The New Anti-Semitism

by Victor Davis Hanson

Hating Jews, on racial as well as religious grounds, is as old as the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. Later in Europe, pogroms and the Holocaust were the natural devolution of that elemental venom.

Anti-Semitism, after World War II, often avoided the burning crosses and Nazi ranting. It often appeared as a more subtle animosity, fueled by envy of successful Jews in the West. "The good people, the nice people" often were the culprits, according to a character in the 1947 film "Gentleman's Agreement," which dealt with the American aristocracy's social shunning of Jews.

A recent third type of anti-Jewish odium is something different. It is a strange mixture of violent hatred by radical Islamists and the more or less indifference to it by Westerners.

Those who randomly shoot Jews for being Jews - whether at a Jewish center in Seattle or at synagogues in Istanbul - are for the large part Muslim zealots. Most in the West explain away the violence. They chalk it up to anger over the endless tit-for-tat in the Middle East. Yet privately they know that we do not see violent Jews shooting Muslims in the United States or Europe.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad promises to wipe Israel "off the map." He seems eager for the requisite nuclear weapons to finish off what an Iranian mullah has called a "one-bomb state" - meaning Israel's destruction would only require one nuclear weapon. Iran's theocracy intends to turn the idea of a Jewish state on its head. Instead of Israel being a safe haven for Jews in their historical birthplace, the Iranians apparently find that concentration only too convenient for their own final nuclear solution.

In response, here at home the Council on Foreign Relations rewards the Iranian president with an invitation to speak to its membership. At the podium of that hallowed chamber, Ahmadinejad, who questions whether the Holocaust ever took place, basically dismissed a firsthand witness of Dachau by asking whether he really could be that old.

The state-run, and thus government-authorized, newspapers of the Middle East, slander Jews in barbaric fashion. "Mein Kampf" (translated, of course, as "Jihadi") sells briskly in the region. Hamas and Hezbollah militias on parade emulate the style of brownshirts. In response, much of the Western public snoozes. They are far more worried over whether a Danish cartoonist has caricatured Islam, or if the pope has been rude to Muslims when quoting an obscure 600-year-old Byzantine dialogue.

In the last two decades, radical Islamic terrorists have bombed and murdered thousands inside Europe and the United States. Their state supporters in the Middle East have raked in billions in petro-windfall profits from energy-hungry Western economies. For many in Europe and the United States, supporting Israel - the Middle East's only stable democracy - or even its allies in the West has become viewed as both dangerous and costly.

In addition, Israel is no longer weak but proud and ready to defend itself. So when its terrorist enemies like Hezbollah and Hamas brilliantly married their own fascist creed with popular leftwing multiculturalism in the West, there was an eerie union: yet another supposed third-world victim of a Western oppressor thinking it could earn a pass for its murderous agenda.

We're accustomed to associating hatred of Jews with the ridiculed Neanderthal Right of those in sheets and jackboots. But this new venom, at least in its Western form, is mostly a leftwing, and often an academic, enterprise. It's also far more insidious, given the left's moral pretensions and its influence in the prestigious media and universities. We see the unfortunate results in frequent anti-Israeli demonstrations on campuses that conflate Israel with Nazis, while the media have published fraudulent pictures and slanted events in southern Lebanon.

The renewed hatred of Jews in the Middle East - and the indifference to it in the West - is a sort of "post anti-Semitism." Islamic zealots supply the old venomous hatred, while affluent and timid Westerners provide the new necessary indifference - if punctuated by the occasional off-the-cuff Amen in the manner of a Louis Farrakhan or Mel Gibson outburst.

The dangers of this post anti-Semitism is not just that Jews are shot in Europe and the United States - or that a drunken celebrity or demagogue mouths off. Instead, ever so insidiously, radical Islam's hatred of Jews is becoming normalized.

The result is that the world's politicians and media are talking seriously with those who not merely want back the West Bank, but rather want an end to Israel altogether and everyone inside it.

