In the Monty Python sketch, “Hell’s Grannies”, an earnest TV documentary presenter investigates ruthless gangs of grannies, who rule the streets by spreading fear and terror amongst healthy young men and women, clobbering people with their handbags and walking sticks.

I was reminded of the sketch when reading a startling article entitled “The Limits of Multi-Culturalism” in The Independent newspaper (28 July 2010). It begins with this: 

I would like to teach some of my neighbours some manners

These neighbours (and the article’s author, Christina Patterson) live in Stamford Hill: a fascinating multi-cultural neighbourhood, with many different types of people and not insignificant amounts of criminality on its streets. Out of all these various people who live in and around Stamford Hill and who populate its pavements, roads and street corners it is the orthodox Jews that concern Patterson.

“Hell’s Grannies” came to me when I read Patterson’s take on orthodox Jewish women who “roam” with “pushchairs and vast armies of children”:

I would like to say to the women who roam the streets with double-decker pushchairs and vast armies of children, that it’s sometimes nice to allow someone else to get past

There is nothing wrong with writing an article that asks a group to do more to integrate with the surrounding society. This article, however, goes much further than that. It treats Muslims and Jews as nothing more than uncivilised mirror images of one another; and ranges, seamlessly, from genital mutilation to castigating Jews in Volvos with mobile phones, bad manners and “chosen” people haughtiness.

In the first two paragraphs, Patterson complains of orthodox Jews

• They are ill-mannered and non-communicative to others.
• Don’t say “please” or “thank you”; and would rather not sell fish to others (especially black others).

The third paragraph picks up the pace

• Their little boys make women feel like pariahs because they “leap up as if an infection from the ebola virus was imminent” when a woman sits next to them on the bus.
• Their “women who roam the streets with double-decker pushchairs” block the pavement.
• “They could treat their neighbours with a bit more courtesy and just a little bit more respect.”

Patterson’s next paragraph moves well beyond Monty Python territory – and was extracted by The Independent to highlight the article

When I moved to Stamford Hill, I didn’t realise that goyim were about as welcome in the Hasidic Jewish shops as Martin Luther King at a Ku Klux Klan convention

I take the King and Klan references not so much as seriously comparing orthodox Jews with terroristic racist murderers, but rather as a more extreme version of the tired old joke, ‘about as welcome as a pork pie at a Bar Mitzvah’. However, the use of the single word “goyim” troubles me far more: as it always does when journalists use it to invoke the notion that Jews believe others to be inferior beings.

The motif of “chosen people” (and therefore “goyim”) is a core historical element of antisemitism throughout the ages. An article entitled “Why There is ‘Anti-Semitism’”, (subtitle: “The Average Man’s Guide to the Jewish Peril”), in the January 1965 edition of the neo-Nazi publication Spearhead explains why:

4) The Jews regard themselves as a master-race.

…As the ‘chosen people’, they intermarry very little with non-Jews, and wherever possible form ghettos where they can live a life apart from the ‘inferior’ Gentiles, whom they call ‘Goyim’ (cattle).

Sure enough, Patterson immediately uses the word “goy” again: and does so with a follow-up sucker punch about the “chosen” people.

I didn’t realise that a purchase by a goy was a crime to be punished with monosyllabic terseness, or that bus seats were a potential source of contamination, or that road signs, and parking restrictions, were for people who hadn’t been chosen by God.

Patterson says that “none of this is a source of anything much more than irritation” (although she could have fooled me) and adds that she is made “sad” by eight year old boys who have “presumably…been taught” that “a normal-looking woman” (ie her) “is dirty, or dangerous, or, heaven forbid, dripping with menstrual blood”. From this, she also goes on to say how “sad” she is about “three year olds in hijab, who want, of course, to look like mummy”.

Having acknowledged that you cannot legislate against what “parents, or rabbis” teach their children, Patterson then veers off into an impassioned polemic against “one thing I will never accept”: female circumcision within the Muslim community. This concludes with

There is, I’m sure, nothing in the Koran to indicate that hacking off a girl’s labia is an all-round great idea, just as there’s nothing in the Torah to say that Volvos should always be driven with a mobile phone in hand, and goyim should be treated with contempt.

