“Anti-Semite,” the very word can evoke a strong emotional reaction in many people, sometimes this reaction manifests itself as fear and discomfort, other times it may create confusion and uncertainty, which may then cause that individual to rethink their former position on various matters and perhaps even change their mind.

The word itself is something of a misnomer, in that its modern application generally is associated with identifying and/or defining someone that “exhibits hostility towards Jews as a religious, ethnic or racial group.”[1] The term, as it is used however is contradictory and prejudicial in that it excludes every other member of the Semitic racial-ethnic group except Jews. The very same modern dictionary that defines “anti-Semitism” in the aforementioned manner clearly identifies a Semites as “a member of any of a number of peoples of ancient southwestern Asia including the Akkadians, Phoenicians, Hebrews and Arabs.”[2] This may at first seem to be a rather meaningless and even petty argument, after all it’s just a word right? In many instances this might be true, but not so this particular word, it has special connotations and purpose. There may not be another word in the entire English language with as much power and influence as the word “anti-Semite, it is truly a unique expression, reserved for those unfortunate enough to feel the effects associated with its malignant label.

Despite being Semitic themselves, Arabs are frequently branded anti-Semites, as are the modern day descendents of the Phoenicians [Lebanese] when it comes to identifying any negative attitudes they may harbor towards Jews. David Rieff of the New York Times asserted in 2004 that the “Sharon government claims Arafat is an anti-Semite,”[3] which is a lot like saying that an Anglo-Saxon British subject is an Anglophobe, which admittedly it is not impossible, but would be quite rare. The fact that Yasser Arafat, the former leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization [PLO] can be labeled an anti-Semite in America’s largest and most influential newspaper, despite the fact that Rieff and the Times editors themselves were well aware of Arafat’s Semitic pedigree goes a long way in describing the awesome weight carried by that word.

The purpose of delving into the application of the word “anti-Semitism,” is done solely to provide a clearly stated definition of what that word should mean and how its meaning has become distorted to the point where it excludes the vast majority of those it should theoretically be applied toward. The reason behind this of course has everything to do with the significance of the word itself, the weight it carries politically, socially, and emotionally. Essentially the question is, should the word “anti-Semitism,” continue to be associated with Jewry exclusively, or should it be discarded as meaningless, in that Arabs too are in fact Semites, and therefore cannot truly be categorized themselves as “anti-Semites?”

In 2000 Perseus Books published The Jewish Threat: Anti-Semitic Politics of the U.S. Army, by Joseph Bendersky.[4] The provocative title is self-explanatory; the author probes into the history of the United States Military Intelligence Division [MID] and its interest in what many of its members perceived to be Jewish socio-political machinations in the first half of the Twentieth Century. The author’s premise is that an inherent anti-Semitic bias played the largest role in these erroneous beliefs, the result of an indoctrinated prejudice among officers in particular that was instituted initially in their white racist upbringing and reinforced later in various military venues including the War College itself. The book itself is well written and thoroughly researched, Bendersky claimed that in researching and writing the book it “grew enormously in scope and ultimately took more than a decade to complete.”[5] The author dredged up many documents heretofore unseen, many of which would no doubt cause their original author’s great embarrassment today, but which were written contemporaneously without the slightest hesitation and/or concern for how they or their material might be perceived fifty, sixty, seventy years in the future.

Bendersky’s fundamental argument centers on the idea that many memos and reports forwarded to MID from various embassy intelligence staff members overseas implicating Jews as exerting a disproportionate amount of influence and leadership over the Bolshevik party, the Bolshevik revolution and its associated bloody aftermath are more the result of the racist [anti-Semitic] views held by these predominantly Anglo-Saxon officers rather than their honest and unbiased testimony as to facts they witnessed on the ground.

Many of these MID officers absolutely believed in 1917 that Jews controlled the media in the United States. They believed that through the media public opinion was carefully cultivated and could be used against them. Their ideas may seem ludicrous today, even paranoid, but in reading Bendersky’s tome, one begins to come across the names of many well-known American military personalities, officers we view today as heroes, could they have been so wrong, so ignorant, so blind? Perhaps one of America’s greatest military heroes was General George S. Patton, we know him today as one of our greatest military strategists/tacticians, a man tough on communism, a no-nonsense soldier’s soldier, but very few know about his views on Jews and communism or the fact that Patton himself believed insidious Jewish influence over President Roosevelt had created a “virus” of “Semitic revenge against all Germans,” in post war Germany, led by “Morgenthau and Baruch.”[6] Patton was said to despise the Jewish post war displaced person [DP], or those Jews who had either survived Nazi internment and/or who slipped out of Eastern Europe in an effort to evade Soviet occupation or to emigrate to the west. In a September 1945 diary entry Patton wrote, “Harrison and his ilk believe that the displaced person is a human being; which he is not, and this applies particularly to the Jews, who are lower than animals.”[7] Some believed that “radical journalists,” intent on establishing a “Russian puppet government” in post war Germany wanted to get Patton out of the way.[8] It is interesting that Bendersky cites “editorial condemnation” as what “set the stage for his removal,” after the General “supposedly” compared Nazis to Democrats and Republicans.[9] After this disgraceful departure, Patton wrote home to his wife over a period of several weeks stating repeatedly that there was a plot by “Jews and Communists” ‘to remove him and anyone other officer who stood in the way of their destructive plans for Germany.”’[10]

