Blood Libel promoted by Counterpunch, Alison Weir

The death of Alexander Cockburn has predictably elicited some hagiographic eulogies in the Nation and elsewhere. In light of certain oversights in those obits, I am re-posting the following which was originally posted here on September 11, 2009, and subsequently cross-posted at Harry's Place. A second post on the subject is available here. Those who think the Counterpunch article discussed here was anomalous should take note that the pseudonymous author "Israel Shamir", whose role in promoting the blood libel is discussed below, has a column in the current edition of Counterpunch which argues that the infamous prosecution of Col. Alfred Dreyfus was just.


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The blog Counterpunch, which is edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, has published an article which alleges that the blood libel is true and is related to purported Israeli thefts of human organs from Palestinians. The blood libel, the charge that Jews ritually murdered gentiles and used their blood to cast spells, was a mainstay of medieval European anti-Semitism. In Europe, the blood libel led to pogroms, mass slayings and expulsions. The Counterpunch article may be the first instance of an American leftist media outlet promoting the blood libel.

The Counterpunch article (read here) supports and elaborates on spurious allegations concerning Israeli theft of body parts from Palestinians -- charges originally appearing in an article by Donald Bostrom which was published in the Swedish tabloid newspaper Aftonbladet. The controversy concerning that article has received extensive coverage internationally (read here). Medical experts have unanimously stated that the theft of organs from the dead for use in transplants, as alleged in the story, is medically impossible (read here). Bostrom's article claims that Israeli soldiers hunted down a Palestinian youth, shooting him in the chest and abdomen at close range in order to steal his organs. The alleged witnesses to the events described in his article, including the families of the purported victims, have completely disavowed the story (read here). Counterpunch alleges not only that such murders and thefts of organs in fact truly occur, but that they are part of a campaign which is sanctioned by the Israeli government and other Israeli institutions and that it is connected to religious traditions allowing the ritual murder of gentiles.

The Counterpunch coverage of these allegations was written by Alison Weir, the head of an anti-Israel organization called If Americans Knew. Weir's Counterpunch article derives in large part from articles written about the controversy by a notorious anti-Semite who goes by the assumed name "Israel Shamir". Weir deceptively identifies Shamir in her footnotes as an "Israeli writer" in spite of widely reported revelations that Shamir is actually a Swede of Russian descent and that he is associated with Russian ultra-nationalists. Shamir has been disavowed by many on the left and in the pro-Palestinian movement as the result of his overtly anti-Semitic writings and his connections to the far-right. Research into his real background has revealed that he began his journalism career under his assumed name working for a prominent far-right, Russian nationalist anti-Semite, Aleksandr Prokhanov, chief editor of the newspaper Zavtra. Even as he presents himself to the west as a leftist, anti-Zionist, "Shamir" has continued to publish explicitly right-wing articles in Russia and Eastern Europe. Shamir's original article in support of the spurious organ theft allegations is posted here. His advocacy of the blood libel can be read here. Shamir writes in the latter article that "'Blood libel' is the Jewish battle cry", thus claiming not only that the libel is in fact true, but that to say otherwise is an act of aggression.

In her Counterpunch article, Weir parrots Shamir's arguments that the blood libel is no libel, and that the charge that it is libel is a ruse used by Jews to suppress the revelation of their crimes. She writes:

"In scanning through the reaction to Bostrom’s report, one is struck by the multitude of charges that his article is a new version of the old anti-Semitic “blood libel.” Given that fact, it is interesting to examine a 2007 book by Israel’s preeminent expert on medieval Jewish history, and what happened to him.

"The author is Bar-Ilan professor (and rabbi) Ariel Toaff, son of the
former chief rabbi of Rome, a religious leader so famous that an Israeli journalist writes that Toaff’s father “is to Italian Jewry as the Eiffel Tower is to Paris.” Ariel Toaff, himself, is considered “one of the greatest scholars in his field.”

"In February 2007 the Israeli and Italian media were abuzz (though most of the U.S. media somehow missed it) with news that Professor Toaff had written a book entitled "Pasque di Sangue" (“Blood Passovers”) containing evidence that there “was a factual basis for some of the medieval blood libels against the Jews.”

"Based on 35 years of research, Toaff had concluded that there were at least a few, possibly many, real incidents.

"In an interview with an Italian newspaper (the book was published in Italy), Toaff says:
"“My research shows that in the Middle Ages, a group of fundamentalist Jews did not respect the biblical prohibition and used blood for healing. It is just one group of Jews, who belonged to the communities that suffered the severest persecution during the Crusades. From this trauma came a passion for revenge that in some cases led to responses, among them ritual murder of Christian children.”

"(Incidentally, an earlier book containing similar findings was published some years ago, also by an Israeli professor, Israel Shahak, of whom Noam Chomsky once wrote, “Shahak is an outstanding scholar, with remarkable insight and depth of knowledge. His work is informed and penetrating, a contribution of great value.” )

"Professor Toaff was immediately attacked from all sides, including pressure orchestrated by Anti-Defamation League chairman Abe Foxman, but Toaff stood by his 35 years of research, announcing:

"I will not give up my devotion to the truth and academic freedom even if the world crucifies me… One shouldn't be afraid to tell the truth."

"Before long, however, under relentless public and private pressure, Toaff had recanted, withdrawn his book, and promised to give all profits that had already accrued (the book had been flying off Italian bookshelves) to Foxman’s Anti-Defamation League. A year later he published a “revised version.”

"Donald Bostrom’s experience seems to be a repeat of what Professor Toaff endured: calumny, vituperation, and defamation. Bostrom has received death threats as well, perhaps an experience that Professor Toaff also shared.

"If Israel is innocent of organ plundering accusations, or if its culpability is considerably less than Bostrom and others suggest, it should welcome honest investigations that would clear it of wrongdoing. Instead, the government and its advocates are working to suppress all debate and crush those whose questions and conclusions they find threatening."

Many of the claims in that excerpt are falsehoods intended to support an unsupportable conclusion: that Jews ritually murdered gentiles. Let's debunk some of them in order:

1) Ariel Toaff is not "Israel’s preeminent expert on medieval Jewish history". Weir has no reason to believe that he is and provides no citation for this invented claim. Toaff is not a rabbi. Toaff did not conduct 35 years of research into the question of whether Jews conducted ritual murders of gentiles, or used blood to cast spells. All of these claims by Weir are untrue and were invented by Weir to burnish Toaff's reputation as an expert on the subject of ritual murder and bolster his opinions about it.

2) In the first edition of the book in question, Toaff relied on faulty logic to reach the conclusion that a small group of Jews may have conducted ritual murders and ritually used blood in contradiction of Jewish law as a form of revenge for the anti-Jewish atrocities of the Crusades. He based his conclusion on testimony extracted from Jewish victims under the extreme duress of medieval torture chambers, the sole documentary record of these events. One would expect that a historian researching this subject would bring an understanding of the tainted origin of these documents and counterbalance them with that understanding and a knowledge of the historical context. In the annals of lapses of judgment by historians, Toaff's initial credulous reliance on these documents must rank high. Neither Toaff nor Weir offer any reason for the reader to accept the veracity of statements extracted under extreme duress, and readers shouldn't do so.

3) Toaff, since the initial publication of his book, has retracted his earlier conclusions concerning ritual murder. (Read here.) He has issued a new version of his book which states unequivocally that "Jews were not involved in ritual murder, which was an entirely Christian stereotype". Weir neglects to mention this statement, continuing to maintain that Toaff found that "there was a factual basis for some of the medieval blood libels against the Jews. Based on 35 years of research, Toaff had concluded that there were at least a few, possibly many, real incidents." Toaff's retraction occured 18 months prior to Weir's article. While Weir does mention that Toaff has issued a new version of his book, she fails to detail his more recent findings, dismissing them as a capitulation to pressure by Abe Foxman and the ADL -- proof to her of a Jewish conspiracy of silence.

4) In order to shore up Ariel Toaff's credentials, Weir quotes a Haaretz article with respect to the high regard for Toaff's father, Rabbi Elio Toaff. Elio Toaff served with great distinction as chief rabbi of Rome in the 1950s and 1960s. He also demonstrated extraordinary bravery as an anti-fascist partisan during World War II. Weir quotes the Haaretz article to the effect that Elio Toaff “is to Italian Jewry as the Eiffel Tower is to Paris”. She fails to cite that article in a footnote, however, because to do so would have forced her to give its headline: "The wayward son". A footnote or link also would have allowed Weir's readers to see the following quote from Rabbi Elio Toaff in the lede paragraph:

"(T)he criticism that everyone has expressed about his book was justified. His arguments in the book were an insult to the intelligence, to the tradition, to history in general and to the meaning of the Jewish religion. It saddens me that such nonsense was put forward by my son of all people."