This seamless comparison between the brutality of female circumcision and Volvo-driving Jews who treat “goyim…with contempt” is shocking. Stylistically, however, it neatly sets Patterson up to demand laws against anyone breaching her notion of what is a “civilised society”. This is no longer about female circumcision: we are back to Jews and Jewish practises again. Having previously insisted that she is merely “sad” about such things, she now rails against them as “crazed whims”

 ….a civilised society will have laws to indicate what is acceptable… A properly civilised society would also ensure that children are not subject to the crazed whims of their parents, and hived off into “faith schools” where they’re taught that the world was created in seven days, or that they need special gadgets to switch on the lights on a Saturday, or that women who show their face are sluts.

This is not a Richard Dawkins style atheist argument against all religions, Patterson fondly recalls

lovely little C of E schools were once an excellent place for children to learn about the religion that shaped their culture, art and laws

Patterson bemoans that if you are to close down “the madrassa run by the mad mullah next door”, then you must also shut the C of E school. Her silver lining, however, is that she would replace them with “compulsory state secular education” in which all children are taught to get on with one another; and that “the culture of the country they’re living in was, for 2,000 years, largely based on one.”

If the old age pensioner branch of the British National Party published this kind of stuff, then nobody would bat an eyelid. It simply won’t do, its simply not how we do things here old boy. But The Independent?

It was, however, only in March and June of last year that two different Independent journalists wrote about the power of the “Jewish lobby” in America. Furthermore, the same newspaper twice warned against Jews serving on the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War. Now, it seems that Jews are also threatening London’s multi-cultural tapestry. Whatever will these Jews subvert next? No doubt The Independent will let us know soon enough.

Note – Miriam Shaviv’s deconstruction of Patterson, on the Jewish Chronicle blog is well worth reading. It is here, and begins

I feel like I need to wipe the spittle off my face. I have just finished reading one of the ugliest, most vile pieces ever published in the British press. It is actually dripping with venom.

And if, like me, you need cheering up after all of this, then click here to watch the aforementioned Monty Python granny sketch (scroll in by about 24 seconds to reach the start).

CST has issued its antisemitic incidents report for January-June 2010 . 

The report (in pdf form) may be read in full here and reveals a mixed picture, with incident levels having fallen from 2009 but still higher than in most other years.  

The report shows that 310 antisemitic incidents were reported to CST in these first six months of 2010.

This was a welcome decline of 51% compared to the 628 incidents in the same period in 2009 (which had seen a record number of antisemitic incidents, mainly due to extreme reactions to the Gaza conflict at the beginning of that year).

Nevertheless, the 310 incidents amount to 12% more than the 277 incidents during the same period in 2008 and are also higher than in 2007, 2006 and 2005.

Analytically, there were 43 violent antisemitic assaults reported to CST in the first half of 2010, 45 incidents classified as Damage and Desecration of Jewish property and 201 incidents in the category of Abusive Behaviour, which includes verbal abuse, hate mail and antisemitic graffiti on non-Jewish property.

Geographically, of the 310 incidents, 122 were in Greater London and 89 were in Greater Manchester. The remaining 99 occurred in 36 different locations around the UK.

By comparison, in the first six months of 2009, there were 303 in Greater London and 143 in Greater Manchester; and in the first half of 2008, 120 in Greater London and 57 in Greater Manchester.

A further 168 potential incidents were reported to CST during the first half of 2010, but upon investigation were not deemed to be antisemitic and are not included in these totals.

CST thanks our many partners and friends, both Jewish and non-Jewish, for their continuing encouragement, co-operation, and assistance in our work.  

This photograph, below, taken in the Greater Manchester area, is on the cover of the report. It shows antisemitic graffiti that combines old and new hatreds:

Film director, Oliver Stone, famously knows a thing or three about conspiracies. Odd then, that when telling the Sunday Times about his next project, the “Secret History of America” he should have fallen foul of the hoary old one about Jews running the world.

Stone’s comments appeared at the end of an interview with Camilla Long and they were neither challenged; nor referred to in the headlines and sub-headlines accompanying the article. This was how it appeared

“Hitler did far more damage to the Russians than [to] the Jewish people, 25 or 30m.”

[Long asks] Why such a focus on the Holocaust then? “The Jewish domination of the media” he says. “There’s a major lobby in the United States. They are hard workers. They stay on top of every comment, the most powerful lobby in Washington. Israel has f***** up United States foreign policy for years.”

