Showing posts with label Anders Breivik. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anders Breivik. Show all posts

2 January 2024

An Open Letter to Stephen Fry whose 'Alternative' Xmas Message on 'Antisemitism' Flew in the Face of Everything He Once Stood For

Fry's Message Was an Embrace of the British Establishment’s Support for Genocide in Gaza under the Pretext of Opposition to Antisemitism


Stephen Fry’s Xmas Message on Behalf of the British Establishment

Dear Stephen,

As you are all too aware, ‘anti-Semitism’ is the standard defence, the only defence, that Israel has for its genocide and sadism in Gaza today. ‘Anti-Semitism’ is the stock response to torture, imprisonment and abuse of Palestinian children and the creation of a state which Netanyahu boasts is a state, not for all its citizens but only those who are Jewish.

When I refer to sadism I mean things like Israel’s removal of anaesthetics from aid lorries resulting in over 1,000 Palestinian children having to undergo amputations without anaesthetic. This is what your ‘Alternative’ Xmas Message was condoning.

Fortunately we were privileged to have a genuine Alternative to the Establishment’s Xmas that you delivered and it was by a fellow Jewish comedian, Alexei Sayle.

 Alexei had a few choice words for you and it is this that I am pleased to publish. As an aside you mentioned how, as a Gay man attitudes in Britain, especially amongst those you hang out with, have improved immeasurably in the past 25 years. I wonder whether the radicalism that was engendered all those years ago led you to support the Palestinians whereas acceptance by the Establishment of your sexuality has resulted in you turning your back on the oppressed.


Alexei Sayle’s Xmas Message

There has been a trend in recent years for elderly Jewish comedians to bloviate without going through any artistic process on various topics....

Now the other elderly Jewish comedians follow the line that entirely plays into the establishment ruling class narrative. They are an alternative to nothing. ..

One of the elderly Jewish comedians has urged us to stand with the Jewish people. Well fair enough.

The Jews I’m going to stand with are those of the Jewish bloc who I’ve marched with on all the pro-Palestine demonstrations. Over 1000 Jews and we’ve always been greeted with love, kindness and support. ...

We were marching with thousands of people – Muslim, Christian, Atheist, Black, white, brown, gay, straight, trans you name it. Everyone was marching together wanting an end to war and slaughter. In their leaflet the young Jews said ‘instead of looking to Israel to make Jews safe, we look instead to solidarity, freedom, justice and equality for Palestinians and Jews everywhere’...

If you see anybody advocating for Israel on the TV or radio. One of their repellent spokespeople say, then they will be lying because that’s what they do.  They lie and they lie and they lie.... So let’s keep Palestine in our hearts and minds this Xmas.

As Caitline Johnson writes concerning the ‘anti-Semitism’ smear against those who oppose Israeli war crimes:

If I saw someone murdering a child, there are many things I might say and do, but the very last thing that would ever occur to me would be to wonder what religion he is. It’s the silliest, most nonsensical narrative in mainstream politics and media today.

Your ‘new’ anti-Semitism has nothing to do with traditional anti-Semitism. Its sole concern is about defending Israel – right or wrong.

Anti-Semitism historically was hostility, prejudice or discrimination against Jews. In 2005 a campaign was launched by Israeli and Zionist academics to redefine anti-Semitism as anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel. The resulting was the IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism, a definition which anti-Semites like Victor Orban of Hungary supports.

When Stephen Fry was an Anti-Racist

In February 2007 you signed the Founding Statement of Independent Jewish Voices. You were number 217 on the list of signatories, I was number 259. A total of 735 Jews signed the declaration which said:

1. Human rights are universal and indivisible and should be upheld without exception. This is as applicable in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories as it is elsewhere....

5. The battle against anti-Semitism is vital and is undermined whenever opposition to Israeli government policies is automatically branded as anti-Semitic.

Instead of standing up for Palestinians who are being massacred in Gaza, you have chosen to support their killers. This is shameful. You are famous as a comedian but what you have done is no joke. By propagating a false narrative of increasing ‘anti-Semitism’ you have sought to distract attention from the 21,000 who have been murdered, including 9,000+ children, on to British Jews whose idea of discrimination is not getting a good seat in a restaurant.


 

You’ve held hands with those who torture children, bomb hospitals & ambulances & murder church worshippers. It wasn’t always like this:

In April 2008 you signed a letter with 104 other Jews, including me, headed We're not celebrating Israel's anniversary. The letter said:

We cannot celebrate the birthday of a state founded on terrorism, massacres and the dispossession of another people from their land. We cannot celebrate the birthday of a state that even now engages in ethnic cleansing, that violates international law, that is inflicting a monstrous collective punishment on the civilian population of Gaza and that continues to deny to Palestinians their human rights and national aspirations.

We will celebrate when Arab and Jew live as equals in a peaceful Middle East.

How is it that in the intervening years you have parted company with anti-racist Jews in favour of racist Jews (Zionists)? Why do you think that neo-Nazi Tommy Robinson, ex-member of the holocaust denying BNP wanted to join the Zionist march against anti-Semitism recently? He says he is a Zionist. I think we can believe that.

