Antony Loewenstein

Thank you.

2011 has been a Fox News year with a Muslim American President, socialism in the class room, terrorists in the White House and:

Elie Wiesel, Mr Murdoch, is a Holocaust survivor but he has used his fame to care about all kinds of causes (including, according to Norman Finkelstein, exploiting groups and firms involved in the genocide) and caring little about the Palestinians.

His supposed love and affection for humanity has its limits.

This is an area covered throughout the recently released book, On Utoya, and my contribution covers how the Norway killer Anders Breivik rather loved Israel in his manifesto.

This piece in American Jewish newspaper Forward highlights this disturbingly growing alliance between hardline Zionism and neo-Nazis (yes, you read that right):

Economic upheaval and strife in Europe have historically begat fierce nationalism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism. Faced with a serious debt crisis, severe budget cuts, grim austerity, rising unemployment and creeping inflation, the current depression is no exception.

Since the fall of 2008, reported incidents of anti-Semitism have risen across the continent. In Britain, a record number of anti-Jewish crimes was noted in 2009. This year in the Netherlands, the number of Jews who reported being verbally harassed, and even physically attacked, climbed. More recently, a restored Jewish cemetery in the Republic of Kosovo was desecrated with Nazi grafitti.

What is fundamentally different about Europe’s current condition, however, is that anti-Semitism has been largely superseded in the organized far-right by suspicion at best, and hatred at worst, of the continent’s growing Muslim community. As Australian writer Antony Loewenstein puts it: “Yesterday’s anti-Semites have reformed themselves as today’s crusading heroes against an unstoppable Muslim birth rate on a continent that now sees Islam as an intolerant and ghettoized religion.”

More curious still is that via this Islamophobia (for lack of a better term), Europe’s extremist parties have entered into a disturbing marriage of convenience with sections of the Israeli right. In December 2010, politicians including Heinz-Christian Strache of Austria’s Freiheitliche Partei and Filip Dewinter of Vlaams Belang in Flemish Belgium visited Israel and signed the Jerusalem Declaration, “guaranteeing Israel’s right to defend itself against terror.” On a separate occasion, Members of Knesset Aryeh Eldad (National Union) and Ayoob Kara (Likud) met with members of a Russian neo-Nazi delegation that also toured Yad Vashem.

The English Defense League — not a political party but, rather, a thuggish and violent mob made up of the same sort of white working-class males who formed the rank-and-file of Mosley’s Blackshirts — has described the bond between themselves and Israel in the following terms: “In many ways there are parallels to be drawn between the radicalization that has infected the Palestinians and their supporters and the radicalization that continues to breed in British mosques. In this way at least, the people of England and the people of Israel have a great deal in common.”

Tablet reports on how blind love for Zionism and hatred of Islam has become a toxic mix:

Since its inception in the 1970s, the Front National has wrapped itself in the repellent rags of traditional French anti-Semitism. The series of outrageous dérapages, or verbal slips, of the movement’s founder and longtime leader Jean-Marie Le Pen—Marine’s father—are legion, ranging from his remark that the Holocaust was a “detail” of history to his rhyming of crematory (crématoire) with the name of a Jewish politician Michel Durafour. Thus the question of whether anti-Semitism was incidental or central to the Front National’s ideological essence was, from the perspective of French Jewry, entirely settled.

Until now, that is. Since she assumed its leadership at the beginning of 2011, Marine Le Pen has worked to “modernize” her father’s party—a diplomatic word for purging its most reactionary elements. Nolwenn Le Blevennec, a journalist for the news site Rue89 who reports on the Front National, notes that Le Pen has demoted party figures like Christian Bouchet, a notorious fan of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and expelled Alexandre Gabriac, who gave a Nazi salute at a party rally. She’s also distanced herself from Alain Solal, a prominent anti-Semite previously identified as one of Front National’s intellectuals. Even more notably, by making her father the honorary president of the Front National, Le Pen has effectively made him a figurehead shorn of actual power.