Following protests from Israel and American Jewish groups, Stone made a partial back-pedal, concentrating on his having said the word “Jews”

In trying to make a broader historical point about the range of atrocities the Germans committed against many people, I made a clumsy association about the Holocaust, for which I am sorry and I regret.

Jews obviously do not control media or any other industry. The fact that the Holocaust is still a very important, vivid and current matter today is, in fact, a great credit to the very hard work of a broad coalition of people committed to the remembrance of this atrocity – and it was an atrocity.

Stone’s limited apology, released via his publicist, Rubenstein Communications, says nothing about “the most powerful lobby in Washington”: but then again, why would it? After all, isn’t that what simply everybody who’s anybody is saying these days?

Still, the allegation that Jews run the media and entertainment (and P.R.?) industries is merely one part of the conspiracy charge that Jews run the world. Jews don’t do stuff for any old reason.

Of course, Stone didn’t actually say that Jews run the world, or even that they run America. Read his words again: he only said that they dominate the media. He didn’t say who actually comprises the “major lobby”, nor who the “hard workers” that comprise “the most powerful lobby in Washington” actually are. He does, however, seem to know the product of their work, “Israel has f***** up United States foreign policy for years.”

Stone appears too busy to schlep his way through that mother of all conspiracies, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Perhaps he’d be better off trying to read the abbreviated Protocols so usefully provided by the Britons Publishing Society in 1936. This is how it opens

Note the bits in italics, how congruous the words “Jewry” and “leaders of Zionism” are.

This is what the Nazi Britons then say about Jews running the media

Protocol No.2 says:- ‘…there is a great force that can be made to mould the thoughts of the people, and that is the Press. But the Gentile States have not known how to make use of this force, and it has fallen into our hands. Through the press we have gained the power to influence the public while remaining ourselves in the shade…

we have been able to manufacture public opinion, and thus to compel the governments to move in the direction in which we desire them to move.

By the 1980s, the antisemitic rag, “Holocaust News”, formerly peddled on street corners by the BNP (including its then deputy leader Richard Edmonds) put it like this (in the original, the 2nd paragraph appears in bold):

…Jews are grotesquely over-represented on the boards of companies which own TV networks, radio stations, newspapers, film studios, book publishers and other enterprises which the public relies upon for information…

These media Jews are, for the most part, not merely sympathetic to Zionism but organised Zionist activists. As such they ruthlessly and arrogantly exploit their power to influence the public mind in the service of Zionism

The BNP don’t do “Holocaust News” any more, but in the 1990s their current leader, Nick Griffin, authored “Who Are The Mindbenders?”. The answer to Griffin’s question was no surprise: people with Jewish names, scores of them. Griffin did, however, make a witty little rejoinder against the claims of antisemitism that would inevitably accompany such a publication 

Our quarrel is with the Mind-Benders in the media, not with law-abiding tailors and dentists.

The tailors that Griffin had in mind do not appear to have been the same ones referred to in the opening sentence of the Guardian editorial of 24 July 2008

When a presumptive US presidential candidate arrives in Jerusalem, he willingly dons a jacket designed by Israeli tailors.

Of course, the difference is that Griffin’s tailors were Jewish: whereas the Guardian’s were Israeli. It is the crucial conceit that Stone failed to observe when he said that Jews dominate the American media: had he merely stuck to the Zionist motif then he could have been right up there in the pantheon with Mearsheimer & Walt.

But he didn’t. Instead, Stone blew it and trespassed onto Mel Gibson’s set. Will the Guardian, the Independent, the New Statesman, the London Review of Books et al cast it up to him when he comes selling his finished “Secret History of America”? Don’t bet on it. After all, people in anti-Zionist glass houses…

Now, from the very deepest depths of ‘whatever will they think of next’ comes news that iconic 1970s pop group, Boney M, were requested by the organisers of the Palestine International Festival in Ramallah to not sing their hit number, “By the Rivers of Babylon”.

Regrettably – for the many of us who have shamelessly danced to cheesy renditions of their hits at Bar Mitzvahs, weddings and the like – Boney M complied.

Having done so, they reportedly showed as much awareness of modern politics as “Ma Baker” does of Gangsta Rap.

Williams said she did not know if it was a political thing or what, but they asked us not to do it and we were a bit disappointed. Organizers said they asked for the song to be skipped, deeming it inappropriate.

