opposition” favored by the US was in fact “fighting side by side with al-Nusra.” Therefore, Rhodes recalled arguing to his colleagues, designating al-Nusra as a terrorist organization “would alienate the same people we want to help.”

Rhodes and his compatriots ended up losing that debate. Yet while the State Department designated al-Nusra in December 2012, it turns out that the US still found a way to help. By placing Nusra on the terrorist list, the New York Times explained that month, the Obama administration hoped “to remove one of the biggest obstacles to increasing Western support for the rebellion: the fear that money and arms could flow to a jihadi group that could further destabilize Syria and harm Western interests.”

In other words, designating al-Nusra as a terrorist group was a toothless move that helped the Obama administration continue arming the insurgency that the Nusra militants dominated. The notion that US sanctions would force an Al Qaeda-dominated rebellion to abandon its leading fighting force was a fantasy – if not a deliberate ruse — that ensured that US weapons would continue to flow.

And that they did: three months after Nusra’s terrorist designation, the Associated Press reported that the US and its proxy war allies had “dramatically stepped up weapons supplies to Syrian rebels” to help them “seize Damascus.” Despite the Obama administration’s public opposition to Nusra, “there is little clear evidence from the front lines that all the new, powerful weapons are going to groups which have been carefully vetted by the U.S.” Instead, insurgents “including Jabhat al-Nusra” had been seen “with such weapons.” Once U.S. weapons arrived in Syria, the Obama administration quietly acknowledged that it had no way of controlling who would use them. “We needed plausible deniability in case the arms got into the hands of al-Nusra,” a former senior administration official explained in 2013.

With US arms in hand, al-Nusra and its allies captured the Syrian province of Idlib in May 2015. It was from Idlib that al-Nusra – now under the name of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – launched the recent offensive that removed Assad.

And now that HTS, an Al Qaeda offshoot, has finally seized Damascus in December 2024, the Obama administration veterans who now serve under President Biden are facing a dilemma similar to what Ben Rhodes described during that same month in 2012.

On the one hand, the US helped the insurgency that toppled Assad – not only via the CIA dirty war, but also the crippling sanctions that crushed Syria’s economy and the concurrent military occupation that deprived Syria of its oil and wheat. Yet on the other — because of the decision that the Obama team took in December 2012 over Rhodes’ objections — the new Syrian government is a designated terrorist organization. The HTS ruler, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani – now using his given name, Ahmed al-Shara – even has a $10 million US bounty on his head.

In Washington, the decision has been made to give Syria’s ruling Al Qaeda spinoff another helping hand.

After meeting with al-Jolani/al-Shara in Damascus on Dec. 20th, senior State Department official Barbara Leaf announced that the US will suspend the $10 million reward for his capture. In Leaf’s telling, Al-Shara “came across as pragmatic” and offered “moderate statements” on issues including the rights of women and minorities.

The US government’s willingness to engage with al-Shara, a former leader of Al Qaeda – and before that, a former deputy leader of ISIS – underscores that its definition of “terrorism” is entirely dependent on political calculations. The operative standard boils down to whether or not the designated “terrorist” is “on our side”, as Jake Sullivan described al-Qaeda in Syria in a now infamous February 2012 email.

Similar criteria applies to the US definition of “moderate.” After receiving the Biden administration’s endorsement, al-Shara’s government has offered a vision for Syria that hardly reflects the democratic aspirations of the secular, reformist protesters who took to the streets against Assad in early 2011. …

After initially suggesting that there would be quick elections, al-Shara now says that this could take up to four years. For a war-torn country like Syria, some interim period of restructuring before a vote is understandable. But the government that al-Shara is putting in place for this open-ended transition does not resemble Syria’s rich cultural mosaic, and instead HTS’ own brand of sectarianism.

Al-Shara has tapped Anas Hassan Khattab, a former Al-Qaeda commander and Nusra co-founder, as Syria’s new intelligence chief. Back in 2014, the United Nations designated Khattab as a “terrorist” for his critical role in Nusra’s financing and operations. Meanwhile, the only woman appointed to serve in the “transition” government to date has declared that the new system will be based on Sharia law. She also insisted that there will no space for both “secularism” and “those who don’t agree with my thinking.”