The reader learns that a great American General has his prejudices, feet of clay so to speak. One can either look at Patton and his views as that of an innate and/or cultivated racist, which Patton most certainly was, and thus tainted by this bias, or one might consider that their could have been a kernel of truth in what he wrote, at least in respect to the existence of a plot against him and the idea that it might have been instigated by Jews in some manner. Ultimately that is the choice the reader must at some point consider, either it was in some way true, or it was completely false.

Patton wasn’t the only prominent U.S. General to harbor “anti-Semitic” views, many did, including General George Van Horn Mosely, once considered for the position of Chief of Staff, which elicited Dwight D, Eisenhower to note in his diaries that Mosely would prove to be “a peach” in that spot.[11] General Mosely was none to quiet about his racist beliefs; he advocated segregation in the ranks as did most officers of his generation, but Mosely was especially sensitive about issues related to Jews. In fact a speech given before a group of doctors in which Mosely advocating sterilization of European refugees in the 1930s [Mostly Jews or at least taken to mean Jews] led to his untimely retirement.[12] Mosely felt that certain Jews were conspiring to force America’s hand into war against Germany, stating publicly in 1939, “The war now proposed is for the purpose of establishing Jewish hegemony throughout the word,” utilizing “your sons and mine.” Mosely insisted that the Jewish banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb and Company, a well-known Jewish banking establishment had “financed the Russian Revolution,” which fed into what was considered to be the “anti-Semitic” ideas of American rightists and Nazis at the time.[13]

Other eminent American military officers like Mosely, General Patton, General Fries, General Willoughby, General Wedemeyer, General Stratemeyer, General Pedro del Valle were convinced to a man that Jews wielded a disproportionate influence in various American institutions but most especially in the media, where they felt public opinion was being manipulated in such a way as to advance Jewish interests [Later Zionist interests] and discredit those who sought to draw the American peoples attention to these matters. It is safe to say that no other American minority group has to the extent of Jews been accused of the same manipulative and/or hegemonic influence. As an example, one never hears the idea that African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Asian-Americans, or Arab-Americans dominate the media, it is and has always been always Jewish-Americans.

Billy Graham, America’s best known evangelist was recorded as saying to Richard Nixon in the confines of the Oval Office in 1972, that the “stranglehold” on the United States media [by Jews] had to be “broken,” to which Nixon replied, “You believe that?” “Oh boy so do I, I can’t ever say that, but I believe it.”[14] What Graham and Nixon had to say to one another on that day in 1972 has been effectively diminished and/or forgotten by the news media, very few Americans are aware of their former Presidents views on Jews and the media and those who are seem all to ready to dismiss what he had to say as the words of an anti-Semite. Admiral Thomas Moorer, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Vietnam War believed that Jews commanded so much power of the President of the United States that he had this to say to former Congressman Paul Findley, when the latter was conducting research for the purposes of a book on Jewish influence in Washington:

I've never seen a President -- I don't care who he is -- stand up to them... They always get what they want. The Israelis know what is going on all the time. I got to the point where I wouldn't write anything down. If the American people understood what a grip these people have got on our government, they would rise up in arms.[15]

Was Moorer a racist and anti-Semitic nut too, or did he have some special insight? As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he was arguably in a position to know what kind of influence the Israeli’s [A Jewish State] had on the President of the United States of America. He certainly was in a position to know that they exerted some form of influence on President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1967 when they, the Israeli’s intentionally attacked an American military ship, the USS Liberty, killing thirty-four American seamen and wounding more than one-hundred and seventy.[16] Moorer knew for more than two decades that Johnson and Defense Secretary Mcnamara intentionally deceived the American people by suppressing the facts associated with an American Naval investigation, the results of which proved Israeli culpability and intention. Of course Moorer was attacked in the press as an anti-Semite and marginalized as a result. Only in 2003 was Moorer vindicated when Captain Ward Boston the lead investigator in the 1967 USS Liberty investigation came forward after signing a sworn affidavit testifying to the following:

For more than 30 years, I have remained silent on the topic of the USS Liberty. I am a military man and when orders come in from the Secretary of Defense and President of the United States, I follow them. However, recent attempts to rewrite history compel me to share the truth.
In June of 1967, while serving as a Captain in the Judge Advocates General Department of the Navy, I was assigned as senior legal counsel for the Navy’s Court of Inquiry into the brutal attack on the USS Liberty, which had occurred on June 8th. The late Admiral Isaac C. Kidd, president of the Court, and I were given only one week to gather evidence for the Navy’s official investigation into the attack. Admiral John S. McCain, Jr., then Commander-in-chief, Naval Forces Europe (CINCUSNAVEUR), at his headquarters in London, had charged Admiral Kidd (in a letter dated June 10, 1967) to “inquire into all the pertinent facts and circumstances leading to and connected with the armed attack: damage resulting therefrom; and deaths of and injuries to Naval personnel.” Despite the short amount of time we were given, we gathered a vast amount of evidence, including hours of heartbreaking testimony from the young survivors.
The evidence was clear. Both Admiral Kidd and I believed with certainty that this attack, which killed 34 American sailors and injured 172 others, was a deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew. I am certain that the Israeli pilots that undertook the attack, as well as their superiors who had ordered the attack, were aware that the ship was American.[17]

The long and short of it is, Israel did attack the USS Liberty and did so intentionally. The only unknown aspect of the investigation today remains exactly why they did it. It does seem clear however, that for some reason, despite committing what was essentially an act of war against the United States, Israel somehow managed to get President Johnson to cover it up for them.

Moorer wasn’t the only Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to speak up about Jewish/Israeli/Zionist influence in the United States, in October of 1975, General George S. Brown, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs under President Gerald Ford stated before a group of Duke University students that “Jewish influence” in the United States was so strong that they “wouldn’t believe” it, and that they [Jews] “owned” the banks and newspaper in the USA, adding presumably to reinforce his words to “look where the Jewish money is.”[18] Of course Brown was immediately assaulted by the press, labeled a bigot and an anti-Semite, but was he, or was there some truth to what he had to say? The idea that Jews monopolize the United States media has been kicked around by the right wing for many decades, MID as we know was focused on it even in 1910. As a rule, the notion is generally dismissed as nonsense and/or racist/anti-Semitic propaganda. However, careful and objective research proves otherwise, we can certainly accept the fact that MID tended to believe that Jews dominated the American media prior to WWI, establishing precedent of opinion whether factual or erroneous and today at least facts bear out that Jews do represent a seriously disproportionate presence in television media and in Hollywood.[19] Ben Stein, a well-known Hollywood personality, author and speechwriter for Presidents Nixon and Ford writes in his somewhat provocatively entitled article “Do Jews run Hollywood? You bet they do - and what of it?

A few days after Marlon Brando scandalized the airwaves by referring to the Jews who worked in Hollywood as "kikes," I got a call from an editor at 60 Minutes. The woman wanted to know how I felt about Brando's use of words and his allegation that Hollywood is "run by Jews."
She suggested the desired answer by noting that her researchers had conclusively proven that Jews do not run Hollywood.

Crafty 60 Minutes had studied the top slots in town. Their research showed that "only" about 60 percent of the most important positions in Hollywood were run by Jews… if Jews were about 2.5 percent of the population and were about 60 percent of Hollywood, they might well be said to be extremely predominant in that sector.[20]


Stein states that nobody really “controls Hollywood,” asserting that it is much too “chaotic” for that, but he acknowledges a certainly suzerainty that anyone else other than he, a Jew, might be accused of being an “anti-Semite,” for saying:

At mighty Paramount, the controlling stockholder is Sumner Redstone. Head of the studio is Jon Dolgen. Head of production is Sherry Lansing--all members of the tribe. At titanic Disney, the CEO is Michael Eisner, the world's most assimilated Jew, who might as well be a Presbyterian. Deputy head is Michael Ovitz, karate champ but also a Jew. Head of the studio is Joe Roth. At newly energized ICM, the top dogs are Jeff Berg and Jim Wiatt. At still overwhelming CAA, Jack Rapke and other members of my faith predominate. At William Morris, Jon Burnham and other Jews are, by and large, in the power positions. This has always been true in Hollywood. The ex-furriers who created Hollywood were Eastern European Jewish immigrants, and all of the great edifice of fantasy-making in Hollywood is their handiwork. Names like Zukor and Lasky and Goldwyn and Cohn are the foundation of mass culture in America and the world.[21]
Stein essentially listed all of the major studios and affirmed the idea that they are at least heavily under the influence of Jewish management and ownership. In January 2001, Michael Wolfe wrote in an article appearing in New York Magazine, entitled “From AOL to W,” in which he stated, “since Time Inc.'s merger with Warner ten years ago, one of the interesting transitions is that it has become a Jewish company,” which would seem to indicate Jewish control on at least some level at Time-Warner, the largest media corporation in the world today.[22] Another huge media conglomerate is Viacom, which is headed by Sumner Redstone (Born Murray Rothstein) who also purchased CBS in 1999. As mentioned above by Stein, Disney, which acquired ABC in 1995, is run by Michael Eisner, a Jew whether assimilated or not. Edgar Bronfman Jr. whose father Edgar Bronfman Sr. is President of the World Jewish Congress has a major stake in NBC. Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox Television Network, has a rather obscure pedigree he was born of a gentile father without any doubt, but his mother Elisabeth Joy Greene’s ethno-religious background isn’t clear. David Irving, a rather toxic individual associated with Holocaust revisionism has posted some intriguing information on his website Focal Point Publications[23] which purports that Murdoch’s mother, Elisabeth was of Jewish ancestry, although it must be stated here that subsequent investigation revealed nothing confirming this to be true or false.[24]