Revolving Door to Blackwater Causes Alarm at CIA

Plus: More on the Agency's “Wehrmacht”

by Ken Silverstein
HARPER'S

Blackwater USA, the private security contractor that has operated in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, and New Orleans, has been booming the past few years. Founded in December of 1996, the company spent its early years “paying staff with an executive's credit card and begging for customers,” according to the Virginian-Pilot. But today, Blackwater reportedly has revenues of about $100 million annually, almost all of it from government contracts, and maintains “a compound half the size of Manhattan and 450 permanent employees,” according to the newspaper.

How did Blackwater rise so high, so fast? [CONTINUE ORIGINAL ARTICLE]

A Dirty Little Secret

GermanForeignPolicy.com

WASHINGTON/BERLIN/PARIS
(Own report) - American military circles are recommending a re-organization of all nations in the Middle East along ethnic lines. Loss of territory and drawing new borders will effect Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan among others. Through the complete dissolution of states, new actors will be created in international law, along the lines of ethnic and religious affiliation. According to this plan, a country, by the name of "Free Kurdistan" will be created, three times the size of Syria, from territory taken from today's northern Iraq and eastern Turkey. The remainder of Iraq will be divided, the capital, Baghdad, smashed. Iran would lose extensive areas of its coast, as well as, territory bordering on Pakistan, where a "Free Baluchistan" is to be founded. Mekka and Medina, until now located in Saudi Arabia, will be promoted to capitals of an "Islamic Sacred State," that will extend to the southern borders of Jordan - doubling the surface of the Hashemite territory ("Greater Jordan"). This ethnic re-organization is depicted on several US maps, that the historian Dr. Pierre Hillard (Paris) has now published in France. In his talk with german-foreign-policy.com Hillard deems that "German policy plays an important role in propagating these ideas". German-foreign-policy.com publishes, for the first time in Germany, the US cartography.
Recommendations for a complete overthrow of the prevailing state order were published in the "Armed Forces journal" (AFJ, June 2006) a magazine of the "Army Times Publishing Company". This enterprise publishes at least ten military magazines (including "Army Times" and "Navy Times") and is owned by the Gannett Media Group (Virginia, USA). In a self-portrait, the operational income of the group, to which the well-known daily, "USA Today" is also affiliated, figured at US $7.6 billion in 2005.[1]

Experience
Under the title "Redrawing the Middle East Map" the "Armed Forces Journal" shows its readers two maps with identical territorial outlines, with one ("before") showing the current border situation to then develop the future ("after") image of the Middle East. According to the accompanying article, the Muslim world is in a situation generating hatred and violence, in part as a consequence of its colonial heritage and partially due to its own fault, which can only be corrected with radical border alterations. The redrawing of the boundaries would have to follow ethnic affinities and religious communalism, writes the author Ralph Peters, a retired military officer.[2] Peters makes no secret of the fact that he has experience in the field of intelligence.[3] According to information gleaned by german-foreign-policy.com, Peters last visited Baghdad in the spring of 2006.

Unearned
The cartography published under Peters' name, recommends the break-up of the current Saudi Arabia, which must accept the largest loss of territory. This radical transformation is explained with the political situation of the Saudi rulers, who are not only "one of the world's most bigoted and oppressive regimes" [4] - but also that their "vast oil wealth" is completely "unearned." To obtain "true justice", according to the "Armed Forces Journal," the oil fields today on the southwest Saudi coast, must be assigned to Yemen. But not just Saudi control over resources, Riyadh's religious influence over the holy sites (Mekka and Medina) is also to be weakened. Therefore, what had been the prophet Mohammed's area of activity are to be administered by an "Islamic Sacred State," which will have an enormous territory, but no continuous central government - since it will be ruled by a rotating council representative of the world's major Muslim schools and movements.

Pro-Western
The US military author offers the Kurdish separatists of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran a hundred percent territorial surplus. These states will lose substantial chunks of territory to the chimera, "Free Kurdistan", whose founding can no longer be postponed. "A Free Kurdistan, stretching from Diyarbakir (Turkey) through Tabriz (Iran), would be the most pro-Western state between Bulgaria and Japan," are the benevolent motives behind the territorial amputation of several UN member states as described in the "Armed Forces Journal".

