Maik Baumgärtner and Lisa Bjurwald examine how “leading members of Europe’s Islamophobic movement are forging close bonds with ultra-conservative Israeli politicians, lawyers and businessmen”.
Category Archives: Israel
US taxpayers to fund MEMRI
Yes, really. The US State Department has awarded a $200,000 grant to the right-wing Zionist propaganda organisation the Middle East Media Research Institute. What were they thinking? Even leaving aside its reputation for attacking Muslim critics of Israel, and the inspiration this provided for Anders Breivik, MEMRI notoriously intervened in the 2004 US presidential election with the baseless claim that Osama bin Laden was supporting the Democrats’ campaign by offering to refrain from attacking US states that voted for Kerry rather than Bush.
See Jim Lobe and Philip Weiss. Also Ali Gharib at Think Progress.
Islamophobia: the new anti-semitism
Writing in the Palestine Chronicle Yuri Avnery notes the rising tide of Islamophobia in Europe which provided the context and inspiration for Breivik’s terrorist attacks:
I first became aware of the gravity of the situation when a friend drew my attention to some German anti-Islamic blogs.
I was shocked to the core. These outpourings are almost verbatim copies of the diatribes of Joseph Goebbels. The same rabble-rousing slogans. The same base allegations. The same demonization. With one little difference: instead of Jews, this time it is Arabs who are undermining Western Civilization, seducing Christian maids, plotting to dominate the world. The Protocols of the Elders of Mecca….
Many of the Islamophobic parties and groups remind one of the atmosphere of Germany in the early 1920s, when “völkisch” groups and militias were spreading their hateful poison, and an army spy called Adolf Hitler was earning his first laurels as an anti-Semitic orator. They looked unimportant, marginal, even crazy. Many laughed at this man Hitler, the Chaplinesque mustachioed clown.
But the abortive Nazi putsch of 1923 was followed by 1933, when the Nazis took power, and 1939, when Hitler started World War II, and 1942, when the gas chambers were brought into operation.
It is the beginnings which are critical, when political opportunists realize that arousing fear and hatred is the easiest way to fortune and power, when social misfits become nationalist and religious fanatics, when attacking helpless minorities becomes acceptable as legitimate politics, when funny little men turn into monsters.
Settler MKs welcome Russian neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers to Knesset, Yad Vashem
The close links that have been established between a section of the Israeli right and European far-right Islamophobes on the common ground of support for Zionism are well known (see for example here and here). But it is still difficult to credit the report that representatives of a Russian group of Hitler-admiring, Holocaust-denying neo-Nazis recently visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial centre in Jerusalem and were welcomed to the Knesset by two of the most notorious anti-Muslim MKs, Aryeh Eldad and Ayoob Kara. Richard Silverstein has the details:
Under the auspices of Tuvia Lerner, editor of the Russian edition of Arutz 7, the media voice of the settler movement, they inveigled themselves an invitation to meet with far-right MKs Aryeh Eldad and Ayoob Kara. They also toured Yad VaShem without telling anyone there that they were Holocaust deniers. Like I told you, this story has to be read to be believed. The two Russians have been photographed giving Nazi salutes, celebrating Der Führer’s birthday, and they published songs of praise to Adolf Hitler on their website.
Naturally, when they met with the MKs the ideas they espoused were quite different. One of the neo-Nazis told Israeli TV that the concept of Israel “excites me,” because it involves “an ancient people who took upon itself a pioneer project to revive a modern state and nation.” The TV reporter tartly asked how the neo-Nazi of yesterday suddenly became a Zionist. How they did it, is by finding a common enemy: Islam (sound familiar?). The second neo-Nazi tells the interviewer: “We’re talking about radical Islam which is the enemy of humanity, enemy of democracy, enemy of progress and of any sane society.”
Israeli deputy minister meets German neo-Nazi millionaire
Deputy Minister Ayoob Kara met with Swedish-German millionaire Patrik Brinkmann who has ties with German neo-Nazi groups in Berlin over the weekend,Yedioth Ahronoth reported.
Brinkmann, who is trying to establish a far-right anti-Islamic party in Germany claims he is not an anti-Semite, however his previous close contacts with the German neo-Nazi party (NPD) and his past membership in another neo-Nazi party raise questions regarding his ideology.
Brinkmann, 44, made his fortune in the Swedish real estate business in the 1980s before becoming mixed in tax problems in his home country. As legal battles were going on he used the majority of his finances for the establishment of two research foundations which became closely affiliated with far-right and neo-Nazi elements in Germany.
The millionaire later began supporting the Pro NRW movement, Germany’s far-right and anti-Islamic party. He declared he fears that Sharia law will be introduced in the country and has pledged to establish a strong German right-wing party. He left the party last year in protest of its anti-Semitism, but resumed membership earlier this year. He now heads the party’s Berlin branch.