Zionism’s Anti-Semitic Supporters

Have you ever wondered why neo-Nazis and White Supremacists admire Zionism and Israel? Anders Breivik, who murdered 77 young members of Norway’s Labour Party in 2011 was an ardent Zionist .

Or neo-Nazi Richard Spencer, founder of the alt-Right, who organised the ‘Jews Will Not Replace Us’ march at Charlottesville. That hasn’t stopped him claiming that he is a White Zionist. 

What is it that attracts racists and anti-Semites from Trump and Bannon to Bolsonaro and Orban, to the Israeli state if not its ethno-nationalism and Islamaphobia? Why is it that the fascist Geert Wilders, who has just won the election in Netherlands, sees Israel as the last defence of civilisation?

By supporting the Zionists’ false accusation of ‘anti-Semitism’ you have also joined hands with Zionism’s anti-Semitic supporters. You have become, not everyone’s favourite uncle but an aged bigot.

The International Court of Justice at The Hague

False Accusations of Anti-Semitism

If you have any doubt Stephen about the weaponisation of anti-Semitism then the Times of Israel article ‘Blood libel’: Israel slams South Africa for filing ICJ genocide motion over Gaza war’ should convince even the most obtuse Zionist. It might even convince you.

South Africa’s crime? Filing a claim at the International Court of Justice against Israel. Zionism is once again using Jewish victims of anti-Semitism past in order to justify present day war crimes. This illustrates just how cynical Zionism is towards actual anti-Semitism.

The Blood Libel was the false accusation made against the Jews of Medieval Europe that they baked matzot, unleavened bread, with the blood of Christian children.

There is nothing false or imagined about Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. If referring to Israel’s war crimes in Gaza is a ‘blood libel’ then that can only mean that the accusations against Jews in times gone by were also true. This is Zionist anti-Semitism and this is what your Christmas message amounted to.

Stephen Fry’s Failure to Understand Anti-Semitism

Despite saying that you consider yourself Jewish you clearly weren’t brought up as one.  I noticed in your Xmas Monologue that you said that as a child you were almost unbearably fascinated by Xmas trivia.

In my Orthodox Jewish family Xmas was not celebrated. My rabbi father used to spit on the ground every time Jesus name was mentioned. Jesus was the ultimate heretic.

You are an atheist which implies that your reason for claiming to be Jewish is political or racial. In practice you have become a Jewish nationalist. It is no surprise that you claim that you are racially or genetically Jewish. 52% Ashkenazi no less!

It seems that Fry's Zionism has gone hand in hand with toleration of child abuse

You began your Xmas message by recalling how you grew up as gay and saw a ‘long and lonely’ life ‘exclusion, exile and disgrace’ ahead because of the homophobia of the time.

Yet, as you observe, during your ‘short lifetime’ society has ‘moved towards an understanding and acceptance’ of those who are gay. Yet when it comes to anti-Semitism, which was widespread in the 1940s and 50s you refuse to accept that attitudes have changed.

You begin your rant by asserting that anti-Semitism is a ‘light sleeper’ and you go on to say that it has now ‘woken up’. But has it? Anti-Semitism is not a person but a political phenomenon. Racism never sleeps but it does change and anti-Semitism has changed.

In the 1930s there was a large anti-Semitic fascist party, the British Union of Fascists, led by a member of the aristocracy Sir Oswald Moseley, which was supported by many other members of that class.

The British Establishment then was riddled with anti-Semitism. In October 1936 the BUF decided to stage a march through the Jewish East End and the Metropolitan Police, which contained many fascist sympathisers, tried to baton their way through the 200,000+ Jewish and non-Jewish working class demonstrators.

This became known as the Battle of Cable Street. However your friends in the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Chronicle, were strongly opposed to Jews taking part in counter-demonstrations to fascism. They advised Jews to ignore the fascists and stay at home. Moseley’s Blackshirts were genuine anti-Semites not today’s fake variety.

Your Support for Israel’s Genocide

You refer in your tirade to ‘the horrendous events’ of October 7, and ‘the Israeli response.’ Let us stop there. The latest casualty figures for October 7 are 1,147 and of those one-third were soldiers and the majority of the civilians were, it seems, killed by the Israeli military when tanks fired shells at kibbutz houses in order to prevent anyone being taken prisoner and swapped for Palestinian prisoners in Israel.

Whilst you condemn the events of October 7 as ‘horrendous’ you say nothing about the murder of over 20,000 people, 9,000+ of whom were children. These deaths and the massive number wounded do not seem to trouble you in the slightest. It seems that you have become a Jewish exceptionalist and racist.

You assert that October 7 and Israel’s attack on Gaza (the word ‘genocide’ never passes your lips) has led to a rise, according to the Metropolitan Police, of 1350%.

If this is true, then it is clear that strenuous efforts must be made not to associate British Jews with what Israel does. The advent of a ‘Jewish’ state has been a disaster for Jews everywhere.

