Jewish Attitudes on Free Speech

Philip Giraldi on the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act

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From Philip Giraldi, “Fake News Versus No News” on Unz.com:

… The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act is intended to give the Department of Education investigatory authority over “anti-Jewish incidents” on America’s college campuses. Such “incidents” are not limited to religious bigotry, with the examples cited in the bill’s text including criticism of Israel and claiming that the holocaust was “exaggerated.” It is a thinly disguised assault on the Boycott Divest and Sanction (BDS) movement, which is non-violent, does not criticize Jews as a religion or ethnicity, and is actually supported by many Jewish American who are concerned about Israel’s apartheid regime.

The Anti-Semitism bill makes Jews and Jewish interests a legally protected class, immune from any criticism. “Free speech” means in practice that you can burn an American flag, sell pornography, attack Christianity in the vilest terms or castigate the government in Washington all you want but criticizing Israel is off limits if you want to avoid falling into the clutches of the legal system. The Act is a major step forward in effectively making any expressed opposition to Israeli actions a hate crime and is similar to punitive legislation that has been enacted in twenty-two states as well as in Canada. It is strongly supported by the Israel Lobby, which quite likely drafted it, and is seeking to use legal challenges to delegitimize and eliminate any opposition to the policies of the state of Israel.

As the Act is clearly intended to restrict First Amendment rights if they are perceived as impacting on broadly defined Jewish sensitivities, it should be opposed on that basis alone, but it is very popular in Congress, which is de facto owned by the Israel Lobby. That the legislation is not being condemned or even discussed in the generally liberal media tells you everything you need to know about the amazing power of one particular unelected and unaccountable lobby in the U.S.

And there is always Iran to worry about. If the United States can successfully avoid a war with Russia, a conflict with the Mullahs could have major consequences even if the all-powerful U.S. military successfully rolls over its Iranian counterpart in less than a week. Iran is physically and in terms of population much larger than Iraq and it has a strong national identity. An attack by Washington would produce a powerful reaction, unleashing terrorist resources and destabilizing an economically and politically important region of the world for years to come. Currently, the nuclear agreement with Iran provides some measure of stability and also pushes backwards any possible program by Tehran to build a weapon. Iran does not threaten the United States, so why walk away from the agreement as some of Trump’s advisors urge? Or violate the agreement’s terms as the U.S. Congress seems to be doing by extending and tightening the sanctions regime with its just passed Iran Sanctions Extension Act? Look no further than the Israel Lobby. Hobbling Iran, a regional competitor, is a possible Israeli interest that should have nothing to do with the United States but yet again the United States government carries the water for the extreme right wing Netanyahu regime.

Israel for its part has welcomed the Trump election by building 500 new and completely illegal settler homes in what was once Arab East Jerusalem. Trump has surrounded himself with advocates for Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s expectation that he will have a free hand in dealing with those pesky Palestinians is probably correct. I would like to think that Donald Trump will unpleasantly surprise him based on actual American rather than Israeli interests but am not optimistic.

Indeed, deference to perceived Israeli interests enforced by the Israel Lobby and media permeates the entire American foreign policy and national security structure. Congressman Keith Ellison who is seeking to become Democratic National Committee Chairman is being called an anti-Semite for “implying U.S. policy in the region [the Middle East] favored Israel at the expense of Muslim-majority countries, remarks ADL’s CEO Jonathan Greenblatt described as ‘deeply disturbing and disqualifying.’ ” Donald Trump and his senior counselor Steve Bannon have also both been called anti-Semites and several other potential GOP appointees have been subjected to the media’s fidelity-to-Israel litmus test.

The recently nominated Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who can hardly be called a moderate when it comes to Iran, has also been labeled an anti-Semite by the usual players. Why? Because in 2013 he told Wolf Blitzer “So we’ve got to work on [peace talks] with a sense of urgency. I paid a military security price every day as a commander of CENTCOM because the Americans were seen as biased in support of Israel, and [because of this] moderate Arabs couldn’t be with us because they couldn’t publicly support those who don’t show respect for Arab Palestinians.”

