Jewish Conspiracy Theory on the Jewish Conspiracy Thread #3 – Day 1

The third article in the series covering the Oborne documentary on “Comment is Free” was an article by Jonathan Boyd that generated an astounding 509 comments before the “clean up crew” reduced the comment count to 472.
Because of the sheer volume of antisemitic commentary, we are splitting this post into two threads by “day 1” and “day 2”.
Let me start off with an observation from anunbiasedobserver:

anunbiasedobserver

18 Nov 2009, 5:57PM
Reading through the comments in this article make me want to throw up. These people just don’t realize that they have such a primordial hatred to jews, call it what you want.
If I was a Jew and I lived in the UK, I’d get the hell out.
With opinions like I see in this forum, I totally understand why they need their own state.

Wow. What a startling comment. Lets take a closer look to see what prompted anunbiasedobserver to say such a thing.
Well, first off we have this comment by stevehill that set the tone for the entire thread. This comment garnered a whopping 385 recommendations.

stevehill

18 Nov 2009, 4:05PM
So in essence you can’t actually contradict a single word of the Dispatches programme, so you resort to the default position (since you don’t like it) that it is therefore by definition anti-semitic?
If all else fails, libel your critics. It’s easier than acknowledging that maybe they have a point.

The underlying message here is particularly pernicious because it completely discounts the antisemitism that pervaded the Oborne documentary and employs the Livingstone Formulation to drive the point home.
Stevehill’s comment then fuels this from martinusher that has undertones of Jewish conspiracy theory. This one received 286 recommendations.

martinusher

18 Nov 2009, 4:10PM
Its all true. How does pointing it out make one anti-semitic?
The Israel lobby in the US is well known. Its far too powerful for our own good. Even mentioning it exists can get you into trouble.

And this same sentiment resonates throughout the thread, for example, with these two.

Berchmans

18 Nov 2009, 6:49PM
1830
## Who are these people who see antisemitism everywhere?##
Have you read one of Monnie posts ?..or have a peek at CIFwatch..its frightening but a real experience.
B

Indigenous1

18 Nov 2009, 7:05PM

So to sum up: any report about zionists and their operations is anti-semitic and should be prohibited, except if such report is permitted by those zionists because it promotes zionist propaganda.

Then we have a good example of the Livingstone Formulation in action with this.

corrocamino

18 Nov 2009, 4:10PM
“Anti-semitism” is a gag, not a statement.

And it sparked this “joke” later on:

lovemymod

18 Nov 2009, 6:15PM

corrocamino

Anti-semitism” is a gag, not a statement.

And not even a very funny one.
82 year-old Zaida goes to try out for thye Olympic swimming team. When he returns he is glum.
Boba asks, “So. Did they choose you for the swimming?”
Zaida answers, “Of course not! Bloody anti-Semites.”

Ha ha. Very funny.

Then corracamino makes a comment that echoes the Protocols.

corrocamino

18 Nov 2009, 4:23PM
@Litah
a joke, considering how much influence the tobacco, alcohol and food lobbies exert in    this country.
Not to mention all the invasions, wars, war crimes, apartheit, racism, and state terrorism we’re drawn in to by that lot.

Then we have papalagi rescsusitating the big lie that there was a massacre in Jenin which incidentally the Guardian was at the forefront in spreading at the time.

Papalagi

18 Nov 2009, 4:29PM
Concerning what happened in Jenin, it was Peres who said that it was a massacre. Haaretz reported it. And after the Israeli attack Israel closed the city and didn’t allow any independent observer to see what had been done. It’s a bit rich to speak approvingly of a UN report about Jenin when a lot of people who do this at the same time reject the UN and the Goldstone report

And while we’re on the subject of the Jenin lie, Daddy Rusbridger, your apology for what you characterized as a “misjudgment” six years later at the Jewish Book Week in 2008 doesn’t wash with us, not when your newspaper and its online forum continue to obsessively demonize and deligitimize  the Jewish state.
Anyway turning back to the thread. Here we have the old time honored Zionism is racism trope:

thetrashheap
18 Nov 2009, 4:13PM
“Perhaps most important, it failed to mention in any detail why some Jewish leaders may feel compelled to support Israel. Leaving aside the politics of the region, the notion that Israel is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people, or that Israel is the only nation state in the world in which Judaism is mainstream, Jewish culture is the norm and the Hebrew language is widely spoken and celebrated, were all ignored.”
Em becuase the idea that you have a right to a racially pure nation isn’t seen as a respectable argument in Europe for some reason.