At the same time, Marine Le Pen has made a series of dramatic overtures to the Jewish community. Her trip to the United States in early November largely passed under the radar of the American media, but it was widely covered by the French press. At first, the visit wobbled between the surreal and slapstick. At one point, Le Pen’s handlers tried to bar the pack of French journalists from following her into the U.S. Capitol; once inside, the reporters found that Le Pen’s strenuous efforts to meet with a U.S. politician—indeed, any politician at all—ultimately yielded only a furtive 10-minute chat with Rep. Ron Paul. But then, days later, Le Pen pulled off a coup de théâtre: Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Ron Prosor, attended a gathering she hosted at the United Nations. Despite the subsequent announcement from Israel’s foreign ministry that the meeting was based on a “misunderstanding,” all the press releases in the world can’t undo the image of a smiling Prosor standing side-by-side with a beaming Le Pen.

…

French Republicanism—the doctrine that affirms the equality and liberty of citizens and requires that the public sphere be entirely free of ethnic or religious claims—is the crossroads at which the Front National and French Jewry seem slated to either collide or collaborate. Upon their civil emancipation during the French Revolution, French Jews embraced republicanism, particularly its emphasis on a secular society, as their own.

But that might not be the case for much longer. The national debate over immigration and national identity—issues that involve the 5 million Muslims, mostly of North African origin, living in France—seems shriller by the day. The urban riots that convulsed France in 2005, followed by the appalling death of Ilan Halimi, a young French Jew tortured and murdered by several youths of North African background, have had an especially powerful impact on French Jewry. It may well be that the community has reached a point no less pivotal than 1967, when the Six-Day War, followed by Charles de Gaulle’s notorious remark that Jews were an elite and domineering race, ignited French Jewish self-consciousness.

According to Jean-Yves Camus, the political scientist, at least 5 percent of Jewish voters will support Le Pen in 2012. While he and other specialists debate the precise number—there are no surveys on the question—they agree that France’s Jewish community has been moving steadily toward the political right and, indeed, to the extreme right. Clearly, a Jewish Le Pen supporter is no longer the oxymoron it once was. Richard Prasquier, of the Jewish council, worries about this potentially tectonic shift, suggesting that French Jews are increasingly “receptive to and tempted by Le Pen’s discourse.” Perhaps the most immediate reason for this evolution is, that “for the first time since World War II, French Jews are afraid,” said the intellectual Alain Finkielkraut.

…

Against this background, Le Pen’s effort to seduce the French Jewish community takes on even greater significance. It is only by channeling popular fear and loathing at Muslims that the Front National has made room under its “republican” umbrella for its previous bête noire: the Jews.

“Democratic” America post 9/11 (via Associated Press):

In northern Bucharest, in a busy residential neighborhood minutes from the heart of the capital city, is a secret the Romanian government has long tried to protect.

For years, the CIA used a government building — codenamed “Bright Light” — as a makeshift prison for its most valuable detainees. There it held al-Qaida operatives Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, and others in a basement prison before they were ultimately transferred to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2006, according to former U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the location and inner workings of the prison.

The existence of a CIA prison in Romania has been widely reported, but its location has never been made public. The Associated Press and German public television ARD located the former prison and learned details of the facility where harsh interrogation tactics were used. ARD’s program on the CIA prison is set to air Thursday.

The Romanian prison was part of a network of so-called black sites that the CIA operated and controlled overseas in Thailand, Lithuania and Poland. All the prisons were closed by May 2006, and the CIA’s detention and interrogation program ended in 2009.

Unlike the CIA’s facility in Lithuania’s countryside or the one hidden in a Polish military installation, the CIA’s prison in Romania was not in a remote location. It was hidden in plain sight, a couple blocks off a major boulevard on a street lined with trees and homes, along busy train tracks.

The building is used as the National Registry Office for Classified Information, which is also known as ORNISS. Classified information from NATO and the European Union is stored there. Former intelligence officials both described the location of the prison and identified pictures of the building.

In an interview at the building in November, senior ORNISS official Adrian Camarasan said the basement is one of the most secure rooms in all of Romania. But he said Americans never ran a prison there.

“No, no. Impossible, impossible,” he said in an ARD interview for its “Panorama” news broadcast, as a security official monitored the interview.

