The State of the Jews

Looks like a fun party.

Anti-Ahmadinejad protest in Rio de Janeiro last week, where demonstrators carried Brazilian, Israeli and gay pride flags.

Hat tip: Tom Gross.

According to JTA, Aftonbladet journalist Donald Bostrom, who spectacularly accused Israeli soldiers of running a massive organ-trafficking operation preying on Palestinian youngsters, is “reconsidering” his story.

Donald Bostrom cancelled a scheduled appearance at a conference in Beirut after a visit to Israel in which he participated in dialogue on the issue, according to Army Radio. Bostrom was in Israel last month for a media conference in Dimona.

The Beirut conference was set to be an anti-Israel hate fest, according to reports.

“The visit to Israel and the fact that I was part of a fair dialogue made me rethink the whole issue,” Bostrom reportedly told associates, according to Ha’aretz.

In an article published in August in the popular Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, Bostrom reported that Israel seized young Palestinian men and returned them to their families with missing organs.

The story, which ran under the headline “They plunder the organs of our sons,” also cited the recent arrest of a New York rabbi accused of trafficking in human organs.

During the Dimona conference Bostrom admitted that his only proof of the organ stealing came from the allegations of the Palestinian families.

Check out what Ha’aretz military reporter Anshel Pfeffer recently did to Bostrom’s story.

In case you missed it, Tom Gross caught it on Wednesday:

Not only did Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, today say that negotiating with the United States would be a “naive and perverted” thing to do (Khamenei revealed President Obama has approached him several times through oral and written messages which he has not replied to).

Not only did Israeli commandos today intercept a ship carrying hundreds of tons of Iranian weapons intended for Hezbollah in Lebanon – the biggest ever seizure of arms on their way from Iran to its client terrorist militia, Hezbollah, which Iran plans to use as one element in its attempt to wipe the Jewish state off the map (BBC story and video here).

Mohammad Ali Ramin

Not only did Iran brutalize pro-democracy demonstrators once again on the streets of major Iranian cities today (there are several videos if you scroll down here from France 24, and a report here by BBC Persian).

But in addition Iran has appointed as its new deputy culture minister, in charge of media and communications, Mohammad-Ali Ramin, who previously served as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s top advisor on Holocaust matters and is known as “the brain” behind the president’s strategy of Holocaust denial.

Incidentally, an interesting piece on the possible philosophical roots of Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial ran in the Forward last month. You should read it.

If you read this blog, then you’re newsy enough to have seen the report that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad might have been born Jewish.

As the Telegraph reported yesterday:

A photograph of the Iranian president holding up his identity card during elections in March 2008 clearly shows his family has Jewish roots.

A close-up of the document reveals he was previously known as Sabourjian – a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver.

So what to make of it? Does it matter that Ahmadinejad, who wants to destroy the last major Jewish enclave in the Eastern Hemisphere in the name of his Shi’ite messianism, was born a Jew?

In my opinion – not at all.

It isn’t Ahmadinejad’s possible hidden Jewish past that matters, but the fact that he must hide it. It isn’t the father’s alleged abandonment of Judaism that matters, but the son’s plan to murder the rest of them. If Ahmadinejad is Jewish, the significance is not his personal psycho-drama, but the baggage that the word “Jew” carries in his world and in large swaths of the Muslim world generally.

A day after the Telegraph report on Ahmadinejad, Pakistan Daily, an English-language Pakistani paper, published another Muslim-who-is-really-Jewish story about the Saudi royal family. The paper blames Saudi oppression on the secret history of the Saudi family, which it claims descended from a murderous, cheating Jew who usurped the legitimate tribal leaders of the Arabian peninsula through lies. Wahhabism itself, the paper claims, is a Jewish invention.

Give it a read. It’s a real hoot:

Their hideous Jewish family has, in fact, done all that kind of atrocities in the name of their false religious sect (the Wahabi), which has actually been invented by a Jew so as to sow the seeds of terror in the hearts if people in towns and villages. This Jewish Dynasty has been committing such brutal atrocities ever since 1163 A.H. They have named the whole Arabian Peninsula after their family name (Saudi Arabia) as if the whole region is their own personal real estate, and that all other inhabitants are their mere servants or slaves, toiling day and night for the pleasure of their masters (The Saudi Family.)

…

That was and still is the system of this regime of the Jewish family) (Saudi Family). All its goals are: plundering the wealth of the country, robbing, falsifying, and committing all kinds of atrocity, iniquity, and blasphemy-all are executed in compliance with their self invented Wahabi Sect which legalizes the chopping of the heads of their opposing subjects.

Modernity was supposed to fundamentally alter the way people act and interact. In an age of reason and the overpowering triumph of technology and democracy, human beings were supposed to think more clearly, act more wisely.

So why does stuff like this keep sweeping across the Muslim world?

The anti-Semitic blogosphere and many Arab and Muslim media outlets are aflutter in recent days over accusations of an international Jewish conspiracy to kidnap Algerian children and harvest their organs.

According to the story, first reported by Algeria’s Al-Khabar daily, bands of Moroccans and Algerians have allegedly been roaming the streets of Algeria’s cities kidnapping young children, who are then transported across the border into Morocco. From the Moroccan city of Oujda, the children are then purportedly sold to Israelis and American Jews, who then harvest their organs for sale in Israel and the United States. The organs are said to fetch anywhere from $20,000 to $100,000.

Yes, this lie is being told in America, too.

And yes, Iran’s official news organ made the obvious Swedish connection. Can you blame them?

Last month, a report published in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, accused Israeli soldiers of kidnapping Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip for their organs, indicating a possible link between the Israeli military and the mafia of human organs detected in the US.