"I Have A Name for It: Conspiracy"

"I Have A Name for It: Conspiracy"
by Jeffrey Blankfort (dhe repost) Monday, Mar. 22, 2004 at 10:50 AM
cuibono [at] rcip.com

Dan Elliott posts: I don't know Carol Valentine nor have I read enough of her to remember her. As far as I know anything about her or her activities, she may very well be as Mr Ashes describes her, or she might be a total all-around altruistic humanitarian. (?)

But reading Mr Ashes' post, it occurred to me that he, Ms V., & perhaps other list subscribers might be interested in something recently posted on the ISM Norcal listserve by a knowledgeable Israeli lady, Dorothy Naor. Ms N. writes for the Israel-based internet news service New Profile. She picked up on a think-piece by SF writer, anti-Zionist Jew (& former "Malvina's" habitue:) Jeffrey Blankfort:

- Topica Digest --

Fw: [New Profile] Jeff Blankfort "I Have A Name for It: Conspiracy"
By cuibono [at] rcip.com

t-shirts
By yvette618 [at] yahoo.com

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Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2004 08:51:28 -0800
From: "DHE" <cuibono [at] rcip.com>
Subject: Fw: [New Profile] Jeff Blankfort "I Have A Name for It: Conspiracy"

Dear All,

In a powerful essay, Jeff Balnkfort below argues that a Jewish conspiracy influences if not determines US policy towards the Middle East. There is little I disagree with in his essay, except the conspiracy theory itself. Undoubtedly the neocons, AIPAC, and organized pro-Israel Jewry are significantly influential, but they are not the final word. After all, the act of lobbying Congress is not a Jewish invention, nor is trying to elect people who support the interests of one’s group. More important, Balnkfort’s theory neglects to take into account the clout that the US industrial-military complex wields; it has an enormous role in determining US foreign policy. My guess would be that the US industrial-military complex is by far more influential in determining US policy towards Israel than are all the pro-Israel Jews united. I have not come across a study yet of how many Jews have controlling stocks in these industries. But this is an issue that needs researching before the too facile claims of a Jewish conspiracy can hold.

Best, Dorothy


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From: From: International News sherif [at] unforgettable.com
March 18, 2004

I have a name for it: conspiracy

writes Jeff Blankfort in a Californian newspaper
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/shamireaders/message/246

On the national level, the major Jewish organizations meet in Washington
to strategize on behalf of Israel. On the local level, in every
community with an extensive Jewish population, there is a Jewish
Community Relations Council that successfully intimidates politicians
and the media. The major newspapers in large cities are all monitored by
Jewish organizations. Jewish organizations are constantly sending
delegations of local public officials on all expense-paid trips to
Israel. Does anyone seriously believe this is happening haphazardly? I
don’t and I have a name for it: conspiracy, and it is undermining what
little is left of our democratic institutions.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------
While it is generally acknowledged that the framing of Captain Alfred
Dreyfus, a French Jew who had served his country honorably and
faithfully is what ignited the efforts of Austrian journalist Theodore
Herzl to lay the foundations of political Zionism with a goal of
establishing a Jewish state, little attention is paid to what else was
happening in Europe and elsewhere at the end of the Nineteenth Century.

Zionism arrived on the scene after unified national entities had been
created in Germany and Italy and only slightly more than a decade after
the Europeans had carved up Africa for their nefarious colonial
enterprises. If they can do it, why can’t we, apparently thought Herzl
who was thoroughly European and as racist as any imperialist of those
times which was well before imperialism and colonialism became dirty
words. Herzl’s Zionist manifesto, Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State)
makes his affection for such enterprises clear to any reader lucky
enough to locate a copy.

Roberta Werdinger’s critique (Letters, March 10) of Russell Norvell’s
excellent review of “The Politics of Anti-Semitism” brought old man
Herzl to mind because Werdinger seems caught up in the same mindset that
infected Herzl and has informed the Zionist movement to this day, that
is the notion that “anti-semitism,” if sometimes dormant, is inherent
among all non-Jews, that the existence of Jews among non-Jews eventually
exacerbates the situation and leads to massacres and pogroms, and that
the only solution to the problem is for Jews to have their own state and
live by themselves.