The CIA prison opened for business in the fall of 2003, after the CIA decided to empty the black site in Poland, according to former U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the detention program with reporters.

Shuttling detainees into the facility without being seen was relatively easy. After flying into Bucharest, the detainees were brought to the site in vans. CIA operatives then drove down a side road and entered the compound through a rear gate that led to the actual prison.

The detainees could then be unloaded and whisked into the ground floor of the prison and into the basement.

The basement consisted of six prefabricated cells, each with a clock and arrow pointing to Mecca, the officials said. The cells were on springs, keeping them slightly off balance and causing disorientation among some detainees.

The CIA declined to comment on the prison.

Another week and another column by a Melbourne Herald Sun editor Alan Howe on just how dysfunctional is the Middle East, Arabs, Muslims, Palestinians, Islamists etc. The man has form.

Yes, this is what countless Zionist lobby trips to Israel do to a Murdoch man. Hatred Inc:

In Arab lands, like-minded, militant Islamists abound. Some are Sunni. Some are Shia. Some are just bonkers.

Democracy? It’s all Greek to them.

The wave of uprisings this year is being called the Arab Spring, a name derived from the so-called Prague Spring of 1968 in which Czechoslovakian leader Alexander Dubcek untied a few of the shackles of Moscow-enforced communism.

He was a man before his time. Within months the Warsaw pact nations invaded Czechoslovakia sending 200,000 troops and 2000 tanks to forcefully take control of the nation, Soviet boss Leonid Brezhnev installed a puppet leader and communism was quickly restored.

That back-to-the-future lesson is a powerful one for the Arab world.

At first blanch, the Arab uprisings of this year looked to be advances for people often trapped by clerics and tyrants who have used Islam to enslave, torture and kill their people so that they can live in opulent grandeur among some of the planet’s poorest populations.

Iran might appear to be the odd man out. For a start its people prefer to fashion themselves as Persians, but it has a significant Arab core. Its supreme leader seems to shun the indulgences that define the lifestyles of his neighbouring leaders, but he and his president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, are still the two of the most dangerous men on earth.

Ahmadinejad is mad. Barking. And soon to be nuclear armed.

This year saw movements for freedom in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Bahrain, Morocco, Iran, Syria, Jordan and even Saudi Arabia.

The tyrannical states that enjoy Western support – Bahrain and Saudi Arabia – have largely survived, although Egypt fell quickly. Those who alienated the West, or threatened it, or attacked it, are gone. By the hand of their own people.

…

If the Palestinians put down their weapons, there’d be peace. If the Israelis put down their weapons, there’d be genocide.

The mainstream normalisation of anti-Muslim hatred is finding friends in the most predictable of places; Israel. This is something discussed in the new e-book On Utoya.

This piece in Israeli paper Haaretz offers a worrying new development:

Marine Le Pen hit the jackpot. She invited about 100 diplomats to a luncheon last week during a visit to UN Headquarters in New York. Four accepted: There were the envoys from Trinidad and Tobago, Armenia and Uruguay, who obviously are of no concern to her at all. But the entrance of the fourth guest, Israeli UN Ambassador Ron Prosor, made the event a sensation and worth her whole trip.

No official American representative agreed to meet with France’s extreme-right leader. Neither did any leader of the Jewish community. She failed in her attempt to stage a photo op at the Holocaust Museum, and skipped the visit. The French ambassador to the UN sent a sharp message that she is persona non grata in the United Nations building. But the Israeli envoy? He shook her hand and spoke of the importance that must be accorded to a wide variety of opinions.

“We flourish on the diversity of ideas,” Prosor said. “We talked about Europe, about other issues and I enjoyed the conversation very much,” Prosor was quoted as saying. Even before he went into the hall where the luncheon was being held, he told shocked reporters that he was a “free man.”

The Foreign Ministry now claims there was a misunderstanding; the ambassador “thought he was attending an event hosted by the French UN delegation. When he realized his error, he skipped the meal and left.” User comments on leading French news websites over the weekend were derisive, including all the French equivalents of LOL and ROFL in response to the explanation.

