September 1, 2005 Yes folks, time for another episode of Flip Your Yarmulke!—the unintentionally funny reality show where members of Canada’s Jewish Lobby go berserk on scholars and journalists who challenge the verities of zionist dogma and seek justice for Muslims. The rules of the show are simple. A Lobby representative impugns the integrity of a writer or publication by invoking the stale epithets “anti-Semitism” and “anti-Israel bias,” and then advocates censorship under the guise of fighting racism. The Lobby’s three weapons are: intimidation, rhetorical predictability, ruthless disregard for honest argument, and a … four!… the Lobby’s four weapons are: intimidation, predictability, ruthless disregard for honest argument, and a fanatical devotion to Israel. The opponent defends himself by relying on historical scholarship and our Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of opinion, but that doesn’t necessarily guarantee victory. As we all know, anti-Muslim hysteria and the Lobby’s corrosive influence on the media, government and academia have made free and open debate a dangerous undertaking. Much like the medieval Church, which enforced obedience to Christian dogma through terror, torture and mass murder, the Lobby wages its own crusade against enlightenment and free thought. There are no public burnings or thumbscrews, but the climate of intimidation is palpable for anyone willing to speak out on behalf of Muslims or expose possible Israeli involvement in mass murder, such as the Sept. 11, 2001, attack or the July 7, 2005, London bombing. Nevertheless, this seemingly neverending theatre of the absurd has its humorous side, and this installment promises plenty of self-inflicted ridicule. You’ll laugh so hard you’ll plotz! On our show today, the Lobby is represented by B’nai Brith Canada. The object of its disaffection is Jewish professor Michael Chossudovsky from the University of Ottawa; more specifically, his website globalresearch.ca, which is unaffiliated with the university. It seems some articles on a discussion forum blamed Jews for the Sept. 11 attack, and claimed that the number of Jews who died at Auschwitz has been exaggerated. Chossudovsky did not write the articles and they have since been removed, yet B’nai Brith is still demanding the site be investigated. By any logical standard, the removal of the articles should have been enough to mollify B’nai Brith, but when the issue is Israel, ya gotta go berserk! Executive vice-president Frank Dimant begins by denigrating globalresearch.ca without even pretending to make an intelligent argument: “The material on the site is full of wild conspiracy theories that go so far as to accuse Israel, America and Britain of being behind the recent terrorist bombings in London.”* What does Dimant mean by “full of?” Three articles? Five? 10? 50? Since Chossudovsky pulled the offending pieces, the clearly appears to be gratuitous and malicious, as is the charge of “wild conspiracy theories.” Just because B’nai Brith doesn’t like theories that exculpate Muslims doesn’t mean these theories have no value. For example, the British have no video footage of the alleged bombers in the subway cars before they were blown up, even though underground stations and cars have multiple surveillance cameras. Also, personal identifying documents belonging to the “bombers” were found intact near each blast site, even though the “bombers” themselves were blown to smithereens. Obviously, the official story of the July 7 explosions, like the official story of the Sept. 11 attack, has serious credibility problems, which means that an alternative theory is almost certainly closer to the truth. All right—get ready to plotz! Not content with smearing Chossudovsky’s website, Dimant segues into the classic “poor Jew” rant: “They [the articles] echo the age-old anti-Semitic expressions that abound in the Arab world, which blame the Jews for everything from 9/11 to the more recent tsunami disaster.”* What a fearless berserker! Most people would be mortified and ashamed to make such an idiotic, offensive non sequitur, but not Dimant. This man knows no shame. He said, in effect, that the accuracy of the offending articles was irrelevant. All that mattered was that someone accused Israel of helping to frame Muslims for the attack. Of course, it would have made more sense for B’nai Brith to keep the whole matter private and solve the matter quietly; in fact, Chossudovsky did just that by removing the articles, but B’nai Brith couldn’t let it end there. It had to go overboard to stigmatize Chossudovsky and the website, even if that meant committing intellectual suicide in public. Now we come to the interview segment of our show. Flip Your Yarmulke! spoke with B’nai Brith’s legal counsel and human rights co-ordinator Anita Bromberg. What she had to say about “ridiculous conspiracy theories” and the effect of anti-Zionist theories dovetailed nicely with Dimant’s non-cognitive burbling. Her most astounding assertion had to do with the contingent existence of truth. It was permissible, she said, to question the numbers of Jews killed in World War II so long as it was done in the right context, as if to say the Lobby had the right to determine the boundaries of scholastic enquiry. According to Bromberg, two people could use the exact same data yet one could be charged with being anti-Semitic. Truth is in the eye of the Lobby, and this brings us to the main reason for the campaign against Chossudovsky: “The bottom line is, he is a professor at a leading university, which gives him credibility. ... It worries me what students, who may be very ill-equipped, face. He has an obligation as a professor towards the young minds he teaches.” How noble! Such concern for the intellectual welfare of students! Although, if the zionist version of the Holocaust held water, one would think it could stand up to weaker theories. Historically speaking, assaults on free expression happen when an indefensible, but politically powerful, belief is in danger of collapsing and needs to be propped up. For the Lobby, that belief is zionism. The Lobby’s attack on Chossudovsky’s website is an attack on free expression. Sadly, there’s nothing funny about that. ——
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