Behind the Anti-Semitism Industry

"Anti-Semitism is no longer a problem [in the United States], fortunately. It's raised... because privileged people want to make sure they have total control, not just 98% control... they want to make sure there's no critical look at the policies the US (and they themselves) support in the Middle East." Noam Chomsky, 2002

Here are the opening lines of The London Declaration on Combating Antisemitism, which Prime Minister Julia Gillard signed earlier this month:

"We, Representatives of our respective Parliaments from across the world, convening in London for the founding Conference and Summit of the Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Antisemitism, draw the democratic world's attention to the resurgence of antisemitism as a potent force in politics, international affairs and society. We note the dramatic increase in recorded antisemitic hate crimes and attacks targeting Jewish persons and property, and Jewish religious, educational and communal institutions."

"... resurgence... potent force... dramatic increase..."

Is Kristallnacht coming to a street near you? Or is someone perhaps pulling a swiftie here?

Before you get too carried away, consider this extract from Antony Lerman's revealing new book, The Making & Unmaking of a Zionist: A Personal & Political Journey (2012):

"The World Jewish Congress's ten-year-campaign against the President of Austria and former UN secretary general Kurt Waldheim, for hiding his Nazi past, which kept it at the forefront of international Jewish political activity, had run its course. Prompted by the surfacing of antisemitism in post-communist Europe, they now chose 'eliminating' antisemitism for their new blockbuster campaign. We [at the Institute of Jewish Affairs*] were already producing information and analysis on these developments, so when the WJC decided to kick off its new programme with a major international conference on antisemitism in Brussels in July 1992, we knew that IJA had to play a significant role in it. I conceived of the idea of producing an annual, worldwide, country-by-country survey of antisemitism - Antisemitism World Report - modelled on the annual human rights reports of bodies like Amnesty International, to be launched at the conference. Nothing like this had been done before.

"A major problem we faced was the variable quality of the available data. Especially problematic was the worldwide dissemination of often distorted and inaccurate lists of 'antisemitic incidents' by the Israel Government Monitoring Forum on Antisemitism. To overcome these difficulties we developed our own international network of researchers and began working furiously to produce the report in time for the Brussels conference. As we searched for objective experts we discovered that a significant proportion of what purported to be academically-based research was tainted by political and ideological bias. Especially troublesome was the Project for the Study of Antisemitism at Tel Aviv University - a new body, set up with the sponsorship and urging of the Forum and the Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence service - which was planning to produce its own world antisemitism survey. In fact it was the Mossad that was responsible for gathering the data on antisemitism disseminated worldwide by the Forum.

"At the Brussels conference, where our report was well received, the Israeli Forum coordinated attempts to strong-arm us into stopping production of our report and 'cooperate' with the Tel Aviv Project, and others, on a joint venture. Persuasion turned to threat when we were told that unless we agreed, Tel Aviv would immediately start producing its own annual report. Not wanting to be accused of Zionist bias and deeply suspicious of working with the Forum, we declined. The Forum was seeking to establish Israeli hegemony over antisemitism monitoring undertaken by Jewish groups and individuals worldwide. It was also establishing networks of young Jews tasked with supplying it with country-specific data, which was then crudely collated and repackaged for worldwide dissemination. Its aim was to sensitise those young Jews to the danger of antisemitism and thereby encourage aliya.

"So, in short, the Israeli government's civil arm devoted to monitoring and dealing with the problem of antisemitism, working hand-in-hand with the Mossad, was acting as a Zionist recruiting tool of the crudest kind." (pp 98-99)

[*Research arm of the WJC]