Anders Brieviek the Norwegian mass murderer idolised Islamophobic demagogues like Fjordman, Robert Spencer, Bat Ye’or, Pamella Geller, Brigette Gabriel and Geert Wilders. What do Islamophobes, whether they are nazis, white supremacists, neo-cons, Christian supremacists, funders, bloggers, propogandists or media personalites nearly all have in common? This article connects the dots between the Islamophobia industry and right wing Zionism.
On the 22 July 2011, Anders Behring Breivik, an Islamophobic right wing Norwegian, set off a bomb outside the prime minister’s office in Oslo. He then entered a summer camp on the Norwegian island of Utoya where the youth wing of Norway’s ruling Labor party had been holidaying and shot dead 69 people. He is now in solitary confinement awaiting trial. Breivik had cobbled together a “manifesto” that layed bare his reasons for the attack and the motivations. Under interrogation, he told police he had no regrets about the massacre because he had to save Europe from being taken over by Muslims and from multiculturalism.
Brievik cited heavily from the now notorious anti Muslim blog “Gates of Vienna” (GoV) run by a white supremacist Baron Bodissy.
His fellow Norwegian white supremacist Islamophobe, Pedar Jensen, was a heavy contributor to Gates of Vienna under the anonymous alias of Fjordman until he was interviewed by Norwegian police. Fearing for his safety, Fjordman has since gone into hiding.
American Islamophobes
Islamophobia became an industry after 9/11 in the USA.
Aubrey Chernick, is a publicity shy software tycoon with a personal fortune of $780 million. He and his wife Joyce Chernick are amongst the biggest donors to David Horowitz’s Freedom Centre which owns Jihad Watch. Another recipient of their funds is Aish HaTorah, an organisation which claims to educate Jews about Judaism. With an office in New York this group has branches in and is active in the occupied Palestinian territories.
What does all this have to do with the Middle East? American foreign policy, lobby groups, media propoganda and the demonisation of Islam, ultimately influences the politics and economies of not only Palestine, but the wider Arab and Muslim world as tools to be manipulated for an agenda. A selection of some of the more prominent personalites engaged in the Islamophobia industry gives us an insight into how the dots are connected:
“Let us fight together with Israel, with our Zionist brothers against all anti-Zionists, against all cultural Marxists/multiculturalists,” Breivik wrote in his manifesto.Commending Israel for robbing most of it’s Muslim citizens of civil rights, as opposed to the freedom Muslims enjoyed in Europe Brievik spoke highly of Netanyahu for including the Yisrael Beiteinu and the Shas parties in his ruling coalition. A number of Israeli professors were quoted in his “manifesto”, including Itamar Rabinovich and Eyal Zisser.
Ten years earlier, Netanyahu could barely conceal his glee when asked for his reaction to the 9/11 attacks. “It’s very good”, he gushed, then realising how it would sound, quickly added, “Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy”. This was a heaven sent opportunity to the Zionist lobby to propogate the myth of Israel and the United States as having the same enemy. In the heightened climate of fear, this propoganda of Islam and Arabs being the enemy found a receptive audience particulary amongst the millions of Christian Zionists. Thus was born a whole new Islamophobia industry, complete with “ex Muslims” like Walid Shoebat, whose fake narrative has now been exposed as a sham. Brigitte Gabriel another rabid Islamophobic Christian Zionist is President of Act for America. She is also known as Nour Semaan and Hanan Tudor. Her talks denigrating Islam and Muslims are sponsored by hard right Zionist organisations.
David Yerushalmi, a Brooklyn lawyer who settled in Jerusalem, and is affiliated with Lubavitch Hasidic Judaism, has been the architect behind the anti-Sharia bills in the USA. He is Pamela Geller’s and Robert Spencer’s legal representive.
Aish HaTorah, the Jewish educational organisation which receives funds from Aubrey Chernick is active in the settlements of the West Bank, in Palestine. Most of the funds for the expansion of settlements come from the USA, from Jewish and Christian Zionist charities.
All of the writers and bloggers mentioned above have expressed their revulsion and distanced themselves from the carnage in Norway. Since coming under the spotlight, their reactions have ranged from expressing regret (Bat Ye’or) being on the defensive (Pamela Geller, Geert Wilders).
Gates of Vienna meanwhile has inferred that Anders Brievik may be working for ‘covert forces’. Frank Gaffney and Jihad Watch have have put forth bizarre conspiracy theories of the Noway massacre having being a false flag operation to silence the “counter jihadists” with dark hints that Brievik may be a convert to Islam. Debbie Schlussul, who like Pamela Geller is notorious for her pro Israel and anti Muslim rants, has condemned the attack but crowed that it was “karma” for Norway, as it is an anti Israel country.
Up until the Norway massacre, the underground world of Islamophobic bloggers did not merit the attention of the law enforcement agencies. After Utoya, Europol announced a new EUR50 million fund to monitor far right extremism. Previsouly right wing extremism had been deemed as less worthy of attention and not as serious a threat as that posed by Al Qaeda and Islamists.
In an attempt to intimidate, denunciations of “anti-semitism” followed at any attempt to link the ideology behind the Norway massacre to Zionist extremism. For too long these underworld hate mongers have tried to silence and stifle any debate on this subject. Is there a link between right wing Zionism and Islamophobia? Certainly more and more people and the mainstream media are now exploring this hitherto taboo subject and connecting the dots.