Judeosphere

Back in 1997, when news broke about Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s “Jewish ancestry,” there was a predictable storm of stupid commentaries and questions. At a February 4, 1997 State Department press conference, someone actually asked: “How this might possibly affect her, in any way, shape, or form, whether it be the relationship with the Arabs, with Israel, with Eastern Europe, with Germany, or any of these countries?”

The tradition of foreign-policy profiling continues. This time around, the perpetrator is Daniel Pipes, who recently wrote a loathsome column about Barak Obama in the wingnut FrontPage Magazine. (Hat tip, Ben Smith.) After definitively declaring that Obama is “not now a Muslim” (as if that would be so terrible), Pipes ponders:

But was he ever a Muslim or seen by others as a Muslim? More precisely, might Muslims consider him a murtadd (apostate), that is, a Muslim who converted to another religion and, therefore, someone whose blood may be shed?

One must assume that some Islamists would renounce him as a murtadd and would try to execute him. Given the protective bubble surrounding an American president, though, this threat presumably would not make much difference to his carrying out his duties.

More significantly, how would more mainstream Muslims respond to him, would they be angry at what they would consider his apostasy? That reaction is a real possibility, one that could undermine his initiatives toward the Muslim world.

Translation: (1) Whether or not he ever considered himself a Muslim, others will see him as a convert. (2) A vote for Obama is a vote for a dead man. (3) And if he survives, he’ll be the catalyst for a new wave of Islamist terror. And you thought the swift-boat smear campaign was disgraceful.

Well, the year is almost over, which means it’s time for everyone to draft their retrospective “Top Ten Lists” for 2007. The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles has just published its Top Ten Mensches. And Juan Cole has predictably published his Top Ten Myths About Iraq.

I’ve already written my “Top Ten Double-Standards On the Middle East.” But, in the spirit of the New Year, herewith Judeosphere’s “Top Ten Moonbats of 2007”

(1) Norman Finkelstein: In keeping with his academic background, when Finkelstein learned that he was denied tenure at DePaul University, he accepted the decision with quiet grace. Naw, just kidding—true to form, Finkelstein blamed the all-powerful Zionist cabal and opted for a public temper-tantrum (which apparently included physical confrontations with fellow faculty members). He revealed the frightening size of his ego when, speaking of his battle to earn tenure, he declared: “Two thousand years ago, another Jew tried that with mixed results.” Nowadays, he’s living more like Howard Hughes than Jesus Christ: According to an article in New York Magazine, “he is spending his days at home alone, surrounded by notes of support from his students, and a picture of him and Noam Chomsky bare-chested on the beach at Cape Cod [eeew!]. On the CD player: Gloria Gaynor’s rousing 1978 disco song, I Will Survive.” Finkelstein is convinced that his academic career is over, but I bet that within a year he will take a position at a European university (Hello, University of London School of Oriental and African Studies?) and relish his celebrity status as an “academic refugee.”

(2) Yvonne Ridley: Really, she’s the gift that keeps on giving. It was another banner year for the Madame LaFarge of the Radical Islamist movement. She threatened B’nai Brith Canada with a lawsuit, after it issued a press release accusing her of “glorifying terrorism.” She denounced the ongoing occupation of Western Sahara, arguing that “the Zionist and/or pro-Israeli lobby in Washington” is behind the Moroccan government’s agenda. (Her colleague George Galloway defends the occupation of Western Sahara…which means that George Galloway is, in fact, a closet Zionist!) And, she blamed Hindus as being responsible for most of the world’s suicide bombings. Thanks, Yvonne! We’re all looking forward to your antics in 2008!

(3) Gilad Atzmon: No longer satisfied with just attacking Jews and Zionists, the jazzman has expanded his repertoire to include virulent attacks on Jewish anti-Zionists. He reached a new low point in 2007 (which says a lot) when he wrote an essay, “Saying NO to the Hunters of Goliath,” wherein he suggests, among other things, that Jews brought the Holocaust upon themselves, because they were, well, so unpopular.

(4) James Petras: The “anti-imperialist” author of such opuses as The Power of Israel in the United States continues his devolution into near-self-parody. In 2007, he proudly coined a new term, the “Zionist Power Configuration,” to document the vast Jewish conspiracy in the United States, which apparently includes “dentists” and “real-estate brokers.” Even Marxists are getting fed-up with his crap.

