Naomi Wolf and anti-semitism’s mystification

Anti-Semitism in the eye of the beholder – using 'anti-semitism to silence cartoonists

This cartoon in a German paper was deemed 'anti-semitic'

From the Der Sturmer stable

This is a cartoon in the Nazi paper Der Sturmer - I'll leave it to you to work out the similarities, if any, with the above cartoon

Another  obviously antisemitic cartoon from Der Sturmer

 Jonathan Cook is one of the best and most thought provoking writers around.  An award winning former Guardian journalist he lives in Nazareth.

The issue he writes about, the mystification of anti-Semitism, is an important one.  If people are confused about the differences between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism then it is doubly difficult when it comes to works of art, especially cartoons.

Let me offer a guide.  Anti-Semitic cartoons have an intent behind them – which is to depict the Jew as the devil, the lecherer, the controller.  Pictures of  Netanyahu tend to depict someone who is willing to kill ever increasing numbers of Palestinians.  The context and intent is entirely different.

Yair Netanyahu's cartoon above had all the right anti-Semitic ingredients

Ironically last year, there was a campaign both in Hungary and in Israel against George Soros, the archetypal Jewish financier.  The campaign in Hungary, led by its Prime Minister Viktor Orban was undoubtedly anti-Semitic.  That in Israel was much the same.  Soros’s crime being to have financed some Israeli human rights groups.  He was portrayed in an anti-Semitic cartoon by none other than the son of Benjamin, Yair Netanyahu in a cartoon that had every ingredient of anti-Semitic caricature.  Little wonder that it was praised by David Duke former Grand Wizard of the KKK and Andrew Anglin, editor of the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer.  However the usual culprits didn’t jump up and down about anti-Semitism.

Neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin just loved Yair Netanyahu's cartoon

It is clear, beyond any doubt, that ‘anti-Semitism’ has become the principal weapon of the Zionist movement and Israel’s defenders.  It should be said at once that it has not won over the vast majority of ordinary people but it has befuddled and confused important  layers of people politically, not least in the Labour Party, where it has had a chilling effect on peoples’ willingness to discuss let alone motivate criticism of Israel.  Given the nature of the witchhunt, where anything anti-Zionist is called anti-Semitic by the witchhunters, this is not surprising.

In his eagerness to please the Zionists  Murdoch engaged in one of those well-known anti-semitic caricatures - the 'Jewish owned press'

A cartoon on Netanyahu not deemed anti-semitic by the Board would be so anodyne that it wouldn't be worth drawing

Five years ago there was one of these artificial Zionist controversies over the a cartoon by Gerald Scarfe in the Sunday Times.  It portrayed a bloody Netanyahu cementing a wall with the bodies and heads of Palestinians.  For some unearthly reason it was considered anti-Semitic by those who make it their business to ensure that any portrayal of the Zionist state is channelled into accusations of Jew hatred.  Of course on any objective basis there was nothing anti-Semitic about Scarfe’s cartoon.  If it had been a portrayal of the US President or George Bush or Trump today then no one would have batted an eyelid.

As Jonathan Cook describes, a similar controversy has blow up over a German cartoon.  Like the Scarfe controversy there seems little doubt that this is a false accusation by the supporters of Israel.  It is noticeable that when it comes to cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad then anything goes but if you depict Netanyahu as the murdering bastard he is then you risk the heavens falling in.

No doubt depicting the Apartheid wall was also anti-semitic

Similarly with the nonsense about the long erased mural that Jeremy Corbyn had supported on grounds of free speech.  Corbyn was forced to backtrack by the ‘anti-Semitism’ storm in late March and accept that he hadn’t noticed its anti-Semitism.  Fake leftists like Richard Seymour and Owen Jones joined in the hue and cry but those of us who are more familiar with anti-Semitic cartoons of the Der Sturmer variety could not detect any anti-Semitic content.  Conspiratorial perhaps.  Anti-banker yes but anyone saying that all bankers are Jews is, well, anti-Semitic!

Unfortunately these days Corbyn, whose support for the Palestinians was never based on any theoretical understanding of why Zionism and Israel are racist, backed down once again and in so doing made a rod for his own back.  If just for once he stood up to his accusers he would find life far easier.

Tony Greenstein 

Naomi Wolf and anti-semitism’s mystification

24 May 2018

My previous post was about the firing of a cartoonist, Dieter Hanitzsch, by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung after its editor became concerned – though, it seems, far from sure – that a cartoon he had published of Benjamin Netanyahu might be anti-semitic. Here is the image again.

As I argued then, the meaning seems pretty clear and uncoloured by any traditional notion of anti-semitism. It shows the danger that Israel, a highly militarised state, will use its win at the Eurovision song contest, and its hosting of next year’s competition in occupied Jerusalem, to whitewash the sort of war crimes it just committed in Gaza, where it has massacred large numbers of unarmed Palestinians.

In fact, the cartoonist is far from alone in highlighting such concerns. The New York Times has reported delight among Israelis at the prospect of what they regard as a “diplomatic victory” as much as musical one. And, according to the Haaretz newspaper, the Eurovision contest organisers have already expressed concern to Israeli broadcasters about likely attempts by Israel to “politicise” the competition.

Among those responding on Twitter to my post was Naomi Wolf, a US Jewish intellectual and feminist scholar whose body of work I admire. She disagreed with my blog post, arguing that the cartoon was, in her words, “kind of anti-semitic”.

In our subsequent exchange she also noted that she was uncomfortable with the fact that the cartoonist was German. (For those interested, the complete exchange can be found here.)

In the end, and admittedly under some pressure from me for clarification, she offered an illustration of why she thought the cartoon was “kind of anti-semitic”. She sent a link to the image below, stating that she thought Hanitzsch’s cartoon of Netanyahu had echoes of this Nazi image of “the Jew” alongside an Aryan German woman.

Frankly, I was astounded by the comparison.

Nazi propaganda

Cartoons in Nazi propaganda sheets like Der Sturmer were anti-semitic because they emphasised specific themes to “otherise” Jews, presenting them as a collective menace to Germany or the world. Those themes included the threat of plague and disease, with Jews often represented as rats; or secret Jewish control over key institutions, illustrated, for example, by the tentacles of an octopus spanning the globe; or the disloyalty of Jews, selling out their country, as they hungered for money.