Wrest
In order to wrest control over the Persian Gulf and its wealth in oil from Iran, the entire coastal flank of the country would go to a not yet founded partial state of the former Iraq. In this way, both opponents to the presumption of western rule, will be deprived of the material basis of their autonomy, around which, they must compete against each other. Whereas Iraq will have ceased to exist, Iran would lose a great deal of territory to Unified Azerbaijan, Free Kurdistan, the Arab Shia State and another chimera (a "Free Baluchistan"), but would gain the provinces around Herat in today's Afghanistan.

New perspectives
As the French historian, Pierre Hillard, judges, this ethnicist aggression, carried out by western powers, is being decisively promoted through the foreign policy of Germany. Hillard refers to continuous efforts by German front organizations, seeking to "remodel the Middle East," [5] and in this connection, mentions specifically the activities of the Bertelsmann Foundation. The foundation annually organizes forums ("Kronberg Talks") on the Middle East, where discussions center around a "complete transformation of the political, economic and religious Institutions" of the Muslim resource states - with the objective of "coupling them to the Euro-Atlantic axis," Hillard explained in an interview with german-foreign-policy.com. As is recorded in the minutes of this year's "Kronberg Talks" [6], the "progressive increase of European presence in the region" should be combined "with American assertiveness." This reference links diplomatic and subversive measures ("minority rights") to war threats. At one of the previous Bertelsmann's forums, it had been demanded that the "regional administrative and natural borders lose their significance as quickly as possible, so that new perspectives can be opened".[7]

Unnaturally
The reapportionment of entire state systems is not unknown to Bertelsmann. Thus, on the eve of the (1999) aggression against Yugoslavia, the foundation recommended "the ethnic principle" [8] and the mobilization of ethnic groups against Belgrade - genetically defined minorities with claims to territorial rights. Bertelsmann, in 1996, likewise proposed an ethnic partition plan for Hungary, Romania, Russia and the northern Caucasus.[9] Similar to the propositions contained in the "Armed Forces Journal" several UN member states are being threatened with the loss of their existence, as nation-states. The author at Bertelsmann bases himself on the allegedly "unnatural" drawing of the borders and stakes claims to bogus tribal rights of ethnic communities.

Works
The ethnicist aggression in German political policies can be traced back to Bismarck. Whereas theoreticians, at that time, postulated the constant "flowing" of national borders, to follow the biological course of tribal and "ethnic groups", today, the "Armed Forces Journal" claims that "borders have never been static".[10] Because of "unnatural" territorial demarcation, borders "especially now" are changing their contours, writes the American military author: "from the Congo through Kosovo to the Caucasus". Concerning the means used to bring this about, information is readily provided. One can divulge a "dirty little secret from 5,000 years of history: Ethnic cleansing works."[11]

Click here to view the documents containing the US maps.

Please read also the Interview mit Dr. Pierre Hillard.

[1] Gannett Co. Company Profile; www.gannett.com/about/company_profile.htm 08.09.2006
[2] Ralph Peters: Blood Borders. How a better Middle East would look; Armed Forces Journal Juni 2006
[3] Real Clear Politics; Author Archive 08.09.2006
[4] Ralph Peters: Blood Borders. How a better Middle East would look; Armed Forces Journal Juni 2006
[5] Please read also the Interview mit Dr. Pierre Hillard.
[6] Europa und der Nahe Osten; 10. Kronberger Gespräche, 14.-15.07.2006. English: www.cap.lmu.de/download/2006/ 2006_europe-and-the-middle-east.pdf
[7] Please read also the Interview mit Dr. Pierre Hillard.
[8] Walter von Goldendach, Hans-Rüdiger Minow: Von Krieg zu Krieg. Die deutsche Außenpolitik und die ethnische Parzellierung Europas, München 1999, S. 206.
[9] Georg Brunner: Gutachten über Nationalitätenprobleme und Minderheitenkonflikte in Osteuropa, Bertelsmann, Reihe Strategien für Europa, Gütersloh 1996
[10] Ralph Peters: Blood Borders. How a better Middle East would look; Armed Forces Journal Juni 2006
[11] Im englischen Original: "Oh, and one other dirty little secret from 5,000 years of history: Ethnic cleansing works."

