17

The Quds Day Panic of 2019

CJ Hopkins

Gegen Al-Quds Tag

So it appears we managed to survive another terrifying Quds Day in Berlin. It was certainly touch-and-go there for a while, what with the media issuing hysterical warnings about the hordes of “Hamas and Hezbollah supporters, neo-Nazis, and conspiracy theorists” that were going to materialize out of the ether, goose-step down the Kurfürstendamm, and reenact Kristallnacht, or something.

The city was braced for an all-out Perso-Palestinian Quds Day Pogrom, which is always a threat on Quds Day in Berlin, but the hysteria level this year was elevated, due to the Anti-Semitism Pandemic that mysteriously erupted in 2016 for no apparent reason whatsoever.

OK, what, you’re probably asking, is Quds Day? It’s an annual event initiated by Iran to show support for the Palestinians and opposition to Zionism. It takes place on the last Friday of Ramadan, in opposition to Israel’s Jerusalem Day, the national holiday commemorating Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem in the aftermath of the Six-Day War.

In Berlin, there’s an annual Quds Day march, which the German media typically respond to by whipping up anti-Semitism hysteria and fanatical, guilt-ridden support for Israel. This year was no exception … on the contrary.

A week or so before the event, Felix Klein, Germany’s “Commissioner for Jewish Life and the Fight Against Anti-Semitism,” warned Jews not to wear kippahs in public, on account of the unprecedented explosion of anti-Semitism throughout the country.

According to the interior ministry, there were 62 violent anti-Semitic attacks in Germany during 2018, compared to 37 in 2017, which, in a nation of 83 million people, and with a history of real-life, goose-stepping Nazis, and of perpetrating the Holocaust, and so on … well, you can understand the Commissioner’s alarm.

The international corporate media began spreading the news that Anti-Semitism was once again on the march in Germany. The BBC reported that official figures showed that 1,646 hate crimes had been committed against Jews in 2018, up 10% from 2017! CNN reported that anti-Semitic hate crimes had increased by almost 20%! According to The Jerusalem Post, there were 1,800 anti-Semitic incidents committed against Jews in 2018! It was almost as if the Anti-Semitism Pandemic was retroactively metastasizing right before our eyes.

But whatever. The statistics don’t really matter. The point was, “Jews are not safe in Germany!” The Putin-Nazis had teamed up with the Iranian Nazis and the Syrian Nazis, who were backing the Palestinian Nazis, whose irrational hatred of the State of Israel the German Nazis had somehow weaponized (probably with a bunch of fake Facebook ads), and they were all going to storm the historic high-end shopping boulevard of West Berlin!

Then, on Friday, the day before Quds Day, in a desperate, last-minute, tactical manoeuvre, German politicians and cultural figures exhorted Jews and Gentiles alike to defiantly wear their kippahs on Quds Day.

BILD, the leading German tabloid, even printed little cut-out “BILD kippas” (complete with meticulous assembly instructions), and called on Germans to wear them on Quds Day to show their solidarity with the State of Israel … uh, sorry, I meant with the Jewish people.

The BILD kippa tactic was a huge success! On Quds Day, fewer than a thousand people, many of them women and children, peacefully strolled along the Kurfürstendamm chanting slogans like “free, free Palestine,” and asking the world to stop the Israelis from penning people up in de facto ghettos, shooting their legs off with dum-dum bullets, demolishing their houses, hospitals, and schools, stealing their land, randomly murdering them, and otherwise behaving like sadistic fascists.

The hordes of “Hamas and Hezbollah supporters, neo-Nazis, and conspiracy theorists” that the corporate media had warned us were coming, oddly, never showed their faces … clearly, the “BILD kippas” scared them off.

Or maybe it was the counter-demonstrators. Hundreds of anti-anti-Semites, including prominent German government officials, Israeli diplomats, Antifa factions, members of the local Jewish community, and BILD subscribers confronted the march, wearing kippahs, waving Israeli flags, displaying giant “MAGA” banners, shouting “long live Israel” and “free Gaza from Hamas,” and giving the marchers the finger, and so on (which, OK, I found a little confusing, as, the last time I checked, Trump was still Hitler, and Antifa were supposedly a bunch of anarchists).

In any event, the hysteria has subsided. Berlin and Israel appear to have survived. The Jews can come back out of hiding, although it isn’t quite clear whether Germany wants them to wear their kippahs in public or not now. Hopefully, we’ll be receiving some sort of official directive from Commissioner Klein (or possibly Axel Springer) about that.