(5) Shiraz Dossa: The esteemed professor of political science at St. Francis Xavier University got a lot of flack when he attended Iran’s Holocaust conference to deliver a “scholarly” paper. He was shocked (yes, shocked!) to discover that the conference was packed with Holocaust deniers. A reasonably sane person would have admitted error and then prayed for tenure. But Dossa instead went on the offensive: Declaring that he was the victim of an academic witch-hunt, he penned a diatribe in the Literary Review of Canada. His key assertion: Iran’s grotesque caricature of an academic conference was not about the Holocaust at all, but rather “a Global South conference convened to devise an intellectual/political response to western-Israeli intervention in Muslim affairs.” (Duh! How could I have missed that?)

(6) Media With Conscience: Criticizing an “alternative” media outlet is almost too easy—especially with the global moonbattiness that is IndyMedia. But “Media With Conscience” (MWC) distinguished itself in 2007 with its publication of virulent anti-semitic cartoons under the claim of progressive, open debate. When a reader complained about the publication of cartoons by Belgian cartoonist Ben Heine, the website’s editor replied: “It is very difficult for someone like me, an activist/advocacy writer whose writings are considered unpalatable – and non-publishable – in the mainstream corporate media, to identify with the idea that someone’s work (literary or artistic) is simply objectionable because it won’t be touched with a ten-foot pole by The Economist or any ‘reputable’ European newspapers.” (Hah, take THAT mainstream, corporate media). And, as if to drive the point home, two months later MWC published a cartoon depicting an ADL boot kicking over a Church–which originally appeared on the neo-Nazi site, rense.com.

(7) Ron Paul Supporters: You can count on three things uniting the far-left and the far-right: (1) Paranoid distrust of the U.S. government (2) Hatred of Israel (3) Ron Paul. While I personally have no strong feelings about Ron Paul, his campaign has engendered a weird-bedfellows coalition that includes 9/11 truthers, white supremacists, opponents of “world government,” and advocates for a return to the gold standard. I salute you Ron Paul: You’re a uniter, not a divider.

(8) Philip Weiss: His blog, Mondoweiss, vividly charts a spiraling descent into an all-consuming obsession with “Jewish power.” Weiss has become an “Israel Lobby” fundamentalist. In his eyes, to question the scholarship of Walt and Mearsheimer is to question truth. Every page of their book is gospel. Any negative review of their work is automatically dismissed as a “smear,” and every day that passes without an expose of the “Israel Lobby” on “60 Minutes” or the cover of Time magazine is further evidence of Jewish control over the media. One of his “high points” in 2007 was this commentary on the Obama campaign: “Obama was borne up on….idealism, and his campaign is about bringing that idealism to America’s actions in the world….The ideology of Zionism is simply out of step with that spirit, and if Obama succeeds, Zionism will lose its hold on Jewish-American intellectual life.”

(9) War on Want: The British charity organization “War on Want,” which is ostensibly dedicated to fighting global poverty, published a glossy, 15-page pamphlet outlining global strategies for “boycott, divestment and sanctions” against Israel. As the Jewish Chronicle noted in its assessment of the pamphlet: “Turgid text filled with references to economies driven by ‘transnational accumulation’ and ‘the fusion of local capital into the
global circuits of ownership’ is lightened only by images of Jaffa oranges dripping (presumably Palestinian) blood. It is hard to understand how such tedious academic drivel is supposed to further the cause of peace and understanding in the Middle East — even if anyone bothered to read it.”

(10) Joseph Massad: The associate professor of modern Arab politics at Columbia University—who became a focus of controversy for his alleged intimidation of Jewish students—has expanded his academic mandate to rant against the “Homosexual Lobby,” as evidenced by his latest book Desiring Arabs. Brain Whitaker, the Middle East editor of the Guardian who now edits the newspaper’s “Comment is Free” section, offered this first-rate critique in Gay City News: “Massad talks of a ‘missionary’ campaign orchestrated by what he calls the ‘Gay International.’ Its inspiration, he writes, came partly from ‘the white Western women’s movement, which had sought to universalize its issues through imposing its own colonial feminism on the women’s movements in the non-Western world,’but he also links its origins to the Carter administration’s use of human rights to “campaign against the Soviet Union and Third World enemies.”

And that was the year that was….

After an all-night session, the United States stood alone in its refusal to support the UN budget, which was approved in a final vote of 142-1.

A key reason for the “no” vote was the inclusion of financing for a reprise of the laughably-named World Conference Against Racism. A note explaining the vote issued by U.S. Ambassador Mark Wallace stated: “We could not support this budget resolution because this budget today contains funding to what we refer colloquially to as the ‘Durban II Conference.’ Our political sentiments have been clearly expressed on this revisiting of an event that was noxious to my country and a disgrace in the International Community. Unfortunately, the objectionable political agenda that seeks to revisit Durban has seeped into the fifth committee.”