The Haaretz article Weir quoted but failed to cite goes on to describe the reaction to the publication of the first version of Ariel Toaff's book as "the shock currently being felt by the Italian Jewish community over this human tragedy". Weir either completely misunderstood the point of the article or she deliberately withheld it. She either inadvertently failed to cite the quote's source, or she deliberately suppressed it. You be the judge.

5) Weir cites Israel Shahak as a purported expert on Judaism who supported the truth of the blood libel, stating point blank that Shahak reached similar conclusions to those reached by Toaff. The footnote Weir provides for this claim, a biographical sketch of Shahak by Norton Mezvinisky on the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs website, does not in any way support this assertion. (In fact, the only aspect of what Weir wrote about Shahak which is supported in the article she cited is that Noam Chomsky provided Shahak with an extremely generous blurb for a book cover.) Shahak, who was a chemistry professor at Hebrew University and not an authority on history or religion, was infamously the author of a polemical pamphlet concerning Judaism entitled Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years. This book, which largely consists of very obvious falsehoods, is a favorite among those who want ammunition against Jews but are not particularly concerned about accuracy. It is notable not for scholarship but for its palpable disdain for its subject. To give a sense of the tone of Shahak's book, it literally argues that the Chmielniki massacres, in which hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed, were justified. (Read here and here.) The book also absurdly claims that religious Jews worship Satan. It even falsely contends (at length) that Judaism permits the murder of gentiles and forbids violating the Sabbath to save a gentile's life. (As the grandson of an Orthodox Jewish physician who routinely broke the Sabbath to care for Jews and gentiles alike, this argument is especially galling to me.) In spite of all that, I know of no instance where even Shahak alleged that the blood libel was literally true. In fact, he said the contrary. On page 21 of the 1994 Pluto Press edition of Jewish History, Jewish Religion (available here), he makes a point to distinguish such claims from medieval arguments against the Jewish religion with which he agrees.

"We are not referring here to ignorant calumnies, such as the blood libel, propagated by benighted monks in small provincial cities."

It is precisely such an ignorant calumny which Alison Weir and Counterpunch have published.

Anecdotal Evidence

Weir's article makes the case that Israel plays a disproportionate role in the illegal trade in human organs, that the government and military is involved, and (as indicated above) that this trade has its roots in Jewish religious traditions involving ritual murder of gentiles. The obvious spuriousness of her evidence for this is helpful because it puts the bad faith behind the inaccuracies of the rest of her arguments into clear focus. But the rest of her arguments hardly stand up to close scrutiny even without taking her support of the blood libel into consideration.

To make her argument, Weir provides a deceptive history of the issue, citing no statistical studies of the issue, but relying exclusively on anecdotes from media coverage of a number of Israeli cases concerning illegal or unethical medical use of organs. Her version of events cites a few reports concerning claims made by anonymous sources to bloggers and activists. She cites an editorial from the Forward which details some Israeli cases involving parts taken from corpses and used for medical instruction, not transplant. The Forward editorial decries the inappropriate use of human organs for research or study as an international problem concerning treatment of the dead, and specifically reaches the conclusion that the charge that Israel is harvesting Palestinian organs for transplants is baseless. (Read here.) Weir, as usual, selects from this piece the facts which tend to support her case and completely withholds its main point. She also repeatedly cites "Israel Shamir". Based on unreliable or cherry-picked anecdotal evidence and completely lacking supporting statistics, Weir reaches the conclusion that Israeli involvement in the illegal organ trade is uniquely widespread, and is state and institutionally sanctioned.

The first anecdote Weir cites is a case in point. It concerns the sad case of the donor for Israel's first heart transplant, a stroke victim who had not consented to be an organ donor. His family protested this surgery and was allegedly forced by the hospital to sign a release from liability before the body was released to them. This troubling case was widely reported at the time, and rightfully led Israel to enact greater protections from such practices, which Israel, like other nations, did not properly regulate in the early transplant era. Not only does Weir not provide this historical context, she goes so far as to imply without basis that the donor was deliberately allowed to die (or worse) in order to transplant his heart, that this practice is allowed under Israeli law and that it is commonplace there.

Where is Counterpunch headed?

It is bad enough that Counterpunch, in the name of defending human rights, would publish such patently false charges as true. It is outrageous that they would present the anti-Semitism of the middle ages as a progressive response to the Jewish people, whom they portray as intrinsically reactionary and criminal. In doing this, Counterpunch has turned the definitions of "progressive" and "reactionary" on their heads. In fact, they have completely turned logic on its head. What will they support next? The Spanish Inquisition?

NOTE: Counterpunch is publishing other articles supporting the spurious charges from Aftonbladet. One, entitled "Israeli Bodysnatchers", was authored by Bouthaina Shaaban, chief spokesperson for President Assad of Syria and a former Syrian "Minister of Expatriates". Shaaban describes herself as "a Nobel Peace Prize nominee". (I love when people claim that as a credential. Literally anyone can be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, so those who cite it as an honor always do so fraudulently.) In addition to repeating the absurd organ trafficking charges, her article also baselessly blames Israel for the assassination of Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh.

"9/11 Truth" Leader: Arab Spring is a Zionist psy-op

From the founder of Muslim, Christian and Jewish Alliance for 9/11 Truth, Kevin Barrett, comes the informative podcast he describes as follows:

Guest: Islamic scholar Imran Hosein, a leading Islamic eschatologist and one of the first and most important Muslim supporters of 9/11 truth. 

Is the Zionist global banking elite intentionally destroying the USA in order to replace it with a new world hegemon: a Zionist empire based in Occupied Palestine? Is the Arab Spring a Zionist psy-op designed to pave the way for a big Mideast war, or even a nuclear World War III? ,Do the Zionists actually WANT an “islamist” takeover in Syria? Is Russia returning to its Byzantine Christian roots, and will it (in alliance with resurgent Islam) lead the opposition to the satanic Zionist New World Order? Should all Muslims, and all people of good will, be supporting the Russia-Iran-China alliance as it opposes the satanic Zionist plot to enslave the world? And has the real Muslim conquest of Constantinople – the one foreseen by the Prophet Muhammad, peace upon him – not yet occurred? 

Imran Hosein combines extensive theological knowledge with unusual expertise in world affairs, and expresses his views clearly and forcefully.

[source]

Barrett promotes the idea that the "truth" of 9/11 was that Jews did it. That explains why the only Jewish board member listed for his organization is Israel Shamir. (Read here.)

Meanwhile in Belarus...

Wikileaks' primary Russian-language correspondent Israel Shamir met with Uladzimri Makei, the chief aide to President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko. Lukashenko's regime has been described as Europe's last dictatorship. According to the Belarusian pro-democracy group Charter 97:

In his interview to Interfax-Zapad news agency, Shamir confirmed the website possesses files on Belarus. According to him, WikiLeaks has several thousands of secret documents concerning Belarus to a greater or less degree. He added that the files on Belarus were “what the Americans report from Belarus and on Belarus. There may be interesting things.”

read here: Makei afraid of Assange’s files

Shamir was photographed by an Interfax photographer on the steps of the Belarus Presidential Administation Building in Minsk earlier today.

In related news, Hal Roberts of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society reports that the Lukashenko regime has prepared for today's election by conducting a hijacking campaign against a long list of websites associated with opposition parties. People who try to view these websites are redirected to phony ones set up by the regime.

read here: INDEPENDENT MEDIA SITES IN BELARUS REPORTEDLY HIJACKED DURING ELECTION

UPDATE (Monday, Dec. 20, 2010):


And of course...


The Lukashenko regime has reverted to form.  Yesterday, election day, at least 6 of 9 opposition candidates were illegally arrested, as were hundreds of their aides and supporters.  Voters, protesters, reporters and observers were beaten by police.  Now we await the results of the "vote count", by which I mean outright theft of the election.  All this in spite of a promise of almost $4 billion of aid from Germany and Poland if Lukachenko allowed fair elections.  Read the NY Times coverage here: Belarus Police Arrest Opposition Leaders.  Human rights organization VIASNA has coverage here.

A note about the Holocaust denier Israel Shamir's working for Julian Assange as Wikileaks Russian correspondent: 

When I originally posted about this on Facebook, I received outraged comments from a free-lance journalist who supports Assange.  She claimed (without citing any specifics) that all the evidence of Shamir's working for Wikileaks was falsified, and that there was no indication of such a connection.  She went on to absurdly claim that my asking if such a connection worried her was a calculated attempt on my part to label her as a Nazi.  How silly.

And the rape charges:

In the past several days, we've seen liberals such as Bianca Jagger, Keith Olbermann, Michael Moore, Naomi Wolf and Naomi Klein (henceforth "the Naomis"), as well as the blog firedoglake, slander Assange's alleged victims as liars working in cahoots with the CIA to silence Assange.  Now we have Andrew Krieg writing in the Huffington Post claiming without any evidence whatsoever that they're working not for the CIA but for Karl Rove.  His "reasoning"?  Rove works as a consultant to the Swedish PM Reinfelt, and

"This all has Karl's signature," a reliable political source told me a week and a half ago... He must be very happy. He's right back in the middle of it. He's making himself valuable to his new friends, seeing the U.S. government doing just what he'd like ─ and screwing his opponents big-time."