So what does this all mean? Nothing perhaps, but it is indicative of a rather large and disproportionate management and ownership of the American media by a minority that composes less than three percent of the American population. It also supports rather than refutes the statements of people like Admiral Thomas Moore, General Brown, Richard Nixon, Billy Graham et al, exonerating them of the guilt of anti-Semitism, unless of course we choose to believe that facts can be anti-Semitic, in which case we then accept the notion that “Truth is no defense,” i.e. that hurt feelings become more important than facts. This exact thing actually happened relatively recently in a Canadian courtroom, when the Canadian Human Right Tribunal handed down a decision stating that “Truth is not a defense,” in a case involving another alleged “anti-Semite” named Ernst Zundel, a man who harbors without a doubt strong critical opinions of Zionism and Jewry as both a religion and ethnic group, similar in some respects to those of General Mosely, in regards to whether or not there is in fact a Jewish hegemonic presence in western politics, economics, and the media.[25]

Noam Chomsky, a well-known Jewish intellectual, leftist, and professor of Linguistics at MIT acknowledges a very real and concerted effort on the part of some Jews in order to discredit dissent and critics by way of accusing them of “anti-Semitism,” or labeling them a “self hating Jew,” in the case of Jewish critics of Zionism and our Zionist-Israeli policies.

About 30 years ago, the distinguished Israeli statesman Abba Eban commented that the task of Israeli propaganda (he did not, of course, use that word) was to demonstrate that critics of Zionism -- by which he meant critics of the policies of the state of Israel -- were either anti-Semites or self-hating Jews. That's wise advice: it entails that state policies are insulated from criticism, as a matter of logic. Those who do not take old-fashioned Stalinist commissars as their models regard such practices with disgust.[26]

Kevin MacDonald, a Professor of Psychology at the State University Long Beach in California critiqued Bendersky’s The Jewish Threat and provides some excellent insight in respect to why MID officers were more likely to submit accurate contemporaneous intelligence reports rather than distortions that fit an alleged “anti-Semitic” agenda as insinuated by the author Bendersky.[27] Admittedly, MacDonald is not a historian per se, but he can and does effectively examine and analyze human motivation in this instance and contributes to the epistemology in this sense. MacDonald himself is well versed in Jewish cultural history and has written several books on the topic. MacDonald notes that Bendersky’s approach in The Jewish Threat relies mostly on the idea that anyone that might criticize Jews is probably anti-Semitic and therefore their thoughts, idea, findings and research can be dismissed with extreme prejudice. Bendersky thus safely “assume[s] that any statement by a U.S. military officer that reflects negatively on Jews or Judaism is a reflection of the prejudices and bigotry of the officer and has nothing to do with the actual behavior of Jews or the nature of Judaism.”[28] MacDonald further asserts that the purpose of his critique is an effort to show that the “officers [of MID] had a basically accurate view of Jews and Judaism for they were quite correct in their fear that Jewish influence would have a disastrous effect on the ability of their race to retain control of the United States.”
MacDonald’s approach is dry, unemotional and analytical. He isn’t attacking Jews or attempting to deny the idea that Anglo-Saxon officers in the early part of the Twentieth Century may have harbored what would today be considered “racist” views, rather he acknowledges that indeed, these officers did embrace a racist world view and that their preoccupation with Jewish subversion was justified in the sense that Jews weren’t necessarily interested in furthering their Anglo-Saxon vision of the future.

MacDonald is of the opinion that the innumerable contemporaneous reports submitted by United States military officers in various foreign missions around the world in the early Twentieth Century indicating a disproportionately high number of Jews in the Bolshevik hierarchy “should be believed,” whereas Bendersky’s latter day interpretations of these reports essentially dismisses what they say and instead suggests that they are simply the “paranoid ravings of racist military officers.” MacDonald also challenges Bendersky’s assertion that atrocities committed during the Bolshevik Revolution were magnified and exploited by MID solely for the purposes of advancing their anti-Semitic agenda:

Bendersky also makes it appear that MID reports of Bolshevik atrocities are fantasies. Reports stated that Bolshevik methods included not only seizure and destruction of property but also "barbarism and butchery" (p. xii). Included in the intelligence reports were photographs of "naked bodies with butchered flesh, hanging upside down from trees, while 'the Bolsheviki soldiers were laughing and grinning and standing about'" (p. xiii). Bendersky writes as if such claims are unworthy of being rebutted, yet there is more than enough evidence that such things did happen. Indeed, the recently published Black Book of Communism not only documents the horrific slaughter of some 20 million Soviet citizens, the widespread torture, mass deportations, and imprisonment in appalling conditions, but reproduces the photos from 1919 of a naked Polish officer impaled through the anus hanging upside down from trees while Bolshevik soldiers are laughing and grinning and standing about (Courtois et al. 1999, 202‑203).