No one believes it was a coincidence. Prosor is a proven professional. He would certainly want to forget the fact that he became the first representative of the Jewish state to meet with a leader of the National Front. He would probably be happy to smash the camera that documented the smiling encounter. But his mistake did not happen in a vacuum. It has the odor of a symptom. The odor of a very unholy alliance being formed between members of the Israeli right-wing and a number of the most nationalistic and anti-Semitic figures in Europe. Over the past year, among visitors to Israel were the populist Dutch leader Geert Wilders, the Belgian racist Filip Dewinter and the Austrian successor to Jorg Haider, Heinz-Christian Strache.

These politicians, like Le Pen, have exchanged the Jewish demon-enemy for the criminal-immigrant Muslim. But they have not really discarded their ideological DNA. The Israeli seal of approval they seek to get is intended to bring them closer to power. Le Pen herself has decided to leave behind the anti-Semitic scandals of her father, Jean-Marie. She wants to make the National Front a popular and legitimate party.

She is already popular (19 percent in the polls). Legitimate? In two interviews she gave to Haaretz in the past, she attacked President Jacques Chirac for his historic 1995 declaration in which he took, in the name of France, responsibility for Vichy war crimes. She adamantly refused to denounce French fascist crimes and showed that she cannot really disengage from her father, his heritage and her party’s Vichy and anti-Semitic hard core.

It is easy to guess what would happen to an Israeli ambassador if he found himself at an event hosted by the “disgraced” Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas – or, perish the thought, at a Hamas or Hezbollah event. The earth would tremble. Even tar and feathers would not be enough under such circumstances. But Le Pen is blonde and she has blue eyes. Oh, and she hates Muslims.

The following story appeared on ABC Radio’s PM yesterday:

MARK COLVIN: Researchers in Europe say the financial crisis and the immigration debate are fuelling support for far right groups. Young men, in particular, are joining them via social media.

The same sets of issues are politicising young Australians but commentators here say there isn’t the same attraction to fringe groups.

Adam Harvey reports.

ADAM HARVEY: Researchers with the British think-tank Demos say young Europeans are being drawn to far right groups and they’re showing their support in a very modern way, by becoming Facebook friends with, and Twitter followers of, organisations like the British National Party.

Demos surveyed the opinions of more than 12,000 supporters of the BNP and other anti-immigrant parties like Marine Le Pen’s French Front National, and Italy’s Northern League.

And the group used Facebook’s own data to analyse more than 400,000 supporters of these groups. Most are aged under 30, and more than 75 per cent were men.

Australian journalist and author Antony Loewenstein says the rise of the far right is no secret.

ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN: One of the things that is very clear in the last 10 years, particularly since September 11th has been the growth in anti-Muslim, anti-immigration parties in many European countries, including countries that were traditionally quite liberal, open minded towards immigration.

ADAM HARVEY: Loewenstein is a contributor to a new book on the rise of the far right. The book, “On Utoya” is a series of essays prompted by the massacre on Norway’s Utoya Island by extremist Anders Breivik.

ANTONY LOWENSTEIN: His manifesto, 1500 page manifesto very clearly stated mainstream views these days, mainstream being anti-immigration, anti-Islam, very, talking about white pride, white culture, very supportive of Israel, supportive of the idea of Israel being a strong nation dealing with the Islam or the Muslim and the Arab problem. And that’s the kind of thing that used to be on the fringes but now is very mainstream.

ADAM HARVEY: The Demos research found that far-right supporters like Breivik who may once have been anti-Semitic, have found a new enemy.

ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN: They way that Jews used to be viewed, as strange, weird, strange dresses, odd food, a threat to the harmonious society has now been replaced by the strange, crazy Muslim in these people’s languages.

ADAM HARVEY: Social media commentator Tommy Tudehope says it’s easier these days to join far right groups.

TOMMY TUDEHOPE: You know for something that’s unpopular or something that can be embarrassing or if you don’t want to be publicly seen to be backing a far right cause, jumping on the internet and a few clicks supporting such a movement gives you that anonymity and gives you that right to support that thing which you may previously not have had.

ADAM HARVEY: But Tommy Tudehope says it’s important not to confuse online support with actual feet on the ground and that’s as true for the far right, as it is for far left groups like the Occupy protesters.

