RJC and CUFI Incite Islamophobia

Book written by Jewish Executive Director of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), endorsed by former Israeli Ambassador, distributed with Obsession DVD, mailed under CUFI postal permit at behest of Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC)

 

Before reading the following story from JewsOnFirst, please note that CUFI is a Jewish funded and managed crypto-Zionist organization.

 

It is very similar to those think tanks that like the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies hide a purely Zionist agenda under a veneer of patriotism and the goal of identifying threats to America. According to the Foundation's biographies webpage, Sen. Joseph Lieberman and R. James Woolsey are among the organization's Distinguished Advisors while its Board of Advisors includes Frank Gaffney, Charles Jacobs, Charles Krauthammer, and Bill Kristol.

 

CUFI is more creative than most crypto-Zionist groups because it camouflages itself as an Evangelical Christian organization with Hagee as titular Christian leader.

 

A genuine Evangelical Christian organization simply would not distribute the sort of murderous hate-filled incitement, with which the Jewish Zionist director Pierre Rehov fills his film entitled Obsession, Radical Islam's War against the West, for this activity is simply incompatible with Jesus' command to his disciples in Mark 16:15,

And he said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation.

Republican Jewish Coalition responsible for mailing anti-Muslim film

Mailing done in cooperation with Christian Zionist organization

By JewsOnFirst.org, February 15, 2007

The Republican Jewish Coalition is responsible for a mailing received by Reform rabbis and other Jews that included a DVD of the controversial anti-Muslim film Obsession, JewsOnFirst.org has learned. At least part of the mailing was sent under the postal permit of Christians United for Israel, a leading Christian Zionist organization.

The DVD was packaged inside a book by David Brog (see scan below, at right), CUFI's executive director. The package also contained a letter by a former Israeli ambassador to Washington, endorsing Brog's book and calling on Jews to accept an alliance with Christian Zionists.

CUFI's media representative told JewsOnFirst.org that the package was "mailed out" by the Republican Jewish Coalition. The representative, Juda S. Engelmayer, was unable to specify a particular mailing list the coalition used, but said he believed the recipients came from "a combination of various lists."

Informal surveys by JewsOnFirst and others determined that the mailing was received by many rabbis, and also many members of the Jewish community.

A staffer at the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the organized rabbinate of Reform Judaism, said that the organization had neither made its list available for the mailing nor sent the package through its mailing house.

Book cover altered
The Republican Jewish Coalition's media officer asked that a request to confirm the group's role in the mailing be emailed. She has not responded to the email or subsequent phone messages.

Engelmayer of CUFI told JewsOnFirst that he did not know what motivated the Republican Jewish Coalition's involvement, but that the mailing was intended to reach "the broadest spectrum of Jewish community members."

It is likely however, that Obsession was added to the book specifically for the mailing.

The cover of Brog's book, Standing with Israel, that arrived in the mailing is different than the cover currently advertised on his website. The cover in the packages received this week indicates that the DVD of Obsession is inside (see scan above). The original cover, copied this morning from Brog's website and shown here below the book cover from the mailing, has no reference to Obsession.

A knowledgeable source who asked not to be identified said that the Republican Jewish Coalition dictated the contents of the mailing as a condition of getting CUFI's message to the Jewish audience that CUFI wished to reach.

The Republican Jewish Coalition is a national organization, headquartered in Washington, DC, with revenue of $4 million in 2005. It calls itself "the pre-eminent Republican organization in the Jewish community."

On February 14th, the group's website had a news release slamming Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama's plan to try to bridge the widening gap between Muslim and Western nations."

Rabbi Joan Friedman a professor of Religion and Jewish Studies at the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio, said it would be a mistake for Jews to involve themselves in the enduring contention between Islam and Christianity. "There is a long history between Christianity and Islam but if the Christians want to get on an anti-Islamic hobby horse, I think it is a mistake to buy into that," said Friedman, who received the mailing this week. (You can listen to our recorded conversation with Friedman here.)

CUFI displaying link to Obsession trailer
Responding to a question about the thinking that went into sending the anti-Muslim film Obsession to Reform rabbis, who are often engaged in interfaith work, Engelmayer, CUFI's representative, said that CUFI also engages in interfaith work. Engelmayer added that CUFI has nothing to do with the film.

In response, JewsOnFirst noted that CUFI's contact with Muslims is limited to harsh critics of Islam like Walid Shoebat -- and that CUFI's website displays a link to the Obsession trailer, using the photo below.

Rabbi Steven B. Jacobs, founder of the Progressive Faith Foundation, who has been active in efforts at Jewish-Muslim bridge-building, said in an interview with JewsOnFirst.org that Obsession "offers an inflammatory portrayal of Islam and stigmatizes all Muslims as potential terrorists." Jacobs expressed concern that the film is "going to blow up the bridge that many of us have worked hard to establish." (You can listen to our recorded conversation with Jacobs here.)

The film has sparked controversey around the country; critics have challenged its thinly disclaimed portrayal of Muslims as violent and hostile. Campus screenings have sometimes been canceled, in one instance because of fears that the film would provoke anti-Muslim hate crimes.

Florida Attorney General screened film for staff
Recently Florida's Attorney General Bill McCollum prompted an outcry from Muslim and civil liberties groups when he screened Obsession three times for his staff during business hours, in government buildings. Earlier this week Muslim leaders, civil rights leaders, and Rabbi Jacobs met with McCollum about the screenings.

Jacobs told JewsOnFirst that, while McCollum did not require his staff of 400 to see the film, "it was quite intimidating" for staffers to refuse to see the film and the few Muslims on his staff were "quietly threatened." As a result of the meeting, McCollum agreed to establish a Muslim advisory panel and to educate his staff about Islam.

However, Jacobs noted, with the widespread mailing of Obsession into the Jewish community "many more will see the film" and "we've got an enormous responsibility to tell truths and not set a people up the way we were set up. In my opinion the Muslims are the new Jews of America in terms of being scape-goated and being hated. And we know that as well as anybody and we need to challenge this film."

Israeli ambassador urges U.S. Jews to embrace Christian Zionists
In the cover letter included in the mailing, former ambassador Daniel Ayalon praised CUFI's David Brog for his work with Christians and urged Jews to overcome their antipathy to Christian Zionists. "For the first time in Israel's history, we are seeing the emergence of a significant pro-Israel movement outside of the Jewish community," wrote Ayalon, who was ambassador to the U.S. between 2002 and 2006.

As does Ayalon in his letter, Brog (who is Jewish) argues in Standing with Israel that Jews should appreciate -- not shun -- Christian Zionist support for Israel.

Many Jews reject allying with Christian Zionists because of their fundamentalist domestic positions. CUFI's executive board and its directors include some of the biggest names on the religious right -- Gary Bauer, Jonathan Falwell and Rod Parsley, to name a few.

In the two-plus years that CUFI has been in existence, local Jewish federations have pressured rabbis to participate in CUFI's "Nights to Honor Israel." These programs usually feature televangelist John Hagee, CUFI's founder and chairman, who typically presents a big donation to the local federation and sometimes to an Israeli settlement project as well.

Christian Zionism not an easy sell
Some Jews reject the Christian Zionists' credo that Israel will be the scene of the "Battle of Armageddon" that presages the return of Jesus.

Rabbi Bill Leffler, vice president of MoneyWatch Financial Advisors, said he found Brog's book "a sorry commentary on why we should appreciate the religious right's support of Israel which has to do with the rapture and not the intrinsic worth of Israel. Politics can make for strange bedfellows!"

Recently CUFI has been trying to downplay Hagee's promotion of endtimes prophecy. CUFI's represenatitve Engelmayer emphasized that Hagee has said "countless times" that he does not believe Jesus' return is imminent. But Hagee has been promoting a U.S. attack on Iran in an end-times context.

Additionally, CUFI has gone out of its way to oppose Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that might lead to Israeli concessions. That causes some who believe it is in Israel's interest to negotiate a settlement with the Palestinians, to question the value of CUFI's support for Israel.