But the Board of Deputies has gone out of its way to support the attacks of the Israeli state on Palestinians. Since the Board claims to represent British Jews is it any wonder that some people take them at their word and attack Jews because of what Israel does?

In 2018 when Israeli snipers murdered over 300 unarmed Palestinians in Gaza the Board chose to criticise Hamas not the killers. A subsequent statement placed all the blame on the victims.

An Open Letter by over 100 Jews made our position crystal clear:

We are appalled that the Board of Deputies (BoD) which claims to be “the voice of British Jews,” has once again attempted to justify the massacre of unarmed Palestinian people by the Israeli military. 

Is Anti-Semitism On the Increase in Britain?

There are good reasons for doubting that there has been a massive increase in anti-Semitism. By its own admission, the Metropolitan Police are using the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. As such its statistics are worthless.

If someone is attacked because they support Israeli genocide is that an anti-Semitic attack? Obviously not. The person has been attacked for their politics not their religion or race. I don’t condone attacking anyone, not even Zionists, but any such attacks are not anti-Semitic.

If however someone is attacked for no other reason than that they are Jewish, on the assumption that they support Israel’s genocide, then the attack is anti-Semitic. The blame for the attack lies equally with your Zionist friends as with the attackers because they gave people the idea that all Jews support war crimes against Palestinians.

We should ask ourselves why the Met are so eager to inflate the number of anti-Semitic incidents when in the 30s they operated as an adjunct to the BUF? Have they changed? All the evidence is that the Met are as racist now as they were 90 years ago. The only difference now is that their racism is directed at Muslim and Black people.

The Black Widow!

There are many other differences. Suella Braverman, the most racist Home Secretary Britain has ever had was vociferous in her opposition to anti-Semitism (in fact anti-Zionism).

xxxx

 

In 1936 Home Secretary Sir John Simon, insisted on the fascists being allowed to march on the Jewish East End. In March 2023 Braverman was the guest of honour at the Annual Dinner of the CST, a Mossad Project that compiles statistics of anti-Semitic incidents. The CST work closely with the Met. Their statistics are, in the immortal phrase of Disraeli, ‘lies, damned lies and statistics’.

You paint a picture of anti-Semitism today that bears no relation to reality: swastikas daubed on buildings, shop windows smashed, Jewish schools forced to close. It seems as if Nazi Germany is around the corner. ‘There is real fear stalking the neighbourhoods of Britain’.

You say of your Jewish grandparents that:

I’m glad they aren’t alive now to read newspaper stories that would have reminded them of the 1930s Europe that they left. 

I am reminded of what Anshel Pffefer wrote in Ha’aretz during the height of Labour’s ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign. This was when the Campaign Against Antisemitism was claiming that polls showed more than half of British Jews felt that anti-Semitism echoed that of the 1930s. Pfeffer observed that if the CAA and British Jews

“actually believe that, then it’s hard to take anything they say about contemporary anti-Semitism in their home country seriously.”

Pfeffer added that such a belief showed

“a disconnect bordering on hysteria … not only are they woefully ignorant of recent Jewish history but have little concept of what real anti-Semitism is.” 

Twice in recent years you have signed letters for Israeli lobby group CCFP/Stand with Us. As Black rap artist, Lowkey, asked:

Can Stephen Fry be an authority on racism if he puts his name on the letters of a lobby group which functions as a proxy of a racist regime, exacting a genocidal war on the Palestinians?

The statement that you signed in 2007, began:

We come together in the belief that the broad spectrum of opinion among the Jewish population of this country is not reflected by those institutions which claim authority to represent the Jewish community as a whole. We further believe that individuals and groups within all communities should feel free to express their views on any issue of public concern without incurring accusations of disloyalty.

The Producers of Your video were involved in recruiting and training members of the Israeli Defence Force


What makes your behaviour even worse Stephen is that your video was produced by Fulwell73 Productions, which was founded by 4 members of B'nei Akiva, which runs pre-military programmes to enrol members in Israel’s occupation forces. They have also spoken at events for Israel lobby group, the Jewish Leadership Council.

When I was a child, I was a member of Bnei Akiva, which was then the youth group of the National Religious Party which was in coalition with the Israeli Labor Party. After 1967 and the occupation of the West Bank the NRP moved steadily to the settler right and was part of the Greater Israel Movement.

Bnei Akiva functions as an adjunct to the far-right neo-Nazi settler movement in Israel. This is who produced your Alternative Christmas Message and this Stephen is who you have allied with.

Channel 4 should hang its head in shame for allowing fascists to produce their ‘alternative’ Christmas message. Perhaps next year they will invite the KKK to say what White Xmas means to them?


 

At least some people have retained their integrity in this sordid affair. Tamara Abood, a former Channel 4 commissioning editor, who is now a psychotherapist working with people in the entertainment industry, criticised Channel 4’s decision to screen the message.

She was also critical of Fulwell 73, the production company that made the programme:

“The asymmetry of the conflict was not remotely reflected in what Stephen Fry had to say. It was carefully worded lip service.”