According to MacDonald, the belief that wealthy Jewish financiers supported the Bolshevik Revolution “rest[s] on widespread [contemporaneous] intelligence reports,” not upon “fantasy” as suggested by Bendersky.

Another inconvenient fact glossed over by Bendersky as just one more example of an innate anti-Semitic bias in the United States Officer Corp were MID reports submitted by American military officers stationed in Poland in 1919, that clearly stated that the Jews welcomed the Bolsheviks with open arms to the chagrin of their Polish countrymen, who then later “attacked Jews who were accused of collaborating with the Soviets,” when the Bolsheviks were “expelled from Vilna in 1919.” Bendersky argues that that attacks against the Jews were quite real, whereas the alleged embrasure of the Bolsheviks by Polish Jews was exaggerated. The psychologist in MacDonald simply points out, what would the motivation have been in attacking the Jews once the Soviets had been expelled unless their was more than a modicum of truth to the accusations, a view taken by MID in 1919 as well. MacDonald then further points out why the Jews may have been motivated to collaborate with the Soviets, they simply believed, and with good reason, that the “Polish government was anti-Semitic” and that its policies were not necessarily in the best interests of its Jewish population, albeit a minority within the larger non-Jewish Polish population. In other words, MacDonald notes that it wouldn’t necessarily have been all that odd for Polish Jews to collaborate with a foreign regime they believed would instate a more equitable form of government in Poland. According to MacDonald:

Polish Jews did welcome the 1919 and 1939 Soviet invasions of Poland, because of perceptions of Polish anti‑Semitism combined with favorable opinions about the treatment of Jews in the Soviet Union -‑ that in fact Jews were an elite group in the USSR (Checinski 1982; Schatz 1991).

In regards to whether or not Jews constituted a threat to American National Security, MID thought so, according to Bendersky, who fails to mention the fact that the American Communist Party was effectively “directed by the Soviet Union and had a high percentage of Jewish members, often above 40 percent.”[29] Whether or not the percentage of Jews in the American Communist Party was approximately 40 percent, without any doubt Jews did in fact constitute a disproportionate number, considering that their representation within the American population hovered around three percent, and being that the Communist Party was considered a subversive organization by MID it is little wonder the organization did pay particularly close attention to American Jews.

MacDonald ends his critique of Bendersky’s The Jewish Threat by emphasizing something the discerning reader begins to detect early in Bendersky’s approach, that the author is too emotionally involved in his argument, that he himself is biased. “Bendersky,” MacDonald asserts, “for all of his obvious hatred toward his subjects, tells a compelling story, but, in the end, one just has to believe the officers whose views he chronicles and not their chronicler.” Were this not such a sensitive subject, MacDonald’s view would be much easier to accept, after all, we are once again left with the option of either accepting the word of the men who were actually present and/or at least living during the time these events occurred, or the ideas of a man who interprets what he believes motivated these men to write the reports they did seventy or more years after the fact.

This brings us back to the timeless question, what exactly is anti-Semitism, when should it be applied and to whom. Is Professor Kevin MacDonald to be branded an anti-Semite simply because he exposes the limitations so easily found in the research and writing of a historian? Should we denounce all of the findings of America’s Military Intelligence Division because some of its officers believed, and with justification, that a subversive Jewish element existed within the United States and that some Jews did in fact engage in activities that could generally be considered against the best interests of the nation as a whole? Many people are of the erroneous opinion that propaganda entails the dissemination of lies alone, this isn’t true; the truth too can be propagandized. In this respect, Bendersky’s The Jewish Threat smacks from cover to cover of pure unadulterated propaganda, the author does an incredible job of bringing many facts to light, he utilizes excellent source material, but from them, draws the most unlikely of conclusions. MacDonald’s critique exposes these weaknesses and does so without the same emotional investment Bendersky himself falls victim to.

Historiography is an incredibly complex and important discipline; it must not be tainted by emotionalism and the biases so intimately associated. The very word “Historiography,” is defined as the “writing of history based on the critical examination of sources, the selection of particulars from the authentic materials, and the synthesis of particulars into a narrative that will stand the test of critical methods.”[30] In a sense Bendersky met the first two characteristics without much difficulty, but fails in the third as so well demonstrated by MacDonald’s thesis. At the same time that bias shouldn’t play a leading role in the research and writing of history, it is generally accepted that the two can never be entirely mutually exclusive. For some reason Bendersky was “motivated” to write about MID, its findings and biases and for some reason MacDonald too was “motivated” to critically examine and call into question many of Bendersky’s conclusions. Kevin MacDonald is an Evolutionary Psychologist, a firm believer in the importance that genetics play in determining who and what we are, something Bendersky vociferously argues is a racist belief in and of itself.

