The Economist published the anti-Semitic pictured above in its January 18 edition. What's the problem with it? Look closely, and if you still can't figure it out, here's the Commentator.
You don't have to be (clue) eagle eyed to spot it do you? At the
centre-top of the Congressional emblem, above that eagle, is a Jewish
Star of David. Now, this obviously plays to the theme, common among
anti-Semites around the world, that the U.S. Congress is essentially a
puppet of the Jewish people.
Obama is literally and figuratively chained back from properly reaching out to Iran by the Jews.
The Israeli flag has a Star of David in it, of course. But if the cartoonist, and the editorial team of The Economist
that approved it, had wanted to emphasise Israel rather than the the
broader global Jewish community, they could have easily had the
cartoonist put in the image of the Israeli flag. No problem at all from a
technical point of view.
That would still have been bigotry -- the notion that Israel runs American politics is an obvious form of neo-anti-Semitism.
But this is the old fashioned stuff. It's the kind of thing that
appeared in The Protocols of Zion. It's the kind of thing the Nazis
used. It's the kind of thing bigots -- including in the Western-funded
Palestinian authority -- use all the time.
The Jews run the world: or at least its most powerful nation. That's the message The Economist
conveys. Sometimes the term anti-Semitism is over-used. Sometimes it is
under-used. This time there's no doubt at all what is going on.
The Commentator calls this 'shocking bigotry.' Bigotry, yes. Shocking, no. This has practically become standard fare for the Economist. And that's why the ADL's demand for an apology is meaningless. What's needed isn't an apology. It's a lobotomy.
OVERCOMING five years of punishing siege, bombardment and war should be a cause for celebration. But Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement that rules the coastal enclave of Gaza, was not cheering the anniversary of its military takeover on June 14th. Its initial pride at imposing internal security, constructing an effective administration and rebuilding Gaza by burrowing tunnels into Egypt is turning to embarrassment. Hamas officials have grown fat on the proceeds. The movement seems increasingly confused and evasive about its political direction.
In recent months Hamas has dithered and bickered about whether it should seek reconciliation with Fatah, the secular-minded party that runs the bigger bit of the would-be Palestinian state on the West Bank, or preserve its near-monopoly on power in the isolated Gaza Strip. The people of Gaza, meanwhile, have come to see Hamas as putting factional interests ahead of national ones. “Curse you men of moustaches and beards,” wrote Hassan Salama, a Hamas militant, from his Israeli cell in a widely circulated letter, lambasting the leaders of both Fatah and Hamas for splitting Palestine into two self-serving autocracies.
When Hamas won Palestine’s most recent general election, in 2006, it promised to replace Fatah’s venal patronage system and unexplained wealth with democracy and equality. To some the movement now looks just as compromised as Fatah once did. Despite several attempts to overthrow it, both by Israel and Fatah, Hamas has tightened its grip on Gaza. Its internal security forces have more or less quashed feuding clans, silenced guns, and opened up the beaches for families. It enforces a tax regime that is even more stringent than Fatah’s on the West Bank.
Using tunnels to transport building materials, Hamas has begun to regenerate Gaza, transforming security bases into schools, turning training grounds into public parks, and levelling the Saraya, the Gaza City fortress from which the enclave’s past rulers had governed, instead erecting a commercial complex. A host of new tourist resorts line the beach front. A corniche is being built which, say hopeful officials, will rival Tel Aviv’s. Anxious to stop Israel from ruining the show, Hamas guards prevent Palestinian militants and demonstrators from coming close to the border with Israel to avoid confrontation with—and retaliation by—the watchful opponents.
Continue reading here. If only Gaza were as enticing as they make it sound (although, if you read the article, you will see that it is definitely not impoverished).
1. 'Wars are the Jews' harvest.' (Henry Ford, 1920).
2. The three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt Administration.Instead of agitating for war, Jews in this country should be opposing it in every way, for they will be the first to feel its consequences. Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government. (Charles Lindbergh, 1941).
3. Let's go to the videotape.
In the wacky world of The Economist, that video you just saw is not anti-Semitic.
Attention, Simon Wiesenthal Center: Do you see the difference between the first two clauses of the final sentence, and the last clause? Because this is exactly the kind of move that is getting people so upset with you. Dual-loyalty charges are indeed pretty dicey. Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh were anti-semites, and their claims that Jews caused the first and second world wars were baseless anti-semitic propaganda. But the last claim offered here is completely different. There are, in fact, a lot of Jewish neocons, so the scare-quotes here are as inappropriate as those on roadside marquees across America advertising "A 'Delicious' Breakfast" and so forth. (Here's another apposite one.) Those neocons did, in fact, press for the United States to invade Iraq in 2003. The Israeli government also generally supported the American invasion of Iraq, though it was more concerned about Iran and had misgivings about a prolonged American occupation. Yes, it would be ridiculous, and anti-semitic, to cast the Iraq war as a conspiracy monocausally driven by a cabal of Jewish neocons and the Israeli government. But it's entirely accurate to count neoconservative policy analyses as among the important causes of the war, to point out that the pro-Israeli sympathies of Jewish neoconservatives played a role in these analyses, and to note the support of the Israeli government and public for the invasion. In fact any analysis of the war's causes that didn't take these into account would be deficient.