I don’t blame Maizie Williams and the rest of Boney M for going along with their hosts’ requests. Her reported words show no hint of political bias either way; and her compliance is invisible compared to what alarmingly large sections of the British liberal-left have gone along with in recent years.

Still, lets try and answer Wiliams’ question, was it “a political thing”? Lets compare some Boney M songs to find out:

Its not a sex thing or a sexism thing because “Bang Bang Lulu”, “Baby do You Wanna Bump”, “Gloria, Can you Waddle” and “Love for Sale” were ok.

Its not a colour thing or a nationalist thing, because “Brown Girl in the Ring”, “White Christmas” and “Ra Ra Rasputin” were ok.

Its not a Christian or even a Voodoo thing, because “Mary’s Boy Child”, “Hark the Herald Angel” and “Voodoonight” were ok.

It’s not an artistic merit thing, nor a flares thing, nor a…I could go on…but lets cut to the serious bit. It was a Jewish thing. Not a political thing, nor even an anti-Zionist thing, but a Jewish thing: or rather, an anti-Jewish thing.

It is one thing to demand a boycott of Israel, but it is quite another to demand a boycott of popular cultural references to the historical Jewish longing for Israel, or Zion.

The instinct is to say that if this is the direction that the boycott movement takes, then arguments over Israel-Palestine will be entering into new anti-Jewish territory. That, however, would be to forget the prominence that arguments over history, archaeology and mythologised pasts have always played in the superheated attempts to disprove Jewish links to the land of Israel.

Those who sat and wept by the rivers of Babylon were expressing the Jewish link with Zion: the fundamental link that the Palestinian festival organisers want to suppress because of their competing claims to it. Each and every debate about Israel and Zionism risks exactly this kind of denial of Jewish history.

Discussing Jewish history in these contexts is an inescapable and fundamental reason why the division between anti-Zionism and antisemitism is such a porous one.

Furthermore, the age old association of Jews with Zion exposes, yet again, the hysterical invitations to antisemitism provided by the regular bastardisation of the word Zionism in today’s media and politics. (For example, Zionists are definitionally racists, ethnic cleansers, inheritors of Nazism, dominators of Washington, manipulators of media, harbingers of war etc etc.)

Indeed, the fundamental Jewish link to Zion was shown only last week by a survey showing that 90% of British Jews believe that “Israel is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people.” It is not, however, what we might call a ‘fundamentalist’ link: 76% of respondents disagreed that “Jews who live outside Israel are living in exile” and a narrow minority of 48% agreed that “the Land of Israel was given to the Jewish people by G-d”.

We are used to seeing the really big Jewish issues swept under the anti-Zionist / anti-Israel carpet. You know the ones.

Things like the singular denial of Jewish historical perspectives. Things like how many Jews would have been saved from the Holocaust had Israel existed pre-1948; or the role of mainstream Zionists and Israel in the revival of the Jewish people after the Holocaust.

Things like never asking what the impact would be upon Israeli and Diaspora Jews if Zionism and Israel were to be smashed by the revolutionary armies of Arab nationalism or Islamic revival; or why is it that Jews are the only people on earth who shouldn’t have a state, because if they do, well…that would just be so…you know, uniquely racist wouldn’t it?

Sometimes it takes the strangest little thing to make you sit up and take notice of what is going on. Who would ever have thought that Boney M would provide that thing?

The Jewish Chronicle reports that the government has announced measures to amend the law on universal jurisdiction for war crimes. The proposed change will take the power to issue an arrest warrant out of the hands of local magistrates, so that it rests solely with the Director of Public Prosecutions. Joshua Rozenberg’s Standpoint blog has the full text of the Ministry of Justice statement.

The government is right to recognise that this law is liable to abuse by extremist groups, that seek to use the law to further their particular political agenda. For example, in November 1977 the National Front tried to have the recently-elected Israeli Prime Minister, Menachim Begin, arrested when he visited the UK. The Daily Express (23 November 1977) reported the story as follows:

Front plan Begin arrest

NATIONAL FRONT chief Martin Webster said last night that the party would try to have Israeli Premier Menacham (sic) Begin arrested as a “former terrorist” when he visits Britain next week.

A former Palestine policeman would try to have an arrest warrant – issued when Begin was an anti-British terrorist with a £10,000 price on his head – executed by a British court, he said.