MacDonald has written extensively on Jewish cultural history in the context of its adaptations over millennia and has many unacceptable and politically incorrect views on the matter, including the below:

Count me among those who accept that the Jewish commitment of leading neoconservatives has become a critical influence on U.S. policies, and that the effectiveness of the neoconservatives is greatly enhanced by their alliance with the organized Jewish community… We shouldn’t be surprised by the importance of ethnicity in human affairs. Nor should we be intimidated by charges of anti-Semitism. We should be able to discuss these issues openly and honestly. This is a practical matter, not a moral one… Ethnic politics in the U.S. are certainly not limited to Jewish activism. They are an absolutely normal phenomenon throughout history and around the world. But for well over half a century, with rare exceptions, Jewish influence has been off-limits for rational discussion…[31]

Considering the above, it is easy to see why MacDonald would have been interested in critiquing Bendersky’s The Jewish Threat; MacDonald makes it fairly clear, at least for those familiar with current events, that in many respects, his views and those of MID, at least in respect to Jewish influence, the “Jewish Question,” if you will, are interconnected ideologically. The Military Intelligence Division feared that growing Jewish influence in the United States would subvert the democratic and Constitutional constraints within the system and one day dominate, manipulate and control the entire system itself, something the neoconservatives, have frequently been accused of since 2000. Whether or not there is any truth to the idea that neoconservatives actually are “controlling” the policies of the United States, it is an indisputable fact that Jews once again, like within the early Bolshevik movement, are represented in significantly disproportionate numbers within the neoconservative movement, if you will.
One could make the argument that disproportionate representation of any ethnic group in any single organization isn’t necessarily a sign of a concerted effort on that group’s part to surreptitiously infiltrate and usurp authority within that specific group and/or the larger majority and that much would be true. However, as shown by Bendersky’s extensive research within The Jewish Threat, Jews weren’t being accused by MID of dominating a single group, they were accused of dominating communist groups internationally, the United States government itself through Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s sympathetic ears, the newspaper and publishing industries, various social institutions, etc… The very idea may seem preposterous, but it must be kept in mind that MID and MacDonald haven’t been the only one’s to suggest as much, there have been many others, Presidents, Statesmen, Congressmen, Senators, Military Officers, industrialists, authors, journalists, the list goes on and on. Are we to assume that these men were fools, deluded, or simply out of touch with reality?

The Jewish Threat reveals quite clearly, that these ideas were given a good bit of credibility in the first three decades of the Twentieth Century. Bendersky himself suggests that this “anti-Semitic” atmosphere within the United States military diminished over time, never fully disappearing, but succumbing slowly to the growing phenomenon of tolerance, diversity and understanding. In a sense this is true, but as shown earlier by the words of General Brown and Admiral Moorer this paranoia or possible insight has continued up to the present day. William J. Fullbright, a United States Senator stated quite clearly on CBS’ Face the nation in 1973, that:
"The Israelis control the policy in the congress and thesenate . . . somewhere around 80 percent of the senate ofthe United States is completely in support of Israel -- ofanything Israel wants.[32]

Fullbright’s sentiment was reinforced in the 1980’s by former Congressmen Paul Findley’s diatribe on the power of the Israeli lobby within the halls of Congress, in his book They Dare to Speak Out..[33] Findley’s thought provoking work details many instances in which The Israeli lobby and Jewish American interests were able to effectively manipulate US foreign and domestic policy in ways that weren’t necessarily in the United States’ best interests. Findley challenged the Israeli lobby while in office and paid a price, he lost reelection to another man heavily financed by Jewish Americans bent on seeing him replaced.

One can look back at the apology Billy Graham made to the Jewish community for stating to President Nixon in what he thought was a private conversation, that he felt there was a [Jewish] “stranglehold” on the media. He apologized for the comment, but does that mean he no longer believed what he said in 1973, especially considering that the apology was issued in 2002, nearly thirty years after the remark was initially made, and at a time when the actual Jewish presence in the media had grown exponentially? Perhaps he did. However, one might then take into consideration the apology of Henry Ford to the International Jewish community issued on June 30, 1927, in which Ford apologized for anti-Semitic articles published in his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent. For years [Since 1922] the Dearborn Independent had accused Jews of everything from dominating International Finance, to surreptitiously infiltrating western government for the purpose of world domination. This outraged the Jewish community, who then set out to hold Ford accountable for his shocking and outrageous accusations. Then one day, mysteriously, if you believe current accounts, Ford must have recognized the error of his ways, because out of nowhere the industrialist sent two of his representatives to see a prominent Jewish American Congressman and Vice President of the American Jewish Congress, named Nathan D. Perlman. They said that Ford was ready to “end” the “controversies and ill feelings stimulated by the Dearborn Independent articles.” Perlman sent Ford’s representatives to Louis Marshall, a prominent Jewish-American attorney.[34] Having to go through Marshall, must have caused Ford a considerable amount of discomfort as the Independent had written many nasty things about Marshall, including that he [Marshal] was something of and “enigma,” and that he headed up “the list of organized Jewry in America, and [that he was] known as the arch-protester against most things non-Jewish… He [was the] head of nearly every Jewish movement that amount[ed] to anything, and [that] he [was the] chief opponent of practically every non-Jewish movement that promise[d] to amount to something.[35]