Ms Abood added that Channel 4’s broadcast about anti-Semitism “demonstrates where the power lies”. Her LinkedIn post was ‘liked’ by Deborah Williams, the head of Creative Diversity Network, a diversity and inclusion charity to the Zionists chagrin.

In response to criticism by racist former colleagues Abood observed that “Historically the spectre of anti-Semitism has been used to silence debate and I see a lot of that on here.”

If British Jews were treated even a hundredth as badly as Palestinians by Israel then you would have good reason Stephen to complain of anti-Semitism. As it is you should shut your mouth and keep it shut.

Just imagine that you were told that the British state only belonged to its Christian citizens and that Jews were considered a fifth column. You would be the first to complain. Yet your ‘alternative’ Xmas message had but one purpose – to reinforce the false ‘anti-Semitism’ message that criticism of what Israel does equals hatred of Jews. In making that claim it is you, not Israel’s critics, who is anti-Semitic .

xxxx

Stephen. You were once considered a national treasure. Today you are a national disgrace mouthing the same platitudes as Braverman whose concern over ‘anti-Semitism’ was in inverse proportion to her racism against everyone else.

Braverman’s demonization of refugees crossing the Channel was a genuine example of racism. Your invocation of anti-Semitism was fake and contrived. Your Xmas message a mixture of maudlin, lachrymose sentiment totally at odds with the experience of Jews in Britain today

Tony Greenstein



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27 November 2017

Israel’s Alliance with Europe’s Neo-Nazi and Far-Right Parties

Zionism's Collaboration with Nazi Germany is not just a matter of history 

When you mention the fact that the Zionist movement collaborated with the Nazis and even welcomed them to power in the 1930’s, accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ come thick and fast.  According to them, this is a calumny against all Jews even though before WW2 the Zionists comprised only a small percentage of world Jewry
Yet today, as the three following articles from Ha’aretz and Electronic Intifada show, there is a symbiosis between Zionism and far-Right and neo-Nazi parties.  The condemnation of the new German Alternative for Germany party by Israeli leaders has been conspicuous by its absence.  Not only Likud but the Israeli Labour Party has remained silent, thus demonstrating that all wings of Zionism are complicit.
As Anshel Pfeffer explains, whereas in 2000 when the far-Right Freedom Party entered the Austrian government the Israeli Ambassador was withdrawn from Vienna, today it merits barely a ripple.  The leader of the FP, Herr Strache is welcomed to Yad Vashem, Israel’s  Holocaust Propaganda Museum.  If there was ever an insult to the dead of the Holocaust it is in the tribute that neo-Nazis pay at a supposed Institute to commemorate the Holocaust dead.
Of course the diaspora Jewish communities realise, however hesitatingly that Israel’s courting of their own far-Right and anti-Semitic parties bodes ill for them.  Unfortunately the grip of Zionism is such that relatively few in these communities come to the conclusion that Zionism and anti-Semitism are twins in kind and that a fight against anti-Semitism includes a fight against Zionism.
But once again we see how Zionism and the Far-Right have much in common because the neo-Nazis see Israel as a model state.  Israel is an ethno-nationalist state in which Arabs are barely tolerated guests in the State of Israel.  That is exactly the situation that these parties desire in respect of their own Muslim populations.  That is why Richard Spencer, leader of the Alt-Right in the USA can declare that he is a White Zionist.  What after all is there not to like, if you are a neo-Nazi in Israel?
Tony Greenstein
How Netanyahu Has Betrayed the Jews
Netanyahu wants the right to speak as the representative of all Jews. But in America and Europe, he's abandoned all pretense of solidarity with them
Anshel Pfeffer
  Oct 27, 2017 8:11 AM
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at the opening of the winter session of the Knesset in Jerusalem. October 23, 2017 RONEN ZVULUN/REUTERS
In February 2000, there was no question.

The center-right Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) had just formed a new coalition government with Jörg Haider's Freedom Party (FPÖ). For the first time since World War II, a far-right political party, whose members commemorated and respected its Nazi roots, was to be a member of a European government.

Haider himself wasn't a member of the new government, and the chancellor was the moderate Wolfgang Schüssel, but there was simply no question: Israel would not engage with such a government. The Israeli ambassador was withdrawn from Vienna and diplomatic relations with Austria remained at their lowest level for the next five years, until a new government was formed - without the Freedom Party. 

Fast-forward to this month, and the election victory of 31-year-old Sebastian Kurz, the current ÖVP leader and soon-to-be chancellor. Kurz is almost certainly going to form his new coalition with the Freedom Party. Major Jewish organizations, including the World Jewish Congress and the Anti-Defamation League, have called on Kurz to reconsider. 
Heinz-Christian Strache, head of the far-right Austrian Freedom Party, at an anti-Muslim demonstration in Vienna. 14 May 2009Wikimedia
"We are not convinced the Freedom Party has fully outgrown its Nazi roots. We join the Austrian Jewish community in asking Sebastian Kurz to keep the Freedom Party out of government," said the ADL's Jonathan Greenblatt. The Jewish community in Austria expressed its own concern in strong terms, urging Kurz to drop the Freedom Party. One prominent Jewish leader said Kurz's party was "deceiving itself" if it thought it would tame the "nationalist wolf" of the FPO. 

