Marina Benjamin reviews Martin Gilbert’s “In Ishmael’s House,” a book about Jewish experiences under Muslims:

“My sense is that Gilbert doesn’t feel quite at home with his material. Like the white boy in the hood, he likes the rap music but can’t always understand the lyrics. Among Jews from Arab lands (I know this because I am one), there exists a culture of complaint, a cult of victimhood and a strong undertow of racism. “How we suffered!” they like to wail, before cursing their former overlords. Gilbert, as an Ashkenazi, can’t tell when to listen respectfully from when a large pinch of salt is required.There is no arguing with the fact that 850,000 Arab Jews were expelled from their native countries after Zionism trounced Arab Nationalism, brandishing the Israeli state as its trophy. Most Arab Jews are also furious that their forced exile has nothing like the profile given to the plight of Palestinians, spat out of Israel at the same time and in roughly equivalent numbers.

“But that’s where the self-pity ends. Arab Jews wouldn’t dream of going back to countries they now see as primitive. For them, there is no homeland outside America, England, Holland, Israel or Canada. Gilbert tells us that some Muslims think of their Jewish compatriots as “dogs”. Yet he appears clueless as to the slanders that Arab Jews reserve for Muslims in return.”

“Haaretz reports rising anti-Jewish feelings in the US:

“It is disturbing that with all of the strides we have made in becoming a more tolerant society, anti-Semitic beliefs continue to hold a vicegrip on a small but not insubstantial segment of the American public,” he added.

19 percent of Americans who participated in the survey said they thought the statement “Jews have too much control/influence on Wall Street,” was “probably true,” a five percent increase since 2009.

“The stereotypes about Jews and money endure, and the fact that more Americans are now accepting these statements about Jews as true suggests that the downturn in the economy, along with the changing demographics of our society, may have contributed to the rise in anti-Semitic sentiments,” said Foxman.

The survey also found that 30 percent of the respondents believe that Jews are “more loyal to Israel than to America.” Nearly half of all respondents agreed with the statement that Jews “stick together more than other Americans, and 33 percent said they believe Jews “always like to be at the head of things.” And finely, 31 percent of Americans believe “Jews were responsible for the death of Christ.”

The highest level of anti-Semitism in the U.S. recorded by the ADL was 17 percent, reported by the league in 2002.” [compared to 15% of Americans today, or 35 million]

Lila:

If 15% of the population openly admit such thoughts/feelings, it’s a good bet that at least twice as many, if not three or four times, harbor the same feelings without speaking out.

That would be well over half the population. If you eliminate minors, the elderly, the sick, and Jewish people themselves, that means most politically aware adults probably harbor similar feelings, although few will admit them, and most will denounce them publicly, for obvious reasons.

If blog comments are any guide, anti-Jewish feeling is running extremely high, and Jewish leaders who persist in dismissing it as “fringe” or “outlying” are in denial. They should listen carefully and rationally to what they are hearing and lay aside their emotional reactions. 

Can 15% or more likely 40-50% of the literate adult population in the US, many of them well educated and informed (thanks to the Internet), all be bigots, ignorant, and crazy?

Might there not be some vestige, some glimmer, of accuracy somewhere, after all the rancid or bigoted statements are eliminated? 

In Germany, the left has been noticeably radicalized:

“The Left Party’s foreign policy spokesman, Wolfgang Gehrcke, has been accused of attending pro-Hamas and pro-Hezbollah rallies in Germany, and he also has a track record of making anti-Israel statements to the German media
“Over the years, leading members of the Left Party have also waged an anti-Israel campaign. Left Party deputy Christine Buchholz has been a member of the party’s “Shift to the Left” faction, which supports the “legitimate resistance” of Hamas and Hezbollah in their terrorist attacks against Israel. She has also played down the Iranian threat against Israel

“Left Party Vice President Sahra Wagenknecht, in an interview with Der Tagesspiegel in February 2010, accused Israeli President Shimon Peres of spreading “lies” about Iran’s drive to build nuclear weapons. Wagenknecht and Buchholz were also the only ones to remain seated during a standing ovation for Peres during his Holocaust remembrance speech in the Bundestag.
“But German anti-Semitism is not limited to just the far-left Left Party. A new study published by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, a think-tank affiliated with Germany’s Social Democratic Party, reveals high levels of anti-Semitism in Germany and a strong presence of anti-Semitism that is linked with Israel and is hidden behind criticism of Israel.