Mattis will no doubt be reminded of his remarks when he is up for Senate confirmation. A predecessor Chuck Hagel was mercilessly grilled by Senators over his reported comment that the “Jewish lobby” intimidates congressmen. But ironically nearly everyone who is not an Israel-firster who is involved in U.S. foreign and security policy knows that aggressive Israeli colonization of the Palestinian West Bank and its siege of Gaza contribute greatly to terrorism against the United States, since Washington is regularly blamed for enabling Netanyahu. When General David Petraeus said pretty much the same thing as Mattis back in 2010 he was forced to “explain” his comments, retract them and then grovel before he was eventually given a pass by the Lobby.

And there is considerable self-censorship related to the alleged sensitivity of “Jewish issues,” not only in the media. I recently attended a conference on the Iraq invasion of 2003 at which the role of Israel manifested through its controlled gaggle of American legislators and bureaucrats as a factor in going to war was not even mentioned. It was as if it would be impolite or, dare I say, anti-Semitic, to do so even though the Israeli role was hardly hidden. Former Bush administration senior official Philip Zelikow has admitted that protecting Israel was the principal reason why the U.S. invaded Iraq and others have speculated that without the persistent neocons’ and Israel’s prodding Washington might not have gone to war at all. That is apparently what then Secretary of State Colin Powell also eventually came around to believe.

So let’s stop talking about what Russia is doing to the United States, which is relatively speaking very little, and start admitting that the lopsided and completely deferential relationship with Israel is the actual central problem in America’s foreign policy. Will the media do that? Not a chance. They would rather obsess about fake news and blame Putin.

 

America as a Promised Land for Jews: Threatened by Muslims, Israel and White Identity?

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Note: This is an edited, linked version of my talk at the NPI conference in Washington, DC, November 19, 2016.

I am going to talk about Jews. It’s not that I relish doing this, but somebody’s got to do it, and it’s definitely a subject that needs to be addressed as best we can, fairly and factually, and with the understanding that we are not talking about all Jews but about activist Jews and the general thrust of the organized Jewish community.

Beginning in the nineteenth century, Jews saw America as a promised land, whose “streets are paved with gold” as they often wrote to their families in Europe. Jews were therefore staunch advocates of unrestricted immigration. Writing in 1914, University of Wisconsin sociologist Edward A. Ross believed that liberal immigration policy was exclusively a Jewish issue and he quoted the prominent author and Zionist pioneer Israel Zangwill who articulated the idea that America is an ideal place to achieve Jewish interests.

America has ample room for all the six million [Russian Jews]; any one of her states could absorb them. And next to being in a country of their own, there could be no better fate for them than to be together in a land of civil and religious liberty, of whose Constitution Christianity forms no part and where their collective votes would practically guarantee them against future persecution. (Israel Zangwill, in Ross 1914, 144)

Zangwill wrote a famous play called The Melting Pot that premiered in 1908 in Washington, DC, the heart of American political culture. What’s interesting is his idea that America was a land where all the old ethnic hatreds would be abolished in a grand symphony of ethnic harmony. Sound familiar? In the play a Jewish immigrant fleeing Russian pogroms comes to America, writes a great symphony and marries a wealthy Christian woman. Audiences were wildly enthusiastic:

There were cries for Zangwill after every scene, and President Roosevelt himself joined in the applause. During the play he sat next to Mrs. Zangwill “and positively raved.” When Zangwill took his bows afterward, “the President shouted across the theater, ‘that’s a great play, Mr. Zangwill.’ “2 … Throughout the drama [the Jewish character] argues that the United States is a land of universal love and brotherhood. He sees it as a place in which the divisions among men will soon disappear. … Within the stirring and seething of the vast cauldron, the “Great Alchemist” was melting Celt and Latin, Slav and Teuton, Greek and Syrian, black and yellow. He was fusing together East and West, North and South, pole and equator, crescent and cross.”[1]

