Several of us among the incurably curious asked ourselves a simple question: what is anti-Semitism? That it must be written with a capital “S” says a lot.

Then we realized it also morphs. To that feature I can attest. In November 2002, I met a “John Doe” in London who proposed a research challenge. While meeting that challenge, I encountered various versions of anti-Semitism.

A colleague advised against this challenge. First he fretted at the criminal nature of what the research has since confirmed. Then he inquired about my safety. That said a lot.

The colleague was M.I.T. Professor Noam Chomsky. For his criticism of Israeli policy, he was attacked as a self-hating Jew. Were he not Jewish, doubtless he would have been an anti-Semite. For critics of Israel, those are the only two options. He cautioned me:

You’ll get the same thing: anti-Semitic, Holocaust denier, want to kill all the Jews, etc. It doesn’t matter what the facts are. Bear in mind that you are dealing with intellectuals, that is, what we call ‘commissars’ and ‘apparatchiks’ in enemy states.

Is anti-Semitism a geopolitical strategy? If so, for what purpose? Character assassination?

Ten months ago, I met with Professor William Robinson on the University of California Santa Barbara campus. We met soon after he was attacked by the Anti-Defamation League and its network.

Robinson had read Guilt By Association, the first release based on this research. His question mirrored Prof. Chomsky’s concern: “Are they going to kill me?” he asked. Who are They? Those who attack anyone critical of Israeli policy.

Anti-Semitism—A License to Kill?

For his class on globalization, Robinson provided an email link to a photo essay critical of Israeli policy. The essay had been circulating online for weeks. When two students complained to the ADL, its attack troops insisted on Robinson’s removal while its national network urged alumni to threaten the withholding of gifts and bequests to the university.

Word quickly spread among academics nationwide. That time-critical ADL strategy silenced on-campus criticism of the Israeli assault on Gaza. Is it anti-Semitic to suggest that’s how anti-Semitism works?

When the Anti-Defamation League intimidates on a national scale, does anti-Semitism morph into something even more sinister? The Gaza assault killed 1,400, including 400 Palestinian children. That slaughter was scheduled during America’s political and media “down time”—between Christmas 2008 and the January 2009 inaugural of Barack Obama.

Is it anti-Semitic to suggest a strategic motive behind the timing of Israel’s latest savagery?

Then there’s the motive for 911. Is it anti-Semitic to raise that taboo subject? Ask those members of the 911 Commission who objected—successfully—when the chair and vice-chair proposed hearings on the motivation for that high-profile provocation.

Instead, Americans were left to cope with the results of an overwrought reaction to an unexplained mass murder too quickly blamed on “Islamo” fascism. Only now can we see the full costs in blood and treasure of a war waged on fixed intelligence and false pretenses.

The fiscal tab alone is projected to total $3 Trillion. That includes the future costs of military pensions, disabilities, record-level post-traumatic stress, suicides and so forth.

All that money is borrowed, a first for an American war. The interest cost could reach $700 billion. Is it anti-Semitic to mention here that debt is always the prize?

At the end of WWII, the victorious U.S. was home to 50% of the world’s productive power. Our bonds were gilt-edged and remained so for two generations. Now we are widely hated, our credibility is shot, our credit rating is slipping and our economy teeters on a meltdown.

Is it anti-Semitic to ask, “What happened?”

Is it anti-Semitic to report that the so-called “mastermind” behind 911 cited as his motive the U.S.-Israeli relationship?

Would it be anti-Semitic to ask for an accounting of the “but for” costs of this relationship?

But for this “special relationship” what would be the current condition of the U.S.—financially, militarily, diplomatically, geopolitically? Would the computation of those costs be an exercise in anti-Semitism? How about future costs?

Is it Anti-Semitic to call for a New 911 Commission?

America was misled to wage war in Iraq. Who had a relationship with us privileged enough to succeed with such duplicity in plain sight?

Who had the means, motive, opportunity and—importantly—the stable nation state intelligence to deceive us from inside our own government? Is that question anti-Semitic?

We were betrayed. Does that betrayal trace to those who befriended us?