I never knew Dick Cheney (pictured) was Jewish. And I don't know about the rest of you, but the video I just showed you gave me the creeps (I took the trouble to dislike it on YouTube). If that video isn't anti-Semitic (and I apologize for giving it more exposure), I don't know what is. Israel doesn't control US government policy - never has and never will. Nor do American Jews, although nothing spooks them quite like accusations like this one. There are plenty of neocons who - like Cheney - are not Jewish, and there are plenty of American Jewish neocons who thought that invading Iraq was the right thing for America to do for its interests.
And by the way, rumor has it that Israel thought in 2003 that invading Iraq was a mistake.
In a reaction which would be a parody if it weren’t sadly true, Erdoğan has blown a gasket. It’s not just the Economist’s fault, the prime minister explained. In reality, it’s a plot by world Jewry. “These calls have been well-timed, because they show that we are on the right track. They cannot make any decisions concerning Turkey,” Erdoğan said. “This international media, as they are supported by Israel, would not be happy with the continuation of the AKP government,” he continued.
Michael Rubin notes that The Economist has gotten it right, but it's probably too late anyway.
This cartoon was published in The Economist on March 17 - after the Israeli government authorized the construction of 400 apartments in the 'settlement blocs' in Judea and Samaria following the Fogel family massacre in Itamar (Hat Tip: Elder of Ziyon via Shilo Muse via Shy Guy). Yes, The Economist thinks Jewish construction is as bad as Gadhafi or Assad or Abu Khalifa opening fire on their own people.
Elliot Jager rips The Economist for their recent cover story warning of the possibility of war in the Middle East.
Economist editorials and feature articles are published anonymously—though the newspaper's Israel correspondent, former Haaretz editor David Landau, would likely have contributed to the latest barrage. Landau is on record as asserting that Israel is begging for "more vigorous U.S. intervention" and in fact "wants to be raped" by Washington. In the Economist report, an unappreciative Israel is now pocketing billions in American aid even as it rebuffs pleas to "pause in its building of illegal Jewish settlements." The reasons for this supposed obstinacy are Israel's "thriving economy" and "America's pro-Israel lobby"—hence the need for muscular and determined action by the White House.
One despairs of rehearsing the fatal flaws with this argument, to the extent that it is an argument at all rather than an unsubstantiated rant. Suffice it to say that Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, has latched onto any pretext not to negotiate with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government. But it is hardly any wonder that relative moderates like him are fearful. Coddled by the international community, Hamas is solidifying its grip on Gaza, and with Syria's support Hizballah has for all intents and purposes usurped Lebanese sovereignty. Iran may soon provide the rejectionists with a nuclear umbrella. In this geopolitical climate, Abbas would be pilloried if he negotiated in earnest with Netanyahu.
The implication is clear: unless the international community first tackles the jihadists and rejectionists, moderates will be afraid to make the compromises necessary for a settlement. But don't tell that to the Economist. Indeed, in its survey of the entire Middle East, from Afghanistan to Iran to Iraq, the "biggest headache" the editors can find to name is not the metastasizing evil that, in its latest incarnation, inspired the terror bombing of a New Year's eve mass at a Coptic church in Egypt but rather "Jewish colonization in the West Bank." Swept aside as evidently beneath consideration is the possibility that disputed territory captured in a war of self-defense, of immense strategic value to Israel's survival, and deeply rooted in Jewish civilization ought at least to be the subject of direct negotiations between the parties.
All this is par for the course. Reading the Economist, one learns that Israel perpetually, and lethally, magnifies and then bungles even legitimate security threats; that it obdurately "colonizes" the "Palestinian side of the 1967 border"; that its harassment of Arabs extends to setting traffic lights in Palestinian areas to flicker green only briefly. Such "reporting," which falls somewhere on the grid between the false, the farcical, and the fabricated, lends a sobering relevance to the words of billionaire CEO Larry Ellison, quoted in one of the magazine's canny ad campaigns: "I used to think. Now, I just read the Economist."
One trembles to imagine how many among its 1.6 million readers let the Economist do their thinking for them.
As we've already seen, there are apparently a lot of readers who let the Economist do their thinking for them.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