The most ominous development is a wave of sectarian violence. Although largely downplayed in Western media, there are widespread reports, documented with video evidence, of militant attacks on Alawite, Christians, and other minorities. Although HTS fighters have reportedly tried to stop such attacks in some areas, this is an inevitable consequence of a sectarian insurgency taking power in a decimated, divided country. As the New York Times notes, HTS’s own ranks “include thousands of radicalized foreign fighters”, complemented by many more in other militias. In a show of gratitude for their critical role in toppling Assad, al-Shara has said that these foreign militants will likely be granted Syrian citizenship.

Continues at Matés Substack.

Israel increases hasbara in effort to change the narrative on its Gaza genocide

December 30, 2024/5 Comments/in General/by Kevin MacDonald

Israel has spent millions trying win hearts and minds abroad. It’s about to spend 20 times more.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry will receive $150 million for what’s officially known as public diplomacy, or in Hebrew, hasbara.

Israel’s new foreign minister, Gideon Saar, in a photo from a speech he gave in the Israeli city of Ramat Gan, July 10, 2022. (Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images)

By Asaf Elia-Shalev December 27, 2024 4:19 pm

The Israeli government plans to offset wartime spending and an economic slowdown with tax hikes and deep cuts to public services. But the proposed budget for 2025 also includes a massive new allocation: toward pro-Israel advocacy efforts abroad.

Under the new budget, Israel’s Foreign Ministry will receive $150 million, on top of what it gets for its existing activities, for what’s officially known as public diplomacy, or in Hebrew, hasbara. That sum is more than 20 times what such efforts have typically been allotted in past years.

The dramatic expenditure is the result of a political deal that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu struck last month to shore up his governing coalition. Politician Gideon Saar and his New Hope party agreed to rejoin the coalition in return for the funding and the appointment of Saar as Israel’s foreign minister.

The news comes as public opinion about Israel in the United States and elsewhere around the world has been intensely battered as a result of a war that has left the neighboring Gaza Strip in ruins with much of its population facing displacement, disease, and hunger.

Saar’s statement also said he foresees a focus on American college campuses, which have been rocked by pro-Palestinian protests since the war broke out when Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023. The statement noted that its activity will be carried out in cooperation with American Jewish groups and alongside similar efforts by the Diaspora Affairs Ministry.

“Israel’s hasbara efforts and consciousness warfare have for decades not received the critical and life-saving resources and tools they require,” Saar told the Israeli newspaper Maariv. “I am determined to make a change. Every shekel devoted to this cause is an investment, not an expense, and will strengthen Israel and its standing in the world.”

Saar and his team have been holding brainstorming sessions with a wide array of individuals and groups who are involved in pro-Israel advocacy around the world, Jewish Insider reported. Participants include social media influencers, cultural figures, professional hasbara advocates and representatives of various Jewish groups.

Whatever comes of the planning, the Israeli government will attempt to improve upon its weak record of executing similar, albeit smaller advocacy initiatives in the past. Millions spent on the national effort against antisemitism and the delegitimization of Israel around the world over the past decade have not produced almost any fruit in the eyes of Israeli government officials, according to reporting from investigative journalist Uri Blau in the Israeli digital outlet Shomrim.

“This activity has failed by every conceivable parameter,” Avi Cohen-Scali, the director general of the Ministry of Diaspora and Combating Antisemitism told Shomrim

Bernard Bachrach’s “Early Medieval Jewish Policy in Western Europe”

December 30, 2024/3 Comments/in Anti-Semitism, Featured Articles, Jewish Writing on Anti-Semitism/by Spencer J. Quinn

Early Medieval Jewish Policy in Western Europe
Bernard Bachrach
University of Minnesota Press, 1977 (Available online at Archive.org)

2910 Words

The term “lachrymose” should be in the lexicon of all modern dissidents. According the first entry in my 1984 Webster’s II dictionary, it means, “Weeping, or given to weeping: tearful.” This term gained prominence regarding the Jewish Question in the late 1920s when historian Salo Baron coined the “lachrymose theory” of Jewish history, which describes “the eternal self-pity characteristic of Jewish historiography.” Such an approach, as many of us know, amounts to dishonestly politicizing history by exaggerating both the innocence and suffering of Jews as well the power and malevolence of White gentiles. The point, of course, is not to increase our knowledge of days gone by but to cynically promote the ethnic interests of Jews in the here and now.