We were defrauded. Does that treason trace to those we were induced to trust?

As counsel to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee (1980-87), I crafted federal tax law governing funds under management. Those funds surged from $800 billion in 1980 to more than $17,000 billion by the spring of 2007.

Those tax policies created a vast pool of “money-on-autopilot.” Today’s consensus belief can be simply put: money should be allowed to pursue more of itself—freely.

The unspoken assumption is that money is smarter than people. That’s the generally accepted truth behind the finance-fixated obsession we now know as “economics.”

Legions of consensus-touting consultants insist that this One True Faith guide lawmaking worldwide. By law, financial freedom became a proxy for personal freedom. Tribunals under the World Trade Organization may yet enforce that worldview globally.

How did such a narrow perspective become a widely agreed-to mindset? How were we induced to set America’s course by those values peculiar to money?

Rather than the civil rights refrain, “Let my people go,” the consensus refrain is “Let my money go.” Were we induced by a subculture within a subculture…within a subculture to freely embrace the very money myopic mindset that now endangers our freedom?

This mindset first surfaced as the “Chicago model” before morphing over decades into the “Washington” consensus.

How were we as a nation induced to brand democracy with a point of view that, by law, displaces those values not denominated in money? Is that an anti-Semitic question?

Shutting Down Debate

Early on in this challenge, I included the noun “Jew” in a Google search. I received in return an automated response from the Anti-Defamation League implying I was an anti-Semite.

Why?

More importantly, how did a Google response appear in my email inbox—automatically—from the Anti-Defamation League?

The ADL network conducts trainings for law enforcement under recently enacted federal hate crimes legislation. By my use of a common noun in an online search, am I now identified in a database as wanting to kill all the Jews?

Mark Yudoff, president of the University of California, could have intervened in the on-campus events that caused Professor Robinson to fear for his life. He declined. Richard Blum, chair of the state’s Board of Regents, could have intervened. He too declined.

Judith Yudoff is the immediate past international president of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism representing 760 synagogues. Blum’s wife, U. S. Senator Diane Feinstein, chairs the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Is it anti-Semitic to report these facts?

My apologies. Clearly I don’t yet grasp what anti-Semitism is. Thus I throw the challenge to you the reader: what is it? Together perhaps we can sort this out.

Winning wars in the Information Age largely depends on winning the battle for public opinion. Thus the opinion-shaping role of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) when it attacked a high profile California professor for his criticism of Israeli policy in Palestine.

That ADL intimidation campaign successfully chilled debate on campuses nationwide during several time-critical months while a new president, promising the hope of change, reassessed U.S.-Israeli relations. His only change—endorsing more Israeli settlements on Palestinian land—quashed any hope of peace.

This ADL silencing strategy offers a microcosm of how the U.S. was induced to war in Iraq based on false intelligence. From the provocation of September 11, 2001 until the invasion of March 2003, war-planners ignored, dismissed or sought to silence anyone critical of the spurious premises offered for war.

Only later did we discover that the intelligence was fixed around a preset agenda. Even now, Americans are unaware that the U.S.-led invasion had long been an Israeli goal.

In similar fashion, an ADL campaign silenced on-campus criticism of Israel’s December 2008 assault on Gaza. At the University of California Santa Barbara, ADL-initiated charges were lodged against sociology Professor William Robinson. The disciplinary action dragged on until June 24^th when 100 professors and 20 department heads demanded an end to all proceedings.

By then the damage was done—to the reputation of Professor Robinson, to academic freedom at the University of California and to national security as this campaign silenced academics countrywide. While Robinson’s reputation can be restored, the damage to national security is irreparable.

Manipulating Thought

The ADL and the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles coordinated the assault on Robinson after he shared with students from his globalization website a photo essay critical of Israel. The essay had circulated for weeks on the Internet.

Aaron Ettenberg, a member of the Faculty Senate Charges Committee, collaborated with Santa Barbara Rabbi Arthur Gross-Schaefer who reviled Robinson in the local community and urged—along with the ADL—that he be disciplined by the university for his “anti-Semitic” behavior.