In spite of the fact that a Wikileaks spokesman, in a Swedish radio interview, has confirmed and defended Wikileaks employing Israel Shamir, and in spite of the fact that Shamir himself has confirmed this and has negotiated on Wikileaks behalf with the Belarusian regime, Assange's enablers deny that such a thing could be true and slander as liars those who report it.  Meanwhile, Assange's enablers groundlessly slander the alleged victims of his sexual assaults as liars working for the CIA and/or Karl Rove.  The sheer brazenness of this double-standard concerning evidence is breathtaking.  More importantly, it is wrong to treat alleged rape victims in such a manner. These people feel that their actions support free speech and transparency in government, but support for any cause, no matter how just, would not mitigate their offenses.  Assange's narcissism and recklessness seem to be echoed by some of his supporters.  Good intentions is no defense.

The Guardian has coverage of Shamir and Wikileaks here.  The Guardian also published details of the Swedish prosecutors' evidence for their charges against Assange here, and an interview with the attorney for Assange's accusers, one which addresses the Assange enablers' conspiracy theories, here.    Have the enablers read this stuff?

Cynthia McKinney increasing her ties to the racist far-right: Michael Collins Piper and Israel Shamir.

About a year ago, I wrote a number of pieces on Cynthia McKinney's increasing connections to far-right bigots such as former Prime Minister of Malaysia Tun Mahathir; his chief aide, conspiracy theory author Matthias Chang (read here and here); and Islamic Party of Britain leader David Pidcock (read here).  I also wrote about her anti-Semitic interviews with hate bloggers Daryl Bradford Smith and Noel "Ognir" Ryan (read here).   McKinney's supporters and representatives of the U.S. Green Party have defended her work with this motley crew, sometimes stating that condemning McKinney's work with them amounts to "guilt by association", acknowledging by implication that this group has some troubling beliefs or worse.  At other times, McKinney supporters have actually defended the extreme views of this group.

Now I've found two additional far right figures for whom McKinney has expressed her support and with whom she's made common cause.  I've also discovered that she's done another interview with the two hate bloggers about whom I wrote last year.


Non-denial denials

The information about McKinney's ties to Chang and Pidcock which I published here last spring appears to have been the basis at least in part for an article written by Rob Waters which was published by the Southern Poverty Law Center in their December, 2009 Intelligence Report.  (Read here.)  For that article, Waters got Scott McLarty, a Green Party official, to go on the record to deny that McKinney shared the views espoused by her far-right associates, calling such a conclusion "guilt by association".  However, McLarty failed to find any problem with a lengthy quote from Chang's book The Shadow Money Lenders which McKinney posted on a Green Party website, in which a long list of Jewish bankers were accused of plotting to destabilize the world in order to take control of it. 

Anita Stewart, a Green Party official and staffer to McKinney (during the 2008 presidential campaign and, since then, with McKinney's Dignity Action Network), posted a gnomic comment to one of my articles about McKinney's ties to Chang.  She defended McKinney's endorsement of Chang's conspiracy theories as intrinsically valid.  Stewart's response, which, like McLarty's, failed to contend with the bigotry or far-right ideology of McKinney's allies, stated that, if McKinney agrees with them, they're probably right. (See comments here.)

As you read McKinney's praise of Chang, and McLarty's and Stewart's defense of that praise, keep in mind that Chang has written that he was inspired by "the American Free Press, The Barnes Review, The Spotlight, and the truth seekers that I have long admired, Harry Elmer Barnes, Willis Carto, Michael Collins Piper, Christopher Petherick, Eustace Mullins (whose life-long persecution by the Police State is a disgrace to the Constitution), (and) Col. Donn de Grand Pre..."  That's a long list, and some of the names are obscure ones.  Suffice it to say that there is a common thread of bigotry running through that list.

Also keep in mind that McKinney's connection to Chang is more than lip service.  Chang, as chief aide to former PM Mahathir of Malaysia, runs a foundation purportedly devoted to the absolute pacifist position of making all war illegal.   (Read here.)  That foundation, far from actually campaigning to ban all war, focuses exclusively on falsely accusing Israel of crimes such as genocide.  Cynthia McKinney has participated as a keynote speaker, presumably for pay, in at lest three of this foundations' international conferences (two in Kuala Lumpur and one in London) where she participated in this ritualistic hate in the name of peace.  


Compared by her friends to Father Coughlin


While McKinney's supporters defend her by (falsely) claiming that she does not make anti-Semitic statements herself, the same defense cannot conceivably be made for those who interview her.  In one of last year's "Ognir" interviews with McKinney, Ognir/Ryan introduced her with a lengthy discussion of "banking Jewry" having controlled the world for the past four centuries.  In another, Ryan asked McKinney about Rahm Emanuel, saying "(h)e's got Jew nationality and Jew loyalties."  Far from condemning this obviously bigoted remark, McKinney replied by saying "I think that what you're talking about is who controls the U.S. government".  She went on to explain that she left the Democratic Party precisely because she believes it to be controlled by this conspiracy.

In last year's interviews, Ryan's questions to McKinney expounded elaborate, bizarre conspiracy theories concerning Jewish culpability for 9/11, the world financial crisis, capitalism, communism, and, absurdly, medical marijuana and gay marriage.  McKinney failed to disagree with the interviewers' assertions once, sometimes going so far as to say that she knew what the interviewer meant by this drivel, thus giving her tacit support.  On several occasions, she stated her explicit support.  She also showed her own ties to reality to be a bit shaky, comparing herself to civil rights hero Rosa Parks.  (Read my original posts on this for more details including transcripts.)

Since I last wrote about her interviews with Ryan and fellow hate blogger Daryl Bradford Smith, McKinney has returned to give them additional interviews.  In one conducted by Smith and Ryan on January 14, 2010, Smith introduced McKinney as the best thing to happen in U.S. politics since the pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic radio preacher Father Coughlin.  (Listen below at about 6:20.)



This comparison, which most people would consider insulting, is a high complement for Smith, who features portraits of both McKinney and Coughlin and recordings of Coughlin's infamous post-Kristallnacht broadcasts on his website.  (Read here.  Smith also features on his website the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and conspiracy theories about Jews causing the swine flu epidemic.) If one of McKinney's critics were to denounce her by comparing her to Coughlin, that person would be swamped with passionate denials and vicious denunciations impugning the comparison as somehow motivated by a conservative, "Zionist" or even Jewish bias.  When the person actually interviewing McKinney makes that comparison, we hear the sound of silence.

from Daryl Bradford Smith's iamthewitness.com website:




McKinney says she's a fan of anti-Semitic author Michael Collins Piper, he dedicates a book to her
 
Cynthia McKinney has played the double-game of working with increasing brazenness with racists of the far-right, even as she says through her spokesmen that we shouldn't judge her by her friends.  I wonder how they explain the fact that McKinney has declared herself, via Facebook, to be a fan of the anti-Semitic author Michael Collins Piper.  Piper has worked for decades in the employ of Willis Carto, one of the United States' most infamous far-right racists. 

Author Leonard Zeskind describes Carto as one of the two foremost leaders of the U.S. "white nationalist" movement in the latter half of the 20th Century, and Piper as Carto's "loyal assistant". (Read here and here.  A Piper interview with Carto is available here.  [Link goes directly to RAM file.])  Carto is the founder of a number of extreme right wing groups such as the Liberty Lobby (which "appealed to both anti-communists and arch-segregationists", read here) and the Holocaust-denial group Institute for Historical Review, among his countless other similarly oriented projects.  Piper has worked for the newspaper founded and published by Carto, American Free Press, since that paper's founding, and has participated in a number of Carto's Holocaust-denial conferences.  (Read here and here.)  Piper has also been described as a "far-right emissary to the Islamic world", attempting to unite Islamists and the U.S. far-right around the common causes of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism .  (Read here and here.  My earlier article on Piper can be read here.)

Piper, along with David Duke and a rogue's gallery of others, participated in Holocaust denial conferences hosted by far-right Russian Nationalists (read here), and, infamously, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who invited Piper to the Tehran Holocaust denial conference as his personal guest (read here).  It would be fair to say of him that Piper has made the production of books, columns and radio programs fabulizing Jewish conspiracies to control the world his life's work.  He has, among other things, accused Jews of assassinating U.S. presidents, secretly controlling the government, financial system and media, and, literally, practicing human sacrifice and cannibalism.