TOMMY TUDEHOPE: And I think there needs to be a far more considered approach in measuring how effective or how actually authentic these movements are. Now the Occupy Sydney movement, they may have cultivated some online presence but there’s very few of them in the street.

ADAM HARVEY: He says Australians aren’t as likely to be drawn to the fringe.

TOMMY TUDEHOPE: People are less likely to subscribe to an extreme movement regardless of its belief system simply because of the fact they think, well you know if I’m going to make a difference, I’m going to have to vote anyway so I might as well do it at the ballot box every couple of years.

But you know in terms of extreme movements, we have a very stable democracy and both parties are you know relatively vibrant in their membership and offer relative ease in terms of joining.

So I don’t think there’s too much of a cause for any sort of extreme movements to pop up.

MARK COLVIN: Social media commentator Tommy Tudehope ending that report from Adam Harvey.

Herald Sun senior editor Alan Howe loathes Muslims, Arabs, Palestinians and anybody who doesn’t embrace US foreign policy.

Today he takes his hatred even further. “Journalism”, Murdoch style:

There was some truth told last week, and the usual suspects – devious and untrustworthy – found it most uncomfortable.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, not for the first time, acted out another UN farce and voted to grant membership to Palestine.

Not enough people in Palestine know much about science, or education, or culture, so on the surface it might look a good idea.

The truth is that it is a dangerous ploy by the Palestinians to try to get the UN to grant them nationhood.

Palestine is not yet a nation – it rejected that opportunity in a generous offer made by Israel 11 years ago – and so should not be part of any UN body. It’s the United Nations.

In all, 107 nations voted away their souls on the Palestine issue. They predictably included Russia, China, Austria and South Africa. Oh, and France, of course; there’s a country that never passes up an opportunity to display how contemptibly weak it is.

The noble nations that told the truth – just 14 of them – included Australia, the US, Canada, Israel and Sweden, while 52 nations, only slightly to the north of the French when it comes to courage, abstained.

There was pressure on Julia Gillard for Australia to abstain. Instead, she told the truth.

The recent release of the e-book On Utoya about the Norway massacre and Right racism continues to generate necessary discussion about the highly political act of murdering dozens of Left activists. My chapter is about Israel and the far Right.

This morning I was interviewed on ABC Radio National’s The Book Show alongside Overland editor Jeff Sparrow on the reasons behind the book – not least challenging the mainstreaming of anti-Muslim hate – and the rise of e-books in general:

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The growing connection between the Far Right and Zionism is highlighted in my essay in the recently released e-book On Utoya.

This story in Haaretz is therefore fascinating, and makes me wonder if the “acceptable” face of the racist Right is viewed as a prospective ally of Israel because of the mutual loathing of Muslims:

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Ron Prosor, said over the weekend that his attendance at a luncheon for Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s extreme right-wing party National Front and presidential candidate, at the UN Headquarters in New York on Thursday was a “mistake”.

“It was an event that I wasn’t supposed to be at to begin with, and I got there by accident. When I realized my mistake, I immediately left the event,” Prosor said after the event.

Marine Le Pen is the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the National Front party.

French media outlets reported widely on Prosor’s attendance at the UN event organized in Le Pen’s honor. French media noted that the Israeli ambassador shook Le Pen’s hand and remained at the event for 20 minutes. French newspapers also published a photograph of Prosor and Le Pen standing together.

Ambassador Prosor denied the contents of the French reports in a conversation with Haaretz. “After I saw Marine Le Pen there, I immediately realized that I had no place being there, and I left the room,” said Prosor.

The ambassador also said that no conversation took place between himself and Le Pen. “I didn’t remain there and I didn’t hear her briefing,” he said.

Prosor’s version of the events contradicts comments he made to reporters outside the event. Before he entered the hall, Prosor was asked by a French journalist if he is the “number one” Israeli diplomat at the United Nations. According to Prosor’s own recollection, he responded, “I replied to him that I am not a number, but a free man.”

When Prosor left the event, he was filmed by television cameras saying, “We spoke about Europe and other topics and I very much enjoyed the conversation.”