By one of the tragic ironies of history, that sentiment was what guided
the Nazis in establishing the anti-Jewish Nuremberg laws in 1935 which
drew well documented support from the Zionist organizations within the
Nazi state.

The introduction to the Nuremberg Laws of 15 September 1935 state:

"If the Jews had a state of their own in which the bulk of the people
were at home, the Jewish question could already be considered solved
today, even for the Jews themselves. The ardent Zionists of all people
have objected least to the basic ideas of the Nuremberg Laws, because
they know that these laws are the only correct solution for the Jewish
people."

And that was so. A minority among German as well as European Jews, the
Zionists publicly welcomed the laws proscribing Jewish activity, and
were rewarded by being alone among Jewish groups that were allowed to
function without serious restrictions until the advent of WW 2. (See
Lenni Brenner’s Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis",
Barricade Books, 2002)

Haim Cohen, Israel’s first attorney general and later a judge of the
Supreme Court of Israel stated:

"The bitter irony of fate decreed that the same biological and racist
argument extended by the Nazis, and which inspired the inflammatory laws
of Nuremberg, serve as the basis for the official definition of
Jewishness in the bosom of the state of Israel" (quoted in Joseph Badi,
Fundamental Laws of the State of Israel NY, 1960, P.156). Indeed, Adolph
Eichmann had read Der Judenstaat, and startled the courtroom at his
trial in Jerusalem by proclaiming himself to be a Zionist.

Werdinger seems to be making the same argument when she speaks of the
“deep rooted and periodically savage malaise of anti-Semitism” and
notes that “in these turbulent times, it would be surprising” if it did
not emerge.

The “turbulent times” she acknowledges is the “increasingly tragic
situation unfolding in Israel/Palestine” but she writes that she is more
“alarmed to read an assertion that the policies of Israel itself are the
root cause of anti-Semitism.” Now, of course, she is playing with words,
because most observers not blinded by fealty to the Jewish state would
agree that while Israel’s policies are not the “root cause” of
historical anti-semitism, they are certainly the major cause of its
re-birth in the past few years.

One can well imagine what would have happened if there were comparable
white Afrikaner institutions in Europe (or the US for that matter) that
openly supported the apartheid regime in South Africa and were
attempting to use their political and economic clout to suppress all
criticism of that racist regime.

The charge of being “anti-Afrikaner” obviously wouldn’t have had the
same impact in polite circles as does anti-Semitism and would have
subjected those making such a charge to ridicule. But when it comes to
criticizing Jews for anything, the issue quickly becomes one in which
the critics become the bad guys and soon find themselves buried up to
their necks by spurious charges of anti-semitism.

“Anti-Semitism,” Werdinger writes, “like racism and homophobia, arises
because of the deep divisions of the human heart, not because the Jewish
population caused it.” If so, one needs to ask, at this time, why
“anti-Semitism” is in a separate category from all other forms of racism
and why it is used and kept alive almost exclusively by Jews instead of
using the more accurate term, “anti-Jewish racism?”

“Jews in any country,” asserts Werdinger, “have a right to wonder why
Israeli human rights violations are put forward while similar human
rights disasters as well as daily ongoing oppressions (many of them in
nations neighboring Israel) go unmentioned.”

Israel’s supporters across the political spectrum are constantly putting
out such a message as if by repeating it over and over, people will
accept it as true. Well, Ms. Werdinger, it isn’t. While no one that I am
aware of justifies undemocratic regimes in the Middle East, there are no
similar human rights disasters taking place in these countries.

There is oppression, jailing of political prisoners, and lack of basic
democratic rights among Israel’s neighbors, but none are occupying and
confiscating another people’s land, collectively punishing them on a
daily basis for almost four decades, destroying their homes and orchards
and holding over 6000 as political prisoners with no legal rights
whatsoever. Moreover, none of them are recipients of billions of dollars
in aid such as Israel is provided by the US not to mention America’s
blatant protection in the UN and other international forums which
extends to its silence concerning Israel’s known nuclear stockpile.