So there you have it. Crescent and Cross. Black, Yellow and White all coming together in blissful harmony — less than 50 years after the Civil War. The reception given the play, and remember this was over a century ago, shows that this optimistic image appealed to many Americans—prominent Americans like President Teddy Roosevelt. Read more

Donald Trump, Judge Curiel, and (((Mean Tweets))): The Reality of Ethnic Identification in Multicultural America

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Strong ethnic identifications for non-Whites remain controversial in multi-cultural America. On the cuckservative right, such identifications are half-heartedly condemned because they like to imagine that an ideal America should be blind to ethnicity as a way of justifying their non-opposition to massive non-White immigration (“after all, they’re just like us”) and their own lack of identification as Whites — even though this is a sure-fire recipe for White oblivion in the long run.

The intellectual gyrations on the left are even more laughable: They encourage non-Whites to have strong ethnic identifications and to organize to pursue their interests. In fact, such identifications are the key to success in a wide range of fields, certainly including academia, the law, and politics, and there are plenty of well-paying jobs running ethnic activist organizations. Being known as an ethnic activist and being a member of ethnic activist organizations are keys to advancement. For the MSM and the rest of the left, seeing things from an ethnic perspective is a positive virtue for non-Whites. So it’s not surprising  that, as Peter Brimelow notes, Sonia Sotomayor’s “wise Latina” comment was not sufficient to derail her appointment to the Supreme Court and indeed was applauded by the elite media. So making decisions based on ethnic identity is just fine.

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Paul-Éric Blanrue and the Jews: From Celebration to Censorship

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Paul-Eric Blanrue

Paul-Éric Blanrue

Paul-Éric Blanrue is a French writer whose most recent books have documented Jewish power networks in France, especially their relationship with the center-right under Nicolas Sarkozy and with the “far-right” Front National under the Le Pen family.[1] The thesis of these books, meticulously documented, is that Jewish influence in elite French political and cultural circles is enormous. Blanrue quotes countless French political leaders and commentators remarking upon this, but also shows how, if any are critical, they are swiftly punished.

Elite political and cultural power in France is thus distorted by Jewish perceived interests and ethnic biases, to the detriment of non-Jewish groups. The native French suffer demonization at the hands of a holocaust-centric memorial culture, the de facto exclusion of French nationalists from normal democratic politics, and the de jure censorship of indigenous European advocates, race-realists, and revisionists. Arabs and Muslims also suffer at home with a noxious combination of continued immigration and race-baiting, and abroad since at least 2007 with unconditional French support for Israel and the American Empire against the Palestinians, Libyans, and Syrians. Read more

Friends of Israel: Old and New Patterns in British Politics

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Two interesting patterns became apparent after the recent general election in Britain. One of them has been extensively discussed in the mainstream media. The other hasn’t been discussed at all. Why not? Because it involves Britain’s most powerful ethnic group and that group intends to maintain its stranglehold on British politics. Power that can’t be discussed is also power that can’t be challenged.

Key qualities of the left

First, let’s look at the pattern that could be discussed in the mainstream: the resounding success of the Scottish National Party, which held six of fifty-nine seats in Scotland before the election. Now it holds fifty-six. A huge Labour majority has evaporated in a single day. The fiasco is further proof that the left doesn’t understand the societies it wants to control. As I pointed out in “The Toxicity of Truth,” parties like Labour are interested in power, not in facts, logic or objective reality. But their insatiable greed for power is sometimes thwarted by another of their key qualities: their boundless incompetence.