But despite the concerns of Austrian Jewry, one, prominent Jewish leader has already given Kurz carte blanche.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t wait to find out with whom Kurz will decide to form his coalition. The day after the Austrian election, he was already on the phone to Kurz to congratulate him.

He succeeded in surprising even Israel’s long-suffering diplomats. "Standard procedure in such a case would have been to wait to see who is going to be in the coalition before calling to congratulate," said one veteran at Israel's Foreign Ministry.

Not only was Netanyahu broadcasting a message that Israel didn’t mind who Kurz appoints to his new government, he effectively 'kosher certified' even current FPÖ leader Heinz-Christian Strache who - before becoming a 'respectable' politician - took part enthusiastically in neo-Nazi activities.
Neo-Nazi leader of Austrian Freedom Party, Heinz-Christian Strache at Yad Vashem. Olivier Fitoussi
True, Strache has tried to clean up his act, even visiting Israel last year and promising that his party has no links to Austria’s Nazi past. But he has yet to convince Austria’s Jews and still remains completely off-bounds.

In the past, Israel has always adhered to a clear policy that it will not engage with political parties ostracized by the local Jewish community. The government of the Jewish state does not undermine Jews in their own countries and will not give any politician or party its stamp of approval unless they do so.

Netanyahu, however, has abandoned this policy. And Austria’s Jewish community is not the first he has betrayed.

Three months ago he did the same to Hungarian Jews. The leadership of the community in Budapest launched an international protest against the anti-Semitic nature of the Hungarian government’s campaign against Jewish financier George Soros. Israel’s ambassador, in line with long-standing policy, backed up the Hungarian Jews, sending a letter of protest to Prime Minister Viktor Orban. A day later, Netanyahu publicly and humiliatingly slapped down the ambassador, ordering him to retract his letter. 
File photo: Hungarian government poster portraying financier George Soros and saying "Don't let George Soros have the last laugh" is seen at an underground stop in Budapest, Hungary July 11, 2017. LASZLO BALOGH/REUTERS
Netanyahu’s policy is pragmatic. Orban and Kurz are representatives of the wave of populist right-wing politics sweeping Europe, with which Likud feel comfortable. The leaders themselves are not suspected of anti-Semitism, quite the opposite. They have promised "zero tolerance" and profess staunch support for Israel.

Netanyahu sees them as his key allies in the European Union, a bulwark against the more critical voices coming from Scandinavia and western Europe. Some of their political allies may be unsavory, but Bibi is prepared to swallow them for his own diplomatic purposes. The local Jewish communities don’t have a say.

Not only is it pragmatic. Netanyahu’s policy is easily justified. He is the elected leader of Israel and must put its interests first. If he believes that Israel needs the friendship of Orban and Kurz so badly that it overrules the concerns of Hungarian and Austrian Jews, he has every right to make that call.
The only problem is, Netanyahu has insisted in the past that he is not only Israel’s prime minister, but that he represents all Jews around the world.

In February 2015, shortly after returning from Paris, where he took part in events in memory of Jews killed in terror attacks there, and just before he was about to fly off to address Congress, against Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, Netanyahu declared: "I went to Paris not just as the prime minister of Israel but as a representative of the entire Jewish people."

The elected leader of a country in which less than half the Jews of the world live (and only a quarter of them actually voted for him in the last election) wants the right to address the world as the representative of all Jews. And he won’t even check with them first.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks before a joint meeting of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, March 3, 2015. In a speech that stirred political intrigue in two countries,AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
Twice the number of Jews voted for Barack Obama in 2012 than voted for Netanyahu’s Likud in 2015. That doesn’t mean for one moment that Netanyahu had to accept Obama’s policies. But he certainly had no right to speak "in the name of the entire Jewish people" when confronting Obama, who received more Jewish votes than any politician, anywhere, in history.

As Judy Maltz revealed this week in Haaretz, Netanyahu will not be addressing the General Assembly of Jewish Federations of North American next month. Not in person, and probably not even over satellite link.

There are various explanations being given for Netanyahu’s highly irregular absence. He doesn’t want to share the limelight with this bitter rival President Reuven Rivlin, who will be in attendance. There are fears he may be booed by some of the delegates, angry at the way Netanyahu’s government has capitulated to the ultra-Orthodox parties at the expense of Reform and Conservative Jews.

One thing is clear, he is not very welcome there. And it’s not just a matter of political nuances between the leader of Israel’s right-wing and the liberal mainstream of American Jewry. Those have always existed in the past and have been papered over. The rift that Netanyahu has opened up with the Jews is much deeper than that.

In an era when Netanyahu wakes up with every morning with a feeling of relief that he no longer has to deal with the hostile Obama, while the great majority of American Jews are sinking in to ever-deepening despair at the forces of racism and bigotry being unleashed by Donald Trump, the president Netanyahu so eagerly embraces, it is impossible to talk of a joint destiny for Israelis and Diaspora Jews while he's in power.

