Raheem Kassam’s Anti-Semitic Claim that Jews Funding Cadwalladr’s Investigation of ‘Leave’ Campaign

After the anti-Semitism lies and smears against the Labour party and decent, anti-racist people like Mike, Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker, Martin Odoni and so many, many others, here’s what looks very much like the real thing. Yesterday Mike put up a piece about a smear made on Patreon by Raheem Kassam against the journalist Carole Cadwalladr. Kassam’s a staunch supporter of Brexit, but many of the ‘Leave’ organisations are now being investigated for breaches of electoral law and funding irregularities. Much of this is the result of Cadwalladr’s investigations into these bodies. Kassam couldn’t tolerate this, and so issued a Tweet claiming that because Cadwalladr’s investigations were published on the Open Democracy website, which is partly funded by George Soros and his Open Society Foundation, she’s being backed by ‘Globalist shills’. Mike explains that this is apparently an anti-Semitic dog-whistle.

Kassam stated

“Cadwalladr has attempted to cover such tracks by issuing a series of tweets alleging that any critique of the billionaire, fund manager Soros is ‘racist’ against Jews. This is despite Soros’s rejection of his Jewish identity, and in spite of the fact that he has openly admitted to assisting in the confiscation of Jewish property during the Holocaust”.

The Liberal Jewish organization, Zelo Street, responded by issuing a firm refutation of Kassam’s claims.

“George Soros did not assist in confiscation of Jewish property” – and this certainly seems unlikely as he would have been only 15 at the end of World War II. “And whether he “rejects his Jewish identity” is irrelevant. Calling “Soros” is code for “the Jews”. Like gratuitously pitching terms like “globalists”, “global bankers”, and “Goldman Sachs”.”

Mike in his article wonders if the Leave response to these breaches of electoral law is simply anti-Semitism, and asks if many Leave supporters will disassociate from Kassam, or whether they will simply double down and renew their calls for Remainers to get over it.

See https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2018/11/07/anti-semite-claims-the-jews-are-funding-carole-cadwalladrs-brexit-investigations/

I really don’t think there can be much doubt that Kassam’s tweet was full of coded anti-Semitic terms. The American Right, and particularly Fundamentalist Evangelical Christians, have been afraid of the creation of a ‘One World’ dictatorial state for a very long time. In modern Millennialist Christian theology, this will be the beginnings of the End Times, with the Anti-Christ as the dictator of this new global state. Which will, of course, begin the persecution of Christians. See the ‘Left Behind’ series of Christian novels by Tim LaHaye. I don’t doubt that most of the people, who hold these views aren’t anti-Semites. But it can shade into the real anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about the Jews secretly running the world, manipulating capitalism and Communism to enslave gentiles and destroy the White race through immigration and racial intermixing. The literature for this conspiracy theory sees the United Nations as the seed from which the One World dictatorship will develop, as well as the Trilateral Commission in the US and the Bilderberg group. The last is a regular meeting of major political and business figures from around the world, and is the centre of much conspiracist speculation.

The literature also discusses the major roles of the Jewish financiers in the creation of these bodies, through the Rothschild banking family and Bernard Baruch. Some of this literature will try to distance itself from overt anti-Semitism by drawing a distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Jews. The good Jews are the millions of ordinary Jewish peeps not involved in the conspiracy, and who may themselves be the victims of it. The material taking this line will point out that Rothschilds continuing giving credit and financing the Nazi regime even when it began openly persecuting the Jews. The bad Jews are, of course, Rothschilds and the other immensely wealth Jewish banking families. These last are described as ‘Zionists’, but the term isn’t used according to its normal meaning. When the people promoting this conspiracy talk about ‘Zionists’, they really mean the Jewish global banking conspiracy. They definitely don’t mean in its proper sense of supporters of the state of Israel. Hence the Nazis and anti-Semites in America refer to their government as ZOG, or Zionist Occupation Government.