Mormons Financing Terrorism?

by Debbie Schlussel
FrontPageMagazine.com | September 4, 2006

Mormons are among the most patriotic Americans.

So, why are†they the new financiers of Islamic terrorism and instruction for young children in beheadings?

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the Mormon Church, is the single largest donor to the U.S. branch of Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW), also known as Islamic Relief. In the past year, it donated $1.6 million to the charity.

But Islamic Relief is not just any charity. The Israeli government says it is a†Hamas front group. It is also under investigation by the American government.

IRW was founded in 1984 by Dr. Hany El Banna. He is a relative of Hassan El Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist group--from which Hamas, Yasser Arafat, and Al-Qaeda's second-in-command Ayman Al-Zawahiri emanated.

In May, Israel deported Ayaz Ali, IRW's chief of operations in Gaza, after three weeks in jail. Israel said Ali gave money to Hamas and Al-Wafa and Al-Tzalah, both outlawed by Israel for laundering money to Hamas. He also stored images of Osama Bin Laden, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, Senior German Nazi officials, Nazi swastikas, and a "God Bless Hitler" banner on his computer.

Upon Ali's deportation an Israeli government statement said:

He also admitted that he worked in Jordan and cooperated with local Hamas operatives. . . . Incriminating files were found on Ali's computer, including documents that attested to [Islamic Relief's] ties with illegal HAMAS funds abroad--in the UK and in Saudi Arabia--and in Nablus.

The IRW's activities in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip are carried out by social welfare organizations controlled and staffed by Hamas operatives. The intensive activities of these associations are designed to further Hamas' ideology among the Palestinian population.

These associations' educational and religious institutions incite against the State of Israel and advocate terrorist actions against it and its citizens.

In 1999, IRW's British headquarters received $50,000 from a Canadian group that the Treasury Department says is a Bin Laden front, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Investigator Bill Warner notes that IRW's registered agent in the United States, Kazbek Soobzokov, is the son of Nazi Waffen SS officer Tscherim Soobzokov and was the lawyer for deported accused terrorist and Islamic cleric, Imam Wagdy Mohamed Ghoneim. Regarding Ghoneim, Immigration and Customs Enforcement official Bill Odencrantz said, "Frankly, our task is not to sit around and wait for people to blow up buildings."

At an Islamic Relief fundraiser I attended last Friday, Misbah Shahid, the organization's Detroit representative, announced that IRW publishes and distributes school textbooks to children in Palestinian refugee camps. But textbooks distributed in the camps are riddled with anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, and anti-American rhetoric, according to Molly Resnick of Mothers Against Teaching Children to Kill and Hate.

Shahid also told the audience that his organization is one of the key Non-Governmental Organizations currently distributing aid to Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, including UN and U.S. aid. But those camps are known as breeding grounds for terrorists.

Given all this, why are Mormons pouring millions into Islamic Relief? They aren't alone.

Islamic Relief's brochures show Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour accepting Katrina aid from IRW, last year. It is a consultative member of the UN. It was founded in Britain with the continued financial aid and assistance of the British government, whose ambassador to Israel convinced the Israeli government to allow Islamic Relief to open its HAMAS-friendly Gaza office.

Almost five years after 9/11, we will never end terrorism if the West continues to sanction its funding.

Why did Berkeley paper run anti-Jewish column?

by Chip Johnson
SAN FRANCSCO CHRONICLE

The fallout from an opinion piece published in Berkeley's twice-weekly community newspaper has mushroomed well beyond the confines of the nation's first designated Nuclear-Free Zone.

And while it is not unusual for the Berkeley Daily Planet's executive editor and owner Becky O'Malley to publish controversial, far-flung opinion pieces and wacko reader responses, the decision to run a commentary headlined "Zionist Crimes in Lebanon" is being questioned by scores of critics.