"If they want to contribute money to build hospitals, it is hard to argue with that, said Prof. Joan Friedman. But, she continued, "their contributions are not so innocent. They support groups that are inimical to the peace process."

---

Conversation with Rabbi Joan Friedman

Interview by Haim Dov Beliak, JewsOnFirst.org, February 14, 2008

Rabbi Joan Friedman is a professor of history and religious studies at a College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio. This interview focuses on the motives of Christian Zionists. Professor Friedman points to the long history of the demonization of Islam. She notes a bitter irony that fundamentalist Christian often mirror the hate of the most extreme Islamist elements. Click here.

Conversation with Rabbi Steven B. Jacobs

Interview by Haim Dov Beliak, JewsOnFirst.org, February 14, 2008

Rabbi Steven B. Jacobs is a long time social justice activist. Now in retirement, Jacobs focuses on building bridges between Jews and Muslims. In this interview he discusses attending a meeting with the Florida Attorney General, who screened Obession for his staff. Jacobs says that Jews should know how it feels to be scapegoated -- the way Muslim are now. Click here.

Film's View of Islam Stirs Anger on Campuses

By Karen W. Arenson, New York Times, February 26, 2007

When "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West," a documentary that shows Muslims urging attacks on the United States and Europe, was screened recently at the University of California, Los Angeles, it drew an audience of more than 300 — and also dozens of protesters.

At Pace University in New York, administrators pressured the Jewish student organization Hillel to cancel a showing in November, arguing it could spur hate crimes against Muslim students. A Jewish group at the State University of New York at Stony Brook also canceled the film last semester. Continue.

University of Florida clash pits freedom, faith

The attorney general threatens action against school officials who sided with Muslim students.

Shannon Colavecchio-Van Sickler, The St. Petersburg Times, December 13, 2007

It started as a documentary screening at the University of Florida, the kind of discussion-generating event that happens every day on college campuses.

But the students promoting Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West put up dozens of posters declaring, "Radical Islam Wants You Dead."

And before long, what might have been just another night at the movies turned into a debate about free speech, terrorism, the Muslim faith and censorship.

So loud is the furor now, Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum is warning of possible legal action against university administrators who - in a widely circulated letter to students - sided with a Muslim student organization whose members saw the posters as an attack on their faith. Continue.

Florida Attorney General screens Obsession for staff

McCollum, Muslims to discuss film

The attorney general played the disputed movie for his staff.

By Meg Laughlin, St. Petersburg Times, February 12, 2008

Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum and Muslim leaders will meet today to address concerns that McCollum showed the controversial film Obsession to his staff during work hours in state buildings.

Through an assistant, McCollum sent an e-mail to his 500 employees in January, urging them to attend one of three screenings of the film in order to understand "the terrorist threat to Florida and the West by radical Islam." Employees taped up posters of the crescent moon and star of Islam imposed over the wreckage of the World Trade Center.

Muslim leaders from the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles and the Council of American Islamic Relations describe the film as an "anti-Muslim propaganda film." Continue.

FL Attorney General Agrees to Muslim Advisory Group

News release, Muslim Public Affairs Council, February 12, 2008

In a meeting today with state and national Islamic leaders in Tallahassee, Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum agreed to establish a Muslim community advisory group.

Today's meeting came following a controversy in which McCollum's office reportedly directed staff throughout the state to view the controversial anti-Islam film "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West." The film includes interviews with infamous Islamophobes like Nonie Darwish, Walid Shoebat, Daniel Pipes, and Steven Emerson.

During the meeting with representatives of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), the ACLU of Florida, and the Florida Muslim Bar Association, McCollum also agreed to offer educational programs on Islam and Muslims to his staff and to help build better relations between the Muslim community and law enforcement agencies. Continue.

Gripes on film pay off a little

But Bill McCollum stands by showing what some call propaganda.

Meg Laughlin, The St. Petersburg Times, February 13, 2008

Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum refused to "disassociate" from the controversial film Obsession during a meeting Tuesday but said he would create a Muslim advisory group and offer educational programs about peaceful Muslims to his 500 employees.

At the 70-minute meeting in McCollum's Tallahassee office, Muslim leaders and a rabbi called the film an "anti-Muslim propaganda piece" and expressed concern that McCollum had shown the film to employees in state offices, during work hours.

"He was receptive to our concerns but still said he thought the film had value raising awareness," said Ahmed Bedier, the Tampa executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Continue.

Florida Attorney General Requires Employees To Watch Anti-Muslim Propaganda

Muslim Public Affairs Council, Press Release, January 24, 2008

Muslim Public Affairs Council today sent a letter to Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, who serves as a campaign adviser to Rudy Giuliani, calling on him to cease subjecting his employees to blatantly anti-Muslim propaganda.

Last week, MPAC learned that McCollum sent an email to his employees requiring them to attend one of three screenings of a controversial video called "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West" in the State Senate Building. In the email, McCollum says the screening is intended to help employees "better understand the threat that we face as a nation and society."

McCollum is a former member of Congress (1981-2001) who served on the Republican Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare for the US Congress. The Task Force was first in issuing papers on the clash of civilization and promoting an anti-Muslim agenda in the US Congress. Continue.

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What is The Clarion Fund?

Marketing Hate to the Masses

Joachim Martillo (ThorsProvoni@aol.com)

 

The Clarion Fund has generated a great deal of curiosity with its plans to distribute 28 million copies of Obsession, Radical Islam's War Against the West.

 

Philip Weiss has covered the story in 'NYT' Distributes Movie That's Harsh on Islam, Paid for by Rightwing Fearmongers.

 

Richard Silverstein provides more analysis in Anti-Muslim Film Produced by Pro-Israel Partisan Boosts McCain.

 

Sheila Musaji has a somewhat different angle in CAIR's Indifference to Obsession DVD Distribution.

 

I have reported a similar story about the dissemination of this film in RJC and CUFI Incite Islamophobia.

 

Here is are my findings about The Clarion Fund.

CLARION FUND INC
270 MADISON AVE FL 9
NEW YORK, NY
10016-0601

 

Taxonomy: (classifies an exempt Internal Revenue Code 501 (c)(3) organization) --  television

Contributions to the Clarion Fund are deductible

 

The organization receives a substantial part of its support from a governmental unit or the general public.

 

Correspondence with the organization are sent to the care of: ELI D GREENBERG ESQUIRE.

 

The founder of the Clarion Fund is Raphael Shore, who is a Canadian citizen, lives in Israel and is the producer as well as co-writer of Obsession.

 

Shore is a director of the organization as is Richard Green of Miami/Ft. Lauderdale.

 

The Clarion Fund director of communications Gregory Ross.

 

The Haaretz article 'Obsession' stokes passions, fears and controversy provides the following information.

"'Obsession' gives the picture that unfortunately no one else does," says Raphael Shore, the Canadian-Israeli living in Jerusalem who produced the film.
...
For one, it has a largely Jewish and pro-Israel distribution network, though Shore is trying to expand the film's appeal. According to news reports, at a screening earlier this year at New York University, distributors of the film required viewers to register at IsraelActivism.com, the Web site of Aish HaTorah's Hasbara Fellowships.

Shore, incidentally, was the director of both Aish HaTorah International and the Hasbara Fellowships, a pro-Israel advocacy group.But he says the film was an independent project.

He also tries to play down the film's Israel connection, simply because "It isn't helpful," he says."I don't want it to be only Jewish and Israel-related.

"I don't understand why it's biased if Jews are behind the creation of an objective film," he says."There's nothing wrong with Jews saying the radical Islamists are coming, just like there's nothing wrong with Jews in Nazi Germany saying the Nazis are coming."

Funders anonymous

The issue is further complicated as funding sources for the film remain hazy.Shore and director Wayne Kopping of South Africa are the only figures associated with the film willing to release their real names and appear in media interviews; the executive producer is listed as Peter Mier, while the production manager is listed as Brett Halperin.
...
But Mier and Halperin are just aliases, Shore says.
...
According to Shore, about 80 percent of the film's $400,000 budget was provided by Mier.
...
On the organization's site, "Obsession" is described as "Honest Reporting's newest documentary film," but Shore says it's a mistake and that the film's creators have told Honest Reporting to take it off their site "a dozen times."
...
"Many evangelical Christians are waking up and becoming passionate about this issue," says Shore.