But, seriously, you can’t really blame the Germans for a going a little overboard with their anti-anti-Semitism hysteria or for being reluctant to criticize Israel. It wasn’t all that long ago that their parents and grandparents were heiling Hitler and systematically murdering millions of Jews, or looking the other way while it happened. Most of the Germans I’m acquainted with still feel kind of awful about that. Which isn’t terribly surprising, is it?

I mean, imagine, if you’re one of my American readers, if some other country conquered the USA, and put our political and military leaders on trial for all the war crimes they’ve committed, and for the millions of people they’ve systematically murdered, and taught our children the truth about our history … that might give you some idea of how most Germans feel about the Nazis and the Holocaust.

So, yes, Germans are a bit hypersensitive about anything resembling anti-Semitism, and they tend to conflate opposition to Israel with hatred of the Jewish people (despite the fact that Israel is doing a pretty convincing impression of the Nazis, what with its ethnic cleansing, walls, ghettos, sadistic goons, propaganda, and so on).

Many Germans also overcompensate for their feelings of shame about the Holocaust by displaying an awkward fascination and enthusiasm for anything “Jewish” (you know, like many liberal Americans fetishize Native and African Americans), so that might explain the “BILD kippa” nonsense.

No, I’m not mocking or scolding the Germans … they’re still trying to work their history out. I’m just trying to track the propaganda and cynical emotional manipulation that we are increasingly being subjected to as the global capitalist ruling classes wage their War on Populism.

The Quds Day Panic of 2019 is just one example. There are many more, both manufactured and all-too-real. The Charlottesville Nazis. Charlottesville II. The MAGA bomber. The Tree of Life shooting. The Christchurch attack. Jussie Smollett. MAGA hat Smirk Boy. And the list goes on … pretty much as it always has.

I’m sorry if this comes as a shock to anyone, but the world has always contained a minority of racist and anti-Semitic whack jobs. They didn’t suddenly start murdering people when Brexit passed and Trump got elected.

They’ve been doing that for quite some time. And, of course, there is still anti-Semitism in Germany. Saxony is crawling with neo-Nazis. And Iran really would like to wipe out Israel, just as Israel would like to wipe out Iran. None of this is in any way new or shocking to anyone who has been paying attention.

The only thing that has significantly changed since November 8, 2016, is the official narrative we are being fed, in which anyone opposing global capitalism and the hegemony of neoliberal ideology is either a Russian or some kind of Nazi, and a new “anti-Semitism” or “fascism” panic is whipped up for us on a monthly basis.

The Quds Day Panic of 2019 (like the Charlottesville Kristallnacht of 2017) is going to be rerun, over and over, in endless variations, until 2020, or whenever the global capitalist ruling classes manage to restore Normality.

By that time Israeli sports teams will probably be wearing little Palestinians on their caps, Julian Assange will be locked away in Supermax, and satirists like me … well, I think you know.

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Tutisicecream
Tutisicecream
Jun 7, 2019 5:36 AM

I sympathise with CJ, it’s all too confusing this neo-liberal apoplexy which has seized the MSM- stream of consciousness. It’s a kind of nightmare. The truth has to be hidden and often in plain sight, such as: Assange; Skripal; Syria; Libya; Ukraine; Venezuela on and on ad nauseam… With the anti-Semitism schism being buried in plain sight, under the banner of trusted news. What ever that’s supposed to mean!

Failing neo-liberalism is cloaking itself in the chimera of trust and truth as if it were real. unfortunately it’s not. Truth is not about choosing your criminal fraternity, but exposing the corruption which drives it.

Gezzah Potts
Gezzah Potts
Jun 7, 2019 12:30 AM

“they try and styilise themselves as a resistance movement against the Alleged Aggressor Israel” WTF? That was a quote from that Antifa link CJ kindly supplied. So now Antifa (or a faction) is in bed with a mass murdering apartheid state. Is up down? Are apples blue? Gatekeepers gatekeepers everywhere, and the truth is continuously crushed under the weight of Neoliberal jackboots. Pretty soon it will be a criminal offence to wear a BDS or Free Palestine T shirt. Oh wait…..

mark
mark
Jun 9, 2019 8:19 PM
Reply to  Gezzah Potts

“Pretty soon it will be a criminal offence to wear a BDS T shirt.”

It already is. In Shabbos Goy Macron’s France, youngsters have already been prosecuted for wearing BDS T shirts.

Gezzah Potts
Gezzah Potts
Jun 10, 2019 10:53 AM
Reply to  mark

Yeah, was thinking of France when I said ‘Oh wait’…. And we know the situation in states like Texas with state employees, and what, 25 other U.S states have explicit Anti BDS laws plus Germany came out a couple weeks ago and condemned the BDS movement as anti semitic. I’m quite amazed similar laws havn’t happened in Australia yet. The Zionists are pushing back hard.

mark
mark
Jun 7, 2019 12:02 AM

There was a lot of similar hyperventilating about the “epidemic of anti semitism” in the US a couple of years ago. AIPAC and its 10,000 similar holocaust industry organisations solemnly announced that anti semitic incidents had risen 50,000% and Jews were about to be gassed by the million.