As Wolf notes, anti-semitic cartoonists would give the portrayed “Jew” grotesque or sinister facial features to alienate readers from him and convey the threat he posed. These features famously included a large or hooked nose, voracious lips, and a bulbous or disfigured head.

So how did the cartoon of Netanyahu qualify on any of these grounds? There is no implication that Netanyahu represents “Jews”, or even Israelis. He is illustrated straightforwardly as the leader of a country, Israel. There is no sense of disease, world control or money associated with Netanyahu’s depiction. Just his well-known hawkishness and Israel’s well-documented status as a highly militarised state.

And there is nothing “grotesque” or “other” about Netanyahu. This is a typical caricature, certainly by European standards, of a world leader. It’s no more offensive than common depictions of Barack Obama, George Bush, Tony Blair, or Donald Trump.

So how exactly is this Netanyahu cartoon “kind of anti-semitic”?

Limiting political debate

What follows is not meant as an attack on Wolf. In fact, I greatly appreciate the fact that she was prepared to engage sincerely and openly with me on Twitter. And I acknowledge her point that judgments about what is anti-semitic are subjective.

But at the same time ideas about anti-semitism have become far vaguer, more all-encompassing, than ever before. In fact, I would go so far as to say the idea of anti-semitism has been metamorphosing before our eyes in ways extremely damaging to the health of our political conversations. It is the current mystification of anti-semitism – or what we might term its transformation into a “kind of antisemitism” – that has allowed it to be weaponised, limiting all sorts of vital debates we need to be having.

It is precisely the promotion of a “kind of anti-semitism”, as opposed to real anti-semitism, that has just forced Ken Livingstone to resign from the Labour party; that empowered Labour’s Blairite bureaucracy to publicly lynch a well-known black anti-racism activist, Marc Wadsworth; that persuaded a dissident comedian and supporter of the Palestinian cause, Frankie Boyle, to use his TV show to prioritise an attack on a supposedly “anti-semitic” Labour party over support for Gaza; that is being used to vilify grassroots movements campaigning against “global elites” and the “1 per cent”; and that may yet finish off Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, currently the only credible political force for progressive change in the UK.

None of this is, of course, to suggest that Wolf would herself want any of these outcomes or that she is trying to misuse anti-semitism. I fully acccept that she has been a strong Jewish critic of Israel and doubtless paid a price for it with friends and colleagues.

But unlike Wolf, those who do consciously and cynically weaponise anti-semitism gain their power from our inability to stand back and think critically about what they are doing, and why it matters. There is an intellectual and cultural blindspot that has been created and is being readily exploited by those who want to prevent discussions not only about Israel’s actions but about the wider political culture we desperately need to change.

Israel and Jews

In fact, the mystification of anti-semitism is not new, though it is rapidly intensifying. It began the moment Israel was created. That was why a Nazi cartoon – drawn before Israel’s establishment in 1948 – could never have been described as “kind of anti-semitic”. It simply was anti-semitic. It attributed menacing or subversive qualities to Jews because they were Jews.

To understand how the current mystification works we need briefly to consider Israel’s character as a state – something very few people are prepared to do in the “mainstream”, because it is likely to result in  allegations of … anti-semitism! As I observed in my previous post, this has provided the perfect get-out-jail-free card for Israel and its supporters.

Israel was created as the national homeland of all Jewish people – not of those who became citizens (which included a significant number of Palestinians), or even of those Jews who ended up living there. Israel declared that it represented all Jewish people around the world, including Wolf.

This idea is central to Zionism, and is embodied in its Declaration of Independence; its constitutional-like Basic Laws; its immigration legislation, the Law of Return; its land laws; and the integration into Israel’s state structures of extra-territorial Zionist organisations like the Jewish National Fund, the World Zionist Organisation and the Jewish Agency.

A dangerous confusion

It is also why the rationale for Israel is premised on anti-semitism: Israel was created as a sanctuary for all Jews because, according to Zionists, Jews can never be truly safe anywhere outside Israel. Without anti-semitism, Israel would be superfluous. It also why Israel has a reason to inflate the threat of anti-semitism – or, if we are cynical about the lengths states will go to promote their interests, to help generate anti-semitism to justify the existence of a Jewish state and encourage Jews to immigrate.

So from the moment of its birth, the ideas of “Israel” and “anti-semitism” became disturbingly enmeshed – and in ways almost impossible to disentangle.

For most of Israel’s history, that fact could be obscured in the west because western governments and media were little more than cheerleaders for Israel. Criticism of Israel was rarely allowed into the mainstream, and when it did appear it was invariably limited to condemnations of the occupation. Even then, there was rarely any implication of systematic wrongdoing on Israel’s part.

That changed only when the exclusive grip of the western corporate media over information dissemination weakened, first with the emergence of the internet and satellite channels like Al Jazeera, and more recently and decisively with social media. Criticism of Israel’s occupation has increasingly broadened into suspicions about its enduring bad faith. Among more knowledgeable sections of the progressive left, there is a mounting sense that Israel’s unwillingness to end the occupation is rooted in its character as a Jewish state, and maybe its intimate ideological relationship with anti-semitism.

These are vital conversations to be having about Israel, and they are all the more pressing now that Israel has shown that it is fully prepared to gun down in public unarmed Palestinians engaging in civil disobedience. Many, many more Palestinians are going to have their lives taken from them unless we aggressively pursue and resolve these conversations in ways that Israel is determined to prevent.

And this is why the “kind of anti-semitic” confusion – a confusion that Israel precisely needs and encourages – is so dangerous. Because it justifies – without evidence – shutting down those conversations before they can achieve anything.

The Livingstone problem

In 2016 Ken Livingstone tried to initiate a conversation about Zionism and its symbiotic relationship with anti-semites, in this case with the early Nazi leadership. We can’t understand what Israel is, why the vast majority of Jews once abhorred Zionism, why Israel is so beloved of modern anti-semites like the alt-right and hardcore Christian evangelicals, why Israel cannot concede a Palestinian state, and why it won’t abandon the occupation without overwhelming penalties from the international community, unless we finish the conversation Livingstone started.