McKinney supporters might be interested to learn that Piper's employer Willis Carto worked in George Wallace's segregationist presidential campaign as a leader of Youth for Wallace and subsequently set up an organization which morphed into the neo-Nazi National Alliance.  Both Carto and Piper have for many years worked with former-Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, and continue to do so.  (For a recent example, read here.)  Carto was a key backer both of Duke's 1988 run for U.S. president (read here) and Duke's 2004 "New Orleans Protocol" outlining a political strategy for U.S. "European Nationalists" (i.e. white supremicists).  (Read here.)  The ADL says that Carto is "one of the most influential American anti-Semitic propagandists of the past 50 years... he has been associated with nearly every significant far-right movement in the country, from neo-Nazism to militias, segregationism to Holocaust denial."  (Read here.  For Searchlight Magazine's take on Carto, read here.  Examples of Carto's racist letters to Verne Kaub, a Liberty Lobby board member and author, are available here and here.)

Not only has McKinney now declared her support for Carto's assistant, Michael Collins Piper, Piper  has reportedly declared his support for Cynthia McKinney by dedicating his book The Judas Goats: The Enemy Within to her as follows.  (Read here.)

To the Honorable Cynthia McKinney
Democratic Congresswoman from Georgia

. . .For daring to speak out and raise questions about what really happened on 9-11 and about the dangerous U.S. policy toward Israel and the Arab world — a policy that has made America many enemies around the globe — Cynthia McKinney was driven from the U.S. Congress in 2002.  Judas Goat — a former Republican, no less — was recruited to run against Miss McKinney in the Democratic Party primary.GOP organizers moved into the Democratic Party to assist the Judas Goat. Tons of Zionist money poured into Georgia to help Miss McKinney’s challenger. In the end, Miss McKinney was defeated.  But two years later Cynthia McKinney made a comeback and she sits in the U.S. Congress today — a voice for sane policies and one who still does not hesitate to speak the truth. And as this is written, they are moving against her once again. Her voice is one for all good people. Dear God: Let there be more like Cynthia McKinney!

Piper's Judas Goats book alleges that the Jews control the world via dual Zionist and Trostkyite conspiracies, both under the control of the Rothschild family.   Piper describes it as supplement to a book called Synagogue of Satan by Andrew Carrington Hitchcock, which Piper calls "an overwhelming detailed history of how Jewish power and influence -- particularly through the venue [sic] of the Rothschild banking dynasty -- how that influence came to rule supreme".  (He's nothing if not consistent.)  He talks about the book at length in an interview with far-right radio hate preacher Texe Marrs, audio of which is embedded below.

(Listen here at 6:30.)

Michael Collins Piper also has at least one connection to the previously discussed anti-Semitic blogger Noel "Ognir" Ryan.  The below-embedded video, which I found on Ryan's website TheInformationUnderground.com (here),  features audio from a recent Piper radio program.  In that program, the administrator Ryan's internet forum and radio programs (under the name "LordLindsey" -- he goes by "Lindsey" here), tells Piper how pleased he was with Ognir's McKinney interview.  (At about 3:20 of the video below.)  The reason?  McKinney alleged in that interview (at great length) that (in Lindsey's words) "Zionist Jews control more than 99% of the United States Congress". (You can listen here, at first link, to that McKinney interview.) [NOTE: Among the ever-growing list of incredibly offensive material available on the TheInformationUnderground.com, is a video which attempts to glorify Holocaust Museum murderer Jim von Brunn. View here.]





Considering that Michael Collins Piper does little else but promote the grossest bigotry, I would be very interested to hear from McKinney what it is about him that she supports.  Maybe there's some aspect of his work that's escaped public notice that McKinney would like to draw attention to with her praise of him.  I would also be interested in hearing the reactions of progressives to McKinney's support for this advocate of the racist far-right. 


"I am in Turkey with Israel Shamir!!!"

That's how Cynthia McKinney giddily headlined her article on her meeting with Israel Shamir in Ankara last year (read here).  She writes (here):

I can hardly believe this moment!!  Israel Shamir has written about me and lifted my spirits when I was most down.  Even from faraway Israel, he understood my plight and dared give voice to the truth.  They say that sometimes distance gives clarity--and certainly in Israel's case, in observing my serial targeting, he saw what many inside the United States could not see.  Despite his writings, I never met him until this moment, just a few minutes ago!!  We are speaking together this afternoon in Ankara, Turkey.  He has already sent his message out on his list and so I include it here for you.  I will send my message to you later.  I will bring these contacts from around the world that I have made on behalf of peace, home to the United States so that we can more easily achieve our objectives for justice and peace and dignity in the area of policy where we and the world need it the most.  We are a part of something much bigger than us individually, and our moment is now.

I guess they hit it off.  For those who don't know of Shamir, he's a shady character who got his start working as journalist for a prominent Russian, far-right, ultra-nationalist newspaper under the pen name "Robert David" .  (His legal name has, at various times, been Jöran Jermas or Adam Ermash.)  He spent some time living in Israel under the assumed name "Israel Shamir".  After this, he Portrayed himself in the West as an Israeli and a leftist, and has focused largely on producing anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic propaganda.  He has meanwhile continued to maintain an ideological double identity, publishing in Eastern European languages and Russian from an overtly far-right perspective.    Although he is ethnically Russian and a naturalized citizen of Sweden, he touts the fact that he lived in Israel under his assumed name (read here and here and here and here), and is frequently cited as an "Israeli journalist" when used as source.  This identity is useful to writers who either want to put an acceptable face on what they know to be anti-Israel disinformation, or are credulous enough to believe in the fairy tales he promotes.  I wrote about one such instance, Alison Weir's reliance on Shamir's promotion of literal truth of the blood libel, here and here.  Weir cited him as an "Israeli journalist" working to uncover what she and Shamir describe as Israel's campaign of murdering people to steal their organs.  Both Weir and McKinney still work with Shamir and cite him as an authority in spite of his having been denounced as an anti-Semite by Hussein Ibish and Ali Abunimah (read here), and as an impostor and charlatan by countless others.

To cite one out of countless examples of Israel Shamir's extremism, he counts among his close ideological allies the infamous Horst Mahler, whom Shamir calls "(a) friend of Palestine and anti-zionist, an anti-imperialist freedom fighter".  Read here.  Mahler, formerly a leader of the far left Red Army Fraction, has been for many years a leader Germany's racist far right, largely motivated by extreme anti-Semitism (as evidenced here).  In 2003, Mahler founded a Holocaust denial organization he called Verein zur Rehabilitierung der wegen Bestreitens des Holocaust Verfolgten.  (Read their press release here.  Co-signers of the organization's charter included Ernst Zündel, Robert Faurisson, Germar Rudolf, and Frederick Töben.)  In subsequent years, Mahler has been convicted several times of crimes connected to his activism connected to denial of Nazi war crimes.  In a 2007 interview with the German edition of Vanity Fair, an English translation of which "Shamir" makes available on his website (read here), Mahler said of Jews that they "are the embodiment of a god, who according to our understanding is Satan, and they play a tragic role in the corruption and negation of the life of all the other Peoples".  (In that interview, Mahler greeted his interviewer by saying "Heil Hitler!”, and  went on to praise Hitler, defend his own father's Nazism, and equate it with leftist opposition to "American imperialism".)

Horst  Mahler and "Israel Shamir" in 2008

Mahler (second from left) with sign reading "There was no Holocaust"

"Israel Shamir" has found a very willing  subject for his disinformation in Cynthia McKinney.  With the instincts of a gifted con artist he found the sweet spot where her prejudices intersect with his agenda.  Via McKinney, Shamir promotes the idea that Europe's neo-Nazis and Russia's ultra-nationalists are funded by Jews as part of a global war on Islam, and that this purported covert war is intrinsic to Israel's existence.  This is a bit of misdirection that someone with Shamir's connections to Russian ultra-nationalists -- connections he has been careful to conceal -- might find very useful.

Shamir's writing style can be a bit diffuse, but while following his train of thought might be  tricky, you can be certain as to its destination.  Here's a portion of the text of his Ankara speech as posted by McKinney on her Facebook page:

The problem is the Jewish state. Not only does it besiege Gaza and destroy a football stadium in el Bireh. These are local problems, painful but local. The Jewish state (It is not a Jewish state. It is a Zionist state. S1000+) focuses Jewish power all over the world into action. Without a Jewish state, this power would disperse; it would remain local, it would remain chaotic, probably it would be subdued by the forces of assimilation. Israel focuses these chaotic forces and concentrates them into action.

This action is against Islam. Not only against Islam, but Dar ul Islam (the Islamic world) is a prime target. In the US , the Jewish Neocons led their country into a crusade against Iraq and Afghanistan ; now they are spearheading the push against Iran.

They have formed a powerful front against President Obama and have turned him into a laughing stock after he uttered a few words of wisdom about Palestine .

