Following the shock and awe of recent developments in New Jersey, the philosopher, jazz musician and anti-Zionist activist Gilad Atzmon has a punchy article in PalestineThinkTank: Time to Talk about the Rise of Jewish Crime?

He concludes:

Here is my suggestion to Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary and everyone else who happens to be ‘concerned’ with the ‘rise of anti-Semitism’.

In the light of Israeli brutality, the conviction of gross swindler Madoff and the latest images of Rabbis being taken away by FBI agents, it is about time we stop discussing the rise of anti-Semitism and start to elaborate on the rise of Jewish Crime.

The New Jersey corruption bust

Certainly, a truly tectonic contest appears to be underway – akin to the irresistible force encountering an immovable object.

The cloying, censorious Judeophilia characteristic of public discourse in contemporary western culture is slowly colliding with the gigantic, largely underground mass of organized Jewish criminality. The unmentionable has become too blatant for surface-dwellers to overlook…

Is this to suggest that all Jews are involved in criminal activity?

Sholom Rubashkin, former boss of Iowa kosher firm 'Agriprocessors': charged in 2008 with 7,000 violations of child labor laws

Only fools believe that, it seems to me. They should check Atzmon’s parentage, for one thing.

Tribal loyalties only afflict those who embrace them; it’s always possible to opt out of the predominant value system. Eton, the famous elite school, produced generations of passionate British imperialists – but George Orwell was an Old Etonian too. Remaining a prisoner of family background or cultural tradition is optional for most people.

In any case, crime – especially large-scale organized crime – is very much an optional activity. In any generation, there are criminals who weren’t born into criminal families. Criminality is found in any large group of people.

Those necessary disclaimers aside, it’s also clearly the case that suppression of free speech about any given group of people can be used to shield it from exposure, if and when some of its members engage in criminal activity. That’s a problem for everyone. It cannot be permitted in anything resembling a genuine democratic society.

Personally, I’m convinced the great bulk of so-called ‘Islamic terrorism’ is mythic. I hold the unorthodox view that most atrocities allegedly committed by ‘Islamic terrorists’ are either false flag operations in which Muslims are effectively patsies (eg. 9-11, the London bombings) – or cases of legitimate resistance to military occupation in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Even so, I don’t ask that the term ‘Islamic terrorism’ is de-invented and never used again. There may well be cases when it accurately reflects reality. It is, at the very least, a theoretical possibility – and it’s certainly a highly popular media construct.

In similar fashion, we need to be able to speak about ‘Jewish terrorism’, ‘Jewish organized crime’ and ‘Jewish deceit’.

Not all Jews are involved in these things, for sure. But some are – in a way that utilizes their distinctive networks and institutions. Since 1948, that ‘toolkit’ of impressively powerful Jewish institutions has included the State of Israel.

An important book by courageous Jewish American journalist Robert Friedman, R.I.P.

Jewish domination of what, in the 1990s, came to be known as the Russian Mafiya, has been well-documented – see Robert Friedman’s Red Mafiya (or read the whole book online here). Friedman, incidentally, was a most courageous Jewish American journalist; his untimely demise leaves unanswered questions, at least in my mind

All organized crime has moved on since Fagin’s time. These days, it’s big business.

Gilad Atzmon, a braver man than I, makes the point that must be on the minds of many. He inquires whether equivalent crimes are committed by the practitioners of other major religions – and even offers an answer:

I may raise the inevitable question here, can you imagine your local priest or Imam trading in ‘body parts’? Can you think of a Muslim cleric or a pastor trying to buy your kidney or sell you one in a ‘parking lot’ or in a ‘diner’?

Fair question? Fair comment?

Anyone who thinks the question should never be asked – let alone answered in this way – might care to explain why. A one-word answer – anti-Semitism – isn’t nearly enough of an explanation. Why should the community shut up about the cultural connections of the world’s most successful criminals?

Haaretz is the most ‘liberal’ of the major English language Israeli newspapers. It publishes some articles quite critical of Israeli behaviour, including occasional exposes of Israeli brutality against Palestinians.

Haaretz publishes comments on many of the articles published in its online edition. Most commentators tend to be Jewish supporters of Israel, but some are not. From time to time, there’s a lively debate.

Haaretz: 'moderate' existentialist daily from Israel

The following is a comment that I submitted to the article by its correspondent Yossi Melman, with the rather paranoid title ANALYSIS / Iran can rejoice as Israel fails missile defense test.

Most of the discussion had focused on the minutiae of military strategy and paranoia. I wanted to shift the emphasis of the debate.

The comment – submitted under my own name – remains unpublished more than 24 hours later. Apparently, this message is unwelcome: (emphasis added):

When I was a student, we rarely used the word ‘existential’. Years of study were required and the skill to bullshit endlessly about nuances of the views of Jean-Paul Satre et al.

There seems to have been a Zionist-inspired devaluation of the intellectual currency. Everyone yabbers about existentialism these days. It’s sad.

Israel’s ‘existential threat’ – if the term has any meaning at all – is its lack of legitimacy.

Legitimacy cannot be won by building ghettos with kryptonite walls.

At one stage, Israelis were conned into believing that overwhelming force would give their State security. Now they chase the illusion of impregnable defenses.

It’s all utter nonsense. The only way forward is to make peace.

I doubt a Jewish-separatist State can achieve that, judging by the last 60+ years.

Why not do what South Africa did? Negotiate an end to Apartheid and provide every citizen, irrespective of religion or ethnicity, with an equal-value vote in a post-Apartheid unitary State.