Which is why that conversation was shut down instantly with the accusation that it was “anti-semitic”. But Livingstone’s crime is one no mainstream commentator wants to address or explain. If pressed to do so, they will tell you it is because his comments were perceived to be “offensive” or “hurtful”, or because they were “unnecessary” and “foolish”, or because they brought the Labour party “into disrepute” (Labour’s version of “kind of anti-semitic”). No one will tell you what was substantively anti-semitic about his remark.

Similarly, when pressed to explain how Hanitzsch’s cartoon of Netanyahu was anti-semitic, Wolf digressed to the entirely irrelevant issue of his nationality.

This is the power and the danger of this “kind of anti-semitic” logic, and why it needs to be confronted and exposed for the hollow shell it is.

A mural becomes anti-semitic

The next stage in the evolution of the “kind of anti-semitic” argument is already discernible, as I have warned before. It is so powerful that it has forced Corbyn to concede, against all evidence, that Labour has an anti-semitism problem and to castigate himself, again against all evidence, for indulging in anti-semitic thinking.

Corbyn has been on the defensive since a “controversy” erupted in March over his expression back in 2012 of support for street art and opposition to censorship amid a row over a London mural that was about to be painted over.

Is this antisemitic or anti-masonic?

After he was elected Labour leader in 2015, the first efforts were made to weaponise the mural issue to damage him. The deeply anti-Corbyn Jewish Chronicle newspaper was – like Hanitzsch’s boss at the Süddeutsche Zeitung – initially unsure whether the mural was actually anti-semitic. Then the newspaper simply highlighted concerns that it might have “anti-semitic undertones”. By spring 2018, when the row resurfaced, the status of the mural had been transformed. Every mainstream British commentator was convinced it was “clearly” and “obviously” anti-semitic – and by implication, Corbyn had been unmasked as an anti-semite for supporting it.

Again, no one wanted to debate how it was anti-semitic. The artist has said it was an image of historical bankers, most of whom were not Jewish, closely associated with the capitalist class’s war on the rest of us. There is nothing in the mural to suggest he is lying about his intention or the mural’s meaning. And yet everyone in the “mainstream” is now confident that the mural is anti-semitic, even though none of them wants to specify what exactly is anti-semitic about it.

The 1 per cent off-limits

Much else is rapidly becoming “anti-semitic”. It is an indication of how quickly this slippage is occuring that repeating now a slogan of the Occupy Movement from only seven years ago – that we are ruled by a “global elite”, or the “1 per cent” – is cited as proof of anti-semitism. The liberal New Statesman recently ran an article dedicated to proving that the articulation of basic socialist principles – including ideas of class war and the 1 per cent – was evidence of anti-semitism.

On Frankie Boyle’s popular TV show last week, comedian David Baddiel was allowed to misrepresent – unchallenged – an opinion poll that found 28 per cent of Corbyn supporters agreed with the statement “the world is controlled by a secretive elite”. Baddiel asserted, without any evidence, that when they spoke of a global elite the respondents were referring to Jews. What was this assumption based on? A hunch? A sense that such a statement must be “kind of anti-semitic”?

Lots of young people who support Corbyn have never heard of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and have little idea about Der Sturmer or Nazi propaganda. More likely when they think of a secretive global elite, they imagine not a cabal of Jews but faceless global corporations they feel powerless to influence and a military industrial complex raking in endless profits by engineering endless wars.

The mystification of anti-semitism is so dangerous because it can be exploited for any end those who dominate the public square care to put it to – whether it be sacking a cartoonist, justifying Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians, destroying a progressive party leader, or preventing any criticism of a turbo-charged neoliberal capitalism destroying our planet.

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Lubavitch Rabbi: Jewish Children in the Holocaust were responsible for their Own Deaths in the Holocaust

Rabbi Manis Friedman Agrees with Pastor Hagee - It wasn't Hitler but the Victims Who Were Responsible for their Deaths

The poisonous Rabbi Manis Friedman of Lubavitch/Chabad

It is fair to say that the Orthodox Hasidic sect, Lubavitch, the antics of whose rabbis this blog has regularly covered, [see e.g. ‘Big Questions – Gerald Scarfe's Cartoon and 'anti-Semitism'] are embarrassed by the latest words of wisdom of Rabbi Manis Friedman. According to Friedman ‘Not a single Jewish child died because of the Nazis … they died in their relationship with God’ It’s not that Chabad’s leaders disagree with him, quite the contrary. It’s simply that there are some things that are best left unsaid. It is an article of faith for many if not most Orthodox Zionist sects and Lubavitch is the most Zionist of all, that it was the sins of the Jews themselves that was responsible for the holocaust.

Michal Kaminski, the rightwing Polish leader, speaks at the European Conservatives and Reformists Group event at the Tory party conference in Manchester. Photograph: Martin Argles

The idea that even Jewish children were responsible for their own murder is something that even the most rabid anti-Semites would shrink from saying. Not however Chabad Rabbi Manis Friedman, who has previously justified the murder of non-Jewish children [see ‘Chabad rabbi: Jews should kill Arab men, women and children during war and the sexual abuse of children in general.

Witness the hypocritical denunciations of the anti-Semitic jazzman, Gilad Atzmon, by the Zionists for what he said in his article Saying No to the Hunters of Goliath 

The real Zionist attitude to the Jews of the Holocaust

'the Jewish state and the sons of Israel are at least as unpopular in the Middle East as their grandparents were in Europe just six decades ago. Seemingly, it is the personification of WW2 and the Holocaust that blinded the Israelis and their supporters from internalising the real meaning of the conditions and the events that led towards their destruction in the first place.’ 

Atzmon meant to draw a straight line between the racism of the Israeli state today and the reason for anti-Semitism in Europe in order to find some ‘explanation’ or justification for the holocaust.
That Atzmon’s comments were anti-Semitic is undoubted. But it would be fair to say that they are minor and trivial in comparison with the deep racism and anti-Semitism of Rabbi Manis Friedman and the other Zionist rabbis, inside and outside Lubavitch. [see Why are John Mearsheimer and Richard Falk Endorsing a Blatantly Anti-Semitic Book?]