Just prior to Begin’s visit to the UK, he had hosted Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in Jerusalem, to begin the process which concluded in the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. Sadly for the National Front, but happily for the cause of Middle East peace, a local magistrate in Bristol turned down their application and Begin’s visit to the UK went ahead successfully.

An American court has awarded punitive damages of $300 million against North Korea, for its role in the massacre of tourists at Israel’s Lod Airport in 1972. The terrorist attack was carried out by three members of the Japanese Red Army (JRA), working with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and resulted in the deaths of 26 people, mostly Puerto Rican Christian pilgrims.

The terrorists arrived on the same plane as most of their victims, but their luggage contained automatic rifles and hand grenades. When they reached the baggage carousel, the three calmly removed the weapons and began firing and throwing grenades, until two of the terrorists were dead (Yasuiki Yashuda, the operation leader, was killed by errant gunfire of a colleague, while Takeshi Okidoro was killed by one of his own grenades – it is unclear whether this was suicide or accident) and the third, Kozo Okamoto, had run out of ammunition and tried to flee. Okamoto was caught and sentenced to life imprisonment in Israel, released in a prisoner exchange in 1985, and now lives under political asylum in Lebanon despite a Japanese request for his extradition.

While in prison in Israel, Okamoto was interviewed by Patricia G. Steinhoff, then an Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Hawaii, whose paper “Portrait of a terrorist: an interview with Kozo Okamoto” (Asian Survey vol.16 no.9 Sept 1976) remains a fascinating account of Okamoto’s political development and motivations, and is the basis for much of this blogpost.

The allegation of North Korean support for the JRA is certainly not new. The group’s first major terrorist action was the hijacking of a Japanese aircraft in March 1970 by a team of nine terrorists, armed with samurai swords as well as guns and explosives. Nobody was hurt in what turned out to be a largely symbolic hijacking, but what is relevant here is that the hijackers flew the plane to Pyongyang, where the authorities received them with, according to Steinhoff, a promise to re-educate them in “proper revolutionary methods”. Meanwhile,PFLP leader George Habash was a regular visitor to North Korea, which he had described as the perfect revolutionary state. Significantly, Okamoto’s older brother, Takeshi, was one of the hijackers, and would lead Kozo into JRA activities.

Looking back over a period of nearly four decades, there are some aspects of Okamoto’s story which are strikingly anachronistic: the ability of Trotskyite ideology to motivate people to commit the mass murder of innocent pilgrims, for example, is likely to surprise those SWP members who receive their only political education at Marxism 2010. However, there are other aspects which are as relevant as ever for our understanding of contemporary terrorism and the process of radicalisation.

Japan at that time had a radical student movement which often organised mass demonstrations that led to violence against the police; Yashuda and Okidoro had both studied at Kyoto University, known as a particular a centre of radical student activity. Okamoto’s first real activity on behalf of the JRA was to organise the screening of a propaganda film, “Declaration of World War by the Red Army and PFLP”, in a room at Kagoshima University where he studied. (NB the name of the film commits to a “World War”: the global revolutionary vision of the left wing terrorist groups of the 1970s is often overlooked, but bears a resemblance to the Caliphate dreams of today’s global jihadists.)

However, the link between radical student activity and terrorism is never quite so direct. Campus politics can be a source of radicalisation, but this process has its limits: the JRA was formed, in part, by radicals who became frustrated with the failure of mass demonstrations to bring about revolutionary change, and moved towards a willingness to use more extreme forms of violence. Okamoto himself, despite his film booking, was hardly active on behalf of the JRA in Japan, but merely flitted about the edges of the movement, mainly because of his personal connection through his brother; another feature of many who pass through radical politics on their journey to terrorism.

However, what Okamoto did have was a romantic idea of himself as a guerilla, a taste for action, and a firm belief that the world had to be remade through violence. According to Steinhoff:

The [JRA] espouses Trotsky’s theory of a simultaneous, world-wide revolution in which the proletariat of the entire world must overthrow the bourgeoisie which rules individual nation states. The Red Army believes the revolution must be violent to defeat the overwhelming power of the bourgeoisie.

[...]

By contrast, Okamoto does not seem to have paid much attention to the finer points of the ideology. The idea of being an active revolutionary was the main attraction. The precise theoretical rationale was not important, so long as it encompassed his general political frustrations and his concern about environmental pollution.

