The good news is that Michael Moore's Farragoheit 9/11 is so bad that even Simon Jenkins, the obsessional anti-war commentator on the Times, thinks it's rubbish. The bad news is that this is because Jenkins thinks the real story behind the Iraq war is something Moore didn't mention: that it was all cooked up by the great world Jewish conspiracy. Yup, even on the op-ed page of the Times, even from its leading, most prestigious commentator, the ancient libel of sinister Jewish power is now openly rearing its head.

Jenkins seems to have fallen under the spell of a new book, 'America Alone' by Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, which apparently avers that 'a small group of neoconservatives contrived to take the greatest nation on Earth to war and kill thousands of people'. And the reason? Their support for Israel. This is what Jenkins says Halper and Clarke are saying, with which he agrees:

'Their Iraq war is not about oil but about the agenda of a small group of Washington ideologues, whom they hold as traitors to the American conservative tradition. This group’s seizure of Washington (and London) after 9/11 makes a fascinating study in power. Known colloquially as the Vulcans, they embraced Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and the Pentagon architect of the Iraq occupation, Douglas Feith. Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush were their front men. Their first commitment was to the defence of Israel. The neocons were prominent advisers to the right-wing Israeli Binyamin Netanyahu, and opposed all Middle East “peace processes”. Having distrusted Nixon as soft on communism they distrusted Reagan as soft on Israel.

'Halper and Clarke knew and worked with many neocons during the Cold War. Their response to them is partly cultural. The Vulcans represent tunnel-vision history. Opponents are “surrender monkeys . . . gloom-sayers, saboteurs, peacemongers”. They are invariably anti-Semitic and “in league with Saddam Hussein”. (Much the same was said in Downing Street and the salons of London’s “ Pentagon chic”.) With the coming to power of President Bush the neocons deftly substituted the threat of Islam for the threat of communism. On this basis they sought a “comprehensive revamping of American foreign policy”. They disdained diplomacy, alliances and international law, which might “constrain and control American power”, and demanded pre-emptive military assertion across the Arab world.'

This pernicious theory is, of course, demonstrably ludicrous. The power of this tiny group of 'neocons' has been exaggerated out of all proportion. The idea that such a fragment of the US administration could somehow have reprogrammed the minds of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and all the rest belongs to the wilder shores of paranoid fantasyland. The idea that, almost overnight, these neocons vanquished the vast interests of big oil and that lobby's myriad connections with the US administration is jaw-droppingly asinine. The idea that they could have persuaded Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al to act in the interests of Israel and against the interests of America is simply bizarre.

It also ignores various contrary facts. Like the fact that Israel actually regarded the Iraq war as a diversion from what it sees as the number one threat, Iran. Or like the fact that Rumsfeld and Cheney themselves believed straight after 9/11 that Iraq had been involved in those attacks, and that whether they were right or wrong this and this alone is why Iraq was in their sights. No other explanation is necesary, certainly not a demented conspiracy theory which would do credit to the ravings of Saudi Arabia about the Zionist hand behind terrorism in that country.

But alas, actual facts are irrelevant here. For what we are seeing is a vicious prejudice which is simply impervious to reason. It is the resurrection of the vile and disgusting belief -- which we can now see has never gone away, however we in Britain and America may have deluded ourselves about our 'civilised' society -- that the Jews possess extraordinary and sinister power which they exercise in a covert way to advance their own interests and harm the rest of mankind. Thus, as in the passage above, the Jews have 'seized' Washington, are 'traitors' to the conservative tradition (hello, neocons have their roots in the liberal tradition) and by implication to America itself, 'disdain' law and diplomacy because they are crazed by power-lust and the desire to kill people, and so 'deftly' provided a new threat to terrify the world after communism -- a threat which doubtless is a figment of their war-crazed imagination and nothing whatever to do with the fact that an Islamist death-cult, financed, trained and supported by a network of rogue states and which has now fanned out across the globe, has declared war on the west and is busy pursuing that murderous objective.

Note also the sneer by Jenkins at the idea that there is antisemitism at work here. What else are we supposed to call an attitude which irrationally singles out a tiny group of Jews for exercising superhuman powers they patently do not possess, to influence people with real power who did not need to be influenced, to support a country which did not seek this kind of support but thought it might be a distraction from more urgent considerations, and in a way that makes them deeply disloyal and traitorous to their own country because they actually display a higher loyalty to another?

Actually, I wouldn't call this antisemitism, a word invented by an antisemite. I'd call this straightforward Jew-hatred. Alas, its open expression is now a commonplace. Only this week, I was told by a prominent and distinguished opponent of the war in Iraq that he had been stopped from writing about it in sections of the British press by 'the Jewish lobby in America', and that Bush had gone to war in Iraq because 'he had Ariel Sharon's hand up his back'.

But then, of course, any protest at such loathsome attitudes is held up as triumphant proof of the Jewish lobby at its sinister work. Well, to hell with that. This abomination must be called by its proper name, and fought wherever it rears its ugly head.

Posted by melanie at July 2, 2004