For the first time in Israel’s history, its prime minister is visibly closer to the president of the United States than he is to American Jews. Over the past year, he has demonstrated time and again that his personal relationships with the Trumps and Orbans and Kurzs of this world are more precious to him than Israel’s ties to the Jews.

Germany’s new Nazis see Israel as role model






Ali Abunimah 25 September 2017
Israel and its supporters have made alliances with racists, anti-Semites and Islamophobes all over Europe. (via Flickr)

“Unfortunately, our worst fears have come true,” Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said of the electoral success in Sunday’s general election of Alternative for Germany.

Known by its German initials AfD, the extreme nationalist party won almost 100 seats in Germany’s lower house.

 “A party that tolerates far-right views in its ranks and incites hate against minorities in our country is today not only in almost all state parliaments but also represented in the Bundestag,” Schuster said.

 The party is notorious for harboring all manner of racists and extremists, including apologists for Germany’s war record and Holocaust revisionists.

 It was a disaster that Germany’s mainstream politicians saw coming.

 Sigmar Gabriel, the country’s foreign minister, warned earlier this month that if AfD scored well at the ballot box, “then we will have real Nazis in the German Reichstag for the first time since the end of World War II.”

Pro-Israel funder backs new Nazis

While Germany needs no lessons in how to be racist, this catastrophe can in part be attributed to leaders in Israel and their fanatical supporters: for years they have made common cause with Europe’s far right, demonizing Muslims as alien invaders who must be rejected and even expelled to maintain a mythical European purity.

 It can also be attributed to German leaders who for decades have strengthened this racist Israel by financing Israel’s military occupation and oppression of Palestinians.

 What happened in Germany is another facet of the white supremacist-Zionist alliance that has found a home in Donald Trump’s White House.

 In the past few weeks, liberal flagships The New York Times and The Washington Post have been hunting for the nonexistent shadows of Russian interference in the German election.

 Meanwhile, as Lee Fang reported for The Intercept, the Gatestone Institute, the think tank of major Islamophobia industry funder Nina Rosenwald, was flooding German social media with “a steady flow of inflammatory content about the German election, focused on stoking fears about immigrants and Muslims.”

 The Gatestone Institute is chaired by John Bolton, the neoconservative former US diplomat notorious for his hawkish support of the invasion of Iraq.

 Gatestone articles making claims about Christianity becoming “extinct” and warning about the construction of mosques in Germany were regularly translated into German and posted by AfD politicians and sympathizers.

 Story after story claimed that migrants and refugees were raping German women and bringing dangerous diseases to the country, classic themes of the Nazi propaganda once used to incite genocidal hatred of Jews.

 In a tragic irony, Rosenwald’s father, an heir to the Sears department store fortune, used his wealth to help Jewish refugees flee persecution in Europe.

 His daughter took a different path. Journalist Max Blumenthal has called Nina Rosenwald the “sugar mama of anti-Muslim hate.”

 Blumenthal reported in 2012 that Rosenwald “used her millions to cement the alliance between the pro-Israel lobby and the Islamophobic fringe.”

 In addition to funding a host of the most notorious anti-Muslim demagogues, Blumenthal reported that Rosenwald “served on the board of AIPAC, the central arm of America’s Israel lobby, and holds leadership roles in a host of mainstream pro-Israel organizations.”

The party of Anders Breivik

In a profile the day after the election, The Jerusalem Report, published by the right-wing Jerusalem Post, gave AfD deputy leader Beatrix von Storch a platform to set out the party’s anti-Muslim ideology.

 The Jerusalem Report also quotes German political scientist Marcel Lewandowsky explaining that “AfD members view the European Union as a traitor to Europe’s Christian heritage because they let in the Muslims. The view is that the Islamization of Europe was caused by the EU.”

 “Replacement” by Muslims, Lewandowsky explained, “is the core of the fear of AfD voters.”

 This means that the core ideology of the party is indistinguishable from that of Anders Breivik, the Norwegian who murdered 77 of his fellow citizens, mostly teenagers at a Labor Party youth camp, in July 2011, in the name of stopping the “Islamization” of Europe.

 One of the biggest benefactors of Rosenwald’s largesse, according to Blumenthal, has been Daniel Pipes, the influential pro-Israel, anti-Muslim demagogue who Breivik cited 18 times in his notorious manifesto.

Admiration for Israel

AfD deputy leader von Storch, who sits in the European Parliament, also uses The Jerusalem Report interview to lay out her party’s pro-Israel stance, comparing its German nationalism to Israel’s Zionist ideology.

 According to the The Jerusalem Report, von Storch is a founder of “Friends of Judea and Samaria,” a far-right European Parliament grouping that supports Israel’s illegal colonization of occupied Palestinian land.

 Bizarrely, that group lists as one of its contact persons the head of the “Shomron Regional Council,” a settler organization in the occupied West Bank.