John Hagee

Indeed the nearest comparison to Rabbi Manis Friedman’s comments that I can think of are the comments of Pastor John Hagee of Christians United for Israel:

‘"Theodore Herzl is the father of Zionism. He was a Jew who at the turn of the 19th century said, this land is our land, God wants us to live there. So he went to the Jews of Europe and said 'I want you to come and join me in the land of Israel.' So few went that Hertzel went into depression. Those who came founded Israel; those who did not went through the hell of the holocaust.

"Then god sent a hunter. A hunter is someone with a gun and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter. And the Bible says -- Jeremiah writing -- 'They shall hunt them from every mountain and from every hill and from the holes of the rocks,' meaning there's no place to hide. And that might be offensive to some people but don't let your heart be offended. I didn't write it, Jeremiah wrote it. It was the truth and it is the truth. How did it happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel."

It’s ironic that both Atzmon and Hagee use the metaphor of the Hunter.  The clear message is that Hitler was fulfilling god’s desires to force the Jews to Israel – a key part of the whole Christian evangelical belief that the second coming of Jesus can only occur when the Jews return to the Holy Land. It is difficult to think of a more anti-Semitic diatribe. 

In another sermon, Hagee blamed American economic problems on the fact that the  Federal Reserve System is controlled by "a group of Class A stockholders, including the Rothschilds." In the same series, Hagee further asserted that the Rothschilds, who are Jewish, were part of a wide-ranging conspiracy of "international power brokers based in Europe’ .  As is normally the case a good anti-Semite is also a good Zionist.  On page 149 of his book Jerusalem Countdown, in a chapter entitled 'Who Is a Jew?', Hagee writes:

"It was Esau's descendants who produced the half-breed Jews of history who have persecuted and murdered the Jews beyond human comprehension ... Adolf Hitler was a distant descendant of Esau."[45] 

However this did not stop leading Zionists from defending him, Israel firsters, for whom any amount of anti-Semitism can be excused so long as the purveyor is a Zionist.  Indeed they rushed to defend Hagee. See ‘Jewish allies of the Rev. John Hagee rushed to his defense yesterday to say the Texas evangelist is not anti-Semitic despite Sen. John McCain campaign’s repudiation Thursday of the evangelist’s endorsement' and Jews defend Hagee’s words.

In much the same way, the capitalists of the Jewish Leadership Council in this country supported the anti-Semitic Polish MEP Michal Kaminski against charges of anti-Semitism.  Hagee had defended the actions of Poles in murdering hundreds of Jews in Jedwabne in 1941. 

As the Jewish Chronicle reported 'the decision by Vivian Wineman, president of the Board of Deputies, to send a letter to David Cameron seeking reassurances about the Tories’ new allies, has caused a rift with the Jewish Leadership Council. One JLC member described colleagues as “livid” at the timing of the letter. Another said he was “incandescent”.

The Guardian reported how Dean Godson, a research director at the Tory Policy Exchange thinktank, bitterly attacked Wineman, President of the Board of Deputies and Labour peer Greville Janner (who criticised the Tories' links with Robert Zile of Latvia, another MEP, who has regularly attended commemorations of the Waffen-SS).  Is Michal Kaminski fit to lead the Tories in Europe?

And according to Los Angeles talk show  host Dennis Prager, "John Hagee is one of the Jewish people’s best friends," "Identifying John Hagee with anti-Semitism would be like identifying Raoul Wallenberg, the great Swede who saved thousands of Jews in the Holocaust, with anti-Semitism."

Even more remarkable is the Letter of Support from Leading figures in Netanya Academic College - May 27, 2008 for Hagee:

Dear Pastor Hagee,

We saw the different publications vilifying your character, and we all felt the need to object and protest thus expressing personally our recognition and esteem to your enterprise, your doing and to your unconditional love to the People of Israel and to the State of Israel.

We all feel that these publications remind us the darkest times of our nation, when rivals from inside and out tried to besmirch the Holy Scriptures, our public systems and the leadership of the Jewish nation. These publications were in the focus of terrible slanders that ended in many disasters for our People.

We see in you a man of truth and a true friend, whose doings and sayings always come from a loving heart and out of true faith. We see you as the appropriate and desirable leader to your flock in these difficult times, and we stand by you.  

Orthodox Rabbi Aryeh Scheinberg, of Congregation Rodfei Sholom in San Antonio, appeared at an afternoon press conference yesterday to say Mr. Hagee's "words were twisted and used to attack him for being anti-Semitic."

Likewise David Saperstein in the Washington Post Hagee's Jewish Endorsers ‘Nonetheless, it had become common to find Jewish leaders joining in Pastor Hagee's "Salute to Israel" events around the country and paying public tribute and homage to the pastor for his efforts.’  See John Hagee
What is the basis of this racism? It is the idea that Jews, or anyone else, as individuals count for nothing. What matters is the achievement of a state, a racial state, because no one can pretend that Jews worldwide form a nation except Zionist lunatics and neo-Nazis (it is a fundamental part of the international Jewish conspiracy theory that the Nazis were wedded too that Jewry, wherever it lived, constituted an organic body, a conspiracy. Hence the Nuremburg Laws made it clear that there were no Germans of the Jewish faith but Jews living as aliens in Germany. Something else that the Zionists agree with too.

Hence it is common amongst the religious orthodox, such as Mr Avraham Greenbaum, former Deputy Director-General of the religious University of Bar-Ilan in Tel Aviv, to make a comparison between ‘assimilation’ i.e. Jews marrying non-Jews or simply integrating into the host community and Hitler’s extermination of Europe’s Jews. After all both were ‘lost’ to Judaism, except for the minor fact that those who were assimilated did so freely and without persecution, whereas those who died in the holocaust were anything but free.

But a racist movement such as Zionism, whose racism today is of course expressed vs the Palestinians, began its journey as a movement which assimilated to itself the anti-Semitic perspective.

Tony Greenstein

Survivors Outraged Over Holocaust Remarks Made By Chabad's Rabbi Manis Friedman

"Who in fact died and who remained alive had nothing to do with the Nazis," Rabbi Manis Friedman stated in a speech delivered in Melbourne in the 1980s. "Not a single Jewish child died because of the Nazis … they died in their relationship with God.…Bad things did not happen to our grandparents … No evil befell them."
Timna Jacks • Australian Jewish News
HOLOCAUST survivors have expressed their outrage that the US rabbi who apologised last week for likening sexual abuse to diarrhoea, has failed to say sorry for claiming the Shoah was part of a Divine plan and that the Nazis weren’t to blame.