Shore is also the founder of HonestReporting, which is a Zionist media watchdog outfit.

 

Here is a yahoogroups message that shows a clear connection between Aish Hatorah and The Clarion fund.

 

5 NEW EXCITING JOB OPPORTUNITIES AT AISH HATORAH
……………………..

1. ONLINE ACTIVISM FACILITATOR: NY, JERUSALEM OR HOME-BASED

The Clarion Fund - a new organization dedicated to educating people about the threat of radical Islam - is seeking to hire an Activism Facilitator for a new website-based project.

Launching in conjunction with the new documentary film "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West", this website will serve as a resource of historical and  current information about the issue, and ultimately facilitate the transfer of people's desire to get involved into organized, concrete action.

You will be required to oversee the development of the website as both a resource centre for activists and a forum for ideas. You will need to research and post articles and support material for various pre-existing campaigns, advertise new initiatives and oversee an advisory forum. Further key tasks include creating website membership, following-up with members/potential activists, publishing a weekly blog/newsletter and preparing regular progress reports.

In order to be considered for this role you must be familiar with current events and have experience in activism as well as superior writing, communication and PC skills.

To apply please send the following by Sunday Dec. 24th to emdresumes@...

· A cover letter and resume with three references

· A 2-3 paragraph writing sample/blog matching the website's goal (target audience is college students, 20-30 age group)

2. "OBSESSION" WEB AND RETAIL MARKETER: JERUSALEM

The Clarion Fund is seeking to hire a web and retail marketing professional for the new film "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West." This rewarding and exciting role requires an experienced web marketing expert with superior communication and writing skills.

Your primary responsibilities will include marketing "Obsession" over the web, which involves advertising on a variety of websites and generating links from other sites as well as promoting the film using e-groups and e-lists. You will be required to form retail deals with major stores, distributors, chains and websites for the purpose of maximizing exposure and public access to the film. You will also need to coordinate press with "Obsession's" PR firm in the lead-up to the March 2007 launch of the film.

To be considered for this role you must be organized, responsible, detail-oriented, creative and driven. Your constant willingness to take initiative is a must!

To apply please send a cover letter and resume with three references to emdresumes@... by Sunday Dec. 24th

3. PR EXECUTIVE: JERUSALEM

Help us get Aish IN THE NEWS. Seeking an experienced PR Executive to assist in getting Aish's name 'out there' as the world's fastest growing Jewish outreach organization. You must have a background in PR/marketing, as well as excellent communication and PR/writing skills. Your ability to take initiative and multi-task as well as a high level of creativity is a must! Starting off with a trial period (P/T, 10-15 hrs p/w) this position is expected to evolve into full-time tenure for the right person.

Working from our Jerusalem offices, you will be required to 'market' the organization at local and national levels. You will need to forge relationships with journalists as  well as print and electronic media outlets for the purpose of generating regular publicity. You will also need to put together regular press releases that highlight our ongoing events, programs and achievements, and use all means at your disposal to 'market' Aish HaTorah to the world.

Please apply via our website at www.vocaishion.com <http://www.vocaishion.com/>

4. PROJECT INSPIRE FOLLOW-UP CALLERS: NY OR HOME-BASED

Aish International is looking for part-time (5-15 hrs p/w) follow-up callers for Project Inspire (www.projectinspire.com <http://www.projectinspire.com/> ), a worldwide initiative aimed at encouraging frum people to get involved in easy, highly effective outreach campaigns. You will be responsible for calling people who sign up on the Project Inspire website, reminding them of upcoming campaigns, as well as providing outreach coaching and encouragement for all new registrants. Although Prior Kiruv experience is a real advantage, we will provide full training. However, you must be highly-motivated, positive, able to demonstrate excellent people skills and have a great phone manner.

Please apply via our website at www.vocaishion.com <http://www.vocaishion.com/>

5. AISH.COM WRITER: JERUSALEM

Aish.com <http://Aish.com> is seeking experienced halacha writers for a series of intermediate level halacha courses currently being developed to enable people to learn via email and/or view online. Each course will contain approx. 40 segments, of approx. 1,000 words each. Payment is approx. $200 per segment, depending on a variety of factors.

Separate courses will be developed on Tefillah, Shabbos, Brachos, Kashrus and Daily Living. Each course will explain the hashkafa behind these mitzvos, the principles behind the various halachas, and cite numerous practical examples. The target group is someone who has already accepted basic ideas (e.g. that God exists). This person is interested in moving forward in his or her practical observance, and needs a systematic, practical system for doing so.

Writers who are interested in submitting a trial essay should prepare a sample on the Melacha of Gozez, and adhere to the following guidelines:

1) Length: approx. 1,000 words

2) The article should give readers the confidence in the 'principles' to be able to apply them in other situations that may arise.

3) The article should be well-organized, interesting and engaging to read.

4) The writing style should be conversational, as if speaking one-to-one, explaining and taking it through logical step-by-step - how the melacha grows from it's Av basis, to Toldah, to Gezerias etc., and to its practical application today.

5) The writing should not be long paragraphs, but rather shorter paragraphs that incorporate bullet points. This makes the points easier to visualize, absorb and remember. Similarly, at the end of a sub-section, there should be a review and summary. This gives people a chance to pause and absorb.

6) The reader should be engaged in the process of learning. For example, create common scenarios, give them a chance to think about it themselves, and then explain the halacha. This makes the information much easier to relate to and recall, rather than being dry information that just goes on and on for page after page.

7) Include sources whenever possible, all as footnotes. We do have someone on staff who can easily look up sources, so if this is a time strain, it need not be a priority.

8) Regarding machlokes: If both are acceptable common minhagim, in general we should present the more makel shita, and then mention parenthetically that some are machmir. The final course material will be reviewed by a moreh hora, and a team of editors.

Please apply via www.vocaishion.com <http://www.vocaishion.com>

………………………….

Thanks so much.

Remember you can view all our current vacancies on our website at www.vocaishion.com <http://www.vocaishion.com/> .

Feel free to email us with any questions resumes@... <mailto:resumes@...>

Kind regards,

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David Shasha Calls Obsession Propaganda

David Shasha is Director of the Center for Sephardic Heritage in Brooklyn, NY.

While I have some problems with Shasha's use of the term "extremist" and consider it less than accurate or perhaps simply anachronistic to make a blithe equation of the heritage of Muhammad ibn Adbdil Wahhab with extremism, the following article (published 1 year, 3 months and 3 weeks ago or June 17, 2007 if I understand Shasha's numbering scheme correctly) is worth reading because it discusses in detail why Obsession is propaganda.

In the text Shasha refers to pilpul, which is an analytic technique commonly used in the past in Polish Jewish yeshivas by scholars and students as an often logically specious means to reconcile apparently contradictory texts. It is similar to quodlibet reasoning, which has been particularly popular in Polish Catholic seminaries.

In the past Jews outside of Poland often derided Polish Jews for their pilpulistic thinking while religious Jews of Polish Hassidic background sometimes contemptuously describe the Polish Lithuanian misnagdish (anti-Hassidic) scholarly tradition as pilpul.

Uncovering the Obsessions of "Obsession"

"Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West" (Wayne Kopping, 2006)

The problem with properly assessing propaganda and rhetorical excess is that often in the attempt to beat back the dangers inherent in unthinking ideologies the response to propaganda can itself paradoxically turn into propaganda.