Bernard Bachrach successfully challenges this mindset in his brief 1977 volume Early Medieval Jewish Policy in Western Europe, wherein he demonstrates how the lachrymose approach falls short when held against historical data. In his preface, he writes:

Such treatments of early medieval Jewish policy have generally been presented in conjunction with a view of barbarian Europe that depicts Christian secular rulers as powerful and religiously oriented, the Church as the dominant institution in society with immense influence over the political process, and the Jews as very few in number, powerless, and easily victimized though innocent. This picture of strong monarchs, a powerful church, and an insignificant Jewry, however, does not fit the evidence for early medieval conditions.

Although the work is technically one of history, really it is a reflection on historiography and, if writ large, a repudiation of the infusion of politics into the study of Jewish history. In his notes, Bachrach mentions how Jewish scholars had attacked Baron’s lachrymose theory “for providing ammunition with which the anti-Semites can attack Jews.” Thankfully, Bachrach places himself above such concerns (regardless of his personal sympathies). The result is both useful and interesting since in most cases when kings or Church magnates acted against Jews, they were in fact being reasonable.

Bachrach begins with the Visigoths, who were the post-Roman Germanic rulers of the Iberian Peninsula. Their Jewish-policy baseline sprang from the old Roman law which established that Jews were to be . . .

left alone to practice their religion
given judicial autonomy within their communities
prohibited from holding public office wherein they could inflict punishment on Christians
prohibited from converting non-Jews to Judaism
prohibited from owning Christian slaves

Yet, as Bachrach mentions repeatedly, just because a law was on the books does not mean that it was respected or enforced. King Theodoric the Great, the Ostrogoth who reigned over the Visigoths during the early sixth century, for example, had ignored many of the laws which limited Jewish activity. The Visigothic monarch Reccared I, who reigned a half-century later, has been considered anti-Jewish since he decreed that children of Jewish and Christian parents be baptized. Some modern scholars viewed this as forced conversion. Bachrach, on the other hand, reveals that the Visigothic Jews themselves would not have objected to this given that, according to Jewish law at the time, a Jewish woman married to a non-Jew deserved to be stoned to death and that a child born of a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother wasn’t even a Jew. Bachrach exonerates not only Reccared but also the Church leaders for being “concerned about the spiritual and material well-being” of such children. Further, Reccared removed the death penalty for Jews who proselytize and even ignored a missive from Pope Gregory I, which entreated him to punish Jews who were illegally dealing in Christian slaves in Narbonne.

In Visigothic Spain a rough pattern then emerges over the next two centuries:

Jews are given wide freedom by pro-Jewish kings, which they then abuse, typically through bribery, proselytization, dealing in Christian slaves, and forcibly circumcising them.
In response, anti-Jewish kings replace the pro-Jewish ones (often with the support of the Church) and enact laws meant to protect Christians and Christianity from Jews.
Jews do not like this, and subsequently lend their financial and military influence to viable enemies of the crown until the anti-Jewish king is deposed or dead.
Rinse and repeat.

This is a good early medieval example of Jewish aggressiveness against the host society and willingness to exploit non-Jews.

Sisebut in 612 was the first of these supposedly anti-Jewish kings. He reversed many of Reccared’s pro-Jewish policies and attempted to enforce the extant laws about Jews owning and converting Christian slaves. Later in his reign he offered the Jews of Spain an ultimatum, conversion or exile—something that even the anti-Jewish Church officials opposed. This may sound harsh to modern ears, but Bachrach shoots down any interpretations that Sisebut was acting out of greed, fanaticism, or malice. Simply put, the Jews of Spain had opposed Sisebut’s ascension to the throne, and he was understandably trying to hamstring their political influence in response. In any event, his anti-Jewish decrees went largely ignored.

Things then ping-pong between pro- and anti-Jewish monarchs over the following decades. One pro-Jewish king, Chindasuinth was in fact much harder on his fellow Christians than he was on his Jewish subjects. After Chindasuinth’s successor Reccesuinth reinstated Sisebut’s anti-Jewish legislation, Reccesuinth’s successor Wamba had to crush a Jewish revolt in Narbonne. Wamba then banished all Jews from the city. Yet, as with most anti-Jewish actions in Visigothic Spain, it didn’t last.

Wamba, however, was not a religious fanatic, and his appreciation of the power of the Jewish community apparently led him to a rapprochement with them. The Jews of Narbonne were allowed to return to their city where for a long time they continued to be a dominant force. Wamba, in addition, did not enforce the existing anti-Jewish laws, and at the councils which met during his reign the Jewish question was not discussed.