In Europe , if you inspect the coffers of anti-Muslim neo-Nazi groups, you'll find that they thrive on Jewish support. In Russia , Jewish nationalists and Zionists try to rally the Russians against their Muslim brethren. Sometimes they do it under cover of the Russian Church , or of Russian nationalism. I wrote about this recently, as I had discovered that the most fervently anti-Muslim forces in Russia are organised by crypto-Zionists.

Even if a Palestinian state were to be established and recognised, it wouldn’t stop Israeli attempts to undermine its neighbours, to bomb Iran , to sow the seeds of discord from Russia to France , from Turkey to India . Israel 's too powerful intelligence services would keep meddling. Neither would it neutralise the armed forces of Israel , and you know as well as anybody that the generals do not give up their toys, their privileges or their influence easily. The Israeli military machine is so powerful that it would seek to exercise its might.

Consider that the source for this incoherent conspiracy theory has been associated with precisely the far-right Russian nationalist movement most ardently connected to both anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic violence in Russia.  I tend to believe that McKinney (like the rest of Shamir's audience in Ankara) is oblivious to this fact and is taking him at face value to be an Israeli leftist.  But that sort of gullibility is no excuse for the promotion of this sort of deranged and hateful conspiracy theory.  Regardless of whom McKinney believes Shamir to be, the intent of this string of lies is clearly stated: to drive further wedges between Muslims and Jews, to oppose a Palestinian peace agreement with Israel and to deny Israel's right to exist.  In promoting these views, McKinney, like Shamir, should be regarded as an anti-peace activist.

"Guilt by association": a catch-all defense for supporting the indefensible

Cynthia McKinney and her supporters may call any condemnation of her work with Matthias Chang, Michelle Renouf, David Pidcock, Mahathir Tun, Michael Collins Piper, Jöran "Israel Shamir" Jermas, Daryl Bradford Smith and Noel "Ognir" Ryan guilt by association, but by doing so, they help legitimize racism, anti-Semitism and far-right extremism, as does McKinney herself.  While guilt by association might be a legitimate defense to merely talking with, attending the same meetings as, or even belonging to the same organizations as bigots, it is quite another matter to support them politically, tout their writings, promote their views, or actually work in their employ.  By doing this, and by doing this with increasing frequency, McKinney has made precisely her association with bigotry the centerpiece of her message.

More importantly "guilt by association" refers to a legal standard for criminal acts: people cannot be held legally responsible for the acts of others unless they criminally participate in those acts as well.  The standard by which we judge the character of political figures should be much higher than that.  McKinney's supporters, in defending her work with racists and extremists, say "only hold her to the standard by which we judge criminal acts".  A political figure whose followers hold to such a low standard must be doing something wrong.  Besides, as I have shown above and in my earlier articles, this defense ignores what is now painfully obvious.  McKinney is not just associating with people who do and say bad things, she is actively supporting those malicious acts and participating in them herself.


Other McKinney supporters defend her differently, claiming that she is well-intentioned, but is recklessly making ill-advised alliances.  As the number of these alliances grows, and the connections grow deeper, this defense becomes less and less plausible.  The fact that Cynthia McKinney has made common cause with bigots of the far-right with at least some knowledge of who they are indicates that her actions are based on a malice she shares with them.  Cynthia McKinney has done nothing to distance herself from the overtly bigoted views espoused by so many of those she works with, even when they espouse these views to her in public forums.  On the contrary, she has gone out of her way to agree with many of these views, and even to publish them on websites maintained by her or by the Green Party on her behalf.  While in the past she mostly avoided using the word "Jew" in favor of "Zionist", with her publication of Shamir's speech, even this thin veil of propriety has disappeared.  If McKinney had sincerely wished to distance herself from these views, she would have denounced her friends' bigotry long ago; instead, she has repeatedly gone out of her way to support it.

The idea that her guilt is merely "by association" is laughable.  Her guilt is sometimes that of a silent, grinning supporter of her friends' racist rants, and at other times that of an active promoter of those views herself.  Sometimes she has couched her feelings about Jews in language vague enough to hypocritically disavow ill intent, but no one with any pretense of opposing bigotry should be deceived.  Nor should they tolerate the fact that she claims to support peace for Israel and Palestine while campaigning against a peace settlement.  Those who have supported McKinney or have been drawn to any part of her message owe it to themselves to speak out against this.

Screen shot from Cynthia McKinney's Facebook page.




(NOTE: I've revised this article to include a paragraph about Horst Mahler's connection to "Israel Shamir" and two additional photographs.  Thanks to Karl Pfeifer for much of that information. Pfeifer's 2005 article on "Shamir" and Mahler can be read here. Thanks as well to Gene of Harry's Place for his kind words and his link to this article -- read here.)

Gilad Atzmon supports anti-Semitism

"History teaches us that the most universally inspiring Jews, I mean, those who contributed something to humanity rather than merely to their own people or even just themselves, were motivated by some form of self hate." -- Gilad Atzmon

It's not exactly news that jazz musician and blogger Gilad Atzmon advocates anti-Semitism by both Jews and non-Jews -- he's been playing that tune for several years. But his advocacy has become both more blatant and more pathetic recently, as evidenced by his promotion of the Israeli organ theft libel. The products of his fervid imagination on that subject have now been broadcast around the world, along with the twisted fantasies of Israel Shamir, T. West, al-Manar, and Alison Weir (read here and here and here), and thanks to those like Baroness Jenny Tonge who take those fantasies to be reliable information.

Bigots are said to use their targets as scapegoats for shortcomings they fear having themselves, projecting their sins onto those they hate. But the self-hater has a special problem which calls for extraordinary measures. When he looks in the mirror, his scapegoat stares back. The self-hater feels a need to continually prove that he is different from -- better than -- the others of his group. For Atzmon, this need to differentiate compels increasingly extreme demonizing of the Jewish community; and as his critique becomes stronger, it verges on overt opposition to Jewish existence.

Atzmon recently wrote a review of the film "Defamation" which is noteworthy for both for its anti-Semitic opposition to Jewish participation in public life and its attempt to blame Jews for European anti-Muslim sentiment. (Read here.) That review includes the following defense of anti-Semitism:

"Unlike Uri Avnery and Norman Finkelstein who appear in the film and argue that anti-Semitism is exaggerated, I actually believe that resentment towards Jewish politics is rising rapidly and constantly. However, I do differentiate between the Judeo-centric notion of anti-Semitism and political resentment towards Jewish ideology. I do not regard anti-Jewish activity as a form of anti-Semitism or racial hatred because Jews are neither Semites nor do they form a racial continuum whatsoever. The rise of hatred towards any form of Jewish politics and Jewish lobbies is a reaction towards a tribal, chauvinist and supremacist ideology."

Atzmon first admits that he sees that anti-Semitism is on the rise, then that he supports it, although he would prefer that it not be called anti-Semitism. Atzmon writes that he supports opposition to "Jewish ideology", a vague term which can mean virtually any manifestation of Jewish existence in public life. This is an extraordinary limitation to which no ethnic or religious group should be subjected. Opposition to "Jewish ideology" comes very close to opposing Jewish existence itself. Atzmon goes on to deride the term "anti-Semitism" as a "Judeo-centric notion", as if opposition to this particular brand of bigotry (his brand) is itself a form of bigotry.

Atzmon justifies this form of discrimination by saying that he merely wants to protect the rest of the world from the "tribal, chauvinist and supremacist" Jews. What could possibly be wrong with that?

The musician, jazz writer and blogger David Adler wrote about Atzmon in Jazz Times in October 2005. (Read it in pdf here.) David wrote in that article that, in spite of Atzmon promotion of Holocaust denial literature and other manifestations of extremism on his part, music writers tended to portray Atzmon's activism in polite terms, such as, amazingly, "a plea for understanding". David has emailed to tell me that the journalist John Pilger has written recently in support of Atzmon, citing him outrageously as "being at the heart of a battle for a better world"! Adler provided me with a link to Oliver Kamm's column on this. (Read here.) Kamm writes of Atzmon that

(h)e wrote (in a passage on his website that he later partially sanitised):

"American Jewry makes any debate on whether the 'Protocols of the elder of Zion' are an authentic document or rather a forgery irrelevant. American Jews (in fact Zionists) do control the world.. So far they are doing pretty well for themselves at least."

The least objectionable aspect of this remark is that Atzmon regards it as an open question whether the Protocols, a notorious Czarist antisemitic forgery, are an authentic document. And the whole sentiment is quite moderate when you compare it with the rest of Atzmon's output. Consider his belief that Hitler has been unfairly maligned:

"To regard Hitler as the ultimate evil is nothing but surrendering to the Zio-centric discourse. To regard Hitler as the wickedest man and the Third Reich as the embodiment of evilness is to let Israel off the hook."

That says it all, doesn't it? According to Atzmon, Jewish discussions of the worst forms of anti-Semitism are part of a "Zio-centric" plot to expunge their own, far worse, crimes. That is pathetic.