It must be stated at the outset, as the ideas that are raised in any analysis of the Jewish attack on modern-day Muslim civilization are sure to be brutally contested, the basic facts of the realities that the propaganda film "Obsession" is based on:

• The contemporary Arab-Islamic world contains within it anachronistic and reactionary elements that proclaim violence against the non-Muslim world and against even those Muslims who do not abide their literalist readings of Islamic traditions, both written (Qur'an) and oral (Hadith and Shari'a).
• The Arab world since the Imperialist incursions of the Western European powers in the 18th century and the subsequent dismantling and ultimate defeat of the Ottoman Empire after World War I has led to a deeply strained relationship between it and the Western world.
• In recent centuries Arab-Muslim civilization has had a prolonged and often contentious battle waged between liberal modernists and atavistic traditionalists. The line between these groups has often been blurred with the institution of Western-approved dictatorships and/or kingdoms in Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia which have formed a bulwark against both the modernists as well as the religious extremists.
• The case of Iran broke this Western hegemony and marked the first time a Muslim theocracy succeeded in establishing itself in the Middle East. With the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979, a beachhead of Islamic fundamentalism was established, thus creating a new political template in the region.
• Emerging from the Iranian Revolution was a cadre of anti-Western Mujahadeen that had become implicated in the larger schemes of the US Reagan administration against Soviet Imperialism. Islamic extremists in Afghanistan and elsewhere found themselves embroiled in the anti-Soviet Jihad that was in the main supported and encouraged by Washington.
• The natural enmity of the Muslim Jihadists for Soviet Communism did not ultimately preclude their anti-American animus; a matter that was conveniently forgotten by Reagan and his advisors. The Machiavellian strategies that produced the desired results against both the Soviets in Afghanistan as well as in what was called the Iran-Contra affair is something that has made concrete the power of the Jihadists in the region.
• The greatest Arab power in the region in recent years has been Saudi Arabia which has funded and provided a solid base of support for the Muslim extremists. It should be remembered that the West had raised the banner of the Arab revolt against the Ottomans and then continued to play an important role in the destabilization of the region by inserting itself into the internal political arrangements of the Arab world leading to Saudi dominance.
• The promotion and subsequent rejection of Feisal the Hashemite as a potential ruler of a new Arab caliphate led to the emergence of individual nation-states such as Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon and with that a balkanization of Arab politics in a region whose territories had been carved out artificially and whose leaders emerged in relation to Western interests.
• Underlying the new realities of the post-War Middle East was the foundational role of oil and its economic place in the global economic system which had been wrested by a new Western hegemony led by the United States.
• Unlike the various reconstruction plans instituted in Europe and Asia for the well-being of those decimated areas, the Middle East was exclusively seen as significant for the vital petroleum wealth that it had and regimes were judged not by good governance or for their democratic principles, but for their compliance with the new global Imperium.
• While Japan, Germany and Italy, the Axis powers defeated in the War, underwent an indispensable process of reconstruction after the traumas of a brutal war, the Arab world, which was just emerging from the foreign occupations of Britain, France and Italy, was thrown into a political maelstrom that has now become a power vacuum filled with competing ideological movements, one of which is fundamentalist Islam.
• Lastly, the role of an emerging independent state of Israel in the region has served not only to mark what many if not all Arabs see as a foreign accretion in the region, but as a symbol of Western hegemony which is thrown into the stew-pot of the political dysfunction that has characterized the region in the post-War period. It should not be forgotten that Israel, like the Reagan Adminstration's flirtation with the Mujahadeen in the 1980s, sought to empower Muslim radicals as a foil to the secular PLO. These radicals, now organized as a political party called HAMAS, have supplanted the secular nationalist leadership.

To the best of my knowledge, regardless of what one believes about who is right and who is wrong in the Middle East, who is to blame for the state of affairs in the region, these are facts that cannot be contested. The socio-political realities may be open to interpretation, but the facts themselves are not. There can be no debate over the CIA-engineered coup in Iran as there can be no argument over the role of a Wahhabist Saudi Arabia as a regional power in the wake of the failure of Feisal to re-establish a central Arab-led government in the region.

Each of these facts is missing from the Jewish-produced documentary "Obsession."

Using a canny mixture of incitement and factuality the producers of the film bookend their movie with the admission that the film is not an indictment of Islam itself, but just a certain part of it. When I use the word "incitement" I mean to say that the film is completely disingenuous as it offers the basic theme that it hammers over and over again that Islam is akin to Nazism and that the Arab world is in the grip of this Nazi-Islamic ideology.

Propaganda is a means to express an ideological viewpoint at the expense of a plurality of views within the parameters of an open debate. According to this definition we can see a ratiocination taking shape which stacks the deck of argument. And to those living in the Jewish community, the primary mechanism for the distribution of "Obsession," this "obsession" with Radical Islamic ideology is something that we have become quite familiar with.

Generally, the Jewish community has internalized its own expansive understanding of Zionism which is left unquestioned - often militantly so. Discussion is circumscribed and topics are delineated in very precise ways. Certain topics are deemed licit and others illicit. A deeply paranoid sense of the Jewish self is promoted; a sense of Judaism as eternally persecuted and powerless in the face of a litany of typologically-similar enemies who appear in a history that is marked by perpetual violence and persecution.

Exceptions to this rule or alternative histories are rejected with all due prejudice. The mechanisms of the discourse are controlled by social and economic means. Those who dissent from the accepted discursive paradigms are locked out of the institutional network of Jewish organizational life while those - and this is not limited to Jews - who lock into the paradigms are lavished not only with praise and honors, but are provided the bounty and largesse of the well-funded institutions which dole out funds liberally for those on board with the agenda.

The new documentary film "Obsession" is thus populated with people who are now sadly familiar as the "usual suspects": Daniel Pipes, Steve Emerson, Alan Dershowitz, Itamar Marcus, Caroline Glick and Robert Wistrich. In addition to these speakers, there is also a cadre of Arab "witnesses" to the dysfunction and evil of the Arab world. The Arab witnesses are thrown into the maelstrom of the propaganda effort and it would seem helpful that they have all passed through "conversion" experiences that have brought them to the commonplace Jewish position from once being part of what they now consider the hate of the Arab world.

This double rhetoric is an attempt to seal the deal: first it is to be proven that the Arab world is Nazi-like in the sense that the nefarious Jihadist ideology has permeated all levels of the culture - a culture that we are explicitly told at the beginning and end of the documentary is not radical in itself - and secondly this idea is reinforced by those who once served on the "front lines" of Jihad, people like Walid Shoebat, Brigitte Gabriel and Nonie Darwish who as converts are best able to "prove" the "truths" that the film's producers are establishing about the Muslim world.

Embedded within this discourse are a deadening and repetitive array of media clips of screaming, lunatic Jihadis and their minions. Again, there is no need to deny that these people exist or to question the danger they pose not only to Jews and the West, but to the well-being of the Muslim world itself. Image after image is laced with stirringly bombastic music that often resembles the propaganda that the film decries. The rhetoric of the principles being interviewed eschews subtlety and intellectual heft and hammers home in propagandistic fashion that Arabs are Nazis and that's all there is to the matter.

The equation of Arabs as Nazis, as the great Israeli scholar Idith Zertal has so brilliantly taught us, goes way back into the history of Zionist propaganda - back to the Mufti Amin al-Husseini and to the Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser who predated Usama Bin Laden and Zaraqawi by decades. As she states in her brilliant book Israel's Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood (Cambridge University Press, 2005):

The Nazification of the enemy, whoever that enemy may be, and the transformation of security threats into danger of total annihilation of the state, seem to have characterized the way of speech of Israel's political, social, and cultural elites, with very few exceptions. (p. 174)

It is not that Bin Laden and Zarqawi are not religious lunatics and dangerous fanatics who would kill anyone for any reason; it is that the rhetorical motif often does not distinguish between historical persons and their immediate contexts. The motif "Arab as Nazi" brings together Yassir Arafat and the Mullahs of Iran into one unholy cabal. As we now know, the deterioration of the Middle East has often come about because we are not able to see the differences among various Muslim groups and their ideologies.