The article, which appeared as commentary on the opinion pages of the newspaper's Aug. 8 edition, was more an attack on Jewish people than a logical argument against Israel's massive military response to the continuing rocket attacks from Hezbollah forces in Lebanon.

After reducing mainstream America's interests to stories about same-sex marriage and actor Mel Gibson's drunken driving arrest, author Kurosh Arianpour launched a historical assault against Jews.

"Let us go back to 539 B.C., when Cyrus the Great, King of Persia, went to Babylonia and liberated Jews. One can ask why Jews were enslaved by Babylonians. Also, one can ask why Jews had problems with Egyptians, with Jesus, with Europeans, and in modern times with Germans?" wrote Arianpour, a former Berkeley resident who is a student in India.

The newspaper's critics, and there are plenty of them, aren't too interested in Arianpour's historical view.

What more than two dozen rabbis and Jewish community groups and scores of Bay Area residents really want to know is why in the heck would the paper print such an inflammatory, hateful piece in a newspaper that makes its mark with stories about Berkeley land-use and City Hall politics? It's a reasonable question.

The Anti-Defamation League's Northern California chapter sent O'Malley a letter demanding a public apology for the article. It carries the signatures of more than a half-dozen elected officials from the East Bay, including the mayors of Oakland, Berkeley and Emeryville.

The letter described the author's words as "a racist attack on all people of Jewish descent when he asserted that Jews have been the cause of every tragedy that has befallen them -- from slavery in Egypt to the Holocaust.

"We are not surprised when hate-mongers make such statements or when neo-Nazi publications print them. Vulgar and hate-filled statements are written all the time -- editors choose whether or not to publish them. We were, however, surprised, to find them in a Berkeley 'community' newspaper since racism of any kind violates all that our city and region stands for," it read.

Jonathan Bernstein, the group's regional director, said that while the organization overlooks such screeds published on the Internet and in white supremacist publications, this time the message was being presented as valid commentary in a general-interest community newspaper.

"We have to look at who the message is reaching, and in this case it was reaching a lot of people -- and because of that, it was worthy of a response," Bernstein said. "We wanted to show that it was offensive to the entire community, not just the Jewish community, and I think we succeeded in doing that," he said.

Mission accomplished.

While there has been some discussion about a meeting to hash it out (O'Malley said she offered; an ADL representative said she refused), the 66-year-old former software developer believes she need not apologize for doing her job: presenting a diversity of ideas in a public forum to be discussed, criticized, condemned, whatever moves the newspapers readers.

That is the newspaper's forte, she said, and harks back to a time when newspapers were the primary forum for public debate.

"Putting things out in the light of day gives people who can make a counterargument the chance to respond in a straightforward way," O'Malley said. "Those kinds of things are said behind closed doors all the time."

As a matter of policy, the paper will not accept unsigned commentaries, pieces accusing private citizens of misdeeds or the use of unnecessarily obscene language. "Everything else is fair game, and we seldom turn anything away," she told me in an interview this week.

Whether you agree or disagree with her editorial policy -- and some readers do agree -- O'Malley has at least been consistent and even-handed in the publication of mean-spirited, racist comments in the paper, which circulates free and publishes about 22,000 copies for each edition.

"All kinds of racist nonsense gets printed in the Planet -- and for good reason -- since racist thinking pervades American culture," wrote Joanna Graham, a reader who defended O'Malley's decision. In the past three weeks, O'Malley has published several other letters on the subject, including one from a long list of rabbis and Jewish community leaders.

O'Malley herself didn't think much of the article either, but she said she made the decision to run it because it carried a different viewpoint that was worth airing in a public forum.

"It was a piece of crap, but it was representative of a lot of people around the world who make no distinctions between the foreign policy of Israel and the Jewish people of the world," she said. "I want to hear everyone's voice. It makes for a more interesting paper and a more social dialogue."

There are ways to discuss any issue in any nation in the world in the editorial pages of newspapers, but surrendering editorial judgment for the sake of stirring a heated public debate can backfire, as it did in this case. Instead of arguing the merits of a laughable article, people are questioning the judgment of an editor who would publish it.