In the end, Ford signed an apology to the International Jewish community written by Louis Marshall. One can imagine if they like that Ford was actually sorry about what his newspaper had written about Jews and Jewish power and influence over the preceding five years, or one could view his apology as an example of the power and influence the community commanded; they had literally brought one of America’s richest and most powerful men to his knees. The latter idea seems infinitely more likely, especially considering the words of one of Ford’s best-known confidants, E.G. Leibold, who once commented “I don’t know as Ford ever apologized for anything. Of course he was supposed to have apologized to the Jews, but I think everyone knows about that, he never even read that or never even knew what it contained [the apology written by Louis Marshall]. He simply told them [Marshall] to go ahead and fix it up.”[36]

Although we are unlikely to learn the details of a recent occurrence in Russia, through our mainstream news networks that is, in February 2005, five hundred Russian “academics, intellectuals, newspaper editors” and nineteen members of the Russian Duma, a legislative body similar to Congress issued what amounted to an open letter to the Russian government requesting that all Jewish religious organizations be investigated for “suspicion of spreading, incitement and provoking ethnic strife,” within Russia.[37] Of course the letter itself and its authors, all five hundred of them will now be subjected to the power of a body that allegedly has no real tangible power. Natan Sharansky, the Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs, in the spirit of thoughtful support for the democratic virtues of freedom of speech and press, called on Vladimir Putin, the Russian President to “treat the letter and its authors harshly.”[38] Interestingly, Sharansky failed in his attempt to stifle the dissent, almost as soon as his demands of Putin were released, the number of signatories grew from 500 to 5000.[39]

What is important here, isn’t so much that a group of people think Jews as a whole are up to no good, as we have seen, this has been a continuous theme in the last century, and in fact dates back several millennia, but why? In the above case, it won’t be so easy to completely dismiss these “intellectuals, academics, editors and politicians,” as they do represent a significant number of Russian citizens and probably should be viewed as a rather accurate representative sample. The question might be, why have five hundred Russians come forward and signed their names to a letter that the western media will inevitably label anti-Semitic; that is if and when they ever decide to mention it, thus far they haven’t. Could there be any truth to what they have to say?

Time will tell if the contents of this letter, signed by 5000 Russian “academics, intellectuals, editors and politicians” will ever be translated and seen by the American people in the mainstream news, it is arguably bigger news than the Scott and Lacey Peterson saga, but one shouldn’t hold their breath, as it is highly unlikely that Americans as a whole will ever learn of this letter, let alone the details within, at least in the western media.[40] The purpose of writing this paper is to inform - the reader can take what he or she likes with him, or leave it behind. In the end, it is up to the individual to decide for him or herself, whether or not those critical of Israel, Zionism, and yes, Talmudic Judaism itself as a religion, are in fact always anti-Semites or perhaps if they may instead be objective observers accused of being anti-Semites. Henry Ford, the old “anti-Semite” himself mentioned to a friend in conversation, that he didn’t harbor hate, he said, “I don’t hate Jews, I want to be their friend… The Jews have gone along during the ages making themselves disliked… They ignored their own splendid teachers and statesmen. Even they [The statesmen] couldn’t get their people to change some of their obnoxious habits… I thought by taking a club to them [figuratively] I might be able to do it.”[41] [Italics mine]. No doubt Ford attempted to take a club to them in the journalistic sense through the Dearborn Independent, but whether or not he did it with benevolence in mind initially doesn’t matter, as he certainly died with malevolent feelings regarding Jewry.[42]

In the end, the reader should take into consideration the fact that numerous seemingly intelligent, educated and patriotic Americans have believed that Jews for whatever reason have accumulated a considerable amount of influence in the United States and elsewhere around the world in a variety of different ways, through banking, the stock market, the news media, government, etc… it is up to the reader to decide if each and everyone of them was a complete crackpot, crank, racist and/or anti-Semite.

NOTES

[1] Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2004.
[2] Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2004
[3] Rieff, David. New York Times. April, 25, 2004. Accessed on January 21, 2005. http://www.middleeastinfo.org/article.php?sid=4371
[4] Joseph Bendersky is a professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University and has been for twenty five years, as well as the editor of the journal Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
[5] Bendersky, Joseph. The Jewish Threat. Perseus Books. 2000, Pg ix.
[6] Bendersky, Joseph, Pg 357.
[7] Bendersky, Joseph, Pg 357.