George Soros has now entered the demonology of paranoid anti-Semites because he is an immensely wealthy Jewish financier, who funds a variety of groups promoting human rights, democracy and liberal society, as well as being on opponent of Brexit. Thus, he’s been bitterly attacked and vilified by Viktor Orban and his far-right Fidesz party, which now forms the Hungarian government. At the same time, the real Zionists and Netanyahu’s government in Israel despise him because Soros is an anti-Zionist. He’s despised the Zionist movement because of the way they made deals, under the leadership of Kasztner, with the Nazis to allow the deportation of many Jewish Hungarians on the condition that a certain number should be allowed to emigrate to Israel.

Tony Greenstein has today put up a piece about how George Soros thus provides a unifying connection between modern Nazis and anti-Semites, and Netanyahu and the Israel lobby. He also reproduces with his own article a couple of pieces from other journalists, which support his point. One is by Dove Kent of Jewish Currents, and Adele M. Stan of the American Prospect. These articles are also worth reading, as they show very clearly how Trump is using dog-whistle anti-Semitic codewords to weaken the Left. The women protesting against Judge Kavanaugh, who has been accused of sexual assault but is nevertheless trying to become a member of the Supreme Court, are accused of being funded by Soros. As is the Black Lives Matter movement and Trans Rights campaigners. Anti-Semitic tropes were also used to attack the Left during McCarthyism, and were particularly effective because Jews were over-represented in Communist and Left-wing groups. Greenstein in his piece also describes how Netanyahu and the Israeli lobby have also deployed anti-Semitic stereotypes and rhetoric to demonise Soros.

Greenstein also describes how right-wing broadcaster and polemicist, Glenn Beck has also attacked Soros using the rhetoric and ideology of anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. He described Soros as a ‘puppetmaster’, a Jewish financier with no ties to any country – which conforms to the anti-Semitic stereotype of Jews as ‘rootless cosmopolitan’ in Nazi ideology – who wanted to create a ‘one world government’. He also claimed that Soros came from an anti-Semitic family, and participated in the Holocaust against the Jews when he was 14. Beck isn’t a peripheral figure. He’s been a fixture of the American right-wing broadcasting scene for decades. But he is bonkers. Many of his broadcasts and talks are simply rants in which he predicts that America will suffer some kind of totalitarian Nazi-Communist-Socialist-Atheist dictatorship, and that ‘They’ will come for him. And his performance, already bizarre, often ends with him in tears. The online humour magazine, Cracked, a few years ago, covered one of his talks in California, which hilariously described how nonsensical and mad it all was. Apparently it feature someone in pseudo-Nazi costume representing tyranny, while a woman dressed as the Statue of Liberty represented freedom. Oh yes, and I think there was someone who was supposed to represent anarchy as well.

See: http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2018/11/george-soros-unifying-figure-for-trump.html

This is the paranoid, anti-Semitic worldview that is deliberately evoked by the attacks on Soros, although I don’t doubt that many of those, who are taken in by it probably aren’t anti-Semites and don’t realise the very definite anti-Semitic background behind it.

As for Raheem Kassam, if I recall correctly he’s another member of Breitbart, who also promotes Islamophobia. I also seem to remember that a few years ago he was also connected to UKIP and perhaps some other extreme right-wing parties in Britain.

Which also shows what a number of anti-racist campaigners have pointed out: the racism may start out by attacking other groups, like Muslims and Blacks, but ultimately it returns to the Jews.

Ronald Reagan, the Republican Party and the Rise of Militant Zionism in America: Part 2

Other Christian Zionist organisations include the American Christian Trust, run by Bobbi Hromas, and JerUSAlem DC, headed by Mike Evans. Hromas is the wife of a TRW executive. She has a mansion just opposite the Israeli embassey in Washington DC. This has its own soundproofed chapel open 24 hours a day, frequented by high ranking government official and other wealthy Americans. Among those who pray there were Clint Murchison and Tom Landry, the former owner and coach of the Dallas Cowboys respectively.

Evans’ organisation, like the International Christian Embassey, campaigns for the US and other countries to move their embassies to Jerusalem, thus recognising that the city is exclusively Jewish property. He stated this bluntly in a sermon at a Texas church attended by Halsell, declaring ‘It will cost you the lives of your sons and fathers if you do not recognise Jerusalem as Jewish property. God will bless those who bless Israel, and curse those who curse Israel.’ He is one of the very few Christians to have had the honour of an Orthodox rabbi laying his hands on his head to pray for him, and the only Christian minister to appear on Israeli TV, as it is illegal in Israel to try to convert people to any religion other than Judaism.

