“Gabrielle Gifford [sic] is the first Jewish female elected to such a high position in the US government.”
This comes from a Department of Homeland Security internal memo obtained by Fox News. Whether no name is attached to the memo or whether Fox wanted to save the author some embarrassment isn’t clear.
Memo to the DHS: Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer are both Jewish US senators and they took office before Gabrielle Giffords had even decided she was Jewish (after visiting Israel in 2001), let alone sought high office.
The DHS memo also links Giffords’ assailant, Jared Lee Loughner, to a rightwing group called American Renaissance. “The group’s ideology is anti government, anti immigration, anti ZOG (Zionist Occupational Government), anti Semitic.”
American Renaissance refutes the accusation: “AR is not anti-government, anti-Semitic, or anti-ZOG, as is clear from the 20 years of back issues that are posted on our website. The expression “ZOG” has never appeared in the pages of AR, and we have has always welcomed Jewish participation in our work. Many of the speakers at American Renaissance conferences have been Jewish.”
The organization’s own testimony might seem less than persuasive but a report from the Southern Poverty Law Center adds some weight this claim. Referring to Jared Taylor, who edits American Renaissance, the report says:
One issue that has proven problematic for Taylor and his foundation [the New Century Foundation] has been anti-Semitism. Taylor, unlike many on the radical right, is known for his lack of anti-Semitism and for including racist Jews in his events. He told MSNBC-TV interviewer Phil Donahue in 2003 that Jews “are fine by me” and “look white to me.” At one point, he even banned discussion of the so-called “Jewish question” from American Renaissance venues, and, by 1997, he had kicked Holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis off his E-mail list. Despite these efforts, Taylor also has continued to allow people like Don Black, the former Klan leader who runs the neo-Nazi Stormfront.org web forum, and Jamie Kelso, a Stormfront moderator, to attend his biannual American Renaissance Conferences. The problem for Taylor is that many of the most active participants at the American Renaissance Conferences and the most committed members of the American radical right are openly and passionately anti-Semitic. To ban them would devastate Taylor’s efforts to make his journal and conferences flagship institutions of American radical right.
However prevalent anti-Semitism might be in the organization Loughner is being linked to, this doesn’t tell us that much about his own views. Even so, when someone attempts to assassinate a Jewish member of Congress one might expect that anti-Semitism would rank high among the possible motives.
Thus far the Anti-Defamation League has resisted suggesting this might be the gunman’s motive, and neither does anti-Semitism seem to have figured much in the vigorous wider debate the shootings have provoked. Is this because anti-Semitism has so frequently been linked to criticism of Israel that if Israel doesn’t enter the picture then neither does anti-Semitism?
DHS is filled with neocons who look for anything anti-semitic to keep the zionist narrative alive.
“Gabrielle Giffords had even decided she was Jewish”
From the link: “Giffords, 40, was raised “mixed” by a Christian Scientist mother and Jewish father”
How does that work? I thought jewish tribal membership was transferred via the maternal line.
I didn’t know Gabrielle was Jewish, but she does have a Blue Dog ID that entitles her to liberal corporate political bribes. I doubt that the young psycho was anything but a misfit that wanted to wrongly takeout his problems on someone in power to blame for what ever he felt his needs were. Not specifically anti-Semitic as many clear thinking folks might be.
Killing is always caused by sick minded people, especially in the US and Israeli wars of aggression.
And speaking of maternal lines, the shooter’s mother was/is Jewish. See *Mother Jones* article.
I think this piece ends with an important sentence. I have had young students who wonder if the Holocaust might possibly be just a Zionist invention, one that has even duped the writers of their old high school history textbooks. They explained this position as “just a thought,” but these students and many others don’t know what real antisemitism is anymore. Today’s definition is “any criticism of Israeli policy vis-a-vis Palestinians and other Arabs.” This is a lot easier for young students to believe than the industrial slaughter of 6 million people.
RE: ” neither does anti-Semitism seem to have figured much in the vigorous wider debate the shootings have provoked. Is this because anti-Semitism has so frequently been linked to criticism of Israel that if Israel doesn’t enter the picture then neither does anti-Semitism?” – Woodward
TANGENTIALLY RELATED (I THINK): “Defamation” (2009), by Yoav Shamir (an Israeli), 91 minutes
FROM A FILM REVIEW BY GILAD ATZMAN:
ENTIRE FILM REVIEW – http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/defamation-must-be-seen-a-film-review-by-gilad-atzmon.html
“Defamation” can be streamed from Netflix – http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Defamation/70117001
I think you might have missed a little bit Paul on this one.
I don’t think the ADL has left any possible Jewish element out of this shooting,
they have just done an end round to get to it—thru Fox and in conjunction with Southern Poverty Law Center. The head of the SPLC has been after Taylor for a expose he did on the SPLC concering money they mispent when they were suppose to be spending it on poor people. So there has been a feud going on between them.
What we have with the ADL, the SLPC and AMRen is pots and kettles calling each other black.
The AmRen does exactly what some of the major Jewish groups do —Jews should remain cohesive, Jews should only marry Jews, Jews should promote Jewish interest
and etc, etc..
The ADL says they are racist however because they are “White people” doing this….not Jews or Blacks or a minority group.
And naturally the ADL is not going to miss an opportunity to link any violent act to anti semitism or smear the competition so in typical mode they tried to go after two birds with one stone by linking Loughner to American Ren.
The CSM has the low down on it:
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/0109/American-Renaissance-Was-Jared-Lee-Loughner-tied-to-anti-immigrant-group/(page)/2
Here we are! Loughner is an antisemitic! Are people really serious about the antisemitic black hole? That’s the new hysteria! Nowadays it seems to be urgent to become Jewish for a representative of the american voters! There are Jews in Israel who kill every day non-jewish, for the most Arab citizen in occupied Palestine. When you kill Arabs you are not a murderer (at least in Israel). But when an young american kill a representative of the american voters he HAS TO BE an antisemitic! Can one imagine this intellectual huddle? The zionists hate the Arabs at least since 1948 (we all know it). Israel is the only racist state in the Middle East. The zionist government exist because of the US Tax payers. This racist state is one of the most dangerous thing in this moment of history. We have to hate the Arabs because Israel and the West all together want the domination of all the arab states (oil is prevalent) That’s why we kill and plunder in the Middle East! But there will be a time when we have to justify our actions but then the fury will be so big that there will be nothing left of us. I can understand!
I would add:
…but there will be a time when we have to justify our actions, but the fury will be so big, that there will be nothing left of us. THE US GOVERNMENT KNOWS THIS! That why they declared an endless war! But what they do not know is that they will loose that war, because their war is an injust war! We begun that war and this is our fall! Civil society could dissociate with that criminal enterprise (the power has not the permission of the people)
and act against such a barbarian fate. But we have to be conscious about that.