UPDATE: David Adler writes about this on his blog here.

UPDATE #2::  MORE ON ATZMON HERE.

Alison Weir continues to promote blood libel

[Second in a series. First article here.]


In August, the blog Counterpunch published an article which literally claimed that Jews ritually murdered gentiles, apparently the first instance of a mainstream U.S. media outlet promoting this medieval charge as true. That article, written by Alison Weir of the anti-Israel organization "If Americans Knew", connected this blood libel to spurious allegations that Israel is conducting a campaign of theft of body parts from Palestinians killed for this purpose by Israeli troops. Weir claimed on Counterpunch that this purported organ theft campaign was not only sanctioned by Israeli authorities but that it derived from Jewish traditions allowing the murder of gentiles. (Weir's original article on this can be read here. My response to it can be read here.)

Weir has addressed the controversy resulting from her report in Counterpunch by repeating and defending her blood libel in several posts on her blog, even as she backtracks to contradict herself by stating that she has not reached a conclusion as to its truth. She also says that she has revised her article to remove her citation of Israel Shahak as a source for her claim that the blood libel is true. That citation was shown to be false in my earlier post on this subject. Weir has posted on her blog an explanation for this citation in the form of an email exchange concerning this subject between her and Christopher Hitchens. (Read here.) According to Weir's blog post, Hitchens (who was a friend of Shahak) emailed her to ask where Shahak had written in support of the blood libel. In response, Weir implausibly denied that she had intended to say that Shahak supported the ritual murder myth per se, merely that Shahak supported similar claims concerning Jewish anti-Christianity, "Talmudic texts emphasizing vengeance", and rabbis ordering "extreme religious violence (such as) cutting out tongues (and) chopping off noses". She went on to indicate that she hoped that Hitchens would publish something about her in Vanity Fair. The blog post also links to two columns by paleo-conservative blogger Justin Raimondo denouncing Hitchens in strong terms.

In a more detailed response to the controversy also posted on her blog (read here), Weir characterizes Jewish opposition to the blood libel as their claiming that they have "never done anything wrong". Weir sees this a typical Zionist tactic.

The continual portrayal of an entire population that has never done anything wrong ... and that is eternally the victim of allegedly bigoted, always baseless accusations is part of what buttresses the Israeli myth.

She goes on to characterize her views on ritual murder as "balanced", writing that Jews "run the gamut" of good and bad. (By a balanced view of the issue, she apparently means that some Jews sanction ritual murder, while others don't.) According to Weir, Israel's existence relies in part on a doctrine of Jewish infallibility, and her interest in the ritual murder myth is based on opposition to this belief. She goes on to write that she only wants to encourage investigation of ritual murder allegations, and that those who oppose her promoting these charges do so to prevent the truth from coming out. In that way, she argues that she is merely an advocate for free speech and free inquiry, rather than an advocate for a particular position concerning ritual murder.

Weak sources for extreme claims


Weir's confirmation of her belief in the truth of the blood libel is puzzling considering the weakness of her sources. She indicates that her reporting on the issue largely relies on a single book on the subject by Ariel Toaff, on the blog postings of "Israel Shamir" and on articles on a blog called "Zionists out of the Peace Movement" which were posted under a pseudonym. I addressed Weir's reliance on Toaff's book in my earlier article on this subject. 18 months prior to Counterpunch publishing Weir's blood libel article, Toaff rescinded the first edition of that book from publication and reissued it with a statement that ritual murder did not occur and that such charges result from medieval Christian myths. He also reiterated this revised finding in numerous interviews. Weir withheld from her report Toaff's revised findings, dismissing them as merely the result of a Jewish conspiracy of silence.


In response to Hitchens' questions concerning Weir's sources, she now qualifies her support for Toaff's findings, while impugning the motives of his critics.

"At this point, I don't know whether or not Professor Toaff's considerable and somewhat dense scholarly work supports his allegations; to determine this requires considerable study and access to both versions of his book. It would also benefit from open, thorough investigation unimpeded by the diverse and frightening threats received by Toaff and others. My very clear point regardiing Toaff was and is a very simple one: suppressing information is wrong."

Although Weir claimed in her Counterpunch article to have based her ritual murder material on Toaff's book, and devoted a significant portion of that article to establishing his expertise, it appears likely that she has not thoroughly read his book. Weir's blood libel claims rely more on the writings of the far-right anti-Semite who publishes under the assumed name "Israel Shamir". (You can read my original post on this subject for a thumbnail sketch of Shamir's background. Searchlight magazine wrote about him here. This post raises some questions about his true identity.) Although mentioned only in passing by Weir (she falsely calls him an "Israeli writer"), Weir relies on his writings both for her "facts" and analysis on the subject of the blood libel to the extent that she merely restates what Shamir wrote in her own words.


The Israel Shamir article upon which Weir relied for her ritual murder claims has the odd title "Bloodcurdling Libel (a summer story)". (Read here.) Shamir wrote it in response to a 2003 David Aaronovitch column published in the Obsever. (Read here.) Aaronvitch's column concerned contemporary anti-Zionists resuscitating traditional anti-Semitic material such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and ritual murder myths. Aaronowitch mentions the infamous Damascus blood libel of 1840. In that case, Syrian authorities "solved" the mysterious disappearance of a Catholic priest by blaming it on a Jewish ritual murder. They rounded up and tortured several Jews, and extracted several confessions under duress. Aaronovitch wrote that he had recently found this blood libel recounted as a true instance of ritual murder in a variety of Arab media, such as

"in a column in the respected Egyptian mass daily paper Al-Ahram, in a book by the Syrian defence minister and in broadcast sermons from various Palestinian mosques".

Aaronovitch goes on to tell of an Egyptian filmmaker who planned to make a movie on the subject which would assert that the Jews of Damascus kidnapped and killed the Catholic priest not to use his blood in a religious ritual, but to prevent his revealing a Zionist plot to transport Syrian Jews to Palestine. That absurd, doubly anachronistic motive -- the cover-up by pre-Zionist Zionists of a plot to cross a then non-existent border -- makes for a very byzantine blood libel indeed.
In response to Aaronovitch, Shamir's "Bloodcurdling Libel" column claims without basis that the Damascus blood libel was true (although he doesn't indicate which version he believes, the classic or the new, "anti-Zionist" one). Shamir goes on to argue at length that the medieval blood libels were true as well, however, as with the Damascus blood libel, his basis for this outrageous claim is unclear. He then goes on to highlight two infamous modern anti-Jewish libels for special attention. He writes of the Mendel Baylis case, a 1911 Kiev blood libel in which an innocent man was tried and, after a lengthy trial, exonerated for the ritual murder of a 12 year old boy. He also writes of the Dreyfus affair. Shamir writes that

philosemites of Aaronovitch ilk brought incredible calamities to mankind and to Jews. They excluded a priori the possible guilt of Captain Dreyfus or Beyliss. Instead of standing aside and allowing the justice to take its due course, they created mass hysteria in France and Russia, thus obtaining acquittals but also undermining popular belief in the judicial system. After Dreyfus and Beyliss trials, Jews rose above the law. This caused the backlash of the 1930s, and the back-backlash of our days, and will probably cause a back-back-backlash of tomorrow. In a better world, Dreyfusards and Beylissists would be sentenced for contempt of court; for their unspoken axiom was ‘a Gentile may not judge a Jew’.

One should not believe or disbelieve ritual murders. The ability of men to commit crimes is well known, and there can be monsters like Dr Hannibal Lector of The Silence of the Lambs.

Both Dreyfus and Beyliss were innocent Jews prosecuted because of their religion. Both suffered indignities at the hand of reactionary bigots in positions of power. Both fought to be exonerated within the legal systems of their countries. Both were impeded in doing this by official interference in the legal process. Both, at long last, received just verdicts. Yet Shamir outrageously inverts the facts of these cases to cite them as not only as examples of extralegal preferential treatment given to Jews, he actually goes so far as to blame the rise of Nazism on reaction to this preferential treatment, and to predict that it will cause a similar future reaction to boot.


Shamir's lengthy column, which claims without evidence that Dreyfus and Beylis were guilty, and which cites the brutality of a fictional character as evidence that Jews murder gentiles, is difficult to take seriously. It argues not only that medieval and modern ritual murder charges against Jews are true, it blames Jewish opposition to those charges on a Jewish supremacist conspiracy which culminated in the creation of the state of Israel. Alison Weir cites this column by Shamir as one of her two sources establishing the truth of the blood libel. She also parrots Shamir's absurd linking of opposition to the blood libel with a Zionist conspiracy. It is from this column by Israel Shamir more than from Ariel Toaff where Weir's blood libel derives.




Blessed are the peacemongers?