Bachrach also states bluntly that “as late as 694 Jews still owned Christian slaves and carried on business as usual.” This was during the reign of Egica, who also tried to weaken the economic base of the Jews in order to rid his political enemies of their financial strength. He went to so far as to order that all Jews in his kingdom “be stripped of their property and be made slaves.” As in the past, such legislation was an abject failure because most of the leadership in Visigothic Spain was either openly tolerant of Jews or susceptible to their bribes. Still, Bachrach shockingly defends Egica’s decision as rational since the Jews had indeed schemed against him:

Had not refugae sought foreign aid to help rebel causes throughout much of the seventh century? Had not the Jews actively participated in military operations against Wamba? Were not Jews sufficiently disadvantaged as a result of Egica’s politics that would benefit by opposing him actively?

Historian Edward Thompson defines refugae as “men who went to foreign powers with a view to launching attacks on Spain from abroad.” Thus, it can be inferred from Bachrach’s text that many of these traitorous individuals were in fact exiled Jews. This becomes an important point in the early eighth century when, as Egica’s grandson Achila in the north, the upstart Visigothic king Roderic in the south, the Byzantines, and the Arab Muslims were all vying for control of the Iberian Peninsula. In the ensuing chaos the Spanish Jews repaid the Goths for two centuries of prosperity, freedom, and tolerance by allying with the Muslims and seizing a number of cities in Spain—and prospering thereafter.

Although Bachrach does not state this explicitly, it seems that the Visigoths would have benefited greatly had they actually followed through on the anti-Jewish legislation with which scholars of the lachrymose tradition so keenly besmirch them.

In Early Medieval Jewish Policy in Western Europe, Bernard Bachrach saves the best for first, with the remainder of his treatise lacking much of the punch and parry found in his chapter on the Visigoths. This is not Bachrach’s fault since the history itself is not quite as compelling vis-à-vis Jews. Basically, the Ostrogoths, the Byzantines, the Merovingians, and the Carolingians were pro-Jewish and rarely wavered from that. These Europeans also ignored the mildly anti-Jewish Roman laws as well as pressure from Church magnates to penalize Jews when proselytizing or abusing the flock. From the sixth to the ninth centuries, the Jews of Western and Southern Europe enjoyed a golden age of tolerance and prosperity.

Indeed, in an earlier work Bachrach suggests that the Jews were so wealthy, powerful, and aggressive that until around the middle of the fifth century the government viewed a strong anti-Jewish policy as not politically viable, even though it was continually being pressured in this direction by the Church.[1] The rather limited anti-Jewish actions of the government during the 150 years following the Edict of Toleration of 313 are interpreted “as attempts to protect Christians from a vigorous, powerful, and often aggressive Jewish gens” (408). The Jews themselves were perceived by the emperors, the government, and the Church fathers as “an aggressive, well-organized, wealthy, and powerful minority” (p. 408). Particularly revealing are the suggestion that the solvency of the municipalities depended on Jews paying their taxes and the fear that offending the Jews could set off widespread and costly revolts, such as the one led by Patricius in 351.

Of the early-sixth-century Ostrogothic monarch Theodoric, Bachrach writes:

It seems, however, that Theodoric pursued a clearly defined pro-Jewish policy that called for the recognition and enforcement of their privilegia. At the same time he managed to ignore old imperial legislation the restricted the activities of Jews. Those who harmed Jews were effectively and severely punished; alleged or potential Jewish wrongdoing was investigated, admonished, and even threatened with “royal displeasure”; but at no time is there evidence of punishments having been meted out or of anti-Jewish laws having been enforced.

Bachrach points out that the Jews of Italy at the time provided many educated men for public service as well an even greater number of armed fighting men loyal to the crown. So why wouldn’t Theodoric want to pursue pro-Jewish policies? In the late sixth century, Pope Gregory I also had a hand in protecting Jewish interests, especially when he made allowances for Jewish slave traders who may have “accidentally” found themselves owning Christian slaves. Despite Gregory’s professed “horror and loathing” of Jews, he continually relied upon the relatively lenient Theodosian Code rather than the stricter Justinian Code when dealing with Jewish matters.