Nasser, as is known, loathed and persecuted Hassan al-Banna and the Muslim Brotherhood. The emergence of Wahhabi Sunni fanaticism in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Bin Laden, is directly connected to this movement. The Wahhabi strain of militant Islam is never discussed by any of the participants in "Obsession" because it would serve to overcomplicate the iron-clad principle "Arabs are Nazis." The split between Iranian-led Shi'a Islamic fanaticism as represented in the new ruling arrangements in Iraq that have been formed under US leadership and that of the Al-Qa'ida-led Sunni insurgents are very real things that are not only ignored in this film, but are incredibly morphed into some monolithic version of Islam that is an a priori evil.

And we cannot forget while watching this execrable piece of propaganda, a work that is as unhelpful pedagogically as it is dangerous, that the dual logic of contradiction is continually at play: we are TOLD that Islam is not like what is being shown on the screen and yet this is what is being SHOWN to us with a relentlessness that puts the rhetoric of Islam as a peaceful religion to the lie. After a steady diet of one solid hour of seeing images of Muslims juxtaposed - LITERALLY - with those of Hitler and other Nazis, I am not sure if it takes a genius to figure out that we are being browbeaten into capitulation to hate all Muslims.

And to make sure that we do not forget this fact, we are treated to an extensive set of interview clips with an old man named Alfons Heck - a now-reformed former member of the Hitler Youth!

The "obsession" of this film is to turn the current situation with what are admittedly some very dangerous people - all of whom it must be honestly stated are religious Muslim fanatics who twist the words of their traditions and promote ideas of hate and violence that have continually been spread throughout the world over the course of the past century - and make it into a primordial battle being waged between absolute good and absolute evil.

Now it is not at all necessary for us to demand that "Obsession" be fair, or that it present the socio-political and historical contexts that have created this mess. Having said this, it does seem more than curious that the producers of "Obsession" make this demand of the Muslims themselves. And indeed, the visual techniques used in the film are eerily similar to those used by the Muslim fanatics themselves: the endless repetitive barrage of flashy and shocking images presented in a de-contextualized atmosphere smacks of what we might best call hypocrisy. But I think we would more accurately understand the rhetorical mechanisms of "Obsession" as a form of PILPUL; the attempt to speak out of both sides of one's mouth while not-so-subtly railroading home a single, obsessive mono-causal point.

In essence, this is the very rhetorical means that is used against Israel and the US by the Arab media which often inflames the masses to hate Israel and the US. When Israeli and American acts of violence are stripped of their socio-political context, the Arab viewer's feelings are inflamed and the individual is left with a passionate hatred bordering on the pathological.

So the way in which the producers of "Obsession" juxtapose images of victims of Islamic terror with those of Nazi slaughter can easily be transposed into an anti-Western frame of reference by cross-cutting the same Nazi images with images of Israeli or American brutalities - of which there are of course many. In fact, the film does indeed show the ways in which the Arab media applies Nazi imagery to Jewish figures and contexts.

In this sense, the rhetorical means that "Obsession" utilizes to construct its arguments lead us nowhere. The viewer is taught absolutely nothing about the roots of this Islamic mentality or its historical connection to Western politics. The viewer is not told about Daniel Pipes' Zionist proclivities and the way in which he has reframed Middle Eastern history along the lines of those beliefs to disfigure and transform that history. We are not told of Caroline Glick's own sympathies for the messianist Settler movement and its belief in the sacred nature of the land of Israel.

And while I do not mean to imply or state that Pipes and Glick are not entitled to their own fanaticism which is often made more extreme when put to the uses of the apocalyptic Jews themselves, I find it more than a bit curious that the whole point of the film is to reject fanaticism and to reject propaganda. I am not sure how this is to be done when the film itself is constructed along the lines of a classic propaganda tract filled with stirring emotional manipulation of the basest variety. It would appear that propaganda itself is not the real issue, only Arab propaganda.

And to quickly short-circuit the nature of the PILPUL-dialectic, a trap that is often used by the practitioners of PIPLUL to mark their own irrational hermeneutics, we are not rejecting the rhetoric of people like Pipes, Dershowitz and Glick in order to lift up the debased discourse of the Muslim fanatics. And often this is seen as a sort of lock in winning the debate on the Jewish side - either you support us or you are supporting them. It is something that has become a crucial part of the Bush discourse - a discourse that has been strongly informed by an Ashkenazi Jewish influence from people like David Frum and Bill Kristol who have tapped into the Ashkenazi PILPUL tradition and made that tradition a formative part of the new thinking in Bushworld.

It is altogether possible in rational terms to decry the fanatic Muslims and to reject the arguments of "Obsession" and its own particular brand of Jewish fanaticism.

The saddest part about all this is that the clash of discourses, the emergence of a moral Manicheanism that now controls most discussions of the matter, has led only to more violence and more dysfunction. I would suggest that a return to historical and rational discourse might make us all safer and more stable as human beings living in a world that often seems to be flying off its rails.

While it is not at all easy to understand the complicated nature of the Imperial enterprise and its emergence in the Ottoman world, it is a necessary element of our means to understand the problems we face. And not only Imperialism must be studied: we must learn about the emergence of Oil politics, Zionism, and religious extremism in the region as well. Religious extremism is not a one-sided matter limited to Islam alone. When looking at the pathetic images of children being brainwashed by idiot faux Muslim clerics in madrassas throughout the Middle East I was reminded of the fanatical Zionism that is regularly taught in American Jewish Day Schools each and every day. And before I am accused of moral equivalency, it should be remembered that any and all uses of religion to promote nationalist exclusivity is not to be excused and violence is violence and as such is a blight on all of us.

To learn about the situation we are in, we need to read and read widely and deeply.

The anti-intellectualism that permeates the Jewish community at present is reinforced by "Obsession." The film's ultimate aim is not to teach us the truth of reality in all its staggering complexity, but to forcefully indoctrinate in us the simple idea that the Arabs are Nazis - no more, no less. I am not sure how that is helpful to us. The primary voices in the film are those who have denied the realities of the historical Jewish presence in the Arab world over the course of many centuries and have proposed that what we see today is the only reality that Jews have faced in relation to Arab societies, substituting Sephardic Jewish history for that of the Ashkenazim.

We are expected to abide the fact that recent Arab Jewish history is less relevant to the discussion than that of the ancient history of Palestine and its Jewish presence there. The very strange idea that Jews themselves were culturally Arab is alien to this mind-set for the very fact that the version of Zionism that underlies the film's selective biases is one that marks Jews as a people perpetually apart. So any voices or visions that deny the premises of the film's prejudices should be ignored or rejected.

Having spent an inordinate amount of time arguing with the most ardent and hateful Zionists in the Jewish community, I have understood better than most that the obsessions of "Obsession" have been designed to cut us off from the rationality of history and culture and bombard us with image after image of crazy fanatics. The purpose of this rhetorical strategy is to inundate and pummel the viewer into submission and entrap them into a prison that they cannot get out of. Rational argument is here useless; the irrational passions that mark these partisans are too great to argue with. They will get whipped up into a frenzy and start acting out their own violent tendencies with any interlocutors who come their way.

The problem with "Obsession" - and with the current discussion in the Jewish world - is that it repackages a number of facts in such a debased manner that the coherence of its arguments totally evaporate. It proclaims that it does not hate all Arab Muslims, but it relentlessly argues otherwise throughout the film. By means of a nefarious and stealth-like PILPUL it cuts and pastes ideas and images of its own choosing in order to hammer home the point it has taken as sacrosanct before any evidence has been presented. This is the ultimate disingenuousness and the danger inherent in its discourse. It is not interested in hearing other points of view as it is not interested in being examined by others for its own possible violations of human decency and morality.

Again, it is not obligatory for "Obsession" to try and understand the complex realities that we face and it is altogether permissible for it to lump all Muslims together as "barbarians" and "fanatics." But we as viewers should realize that these profoundly disturbing demonizations and distortions of the realities of the Arab-Muslim world create the sort of self-fulfilling prophecy that led to the epic intelligence failures which permitted the 9/11 attacks.

When all Muslims are lumped into one (Nazi) boat - where are the murderous fanatics to be located?