Brinkman visited Israel several months ago where he met Kara and announced his intention to promote one of his foundations in Israel. He met the deputy minister again in Berlin over the weekend as part of Kara’s private visit to the city’s World Culture Festival. Several months ago, Kara met with Austrian Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache who was once active in neo-Nazi groups.
Israel’s embassies in Berlin and Vienna have warned against such contacts. “Even if this is an alleged attempt to create an anti-Islamic European front, some of these elements seek to obtain an Israeli seal of approval without altering their anti-Semitic views,” an Israeli state official said.
The deputy minister said he was unaware of Brinkmann’s problematic connections with Germany’s neo-Nazi far-right movement, claiming this was “irrelevant.”
See also Ayoob Kara’s meeting last month with Filip Dewinter of the Belgian far-right party Vlaams Belang.
Smearing Sheikh Raed Salah
In an article for Al Jazeera Bob Lambert criticises the home secretary’s disgraceful decision to arrest and deport Raed Salah, leader of the Islamic Movement in Israel.
See also ENGAGE, 1 July 2011
Netanyahu’s son abused Muslims on Facebook
The Israeli Prime Minister’s 19-year-old son posted disparaging comments about Arabs and Muslims on his Facebook page, an Israeli paper reported yesterday.
Earlier this year, Yair Netanyahu posted that Muslims “celebrate hate and death,” the Haaretz daily said. After Palestinian assailants entered a West Bank settlement and stabbed five members of an Israeli family to death, he wrote that “terror has a religion and it is Islam”.
Yair Netanyahu, the eldest of Benjamin Netanyahu’s two sons, is currently a soldier in the Israeli military’s media liaison unit. A lawyer for the Netanyahu family, David Shimron, said the comments were those of a “teenager” and were “taken out of context in an attempt to defame the Prime Minister and his family”.
The Prime Minister’s son also ran a Facebook group that called for a boycott of Arab businesses, and used obscenities to describe Arabs.Haaretz said the comments were removed within hours of the paper’s request for a response from the Prime Minister’s representatives.
‘Muslim intimidation’ has struck fear in the ‘British Christian majority’, claims Benny Morris
Israeli historian Benny Morris has written an account of last week’s visit to the London School of Economics where he addressed a meeting on the subject of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
The visit understandably provoked some controversy, given Morris’s support for ethnic cleansing and his bigoted comments about Muslims, and he complains that he was harangued by demonstrators on his way to the lecture theatre. (“Several spoke in broken, obviously newly acquired, English.”)
And what conclusion does Morris draw from this experience of political opponents exercising their legitimate right to protest against him? He writes: “Uncurbed, Muslim intimidation in the public domain of people they see as disagreeing with them is palpable and palpably affecting the British Christian majority among whom they live, indeed, cowing them into silence. One senses real fear….”
Of course, such comments are hardly unexpected, coming from a man who is on record as stating that “the phenomenon of the mass Muslim penetration into the West and their settlement there is creating a dangerous internal threat”.
However, imagine the outrage that would result if a Palestinian speaker at the LSE had been harangued by Zionist students and responded by writing: “Uncurbed, Jewish intimidation in the public domain of people they see as disagreeing with them is palpable and palpably affecting the British Christian majority among whom they live, indeed, cowing them into silence. One senses real fear….”
One thing is certain, that individual would never again be invited to speak at the LSE.
Harry’s Place applauds LSE for offering platform to anti-Muslim bigot who supports ethnic cleansing
Over at the Islamophobic blog Harry’s Place Michael Ezra can scarcely contain his excitement at the news that Israeli historian Benny Morris will be speaking at the London School of Economics tomorrow at the invitation of the LSE Middle East Centre. The organisers state: “The lecture will look at various aspects, some of them innovative, of the 1948 War, the first between the Arabs and Israel.”
Benny Morris is the man who, in a notorious interview with Haaretz in 2004 entitled “Survival of the fittest”, supported the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs in 1948 and only regretted that the Zionist leadership had not gone further.
Far-right arson attack on West Bank mosque
Police have launched an investigation into a West Bank mosque arson attack on Tuesday. Palestinians from the village of al-Muayar, near Ramallah reported that a carpet in the mosque was set fire in the early hour of the morning. A joint police IDF investigation was launched.
“We believe suspects set fire to a tire inside the mosque,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. “No actual damage was observed on the walls,” he added. A police forensics team arrived on the scene and began taking evidence.
Far-right graffiti was also found at the site, including the words “El Ain,” the name of a settlement outpost which was evacuated by security forces last week, sparking a clash which resulted in several injuries among right-wing activists and police. Police suspect the arson incident could be linked to last week’s outpost clearance.