“The April 2011 report, which is titled “Intolerance, Prejudice and Discrimination: A European Report,” questioned roughly 1,000 people in each of eight European countries. The study found that 47.7% of Germans believe “Israel is conducting a war of extermination against the Jews [sic]. Lila: substitute “Palestinians”

” Nearly 50% of Germans believe “Jews try to take advantage of having been victims of the Nazi era.” More than 35% of Germans agree with the statement: “Considering Israel’s policy, I can understand why people do not like Jews.””A previous poll, “Iraq and Peace in the World,” commissioned by the European Union in November 2003, found that 65% of Germans consider Israel to be the greatest threat to world peace, ahead of Iran and North Korea.”

“In Canada, the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism (CPCCA) has noted the rise of anti-Semitism in the form of campaigns dubbing Israel an apartheid state. Critics say the charge is only meant to silence critics of Israel and is made by pro-Israeli partisans intent on maintaining the status quo in their favor.

An MSNBC report from earlier this year about the boy who went to heaven and came back:

“Little Colton nearly didn’t make it: He lay in a hospital bed for 17 days. When he finally rallied, the family rejoiced — but they were floored when, months later, the boy began matter-of-factly describing what he had experienced when he was in between life and death: seeing Jesus dressed in royal purple, meeting John the Baptist, having angels sing to him to ease his anxiety.

“‘Pops’ had ‘huge wings’ in heaven, boy says. The Burpos believed these were things Colton could have gleaned from his Bible studies. But he also told his mother he saw her talking on the phone in another room while he was having surgery, and saw his father praying in a small room, all while he was seated in Jesus’ lap.

“What caught my attention was he could tell me where I was while he was in surgery,” Todd told Lauer. “The surgeon couldn’t tell me that, the nurses couldn’t, my wife couldn’t tell me where I was praying. But he could tell me.”

Colton also spoke of meeting a long-departed relative in heaven, telling NBC News: “I was just sitting by the Holy Spirit and then this guy comes up to me and says, ‘Are you Todd’s son?’ I say yes, and he says, ‘Well, I’m his grandfather.’ ”

 

Note:

I should make it clear that I do not support the views of Israel Shamir (or Atzmon), who, in many ways, seems to be a provocateur. And I don’t endorse his (and Atzmon’s) negative view of “Jewishness.”  For a critique of Walberg that sees him as embodying a dangerous fraternizing between radical Islamicists and the antiwar left, see here.

In my view, it is precisely because Zionism has replaced Jewishness that it is a problem.

In other words, I do not find anything objectionable per se in “Jewishness” or even chosenness, minus the imperial/expansionist element in Zionism.

Nonetheless, I don’t support the demonizing and ostracizing of this important speech, which now, more than ever, clarifies the political debate over capitalism and empire. I believe, that many on the left, like Atzmon and Shamir, are deliberately invoking the ghost of real anti-Semitism (Holocaust denial)

[Lila: added on November 6, 2015. Rereading this, I want to correct the term “real anti-Semitism”. I do not any more think that disputing numbers or revising a historical record means that someone endorses violence against an entire group.]

in order to form a “popular front” against Zionism.  As anyone can see, this is a very dangerous strategy.

ORIGINAL POST:

Eric Walberg on the wide-spread censorship of important political opinion in the free world:

“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” Russian-Israeli author Israel Shamir told Al-Ahram Weekly. “There are thousands of people sentenced and imprisoned for similar ‘crimes’, mainly in Germany and Austria, more than all the dissidents ever imprisoned in Soviet Russia. The majority of these cases never reach public awareness.”

That a lowly sous-prefet became the subject of the interior minister’s personal intervention for stating the above is astounding, just one example of the heavy hand of the Israeli lobby in Europe. Bruno Guigue’s real “crime”, it’s quite clear, was to criticise the state of Israel.

Though not a “Holocaust denier”, Guigue is suffering a similar fate as his fellow anti-Zionists who are prosecuted under the anti-Holocaust denial laws, currently on the books in 12 European countries. The most notorious victims of these laws are writers David Irving and Ernst Zundel, who were jailed for questioning the extent of the death toll of Jews during WWII and the insistence that the Nazis had a plan to kill all Jews (Roma, homosexuals and Communists are forgotten in the brouhaha) as opposed to ethnically cleansing Europe.