Indeed, as the WSJ notes, “The last thing the world needs is a Durban do-over. Oh, and at the U.N.’s August ‘preparatory committee’ meeting for Durban II in Geneva, Libya was elected chairman and Cuba and Iran were among the vice chairs.”

Meanwhile, at a recent press conference, South Africa’s Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Aziz Pahad singled out three US-based NGOs–Human Rights Watch, UN Watch, and Eye on the UN–as being at the forefront of a campaign to demonize the previous Durban conference, noting that they were largely funded by “major Western powers.” Aziz Pahad further declared:

I think the understanding and interpretation of the Durban Conference is absolutely wrong. It still continues now if you get into the web sites. There are massive campaigns depicting this as the worst anti-Semitic experience since Nazism. Now that is not totally not true in light of our own experience in what we’re trying to achieve with the Conference in the end. We cannot be held responsible for the actions of the few NGOs.

Ah, it was just a “few NGOs.” By way of contrast, here’s the JTA report on the 2001 conference:

Jewish politicians and activists are venting their anger at the United Nations, governments, human rights groups and thousands of nongovernmental organizations perceived as complicit in the anti-Israel attacks, either by their support or by their silence.

The incidents are too numerous to count, activists say.

On the grounds of the U.N. conference itself, the Arab Lawyers Union distributed pamphlets filled with grotesque caricatures of hook-nosed Jews depicted as Nazis, spearing Palestinian children, dripping blood from their fangs, with missiles bulging from their eyes or with pots of money nearby. Attempts to have the group’s U.N. accreditation revoked were refused.

A Dutch delegate said she was stunned by the atmosphere.

“My father survived the Holocaust and my mother was hidden, so when I see these cartoons I see what was going on in 1930s Germany,” said Hadassa Hirschfeld, the adjunct director of the Hague-based Center Information and Documentation Israel.

“No one’s speaking out for us against the hate. I’m so sick of it. It’s all covered up, that it’s ‘against Israel,’ ” Hirschfeld said. “But this is against the Jews. And if they don’t speak out, then the world is silent again.”

A group like Amnesty International may have fanned the flames by accusing Israel of war crimes in its response to the past year of Palestinian violence.

An Amnesty press release handed out during the NGO conference cited several examples of racism and human rights abuses around the world, but mentioned only Israel by name.

As for the NGOs themselves, one troubling fact hasn’t been lost on the Jewish delegates.

NGO-types generally are among the most liberal and enlightened folks in their societies, fighting for the rights of the oppressed, the afflicted, the downtrodden.

But there was an irony — and a whiff of moral bankruptcy — when Fidel Castro addressed an adoring, ostensibly pro-human rights crowd: They roared at his anti-Western harangue, but seemed to ignore Castro’s own repression of domestic dissent.

With “liberals” like these, some wondered, what was the potential for these NGO delegates to return home and further spread anti-Israel, anti-Jewish hatred?

I’ve blogged before about Stephen Zunes, a leftist professor at the University of San Francisco and a strident critic of Israel–who nonetheless has consistently disparaged the scholarship of Walt and Mearsheimer.

In 1996, he wrote this critique of W&M’s original paper on “The Israel Lobby.” Now, he’s back with a commentary on their book.

Among the most interesting facets of Zunes’ essay is his take on the neocons, which debunks the notion that they are dual-loyal, “Israel firsters” who planned the war in Iraq to benefit the Jewish State:

Mearsheimer and Walt highlight what they claim to be the affinity for Israel by influential neo-conservatives as a major factor in the U.S. decision to invade Iraq. In particular, they cite the efforts of the neo-cons behind the Project for a New American Century (PNAC).

In reality, however, those who made up PNAC and other neo-conservatives opposed Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq because they feared it would challenge U.S. hegemony in the region, which was always their priority. For example, in the introduction to the influential 2000 PNAC report Rebuilding America’s Defenses, they explicitly spelled out the neo-conservative agenda: “At present the United States faces no global rival. America’s grand strategy should aim to preserve and expand this advantageous position as far into the future as possible.” The strong support by PNAC members and other neo-cons of Israel only goes as far as they see American and Israeli interests converging. They have not been major supporters of Israel, for example, when the right-wing has not been in power there. And even under the rightist prime minister Ariel Sharon, most Israeli government officials – with a few notable exceptions – saw Israel’s political and strategic interests at odds with the grandiose American neo-conservative designs on Iraq.