Constituent

18 Nov 2009, 4:41PM
Anti-semitism : opposition to people because of jewish ancestry or religion.
This is a form of racialism and completely unjustifiable.

Anti-zionism : opposition to the belief that people of jewish ancestry or religion are better than everyone else. This is a form of opposition to racialism and acceptable to all those who believe that all men are created equal.

sayonara2

18 Nov 2009, 4:31PM

Jonathan Boyd
Following the events of WWII, the world had sympathy for the Israelis. However they have behaved so abominably there is no sympathy left. Shouting anti Semitism is like South Africa claiming anti-white racism.

And here’s an interesting one from a commenter that writes from the Muslim perspective that again echoes the Protocols:

MuslimLancs

18 Nov 2009, 4:48PM
I know I’m Muslim but I do think a lot of people are hesitant to criticise Israel for fear of being labelled anti-Semitic. And I also think a lot of people are afraid of getting on a ‘watch-list’ somewhere.
Reading this, I thought you might have had a point in your first couple of paragraphs – then you tried to defend the Israeli atrocities in Gaza. I understand your instinct to defend your faith but you can’t deny the Jewish lobby is unusually powerful and Israel’s actions in Gaza were brutal and despicable.

Then we move to some more demonization of Israel, this time by someone that claims to speak as-a-Jew as if to add greater moral weight to his argument.

CDale

18 Nov 2009, 5:16PM
It is also the only nation state in the world that deliberately targets women and children on the pretext that the killings – 320 children and over 100 women – were in self-defence.
One of the best-equipped armies in the world defending itself from unarmed women and children!
I am an ex professional soldier and can tell you Mr Boyd that no other regular army targets women and children deliberately. It is a war crime.
No, Mr Boyd, the Israeli state is nothing to shout about, but rather to be deeply ashamed of, if you are, as I am, Jewish.
If you are not Jewish, them what on earth on you thinking about to ally yourself with an army that kills innocent civilians?

And here’s another one along the same lines:

DavidTheLiberal

18 Nov 2009, 5:39PM
I cannot remember a Comment is Free contribution that has so annoyed me.
Let me state my starting position. I am Jewish, and like quite a lot of Jews both in UK and in Israel, I find much of what various Israeli governments have done recently quite distasteful. I did not like Ariel Sharon’s Kadiema party and certainly do not like Nettanyahoo and his foreign secretary Liebermann. One of those interveiewed on the Dispatches programme was a Rabbi, and he liked what is going on in Israel no more than I do. Doubless, as the rabbi actually said, the pro-Jewish lobby will attack him as a self hater.
Now to the programme.
What it showed was that the Tory leadership are not even allowed to offer mild criticism of Israel without falling foul of organisations on which they depend for money. Or that was the inference we were invited to draw, and which I certainly did draw, from the fact that as a matter of policy Cameron and Haig avoid talking about the number of neighbours that have been killed by the Israel military adventures.
The programme showed, of all absurdities, the BBC being forced to investigate the output of its correspondent in the region, Jeremy Bowen. Now a more coherent and balanced reporter it would be hard to find. Only an extremist could possibly take issue with his reports, while the vast majority of us, whatever our individual opinions, appreciate just how lucky we are to have such an excellent reporter.
Of course programmes such as Dispatches do not cause anti-Semitism. As would any decent person be, I am appalled that the writer got attacked on his way to pray in Finchley. There are bigots even in Finchley. There are bigots in most places. Did the attacker tell him that he was attacking him because he had just learned how awful Jews are because of the way they distort reporting and comment on Israel? Of course not. Does the writer even think that some newly acquired knowledge such as this might have been the cause? Again, of course not.
I have news for the writer. There was anti-Semitism before the Dispatches programme. Indeed, even before the advent of television. And, I am sorry to say, there will be ant-Semitism so long as there are Jews.
What causes anti-Semitism? Largely it is an irrational attitude, caused more in the mental attitude and home background of the anti-Semite than in anything else. But the mass killings by the Israeli army in various places, Gaza, Lebanon, … surely cannot help. And these killings are undisputed fact, reported in pro-Israel news outlets as much as in the Guardian and the BBC. And these allegedly anti-Israel outlets have always been scrupulously careful to give the pro-Israel writers a chance to comment. Which is why the present miserable article has been published. It certainly does not measure up to the high standards that I have come to expect in most Gardian articles.
Of course anti-Semitism is also encouraged by really poorly argued articles in defence of Israeli killings. If that is the best they can do …. During the recent Gaza adventure there was an Israeli spokesman called Regev whose comments were so ridiculous that it is impossible for anyone who heard them to have believed a word that he said. That does not help prevent the spread of anti-Semitism. But reporting what can clearly be backed up by fact is not a contributor; today’s article was yet another case of blaming the messanger.