Compared to such a standard, the medieval leaders whom the lachrymose school considers anti-Jewish really weren’t. For example, the Byzantine emperor Justinian did confiscate synagogues in North Africa in 535, but this was in response to North African Jews having supported the Vandals in their war against the Byzantine Empire. Another historical hiccup can be found in how Byzantine emperor Heraclitus decreed in 632 that Jews convert to Christianity. Bachrach reveals that this was merely a stratagem to entice potentially disloyal Byzantine Jews to support the Empire’s wars against the Persians and Muslims. As it turned out, the Jews called the emperor’s bluff and refused their support, and Heraclitus still did not enforce the decree. Byzantine Jews later repaid their emperor’s tolerance by rioting in Constantinople in 641 and attacking the Hagia Sophia in 661.

Then, of course, there was the famously pro-Jewish king Charlemagne who did everything he could to promote Jewish mercantile and scholarly activity. In particular, he encouraged the Jewish group known as the Radanites to trade far and wide across Europe, the Muslims world, and beyond. Bachrach even speculates that it is partially because of Charlemagne that Jews became so dominant in international trade to begin with. Despite this beneficence, however, Jews still found ways to abuse the system. For example, they forced Charlemagne to ban Jewish mint masters from operating out of their homes so to cut down on fraud. He also had to prohibit Jewish moneylenders from accepting “the persons of free Christians” as collateral.

As for controlling his kingdom’s economy, Charlemagne

emphasized the importance of the local market where his officials could oversee weights and measures, collect taxes, and monitor prices. Some Jews in the Carolingian realm seemed to have found it more profitable to do business from their homes away from the government’s watchful eye. Charlemagne therefore issued an administrative order forbidding Jews from storing commodities intended for sale such as grain and wine in their homes and thus hoped to stop business from being done outside of the market place.

Bachrach often makes the point that many of the acts of monarchs deemed by lachrymose scholars as anti-Jewish were in fact either sheer bluffs, toothless edicts, retributive fair play, or rational responses to Jewish malfeasance. Charlemagne’s actions above are a great example of this last type of behavior.

The most persistent opponents (I hesitate to use the term “enemy”) of the Jews during the early Medieval period were the Church magnates. They were naturally most concerned about Jewish intermarriage and proselytization as well as the continued Jewish practice of owning and circumcising—thereby converting—Christian slaves. Since Church leaders, at least on paper, had little to gain from the economic benefits that unfettered Jewish activity brought to the table, they were quick to rail against the gross injustices associated with this activity. Of the Carolingian times, Bachrach writes (emphasis mine):

Thus there are contemporary reports that Jews purchased Christian slaves from Christian owners and sold the former to the Muslims in Spain. Jews also apparently castrated some slaves especially for the foreign market and even kidnapped Christian youths for sale abroad.

The growing Jewish trade in pagan Slavs was also a problem. Obnoxious behavior such as Jews entering convents to have “secret dealings” with nuns further offended the ecclesiastics.

Incidentally, in his Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World: Attitudes and Interactions from Alexander to Justinian (Princeton University Press, 1993), Louis Feldman points out that the circumcision of slaves well into the sixth century was a Jewish religious law at least partly for ritual reasons (circumcision enabled slaves to perform their duties, such as handling food, in a manner consistent with Jewish religious law) but undergoing this procedure did not mean that the slaves had been converted to Judaism. Like Bachrach, Feldman also emphasizes Jewish wealth and prosperity and their alliances with wealthy, powerful non-Jews.

The strongest and most notable anti-Jewish Church presence during this period was Bishop Agobard of Lyons (see also Andrew Joyce’s “Agobard of Lyon and The Origins of the Hostile Elite”). During the reign of Charlemagne’s son Louis in the early ninth century, Agobard actively campaigned against Jewish criminal excesses and constantly pressured the crown to enforce the anti-Jewish laws which had been on the books since Roman times. Further, he promoted a general segregation of Jews and gentiles and strongly opposed the ongoing Judaization of Western Europe. If Agobard had his way, Christians would be banned from purchasing wine and meat processed by Jews. Clearly, all of this would have severely limited Jewish economic strength in the nascent Holy Roman Empire, and was something that Louis—who was even more pro-Jewish than his father—would not have allowed.

Things came to a head around 822 when Agobard and a Jewish slaveowner faced each other in imperial court. Essentially, Agobard had absconded with one of the Jew’s slaves, a former pagan who had been converted to Judaism (willingly or not, Bachrach does not say) and later baptized by Agobard. The judge found in favor of the slaveowner, and Louis added insult to injury by peremptorily dismissing Agobard from the court. Bachrach then rationalizes Agobard’s actions and essentially asks the reader to sympathize with him rather than with the king, the court, or the Jews. After mentioning how various supporters of Agobard had to go into hiding or were punished by imperial officials after the trial, Bachrach writes:

He [Agobard] seems to have believed, and he was correct, that compromise with the militant, aggressive, and powerful Jews of Lyonnais would have meant defeat for the Church. As a religious churchman deeply committed to the spiritual health of his flock he had little choice in his course of action; he fought and lost.