And this has sadly continued into the post-9/11 Bushworld that we continue to inhabit. All Muslims are terrorists and want to kill Americans and Jews. This is taken as a tacit truth in the rhetorical overkill that forms the moral arguments of "Obsession." The Arab figures presented in the film are often more pronounced in their hate for other Arabs than even the Jewish speakers like Pipes, Dershowitz and Glick who often appear "moderate" by comparison.

In the current climate of fanatical polarization that we live in, the appearance of a film like "Obsession" is to be expected. It is the culmination of many decades of Ashkenazi Zionist propaganda that sees any Arab who would defend themselves as a "terrorist." Is it any wonder that the situation of Arab "terror" - from the Mufti to Nasser to Arafat to HAMAS and Hizbullah - has gotten worse?

Independence movements in Egypt filled with liberal ideas like those of the Wafd were harshly suppressed, as shown in great detail in Naguib Mahfouz's epic Cairo Trilogy, a staple of Arab modernism, by a West who banked on King Farouk, a corrupt monarch who showed his self-absorbed contempt for his people. The defeat of the Wafd and other liberal secular parties created a vacuum leading to the emergence of a military junta that would become far worse than Sa'ad Zaghlul's Wafd. And once Nasser was entrenched in power, his own secular reforms, mixed to be sure with authoritarian anti-democratic tendencies, the emergence of a religious extremism that would eventually take the life of Anwar Sadat served to help spur on a new fundamentalist explosion throughout the region.

In this climate it is largely forgotten that such a thing as Arab Modernism ever existed!

We can see this clearly in the Palestinian context. The emergence of the PLO, secular and moderate compared to HAMAS, was rejected by Israel and the West which refused to negotiate with it for many years. With the failure of Arafat and the PLO - itself called "terrorist" by the Israelis and Americans - has now brought Islamic extremism and a whole new ball game. It may yet be seen that HAMAS is more moderate than what may come after its inevitable defeat. A nexus between Shi'ite and Sunni radicals has yet to occur, but if it does it may well transform the region in ways that make what we see today look like a cakewalk.

So in the end, "Obsession" is a film being marketed by the mainstream Jewish world in order to lay out a case against Islamic radicals. It repeatedly reinforces the image of the "Arab as Nazi" and makes precious little room for any rational examination of its subject matter. We do not learn about the Muslim Brotherhood as we do not learn about the defeat by Western governments of Arab secular modernists who could potentially have brought stability and peace to the region. The Islamic faith is presented over and over in the film as an enemy of Western "Judeo-Christian" civilization because it serves the argument, not because of its historical truth.

In fact, the idea of "Judeo-Christian" civilization is itself an ideological construct invented and used within the contemporary Ashkenazi discourse to answer a number of questions that feed into the Zionist mindset as they have laid it out: allying themselves with the Western Imperialists and against the organic interests of the region, this view reinforces the idea of a Western-Jewish collusion that of course is disavowed by the very same people who take the Arabs to task for raising the issue.

Having charged the Arabs with being anti-Semitic "Nazis" these same speakers blithely ignore the massive evidence of Christian collusion with anti-Jewish acts in the Middle East throughout history. Not limiting ourselves to the Crusades, one of the most traumatic of the Christian pogroms on Jews and Arabs, we can see the extraordinary case of the Damascus Blood Libel of 1848 which became a global cause celebre. As my grandmother once told me, the problems that Jews had with their neighbors came more from Christians than from Muslims, with whom they had fairly amicable relations as she would repeatedly state.

This linkage between Jews and Christians intimates that Christians did not persecute Jews and that there was no theoretical need for Vatican II. After all, we have the Judeo-Christian civilization that unites us!

"Obsession" blanks out the truths of history in order to fixate on the tale of the Muslim fanatics of the present-day. It is not interested in hearing from the many voices of the historical record as it is not really interested in reaching out in dialogue with Muslims to solve the current problems. It is all too content with having the Jihadists representing Islam while hypocritically pretending that it is interested in dialogue. Its ideological positions are calibrated to a Zionist fanaticism that has already delineated the world and its realities as it sees it and not as the reality would bear.

At the end of the film, as the intoxication of the propaganda has whipped the viewer into a frenzied state, the viewer is presented for a second time with the famous quote from Edmund Burke that for evil to triumph all it takes is for good men to do nothing. It goads the viewer into getting actively involved in the fight against Muslim terror. It promotes its own "Jihad" against the Jihadists and has done so using the same rhetorical means of hateful propaganda that it ascribes to its enemies.

Similar to the way in which Mel Gibson's hate-filled "Passion of the Christ" was screened in the fundamentalist Christian community, so too have the producers of "Obsession" marketed their film to the Jewish synagogues and Christian Zionists to create a grassroots movement of anti-Muslim hate that dispenses with academic discourse - for which the film has great contempt and says so at regular intervals - and the hope that dialogue might present for a more peaceful future. As Itamar Marcus states explicitly in the film, there is no point in discussion; the implication here being that all we have is violence.

And it is through this note of violence that "Obsession" inscribes itself within the very circle of hate and propaganda that it ostensibly aims to combat. It is therefore a mutual sense of incomprehension that is meant to control the discourse and reinforce the Manichean world-view of each side and leave us resigned to a future of hopelessness, fear and perpetual war.

Such is the pyrrhic victory achieved by those who insist on propaganda and rhetorical violence as a means of discourse.

---

Sphere: Related Content

Khaleel Mohammed Apologizes Once Again

Khaleel Mohammed
In an exclusive statement for ObsessionWithHate, Dr. Khaleel Mohammed, the only Obsession interviewee who is an Islamic Studies Professor, delivers a new lethal blow to the film's credibility, exposing what many already knew:

"Sadly, it would seem that I have allowed myself to be used. I gave an interview to the makers of "obsession" wherein I explained the meaning of Jihad, and its misuse by extremists. I understood that the film would be used objectively, focusing on fanatics who seek to spread violence. I am aware that there is a disclaimer at the beginning of the film that says it is not about Islam in general, but only about extremist interpretations.

"But the material from some of the speakers gives the lie to the disclaimer: many of them are not experts, or have used the mantle of academic qualifications to purvey hate. That their alarmist drivel should be mixed with my whittled down interview proves that the intent of the film is not to educate, but to mislead. The free distribution of the film to voters in particular districts shows the political chicanery that is the motive, and the secrecy about the financing of the distribution only underlines the evil intent in circulating this vile piece of propaganda.

[For the complete story, click here.]

To be honest, Dr. Mohammed's contribution beyond lending his name to the movie was fairly trivial. (He defined the term jihad and stated that it was a powerful concept among Muslims.)

In Web of Zionist enmeshment, Dr. Mohammed expresses "sadness" for possible misuse of some of his comments by anti-Mosque activists during the Roxbury Mosque controversy in Boston:

The ISB shared with TMO a June 1, 2004 opposition email which refers to an unnamed "pro-Jewish Muslim ally in Boston," who used Roxbury Community College connections to help conspirators investigate parking infractions the mosque might have committed inadvertently, that could be used in a legal attack.

Khaleel Mohammed, an academic who advocates "Islamic reform" to right-wing audiences, was also mentioned in the anti-mosque correspondence.

An October 1993 Boston Herald article linked a quotation from Mr. Mohammed about mosque financing with two succeeding anonymous quotations so that he would appear to accuse the ISB of connections to "fundamentalist Islamist politics."

In discovery emails, Mohammed discusses with professional Israel advocates the allegedly "Wahhabi" content of library materials at the ISB. Mohammed was invited to comment about his involvement with the anti-mosque group.

"I am sad to find out that organizations are now using government funds to combat the building of mosques," Mr. Mohammed began.

"I have imparted no 'secret' information to anyone…I don't know any of the people in the Boston Mosque. I would at most say that if they are into radical Islam, I would be against their building a mosque."

Mr. Mohammed informed TMO that he verified "some translations [of statements by] someone on the mosque board" for a good friend at the ADL.

Unfortunately, Dr. Mohammed has never apologized for his inexcusable record of pandering the rapaciousness and extremism of the Zionist ethnic Ashkenazi invaders that stole Palestine from the native population.