Though an essential weapon in Israel’s political arsenal, according to Shamir, these laws are not usually invoked; they are intended more as a warning. Rather, writers and their publishers are sued under broader libel laws, as was Norman Finkelstein, the son of Holocaust survivors, and his French publisher Aden Brussels in 2004, when he was accused of Holocaust revisionism and incitement to antisemitism. The Simon Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Liaison Shimon Samuels testified: “Finkelstein’s thesis is an extremist attack on Jews in general, and American Jews in particular, accusing them of exploiting the suffering of the Shoah as a ‘pretext for their crimes in the context of the Middle-East conflict’. This thesis constitutes the principal credo of modern antisemitism. He exploits his own Jewish antecedents in order to attack as ‘racist’ specific Jewish leaders, their organisations and the Jewish people. I am convinced that only a judicial penalty will contain the damage wreaked by this particularly offensive libel.”

Samuels compared Finkelstein to Roger Garaudy, a respected Marxist philosopher who himself spent three years in a concentration camp in WWII, who was convicted in France under the Gayssot Law in 1996, which he argued “restores the law, abolished after Vichy, that defines questioning of official truth as a criminal offence.

It restores discrimination against anybody who does not submit to one-track thought and to the cult of politically correct taboos imposed by American leaders and their Western mercenaries, especially the Israelis.”

From Mother Jones

“Goldline International, the California precious metals retailer promoted by Glenn Beck and other right-wing radio hosts, was formally charged with 19 criminal counts—including grand theft by false pretenses, false advertising, and conspiracy—on Tuesday by the Santa Monica City Attorney’s Office. The criminal complaint also implicates Goldline CEO Mark Albarian, along with two other company executives and two salespeople.

The charges detailed in the complaint support what MoJo‘s Stephanie Mencimer first reported in 2010: Using aggressive telemarketing tactics, Goldline employees routinely pressured customers to purchase expensive coins with mark-ups so steep that it was very unlikely the consumer would ever make his money back. The company racked up a long list of complaints with the Federal Trade Commission, and at one point was sanctioned by the state of Missouri. But Beck and other endorsers (including liberal talker Ed Schultz) lent an air of legitimacy to the whole operation, sowing fears of a total economic collapse to help make the pitch for Swiss Francs. Beck’s pitch went a step further, arguing that in the event of a total financial meltdown, the government would confiscate gold bullion—meaning you should invest your money in coins instead. “

A Times of India article from 2007  asserts that outside Iraq India is the country with the most terrorism, losing as many as were lost in the 9-11 attack every three years or so. Now with the bombing of Pakistan, violence is bound to escalate, as disaffected Pakistanis take out their wrath at the US and Israel on the convenient and vulnerable target next door.

“In fact, India has since 2004 lost more lives to terrorist incidents than all of North America,
South America, Central America, Europe and Eurasia put together. All of these vast swathes of the globe lost a total of 3,280 lives in terrorist incidents between January 2004 and March this year. India alone lost 3,674 lives over the same period of three years and three months.

In yesterday’s edition of TOI, in our front page lead report on the Hyderabad blasts, we had said that terror groups have left India with perhaps the highest number of civilian victims of terror (apart from war-torn countries like Iraq).

Later, on Sunday, when we looked in detail at the worldwide numbers, we found India not only had the highest number of deaths after Iraq, but also the highest number of terror-related incidents and injured among all countries (again, barring Iraq) — more than all the war zones around the globe. India has been hit by terrorists at will and with chilling regularity — Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Malegaon, Varanasi, J&K — the list is endless.

It’s only on one count — hostages taken by terror groups — that India’s at No 3, to Iraq’s No 2. Guess which country was No 1? Nepal, that too by a huge margin, thanks to large-scale kidnappings by Maoists.

Indeed, if one had to pick a terrorist hotspot on the globe it would have to be South Asia. Outside of Iraq, 20,781 people were killed in terrorist violence between January 2004 and March 2007, according to data available from the Worldwide Incidents Tracking System (WITS) of the US National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC). Almost half of them, 9,283 to be precise, were killed in South Asia.

Besides India, Afghanistan has seen 2,405 lives being lost while more than 1,000 each have been killed in Pakistan and Nepal. Sri Lanka has had 866 terrorism-related deaths and Bangladesh 158. Bhutan and the Maldives are the only South Asian nations not to have lost lives to terror in this period.”

The World Terrorist Risk Index compiled by the UK firm Maplecroft had India at number six in 2009,  after Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Lebanon, but, by the end of 2010 (November 2010), the country’s position had improved to 16.  At the top in 2010 were Somalia, Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan, a ranking unchanged from the previous years.