Le Pen herself was quoted by French news agencies on Saturday, saying that the Israeli ambassador’s presence at the event “was not an error.” According to Le Pen, “Please, no one actually imagines that the ambassador burst through the wrong door.”

The National Front leader added, “It is impossible to converse with Marine Le Pen for 20 minutes without knowing who she is.” According to Le Pen, “There was nothing unclear or ambiguous about our meeting.”

My following essay appears in today’s Crikey:

Amid the acres of commentary on the exchange of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit and more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners, one comment stands out: “Let the WORLD know about Israel’s humanity and the terrorists’ inhumanity — SHARE this one with EVERYONE you know, friends!” What makes it noteworthy is that it featured on the “Geert Wilders International Freedom Allinace”  Facebook page, where supporters of the far-Right Dutch politician gather, one of many messages of fanatical pro-Israeli commentary.

The growing appeal of Israel to the world’s right-wing community has been developing for some years. Nevertheless, some examples are eye-popping. In July 2011, a Russian neo-Nazi delegation travelled to Israel, after an invitation by far Right Israeli politicians and an editor of a pro-settler news service. The Holocaust deniers visited Israel’s Holocaust centre, Yad Vashem, despite being photographed previously giving Nazi salutes and publishing songs celebrating Adolf Hitler on their website.

The pair was interviewed on Israeli TV. One said that the idea of the Jewish state “excites me” because it involves “an ancient people who took upon itself a pioneer project to revive a modern state and nation”. The TV journalist then asked how a neo-Nazi could now embrace Zionism. The other Russian quickly responded by explaining the common enemy they both faced: “We’re talking about radical Islam which is the enemy of humanity, enemy of democracy, enemy of progress and of any sane society.” In December 2010 a much larger delegation of European far Right politicians, including a Belgian politician with clear ties to SS veterans and a Swedish politician with connections to the country’s fascist past, also paid their respects at Yad Vashem. They were welcomed by some members of the Israeli Knesset and agreed to sign a “Jerusalem Declaration”, guaranteeing Israel’s right to defend itself against terror. “We stand at the vanguard in the fight for the Western, democratic community” against the “totalitarian threat” of “fundamentalist Islam”, read the document.

The signatories were some of Europe’s most successful anti-immigration politicians who long ago realised that backing Israel was a clever way to guarantee respectability for a cause that risked being framed as extremist or racist. One Israeli politician who met the delegation, Nissim Zeev, a member of ultra-Orthodox, right-wing party Shas, embraced the group: “At the end of the day, what’s important is their attitude, the fact they really love Israel.”

Yesterday’s anti-Semites have reformed themselves as today’s crusading heroes against an unstoppable Muslim birth-rate on a continent that now sees Islam as an intolerant and ghettoised religion. These increasingly mainstream attitudes have marinated across Europe for at least a decade — most starkly expressed in the writings of the Norway killer Anders Breivik, who slaughtered nearly 70 young left-wingers on Utøya island in late July this year.

Breivik’s interest in Israel wasn’t an accidental quirk of his Google search terms. It was reflective of years of indoctrination from that fateful September day in 2001 onwards. None of Breivik’s right-wing heroes openly praised his killings — politically speaking, half-hearted condemnations were the order of the day — because their vision of open war with Islam was arguably even more clinical. They cheered as America and Israel used the vast power of the state to attack, bomb, drone, kidnap, torture and murder literally countless Muslim victims in the past decade in Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Palestine, Somalia and beyond.

Breivik’s admired this Israeli “can-do” attitude but equally dismissed left-wing Jews who supported Palestinian rights. “Were the majority of the German and European Jews [in ’30s Europe] disloyal?” he asked in his “2083” manifesto. He went on:

“Yes, at least the so-called liberal Jews, similar to the liberal Jews today that opposes nationalism/Zionism and supports multiculturalism. Jews that support multiculturalism today are as much of a threat to Israel and Zionism (Israeli nationalism) as they are to us. So let us fight together with Israel, with our Zionist brothers against all anti-Zionists, against all cultural Marxists/multiculturalists. Conservative Jews were loyal to Europe and should have been rewarded. Instead, [Hitler] just targeted them all.” (p 1167)