"Who in fact died and who remained alive had nothing to do with the Nazis," Rabbi Manis Friedman stated in a speech delivered in Melbourne in the 1980s. "Not a single Jewish child died because of the Nazis … they died in their relationship with God."

Rabbi Friedman’s address – a transcript of which was obtained this week by The AJN from the Jewish Holocaust Centre’s (JHC) archives – was part of a 90-minute lecture delivered before community members at a Toorak home during a trip sponsored by the Yeshivah Centre’s Women of Valour Committee in Melbourne.

"Bad things did not happen to our grandparents … No evil befell them," Rabbi Friedman said.

The rabbi was at the centre of a controversy two weeks ago, for a clip on YouTube, in which he said victims of sexual abuse learn "an important lesson" from the crime and that they’re "not that damaged".

The issue stirred the memories of Shoah survivors and educators, who contacted The AJN to discuss the rabbi’s track record. Survivor and JHC guide Moshe Fiszman, still enraged by Rabbi Friedman’s remarks about the Holocaust, said the comments were "immoral".

"For someone who witnessed all that hell, who went through as many camps as I went through … to read and hear that is just … I don’t know. I cannot explain to you how I feel, there is no way," the 91-year-old said.

At the time, survivors lodged complaints against the rabbi with Chabad authorities and Rabbi Friedman has not been invited back to Melbourne.

Holocaust survivor and guide at the JHC Abe Goldberg said Rabbi Friedman’s implication that the Holocaust was part of a Divine plan is "blasphemy".

"There is no question that Hitler was the one responsible for it."

Referring to Rabbi Friedman’s official apology for comments he made about sexual abuse, Goldberg said: "Suddenly he is apologising? He never apologised before. Why does he only apologise now?"

Rabbi Friedman has failed to respond to requests for a comment on his remarks about the Holocaust.

Big Questions – Gerald Scarfe's Cartoon and 'anti-Semitism'

Zionist Cries of ‘anti-Semitism’ Rebound 
Rabbi Shochet of Lubavitch and the Animal Souls of Non Jews

Rabbi Schochet - cultivates an air of liberalism but is a prominent member of a religious sect that justifies genocide against non-Jews and Arabs and excuses child abuse.  The mask slipped as he couldn't conceal his outrage at having to deal with Jewish anti-Zionist opponents and opposition to gay marriage

Tony Greenstein - despite being outnumbered by a gaggle of Zionists made the issue of Palestinian oppression the key issue - many members of the audience came up afterwards to express their agreement

Although the actual question was 'Is Criticising Israel anti-Semitic' the debate was entirely about the cartoon of Gerald Scarfe, that was falsely accused of being 'anti-Semitic'.

On Sunday I spent the morning in Leicester courtesy of BBC1’s Big Questions.  The Sunday Times last week published a cartoon by Gerald Scarfe showing Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, with a trowel dripping in Palestinian blood cementing Palestinians into the Apartheid Wall.  Sure enough the predictable calls came that this was ‘anti-Semitic’.  It was the medieval blood libel no less!

Letter to The Independent from 28 Jews who Reject Zionist Libel of anti-Semitism

This was a bogus and wholly artificial debate about nothing.  Even dedicated Zionists like Howard Jacobson accepts that there was nothing anti-Semitic about Scarfe’s cartoon.   And Rupert Murdoch, who as proprietor, apologised for the cartoon, presides over newspapers like the Sun which are virulently hostile to refugees, asylum seekers, Roma and any other minority they can get their hands on.  Murdoch himself has been caught using anti-Semitic comments such as ‘Why is Jewish owned press so consistently anti-Israel’.

Even ardent Zionist Howard Jacobson agrees that Gerald Scarfe's cartoon was not anti-Semitic.  To Lubavitch's aptly named Rabbi Schochet (a slaughterer in Hebrew!) it was 'pure unadulterated anti-semitism' or maybe pure unadulterated hype

As was pointed out by another member of the audience, traditional Jewish stereotypes, as per Julius Streicher’s Der Sturmer, show fat hooked nose Jews with duping the non-Jews out of their worldly wealth or debauching someone.  Scarfe’s cartoon did none of these things.  It merely told the truth is the form of a visual metaphor.  And the truth is what the main Zionist spokesperson, Rabbi Schochet and his minions wished to suppress in yesterday’s Big Questions.  It was one of the programme’s 3 debates.
Bogus Charges of ‘anti-Semitism’

Enjoying seeing Rabbi Shochet lose his cool as his bland assertions about Scarfe's cartoon being 'pure unadulterated anti-Semitism' fell as flat as a (kosher) pancake

When Zionists use the term ‘anti-Semitism’ what they really mean is ‘new anti-Semitism’ i.e. not hatred of Jews but opposition to Israel, the ‘Jewish’ State. And what is a ‘Jewish’ state but a state that gives privileges to Jews above non-Jews.  The old anti-Semitism manifested itself in things like beating up Jewish children if they walked down the wrong street in the East End of the 1930’s.  The new ‘anti-Semitism’ is manifested in opposition to the United State’s guard dog in the Middle East and the world's fourth strongest military power!

The Medieval Blood Libel

For those not aware, the Blood Libel was the invention of Christian anti-Semitism.  Every Passover and Easter, Jews were accused of kidnapping and killing non-Jewish children or babies in order that their blood could be used to bake unleavened bread (Matzot) on Passover.  It led to many hundreds if not thousands of deaths.  Its first appearance in the Middle East was in 1840 in the Damascus Affair when 13 Jews were accused of having murdered a Franciscan priest.  The French Consul and Franciscan monks whipped the population into a fury and arrested and tortured 13 Jews, 4 of whom died.  The Affair was subject to the vigorous intervention of Sir Moses Montefiore, the famous British Jewish philanthropist.  It is noticeable that the Blood Libel was only introduced to the region via French imperialism and its reactionary church.  Previously it had been unheard of in the Middle East.