Other Christian Zionist organisations include the National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel, which declared that ‘to be Christian is to be Jewish’, and that Christians’ first duty is to the land of Israel. When Israel invaded Lebanon in the 1980s it ran full page ads praising it in the Washington Post and New York Times. Among the group’s members were W.A. Criswell, Jim Bakker and Pat Robertson, and it had links to the International Christian Embassey in Jerusalem. This has an offshoot, called the National Christian Conference, which was originally formed to stop sales of AWACS planes to Saudi Arabia. There is also Christians United for American Security, TAV Evangelical Ministries, and the American Coalition for Traditional Values, headed by Tim and Beverley LaHaye. Tim LaHaye is one of the co-authors of the awful Left Behind series of Christian novels.

Jewish Support for Christian Zionism

Extreme right-wing Jewish organisations have responded to these Christian organisations by giving them their support. They were dissatisfied with the liberal Protestant Churches, who comprised the National Council of Churches, because of their support for the Palestinians. These organisations were afraid that the American public’s disapproval of Israeli expansionism and maltreatment of the Palestinians would lead to a rise in anti-Semitism. This organisations then theorised that this could be prevented if they could recruit the leaders of the organisations most likely to support anti-Semitism into their most active uncritical supporters.

Nathan Perlmutter of the ADL declared ‘We need all the friends we have to support Israel…praise the Lord and pass the ammunition’. He also said ‘Jews can live with all the domestic priorities of the Christian right on which liberal Jews differ so radically because none of these concerns is as important as Israel.’ Irving Kristol, one of the formulators of Neo-Conservativism, stated bluntly that ‘American Jews should join the ultra-right’, and concluded that they should back winners, not losers. Jacques Torczyner of the American Sector of the World Zionist Organisation also said, ‘We have, first of all, to come to the conclusion that the rightwing reactionaries are the natural allies of Zionism, not the liberals.’

Zionism and the Anti-Semitism Libels

These statements show that there is a long history of collusion between Zionists and anti-Semites to promote Jewish emigration to Israel. Not all Zionist organisations have made such alliances, but several have. Ken Livingstone referred to one instance, the Ha’avara agreement, under which the Nazis initially cooperated with the Zionists to smuggle German Jews into Israel, simply as a way of removing Jews from Germany. Livingstone was smeared as an anti-Semite for his comments, which were factually correct. This also bears out another post I put up earlier this week, about a piece, ‘Anti-Semitic Zionists’ that appeared in Counterpunch. And it also explains why the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, the Zionist advocacy group that has smeared Mike and so many others as anti-Semites, has precious little on its pages about real anti-Semitic and Nazi groups. Despite their loud noises to the contrary and shouts of anti-Semitism when it is pointed out, these organisations are quite prepared to ignore domestic anti-Semitism in Britain, the US and the rest of the world because, as Perlmutter bluntly said ‘Jews can live with all the domestic priorities of the Christian right on which liberal Jews differ so radically because none of these concerns is as important as Israel.’

Mike and the others he defended from the accusations are not anti-Semites. They were decent people, who were so labelled because they dared to support the Palestinians. Those libelled as anti-Semites included profoundly anti-racist men and women, gentiles and Jews, who had frequently suffered personal attack and vilification from the real Nazis because of their Jewish heritage, or solidarity with Jews.

It is monstrously hypocritical that organisations like the Campaign against Anti-Semitism should libel them as Jew haters, when the Zionist right has shown itself more than willing to collaborate with extreme right-wing and anti-Semitic gentile organisations, in order to encourage – or scare – more Jews into leaving their historic homelands for Israel.

Guy Debord’s Cat on the Main Political Parties and the Israel Lobby

I’ve been blogging a lot recently about the malign influence of the Israel lobby, and specifically about the its tactics of smearing good men and women as anti-Semites for daring to criticise and expose Israel’s appalling record on human rights and its ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. I’d genuinely like to get away from this subject, but it continues to demand my attention as its a persistent issue. Despite most of those accused of anti-Semitism, if not all, now having been cleared and reinstated as members of the Labour party, and Mr Segalov’s recent article in the press defending Momentum from the charges of anti-Semitism, the Israel lobby still carries on smearing decent people, including Jews and committed anti-racists. It erupted earlier this week, when the Jewish Labour Movement contrived to have Jackie Walker dismissed as vice-chair of Momentum because she questioned the exclusive focus of Holocaust Memorial Day at a recent training event on the Jews to the exclusion of the many other peoples that have suffered genocide, and the assumed need for Jewish organisations, including her daughter’s school, for high security.