That the greatest anti-Jewish advocate of the era met with total defeat is a powerful blow against the lachrymose school of Jewish historiography. Bachrach makes this point several times throughout his volume, and he is quite convincing. He also makes plain that such an approach not only selectively remembers anti-Jewish actions among gentiles and downplays their pro-Jewish behavior, it also exaggerates the power of monarchs and their willingness to enforce anti-Jewish laws. Bachrach essentially accuses lachrymose scholars of exaggerating Jewish suffering during the early Medieval period in Western Europe.

This then leads us to the next question: if the Jews are exaggerating historical events during this period, what other historical events are they exaggerating? It’s a fair question, and one which exceeds the scope of Bachrach’s study. Nevertheless, Bachrach, to his credit, leaves the door open for its pursuit.

We should remember that Early Medieval Jewish Policy in Western Europe is more a commentary on historiography than a work of history per se. It’s too thin to be otherwise. Readers shouldn’t look to it for many “gotcha” moments whereby Jewish historical sins are revealed and historic anti-Semitism exonerated. Yes, there is some of that, but one would be better served viewing American Krogan’s excellent 6-part video series entitled The Visigoths and the Jews for this sort of thing. For his part, Bachrach remains evenhanded by presenting the positive side of the equation. He often depicts Jewish-Christian interaction as voluntary and mutually beneficial. He’s also quick to point out the good Jews can do, such as in 793 when the Jews of Narbonne—the same place where they had been illegally trading in Christian slaves—defended their city and the Carolingian realm against Muslim invaders.

It gets to the point where we begin to wonder if these are even Jews that Bachrach is writing about. His depictions appear strange compared to the Jews that Europeans have known so well since the Middle Ages. Yes, the vigor, venality, economic proficiency, and internationalism will ring a few bells. But one does not find much zealous proselytizing or military prowess among Jewish diasporas these days. Further, Bachrach makes little mention of usury and almost no mention of economic exploitation or cultural degeneracy. Anything resembling the Jewish revolutionary spirit which caused so much damage in the twentieth century also does not make an appearance. Could it be that such stereotypically Jewish traits were less common back then in that part of the world than they are today? Perhaps one reason why Western European Jews and Christians got along relatively well during this period was because these Jews were somehow genetically different than modern Jews? Bachrach never mentions whether he was writing about the Sephardim or the Ashkenazim. Perhaps the evidence from that period was too murky in 1977 to make such distinctions?

In any event, with Early Medieval Jewish Policy in Western Europe Bernard Bachrach has given us a highly useful work with which to refute the pervasive lachrymose school of Jewish historiography.

[1] Bernard S. Bachrach, “The Jewish community in the Later Roman Empire as seen in the Codex Theodosianus,” in “To See Ourselves as Others See Us”: Christians, Jews, “Others” in Late Antiquity, ed. J. Neusner & E. S. Frerichs (Scholars Press).

Nick Fuentes on Trump and Elon

December 29, 2024/7 Comments/in General/by Nick Fuentes

From Nick Fuentes Telegram account. t.me/nickjfuentes

My rough sketch of what Trump and Elon are up to on X is that American elites seem to be gearing up for the emerging great power confrontation with China, a process which has been greatly accelerated by the supply-chain crisis during the COVID recession, the War in Ukraine, growing naval imbalance with China in the Pacific, and the drift of middle powers away from the United States.

To that end— elites seem to recognize that the domestic unrest created by the culture war has become detrimental and that wokeism, in particular the DEI/ESG agenda, is holding back economic growth and creating a competency crisis.

Environmentalism and other concerns are holding back full exploitation of US energy resources which are required to power technologies like cryptocurrency and AI, and which also act as a geopolitical lever against petrostates like Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela.

Thus, the foreign policy establishment seems to be covertly backing this cultural shift away from Left-Wing wokeism and towards a libertarian “effective accelerationism.”

In short— these guys like Joe Rogan, Sean Maguire, Marc Andreessen, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Elon Musk are NOT ideologically aligned. They are not conservative, traditional, Christian, Right-Wing, nationalist, or sympathetic to pro-White politics.