The accusation that Gerald Scarfe’s cartoon was reminiscent of the blood libel is itself a libel.  If I was Gerald Scarfe I would be issuing a writ for defamation.  Unfortunately Gerald was placed under an enormous amount of pressure and forced to apologise.  

The accusations of the Zionists are based on the absurd idea that the depiction of blood in a cartoon is an anti-Semitic blood libel! A child could see that that is ludicrous.  Not so the Lubavitch Rabbi of Mill Hill synagogue, Rabbi Schochet, who was the principal Zionist spokesperson on Big Questions, arguing that it was ‘pure unadulterated anti-Semitism’.   Clearly Shochet has led a very sheltered life.

Zionist McCarthyism

What we have really seen is an exercise in McCarthyism.  An attempt to close down free speech by the Zionists.  So weak is their case that they are forced to resort to cheap, unsubstantiated jibes of ‘anti-Semitism’.  On American campuses many Zionist activists spend most of their time trying to silence opposing points of view.  So when Gerald Scarfe’s cartoon was published in a Murdoch newspaper (the idea of freedom of the press, as opposed to freedom for the proprietor is unknown to this far-right racist warmonger).

Lubavitch and Rabbi Schochet

Schochet himself is a thoroughly disingenuous fellow.  Despite an apparent aura of liberalism (which let slip over gay marriage and in his references to Jewish traitors in his tweet over the Scarfe cartoon) he is a member of the fanatically racist Lubavitch sect which believes non-Jews have animal souls  and that Jewish life is sacred when compared to non-Jews.  As the site of the former Lubavitch member and whistleblower, Shmarya Rosenberg's Failed Messiah explains, the Tanya, the foundational religious document of Lubavitch, ‘contains some of the most virulent anti-Gentile statements ever printed in the name of Judaism, and that the author of the Tanya, the first rebbe of Chabad, Schneur Zalman of Liadi, did not consider non-Jews to be fully human.’ 

In Sholom Rubashkin Prints A Tanya Rosenberg, cites how

The souls of the nations of the world, however, emanate from the other, unclean kelipot [husks] which contain no good whatever מו שכתוב בע׳ חיים שער מ״ט פרק ג׳: וכל טיבו דעבדין האומות לגרמייהו עבדין as is written in Etz Chayim, Portal 49, ch. 3, that all the good that the nations do, is done out of selfish motives. 

Since their nefesh [soul] emanates from kelipot [husks] which contain no good, it follows that any good done by them is for selfish motives. וכדאיתא בגמרא על פסוק: וחסד לאומים חטאת — שכל צדקה וחסד שאומות העולם עושין אינן אלא להתייהר כו׳

The Gemara [Babylonian Talmud] comments on the verse, “The kindness of the nations is sin”  that all the charity and kindness done by the nations of the world is only for their self-glorification

In Rabbi Schochet of the Racist Lubavitch - Big Questions Panellist and Guardian Columnist , which I posted at the time of my last acquaintance with Schochet on Big Questions, I noted how he had failed to dissociate himself from the racism of Lubavitch, to say nothing of Zionism.  I described how Lubavitch Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, who lives in Israel, had written a book, Torat HaMelech (The King’s Torah) which explicitly justified if not urged the murder of non-Jewish children and infants since they were the seed of the Jews’ historical enemy, the Amalekites.

Indeed beneath the liberal image he cultivates is a die-hard Lubavitcher, whose father and grandfather were also Lubavitch rabbis.  Perhaps this explains why he tried to persuade the London Beth Din - orthodox rabbinical court to call a halt to all conversions of non-Jews.  Since Israel's rabbis have got into the habit of not recognising some Orthodox conversions abroad (they have previously reversed conversions if the person left the State of Israel!) Shochet proposed to overcome the problems of non-recognition of conversions by putting an end to them!  What was of more concern to Shochet was the purity of the Jewish people/race and not being contaminated by non-Jews.  [London Beit Din Rejects Chabad Rabbi's Call For Worldwide Conversion Ban - The beit din said it took “exception” to Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet's comments].

Lubavitch's Rabbi Shapira was not an isolated voice.  He was volubly defended in Israel by hundreds of rabbis, Lubavitch and non-Lubavitch.  In one meeting there were 250 rabbis.  Hundreds signed a letter in Shapira’s support.  It says in his book that

‘It is permissable to kill the Righteous among Nations even if they are not responsible for the threatening situation. If we kill a Gentile who has sinned or has violated one of the seven commandments - because we care about the commandments - there is nothing wrong with the murder [either].'

See Max Blumenthal and ‘How to Kill Goyim and Influence People: Israeli Rabbis Defend Book's Shocking Religious Defense of Killing Non-Jews’

Rabbi Manis Friedman - another Lubavitch Rabbi on Child Abuse and the Killing of Non-Jews 

Child abuse is not damaging.  In fact it teaches you an important lesson as to who your friends are!

Another prominent Lubavitch Rabbi, Manis Friedman from America, where Lubavitch is based, is an all-round bigot.  Whether it is women, children, Arabs or non-Jews they are each in their own way inferior – some more than others.

Friedman’s views on the indigenous population of Palestine and the Arabs are best described in an article in Ha'aretz of 9th June 2009 ‘Chabad rabbi: Jews should kill Arab men, women and children during war (see below) 

‘Child victims of sex abuse – ‘they are not damaged’’

Rabbi Manis Friedman not merely sanctions child abuse but he blames the child for the abuse. He told one such victim that they had no need to tell anyone about what had happened to them, anymore than they’d want to tell anyone about having diarrhoea!  The event itself was unimportant, what mattered was the lesson it taught.  But Rabbi Friedman was only saying aloud what Chabad (Lubavitch) believes internally.  It has a long history of  trying to cover up child and sex abuse within the Lubavitch community.  Indeed to report an incident of rape or abuse to non-Jews is itself a sin. In another instance, where a Chabad vigilante group beat up 5 Yeshiva (religious school) students, Chabad Rabbis Avrohom Osdoba, Shlomo Yehuda Segal, and Yitzchok Raitport issued a summons which talked of “the terrible sin informing on Jews to the secular courts.”  This 'terrible sin' equally applies to those who report child abuse, rape and sexual assault. See Crown Heights Beit Din Rules Vigilantes Attacked By Other Jewish Vigilantes Violated Mesira Law By Pressing Charges

See below New York Rabbi Manis Friedman Filmed Comparing Child Abuse to Diarrhoea. 

