Brian Goldfarb on conspiracy theory.

Why write an article on conspiracy theory? Hopefully, that will become clear as this article unfolds, but, basically, because so many members and supporters of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanction (BDS) movement indulge themselves in a variety of conspiracy theorists.

So, how am I to use the notion of conspiracy theory? It’s easy enough to decide what it isn’t: it isn’t outright fabrications such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, produced by the Tsarist secret police in the late 19th Century in the full knowledge that they were telling lies. It isn’t the tendentious rubbish (even if based vaguely on a truism) produced by someone like Tom Hickey as a superficial justification for an academic boycott of Israel (but more of that later). Rather, it is the decision to assign the cause of some event or events to a person or group of people without resorting to seeking evidence of a link between the event(s) and the people blamed. It follows that there is no process of considering evidence, weighing the likelihood of this evidence actually demonstrating a link between event and people, and it further follows that no process of logical thought is employed anywhere in this sequence (even if something vaguely resembling the process known as “thinking” appears to have taken place).

The advantage for the believer of a conspiracy theory is that it saves them having to think, reason and seek facts and other forms of evidence to support their previously arrived at conclusion, as just argued. Any efforts made to introduce logic and reason by those of the rest of us who prefer evidence to assumption and argument to assertion tend to be met with statements along the lines of “well, that’s what ‘they’ want you to believe”. As the Observer reviewer of David Aaronovitch’s book “Voodoo History” put it, “you might not want to be trapped in a lift with the Duke of Edinburgh, but that doesn’t mean he murdered his daughter-in-law.” Regrettably, no amount of cast-iron evidence (sufficient, note, to convince even the most paranoid of intelligence officers) that Prince Philip was a thousand miles away at the time of Princess Diana’s death and, anyway, hasn’t talked to anyone in intelligence circles or even anyone who might have the slightest contact with such circles in several decades, will convince anyone who believes otherwise and will merely elicit the response already noted above about what “they” want you to believe.

Conspiracy theories are comforting, for all the reasons already given. They are a blanket, keeping the cold light of rationality away from the believer. This matters little (other than to those immediately affected, such as family, friends, etc) when the conspiracy concerns whether or not Princess Diana was “targeted” by the (or a) secret service. It matters a little (though at this distance in time not that much) more when there is still speculation, 46 years and several investigations later, as to whether Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone, mentally unstable, assassin (or was there a second, or a third, shooter on the “grassy knoll” – Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorists know exactly what this is all about), or whether Oswald was wound up and set off by…who? The CIA? The Mafia? The KGB?

However, it is far more worrying, and potentially dangerous, when conspiracy theory reaches out to embrace as the villains whole groups of easily identifiable people, such as the Jews, the Moslems, the Blacks, homosexuals, gypsies…

And this is what we are facing here on Engage and in similar forums, in the real world, when conspiracy theory as to the cause of all “our” ills is made concrete with the threats to boycott Israeli universities and Israeli goods, and with threats (and actual occurrences) of attacks on Jews world-wide for the alleged sins of Israel. This becomes ever clearer every time those who are members of the BDS movement and others of their ilk post here. No matter how often and how strongly they are asked for evidence to support their claims (assertions, in actuality) that Gaza is like the Warsaw Ghetto, that genocide is being committed on the West Bank, they merely repeat these assertions (possibly in different words, but it is still repetition) as though this was evidence. They may introduce new topics and assertions, as though this is evidence (perhaps they believe it is) or possibly to distract us. Eventually, they go away, for the time being (unless I’m maligning the moderators, who get tired of reading such repetitive material and decide not to reproduce it).

Occasionally, it dawns on one or other of these people what is being requested of them. One such person (let’s call them “Z”), some months back, actually asked me where they might find the evidence I kept demanding of them. I pointed out to them (quite gently, I thought) that as it was “Z” who was trying to get us to change our minds, they were the one who was under an obligation to find it for themself: I certainly wasn’t going to, especially as I was and am dubious that such evidence actually exists. I may be being too hard on “Z”: “Z” did appear, at least some of the time, to want to understand the arguments, not just assert a contrary view and maybe there was a misunderstanding as to what was being asked of them, not just about evidence, but also about the rules of debate.

