Eretz Israel is our unforgettable historic homeland...The Jews who will it shall achieve their State...And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind. (Theodor Herzl, DerJudenstaat, 1896)

We offer peace and amity to all the neighbouring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all. The State of Israel is ready to contribute its full share to the peaceful progress and development of the Middle East.
(From Proclamation of the State of Israel, 5 Iyar 5708; 14 May 1948)

With a liberal democratic political system operating under the rule of law, a flourishing market economy producing technological innovation to the benefit of the wider world, and a population as educated and cultured as anywhere in Europe or North America, Israel is a normal Western country with a right to be treated as such in the community of nations.... For the global jihad, Israel may be the first objective. But it will not be the last. (Friends of Israel Initiative)

Saturday 15 March 2014

Mondoweiss & the Far Right?

This is a guest blog by Professor William D. Rubinstein.

He writes:

Mondoweiss, the fanatically anti-Zionist website run by Jews, has many open and demonstrable links (unsurprisingly) with the extreme Left, especially with the Center for Economic Research and Social Change (CERSC), which publishes the International Socialist Review and sponsored the “Socialism 2012” conference.

Significantly, Mondoweiss now appears to be developing links with the extreme Right.  A blog posted by Philip Weiss (co-editor of the site, for whom it is named) on 9 March this year, headed “Conservatives for Palestine” , gave an account of the “National Summit to Reassess the U.S.-Israel Special Relationship”, which he attended and addressed.

The Conference was apparently wholly the work of extreme conservatives, ranging from neo-isolationists and old line “Foreign Office Arabists” to out-and-out ultra-right antisemites and Holocaust deniers.

After conceding that “the conference had its share of lunacy” Weiss asked in his blog:
"Does anyone really think that we can build a freedom coalition [sic] without these folks? Certainly we won’t unpack the special relationship with Israel without reexamining the human cost to the United States. That includes the attack on the USS Liberty ..., the 9/11 attacks, the murder of Robert Kennedy.'
I will return to these points below, but it would be useful first to consider the organisers of this conference.

Weiss notes that Grant Smith and Alison Weir “did a fabulous job of organizing the conference”. When I first read this, I feared that the latter might be the Alison Weir who is a well-known British author of popular histories, including such works as The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Traitors of the Tower, who had unaccountably developed a side interest in Israel/Palestine.

(Re the Balfour Declaration)
Thankfully, this is someone else entirely, an American of the same name, who has long had a fanatically anti-Israel blog and who has recently become head of the so-called Council for the National Interest.

Despite its neutral-sounding title, this Council has been described by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) as “an anti-Israel organisation that opposes U.S. aid to Israel and disseminates demonizing propaganda about Israel to academics, politicians, and other audiences”.

The flavour of Alison Weir’s stance on Israel (readily available on her blog) may be seen in her posting “Israel Organ Trafficking and Theft: from Moldova to Palestine”, which gained international notoriety when it first appeared. (It is still there.)

 It quotes Nancy Scheper-Hughes (Professor of Medical Anthropology at the University of California Berkeley) as saying, about the international trade in allegedly stolen or bought organs: "Israel is at the top.  It has tentacles reaching worldwide."  Israel's motives, Weir quotes Scheper-Hughes as explaining, are “Revenge, restitution – reparation for the Holocaust. ...We’re going to get every single kidney and liver and heart that we can. The world owes it to us.’”

(The Jews have certainly diversified from the old days, when all they did was poison the wells.  And it is refreshing to know that all the Jews do now is to steal donor organs; in years gone by they kidnapped and murdered gentile boys at Passover, using their blood to make matzoh.)

So much for one of the principal organisers of the Conference.

Although his remarks are somewhat cryptic, Mr Weiss has apparently bought into the gutter conspiracy theories about the assassination of Robert Kennedy and about 9/11.  I frankly don’t know what precisely he has in mind regarding Kennedy.  I assume he is referring to the fact that assassin Sirhan Sirhan (who is still in prison, 46 years later), a Palestinian, is said to have acted because Kennedy, in a televised debate, promised to supply arms to Israel. And I assume that Weiss thinks there were dark forces (i.e., the Zionists) behind this claim.  What prompts the “9/11 attacks” remark I leave to your imagination.