[8] Bendersky, Joseph, Pg 357-358.
[9] Bendersky, Joseph, Pg 357.

[10] Bendersky, Joseph, Pg 358.
[11] Bendersky, Joseph, Pg 311.

[12] Bendersky, Joseph, Pg 250-252. .

[13] Bendersky, Joseph, Pg 255.
[14] St. Petersburg Times, published March 2, 2002. Accessed on January 22, 2005. http://www.stpetersburgtimes.com/2002/03/02/news_p

f/Worldandnation/Nixon__Billy_Graham_t.shtml Mr. Graham has subsequently apologized for his “regrettable” comments.
[15] Interview with Admiral Thomas Moore by Findley on Aug. 24, 1983. Quoted in, Paul Findley, They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby .Lawrence Hill, 1984 and 1985, pg. 161.
[16] Ennes, James M. Jr., Assault on the Liberty. Random House, New York. ISBN: 0394-50512-3.

[17] Horrock, Nicholas M. United Press International. Friday October 24, 2003. Accessed on January 22, 2005. http://w3ar.com/a.php?p=1562

[18] A speech at Duke University given by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General George S. Brown, October 10, 1975. Accessed on the MIT website on January 22, 2005. http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:99eJqtN3EDMJ:www-tech.mit.edu/archives/VOL_094/TECH_V094_S0477_P005.pdf+%22s

trong+you+wouldn%27t+believe+now.+We+have+the+Israelis+coming%22&hl=en.
[19] Stein, Ben. Article on the Eonline website (1998). Accessed on January 22, 2005. http://www.eonline.com/Features/Specials/Jews/index2.html.
[20] Stein, Ben. Article on the Eonline website (1998). Accessed on January 22, 2005. http://www.eonline.com/Features/Specials/Jews/index2.html.

[21] Stein, Ben. Article on the Eonline website (1998). Accessed on January 22, 2005. http://www.eonline.com/Features/Specials/Jews/index2.html.

[22] Wolff, Michael. “From AOL to W.” New York Magazine, January 21, 2001. Accessed January 22, 2005. http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/media/columns/medialife/4322/
[23] Irving David, Focal Point Publications. http://www.fpp.co.uk/index.html
[24] This author spent many hours and a not small amount of money investigating whether or not E Greene was Jewish, I sent letters to the Australian Archives, made telephone calls and faxes to Australia, in the end I was unable to find any evidence that E. Greene was Jewish, but nor could I find any information suggesting she wasn’t. Her background remains obscure.
[25] Humphreys, Adrian. The National Post. Canada: Friday, February 28, 2003: http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?id={9B4ABE18-360E-4F47-8F29-D24FAEA23905. Accessed on January 22, 2005. http://globalfire.tv/nj/03en/persecution/zundel.htm
[26] In an email to this author, January 29, 2005.
[27] Kevin MacDonald has written three academic tomes on Jewish History and culture, A People that Shall Dwell Alone (1994), Separation and its Discontents (1998), and The Culture of Critique (1998), all published by Praeger Press.
[28] Macdonald’s critique in its entirety is found in the Index.
[29] MacDonald, Kevin. (See Index)
[30] Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. accessed January 27, 2005. http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=Historiography&x=14&y=14
[31] MacDonald, Kevin. “Thinking About Neoconservatism.” September 18, 2003. Vdare: Accessed on January 27, 2005. http://www.vdare.com/misc/macdonald_neoconservatism.htm
[32] Senator William Fullbright, Chairman of the Senate ForeignRelations Committee, Oct. 7, 1973, on CBS' "Face the Nation.”

[33] Paul Findley, They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby .Lawrence Hill, 1984 and 1985
[34] Baldwin, Neil. Henry Ford and the Jews. Public Affairs, New York, 2001, Pp. 235-240.
[35] “America’s Jewish Enigma – Louis Marshall.” The Dearborn Independent, issue of 26 November 1921
[36] Baldwin, Neil. Henry Ford and the Jews. Public Affairs, New York, 2001, Pg 241.
[37] Lily, Galily. “Blood Libel Makes Comeback in Russia.” Ha’aretz. Tue., January 25, 2005 Shvat 15, 5765: Accessed on January 27, 2005. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/531421.html
[38] Lily, Galily. “Blood Libel Makes Comeback in Russia.” Ha’aretz. Tue., January 25, 2005 Shvat 15, 5765: Accessed on January 27, 2005. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/531421.html
[39] Jerusalem Post article, http://www.ncsj.org/AuxPages/012505_Duma.shtml.
[40] When this paper was originally written, 500 Russian academics were known to have signed it. According to Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, 50,000 Russians have since signed the affidavit. The Jerusalem Post placed the number substantially lower – 5000 signatories.
[41] Baldwin, Neil. Henry Ford and the Jews. Public Affairs, New York, 2001, Pg 243.

[42] Baldwin, Neil. Henry Ford and the Jews. Public Affairs, New York, 2001, Pg 328.