Mini-Obama: Nicola Sturgeon

Mini-Obama: Nicola Sturgeon

Labour gave Scotland more and more autonomy in the confident belief that this would “kill Scottish nationalism stone dead.” They thought they were injecting cyanide into the SNP. In fact, they were injecting steroids. Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP’s authoritarian, high-testosterone female leader, became a kind of mini-Obama during the election campaign. Just as millions of deluded narcissists in Europe wished they could vote for Obama in 2008, so thousands of deluded narcissists in England wished they could vote for Sturgeon in 2015. After all, she wants to put “equality and fairness” at the heart of Scottish politics, and she favours immigration and refugee policy that would only speed the Third Worldization of the U.K. What could be nobler than that? Read more

Moshe Kantor’s Campaign to Stalinize Europe

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Moshe Kantor has a dream — a dream of a Stalinist Europe:

Dr. Moshe Kantor, President of the European Jewish Congress (EJC), said that Europe is on the cusp of “a New Dark Ages” during the opening of the Fourth International “Let My People Live!” Forum, held in Prague on the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“Recent atrocities in Paris, Brussels and Toulouse are visible manifestations of the deep structural problems embodied in European society today,” Dr. Kantor said. “This, coupled with the continuing electoral successes of extremist parties in Europe, demonstrated in recent elections across the continent, shows that unfortunately, Europe is on a dangerous path. We need practical solutions and so we have prioritised the adoption of the European Framework National Statute for the Promotion of Tolerance.”

This Model Law, drafted by leading European experts and legislators, and supported by the EJC, defines the limits of tolerance, which is the demand for security. This is intended to be a pan-European law that for the first time deals with not only the general commitment to tolerance, but defines the values that need preserving and the limitation of tolerance towards minority groups who risk the security of other minorities and of their host countries. …

“In the immediate term, intelligence-gathering and sharing across Europe must increase. It is now well known that all of the perpetrators of the attacks in Paris were on the radars of intelligence and police officials. The question of prevention must be readdressed, because the current paradigm is simply not working,” Dr. Kantor said. “Police and law enforcement also need to be strengthened. This includes actively enforcing laws against incitement and anti-Semitic speech, and taking a firmer approach against those who promote hate and violence.

“Never before, has Europe’s intellectual elite joined with the continent’s senior political leadership and top-legal experts within the same conference to genuinely address the very real threats faced by all Europe’s citizens. Now we must transfer these important words into real action.” Kantor said. (EJC President Moshe Kantor: Europe on the Cusp of ‘New Dark Ages’ at Forum to Combat anti-Semitism, Racism and Radical Jihadism, European Jewish Congress website, 28th January 2015)

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Clampdown on Social Media in Britain

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When several thousand Muslims crowded into Downing Street to protest the latest anti-Muslim cartoons published by Charlie Hebdo magazine, it was an angry and indignant protest.  But as with gunman breaking into a Paris office and murdering cartoonists, it was a display of powerlessness and political impotence more than anything else.

If you wanted to see real power at work, you only needed to just click on the BBC where it was revealed that an All Parliamentary Inquiry into Anti-semitism had resolved to introduce legislation outlawing “anti-semitism” on social media.

The cross-party inquiry wants prosecutors to examine whether prevention orders like those used to restrict sex offenders’ internet access could be used against “anti-semites”. With the weight and power of the organised Jewish lobby behind it, this now stands a good chance of becoming law and thus another avenue of criticism about Jewish power could be about to be closed off in Britain.

Predictably, the BBC put an optimal spin on this, saying that the Muslims too could benefit as they are under attack from Islamophobes. All this is less than two years after the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby and only a month after Charlie Hebdo.

Indeed, the environment for free speech of all kinds continues to deteriorate in the UK. Just today the Guardian reports that police are questioning newsdealers to get the names and addresses of people who bought the first post-massacre issue of Charlie Hebdo.

After demanding that the laws of the land be changed for the convenience of a community of less than a quarter of a million, the Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis continued to up his demands. He wants “a government fund to be set up to cover the costs of security at synagogue. Fresh research on identifying and explaining anti-semitic language and finally, guidance for teachers on how to handle the Middle East conflict in the classroom” — the last presumably a plea to make the talking points of the Israeli right part of the British school curriculum. Read more