Their figures included 163 bomb threats to US synagogues made by a Jewish man in Israel.

There was a similar “epidemic of anti semitism” in France a few years ago. A lot of Jewish cemeteries were being vandalised, with gravestones smashed and spray painted graffiti. The culprit was eventually caught, a young Jewish man.

A Jewish woman on a US university campus complained that her accommodation was being vandalised with anti semitic graffiti. There were protest marches, solidarity demonstrations, and demands for action. The university authorities installed a hidden surveillance camera…………and promptly caught the young woman spray painting her own accommodation.

Most of these “anti semitic incidents” are bogus, fake, hoaxes.

“They scream out in pain as they punch you in the face.”

Shai Masot and the Friends of Israel are probably handing out the bulk order of spray cans to Jewish youths as we speak.

Fair dinkum
Fair dinkum
Jun 6, 2019 11:05 PM

Fear.
It sells papers, makes money, wins votes, creates paranoia, divides the people and most importantly, keeps the One Per Cent in an insurmountable position.

Francis Lee
Francis Lee
Jun 6, 2019 10:48 PM

I note that one of the banners reads ‘Solidarity with Israel’ (sic) and there seem to be a number of Israeli flags on view. Whatever happened to Solidarity with Palestine here? Here with have an expansionist, apartheid, militarised state, which breaks every rule in the UN book by its murderous treatment of Palestinians by the IDF, generally referred to as ‘mowing the grass’ i.e., killing them in large numbers. I seem to recall the time when the old Republic of South Africa was – quite rightly – cast as the villain by all civilized people. But Israel is somehow sacrosanct, above criticism. There have been a number of very detailed studies of the zionist project by reputable historians. Notably by Norman Finkelstein – yes, I know he is apparently dismissed as a ‘self-hating’ jew – as well as the ‘Israel Lobby’ by two notable and respected American scholars John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.

The ‘anti-semitic’ trope is just an attempt to intimidate any critics or criticism of Israel and its treatment of those hapless people which it treats as untermensch to be got rid of by fair means or fail. And before anyone calls me an anti-semite, I should point out that during the neo-nazi emergence in the UK in the early 1960s, when there was an attempt by the British National Party led by Colin Jordan and Martin Webster, inveterate nazis, often adorned in full Nazi regalia, to remobilise GENUINE anti-semitic elements in the UK. I was alarmed at this development I became involved with the Yellow Star Movement, a Jewish self-defence organization, although I am not myself Jewish. As I recall one of the organizers of the YSM was a genteleman called Harry Green. Well I was only 17 at the time so Harry and most of the others involved must either be dead or in the twilight of their lives. But that’s bye-the-bye

As Finkelstein points out the present Israeli/Zionst establishment is actually cynically weaponising the bitter memories of the holocaust to further its political agenda. One brave and notable internal critic is one Gideon Levy, who writes for Haaretz. Check Out his piece ”The Zionist Tango – Step Left, Step Right.
Prior to the formation of the state of Israel the zionists of this time argued that there was no place for Jews in European countries and this sentiment was reciprocated by GENUINE anti-semites in those countries. There was thus often a conflation of interests between Zionists and anti-semites. Arthur Balfour of the famous Balfour declaration basically gave Palestine to the Zionists.

There are strong reasons to suspect that Balfour was also anti-Semitic. In 1905, he pushed legislation aimed at preventing Jews fleeing persecution in Russia from entering Britain on the grounds they were “undesirable.”

One reason why Balfour may have been in favor of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine was that he disliked having Jews as neighbors. He once described Zionism as a “serious effort to mitigate the age-old miseries created for western civilization by the presence in its midst of a body which is too long regarded as alien and even hostile, but which it was equally unable to expel or absorb.”

The history of zionism, anti-semitism and Palestine needs a more careful examination than the one the MSM is giving it. I think it needs opening and some fresh air and thinking let in.

mark
mark
Jun 6, 2019 11:35 PM
Reply to  Francis Lee

“If you want to know who rules over you, ask who you are on no account allowed to criticise.”

crank
crank
Jun 6, 2019 8:36 PM

Poor analysis CJ.
I could send some Youtube links but, you know….
…instead Linh Dinh –
…you can be against racism, apartheid, borders, border walls, fascism, nationalism, ethnocentrism, traditional religion, war and genocide all you want, but Israel must be treated differently, for what’s good for the rest of the world doesn’t apply to Jews. This double standard is not inadvertent, but a deliberate strategy deployed by a hostile elite to weaken, divide and demoralize the masses.