Weir's blog post also links to an article on the website "Zionists out of the Peace Movement" authored by a blogger called "PeaceMonger". (Read here.) That website has a history of promoting "anti-Zionist" demonstrations outside an Ann Arbor, Michigan synagogue during worship services (read here and here), bringing together anti-Israel activists from the far-left and the far-right. The "Zionists Out" website features a sidebar motto explaining its reason for being:

"The main purpose of this blog is to expose Zionists subverting the peace movement, especially in Michigan. 'Progressive Zionism' is to Zionism what 'progressive Nazism' is to Nazism."

The post to which Weir links continues a previous post entitled Judaism's Culture of Death. (Read here.) In case the title doesn't get the point across, that post is illustrated with an image of death personified: a black-robed skeleton pointing at the reader.





In the blog post, "PeaceMonger" repeatedly quotes that old chestnut description of Jewish holidays, "they tried to kill us, we won, let's eat", absurdly stating that it reflects something sinister about the Jews:

the "culture of death" and "victimization" that permeates Judaism and much of modern Jewish life.

"PeaceMonger" goes on to quote some violent excerpts from the Torah, for some reason neglecting to mention the fact that Christian and Muslim scripture contains similar passages. Then he or she goes on to blame the following on the intrinsically violent nature of Judaism: the unfounded idea that Jews have been victims of oppression, the many wars between Israel and the Arab states, and the assassination of Yitchak Rabin.


The second part of this essay (the one which to which Weir links) is called "Bloody Passovers: The Jews of Europe and Ritual Murders". That post features features the following image, a medieval German woodcut depicting Jews extracting blood from a Christian child for ritual use. ( I believe this particular image depicts Simon of Trent.)


:




In addition to supporting the truth of the blood libel, the "Zionists Out" blog post makes the case that between 30,000 and 90,000 Christians were massacred by Jews during the Persian conquest of Jerusalem in the year 610 C.E.



Gilad Atzmon on organ theft


In support of her medically impossible charge that Israel is conducting a campaign of assassinating Palestinians and stealing their organs for transplantation, Weir's blog post links to a number of sources, some of which she cited in her Counterpunch article, some of them new. Among her new sources is a column by Gilad Atzmon with the academic sounding title "Organ donation and theft in contemporary Jewish folklore". That Atzmon column (read here), which was written specifically in support of Weir's article, oddly focuses on fictional television depictions of Jews dealing badly with issues relating to organ transplantation. (Much of it concerns Larry David's behavior on an episode of the program "Curb Your Enthusiasm".) Atzmon makes the case that the selfish motives of these Jewish characters reflect the truth of Jewish parsimoniousness with respect to organ donation, and Jewish greed with respect to organ trafficking. When it comes to the article which elicited this odd excursion into television criticism, Atzmon praises it and and repeats some of Weir's falsehoods, stating that

"Alison Weir published a shocking yet comprehensive and detailed review of Israeli human organ trafficking and theft. Weir brings to light some staggering cases of organ theft. She starts with an alleged case of a heart being pulled out of a living person without the consent of the family. She also brings to light continuous reports of organs being robbed from Palestinian's bodies."

Those who read my earlier piece on this subject will remember that Weir's Counterpunch article falsely implied that, in the case of the first Israeli heart transplant, the donor was literally killed so that doctors could remove his his heart. Weir's words had their desired effect on Atzmon; in his mind, Weir's implication became an allegation.


Weir's article falsely reported that there was smoke, now her readers argue that where there's smoke there's fire.



Journalistic error or deliberate hate speech?

Alison Weir has had ample opportunity to reconsider her promotion of medieval anti-Semitic myths -- myths which have been used to justify massacre and oppression -- yet she has chosen to reiterate them and to cite new sources in support of them. Rather than thanking her critics for pointing out her initial error in judgment, she has attacked them as motivated by a desire to suppress the facts. Not correcting an error of the magnitude of promoting the blood libel compounds the original error and calls Weir's good faith as a reporter into question. Her impugning the motives of those who point out her error calls into question whether she's interested in the truth concerning this matter at all.


Weir is continuing both to elaborate on her belief in the blood libel and to further disseminate it, even as she claims otherwise. Her Counterpunch article (including the false citation of Israel Shahak which she now disavows) has already been translated into several foreign languages. Weir currently promotes these translations by linking to them on her blog. Although she claims to be devoted to the pursuit of peace in the Middle East, Alison Weir seems intent on poisoning as many minds as possible with medieval bigotry against Jews. This form of activism helps no one.

Blood Libel promoted by Counterpunch, Alison Weir

[Part 1 of a series. Part 2 here.]


The blog Counterpunch, which is edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, has published an article which alleges that the blood libel is true and is related to purported Israeli thefts of human organs from Palestinians. The blood libel, the charge that Jews ritually murdered gentiles and used their blood to cast spells, was a mainstay of medieval European anti-Semitism. In Europe, the blood libel led to pogroms, mass slayings and expulsions. The Counterpunch article may be the first instance of an American leftist media outlet promoting the blood libel.

The Counterpunch article (read here) supports and elaborates on spurious allegations concerning Israeli theft of body parts from Palestinians -- charges originally appearing in an article by Donald Bostrom which was published in the Swedish tabloid newspaper Aftonbladet. The controversy concerning that article has received extensive coverage internationally (read here). Medical experts have unanimously stated that the theft of organs from the dead for use in transplants, as alleged in the story, is medically impossible (read here). Bostrom's article claims that Israeli soldiers hunted down a Palestinian youth, shooting him in the chest and abdomen at close range in order to steal his organs. The alleged witnesses to the events described in his article, including the families of the purported victims, have completely disavowed the story (read here). Counterpunch alleges not only that such murders and thefts of organs in fact truly occur, but that they are part of a campaign which is sanctioned by the Israeli government and other Israeli institutions and that it is connected to religious traditions allowing the ritual murder of gentiles.

The Counterpunch coverage of these allegations was written by Alison Weir, the head of an anti-Israel organization called If Americans Knew. Weir's Counterpunch article derives in large part from articles written about the controversy by a notorious anti-Semite who goes by the assumed name "Israel Shamir". Weir deceptively identifies Shamir in her footnotes as an "Israeli writer" in spite of widely reported revelations that Shamir is actually a Swede of Russian descent and that he is associated with Russian ultra-nationalists. Shamir has been disavowed by many on the left and in the pro-Palestinian movement as the result of his overtly anti-Semitic writings and his connections to the far-right. Research into his real background has revealed that he began his journalism career under his assumed name working for a prominent far-right, Russian nationalist anti-Semite, Aleksandr Prokhanov, chief editor of the newspaper Zavtra. Even as he presents himself to the west as a leftist, anti-Zionist, "Shamir" has continued to publish explicitly right-wing articles in Russia and Eastern Europe. Shamir's original article in support of the spurious organ theft allegations is posted here. His advocacy of the blood libel can be read here. Shamir writes in the latter article that "'Blood libel' is the Jewish battle cry", thus claiming not only that the libel is in fact true, but that to say otherwise is an act of aggression.

In her Counterpunch article, Weir parrots Shamir's arguments that the blood libel is no libel, and that the charge that it is libel is a ruse used by Jews to suppress the revelation of their crimes. She writes:

"In scanning through the reaction to Bostrom’s report, one is struck by the multitude of charges that his article is a new version of the old anti-Semitic “blood libel.” Given that fact, it is interesting to examine a 2007 book by Israel’s preeminent expert on medieval Jewish history, and what happened to him.

"The author is Bar-Ilan professor (and rabbi) Ariel Toaff, son of the
former chief rabbi of Rome, a religious leader so famous that an Israeli journalist writes that Toaff’s father “is to Italian Jewry as the Eiffel Tower is to Paris.” Ariel Toaff, himself, is considered “one of the greatest scholars in his field.”

"In February 2007 the Israeli and Italian media were abuzz (though most of the U.S. media somehow missed it) with news that Professor Toaff had written a book entitled "Pasque di Sangue" (“Blood Passovers”) containing evidence that there “was a factual basis for some of the medieval blood libels against the Jews.”

"Based on 35 years of research, Toaff had concluded that there were at least a few, possibly many, real incidents.

"In an interview with an Italian newspaper (the book was published in Italy), Toaff says:
"“My research shows that in the Middle Ages, a group of fundamentalist Jews did not respect the biblical prohibition and used blood for healing. It is just one group of Jews, who belonged to the communities that suffered the severest persecution during the Crusades. From this trauma came a passion for revenge that in some cases led to responses, among them ritual murder of Christian children.”

"(Incidentally, an earlier book containing similar findings was published some years ago, also by an Israeli professor, Israel Shahak, of whom Noam Chomsky once wrote, “Shahak is an outstanding scholar, with remarkable insight and depth of knowledge. His work is informed and penetrating, a contribution of great value.” )

"Professor Toaff was immediately attacked from all sides, including pressure orchestrated by Anti-Defamation League chairman Abe Foxman, but Toaff stood by his 35 years of research, announcing:

"I will not give up my devotion to the truth and academic freedom even if the world crucifies me… One shouldn't be afraid to tell the truth."