Chancellor Henry Yang was subjected to threats to withhold funding featuring a campaign led by ADL National Director Abe Foxman and Rabbi Marvin Heir from the Wiesenthal Center.

Professor Ettenberg had served the previous two years as president of the local chapter of B’nai B’rith, an ADL affiliate. Rabbi Gross-Schaefer was director of the local chapter of Hillel, an on-campus ADL affiliate.

Mark Yudof, president of the University of California, opted not to intervene even as this silencing campaign attracted international attention. Yudof’s wife, Judith, is the immediate past international president of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism representing 760 synagogues. She is also a director of Hillel.

As with the dominance of Jewish Zionists among neoconservative war-planners, the pro-Israeli bias was all-pervasive. Richard Blum chairs the statewide Board of Regents for the University of California. His wife, U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, chairs the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. What was their reaction as this professor was silenced? Silence.

Coincidence or Faith-Based Coordination?

Would a professor and a local rabbi have risked their careers and their reputations absent their confidence that—based on the shared bias of university administrators and government officials—they could intimidate with impunity? Absent such implied support, would this silencing operation have dragged on for so long?

Absent their silence—with its tacit approval—what might have been the impact of campus criticism when Israel’s assault on the captive population of Gaza left 1300 dead, one-third reportedly women and children? Those complicit in this silencing campaign knew the impact on public opinion of student protests against the Vietnam War—particularly on California campuses.

Those concerned about anti-Semitism must explain how this broadly coordinated intimidation campaign was allowed to succeed. In the same way that public opinion was manipulated prior to an invasion that launched the Global War on Terrorism, this campaign sought to deny students the facts required to understand Israel’s role in provoking that terror.

Absent access to facts, how can the U.S. preserve a system of self-governance founded on the premise of informed consent? Without facts, how can national security be protected from those who “fix” intelligence in order to deploy the U.S. military for the interests of a foreign nation?

Unless those complicit are held accountable, how will American youth learn the essential role of free and open debate on topics of direct relevance to their lives?

In a representative system of government, the greatest threat to liberty is manipulation of the facts required for informed citizen participation. Anyone who cherishes freedom should be alarmed at the ongoing success of such manipulation and outraged that its common source traces to a purported ally.

Psychological warfare targets knowledge as a means to manipulate thought, opinion and emotion (the “hearts and minds”) and thereby influence behavior. At the center of such disinformation is the displacement of facts with false beliefs meant to prod decision-making toward a preset goal.

Thus the false reports of Iraqi WMD, Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda, Iraqi mobile biological weapons laboratories and so forth. Thus the high profile assault on a high-profile center of learning to silence a professor who threatened to replace manipulated beliefs with confirmed facts.

Where U.S. policies toward Israel are at stake, facts are routinely suppressed to shape debate. Such strategic deceit systematically undermines U.S. national security.

Treason in Plain Sight

Intimidation campaigns have long been a key tool for organized crime and for those whose undisclosed agenda can succeed only when shielded from public scrutiny. Those complicit in such “psy-ops” know their agenda could not prevail in an open debate. They also know that if their treachery is detected they face charges of treason, a capital crime.

That’s why this form of treason instead targets knowledge to corrupt the facts required for informed choice. That focus denies those targeted a meaningful choice while leaving intact the appearance of open debate. Meanwhile the perpetrators seek refuge behind the very freedoms they undermine—freedom of speech, press, assembly and religion.

In this case, pro-Israeli operatives silenced on-campus criticism of Israel while Israel committed dozens of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Evidence of those crimes was depicted in the Internet-posted photo essay that the ADL attacked as “anti-Semitic.”

What was the strategic result? That assault on Gaza marked yet another violent provocation guaranteed to catalyze a violent reaction (aka “terrorism”), adding plausibility to the narrative of “militant Islam.” The result made the U.S. appear guilty by its association with this criminality.

We then compounded our complicity by covering up the facts when the Congress, dominated by the Israel lobby, overwhelmingly approved a resolution portraying as “irredeemably biased” a chronicle of those war crimes in “The Goldstone Report,” a comprehensive account by an eminent Jewish jurist. [See How the Israel Lobby Took Control of U.S. Foreign Policy.]