Okamoto was willing to give up his life for a cause, which was something the three terrorists discussed at length before their attack, even making half-formed plans for it to end in suicide. In his trial, Okamoto concluded his speech with the following, rather strange, passage:

When I was a child, I was told that when people died they became stars. I didn’t really believe it, but I could appreciate it. We three Red Army soldiers wanted to become Orion when we died. And it calms my heart to think that all the people we killed will also become stars in the same heavens. As the revolution goes on, how the stars will multiply!

Thus Okamoto dehumanises his victims, while simultaneously claiming the power of life and death over them, all for the revolutionary cause. The neutrality with which he views the dead is striking: terrorist and victim become indistinguishable in death, and all are martyrs to the revolution. It is as if he placed no value judgement on either himself or those he killed. He certainly showed no animosity towards his victims, unlike the contempt expressed by many jihadists for those they seek to kill.

Another feature of Okamoto’s story is that, when he was pressed on the details of the world revolution he sought to bring about, his vision quickly fell apart. Steinhoff continues:

One of the ambiguities of Okamoto’s revolutionary conception is that the enemy is not clearly defined. Sometimes the ordinary person living in bourgeois society is regarded as part of the enemy bourgeoisie. Yet at other times, he counts the same people as potential supporters of the revolution because they are victims of such things as pollution…The neutrality which which he regards his victims is part of Okamoto’s general suspension of judgment regarding the methods of revolution. He believes in the necessity and the inevitability of the revoultion. Because he foresees total overthrow of the existing arrangements of society, he does not feel bound in any way by the moral values of the present world…On the other hand, he is not really certain of what society will be like after the revolution has occurred. When I asked him what kind of a world he envisioned after the revolution, he smiled and said, “That is the most difficult question for revolutionaries. We really do not know what it will be like.”

This is where the narcissism of revolutionary violence of all types is laid bare. The transgressive glamour of violence, attached to transformative ideology, generates a sense on the part of the revolutionary terrorist that there are no limits to their methods. “It is not simply a question of ends justifying means”, Steinhoff observes, “but a more fundamental vagueness about what are ends and what are means.” Anyone who has watched the martyrdom videos of more recent British terrorists, full of angry self-justification but rarely stating anything that could resemble a political programme, will recognise exactly this phenomenon.

There are some standard tropes about Jews which recur in antisemitic discourse in different contexts and countries, and have done so for centuries. They normally include, for example, that Jews are atypically cruel and bloodthirsty, particularly towards children; that they view non-Jews as somehow sub-human; that they conspire together to use their financial power to manipulate unsuspecting non-Jews; that they create wars and send non-Jews to fight and die in those wars, for Jewish purposes; that the Talmud mandates them to behave in this way; and so forth. It is remarkable how easily and frequently these ideas can be found in the present day, especially if you substitute “Zionist” or “Zionist Jew” for “Jew”.

This post contains just three examples of this from the past week, although there are many others, which have been written about previously on this and other blogs. Firstly, Khalid Amayreh writes of a “Jewish-controlled media” and how “most Jews [are] mass murderers, certified war criminals, child killers, land thieves and pathological professional liars.” Secondly, Ken O’Keefe talks of “some very dangerous teachings within the Talmud in particular that makes the non-Jew, gentile, goy, essentially non-human.” Thirdly, Gilad Atzmon says that Zionism has bought “the entire Western political system” and sends British and American troops to die in foreign wars. There are more details of each below, for those who can stomach it.

 Khalid Amayreh is a Palestinian journalist whose writings we reported on last month; specifically, those which appear to support ideas of a Talmudic “Judeo-Nazism”; Holocaust Denial; the Blood Libel; and a global Jewish conspiracy.

Amayreh has now written an article, “Muslims need to tackle Jewish Islamophobia“, in which he claims that Jews pay “Muslim renegades” to “malign Islam”; that “Zionist agents” fabricate antisemitic incidents to blame on Muslims; and that “most Jews” are “mass murderers, certified war criminals, child killers, land thieves and pathological professional liars.” Here are some extracts from the article:

From Sydney to California , Zionist Jews are spreading venomous hatred against Islam. A few years ago, we were witnessing mere instances and isolated occurrences of Jewish hatred and/or fear of Islam and Muslims. Now, it is very much morbid mass hysteria sustained by rampant and unrelenting incitement and distortion of facts.

[...]

This virulent Jewish Islamophobia is by no means confined to the American arena, where the Jewish-controlled media and show biz have been inciting against Islam for ages.

