Abrabanel: Musings on the Jewish condition

Ha’aretz’s Anshel Pfeffer reports on some real anti-Semitic bastards today:

A new anti-Semitic conspiracy theory has been spreading online over the last few days, claiming that on the eve of Lehman Brothers’ collapse last month, the firm transferred $400 billion to Israel.

The theory, which comes in the form of a news report, has already been distributed on dozens of anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli sites. It alleges that senior Jewish officials at the Lehman Brothers investment bank passed their clients’ money on to three Israeli banks, with the intention of then escaping to Israel to enjoy the take without fear of extradition.

It is a thoroughly detailed conspiracy theory, he explains:

The story making the rounds was written as if it were a news report from Washington, and has a byline of the “Voice of the White House.” The story names three Israeli banks that allegedly received the money, explains in detail Israel’s extradition laws and bank-secrecy act, and charges American law-enforcement authorities of having knowledge of the transfer. It also cites excerpts from a real story that appeared on the Bloomberg economic news service wire about estimated losses of $400 billion in the brokerage division of the investment bank.

According to Pfeffer, “Surfers who read it tried to copy it to more respectable forums and comment pages such as The Huffington Post in the U.S. and The Independent in Britain.”

This is being reported everywhere, from The Jerusalem Post, Ha’aretz and YNet to Arab media, Jewish media and the European press. Strangely, all the reports quote the same AFP story, datelined Gaza City. Is everyone quoting the same Palestinian reporter? How dependable is the report? We don’t know the answers to these questions.

On the other hand, this news is completely believable given the identical sentiments Hamas has espoused in the past:

Hamas on Tuesday accused a “Jewish Lobby” in the United States of fomenting the global financial crisis.

The crisis was the result of “bad administrative and financial management and a bad banking system put into place and controlled by the Jewish lobby,” Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum said in a statement.

Barhum said that despite approving a bailout plan of $700 billion dollars, the U.S. government was ignoring the role of “the Jewish lobby that put the U.S. banking and financial sector into place.”

This lobby, said Barhum, “controls the U.S. elections and defines the foreign policy of any new administration in a manner that allows it to retain control of the American government and economy.”

This caught our eye, from JTA:

Ahmad Ismail, a district chief in the United Malays National Organization ruling party, said Monday that the Malay majority was losing patience with minorities, especially Chinese-Malaysian politicians, The Associated Press reported.

“I urge the Chinese not to become like the Jewish in America, where it is not enough that they control the economy, but they also want to dominate politics,” he said.

Malaysia’s prime minister and the leaders of the ruling coalition rejected the remarks and said they “want swift and firm action to be taken,” according to AP.

Is it completely reasonable in Malaysia to use the Jews in this context? Even when you’re talking about something else entirely?

The Jerusalem Post reported yesterday on the run-up to the April 2009 “Durban II” conference in Geneva. The article contains these surprising words:

Pakistan’s Ambassador said that the anti-racism conference “should not turn into an exercise in anti-Semitism and that doing so would be a clear violation of the Durban declaration and program of action.”

As plans for the conference proceed, “I hope we will find that the OIC member states will stick to that commitment,” said [Israeli ambassador to Geneva Roni] Leshno Yaar.

Pakistan hasn’t really got anything against Israel, but the “look of the thing” requires them to toe the line with the rest of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. It would indeed be shocking news if the Muslim nations of the world are getting a little embarrassed at the rabid anti-Semitism that will probably be on display – in Islam’s name, of course – at Durban II.

The ADL put out a review on Friday of a new book that claims the Iraq War was generated by Jews working for Israel. This one is a doozy!

John Hostettler was a six-term Republican congressman from Indiana who lost his 2006 reelection bid. He’s a die-hard conservative without a whole lot of ideological complexity. He’s pro-gun, pro-life, anti-estate tax, even anti-federal student loans.

The ADL writes:

Hostettler gets to the red meat of his thesis when he focuses on the neoconservatives, relying on names such as Kristol, Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith, and Shulsky, to convey the specter of a covert cabal that has intrigued to encourage the United States to go to war for the benefit of Israel.

This claim is getting old, but it doesn’t seem to be getting any weaker. Yes, many senior Republicans are Jews. So are many senior Democrats. It isn’t being Jewish that made them invade Iraq, it’s being Republican hawks that did it. Was Douglas Feith more or less important than Donald Rumsfeld? Than Dick Cheney?

As John Bolton once told us when we asked if he considered himself a neocon, “no, I’m a conservative. Neocons are liberals who were mugged by reality. I’ve never been a liberal.” Or as Rumsfeld is reputed to have said in response to this conspiracy theory, “Do they think we all just got off the apple cart?” It was these non-Jewish non-neocon Republican hawks who went to Iraq.

As the ADL notes:

For someone who was a six-term congressman, he seems to have a grievous lack of understanding of the messy and argumentative way policy – foreign or domestic — actually gets made.

American Jews, we should note, have opposed the war more than the average Democrat, more than the average American Catholic, even more than atheists and African-Americans. Republican Jews, too, opposed the war more than the average Republican. Here’s a news report of Jewish opinion on the war put out by Gallup in early 2007. The key points are quoted here:

Asked if “the United States made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq,” 77 percent of American Jews said it had, while only 21% believed the deployment was not a mistake. This figure is in marked contrast to the American average, where only 52% indicated opposition to the war and 46% indicated support.

The Jewish opposition to the war, according to Gallup figures, is not new, and preceded most Americans turning against the war. In the first two years of the war (2003 and 2004), when 52% of Americans supported the war, 61% of Jews opposed it. Even before the beginning of hostilities in 2002 and early 2003, US Jews supported the war by just 49% to 48%. Americans generally supported it by 57% to 37%.

The Gallup figures also show that Jewish opposition to the war is not explainable by the high Democratic Party affiliation among Jews. Even within the Democratic Party, Jewish opposition to the war was greater than that expressed by non-Jewish Democrats. In polls taken from 2005 to 2007, 89% of Jewish Democrats opposed the war and just 8% supported it, while non-Jewish Democrats opposed the war by 78% to 20%. …

The Gallup Organization itself noted that “these data show that the average American Jew – even those who are Republicans and may support the Bush administration on other matters – opposes the war.”

Kinda cool, no? This from a German newspaper:

Anti-fascist computer hackers say they have broken into one of the world’s biggest Neo Nazi internet sites and copied details of more than 30,000 members. …

They also took the “Red-Watch” list, on which the Blood and Honour registers their political opponents, recording names and addresses.

It has so far been difficult to prove that Blood and Honour has continued to operate in Germany, Günther Hoffmann from the Centre for Democratic Culture told the paper.

“It would of course be a huge hit on the organized far right scene if it were proven that the German Blood and Honour division still existed.”