I link here to an email exchange I had with Dr. Mohammed shortly after a talk at Harvard on October 20, 2002. After the formal panel session Dr. Mohammed spent some time in dumping on Palestinians for not welcoming racist ethnic Ashkenazi Zionists, who colonized Palestine from the 1880s through 1940s for the purpose of imposing a Zionist state on the country despite the wishes of the majority native population.

I am ThorsProvoni@aol.com.
Dr. Khaleel Mohammed is kmoham1@brandeis.edu.
en_i_ne@yahoo.com is a NJ solidarity member named Bassem.
togethertalk@hotmail.com is Karin Friedemann.

In the past, even though Dr. Mohammed has condemned ignorant Islamophobes like Robert Spencer for making bigoted pronouncements about Islam without any genuine knowledge of Islamic studies, Dr. Mohammed has been willing to make equally if not more ignorant comments about Eastern European Jews and the crimes that Zionists have committed against the native Palestinian population.

It is time for Dr. Mohammed to apologize to Palestinians and either to learn something about ethnic Ashkenazi history and politics or to shut up, for he is not making a positive contribution to the debate as long as he lends his name and ignorance so casually to the cause of Islamophobic incitement. Sphere: Related Content

More Jewish Bigotries at Interfaith Dialogue

I sent my blog entry entitled Jewish Bigotries at Interfaith Dialogue to Rabbi Sanford Seltzer, who is the executive director of the Interreligious Center on Public Life, which is the organization that organized the interfaith conference, at which one of the Jewish attendees made patently false and bigoted comments attacking Christians and Muslims.

I recommended to Rabbi Seltzer that the woman apologize. As I could have predicted, Rabbi Seltzer attacked me. As far as I can tell it is a common phenomenon. Some Jews are completely entrenched in delusions about non-Jews thirsting for Jewish blood, and in their minds the class of particularly egregious malefactors includes anyone that does not share the delusions.

Here is my response to his reply, which is embedded within my email.

In a message dated 03/23/09 19:05:07 Eastern Daylight Time, sseltzer@hebrewcollege.edu writes:

Dear Mr. Martillo, I was present when you made your comments on March 15th and was tempted to respond at that time, but chose not to do so as however disturbing your remarks were, I felt my comments would simply divert us from Jerome Maryon's break-out session. Needless to say, I find your statements totally unacceptable. It is ironic that you begin your Blog with the heading "Jewish Bigotries At Interfaith Dialogue." Ironic in that the very first two sentences that follow are unequivocally clear indications of what your real purpose is. To state as you have, "the organized Jewish community and network of Israel advocacy organizations subject Americans to a web of control that Orwell could not have conceived," is both so outlandish and exaggerated that it smacks of the Protocols of the Elders Of Zion.

Dear Rabbi Seltzer,

You are spinning vinyl in a digital age. Even Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic has embraced the Walt & Mearsheimer thesis on the Israel Lobby in a back-handed sort of way. He wrote in the NY Times:

So why won’t American leaders push Israel publicly? Or, more to the point, why do presidential candidates dance so delicately around this question? The answer is obvious: The leadership of the organized American Jewish community has allowed the partisans of settlement to conflate support for the colonization of the West Bank with support for Israel itself. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, in their polemical work “The Israel Lobby,” have it wrong: They argue, unpersuasively, that American support for Israel hurts America. It doesn’t. But unthinking American support does hurt Israel.

The people of Aipac and the Conference of Presidents are well meaning, and their work in strengthening the overall relationship between America and Israel has ensured them a place in the world to come. But what’s needed now is a radical rethinking of what it means to be pro-Israel. Barack Obama and John McCain, the likely presidential nominees, are smart, analytical men who understand the manifold threats Israel faces 60 years after its founding. They should be able to talk, in blunt terms, about the full range of dangers faced by Israel, including the danger Israel has brought upon itself.

I took a David Project course in Israel Advocacy. Among other things we were supposed to deal with public debates about Israeli policies by giving the appearance of acting as independent concerned pro-Israel citizens in order to show politicians that there was a "genuine" groundswell of support for Israel.

Four years before the Abu el-Haj controversy broke out at Columbia, I attended an Israel on Campus Coalition meeting that discussed the growing problem of pro-Palestinian academics on campus and how to prevent them from receiving tenure. The DP ended up paying academics to knock her scholarship.

In January 2003 I attended an AIPAC event to recruit Harvard KSG students, who would be serving as interns in Washington over the summer. The students were supposed to report back on any Israel-related AIPAC-disapproved opinions among congressmen or staffers.

Rachel Fish secretly worked for the DP to prevent a no-strings $2 million donation from Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan to the Harvard Divinity School.

I read through the discovery materials on the Roxbury Mosque case. The David Project was coordinating among Steven Emerson, Fox News (Jonathan Wells), the Boston Herald (Jonathan Wells), a bunch of Jewish real estate developers, and the NE Israeli Consulate. From the emails, Jeff Jacoby was initially unenthusiastic about the anti-Mosque effort, but by the end he was publishing DP talking points as op-ed columns.

After Cardinal Priest and Cologne Archbishop Joachim Meisner expressed sympathy for Palestinian suffering, he was subjected to an irrational but highly coordinated international defamation campaign. I had a report that Stefan Kramer of Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland actually came to Boston to consult with local Jewish leaders about how to proceed before the attack started. I do not know whether then DP President Jacobs was included in the meetings, but the attacks on Meisner were quite similar to those on Dr. Abu al-Laban and Dr. Fitaihi.

The JCRC Boston organized a $1.2 million campaign against Somerville Divestment that included a number of unique tactics including harassing signature gatherers by following them closely and preventing them explaining the Divestment Initiative to Somerville voters. The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs studied Somerville politics and issued several reports. In Seattle the Jewish Federation with the aid of StandWithUS ran a practically identical campaign against Seattle Divestment (I-97) with the same sort of signature gatherer harassment and other identical tactics while recently the DP and CAMERA have been fighting Emory Divestment with identical tactics.

The United States Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) was subverted by Jewish members and staff like Abigail Thernstrom and Kenneth Marcus to serve Jewish privilege instead of carrying out its civil rights mission. In 2005 the Commission was investigating anti-Semitism on campus, watching the defamatory movie Columbia Unbecoming produced and distributed by The David Project, and taking testimony from professional Israel advocate Sarah Stern all for the purpose of substantiating a non-existent problem of anti-Semitism on college campuses while the same Jewish members and staff went out of their way to suppress any investigation of Jewish Zionist efforts to craft an outbreak of Islamophobia modeled on late 19th and early 20th century anti-Semitism.

The distribution of Obsession: Radical Islam's War on the West during the presidential election involved a clandestine conspiracy among the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), Aish HaTorah/The Clarion Fund/HonestReporting/WordsCanHeal and one or more hyperwealthy Zionists. I suspect Irwin Katsof while others have seen the hand of Sheldon Adelson, but Roberto Tanenbaum is also a candidate because has close connections to the RJC. Of course, all three and others could have been involved.

No thought control activity is too small. When Susan Abulhawa came to Brooklyn to introduce her book entitled Scar of David at a local college and bookstores, the Brooklyn JCC coordinated harassment of the professor who invited her as well as any bookseller willing to host her.

I can trace this sort of conspiratorial Zionist activity throughout the country and back to the 50s particularly in the media and finance industries. Often serious SEC and FEC violations are involved along with intimidation via middle market restraint of trade.

When I was a student at Harvard, I was a concentrator in E. European history. Not only is conspiracy historically a normal part of Eastern European politics, but historians of Russia or Poland write about the politics of conspiracy all the time.