Indeed, the Defense Guidance Plan of 1992, rejected by the senior Bush administration as being too extreme but adopted in large part by his son’s administration, also makes clear that the primary concerns of the neo-conservatives was advancing U.S. hegemony, not supporting Israel. The role for Israel, at least under its right-wing governments, was as an important ally in that struggle for American primacy in the Middle East and beyond, but not the main focus, which they spelled out quite clearly: “In the Middle East and Southwest Asia, our overall objective is to remain the preeminent outside power in the region and preserve US and Western access to the region’s oil.”

The evolution of PNAC is based on – in the words of their initial statement of principles – “A Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity.” Throughout the group’s published statements, American primacy, not Israeli primacy, is their focus. Mearsheimer and Walt cite the 1996 paper written for a right-wing Israeli think tank by two leading American Jewish neo-cons – Douglas Feith and David Wurmser – which encouraged Israel to make a “clean break” with the Oslo Peace Process and rely more on force to advance its objectives, including the removal of Saddam Hussein. However, if one actually reads the paper, it is a clear call for Israel to break from the U.S.-led peace process and the perceived restraints on Israeli actions by the U.S. government, then under the leadership of the more moderate Clinton administration. It was not a call for the United States to take risky initiatives at the behest of Israel. Similarly, the paper demonstrates how, rather than being a case of the Israelis getting the neo-cons to pressure the United States to change its policies to a more hard-line position, it was American neo-cons pressuring Israel to change its policies to a more hard-line position.

The people behind PNAC and other neo-conservatives were indeed allied with more traditional conservatives like former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney to push the United States to take a more assertive position in the region. This was not in support of Israel, but to establish “full spectrum dominance” by the United States over any international or regional rival, in the Middle East or anywhere else. For example, Feith, frequently cited as someone supposedly willing to put Israel’s interests ahead of America’s, used his post as under-secretary of defense for policy during the first term of the Bush administration to sanction and eventually order the purge of top Israeli Defense officials, over the protests of the Israeli government, for their decision to upgrade Harpy drones for China, which the Bush administration deemed a threat to U.S. strategic dominance in East Asia.

Our favorite Talibanette journalist, Yvonne Ridley, having been kicked off British television, has taken her public affairs program, “The Agenda” to Iran’s Press TV.

In a December 17th episode on the U.S. presidential election, one of her guests was British Ron Paul campaigner John Mappin.

Mappin is an heir to the Mappin and Webb jewellery empire; partial owner of the King Arthur-themed hotel Camelot Castle; an owner of local newspapers; a self-proclaimed “Hollywood Filmmaker” with a rather dodgy past; and aconvert to Scientology who distributed several million copies of the video, “Psychiatry: An Industry of Death.”

While in Los Angeles, he heard about Ron Paul and decided that he is “the best choice for America.” Yvonne Ridley broadcast the world premiere of his Ron Paul campaign video, featuring Mappin’s musical ode, “Inner Truth.”

A press release from Mappin that borders on parody reads:

God knows, we need a Ron Paul in England immediately. Truth and wisdom cannot be stopped by even the thickest armour plate and whatever the mainstream media try to do to block Ron Paul’s message, in the long run they will fail.

The fire of freedom is already well ablaze and will not be put out. It is somewhat ironic that an Iranian TV network based in a country that is often presented as a supposed threat to freedom is giving Dr. Paul the airtime that he deserves.

Yvonne Ridley has an extraordinary track record as a journalist of integrity and principle…It is no surprise to me that Yvonne Ridley is one of the first mainstream journalists in Europe to give appropriate notice to Ron Paul’s Campaign. Yvonne has a history of delivering in her role as a journalist of integrity and is second to none when it comes to searching out the truth and exposing it.

Um, okay. Anywhere, here’s the video: A truly horrible montage that mixes footage of Ron Paul with scenes from “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” and lots of nuclear mushroom clouds.

One of the other guests on the program jokingly commented that the video was so bad that it must be a “neoconservative plot to discredit the campaign.”

A more positive review of the program came from the “Brits 4 Ron Paul” website:

If that whole region starts to realise the true spirit of the American people, the fear whipped up by the neocons will soon end.

The Iranian people want the same things as the American people and indeed all people of the world. They want peace and freedom. They want to be left alone!

It is the warmongers and power seekers in government we have to keep in check.