Breivik mirrored the familiar separation of “good Jews” and “bad Jews” that appear in Western dialogue over the Israel/Palestine conflict. The nationalistic, Arab-hating Jew who believes in the never-ending occupation of Palestinian land is praise-worthy but the questioning, anti-Zionist Jew is a threat that must be eliminated. The commentators, journalists and politicians who receive mainstream acceptance and appear regularly in our media such as Daniel Pipes, who calls for the bombing of Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran, are welcomed into the club of popular Islamophobes because they speak the language of domination and violence reflected in our media and political discourse on a daily basis.

My enemy’s enemy is my friend

Breivik’s conviction that he was a friend of Zionism created a moral challenge for many of those he had quoted in his manifesto. It was not a challenge many faced well. One of the more notorious, American blogger Pamela Geller, condemned the killings as “horrific” but not so subtly in the same post reminded readers that the young students who attended summer camp at Utøya were actually witnessing an “anti-Semitic indoctrination training centre”. How? Norway’s Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store had visited the camp and called for an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, apparently making him an anti-Semite by definition. Regular Jerusalem Post columnist Barry Rubin simply called the youth camp, “a pro-terrorist program”.

Geller was further incensed that he even called “Palestinians” Palestinian, because for her and her fellow travellers the Palestinians aren’t a real people deserving rights or a homeland. “Utøya camp was not Islamist,” Geller assures us, “but it was something not much more wholesome.” Thus Islamophobia seamlessly morphed into blind and racist Zionism.

In Australia likewise, the Israel lobby skirted around this uncomfortable reality, both publicly repulsed by the murders but they remain on the record as arguing for boundaries on Middle East debate. Others simply denied that Breivik’s sympathises for right-wing Zionism was irrelevant to understanding his crimes.

Of course this was absurd. Exaggerating a clash of civilisations has become the bread and butter of countless keyboard warriors in the past decade, with ever-more brutal Israel placed at the forefront of this struggle. Demonising Muslims and calling for their death on a regular basis has consequences. Muslims replacing Jews as the supposed enemy aiming for world domination will come with a price.

Israelophilia in the service of Islamophobia

The message emanating from the Zionist crowd was at times conflicted yet clear; Breivik could be forgiven for thinking that Israel was striving for racial perfection. The Jerusalem Post provided clarification after the attack in a startling editorial. It claimed multiculturalism had failed in Europe, Muslims were a threat to societal harmony and clearly implied that an ethnocracy, such as Israel, was the ideal global model:

“While there is absolutely no justification for the sort of heinous act perpetrated this weekend in Norway, discontent with multiculturalism’s failure must not be delegitimatised or mistakenly portrayed as an opinion held by only the most extremist elements of the Right.”

The Post seemed to defend the mindset, if not the actions, expressed by Breivik, as a common and understandable attitude of simply wanting to “protect unique European culture and values”. These values did not include Islam or being proud of a racially diverse land. (A week later, the paper issued an apology editorial after a massive backlash against its position. Belatedly, the editorial noted that “Jews, Muslims and Christians in Israel and around the world should be standing together against such hate crimes”.)

Anders Breivik’s real motivations may never be fully understood but his love for Israel didn’t appear out of the blue. It was because Zionism and its closest followers have cultivated an image of a country that can only survive without integration, peace with its Arab neighbours or an end to the occupation. Racial domination is the dream. Breivik took this call to a devastating conclusion and his manifesto makes clear that his support for Israel is couched in the language of survival against an unforgiving, intolerant and high Muslim birth-rate world.

You can hear these views on any day of the week on Facebook, on Twitter — and in the Israeli Knesset.

*This is an extract from an essay in On Utøya: Anders Breivik, right terror, racism and Europe, edited by Elizabeth Humphrys, Guy Rundle and Tad Tietze, an ebook to be published on October 26. The book will be launched by Senator Lee Rhiannon and Antony Loewenstein , 6.30pm Wednesday, October 26 at the Norfolk Hotel, Cleveland Street in Surry Hills, Sydney.