However, “Z” appears to be an exception. Consider, for example, Tom Hickey, UCU member, (still) elected to its Council and prime exemplar of conspiracy theory. When “debating” the question of a boycott of Israeli universities in the pages of the online version of the British Medical Journal, 27 July, 2007, he wrote (in response to a self-posed question, why boycott Israeli and only Israeli universities): “And we are speaking of a culture, both in Israel and in the long history of the Jewish diaspora, in which education and scholarship are held in high regard. That is why an academic boycott might have a desirable political effect in Israel, an effect that might not be expected elsewhere.” This is where the basis of a vague truism referred to in the first paragraph comes in: it is true that Jews, generally, venerate formal education. But so do vast swathes of the rest of humanity: not many parents declare, hand on heart, that they wish their and everyone else’s children to be ignorant, or at least no better educated than themselves and others like them.

But what is notable here is that Israel and Jews are conflated as though they are one (which is, in itself, an antisemitic attitude), and no other regimes which might conceivably upset Hickey and his fellow believers care anything like as much (if at all) about education as Israelis and Jews (so much for the Chinese, Saudis, Syrians, Sudanese, Zimbabweans, et al): arguably, a racist view. And why should he care about Israel and Jews? Well, he and his fellow boycotters are frequently equating Gaza with the Warsaw Ghetto; claiming Israel is committing genocide on the West Bank and/or in Gaza; is starving the Gazan Palestinians to death; stole Palestine from its previous inhabitants – all with nothing that would pass for evidence in the hallowed halls of the academe of which he and many like him are members, and only passes muster as a real argument in the fevered minds of the members of the Palestine Solidarity Committee, the Socialist Workers Party, Jews for Justice for Palestinians, JBIG and all the other components of the BDS movement. And all of them, of course, dismiss, or more likely just ignore (“well, that’s they want you to believe, isn’t it?”) all evidence to the contrary. Evidence such as the Palestinian refugee population increasing seven-fold in 60 years (some “genocide”), that the standard of living of the population of Gaza is no lower now than when the Israelis occupied it, or that no-one has found any evidence for mass graves on the West Bank.

And this is a resort to a conspiracy theory on a massive scale: Israel must be punished for what is happening in Gaza and on the West Bank. Further, no reference must be made to the ideologies of Hamas and Hezbollah; no examination of the actual history of the area the Romans, after the last revolt of the Jews against their rule, renamed “Palestina”; no consideration of the opposition of Palestinians to legitimate settlement by Jews in the Turkish-ruled Palestine; no thought as to the unprovoked violence showed by Palestinians towards Jews in the Palestine of the British Mandate; no study of the repeated rejection by Palestinians and their Arab backers of the United Nations, and later, plans for two states. None of this, because this would demand thought, reflection, logic, open argument: all the hallmarks of rationality and the intellectual process.

Rather, the whole BDS movement prefers to keep the blanket of conspiracy theory around itself and talk, in effect, only to each other: after all, the bright light of rational discourse can only hurt the eyes of the true believer.

So what are we to do in the face of this massive example of anti-intellectualism? In the immortal words of Winston Churchill during World War 2, “keep buggering on”. Not to do so is to surrender the pass to the barbarians. Anyway, it’s not them we’re talking to: it’s those seeking evidence and arguments to confront their own local conspiracy theorists and those not yet convinced either way, but open to evidence, argument and rationality. Whatever we do, we mustn’t let conspiracy theory and irrationality rule the debate or allow those who prefer not to think to get away with not thinking, and by so doing, think that they have “won”.

And by the way, if anything I have said makes anyone who posts comments (or whose bon mots get reported) here feels that I’m talking to them, well, if the cap fits, wear it (but hardly with pride!).

BRICUP’s guest Bongani Masuku falls foul of Human Rights Commission

The South African Human Rights Commission found that Bongani Masuku’s statements amounted to hate speech.

This post is by Alana Pugh-Jones of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies.

Bongani Masuku, International Relations Secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), will be one of the speakers in the upcoming BRICUP seminar series entitled, ‘Israel, the Palestinians and Apartheid: The Case for Sanctions and Boycotts’.

BRICUP, a an organisation of UK based academics set up in response to the Palestinian Call for Academic Boycott and with the mission to ‘support Palestinian universities, staff and students’ and ‘to oppose the continued illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands’, is hosting numerous talks at universities across the UK. Speakers on the line up include amongst others the former South African Minister of Intelligence Ronnie Kasrils and Omar Barghouti of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

But it is the inclusion of Bongani Masuku in a public lecture series, run by a self described academically orientated organization, which is cause for concern.