They are cosmopolitan liberals who have turned against the ideologically leftist elements of the Democratic machine which are holding back the economic power-base of the United States, specifically human capital and energy.

This is why they are feminist, pro-gay, soft pro-trans, pro-immigration, and quite clearly hostile to radical right wing politics.

A brief summary of the MAGA Civil War:

On December 22, Trump appointed Sriram Krishnan as a senior adviser on artificial intelligence. Sriram Krishnan is a naturalized citizen who initially came to the United States from India on a work visa that he obtained through Microsoft.

Previously, Krishnan worked as a general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen-Horowitz and served as its ambassador to Twitter after Musk’s acquisition, which was partially financed by Marc Andreessen.

Krishnan is the latest Trump appointee drawn from a group of Silicon Valley venture capitalists who call themselves “Little Tech,” mostly in the orbit of Elon Musk and Peter Thiel.

This appointment drew widespread criticism from pro-Trump influencers over previous statements by Krishnan in support of increasing the cap on greencards.

The “Little Tech” or “Tech Bro” faction, including Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, David Sacks, and Sean Maguire, rallied to Krishnan’s defense on X, voicing support for high-skilled legal immigration and accusing his detractors of being motivated by racism.

Yesterday and today, the brand accounts “@ConservativeOGs” and “@ProjectGroyp” were stripped of their verification and features, subsequently their affiliate accounts lost their verification and features like increased character limit.

Earlier today, many of the affiliate accounts under the brand “@ProjectGroyp,” including Dalton Clodfelter, Tyler Russell, Ray, ClassicsGroyp, KaizerRev, Pinesap, and Bookcat, were permanently suspended.

At the same time that the suspensions occurred, Elon posted that “reply spammers” were being nuked as he composed the post. @ProjectGroyp received an email from X saying that the account was unverified for engaging in platform manipulation.

Earlier tonight, Elon posted that, being an H-1B immigrant himself, he would “go to war” against anyone who opposes the H-1B program.

This is an extremely disturbing and unfortunate development.

This is precisely the scenario that I warned everybody about over the last 6 months and what motivated me to declare a second Groyper War on the Trump campaign over the issue of legal immigration and the Middle East conflict. This is also precisely why I didn’t vote for Trump.

It became clear by May and June 2024, at the same time that Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, that two distinct but related monied interests were reluctantly coalescing around Trump to solidify their influence over a government which would almost inevitably change hands in the election.

In May 2024, Miriam Adelson signaled her support for Trump and a promise of +$100 million in exchange for commitments on the West Bank and then in June, on the All In podcast co-hosted by Musk ally David Sacks, Trump committed to a policy of “stapling greencards to diplomas.” Musk went on to contribute nearly $300 million to Trump.

At that time, I was highly critical of both developments and raised the alarm. All of it was either downplayed or ignored by pro-Trump influencers who insisted that Trump’s commitments to Israel were fabricated by a “Left-Wing Israeli blog” (that’s Ha’aretz by the way), and that Trump’s immigration remark was an “off the cuff,” “throwaway remark,” which he didn’t really mean.

On the contrary, these were very significant, intentional concessions that were given desperately in exchange for campaign money and completely forfeited any claim to “America First” foreign policy or immigration policy, and it all happened right in the open.

These so-called “tech bros” like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, David Sacks, Sean Maguire, Vivek Ramaswamy, Jacob Helberg, and Marc Andreessen do not share any of our values, as I said repeatedly. Most of them are immigrants, most of them are either brown or Jewish, many of them are gay, and all of them are non-Christian.

They were not conservative on social issues, they are hardcore Zionists, they are not ethnic nationalists, and they always supported legal immigration. And slowly but surely they began to take over Mar-a-Lago after the David Sacks “Little Tech” fundraiser which he hosted for Trump in June.

Throughout the year, pro-Trump shills reassured the base that this was a “dream team,” that these tech moguls came around to Trump because they must have experienced an epiphany and converted ideologically to Trumpism, they downplayed all concerns about this arrangement.

They insisted that any contention between the base and the donors could be resolved “once Trump won the election.” Well, here we are. Trump won the election. And now all of these appointees and donors are threatening to go to war with opponents of H-1B and excise them from the party.

How are you supposed to push back now? They already got your votes. So what now? Your plan is to “pressure” the administration by “speaking out” … where? On Twitter? The platform owned by them? On Rumble? The platform owned by them? Great plan.

