[cont'd from OP]


Kay's "evidence" that I am a "Holocaust skeptic" consists of a paragraph that a crazy stalker named Mark Rabinowitz claims was in an email I sent him many years ago. Rabinowitz -- a minor-league political paranoid who harassed me briefly in 2005 about my anti-Zionism, and against whom I nearly had to take out a restraining order -- has never produced any evidence that the paragraph he attributes to me actually was in an email I sent him; nor do I remember writing that paragraph. I am reasonably certain that the paragraph was either altered or invented out of whole cloth by Rabinowitz, since it mentions three alleged "holocaust deniers" named "Green, Irving, and Zundel" about whom I knew nothing at the time, and still know very little. (I still don't know who this "Green" person is, though Kay helpfully informs us that the first name is "Mark.") So here I stand, accused of supporting "holocaust deniers" whose names I barely recognize, based on a false claim posted by a nobody on his obscure personal website. Strangely enough, this completely baseless libel proved impossible to remove from Wikipedia despite repeated efforts, and has now found its way into Kay's widely-published book. Time for a libel suit? Will I soon be the proud owner of Wikipedia and HarperCollins?

From his attack on me, which offers many more false and/or defamatory statements than I care to inflict on the reader, Kay segués in his usual non-sequitur style into a rambling rant about the long and terrible history of anti-Semitism, which (he claims) is the reason for "the anti-Zionists' obsessive focus on the victims of Israeli counterterrorist operations, while ignoring the terrorist provocations that led to them." In other words, throughout the history of the Zionist invasion of Palestine, the 95% of the murders and maimings and kidnappings that are attributable to the Zionists are just "counterterrorist operations," while the 5% attributable to the Palestinians are "terrorist provocations." That's a lot like saying that any Jews who killed Nazis while resisting the holocaust were terrorists, since the Final Solution was just a big counterterrorist operation.

Kay claims that the statement that Israel "deliberately targets Palestinian children playing on roofs" is a "blood libel" (p. 299). His statement must be knowingly false, since I sent him a copy of an article in the prestigious British Medical Journal (10/16/04) which concluded: “Two thirds of the 621 children (two thirds under 15 years) killed at checkpoints, in the street, on the way to school, in their homes, died from small arms fire, directed in over half of cases to the head, neck and chest—the sniper's wound. Clearly, soldiers are routinely authorised to shoot to kill children in situations of minimal or no threat.” Along with the BMJ article, I sent him Chris Hedges' Harper’s magazine article "Gaza Diary" (October 2001) in which Hedges graphically reports that he had been in several war zones, but he had never seen soldiers luring children within range of their guns, then gut-shooting them for sport, until he saw Israeli soldiers doing it in the Occupied Territories.

Does Kay, whose book participates in the cover-up of these child murders, as well as the millions of murders of 9/11 and the 9/11 wars, end his book with a final veiled tip of his cap to the guru of the neocon big lie, Leo Strauss, by way of a quote from Voltaire?

"An atheist, provided he be sure of impunity so far as man is concerned, reasons and acts consistently in being dishonest, ungrateful, a slanderer, a robber, and a murderer. For if there is no God, this monster is his own god, and sacrifices to his purposes whatever he desires and whatever serves as an obstacle in his path. The most moving entreaties, the most cogent arguments have no more effect upon him than on a wolf thirsting for blood." (p. 326).

For atheist, substitute Straussian. Leo Strauss, the guru of Kay's neconservative friends, an atheist and self-professed "teacher of evil," taught his students to be pious frauds, wolves in sheep's clothing, who realize that brute force and hatred, not "cogent arguments," rule the world. The ideal Straussian is indeed "his own god, and sacrifices to his purposes whatever he desires and whatever serves as an obstacle in his path." And since Strauss and his students are fanatical Zionists, they sacrifice to their own purposes whatever they desire (including the World Trade Center and the truth), dispense with rational argumentation, and write dishonest books full of ingratitude to those who helped them, slandering some of the world's very best people, robbing their readers of their reason while pretending to defend Reason, and participating in the coverup of mass murder if not the act itself.

Is Jonathan Kay this kind of Straussian? Has he written a discombobulated book, peppered with outrageous falsehoods, whose only connecting thread is an obsession with anti-Semitism in general and the Protocols in particular, as an esoteric parody of the worst sort of conspiracism? Is his real message that reason and truth are feeble, while the kind of emotion-based character-assassination he indulges in is a far more effective political tool? Is he telling his fellow Zionist Straussians to get out there and win the fight with lies, murder, slander...whatever it takes? Is he telling his readers "Whatever you do, do not use reason and evidence to look at the facts about 9/11! Instead, hurl insults at those who do!" And is he performing this ritual sacrifice of goodness and truth and reason under the smokescreen of an ironic hymn to the glory of reason itself?

Alas, the answer is almost certainly "no." Jonathan Kay is no evil genius. As Gordon Duff said on my radio show, Jonathan Kay is a "lightweight." He even seems to be a fairly nice guy, despite his propensity for libel. I think his nastiness and 9/11 denial are driven by deep unconscious fear, not conscious ill will. In fact, I cannot help but feel the same sort of "affection" (with more than a tinge of condescension) for him that he claims to feel for his victims.

# # #


Notes


*Despite Kay's association with Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the successor organization to PNAC, I do not think he is a scheming Straussian, nor do I think his book is a conscious parody. Instead, I think he is driven by a largely unconscious fear of anti-Semitism, which has developed into something approaching full-blown paranoia: his conspiracy theory that all conspiracy theories are part of a immense plot at the heart of which is the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. But it's more fun to read his book as if it were consciously rather than unconsciously parodying itself.

**See Shadia Drury's books on Strauss and neoconservatism. Or read Strauss himself if you have a lot of time on your hands, a high threshold of tolerance for bad writing, and a strong stomach.

*** Please do not miss the point that I am NOT a paranoid anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist, and I do NOT believe any such background check was ever conducted. I know perfectly well that Kay is just a paranoid & sloppy researcher and thinker. This whole review is based on a conceit (not my actual belief) that he's a brilliant, scheming, Machievellian-Straussian Mossad agent. Posted by Kevin Barrett at 10:55 PM


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