Mrs Walker is not an anti-Semite. She is the daughter of Black civil rights activist mother and a Russian Jewish father. She has made it clear that when she was earlier smeared as an anti-Semite for the heinous crime of discussing with a Jewish friend on Facebook the participation of some Jews in the slave trade, she was speaking as a Jew. This is exactly like the many other communities and peoples, that are also confronting their participation in this inhuman trade. She is, rather a woman with a critical intellect prepared to ask awkward questions. It is awkward people like her that have done so much to move human civilisation forward. I am pleased to say that she had received messages of support from both Black and Minority Ethnic and Jewish members of Momentum.

Unfortunately, the Israel lobby is extremely powerful. Guy Debord’s Cat posted an article four years ago in 2012, citing and quoting the blog Occupied Palestine, the Guardian and PressTV, on the Zionist organisations within the three main political parties. Not only is there a Labour Friends of Israel, headed by Luke Akehurst, there is also a Conservative Friends of Israel and a similar organisation in the Lib Dems. 80 per cent of Tory MPs are members of the organisation, and from 2010 to the date the article was written the Conservative Friends of Israel spent £30,000 taking more than 24 Tory backbench MPs on trips to Israel and the West Bank. The Guardian notes that Labour Friends of Israel are less unquestioning in their support, but have taken more MPs on trips to Israel than any other party – 60 since 2001.

The Cat begins his post with the rhetorical questions ‘Have you ever wondered why British politicians are so keen to put Israel’s position across in a positive light? Have you ever wondered why Foreign Secretary William Hague went on television and seemed rather biased towards Israel?’ and says Now you know why nothing ever changes. Israel has bought political influence in this country.

See the article at: https://buddyhell.wordpress.com/2012/11/page/2/

Unfortunately, as it’s untitled, I can’t link directly to it. But scroll down until you reach the post marked November 24. That’s it.

The Cat also comments on the Christian religious reasoning behind some members of these groups’ support for Israel:

I suspect that these “Friends of Israel” see themselves as helping to hasten the Second Coming of Christ (yes, they genuinely believe that Book of Revelations gobbledegook). Of course, the bonehead Zionists can’t see that.

I take issue with the Cat’s dismissal of the Book of Revelations as ‘gobbledegook’, but otherwise agree with the point. The Book of Revelations is a very difficult text for Christians to understand. I was taught at school that you need to read it with a gloss to explain the dense and obscure imagery. One view of the Book, which I believe explains the real meaning of the text, is that it’s largely a coded description of the persecution of Christians during the reign of Nero. If you examine the Number of the Beast, 666, using the gematria, the alphabetical number system of the ancient world, where he letter of the alphabet has a corresponding numerical value, you find that it is the value of the name Neron, the Greek form of Nero, or Qsr Nero, the Syriac for ‘Emperor Nero’. And one of the Roman historians describe Nero’s literal bestial antics, when he was an indolent and bored young aristocrat. He used to dress up as a beast, and wander the streets of Rome at night, attacking people. The Book looks forward to the renewal of the Earth and the general resurrection of the dead at Christ’s second coming, but is not meant as a literal account of the Last Days, as it is supposed by book’s like Hal Lindsey’s The Late, Great Planet Earth and the Left Behind series of Christian novels.

I also don’t think the Zionists are quite as boneheaded as the Cat believes in their acceptance of Christian Zionist support. I think that many of them are undoubtedly aware of the theology behind it, and simply don’t care. They’re just happy to exploit it for the support it gives them. I have come across books critiquing and refuting Christian Zionism. I shall probably try and get hold of one of them at one point, because of its importance in promoting Israel and justifying or excusing its crimes both in America and over here in Britain. It’s been pointed out that there are more American Christians, who support Israel, than Jews.