Thank you, Ron Paul. Your supporters have provided much-needed comic relief in an otherwise dreary presidential campaign.

I confess that I’m a bit perplexed over the report [pdf] issued by the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR), which found insufficient evidence that the University of California at Irvine failed to respond to incidents of anti-semitism.

Here’s the part of the report–with regards to the campus’s infamous “Zionism Awareness Week”–that has me scratching my head:

Most speakers distinguished opposition of Zionism from opposition to Jews. Other speakers did not do so, yet their criticism of Jews was focused on their perceived support for Israel. OCR’s investigation also revealed that some speakers made broad generalizations about Jews, which were offensive to Jewish students. In addition, during these events, there were often symbols utilized that were offensive to the Jewish students, such as mock checkpoints; green armbands; and a poster that contained a picture of a wall on which was painted a swastika, an equal sign, and a Star of David. Several students interviewed by OCR stated they were deeply offended and, in some instances, intimidated and harassed by these events.

OCR determined that, although offensive to the Jewish students, the speeches, articles, marches, symbols, and other events at issue were not based on the national origin of the Jewish students, but rather based on opposition to the policies of Israel. These incidents, therefore, were not within OCR’s subject matter jurisdiction.

Well, where to begin? First, there’s the comment that the offensive remarks and activities were not based on “the national origin of the Jewish students.” In government-speak, this means: “A ‘national origin group,’ often referred to as an ‘ethnic group,’ is a group of people sharing a common language, culture, ancestry, and/or other similar social characteristics.” The government cites the following example of such discrimination: “Thomas, who is Egyptian, alleges that he has been harassed by his coworkers about his Arab ethnicity. He also has been subjected to derogatory comments about Islam even though he has told his coworkers that he is Christian.”

In other words, the offensive comments at UC Irvine supposedly had nothing to do with Jews as a religious and ethnic group. However, the report itself acknowledges “OCR’s investigation also revealed that some speakers made broad generalizations about Jews, which were offensive to Jewish students.”

Examples of such comments at UC Irvine have been archived at the ADL:

On February 21, 2001, Mohammed al-Asi declared “You have the Jews who are blind and deaf and dumb [for whom] discrimination, if it is against a gentile, is not objectionable; but anything that happens against a Jew becomes a Holocaust…Where is the courageous Jew who can come out and say Israel is as fascist as the most fascist of Europe? Israel is a racist as Apartheid could ever be…. We have a psychosis in the Jewish community that is unable to co-exist equally and brotherly with other human beings.”

On May 18, 2006, Imam Amir Abdul Malik Ali delivered a speech, which was titled “Israel: The Fourth Reich,” during which he claimed that the media in the U.S. is controlled by Jews, repeating several times: “Rupert Murdoch is a Zionist Jew!” That same day, an individual distributed literature by Holocaust denier Mark Weber.

On May 9, 2007, Imam Abdel Aleem Musa said: “who ran the slave trade…who funded [it]? You’ll study and you will find out: the Jews…It was the Jewish bankers…in Vienna, with pockets full of money, funding and insuring [sic], that’s who did it…. you can’t tell us about no holocaust. Between the African Americans and the Native Americans, everybody else’s stuff was small potatoes.”

So, these comments do not represent attacks on Jewish “ethnicity”? Well, apparently that’s because they were uttered in the context of “opposition to the policies of Israel.” I guess, by these standards, the virulent anti-semitism on display at the U.N. World Conference Against Racism (including a placard that read “What if Hitler had won? There would be no Israel, and no Palestinian bloodshed”) was not racist at all, since the alleged intent was criticism of Israel. And, by these standards, if someone on campus delivered anti-Muslim hate speeches based upon “concerns over terrorism and national security” or “the authoritarian nature of Arab governments”, then that would be OK.

The OCR report is worse than a whitewash–it has effectively legitimized anti-semitic hate speech on all college campuses, so long as the speakers claim to be critics of Israel.

With tongue planted firmly in cheek, Tim Blair recounts his visit to Israel–the heart of the International Zionist Conspiracy–and reveals the Mossad’s nefarious plans to control the height of his trousers.

Steve Hochstadt, a professor of history at Illinois College in Jacksonville and author of Sources of the Holocaust, has penned a curious column over at HNN denouncing what he calls the “remarkable” lack of reaction to Ann Coulter’s now infamous comments that Jews need to be “perfected.” Hochstadt writes: “Media watchdogs have let her statements pass. Even the ever-vigilant Anti-Defamation League made only a brief public comment, and then dropped the issue.”