Mr Masuku currently has a case of hate speech being reviewed against him at the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC). The SA Jewish Board of Deputies laid a formal complaint with the SAHRC against Masuku in March, on the basis of “numerous inflammatory, threatening and insulting statements” he has made against the South African Jewish community. In a press statement, the Board accused Masuku of using “overtly threatening language” in reference to the mainstream Jewish community because of its support for the State of Israel.

Specifically, Masuku had openly and repeatedly stated that COSATU would target Jewish supporters of Israel and “make their lives hell” and urged that “every Zionist must be made to drink the bitter medicine they are feeding our brothers and sisters in Palestine”. He had explicitly demonised South African Jews who, unlike Ronnie Kasrils and others, had not “risen above the fascist parochial paranoia of Israel”, writing that such people could not be expected to be regarded as human beings by people like himself.

Masuku’s various statements were believed to constitute serious breaches of the Prohibition of Hate Speech as contained in the South African Constitution. Public pronouncements declaring that Jews who support Israel are not welcome in South Africa and should be forced to leave, as well as calling on COSATU’s members to target Jewish businesses and to confront Jews who support Israel wherever they might be even if this means doing something that in his own words, “may necessarily cause what is regarded as harm”, prompted the SA Jewish Board of Deputies to take action.

This week, the HRC released its finding, in which it unequivocally found that Masuku’s statements amounted to hate speech and recommended that the matter would best be resolved through litigation before the Equality Court to seek a public apology from him. Whatever the findings may be, inviting someone who openly and consistently promotes threatening action towards a community instead of employing factually based arguments to forward their cause, is a dangerous move which not only serves to undermine whatever merits may exist in the event but will only provide a platform for furthering hatred and tension around the Israel and Palestine debate.

Alana Pugh-Jones
Johannesburg, South Africa

Mira adds:

University and College Union boycotters and BRICUP members, including Mike Cushman, Hilary Rose, Steven Rose, John Chalcraft and Jonathan Rosenhead have ushered anti-Jewish racism into their movement. Their organisation’s uncritical hosting of Bongani Masuku shows that, for them, hatred of Israel is an acceptable substitute for powers of analysis. This is why BRICUP cannot be effective on behalf of Palestinians and why it’s reasonable to speculate that BRICUP’s main concern isn’t Palestinian emancipation, but hatred of Israel.

Update: see Ami’s guest post on Harry’s Place and background from Ben Cohen on Z-Word blog.

Update 2: According to the Facebook group page for Israel, the Palestinians and Apartheid, UCU is co-hosting the Leeds event.

Saul Asks A Question.

Saul by email asks :

John Demjanjuk is accused of the murder of 29,500 people in Poland in
1943 as part of the planned systematic extermination of Jews.

Antisemites deny the Holocaust happened.

I have two genuine questions about this letter published in today’s Guardian.

“What kind of justice is it that proscribes the normally accepted
right of the accused to challenge the assumption that a crime had, in
fact, occurred? Normally the prosecution is obliged to prove beyond
reasonable doubt that the crime of murder had taken place. This is not
the case in the trial of Demjanjuk. The court will, without proof,
arbitrarily accept that the crime took place. Being stripped of his
most powerful defence, the accused is reduced to pleading mistaken
identity or that he had nothing to do with an unproved murder.”

1. Is this letter doing what I think it is doing, that is, denying the
facts of the Holocaust? Or is some other interpretation possible?

2. If so, why did the Guardian think it fir to publish? or is
Holocaust Denial now part of “legiitimate debate”?

Saul.

UPDATE. Modernity sheds some light on the letter writer’s views.

SAUL ADDS : On an update at Modernity, this has now been placed on the relevant letter’s page at the Guardian,

“Editor’s statement: We published a letter by John Mortl in the Guardian of Thursday 3 December and on this site relating to the case of John Demjanjuk, who is accused of assisting in the murder of 27,900 people in Poland. Unfortunately, we misread the letter. The underlying meaning, we now realise, implied Holocaust denial. As soon as we realised our mistake, we removed the letter from the site. It should never have been published and we apologise unreservedly that it was.”