In Europe, Zionist Jews have been encouraging European neo-fascism as long as the ultimate target is Muslims, not Jews. The messages go like this: Islam is about to take over Europe, wake up before it is too late!!

In many instances, Zionist agents fabricated anti-Semitic incidents, like scrawling anti-Jewish epithets or even setting Jewish property on fire, and blamed it on Muslims

[...]

Moreover, in many instances certain Jewish circles have courted Muslim renegades, given them money, in order to use them as mouthpieces to malign Islam. This is very much similar to Jewish apostates who converted to Christianity in medieval Europe and were used by the Church to malign Judaism and its practices, ultimately leading to pogroms against Jewish communities.

Jewish Islamophobia is much more than a mere protest phenomenon against Muslim opposition to Nazi-like Israeli policies in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and South Lebanon . It is actually a deliberate, organized effort aimed at besmirching Islam and hurting the feelings of Muslims by vilifying Islam’s symbols such as the Prophet Muhammed (Peace be upon him). Just think of any Islamophobic group anywhere in the world today, and you will find that some Zionist Jews stand behind it in terms of financial backing or political support.

[...]

Indeed, contrary to common misunderstandings, Islam is not against Jews as Jews. Islam never lumped Jews in one category and has always sought to make a careful distinction between  good Jews and bad Jews, e.g. God-fearing Jews who truly follow the teachings of the Torah, on the one hand,  and, on the other,  those duplicitous, dishonest and disobedient Jews who views [sic] the rest of mankind as cattle.

In the final analysis, we all know that Jews lived their golden age under the rule of Islam whether in Egypt, or Iraq or southern Spain. This situation, more or less, continued until the advent of the cancer of Zionism in the 20th century. The creation of the evil state of Israel in Palestine in 1948 helped spread this cancer in the Middle East and beyond as most Jews were effectively transformed by Zionism into worshipers [sic] of the  modern golden calf known as Israel. This satanic calf  has effectively morphed Jews, or most Jews, into mass murderers, certified war criminals, child killers, land thieves and pathological professional liars.

[...]
Israeli Nazism has a fixation, namely controlling the world by controlling governments and regimes, as is already the case in the United States, Canada and several other western countries.

Needless to say, the main obstacle hindering the consummation of Zionist global hegemony is the Muslims the world, or more correctly the vital Muslim forces that are mindful of the task of shielding the dignity of Muslim peoples from the ghoul of Zio-Nazism.

Who would publish such an article, which talks of “Zionist global hegemony”, “Jewish-controlled media” and slanders “most Jews” as child killers and liars – rhetoric that in the past, people would assume to be neo-Nazi propaganda?

It was first published by the Palestine Information Center, which is generally viewed as affiliated to Hamas, although it does not declare any official connection. It was then reproduced by the “Information Office” of Hamas’ armed wing, the Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades; Ikhwanweb, which describes itself as “The Muslim Brotherhood’s Official English web site”; the AhlulBayt News Agency, an Iranian Shia website; the website of the Iranian state radio broadcaster, IRIB; and various blogs, including Palestine Free Voice and Uprooted Palestinians.

This is what passes for acceptable discourse about Jews, in these parts.

Here is Ken O’Keefe, one of the Gaza flotillistas, who also thinks he knows how to differentiate good Jews from bad Jews:

Jews and Muslims and Christians and any other section of society have the capacity to be destructive or constructive.  With regard to the Zionist extremists who have their way with Israeli policy, there is a deep sense of entitlement and some very dangerous teachings within the Talmud in particular that makes the non-Jew, gentile, goy, essentially non-human.  The Jew of this ilk is bound to treat the non-Jew as such, and that segment of the Jewish population in Israel has the most power.  What this translates to is the Jewish people are seeing their religion being hijacked.  I know good Jewish people, I know destructive Jews, but Judaism itself is not the problem.  However, I would argue that Jews of conscience must speak out, and do so in increasing numbers.  That is what is required to take your religion back and become a constructive contributor to society.

This kind of thinking is the mirror image of the Islamophobic trope that the Quran compels Muslims to be violent, or to hate and kill non-Muslims. It is an argument usually propounded by people with little knowledge or understanding of the religious traditions they traduce. (I do not know if O’Keefe has spent time in a yeshiva, but I doubt it). Perhaps his hosts at the Islamic Forum of Europe can ask him, when he speaks there on 24th July, about the validity of extracting and essentialising isolated religious verses to explain the behaviour of religious believers today.