The mains reason for this deafening silence, he theorizes, is Middle East politics:

Recently Christian fundamentalists have come strongly to the defense of Israel in its battle against Palestinians. Those who believe in the approaching “end time” want the Holy Land to be in the hands of Jews when Jesus returns, in order to fulfill their interpretation of Biblical prophecies. Fundamentalists in America are now some of the Israeli government’s most vociferous and financially generous supporters, just as many American Jews have gradually become more critical of Israeli settlement policy and treatment of Palestinians.

Those American Jewish organizations and spokespersons who have been the most vigilant in combating the antisemitism of neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and ordinary bigots are also the most vocal defenders of Israeli policy. They have gladly accepted Christian fundamentalist support for Israel, despite knowing that fundamentalists believe the return of Jesus will be the end of Judaism and Jews. Perhaps they made the calculation that support for Israel today is what’s important, since they don’t believe in the Second Coming anyway.

I’ve commented many times that Jewish organizations should think twice about their alliance of convenience with Evangelicals. Still, I have to wonder: What has Steve Hochstadt been smoking? Jewish watchdog groups were certainly not silent about Coulter. The Anti-Defamation League was strident in its criticism of Coulter’s “anti-semitism”–and its comments were widely quoted in the media. (The ADl took the further step of sending a letter of complaint to the editor of the conservative pundit site Townhall.com) And the American Jewish Committee–which outraged leftist Jews with the publication of its pamphlet, “Progressive’ Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism”–called her remarks “hateful.”

Indeed, to the extent that there has been any sympathy for Coulter in the Jewish committee, it can be found among academics such as Yaakov Ariel, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, who sought to contextualize her remarks within the theology of Evangelical Christians.

I grow weary of the generalization that American Jews are willing to sell out their own in order to appease their Christian Zionist supporters. You would think a professor of Holocaust history would know better about the pitfalls of promoting unsubstantiated stereotypes.

I admit, I grow weary of the “You started it – No, you started it” argumentation that inevitably accompanies any discussion of Middle East politics. Still, after being subjected to constant shrieking about Zionism being “Jewish imperialism”–and moonbats like Jeremy Blankfort declaring “there is a direct line from Deuteronomy and the genocides committed by Jews”– I admit that I appreciated the historical ironies raised by Hugh Kennedy’s new book, The Great Arab Conquests. It’s a timely reminder that the moral high ground often rests on rather shaky foundations.

As book critic Carlin Romano notes:

The Islamic and Arabic character of every Mideast nation outside of present-day Saudi Arabia is the blunt result of military conquest—the greatest imperialistic taking of other people’s lands by force in history, a “tale of cruelty and destruction.” As Kennedy puts it, “there is nothing inevitable about the Arab/Islamic identity of the Middle East. … Most of the population of Syria spoke Greek or Aramaic; most of those in Iraq, Persian or Aramaic; in Egypt they spoke Greek or Coptic; in Iran they spoke Pahlavi; in North Africa they spoke Latin, Greek or Berber. None of them were Muslims.”

Accomplished in less than a century after the death in A.D. 632 of Muhammad…the Great Arab Conquests of Kennedy’s title refers to the subjugation of Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Iran, North Africa, Pakistan and other territories by tough Bedouin armies, never larger than 20,000 tribal warriors, attacking outward from Arabia.

The great Arab conquests encompassed far more territory than the United States’ seizure of Mexican lands in the early 19th century, the Soviet Union’s takeover of Eastern Europe and the formerly German Konigsberg after World War Two, or any number of other international land grabs.

Kennedy’s history also makes clear that the very justification for control over land for which the Arab world regularly castigates Israel–military conquest–constitutes the whole explanation of why the Mideast is more than 99 percent Muslim.

Here’s an experiment: Pick any event in history and type it into Google. Next, type the word “Zionists” and hit the search button.

Yes, you’ll find at lease ten web pages that prove the Zionists are behind everything. Now, I know that we’re “responsible” for the War on Terror, War in Iraq, and both World Wars…but I’m always surprised to learn that we’re also responsible for the destruction of the Space Shuttle Columbia, Pokemon, and Hurricane Katrina.

I feel sort of sorry for these conspiracy theorists. Their so obsessed with exposing “the truth” that they never take time to enjoy the finer things in life.

So, as a public service, I’ve created the Official Judeosphere Zionist-Conspiracy-O-Matic (TM). It’s simple, just follow this flow chart and mix-and-match items from actual conspiracy theories. It allows for dozens of variations, and it’s an incredible time-saver!