I’d like to thank Modernity for the information he has thrown on this matter, as well as those who posted their comments, especially Jeremy.
Regards,
Saul

European Jewish Congress concern over Swiss referendum on minarets

The European Jewish Congress defends equal treatment of Swiss Muslims:

Following the referendum in Switzerland concerning the construction of minarets, the European Jewish Congress reiterates the position of its Swiss affiliate SIG in “speaking out firmly in favour of equal treatment and justice and against laws of any type which are intended to apply specifically to certain religious communities.”

The European Jewish Congress defends freedom of religion and religious practice as a fundamental human right, including the right to build places of worship.

Race encyclopaedia’s flawed compromise

About a year ago, we heard from Brian Henry that:

“Next time your kids look up ‘Zionism’ in an encyclopedia, they may read that Israel is a racist state based on an ideology akin to Nazism. This article, recycling the old lie that Zionism is racism, appears in the new Encyclopedia of Race and Racism published by Macmillan Reference U.S.A.”

The author was Noel Ignatiev, of whom Ben Cohen wrote on Z-Word blog:

“What strikes me is that Ignatiev, like Shamir, is a provocateur and a propagandist who relentlessly pushes themes shared by far left and far right alike. He makes statements like this one: “Osama bin Laden was no more than telling the truth when he said that the Muslim world is facing an alliance of Zionists and Crusaders.” And this one, from the same article: “Is one permitted to say above the level of a whisper that U.S. policy toward Israel has something to do with Jewish influence in the US?””

Ben Cohen now has more news:

“Nearly a year later, Gale has instituted an absurd compromise whereby Ignatiev’s unedited entry sits alongside a far superior contribution by an Israeli academic, Uriel Abulof. Those familiar with Zionist history will doubtless find areas of disagreement with Abulof, but the point is that his article is thoughtful and well-researched. His bibliography includes Ze’ev Sternhell and Arthur Hertzberg, whereas Ignatiev relies on the likes of fringe writers such as Lenni Brenner and Moshe Menuhin, author of The Decadence of Judaism in Our Time. By juxtaposing Abulof with Ignatiev, Gale has devalued Abulof’s contribution and wiped out the very clear line which separates scholarship from propaganda.”

Not good.

Rowan Laxton, back in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

There is a great deal of relevance to Engage readers on Harry’s Place – too much to link to it all, but for a sample go and read Denry’s Freedom of Information request, and his discoveries about what happened to Rowan Laxton. Rowan Laxton became so angry about injustices against Palestinians that he started cussing about Jews as if one thing followed from the other.

You can question whether he should have been convicted for shouting about “fucking Jews” and blowing Israelis “off the face of the fucking Earth”, but after such an eruption of hateful bigotry – back in the FCO?

BRICUP dreams of apartheid while the Abraham Fund works for co-existence

BRICUP is touring some boycott celebrity speakers round the country to talk about ‘Israel, the Palestinians and apartheid: the case for sanctions and boycott’. Perhaps somebody could ask Omar Barghouti to kindly explain about Tel Aviv again, for those of us who still don’t understand how he could demand boycott of a really good university, and then go and privilege himself by enrolling there.

Or perhaps we could just give our attention to something better, because meanwhile in the real world Israel has once again brought new meaning to the word ‘apartheid’. A delegation of senior Israeli police officers is visiting Belfast to find out  how to provide a respectful service for minorities:

“The mission, which includes nine brigadier generals from various police departments, is part of an educational program that aims to introduce the officers to practical tools for providing egalitarian and respectful policing services to Israel’s Arab citizens.

The program was developed by the Training and Education Department of the Human Resources Division and the Abraham Fund Initiatives.

This program is part of a joint venture between the Israel Police and the Abraham Fund Initiatives aiming to improve relations between the police and the Arab community. The venture was initiated following the October 2000 events and the publication of the Or Commission recommendations.”

That this has gone ahead under the current Israeli government is a tribute to the Abraham Fund and their friends in the Knesset. As well as advocating for Arab citizens with the Israeli right, the Abraham Fund has to make arguments to Arab citizens who want to turn their backs on Jewish ones. One example is a recent move to boycott “Jewish organisations” by Arab citizens of Sakhnin, to which the Abrahan Fund responded:

“Many of Israel’s supporters understand that just as in the past they contributed toward immigration, absorption, infrastructure development, and project renewal, today the issue of integration of Israel’s Arab citizens is an important and urgent national necessity which needs to be advanced to the top of the agenda.”

To precisely this end, the Abraham Fund is having a global online benefit on December the 9th 2009 during which they will present their work and how it is helping Israeli society. Register to join them real time, free.