One can argue whether Eastern European Jews brought a political cultural propensity to conspiracy with them to the USA, but Bolshevik Ashkenazim were probably the most important group in the conspiracy to overthrow Czarism as both UC Berkeley Professor Yuri Slezkine and Yale Professor Benjamin Harshav have pointed out in books and articles.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is an obvious work of fiction, and I used to give a lecture about the reasons it might be believed or be published. Because of the dearth of materials available to non-Jews at the beginning of the 20th century about Eastern European Jewish history or culture, I am reluctant to accuse someone of anti-Semitism merely for resorting to the Protocols in order to understand E. European ethnic Ashkenazi politics. Anti-Semitism is more likely involved when there is a belief in a single overarching conspiracy among Jewish wealth, Jewish communists and Jewish Zionists. There simply was not one single Jewish conspiracy at the beginning of the 20th century. There were several often violently opposed to one another, and the vast majority of Jews were not involved in any conspiracy at all.

Further down when you denigrate Jewish efforts, which were really inter-religious efforts, in the context of Darfur, you again underscore the true purpose of your e-mail.

I sat about 10 feet from Ken Sweder in Kehillath Israel when he explained how he sold Darfur Activism to the Jewish Council for Public Affairs because it would be good for Jews. I had a fairly long talk with Ruth Messenger of the American Jewish World Service about her organization's Darfur Activism, which consisted entirely of a publicity campaign against the Sudanese government.

Unlike both of them I have actually been in Darfur, and I understand something of the politics of the region. I am fairly certain that the behavior of the Jewish community with regard to Darfur is extremely harmful and that the leadership is either seriously hypocritical or seriously misguided. There are a good number of Sudanese academics in the Boston area. Except for Omer Ismail, who has his own agenda, the SaveDarfur movement has consulted none of them. There are also Muslim charity organizations that have done work in Darfur. The SaveDarfur movement has consulted none of them. Don't these omissions bother you?

I certainly cannot trust any Jewish Darfur or anti-Genocide activism unless the Jews involved categorically condemn Zionism as a racist genocidal movement. If it was not clear before the Gaza rampage, it should be now that a good number of Israeli and American Zionists should have been indicted longer before there was any thought of issuing a warrant on Omar al-Bashir. Because it is close to Passover and relevant, [you can find the testimony] that I gave about Darfur before the Massachusetts legislature [as well as a small correction at 5th Question: Darfur and Eric Cohen vs. Eric Cohen].

You might find it worthwhile to attend

Thursday, April 2nd 7:00 PM @Harvard Book Store MAHMOOD MAMDANI re-evaluates Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror more details

before complaining about my opinions of Jewish SaveDarfur activism.

Let me therefore address myself specifically to your critique of the Talmudic statement found in Sanhedrin 37a: the statement, by the way, is also found in Mishneh Sanhedrin 4:5 where it explicitly says "whosoever preserves a single soul, it is as if he preserved a complete world." I find it curious that you chose not to recite the Mishnaic reference.

I did not cite the Mishnah because Cohen explicitly referred to Talmud Sanhedrin 37a. I have included a scan of the relevant page after my signature. The text certainly says "one soul from Israel." Many censored or self-censored editions leave out from Israel, but both Kohati and Neusner consider the version below to be the original and correct reading.

Yes, it is true that the Talmudic version does speak of the "soul of an Israelite," however, what you neglect to point out is that just because early Christian and contemporary Muslim commentators view this as an act of Jewish selfishness, it must be so.

I said nothing of the sort. I claimed that the accusation against early Christians was simply a calumny. I am not sure exactly how Cohen was defining "early" but let's say 9th century and earlier so that Christians would have had a century to analyze the completed Babylonian Talmud. I do not know of a single Christian writing on this verse from the Mishnah or the Talmud. There were some important Church fathers before the completion of the Mishnah, who had the skill set to read Hebrew and possibly one dialect of Jewish Aramaic, but by the time the Mishnah was completed, not only were such skills completely lost among Christians as far as I know, but there were no convenient translations of the Mishnah into Greek or Latin.

If I am not mistaken, there are less than five Muslim scholars of the Talmud or Mishnah. As far as I know, none of them have written anything on the passage.

I sometimes try to read Christian, Muslim, and Jewish scripture together in order to use each text to illuminate the others.

Even though I know no commentary to the following effect, it is possible that the Quran 5:32

مِنْ أَجْلِ ذَلِكَ كَتَبْنَا عَلَى بَنِي إِسْرَائِيلَ أَنَّهُ مَن قَتَلَ نَفْسًا بِغَيْرِ نَفْسٍ أَوْ فَسَادٍ فِي الأَرْضِ فَكَأَنَّمَا قَتَلَ النَّاسَ جَمِيعًا وَمَنْ أَحْيَاهَا فَكَأَنَّمَا أَحْيَا النَّاسَ جَمِيعًا وَلَقَدْ جَاء تْهُمْ رُسُلُنَا بِالبَيِّنَاتِ ثُمَّ إِنَّ كَثِيرًا مِّنْهُم بَعْدَ ذَلِكَ فِي الأَرْضِ لَمُسْرِفُونَ

[For that cause We decreed for the Children of Israel that whosoever killeth a human being for other than manslaughter or corruption in the earth, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind. Our messengers came unto them of old with clear proofs (of Allah's Sovereignty), but afterwards lo! many of them became prodigals in the earth. (32) ]

is directly commenting on Talmud Sanhedrin 37a according to the principle enunciated in Quran 3:78:

وَإِنَّ مِنْهُمْ لَفَرِيقًا يَلْوُونَ أَلْسِنَتَهُم بِالْكِتَابِ لِتَحْسَبُوهُ مِنَ الْكِتَابِ وَمَا هُوَ مِنَ الْكِتَابِ وَيَقُولُونَ هُوَ مِنْ عِندِ اللّهِ وَمَا هُوَ مِنْ عِندِ اللّهِ وَيَقُولُونَ عَلَى اللّهِ الْكَذِبَ وَهُمْ يَعْلَمُونَ

[And lo! there is a party of them who distort the Scripture with their tongues, that ye may think that what they say is from the Scripture, when it is not from the Scripture. And they say: It is from Allah, when it is not from Allah; and they speak a lie concerning Allah knowingly. (78) ]

The Quranic verse refers to a distortion of the Book (the Bible) with their tongues and not necessarily of the written text while Talmud 37a provides analysis of Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5. The Mishna is the first redaction of Oral traditions that compose the Oral Law or תּוֹרָה שֶׁבְּעַל פֶּה‎ -- in other words the Law which is not supposed to be written but which is spoken with tongues.

Thus the Quran specifically refers to the Children of Israel in 5:32 because the verse provides the correct non-distorted interpretation

• which the Mishnah was supposed to draw from the stories of Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel and
• which you apparently wish were the genuine Jewish tradition.

The Talmudic statement does not and I repeat, does not, make any pejorative reference to either Muslims or Christians since its concern and readership was the Jewish people. One finds in virtually all sacred texts, references that are both universal and parochial. Your failure to note that in both instances the interpretation is tendentious and biased on the part of the commentators, who seek to denigrate Judaism is most revealing of their goals, as well as your own.

I never claimed that the statement in Talmud Sanhedrin 37a made pejorative references to Muslims or Christians, and I was not addressing questions of the universal or parochial.

I could pursue this further, but it would serve little purpose. Suffice it to say, that you owe Louise Cohen, an apology for distorting her remarks and intentions for your own ends.

You are blame-shifting. Cohen came into the Mosque and effectively threw rocks at Muslims and Christians. It was rude behavior, and she should apologize.

What is so difficult to understand about the issue?

You should apologize to me for distorting what I wrote.

I have never heard of Ethnic Ashkenazim Against Zionist Israel. I would like to know who your membership is and what your organization stands for.

Here is the Mission Statement:

This website and the associated organization of the same name have the mission of providing Jews and non-Jews with the intellectual tools to stand up to Zionist intimidation and manipulation.

I am not so happy with the name but most of members are of E. European Jewish background and wish to make a statement that they object to the Zionist reinterpretation of the Ashkenazi ethnic group as the pan-Judaic ethnonational group because said reinterpretation represents an intellectually dishonest attempt to justify the theft of Palestine from the native population by means of false primordialism and essentialism.

Rabbi Sanford Seltzer

Sincerely yours,

Joachim Martillo

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