I’ve become a pariah because I’ve repeatedly attacked Jewish power. That’s the one unforgivable cardinal sin in that Jew-dominated nation [the US], where every public intellectual, academic, politician and even the president must prostrate himself endlessly before this mendacious, blood thirsty and vindictive Moloch.

How can they forgive me for calling their sacred Holocaust an elaborate myth that’s “propped up by a shoahload of bogus scholarship and hundreds of tear jerking movies”? And I’ve added, “The Holocaust does not explain genocide but enables it, but few dare to say so, for fear of Jewish power.”

http://www.unz.com/ldinh/plastic-recycling-and-jousting-jews/

crank
crank
Jun 6, 2019 8:39 PM
Reply to  crank

At least some in politics are starting to take this seriously and attempt to uncover the zionist moles within Labour HQ and the party’s Governance and Legal Unit:
https://www.redressonline.com/2019/06/uk-anti-racism-group-call-on-labour-party-to-respond-to-complains-about-data-leaks-to-zionist-media/

crank
crank
Jun 6, 2019 9:21 PM
Reply to  Editor

That is a very revealing interjeciton OffG.
There clearly are others on here who do not ‘dismiss me as a lunatic’,
That you write such a thing, tells me that you do,
This is a denigrating smear – the like of which you endlessly (and rightly) criticise your political adversaries and media scumbags of all the time,
I did post some sources, and frequently do.
People rant on here all the time – it’s rant central.
I have had lengthy explorations of my opinions with others on your webpage, like just the other day with BigB.
Do you want to explore our opinions here and now?
Or just throw out insults ?

crank
crank
Jun 6, 2019 10:28 PM
Reply to  Editor

Or just throw out insults ?
It seems like you do.
Lines are being drawn.

crank
crank
Jun 7, 2019 8:55 AM
Reply to  Editor

This tells its own story.

What, in your opinion, is that story ?
Any chance of an explanation ?

crank
crank
Jun 7, 2019 6:43 PM
Reply to  Editor

Ok, I’ll sign off here. I fear that I am bringing ‘the party into disrepute’.
If the editors here are willing to resort to inferring that I am a lunatic and a ‘pariah’, and insinuating that I have a hidden agenda (or ‘story’), then its time to find another conversation space.
I hope that OffGuardian continues its trajectory unimpeded. I think it will not. It matters not whether you call a spade a spade, or not, it will be used to beat you into silence eventually. I would speak out now whilst there is the chance. I’ve made my point now I think on these pages. I am done.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/the-trust-project-big-media-and-silicon-valleys-weaponized-algorithms-silence-dissent/259030/
Newsguard is headed by Steven Brill, who happens to be Jewish.
The Trust Project is headed by Sally Lehrman, who also happens to be Jewish. It was seed funded by Craig Newman, who also happens to be Jewish.
Its main impact will probably be on Facebook, which has become the main routing point for news and opinion online. Facebook is of course headed by Mark Zuckerberg, who is Jewish.
Several funders of The Trust Project work with ADL and arch neocons like Bill Kristol. As Webb writes,

‘it remains to be seen whether there is overlap between how major tech companies like Google and Facebook use the Trust Indicators in its algorithms and the influence of the ADL on those very same algorithms.’

But don’t let any of that lead you to question the influence of Jewish power in the information sphere. No, that would place you with the lunatics and pariahs who have been de-monetised by Youtube, de-listed by Google and shadow-banned by Facebook (-and discredited by OffG’s ‘free speech’ editors).
I say, stand against all forms of racism, for we are all one people. Stand up to those who have made supremacism into a religion. Unpick the lies.

Harry Stotle
Harry Stotle
Jun 6, 2019 8:35 PM

Is there anything less appetising than the kind of selective, faux-outrage exhibited by those trapped in the MSM bubble? (yes, of course I mean the Guardian)

Give these journalists the option of either 3 months in Gaza or 3 months in Belmarsh then see if they continue with the same ridiculous hyperbole – needless to say CJ is spot on.

George
George
Jun 6, 2019 7:16 PM

Sorry but, with all this fake news panic, anti-Semitism, anti-anti-Semitism, anti-“revisionist”, this-denial and that-denial and all combinations thereof, I’m getting to the stage that, when I tune into a Guardian article titled “Jews in Germany warned of risks of wearing kippah cap in public “, I have no idea if it’s meant to be taken seriously or if it’s a piss take or a double bluff etc. Naomi Wolf once said that, under fascism, the role of lie-telling was no longer to deceive but to disorientate. I think we’re getting there.