Chabad Lies that Rabbi Manis Friedman Is Not A Chabad Emissary

In order to escape the embarrassment of Friedman’s comments condoning child abuse, the Chabad Yeshivah Centre, headquarters for Australia and New Zealand in Melbourne, issued a statement denying that Rabbi Friedman had anything to do with them.  This was yet one more lie.  Shmarya Rosenberg, a very reliable source on the crimes and misdemeanours of Chabad, demonstrated quite easily through the use of screenshots, that Friedman was prominently advertised on the Chabad website as the Educational Director of Lubavitch House in St. Paul's, Minnesota! See Chabad: "We Vehemently Disagree" With Rabbi Manis Friedman.  Rosenberg writes about 'The massive scandal surrounding Chabad's Yeshivah Centre (which) has been national news in Australia where police have openly condemned Chabad community leadership for what we would call in the United States obstruction of justice... for their roles in the coverups of this child sexual abuse and for attempts to intimidate victims and their families.

According to followers, the late Rebbe Schneersohn was either the messiah or god or perhaps both

It would take a whole chapter to point to the madness of Lubavitch, who believe their late leader the Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, was the new Messiah.  Indeed some believe he was god himself.  Which from my perspective, being an atheist, he could of course have been!   See A Historian's Polemic Against 'The Madness of False Messianism' by David Berger , [The Forward 19.10.01] which argues that the Lubavitch sect, with its Messiah Now chants and its belief that the Rebbe was the Messiah, has effectively collapsed into Christian messianism.

For more on the genocidal anti-Arab comments of Rabbi Manis Friedman, see: Chabad rabbi to Moment: “Destroy [Muslim] holy sites”  [June 01, 2009] and also Chabad rabbi aims to clarify remarks on killing civilians  (see below)

Shmarya Rosenberg wrote that ‘I've known Manis for 25 years. I used to live around the corner from him. I heard Manis say the same thing many times. I also heard many other Chabad rabbis say it – even I said it.’ What is unusual is to have a Chabad rabbi say it for non-Chabad consumption. The theology is the theology of two people: The late Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson and the late Rabbi Meir Kahane.'

This is a very crucial point.  Chabad (Lubavitch) is a mainstream Orthodox group.  Kach is seen as belonging to the fringe.  Led by the late Rabbi Meir Kahane it was quite rightly seen, even by other Zionists, as a Jewish-Nazi group.  It called for the imprisoning of Arab males who had sexual relations with Jewish women, echoing the Nuremburg Law for the Protection of German Honour and German Blood of 1935 which outlawed sexual relations between Jews and 'Aryans' as part of the drive for 'racial hygiene' and the prevention of Rassenschande (racial defilement/pollution).


'Chabad and Kahane shared much with regard to Israeli politics and inner city Jewish community security.  The only real difference is that Kahane was theologically Zionist while Chabad is not.  By that I mean Kahane saw messianic portent in the Jewish state, while Chabad does not.
In day to day life, there is no real difference between the two positions except in religious matters. … That means Chabadniks and Kachniks can and do stand side by side in the dusty outposts and remote settlements of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). But on days like Yom HaAtzmaut, they make two minyans instead of one.’ Chabad Rabbi Tries To Clarify Remarks On Killing Muslims, Destroying Muslim Holy Places

Why do I concentrate on this Chasidic sect?  Because it is very powerful within the Jewish and Zionist community.  Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks is very close to them.  The 3rd President of the Israeli state, Zalman Shazar, was a supporter.  Rabbi Schochet himself was talked about as a future Chief Rabbi. See Rabbi Schochet of the Racist Lubavitch - Big Questions Panellist and Guardian Columnist
 
Chabad however are not stupid and someone like Shochet, although a religious maniac who exhorts his congregation to chant ‘Moshiach (Messiah) Now’ in order to hasten the Messiah's arrival, itself held to be blasphemous in Jewish religion circles historically, cultivates the air of a liberal with all the rhetoric of diversity at his disposal.

New York Rabbi Manis Friedman Filmed Comparing Child Abuse to Diarrhoea

A leading rabbi has compared child sex abuse to diarrhoea and said it teaches victims an important lesson.

Rabbi Manis Friedman, a New York-based leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, was filmed making the comments in a lecture.

In it, he discusses a child abuse victim who asked him about discussing the abuse with a new girlfriend: "They ask me, 'do I have to tell her I was molested?'

"I said 'do you have to tell her you once had diarrhoea?' It's embarrassing, but it's nobody's business.
"What's wrong with him is that he mentioned it."

Friedman, who was born in Australia, suggested that the damage caused by child abuse was mainly psychological in that it results in "loss of trust".

"It's not the event itself, it's the loss of trust, the feeling of weakness or vulnerability," he explained.
However, the acclaimed Torah scholar also asserted that "being molested is the same as having teachers you don't like.'

"The event itself - 'I'm damaged from molestation' - no you're not. In fact you've learned that not every uncle is your best friend. You've learned an important lesson."

He goes on to discuss how we are all damaged people by events that occur in our lives and that such issues "are real for almost everybody", not just child abuse victims.

Manny Waks, an anti-sex abuse campaigner, has now launched a lawsuit against Friedman in the Jewish court, or Beth Din, in Sydney and Crown Heights in Brooklyn.

He says Friedman is doing "untold damage" to the entire Jewish community and that he is perpetuating a negative perception of the orthodox community in particular.

"Most concerning, he is having a direct, damaging impact on victims and survivors of child sexual abuse and their families," Waks said.

Rabbi Padwa - it is a Mesira - forbidden - to inform the Police or any non-Jew about Jewish child abuse.

The film of Friedman follows a similar video which showed Rabbi Ephraim Padwa, who leads the Charedi community in north London's Stamford Hill, telling an abuse victim not to go to the police -  ‘Child Abuse Hidden in London's Strict Orthodox Jewish Community, Claims C4's Dispatches 

 

Rabbi Padwa says that by going to the police would constitute mesira - meaning it is forbidden to report a Jew to a non-Jewish authority.