Now take a look at this one. The commenter believes that there is an “International Jewish Conspiracy” and so convinced is he of the fact of its existence that believes that he is not antisemitic!

MarchOnRome

18 Nov 2009, 5:17PM
I’m sorry, I probably have a lot more time for Israel than many people at CIF but I simply won’t be told it’s anti-semitic to point out that Israel (like many other countries) attempts to influence British lawmakers or that their efforts seem to enjoy more success than, say, any Palestinian lobbyists who are currently working. This is nothing peculiar to Israel, I’m sure the Israel lobby would give their hind teeth to have the influence which the pro-EU lobby commands within British politics, but that doesn’t change the fact that such a lobby does exist.
That’s not paranoia about an International Jewish Conspiracy, it is a matter of recorded fact and people who are sympathetic to Israel would do well not to mischievously conflate the two because it seems to confer a brief tactical advantage. The term “anti-semite” by itself is an increasingly debased coinage as this article demonstrates.

In response, Leofwine made a very astute comment in the thread which has equal applicability to a number of the comments above.

“The big difference between today’s anti-Semites, mostly leftists, and those of Nazi Germany is that most of today’s anti-Semites deny being anti-Semitic. Today’s anti-Semites make a great show of moral outrage with regard to the Holocaust, while they go right on perpetuating the same anti-Semitic myths that motivated the Nazis. At least the Nazis were forthright about their anti-Semitism. One can defy overt anti-Semitism. Nowadys one hears the most outrageous pronouncements about Jews and the Jewish State coming from people who would be shocked, SHOCKED, to be labeled anti-Semitic. How does one defy ant-Semism from those in denial?”

In fact, I would go as far as to say that this is the differentiating feature between the antisemitic posters on “Comment is Free” and the posters on forums like Stormfront.
And speaking of Stormfront, here are a couple of comments that employ Nazi analogies:

BoredSilly

18 Nov 2009, 4:39PM
The word Semitic refers to the linguistic groups of the middle east and as such
Arabic is a Semitic language. It does not mean Jewish (although Hebrew is a
Semitic language as well). Arabs and Jews are both Semitic peoples, anybody
with a dictionary can look it up…. or better still you can do it online…

Semitic – of, relating to, or constituting a subfamily of the Afro-Asiatic language family that includes Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, and Amharic

Israel blames the Palestinians for everything, it reminds me of the way the
Nazis would blame German Jews for everything that happened to them in pre
war Germany. It was always the victims fault and never the fault of the state. The weak were blamed for the injustices forced on them by the powerful. Typical “blame the victim” mentality really.
If the Israelis are tired of being treated like international pariahs (like South
Africa once was) they know how to change things for the better. Simply start
respecting human rights and international law. It’s time they made peace
instead of always making war.