 “Israel could be a role model for Germany,” von Storch told The Jerusalem Report. “Israel is a democracy that has a free and pluralistic society. Israel also makes efforts to preserve its unique culture and traditions. The same should be possible for Germany and any other nation.”

 Von Storch’s identification with Israel echoes that of US Nazi demagogue Richard Spencer, who has described his vision of an Aryan “ethno-state” as “white Zionism.”

 AfD chair Frauke Petry has also expressed support for Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. In February, she told the right-wing Jewish publication Tablet that her only visit to Israel gave her a positive view of the country.

 “Suddenly the picture you get is somewhat different than what you got when you live far away,” she said.

 These views, again, echo those of Anders Breivik. He was a strong admirer of Zionism, and advocated an alliance with Israel to fight against Muslims and their "culturalMarxists /multiculturalists” supporters.

 Israel’s settler leaders have taken note of AfD’s support. As the world reeled from AfD’s electoral success, Yehuda Glick, a lawmaker in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party, tweeted that all those who were “in a panic” about AfD should rest assured that Petry was working “intensively” to expel any anti-Semitic elements.





Glick with Heinz Christian Strache of Austria's Freedom Party
Glick, a leader in the apocalyptic movement that seeks to destroy Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque and replace it with a Jewish temple, also recommended an article outlining AfD’s pro-Israel stance.

 According to Tablet, Petry’s visit also led her to believe “that Europe should be learning more from Israel in its fight against terrorism.”

According to a recent survey, this strong support for Israel is felt across the ranks of AfD’s leadership.

Alliance with Zionism

There is a clear logic for AfD leaders to join the newly invigorated alliance between far-right, traditionally anti-Semitic forces on the one hand, and Israel and Zionists on the other.

 Party chair Petry has argued that Jews should should be willing to talk to AfD over supposedly common interests, explaining, according to Tablet, that “it is the left wing in Germany and new Muslim immigrants who are leading her country’s anti-Israel movement.”

 “Both anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are strongest in the Islamic community, as well as the left,” von Storch said. “They reject the fact that the Judeo-Christian foundations of European civilization are instrumental to its success. We recognize the threat they pose to both Israel and Germany’s Jewish community and their safety is a high priority for us.”

 This is of course the most brazen revisionism: for centuries Europe’s Christian authorities not only did not consider Jews as a foundational part of their “civilization,” but persecuted them mercilessly, eventually attempting genocide.

 But such facts are glossed over in the interests of a present-day anti-Muslim alliance that is prepared to torch the increasingly frayed fabric of pluralistic societies for the sake of Israel and German national purification.

Israel’s support for fascists

Critically, as Glick’s tweets indicate, this has not been a one-way affair. It has been encouraged by Israel and its lobby groups.
The notion that Israel is the spearhead of a Western civilizational battlefront against Islam has been a key claim of Netanyahu.
He and other Israeli leaders have exploited every terrorist outrage in Europe to advance the poisonous message that Israel is “fighting the same fight.”
And powerful Israel lobby groups, such as the Anti-Defamation League, that are now expressing alarm at the electoral success of the AfD, are far from innocent.
For years, the Anti-Defamation League – which poses as an “anti-hate” group – courted and whitewashed influential anti-Muslim hate-preachers because they supported its pro-Israel agenda.
This embrace between Zionists and their supposed opposites continues to thrive in the welcome former Trump advisers Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka have found from Israel and its lobby groups.
Bannon will speak at the Zionist Organization of America’s upcoming gala, while Gorka, who has ties to Nazis and violent anti-Semitic militias, was recently welcomed in Israel.
It can be seen in the Israeli government’s long and conspicuous silence while the rest of the world condemned August’s neo-Nazi rampage in Charlottesville, Virginia.
It can also be seen in Netanyahu’s embrace of far-right European leaders including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has attempted to rehabilitate his country’s Hitler-allied wartime leadership.
While the brazenness of this alliance may be shocking, it dates back to the early years of both the Zionist and Nazi movements. As Columbia University professor Joseph Massad has pointed out, Zionists and European anti-Semites historically shared the same analysis: that Jews were alien to Europe and had to be moved elsewhere.
And it continues: Israeli commentators are noting that Israel has not rushed to condemn AfD.
Netanyahu – always quick to pounce on the alleged anti-Semitism of Israel’s critics – took to Twitter to congratulate Chancellor Angela Merkel on her victory, but has so far remained silent about the subject that everyone else is talking about.
Perhaps it is no coincidence that AfD hired the same US political consultancy, Harris Media, previously used by Trump and Netanyahu’s Likud Party to spread its anti-Muslim message.

Going mainstream

Despite its electoral success, AfD is riven by splits: its chair Frauke Petry made the surprise announcement on Monday that she won’t join her party’s parliamentary caucus.
One strategy party leaders are deploying to make AfD more palatable is to try to assuage the fears of the Jewish community.

 Undoubtedly, it will continue to attempt to do so by expressing admiration and support for Israel – the same approach as France’s historically anti-Semitic Front National.

 We can expect to see AfD double down on its support of Israel, including its colonial settlements in “Judea and Samaria.”