Everyone knows that antisemitic conspiracy theorists claim that Jews were somehow behind the attacks (or the US government) – not Al Quaeda.  The “USS Liberty” reference is to an American naval ship which was accidentally attacked by Israeli forces during the 1967 Six Day War, in the mistaken belief it was an Egyptian vessel.  Thirty-four Americans were killed.  Israel immediately apologised and paid compensation.

Extreme rightwing and antisemitic sources (like this one) have brought up this tragic incident time and again, even after nearly half a century.  (They apparently can’t think of anything more recent, and of course need something to weigh against the countless Arab and Muslim terrorist attacks on American targets.

Mondoweiss now appears to be buying into this cesspool of madness and crackpot dementia.

It will be interesting to see how the site’s core supporters – of whom it is safe to say that 95 percent are on the extreme Left – react.

They say that the extremes meet.  This will be a test case.

16 comments:

  1. Undoubtedly Weiss, who was merely unstable, has now jumped the shark entirely.

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  2. You can see the bilious hatred oozing from that lemon-faced hater in the picture, and smell it right through the Internet.

    Mondoweiss is "anti-Zionist"? LOL. That's one polite way of putting it.

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  3. How they react? Seriously? "Rabbi" Michael Lerner of Tikkun stood shoulder to should with the American Nazi Party a decade or so ago at an event at Chapel Hill, NC sponsored by ANSWER protesting the war in Iraq.

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  4. Yair Rosenberg tweeted this video from the Q&A
    That moment when your anti-Israel movement turns into your old fashioned anti-Semitic movement
    https://twitter.com/Yair_Rosenberg/status/444488932697579520
    The video is from from Gilad Atzmon's YT account?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS73ufRIoYc

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  5. Another video from the same "conference" as broadcast on CSPAN.
    Author Warns of Racist Movement in Israel Looking for ‘Right to Kill Non-Jewish Children’
    "Author and syndicated columnist Allan Brownfeld, speaking at Institute for Research’s Middle East Policy conference on Friday, warned the audience of the rise of “racism” in Israel against non-Jews. He said that there is a popular movement in Israel which takes its cues from a popular book, “financed by the Israeli government,” arguing for the right of Jews to kill non-Jews. Brownfeld added that this extremism dates back to early 19th Century Europe."

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  6. Wow, yes, Ian - what a couple of heavy-duty antisemites in that Conference video, especially the woman in the audience.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS73ufRIoYc

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  7. Over time I've come to view political and societal outlooks as a circle... as opposed to a line running left and right.

    At the utmost Top of the circle are the Centrists. As you roll down right or left, or East and West you get more "right" or "left".

    Once you get due South-East you begin to get FAR RIGHT Nationalistic & Religious Intolerants.

    Once you get due South-West you begin to get the LEFTIST Commie Holier than thou nutjobs.

    When both LEFTISTS and the FAR RIGHT meet dead center at the very bottom, they meet in the ugly sickening embrace of Anti-Semites...

    ~Alexi

    PS. Chag Sameach. ;-)

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  8. Saw some of this conference when it was telecast live and wondered how could CSpan televise it.

    Mondoweiss is so on the fringe that it has next to zero effect other than to show itself as a parody of what it claims to represent. No one that cares for human rights could ever be so outraged to be filled with pure hate.

    The results of the "test" will be informative, but the extremism and irrelevance will persist.

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  9. Many thanks to Professor William D. Rubinstein for this post.

    Purim sameach !

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  10. TRANSCRIPT: A.W on The Free American Hour,
    August 25, 2010
    http://goo.gl/NkD0Yv
    .
    SCREENSHOT: A.W on her Facebook page,
    March 5, 2014
    http://i.imgur.com/aXJ2Yxs.jpg

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  11. Mondoweiss has had links to the far right for awhile: it has received $80,000 in donations from Ron Unz, former publisher of The American Conservative (co-founded by Pat Buchanan):
    http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/12/12/new-york-times-others-praised-anti-semitic-and-slanderous-article/
    Unz concocted an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory falsely claiming that Harvard discriminates against non-Jewish whites in favor of Jews (because, of course, the Jews "control" Harvard).

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  12. Thanks to all commenters - I'm sure WDR will read these comments with interest.

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  13. William Rubinstein18 March 2014 at 10:53

    Thanks, one and all. Bill Rubinstein

    ReplyDelete

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