"Before long, however, under relentless public and private pressure, Toaff had recanted, withdrawn his book, and promised to give all profits that had already accrued (the book had been flying off Italian bookshelves) to Foxman’s Anti-Defamation League. A year later he published a “revised version.”

"Donald Bostrom’s experience seems to be a repeat of what Professor Toaff endured: calumny, vituperation, and defamation. Bostrom has received death threats as well, perhaps an experience that Professor Toaff also shared.

"If Israel is innocent of organ plundering accusations, or if its culpability is considerably less than Bostrom and others suggest, it should welcome honest investigations that would clear it of wrongdoing. Instead, the government and its advocates are working to suppress all debate and crush those whose questions and conclusions they find threatening."

Many of the claims in that excerpt are falsehoods intended to support an unsupportable conclusion: that Jews ritually murdered gentiles. Let's debunk some of them in order:

1) Ariel Toaff is not "Israel’s preeminent expert on medieval Jewish history". Weir has no reason to believe that he is and provides no citation for this invented claim. Toaff is not a rabbi. Toaff did not conduct 35 years of research into the question of whether Jews conducted ritual murders of gentiles, or used blood to cast spells. All of these claims by Weir are untrue and were invented by Weir to burnish Toaff's reputation as an expert on the subject of ritual murder and bolster his opinions about it.

2) In the first edition of the book in question, Toaff relied on faulty logic to reach the conclusion that a small group of Jews may have conducted ritual murders and ritually used blood in contradiction of Jewish law as a form of revenge for the anti-Jewish atrocities of the Crusades. He based his conclusion on testimony extracted from Jewish victims under the extreme duress of medieval torture chambers, the sole documentary record of these events. One would expect that a historian researching this subject would bring an understanding of the tainted origin of these documents and counterbalance them with that understanding and a knowledge of the historical context. In the annals of lapses of judgment by historians, Toaff's initial credulous reliance on these documents must rank high. Neither Toaff nor Weir offer any reason for the reader to accept the veracity of statements extracted under extreme duress, and readers shouldn't do so.

3) Toaff, since the initial publication of his book, has retracted his earlier conclusions concerning ritual murder. (Read here.) He has issued a new version of his book which states unequivocally that "Jews were not involved in ritual murder, which was an entirely Christian stereotype". Weir neglects to mention this statement, continuing to maintain that Toaff found that "there was a factual basis for some of the medieval blood libels against the Jews. Based on 35 years of research, Toaff had concluded that there were at least a few, possibly many, real incidents." Toaff's retraction occured 18 months prior to Weir's article. While Weir does mention that Toaff has issued a new version of his book, she fails to detail his more recent findings, dismissing them as a capitulation to pressure by Abe Foxman and the ADL -- proof to her of a Jewish conspiracy of silence.

4) In order to shore up Ariel Toaff's credentials, Weir quotes a Haaretz article with respect to the high regard for Toaff's father, Rabbi Elio Toaff. Elio Toaff served with great distinction as chief rabbi of Rome in the 1950s and 1960s. He also demonstrated extraordinary bravery as an anti-fascist partisan during World War II. Weir quotes the Haaretz article to the effect that Elio Toaff “is to Italian Jewry as the Eiffel Tower is to Paris”. She fails to cite that article in a footnote, however, because to do so would have forced her to give its headline: "The wayward son". A footnote or link also would have allowed Weir's readers to see the following quote from Rabbi Elio Toaff in the lede paragraph:

"(T)he criticism that everyone has expressed about his book was justified. His arguments in the book were an insult to the intelligence, to the tradition, to history in general and to the meaning of the Jewish religion. It saddens me that such nonsense was put forward by my son of all people."

The Haaretz article Weir quoted but failed to cite goes on to describe the reaction to the publication of the first version of Ariel Toaff's book as "the shock currently being felt by the Italian Jewish community over this human tragedy". Weir either completely misunderstood the point of the article or she deliberately withheld it. She either inadvertently failed to cite the quote's source, or she deliberately suppressed it. You be the judge.

5) Weir cites Israel Shahak as a purported expert on Judaism who supported the truth of the blood libel, stating point blank that Shahak reached similar conclusions to those reached by Toaff. The footnote Weir provides for this claim, a biographical sketch of Shahak by Norton Mezvinisky on the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs website, does not in any way support this assertion. (In fact, the only aspect of what Weir wrote about Shahak which is supported in the article she cited is that Noam Chomsky provided Shahak with an extremely generous blurb for a book cover.) Shahak, who was a chemistry professor at Hebrew University and not an authority on history or religion, was infamously the author of a polemical pamphlet concerning Judaism entitled Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years. This book, which largely consists of very obvious falsehoods, is a favorite among those who want ammunition against Jews but are not particularly concerned about accuracy. It is notable not for scholarship but for its palpable disdain for its subject. To give a sense of the tone of Shahak's book, it literally argues that the Chmielniki massacres, in which hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed, were justified. (Read here and here.) The book also absurdly claims that religious Jews worship Satan. It even falsely contends (at length) that Judaism permits the murder of gentiles and forbids violating the Sabbath to save a gentile's life. (As the grandson of an Orthodox Jewish physician who routinely broke the Sabbath to care for Jews and gentiles alike, this argument is especially galling to me.) In spite of all that, I know of no instance where even Shahak alleged that the blood libel was literally true. In fact, he said the contrary. On page 21 of the 1994 Pluto Press edition of Jewish History, Jewish Religion (available here), he makes a point to distinguish such claims from medieval arguments against the Jewish religion with which he agrees.

"We are not referring here to ignorant calumnies, such as the blood libel, propagated by benighted monks in small provincial cities."

It is precisely such an ignorant calumny which Alison Weir and Counterpunch have published.

Anecdotal Evidence

Weir's article makes the case that Israel plays a disproportionate role in the illegal trade in human organs, that the government and military is involved, and (as indicated above) that this trade has its roots in Jewish religious traditions involving ritual murder of gentiles. The obvious spuriousness of her evidence for this is helpful because it puts the bad faith behind the inaccuracies of the rest of her arguments into clear focus. But the rest of her arguments hardly stand up to close scrutiny even without taking her support of the blood libel into consideration.

To make her argument, Weir provides a deceptive history of the issue, citing no statistical studies of the issue, but relying exclusively on anecdotes from media coverage of a number of Israeli cases concerning illegal or unethical medical use of organs. Her version of events cites a few reports concerning claims made by anonymous sources to bloggers and activists. She cites an editorial from the Forward which details some Israeli cases involving parts taken from corpses and used for medical instruction, not transplant. The Forward editorial decries the inappropriate use of human organs for research or study as an international problem concerning treatment of the dead, and specifically reaches the conclusion that the charge that Israel is harvesting Palestinian organs for transplants is baseless. (Read here.) Weir, as usual, selects from this piece the facts which tend to support her case and completely withholds its main point. She also repeatedly cites "Israel Shamir". Based on unreliable or cherry-picked anecdotal evidence and completely lacking supporting statistics, Weir reaches the conclusion that Israeli involvement in the illegal organ trade is uniquely widespread, and is state and institutionally sanctioned.

The first anecdote Weir cites is a case in point. It concerns the sad case of the donor for Israel's first heart transplant, a stroke victim who had not consented to be an organ donor. His family protested this surgery and was allegedly forced by the hospital to sign a release from liability before the body was released to them. This troubling case was widely reported at the time, and rightfully led Israel to enact greater protections from such practices, which Israel, like other nations, did not properly regulate in the early transplant era. Not only does Weir not provide this historical context, she goes so far as to imply without basis that the donor was deliberately allowed to die (or worse) in order to transplant his heart, that this practice is allowed under Israeli law and that it is commonplace there.

Where is Counterpunch headed?

It is bad enough that Counterpunch, in the name of defending human rights, would publish such patently false charges as true. It is outrageous that they would present the anti-Semitism of the middle ages as a progressive response to the Jewish people, whom they portray as intrinsically reactionary and criminal. In doing this, Counterpunch has turned the definitions of "progressive" and "reactionary" on their heads. In fact, they have completely turned logic on its head. What will they support next? The Spanish Inquisition?

NOTE: Counterpunch is publishing other articles supporting the spurious charges from Aftonbladet. One, entitled "Israeli Bodysnatchers", was authored by Bouthaina Shaaban, chief spokesperson for President Assad of Syria and a former Syrian "Minister of Expatriates". Shaaban describes herself as "a Nobel Peace Prize nominee". (I love when people claim that as a credential. Literally anyone can be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, so those who cite it as an honor always do so fraudulently.) In addition to repeating the absurd organ trafficking charges, her article also baselessly blames Israel for the assassination of Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh.

Cross-posted at HARRY'S PLACE