The U.S. was doubly damaged. We not only discredited ourselves, we also endangered our national security by condoning criminality destined to provoke more violence directed at our troops.

When such psy-ops campaigns are detected, defenders of democracy must fight back by making the perpetrators transparent and their common motivation apparent. This is how Israel wages war on the U.S. from inside the U.S.—by deceiving us to wage its wars and by provoking others to hate us due to our alliance with religious extremists and their apartheid policies.

Duplicity has long been a weapon deployed to “wage war by way of deception.” That’s the operative motto of the Mossad, the intelligence and foreign operations branch of the Jewish nationalists who have dominated Israeli politics since a Christian-Zionist president erred in 1948 by recognizing as a legitimate “state” this enclave of Jewish extremists and ultra-nationalists.

Israel specializes in what the Pentagon calls unconventional warfare. Such warfare is only “unconventional” for the targeted population (us). For militant Zionists, this is how war is waged. When your numbers are few and your ambitions vast, deceit becomes an essential force-multiplier.

In the Information Age, why would anyone expect war to be waged in any way other than by deception? Where else but in plain sight could such warfare be waged?

For freedom to prevail against such psy-ops requires a shift in strategic focus. A robust defense would make this manipulation transparent in real time before deception can work its intended impact on public opinion.

The dominance of pro-Israelis in mainstream media complicates that task. Media complicity was essential to succeed in the deceit that took the U.S. to war and that now seeks to obscure Israeli war crimes.

A Special Relationship with Fanatics

The Pentagon warned six decades ago that Jewish extremists sought military and economic dominance over the entire Middle East. As the Joint Chiefs of Staff cautioned Harry Truman:

“All stages of this program are equally sacred to the fanatical concepts of the Jewish leaders. The program is openly admitted by some leaders, and has been privately admitted to United States officials by responsible leaders of the presently dominant Jewish group—The Jewish Agency.”

Other than religious fanatics, who would deny Americans—including college students—the facts required to make informed choices on an issue as critical as taking the U.S. to war in the Middle East? Other than pro-Israeli publishers and broadcast media owners, who would have the motivation to report as “facts” the phony intelligence that was fixed around Israeli goals?

If not Israel and its Zionist advocates—both Christians and Jews—who would have the means, motive, opportunity and, importantly, the stable nation state intelligence required to corrupt the intelligence that took the U.S. to war? Or to silence academic critics just when those who induced the invasion of Iraq intensified their efforts to expand this war to Iran and now Pakistan?

If the behavior described is not treason, what is? If this is treason, why have those complicit not been charged? Is Professor Ettenberg still employed by the university? If so, why? Have rabbis Gross-Schaefer and Heir been dismissed from their positions of influence? If not, why not?

Why hasn’t the ADL’s Abe Foxman been indicted? Did he confer with the Yudoffs during this silencing campaign? Has a federal grand jury been impaneled to consider charges of treason? Foxman was invited to the White House for the October 28^th signing of the ADL’s “model hate crimes” bill. Will that federal legislation now be deployed to lawfully intimidate critics?

Have mainstream publishers and media owners been investigated for their complicity in this national scale fraud on public opinion? If not, why not? Is the Federal Communications Commission moving to revoke the broadcast licenses of those who used the public airwaves to deceive the public?  If not, why not?

Are news reports correct that an investment firm run by Richard Blum made more than $100 million on the rising value of its stock in a top defense contractor? Did his firm also invest in media outlets that sold us this war?

In an irony of epic proportions, ADL’s amendment to federal hate crimes law was tacked onto an appropriations bill for the Department of Defense. Will the ADL now seek to portray as “anti-Semitic” those who document for a long-deceived military the common source of the psy-ops that took U.S. forces to war in the Middle East?

Will those who repeat the Joint Chiefs’ warning about religious fanatics be targeted for federal prosecution? Will allegations of hate be deployed to silence debate? Is treason now lawful?