Bonus link: The Abraham Fund’s Mohammad Darawshe, speaking in London earlier this year.

Hungary: Catholic Church dignitary peddles racist flyer of neo-Arrow Cross party

This is a guest post by Karl Pfeifer.

Their tongue is as an arrow shot out: it speaketh deceit: one speaketh peaceably to his neighbour with his mouth, but in heart he layeth his wait

Jeremiah 9:8

Sometimes even a hardboiled observer of Hungary can be surprised by what is possible in a member country of EU. I had to write one year ago about antisemitism inside the Catholic and the Reformed Churches of Hungary[1].  But usually I do not look into Hungarian Catholic or Reformed Church website. A leaflet of the neo-Arrow Cross party Jobbik distributed in Budapest – an invitation to the ceremony of the installation of a cross on a big place in the centre of Buda, part of Budapest, on the western side of the Danube – sent to me by snail mail not only astonished me, but made me curious. Could it be that a catholic priest is peddling explicit racism? Could it be that a Calvinist bishop gives a speech at such an event?

The answer is an unequivocal YES.

The organizer of his event, dean Antal é Musits organized this event according the leaflet. So I looked into the website of his church [2] and I found the mentioned Jobbik leaflet in jpg [3]. On this Jobbik leaflet peddled by dean Musits I found the following sentence:

“The society of Christian gentlemen is expecting people of our race with hot tea with rum.”

(A Keresztény Úriemberek Társasága forró, rumos teával várja a magunkfajtákat.”)

In order to understand exactly what this means, one should know that the word ‘Christian’ in this Hungarian context means not a member of a Christian church, but non-Jewish. The word ‘magunkfajta’ is based on the word ‘faj’ which means ‘race’. The word ‘fajta’ has more than one meaning, it means ‘of our kind’, but also ‘somebody of our race’. In the context of a Jobbik leaflet ‘magunkfajta’ means our race.

I thought I’d surprise a Hungarian Catholic in my acquaintance with this news, but he told me that in Hungary it is not uncommon for Catholic bishops to promote, in church and usually implicitly, the political right-wing party Fidesz, and even Jobbik. A Catholic priest peddling in Budapest a racist leaflet on the web site of his church did not surprise him. Cistercian monk Ákos Előd Brückner declared that Hungarians should feel proud to have such organisations as Jobbik. This is not surprising either.

I am not amazed by the fact that a Bishop of the Calvinist church is speaking at an event organized and promoted by racist and antisemitic Jobbik. After all I had to write several times about Lóránt Hegedüs junior, who also racist and antisemitic, and appears at the events of the infamous Hungarian Guard [4].

So I did some research on this bishop. Tamás Csuka is a Bishop of the Reformed Church and a retired brigadier (formerly chief pastor of the Hungarian Army) and as of September 2009, still active in his church [5]. Bishop Csuka consecrated the flags of the Hungarian Guards [6] and gave an antisemitic speech at this gathering in Budapest on November 28.

I wrote in 2007: “The violence is a particular concern in view of Jobbik’s belief that the coalition “should not be able to finish its term”, which ends in 2010″.

To collaborate with a racist party when violence is rampant is a dangerous policy. The Catholic and Reformed Churches feel the need to declare publicly their antagonism to racism and at the same time to be “realistic” and cater for that a substantial part of their members who are racist and antisemitic.

They do SPEAK OUT OF BOTH SIDES OF THEIR MOUTH, to the world they say “We are against racism” but in Hungary, by promoting the political business of the right and extreme right more or less implicitly, church dignitaries signal that racism and antisemitism are acceptable for believers.

1) http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/07/26/hungary%E2%80%99s-biased-justice/

http://blog.z-word.com/2008/10/the-cosmopolitan-parasite-class-antisemitism-in-hungary/

2) Szent Imre Plébánia: http://www.szentimre.hu/archives/1455

3) http://www.szentimre.hu/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/keresztallitas.jpg

4) see 1

5) http://www.reformatus.hu/archiv/2009/folytat_hirek.php?cikk=1249299678

6) http://www.searchlightmagazine.com/index.php?link=template&story=210

As far as I am informed, the Hungarian ministry of defence did not take action against Tamás Csuka. K.P.

http://esbalogh.typepad.com/hungarianspectrum/2007/08/th-hungarian-gu.html