Now it’s the Christmas before Trump takes office and Elon is calling for all “racists” who want “DEI for lazy, mediocre white Americans” to be cut out “root and stem” from the GOP and is apparently getting started by banning many of them on Twitter.

What do the Trump shills like Mike Cernovich and Jonathan Keeperman advise now? Go check their Twitter. They say we just better not make Elon mad or insult him and if we “push back” we must do it in between showering praise on Elon. I’m not exaggerating, that’s what they are doing.

And this is just the beginning. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, because I did. This is what happens when you let Jews do your thinking for you and you get swept up in emotions. Our people have been outmaneuvered politically for GENERATIONS because of shit like this.

For now, all we can do is hunker down and ride out another four years.

Rumor has it that this big “AI push” is something being foisted upon Trump by Jacob Helberg, who has his ear. Helberg is the senior advisor to Alex Karp, the hysterical Jewish co-founder of Palantir. Karp is the guy who says his company is responsible for stopping the Far Right in Europe and his biggest fear is being defenestrated by Christian Nationalists for being Jewish.

Palantir is an intelligence contractor which exclusively served the CIA from 2000-2008 and was mostly like created as a mechanism to privatize a CIA program. It was co-founded by Karp and Peter Thiel. Helberg was the first of the tech moguls in 2024 to max out his contribution to the Trump joint-fundraising committee in March, the others soon followed. Helberg was a lifelong Democrat until October 7th when he changed his party affiliation.

Then, it was JD Vance who arranged for the Silicon Valley fundraiser hosted by David Sacks back in June. JD Vance is a lifelong protege of Peter Thiel and his political career started in 2022 when Thiel cut him a check for $15 million to run for Senate and then secured for him the Trump endorsement in the Republican primary.

David Sacks was a key part of the Paypal predecessor Confinity, which was cofounded by Peter Thiel, and later merged with Elon Musk’s payment company to form Paypal. Sacks was an angel investor in SpaceX and Palantir; he also hosted a fundraiser for Vance in 2022 with Keith Rabois, Jacob Helberg’s husband.

Helberg is a Jewish immigrant from Europe

Elon is an immigrant from South Africa

Thiel is an immigrant from South Africa

Sacks is a Jewish immigrant from South Africa

I WAS RIGHT.

YOU WERE WRONG.

APOLOGIZE. NOW.

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YOU FORGOT THE NUMBER ONE RULE OF POLITICS: DETERMINE WHETHER THEY ARE JEWISH.

NY Post: Trump supports immigration visas backed by Musk: ‘I have many H-1B visas on my properties’

December 28, 2024/3 Comments/in General/by Kevin MacDonald

“I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them,” Trump said by phone, referring to the H-1B program, which permits companies to hire foreign workers in specialty occupations.

“I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program,” added Trump, who restricted access to foreign worker visas in his first administration and has been critical of the program in the past.

Musk and other tech barons argued this week that the H-1B visa program is critical to ensuring American companies can find highly skilled labor which may not be easily available in the U.S. labor force and must be expanded.

Trump’s Saturday comments come a day after Musk vowed to go to “war” on the issue, telling one mocking opponent to go “f–k yourself.”

“Stop trying to optimize something that shouldn’t exist,” a line often used by Musk, Mackey wrote. “Let’s optimize H-1B,” he sarcastically added.

Musk fired back: “The reason I’m in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla, and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H1B.”

“Take a big step back and F–K YOURSELF in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend,” he added, paragraphing a memorable line from the 2008 comedy “Tropic Thunder.”

The tech billionaire has been criticized by MAGA diehards including Laura Loomer and Ann Coulter — who say the H-1B visa program has been abused and needs to be sharply curtailed.

And influential voices around Trump have publicly begun turning on Musk as well.

“Someone please notify ‘Child Protective Services’— need to do a ‘wellness check’ on this toddler,” former White House Counselor Steve Bannon jeered at the X boss in a Saturday post to his account on Gettr.

Musk said his passion for the issue stemmed from wanting America to remain competitive by attracting “the top ~0.1% of engineering talent” which he said was essential for “America to keep winning.”

What do you think? Post a comment.

Vivek Ramaswamy, who is slated to run the Department of Government Efficiency with Musk, backed Musk and offered a critique of American society.

“American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence,” Ramaswamy wrote on X.