The Maplecroft index assesses 198 countries based on number, frequency, and intensity of attacks, as well as the likelihood that there will be mass casualties.  Of the 20 states they rate as high risk, India is at 18 and Israel is at 20, according to a Huffington Post article.

The HuffPo piece doesn’t square with the Times of India assessment I cited at the top, which rates terrorism in India much more severely. By contrast, the Maplecroft Index attributes over 75% of the 13,492 victims of global terrorism to its top four countries, a proportion strongly at variance with the T of I figures.

The explanation for this might lie in the fact that the index is “forward-looking”, even though it’s based on historical data. It’s possible that countries with a proactive stance on terrorism might be rated as less dangerous.  The other possibility –  cynical though it might be – is that the ranking follows Anglo-American military strategy, highlighting terrorism in “areas of interest”, and downplaying it when it occurs inside the territory of allies.

A circular from Occupy Building 7:

On Saturday November 19 and Sunday November 20, we will march from Liberty Plaza to Building 7 and occupy the park in front of Building 7 until nightfall. We hope this will mark the beginning of a sustained Occupy Building 7 movement that will grow and finally bring meaningful attention to the obvious demolition of World Trade Center Building 7 and the dire need for a new 9/11
investigation. ……..

OccupyBuilding7.org

Comment

My fear is that the natural desire to find out what really happened on 9-11 might be in the process of being co-opted. A new investigation, for example, might end up like the show trial that featured a convenient patsy, a mid-level employee of Goldman Sachs, Fabrice Toure, while overlooking the serious criminal allegations against the firm. 

Similarly, a “new” investigation might only subject us to the next layer of disinformation that suits whatever is currently on the agenda of the globalists.  It is a dance of the seven veils and we are nowhere near the raw booty. My guess is, with the Middle East in uproar, the powers that be might well decide to show a bit of skin to distract us, at this point. A Copperfield thigh flash (thank you, Deep Capture) that will show us Saudi complicity or Iranian or Pakistani, but not CIA or MI6 or Mossad. That would of course provide ammunition for further war.

The Occupy Wall Street movement seems to have attracted a lot of top-down input despite its obviously populist strains.  So too the grass roots movement for 9-11 Truth might be in the process of being co-opted.  “9-11 Truth” might end up providing more justifications for war,  while at the same time being permanently discredited and silenced.

After all, if the connections of Pakistani intelligence or Saudi intelligence to 9-11 are revealed, but not those of  British or American or Israeli intelligence, where does the 9-11 movement go from there?  Will it not be caught between a rock (more justification for war, if it accepts flawed findings once again) and a hard place (allegations of anti-Semitism, if it refuses to accept them)?

From Siliconeer.com, an affectionate portrait of  India’s third Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, a man of impressive integrity and character, who supposedly died of a heart attack (some say he was poisoned) in Tashkent, soon after winning the second Indo-Pakistan war in 1965.

Soft, but Never Weak

“….. Lal Bahadur Shastri never sought power, never was keen to stick to power. Twice he resigned from his post. Once when a railway accident occurred and he took the moral responsibility, second time to build the party organization. It was his nature of being ajatshatru (a man without an enemy) and his capability to remain friendly to people whose views he opposed such as Nehru and Purushottam Das Tandon meant he was also favored by opposite camps. He never said a word even in jest which could hurt someone. He spoke in simple sentences. It was these qualities that made him dear to all. But when the test came, he never failed.

And they came soon enough. On August 31, 1965, when war broke out between India and Pakistan, and he was woken [sic] at 3 a.m. in the morning to be told that Pakistan’s army was marching toward Chamb area, it did not take him even five minutes to give the Indian army a free hand to retaliate with full force and open a new front to occupy Lahore. Scholars had their doubts if Nehru would have given orders to cross borders in this case. When after the ceasefire a conference between him and President Ayub Khan of Pakistan was organized in Tashkent, he insisted that a clause should be added in the peace agreement that never again would force be used to settle problems. When Ayub seemed reluctant to agree to that, he replied, “Then you have to find another PM to negotiate with.” This clause was added at the last minute, when Ayub wrote that in his own handwriting.Ayub’s hand-written assurance is still preserved in Indian archives.

