On Charges of "Jewish domination of the Media"

This originally was posted at CiF Watch

Occasionally, thinly veiled covers for anti-Semitic invectives wear down, and the explicit hate is laid bare for all to see. Many of us have noted a disturbing ideological trend, in which classic anti-Semitic tropes about the dangers of Jewish power and influence in politics have become increasingly popular by some on the Left - rendering such bigotry nearly banal within some circles.

Typically, this narrative is advanced using the rhetoric of human rights and anti-imperialism, and carefully avoids making such charges against Jews as such – referring instead to the injurious effects of the “Israel Lobby.”

Glenn Greenwald, who blogs at Salon.com, (and is a member in good standing of the Walt and Mearsheimer brigade of “dissidents” who bravely “expose” the injurious effects of the organized Jewish community on the American body politic) has honed such furtive rhetoric to an art.

However, even his respectable veneer has occasionally been eroded. In 2007, he said

“…the influence of self-proclaimed “pro-Israeli” American Jewish groups in helping to push the country into what looks more and more every day to be an inevitable conflict with Iran is very significant and cannot be ignored.”

Antony Lerman, writing in Comment is Free, in defense of C4s documentary which “investigated” The Israel Lobby, stated cooly that wealthy British Jews are indeed linked to “payments of large sums of money to politicians, power and influence.”

And, as any reader of CiF Watch is well aware, reader comment threads in response to almost any Israel-related essay at Comment is Free often reveal a slew of vile accusations that the UK is held captive by the organized Jewish community.

Oliver Stone – film-maker, conspiracy enthusiast, and ardent defender of South American Narco-Terrorist Movements - has recently “revealed” the real reason there is so much “talk” about Jewish victims of The Holocaust. (Hint: It apparently has nothing to do with natural human compassion for the millions of innocent victims, which included 1.5 million children, slaughtered by the Nazi regime.)

From an interview with Oliver Stone in The Sunday Times (Courtesy of Normblog):

The 10-part documentary [which Stone is planning] will address Stalin and Hitler “in context”, he says. “Hitler was a Frankenstein but there was also a Dr Frankenstein. German industrialists, the Americans and the British. He had a lot of support.”

He also seeks to put his atrocities in proportion: “Hitler did far more damage to the Russians than the Jewish people, 25 or 30m.”

Why such a focus on the Holocaust then? “The Jewish domination of the media,” he says. “There’s a major lobby in the United States. They are hard workers. They stay on top of every comment, the most powerful lobby in Washington. Israel has f***** up United States foreign policy for years.”

I can assure the readers of this blog that CiF Watch’s cadre of writers are indeed very hard workers, and, fully intend to continue staying on top of every comment inspired by such bigotry – this insidious, and seemingly immutable, belief that the Jewish community represents some sort of organic obstacle to peace and progress in our time.

- Adam Levick