 But this is indeed a mark of its mainstreaming. Historically, Germany’s postwar establishment, including the governments led by Merkel, has “atoned” for the country’s genocide of Jews by supporting Israel to commit crimes against Palestinians.

 Billions of dollars of German “reparations” went not to helping Holocaust survivors, but to arming Israel to carry out military occupation and colonization.

 For Palestinians, then, Merkel’s “moderate” centrism and AfD’s overt bigotry and racism, are little different in effect.

 Just as Donald Trump presents the unvarnished face of the American militarism and imperialism that has victimized people around the world for decades, AfD is in some ways a more honest voice of a Germany that speaks of “human rights,” while unconditionally supporting an Israel whose main export is extremism and Islamophobia.

 Europe’s nativist racism joined with this ill-wind from Israel produces a toxic mix.
Bannon Addresses ZOA, Urges Jews to Join 'Insurgency' Against anti-Trump Republicans

Addressing the Zionist Organization of America, Bannon explains: 'We're a nation at war, Trump needs our back'
Shachar Peled Nov 13, 2017

President Donald Trump's former chief strategist on Sunday called on American Jews to join his war on the Republican establishment.
Steve Bannon, the former chief strategist to President Donald Trump, speaks during an event in Manchester, N.H., Thursday, Nov. 9, 2017. Mary Schwalm/AP
Steve Bannon appealed to the Zionist Organization of America to "work as partners" in his crusade against GOP leaders he blames for blocking Trump's agenda. Bannon delivered the fiery address at the organization's annual awards dinner in New York at what ZOA President Morton Klein dubbed "the Academy Awards of the Jewish World" with several current and former Trump staffers in attendance.

Bannon seized the opportunity to punch back at the GOP. "We're leading an insurgency movement against the Republican establishment," Bannon charged, blaming his adversaries in the establishment for playing games.
Steven Bannon delivered an address at the Zionist Organization of America's annual awards dinner in New York on November 12, 2017.

Steven Bannon delivered an address at the Zionist Organization of America's annual awards dinner in New York on November 12, 2017.Shachar Peled

He blamed the Republicans for “playing games” and lowering the bar, which resulted in what he considers a bad nuclear deal with Iran. "That's how you get the Iran deal," he continued. "That's how we still allow the American government to finance people that have blood on their hands of innocent Jewish civilians."

Bannon's participation in the event has raised criticism from many Jewish leaders, some seeing the political figure as tacitly encouraging alt-right and neo-Nazi supporters. The outlet he heads, Breitbart News, is popular among some white supremacists, anti-Semites and others who identify with the so-called alt-right movement.

Rabbi Jill Jacobs of human rights group T'ruah told Haaretz that Bannon had "brought white supremacy to the White house, and promoting that agenda even though he is no longer there, which is dangerous to Israel and Jews."

The Zionist Organization of America has largely embraced Bannon. In attendance at the group's gala of over 1,000 participants was former press secretary Sean Spicer and former deputy assistant to the president Sebastian Gorka. Other controversial figures were present in the audience including pro-Trump conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec and alt-light provocateur Laura Loomer.
Retired Democrat Senator Joe Lieberman was presented with an award, as was serving American ambassador to Israel, David Friedman. “We came into office on the heels of perhaps the greatest betrayal of Israel by a sitting president in American history,” Friedman said to applause from the crowd.


Outside the event, held at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in midtown Manhattan, some 200 activists of the left-wing American Jewish group IfNotNow held a loud protest. “ZOA has decided to abandon the Jewish people in favor of Steve Bannon,” protestor Eliana Fishman said.


 “We’re not going to let the Jewish community be the launching platform for Steven Bannon’s second career,” protestor Sarah Lerman-Sinkoff added. “In a post Charlottesville world, it shows that Jews forming alliances with the alt-right is not good for us and is horrible to our moral core of standing up for all targeted people, including Palestinians.”

ZOA President Morton Klein insisted that such accusations serve as “a horrific character assassination of a good man,” citing Bannon's inability to control his more extreme supporters. “Reagan had Nazis supporting him, so what?” Klein said.

Bannon was expected in last year’s ZOA gala, and some had attributed the then-large demonstration to his no-show. But this time, Klein told reporters, Bannon himself requested an invitation with a wish to introduce business magnate Sheldon Adelson. Adelson was expected but did not attend the gala.

Bannon nonetheless praised the billionare in his speech, for his “guidance, counsel and wisdom” that helped the Trump team “get through.”

Bannon, who left the White House in August, is now trying to raise money to defeat several sitting Republican senators he says are blocking Trump's agenda in Washington.

"President Trump needs our back," he declared. "We're a nation at war. This war is only going to be won if we bind together and work as partners."

Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, in his own speech, called for centrism and warned of extremism, particuarly pointing to the far-left. “I think today the hard left is far more dangerous to Israel’s existence and to the safety of the Jewish community,” Dershowitz told Haaretz. “The right has no influence today on college campuses, which are the future leaders of America.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report
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