“His other test came in handling India’s food crisis in 1965. He was supposed to visit the U.S. The date was fixed, but President Lyndon Johnson decided that he would like Shastri’s visit to coincide with Ayub’s visit. That Shastri refused. He also refused to cancel his visit to Canada which was scheduled to take place at the same time. He visited Canada, but cancelled his visit to the U.S. He also refused to be pressured to accept wheat of inferior quality under PL 480 that the U.S. was to send to India. Instead he appealed to the nation that all its citizens should have one meal less per day so the poor could be fed. Before announcing that to the nation he asked his wife not to cook the evening meal. He also asked people to grow food even in their houses

“But Shastri’s legacy is not in his rule. Shastriji stands for austerity, simplicity and integrity. He never sought power to be rich. There are so many tales told by those who were close to him. Sumangal Prakash, a Gandhian who marched with Gandhiji during the Salt satyagraha, tells us how even as a prime minister he could not afford a decent coat in winter. Once he had to go some event in Bihar and he did not have a coat. He asked a tailor to take four of his old coats — all made of Khadi — and make into one. He could not afford to get new sets of teeth or a new pair of glasses. He never let his children use his name to gain favor from anyone. He never let them use the official car for private use. His son Anil had to use public transportation to go to school.

My brother told me an incident. He went to Lucknow once when Shastriji was a minister in the U.P. Government. He phoned Shastriji. Shastriji invited him but with a warning, “Your bhabhi (sister-in-law) is not at home today, so you will not get a cooked meal. You have to make do with whatever there is.” How many ministers are there whose wives cook their own meal? And how many prime ministers are there who washed their own clothes every day and polished their own shoes? Once Shastri was visiting Varanasi to attend an event in the winter. The famous Hindi poet Mahadevi Varma noticed that he had no socks. She asked him, “Don’t you feel cold?” He replied, “I have only two pairs of heavy woolen foreign socks, which I wear when I have to go to a cold country like Russia.” Nehru had to lend him a mink coat when as a home minister, he was sent to Kashmir in winter.

And yet, he arranged to send a helicopter to shower flowers on a newly wed couple in a village, where the bride was the daughter of one of his poor friends, who spent time with him in prison during the freedom movement. Shastri was the only home minister without a home of his own.”

KBTX.com
“It’s been used for military operations in countries like Afghanistan and East Africa but now it’s coming to a country near you.

“We’re the only sheriff’s office in the state that’s going to have a piece of equipment like this,” said Montgomery County Sheriff Tommy Gage.

Sheriff Gage introduced his department’s newest tool, the ShadowHawk Unmanned Aerial Vehicle or UAV.

“We look forward to utilizing it in a variety of capacities that protect our employees from harm to the extent possible and to enhance the protection to our citizens and their safety,” said Montgomery County Chief Deputy Randy McDaniel.

Thanks to live streaming video, the U-A-V is capable of investigating crimes in progress. It also has night vision and can pick up heat signatures which could help with search and rescues. It can help firefighters with aerial views of fires or even HAZMAT spills.”

DNAIndia ran an analysis earlier this year (March 23) of the Wikileaks cable on Gujarat’s controversial chief minister from the Hindu nationalist party BJP, Narendra Modi. 

Well-regarded on the issue of corruption, the pro-business Modi has been permanently tainted by his alleged complicity in the 2002 Gujarat riots, in which  a large number of Muslims were killed by Hindus.  Modi and his supporters claim that the media, dominated by the opposing Congress Party had promoted a misleading view of the riots and the fact that it was provoked initially by Muslims killing Hindus traveling on a train. 

The centrality of human rights to US policy, as professed in the cable, is characteristic of the expansive “liberventionist” (my neologism for  humanitarian intervention or “liberation” of oppressed or endangered people) foreign policy, a policy very suitable for open-ended intervention anywhere for any reason.

DNAIndia.com:

“Noted human rights activist Father Cedric Prakash said, “one doesnt know the veracity of the wikileaks cables, but if it is to be believed, It seems the US is very clear that nothing will happen (about Modi’s rejected diplomatic visa) till there is clarity on human rights and religious freedom in Gujarat. If it is considered as interference, then the US business interests in Gujarat that Modi is so keen to promote, should also be seen as an intrusion as US companies do not come here out of any love for Gujarat or Gujaratis but for their profits.”

Congress leader Shaktisinh Gohil said, “Modi has very conveniently interpreted the cables. If they say that corruption is lesser at lower levels, it is also said that it is very high at top levels. It clearly says that money collected from corporates goes to the BJP. The cables also say that Modi has used caste and religion to divide people for political gains.”

“When they were discussing human rights violation with me, I looked into their eyes and said that America should not advise us on humanity. The whole world knows what they have done,” Modi said on Tuesday.”