When Alisa Solomon, a Jewish write who is opposed to the U.S.-led war against Iraq, decided to attend last month’s peace rally in Washington, she was not altogether surprised to find anti-Semitic statements mixed with anti-war rhetoric.
“What I’ve felt (in the anti-war movement) is a kind of Israel bashing which is different from regular criticism,” said the 34-year-old, who contributes to the weekly Village Voice.
“It is a kind of gleeful bashing that starts to define the U.S. role in the war as (one) for Israel, which translates into a war for the Jews,” she added. “It’s easy enough to blame the U.S.; why blame Israel?”
As the anti-war movement continues to grow in strength, many of those within and outside the movement are becoming aware of an anti-Semitic strain that has entered some of the anti-war critiques.
At the Jan. 26 anti-war rally Solomon attended, amid the tens of thousands of people marching under the banner of the National Campaign for Peace in the Middle East, were placards proclaiming, “No American Blood for Israel,” according to Solomon and others there.
“We would look to the peace movement to make a strong statement about anti-Semitism, and to date we haven’t heard that,” said Rebecca Suber, field director for the Shalom Center, a Jewish activist group involved in peace issues.
Many peace activists — both Jewish and gentile — have been among the most vocal critics of Israeli government policy over the past few years. But now they are finding an increasingly blurred line between legitimate criticism and scapegoating.
ISRAEL BLAMED FOR WAR
Much of the rhetoric blames Israel for the war by saying it could have been avoided if Israel had accepted Iraq’s purported offer to withdraw from Kuwait in exchange for an international peace conference on the Middle East.
But others say Saddam Hussein’s offer was spurious one, made almost two weeks after his Aug. 2 invasion, and they question whether the former view hides an anti-Semitic perspective.
The anti-war movement has also brought together some seemingly unlikely partners — leftists and extreme rightists — who share a similar anti-war perspective and, some peace activists fear, a similar anti-Jewish agenda.
“The radical right and left have for many years focused on Jews and/or Israel and Zionism for scapegoating on many issues, and now they have found their voice on the war issue on many of the same lines,” said Alan Schwartz, director of research for the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, which monitors anti-Semitism.
The Lyndon LaRouche organization, described by critics as a fascist political movement with neo-Nazi touches, has tried to work within the anti-war movement in 30 cities countrywide, according to Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates, an organization based in Cambridge, Mass., that monitors extremist groups.
LaRouchians, as they are known, along with Liberty Lobby, another group trying to infiltrate the peace movement, have a strong anti-Semitic component, one which is prominent within their anti-war rhetoric.
Most peace organizers refuse to work with these groups, but members may still try to hand out leaflets at rallies or join the anti-war coalition under different names, Berlet said.
He characterizes the Liberty Lobby’s platform as espousing a neo-Nazi, racist world view.
ANTI-JEWISH CONSPIRACIES
An anti-war flyer distributed on the streets of New York by the Liberty Lobby blames the war on “America’s oil policy, (which) makes international manipulators rich, (and) the Israeli lobby, which controls Congress, wants war to eliminate the threat Iraq poses to Israeli dominance in the Mideast.”
In a recent edition of its newspaper, Spot-light, an article titled “Volunteers Flock to Iraq to Help Fight U.S., Israel” favorably compared this with “the building of Waffen SS legions in Europe during World War II,” according to a memo for peace groups put out by Berlet’s monitoring organization.
LaRouche’s newspaper, the New Federalist, formerly New Solidarity, is well known for its conspiracy theories. Articles combine real issues and events with wild hypothesizing that is based in racism and anti-Semitism.
“Somewhere in there is a Jewish banking theory waiting to jump out,” said Berlet. “Both LaRouche and Liberty Lobby put Jews up there as the conspiracy, both have a tendency to use code worlds and both have a soft spot for fascism.”
One of the major peace movements, the Coalition to Stop U.S. Intervention in the Middle East, has allowed members of extremist anti-Semitic groups, such as the LaRouche organization and Liberty Lobby, to speak on its behalf.
The coalition, which sponsored its own Washington march on Jan. 19, is headed by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who recently returned from a fact-finding mission to Baghdad. Clark said Monday that U.S. bombing missions had killed 6,000 to 7,000 Iraqi civilians, and that the United States was guilty of war crimes.
Organizers within the coalition heatedly deny these extremist groups play any role in it. But Monica Moorehead, a spokesperson for the coalition, acknowledged that Dick Gregory, a comedian with links to Liberty Lobby, acted as the coalition’s spokesman for the Jan. 19 march.
DISAVOWAL SOUGHT FROM RAMSEY CLARK
The Rev. James Bevel, a former prominent civil rights activist who now writes a column for the LaRouche paper, spoke with Ramsey Clark at a Jan. 4 coalition news conference broadcast on cable television, according to Frank Bell, a spokesman for the LaRouche organization.
An assistant to Clark, Bob Schwartz, who also serves on the coalition’s administrative committee, said he thought Bevel was the relative of a LaRouche supporter.
Schwartz said the coalition would not tolerate LaRouchians in its organization, although he said he did realize LaRouchians were using Clark’s name in their publications.
Berlet and others would like to see Clark make a public statement disassociating himself from the LaRouchians who have spoken out on behalf of the coalition. They question why Clark has allowed people associated with extremist groups to appear as speakers on behalf of the coalition.
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