Ms. Werdinger objects to a slogan that she saw on some signs at last
year’s anti-war rally which read, she claimed, “No War for the Jewish
Supremacists.” But if it used to be okay to openly criticize “white
supremacy” as I am sure Ms. Werdinger and her friends once did, what is
the problem with criticizing Jewish supremacy when it is clearly shown
to be racist in the case of Israel? Or is not the fact that she and I,
both Jews, have more of a right to live in Israel, should we so choose,
than a Palestinian born there, racist on its face?

Aside from that, it has become increasingly apparent that a collection
of nearly two dozen neo-cons, almost all Jewish and very pro-Israel,
have assumed positions of incredible influence over US foreign policy,
particularly as it is applied in the Middle East. Having disposed of
Saddam Hussein, as Israel requested, (after having been deceived by
Israel’s faulty intelligence concerning Iraq’s alleged WMDs), they have
now set their sights on Syria which has never done anything to harm the
US and on Hizbollah, the Lebanese resistance organization whose only
“crime,” in Israeli eyes is that they whipped the butts of Israel’s
vaunted military and sent its occupying army back across the border in
2000, ending 22 years of US-funded occupation.

The neocons would not have been able to act with such confidence
without the strong backing of Israel’s powerful domestic lobbies,
foremost among them, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee
(AIPAC) which holds both houses of Congress in thrall and the Conference
of Presidents of Major Jewish American Organizations which lobbies the
White House and keeps the present Resident on a short leash. At the same
time, the Democrats tumble over one another to find words pleasing to
the major Jewish funders who usually have the final say so over who the
party’s candidate is going to be. John Kerry is only the latest to play
the whore.

On the national level, every month, as reported by JJ Goldberg, editor
of the Jewish weekly Forward, in his 1996 book, “Jewish Power,” the
major Jewish organizations meet in Washington to strategize in behalf of
Israel. On the local level, in every community with an extensive Jewish
population, there is a Jewish Community Relations Council that
successfully intimidates politicians and the media. The major newspapers
in large cities like the New York Times, The Washington Post, the LA
Times and the San Francisco Chronicle-- that two are Jewish owned is
immaterial--are all monitored by Jewish organizations that scan their
daily reporting from the Middle East for any sign of what can be
interpreted as a pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel bias. Meanwhile, Jewish
organizations are constantly sending delegations of local public
officials on all expense-paid trips to Israel, knowing that is from
their ranks that future members of Congress will emerge. Does anyone
seriously believe this is happening haphazardly? I don’t and I have a
name for it: conspiracy, and it is undermining what little is left of
our democratic institutions.

To be sure, this conspiracy involves only a minority of America’s Jews,
essentially those who are active in established Jewish organizations,
both religious and secular, but it is a powerful minority. From this
segment comes the community’s “official” spokesmen and .women while
those with opinions critical of Israeli policies, outside of the
organized community, are marginalized.. The problem is that the
majority of those not actively engaged in pro-Israel activities and
pushed to the margins (as well as many of those who claim to be working
for the Palestinian cause) are in a state of denial about the role of
the organized Jewish community, i.e., the pro-Israel lobby, and, like
Roberta Werdinger, are just as quick as the latter to accuse anyone who
suggests that there is a Jewish conspiracy of being an “anti-Semite.”

This represents more of a gut reaction on their part based on a deeply
felt, if not wholly accurate, view of the historical Jewish past, than a
deliberate cover-up, but the result is the same. Their obviously sincere
statements that the official Jewish spokespersons don’t represent them
become, under these circumstances, little more than a form of “damage
control” designed to shield any segment of the Jewish community from
legitimate criticism, and this itself has contributed to the growth of
“anti-semitism.”

JEFF BLANKFORT
Ukiah
Published today March 18, 2004 in the Anderson Valley Advertiser



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Sent: Saturday, March 20, 2004 9:59 PM
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Abel Ashes posts:

Carol Valentine blames everything on Jews and seems
very irrational and hateful.
I think that she may well be sincere, but I find her
to be insane.If races and religions are to be blamed
for the world's problems I wouldn't blame Jews, I'd
blame white people in general and any Christian
blaming Jews for evil in the world is surely smoking
religious crack as Christians have much more power
than do Jews globally.
Presently I'm more inclined to trust Phil Berg than
Carol Valentine.
SNIP




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