The precise explanation is, anyway, meaningless. Amayreh claims the “good Jews” are the ones who follow the Torah. O’Keefe’s argument is the reverse: he says that the bad Jews are the ones who follow the Talmud. None of this makes sense, but then it doesn’t need to. It is what Anthony Julius describes as “an affair of ignorance, stupidity, and baleful prejudice.”

Finally, here is Gilad Atzmon, in a speech delivered to a meeting at London’s Friends House (for which O’Keefe was billed as Master of Ceremonies), claiming that Zionism is “a global movement with global interests”, to which end it has “[bought] the entire Western political system”, and that British soldiers are dying in “Zionist wars”:

8.1 Zionism vowed initially to collect Jews from around the world and to bring them to Palestine. It was inspired by the idea of a national home in a ‘promised land.’

8.2 This is definitely not the case anymore. Zionism took a different route. It actually expects the Diaspora Jews to mount pressure on Western governments and media. Wolfowitz was very productive in shaping America’s interests and desires, as was David Aaronovitch in championing ‘moral interventionist’ wars in The Times, David Miliband  fulfilled his duty fighting to amend British Universal Jurisdiction within the British cabinet to allow Israeli war criminals to visit this Kingdom. Alan Dershowitz  managed to transform the  American academic world into a Yeshiva. Haim Saban, the Israeli American tycoon, bankrolls the Democratic party when he isn’t buying American media outlets or funding a new think tank.

8.3 The Israelis realised a long time ago that it is far cheaper to buy the entire Western political system than buy a single tank.

8.4 Zionism has become a global movement with global interests.

8.4.1 It drifted from the discourse of ‘promised land’ into the politics of ‘promised planet’

8.5 Consequently, British and American soldiers are dying in growing numbers fighting Zionist wars.

8.6 More concerning is the fact that British and American people have been made  complicit in a genocide driven by Zionists.

8.7 However, the most troubling issue here is the fact that Brits and Americans are  driven by an Old Testament vindictive ideology, namely an ‘eye for an eye’. One would have expected that considering the Christian foundation of Britain and the USA these countries would be inspired by compassionate Christian ideas such as ‘love your neighbour’ and ‘turn the other cheek.’

[...]

11 It doesn’t take a genius to gather that the proponent of these precepts in our midsts are devoted Zionists. It doesn’t take a genius to gather that Wolfowitz’s Doctrine lead to the war in Iraq. It is literally transparent that the ‘moral interventionism’ that is advocated by David Miliband, Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen is a pretext for violence. It is not exactly a  secret that when Britain was taken into illegal Iraq war,  Lord Levy, a Zionist by admission, was Labour’s No 1 fund raiser.

These examples are not limited to one community or political standpoint: Amayreh is a Palestinian, Atzmon an ex-Jew and O’Keefe an American leftist. They are joined together by a discourse which separates anti-Zionism from pro-Palestinianism, while erasing the distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Claims of Talmudic justifications for alleged Jewish cruelty do not offer practical or political help for Palestinians, nor do conspiracy theories about Jewish politicians or journalists with Jewish names, agitating for wars in Muslim countries. These ideas cannot be categorised merely as criticism of Israel, unless the meaning of the words “criticism and “Israel” are to be stretched beyond comprehension.

In a much-quoted passage, Norman Cohn, in his seminal Warrant for Genocide, located antisemitism in:

..a subterranean world where pathological fantasies disguised as ideas are churned out by crooks and half-educated fanatics for the benefit of the ignorant and superstitious. There are times when this underworld emerges from the depths and suddenly fascinates, captures and dominates multitudes of usually sane and responsible people, who thereupon take leave of sanity and responsibility. And it occasionally happens that this underworld becomes a political power and changes the course of history.

It would be an exaggeration to claim that this underworld and its fantasies have assumed this kind of influence in Britain: these remain marginal views which gain a hearing, still, only on the fringes. (The situation is different in those countries where Islamist movements hold mass appeal). But there are parts of the UK anti-Zionist scene where these ideas can be expressed unopposed, and even meet approval. There are also diluted version of these ideas – of the omnipotent lobby, for example – that circulate as common-sense knowledge in the mainstream. This is not the first time we have pointed this out, and it is unlikely to be the last.