GoldenTriangle

18 Nov 2009, 5:48PM

Lenski

What I find so extraordinary about nearly all these remarks is the vituperative hatred towards Israel. The subject comes up time and again, and always the response is much the same: remarks which, were they made about any other minority group, would produce a storm of outrage. There are large parts of, say, Africa where things happen on a daily basis far worse than anything in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, whatever its rights and wrongs.,

I challenge you to find an instance in Africa as brutal, lengthy, so massively side-sided, with the heavily-armed side a creature of the west, being not criticised?

If you can find an instance in Africa where one tribe has been given everything from jet fighters to nuclear weapons, and has used everything from remote drones to white phosphorous to death-camps, and daily oppress another tribe, we would all like to hear about it, and campaign against it.

Thanks.

Moving on, next we have a comment from the school of Brian Whitaker claiming that pro-Israel commenters are paid agents of the Israeli government.

CDale

18 Nov 2009, 5:54PM
LENSKI
I think you will find, if you stop to consider, that the outcry against the IDF for killing children was not ‘vituperative antisemitism’, but was, and is, an expected response against war crime, against the killing of unarmed civilians.
Ignoring the hasbara-paid comment on this site, these were real children, and real mothers. They were killed by the IDF, in order to terrorise the population of Gaza. They succeeded.
These are substantiated facts. Read the report – that Israel refused to co-operate in compiling.
It is clear from the report that it was the IDF that used civilians as human shields, there is video footage to evidence this. The evidence was taken by a respected team of independent investigators headed by an eminent South African judge with huge experience in this type of investigation.
Of course, Israel has stood on its head to try to discredit this independent report. But that does not fool many people outside of the US.

Then we have some more conspiracy theory:

sayonara2

18 Nov 2009, 4:43PM
Any British citizen giving money to politicians to support a foreign country is committing treason and should go to jail.

sayonara2

18 Nov 2009, 5:44PM

The simple fact is that the Israeli government and its agents are paying British policians to support Israel. It seems that pointing that out gives rise to a vast orchestrated campaign of high pitched hysteria to deride it as anti semitism.

We need a programme like that every week.

sayonara2

18 Nov 2009, 5:51PM

DavidTheLiberal
What causes anti-Semitism?
What causes anti-Semitism is the kind of behaviour we saw in the Dispatches programme. Not the Israeli army but the bribery and corruption. It goes back centuries and becomes part of the culture whether you like it or not.

idiocr4cy

18 Nov 2009, 6:32PM

Israel is addicted to the conflict in the region. It sucks everyone else in with it. As a brit I’m here to tell you that we’ve had enough of your nonsense. You are not doing Israel nor the western world any favour with your policies in the region.

Ranong

18 Nov 2009, 6:51PM
Jubilation
Quite successful in ensuring that the Minister for Israel (sorry, Middle East) is always a member of Labour Friends of Israel. Come to think of it, high-ranking LFI-ers.

And what would a thread like this be without pro-Israel deletions. Here are a selection:

DougallTheDog

18 Nov 2009, 4:22PM

martinusher
18 Nov 2009, 4:10PM
Its all true. How does pointing it out make one anti-semitic?

The Israel lobby in the US is well known. Its far too powerful for our own good. Even mentioning it exists can get you into trouble.

Did you read that in the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion?”

mmmherring

18 Nov 2009, 5:16PM

No one is suggestiing the Dispatches team are nazis, that is ridiculous!

No, the Dispatches team are lazy sensationalists. Blissfully unaware of the impact of their evidence free programme on the general public. Which is the “confirmation” that:

the Jews are are stinking rich,
the Jews are disloyal,
the Jews are secretive,
the Jews are powerful…………….

greytiles

18 Nov 2009, 5:27PM

jae26

Nice to some sanity amongs the dross. The standards are always this low on this subject. Hatred of Jews is indeed a creature of the left.

And if you made it through to this point,  take a long hot shower and stay tuned for day 2 of this thread if you’ve got the stomach.

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