 Chabad rabbi: Jews should kill Arab men, women and children during war

Rabbi Manis Friedman clarifies his controversial comment as quote from Torah permissible in case of self-defense.

Ha'aretz 9th June 2009 The Forward and Nathaniel Popper

Like the best Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis, Manis Friedman has won the hearts of many unaffiliated Jews with his charismatic talks about love and God; it was Friedman who helped lead Bob Dylan into a relationship with Chabad.

But Friedman, who today travels the country as a Chabad speaker, showed a less warm and cuddly side when he was asked how he thinks Jews should treat their Arab neighbors.

"The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way: Destroy their holy sites. Kill men, women and children (and cattle)," Friedman wrote in response to the question posed by Moment Magazine for its "Ask the Rabbis" feature.

Friedman argued that if Israel followed this wisdom, there would be "no civilian casualties, no children in the line of fire, no false sense of righteousness, in fact, no war."

"I don't believe in Western morality," he wrote. "Living by Torah values will make us a light unto the nations who suffer defeat because of a disastrous morality of human invention."

Friedman's use of phrasing that might seem more familiar coming from an Islamic extremist has generated a swift backlash. The editor of Moment, Nadine Epstein, said that since the piece was printed in the current issue they "have received many letters and e-mails in response to Rabbi Friedman's comments - and almost none of them have been positive."

Friedman quickly went into damage control. He released a statement to the Forward, through a Chabad spokesman, saying that his answer in Moment was "misleading" and that he does believe that "any neighbor of the Jewish people should be treated, as the Torah commands us, with respect and compassion."

But Friedman's words have generated a debate about whether there is a darker side to the cheery face that the Chabad-Lubavitch movement shows to the world in its friendly outreach to unaffiliated Jews. Mordecai Specktor, editor of the Jewish community newspaper in Friedman's hometown, St. Paul. Minnesota, said: "The public face of Lubavitch is educational programs and promoting Yiddishkeit. But I do often hear this hard line that Friedman expresses here."

"He sets things out in pretty stark terms, but I think this is what Lubavitchers believe, more or less," said Specktor, who is also the publisher of the American Jewish World.

"They are not about loving the Arabs or a two-state solution or any of that stuff. They are fundamentalists. They are our fundamentalists." 

Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League and a regular critic of Arab extremists, said that in the Jewish community, "We are not immune to having these views. There are people in our community who have these bigoted, racist views."

But, Foxman warned, Friedman's views are not reflective of the Chabad rabbis he knows. "I am not shocked that there would be a rabbi who would have these views," Foxman said, "but I am shocked that Moment would give up all editorial discretion and good sense to publish this as representative of Chabad."

A few days after anger about the comment surfaced, Chabad headquarters released a statement saying that, "we vehemently disagree with any sentiment suggesting that Judaism allows for the wanton destruction of civilian life, even when at war."

The statement added: "In keeping with Jewish law, it is the unequivocal position of Chabad-Lubavitch that all human life is G-d given, precious, and must be treated with respect, dignity and compassion."

In Moment, Friedman's comment is listed as the Chabad response to the question "How Should Jews Treat Their Arab Neighbors?" after a number of answers from rabbis representing other Jewish streams, most of which state a conciliatory attitude toward Arabs.

Epstein said that Friedman was "brave" for stating his views so clearly.

"The American Jewish community doesn't have the chance to hear opinions like this," Epstein said, "not because they are rare, but because we don't often ask Chabad and other similar groups what they think." 

The Chabad movement is generally known for its hawkish policies toward the Palestinians; the Chabad Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, rejected peace accords with the Palestinians. Rabbi Moshe Feller, the top Chabad rabbi in Minnesota, said that the rebbe taught that it is not a mitzvah to kill, but that Jews do have an obligation to act in self-defense.

"Jews as a whole, they try to save the lives of others," Feller told the Forward, "but if it's to save our lives, then we have to do what we have to do. It's a last resort."

Lubavitch Rabbi Manis Friedman - a big for all seasons

Friedman is not a fringe rabbi within the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. He was the English translator for the Chabad Rebbe, and at the rebbe's urging, he founded Beis Chana, a network of camps and schools for Jewish women. Friedman is also a popular speaker and writer on issues of love and relationships. His first book, "Doesn't Anyone Blush Anymore?" was promoted with a quote from Bob Dylan, who Friedman brought to meet the rebbe.

On his blog and Facebook page, Friedman's emphasis is on his sympathetic, caring side. It was this reputation that made the comment in Moment so surprising to Steve Hunegs, director of the Jewish Community Relations Council: Minnesota and the Dakotas.

"Rabbi Friedman is a best-selling author who addresses some of the most sensitive issues of the time," Hunegs said. "I intend to call him and talk to him about this."

But Shmarya Rosenberg, a blogger and critic of Chabad who lives a few blocks from Friedman in Minnesota, says that the comment in Moment is not an aberration from his experiences with Friedman and many other Chabad rabbis.

"What he's saying is the standard normal view of a Chabadnik," Rosenberg said. "They just don't say it in public."

For his part, Friedman was quick to modify the statement that he wrote in Moment. He told the Forward that the line about killing women and children should have been in quotes; he said it is a line from the Torah, though he declined to specify from which part. Friedman also said that he was not advocating for Israel to actually kill women and children. Instead, he said, he believed that Israel should publicly say that it is willing to do these things in order to scare Palestinians and prevent war.

"If we took this policy, no one would be killed - because there would be no war," Friedman said. "The same is true of the United States."

Friedman did acknowledge, however, that in self-defense, the behavior he talked about would be permissible.

"If your children are threatened, you do whatever it takes - and you don't have to apologize," he said.
Friedman argued that he is different from Arab terrorists who have used similar language about killing Jewish civilians.

"When they say it, it's genocide, not self-defense," Friedman said. "With them, it's a religious belief - they need to rid the area of us. We're not saying that." 

Feller, the Chabad leader in Minnesota, said that the way Friedman had chosen to express himself was "radical."

"I love him," Feller said. "I brought him out here - he's magnificent. He's brought thousands back to Torah mitzvah. But he shoots from the hip sometimes." See also Chabad rabbi aims to clarify remarks on killing civilians Jewish Telegraph Agency – Ben Harris 2.6.09.