Midas Ears
by Israel Shamir


A new spectre haunts America. It enters the well-protected boardrooms of newspapers and banks, shakes the deep foundations of its towers. It is the spectre of glasnost: the dark secret of Jewish power is out. Just recently it was ‘third rail’, touch-and-die, deadly dangerous to mention, certain end to a career. Just recently, Joe Public snapped his TV from an eminence with an Israeli passport to a member of a Jewish think-tank, and muttered to himself: Surely it is just a coincidence that so many important and largely unelected people in our country happen to belong to this small minority group. Surely it is just a coincidence that they belong to different parties but reach the same conclusions. Surely it is just a coincidence that ninety per cent of American foreign aid goes to their cousins in prosperous Tel Aviv. Surely it is just a coincidence that they run our newspapers, television, cinema, universities. Anyway, we are not allowed to notice this elephant in our sitting room.



Only rare desperados comment, as Edgar Steele did on Rense.com: “The silence in America concerning Jews is simply deafening, isn't it? The old adage has it that, when visiting a foreign country, to ascertain who really runs things, one need determine only who is spoken about in whispers, if at all.” Judged by this measure, the Jews rule supreme. Indeed, when I referred to ‘Jewish media lords’ during a UNESCO conference in the summer of 2001, the audience’s hearts missed a beat.



The yet-unfought War on Iraq changed this. The American Ultimatum date was set on 17 March, the Jewish feast of Purim. Purim, 1991 saw destruction of Iraqi armies and death of 200,000 Iraqis. Too many coincidences for a purely American war. The Americans peeped into the bottomless abyss of World War Three and woke up from their generation-long stupor. Thus the first victim of the Iraqi War is not truth, but the strongest taboo in the West. A Democrat member of Congress, usually a most docile specimen, one James Moran, dared to tell his supporters: "If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq we would not be doing this."



He was immediately slapped by a Jewish overseer: "It is simply stunning to hear Representative Moran make such accusations", said National Jewish Democratic Council Executive Director, Ira N. Forman. “First, a number of the current leaders of the anti-war movement are Jewish, and Jewish organizations have clearly not been at the forefront among those groups actively and stridently supporting a war in Iraq”. Forman had spoken, and the media reported and amplified his view, and Moran duly recanted, slapped. But he is not the only one.



The secret is out, and like the secret of King Midas and his long ears, it is being sung now from coast to coast, despite the frantic efforts of the organised Jewish community to clamp the lid back on the boiling cauldron. Kathleen and Bill Christison,[i] two ex-CIA experts, exposed the link between right-wing American Jews and the Bush Administration. Edward Said, the most celebrated American thinker of Palestinian origin, stated the cause: “An immensely wealthy and powerful republic has been hijacked by a small cabal of individuals, all of them unelected and therefore unresponsive to public pressure.”[ii]



He was seconded by courageous Herman, Neumann and Blankfort. These Americans of Jewish origin object to the un-elected, anti-democratic Jewish power as they would object to any disproportionate minority power. Their presence, as they were not afraid of the anti-Semitic label, was instrumental in turning the tide and saving the intimidated majority from its browbeating.



Edward Herman, the author of Manufacturing Consent (together with Noam Chomsky), wrote of “the powerful pro-Israel lobby in the United States, which advances Israeli interests by pushing for U.S. aid and protection to Israel, and, currently, by pressing for a war against Iraq, which again will serve Israeli interests. This lobby has not only helped control media debate and made congress into `Israeli occupied territory’, it has seen to it that numerous officials with ‘dual loyalties’ occupy strategic decision-making positions in the Bush administration…”



Jeffrey Blankfort, the Californian who defeated ADL in court and made Foxman pay heaps of dollars for his espionage against activists, took an important next step and rejected the views upheld by Noam Chomsky, Joel Beinin and Stephen Zunes, for these older radicals play down the crucial importance of Jewish power. Jeff Blankfort noticed the roots of the Rupture Evangelicals’ meteoric rise in the US. This obscure sect would never have left its lair in remote Dixie, but for the Jewish media lords. Jeff noticed that when Black Entertainment Television was taken over by Viacom, whose owner, Sumner Redstone (né Murray Rothstein), was recently described in the New York Times as the world's biggest media owner, he eliminated BET's news program and began running evangelical Christian infomercials for Israel. Blankfort’s list of ‘Jews in media’[iii] enables an understanding of the secret of Jewish charm, and it can be compared with a similar extensive list by Prof. Kevin MacDonald of California State University.



The Iraqi War, and even more its linkage with Palestine, became the litmus test of Jewish power. Organised Jewry pushed for war and at the same time denied its involvement. Thus in New York City, the City Council rejected an anti-war resolution, and only 12 of its 51 members were for it. This is not strange for heavily Jewish New York. Indeed, a Democrat, Rep. Robert Jackson, said it in a most straightforward way: "New York City is the home away from home for most Jews; and many members of the Jewish community think [the war is] in the best interests of the state of Israel." According to Jackson, several of his council colleagues have been intimidated into silence by the pro-Israel crowd: “People are not talking about this."



Jackson was certainly right, but a Jewish newspaper[iv] (surprisingly or not, all newspapers in the New York area are Jewish) condemned him for … racism: “[He claimed that] not only do the Jews run New York City, but they've cowed their opponents into silence. Jackson could as well call New York Hymietown.”



This response is remarkable for its typically Jewish logic. First, the opponent’s rational argument is perverted and distorted, then it is aligned with opprobrium; and at the last stage, the opponent is destroyed forever. That is one of the secrets of Jewish might: the Jews enter a dialogue berserk-like, with great vehemence, quite foreign to the Socratic style. While sane people are satisfied with quoting their opponent and fighting his arguments, madmen (for berserk is a temporarily-mad individual) go for the jugular.



David Mamet, the Jewish American playwright, provides a good example of this vehemence as he notices a “Volvo of old, the vehicle of my brethren, the congenitally liberal. It was festooned, as are its kind, with every sort of correct exhortation: Save James Bay, Honour Diversity, and so on. A most interesting bumper sticker read: Israel Out of the Settlements … a slogan which could best be translated as Hook-nosed Jews Die”.



I wonder why Mamet stopped at this, for with equal adequacy the slogan can be translated as Torture Babies, Denounce America and Burn Apple Pie. Who cares for the form of the Jewish nose? Mel Brooks noticed long ago that Jewish girls have the cutest noses, made by the best plastic surgeons…



It is the racist Jewish policies in occupied Palestine that annoy good, ‘congenitally liberal’ people. But if Mamet were honest, he would not be Mamet.



Now, Bill Keller of the NY Times read the Riot Act to the Americans. He kindly allows that ‘most of the big Jewish organizations and many donors are backing the war’ but insists that ‘the idea that Israel's interests are driving one of the most momentous shifts in America's foreign policy is simple-minded and offensive’. Well, Keller is certainly being paid for his convictions by a Jewish media lord, and one of the nastiest, Arthur Sulzberger Jr, the owner of the NY Times, the Boston Globe and a host of other publications. This undermines the possible veracity of Keller’s words. Let something similar be written in a thoroughly non-Jewish newspaper! But alas, there are no important media outlets in the US that are not owned or controlled by Jews …



Surely a coincidence? Do not bet on it. A few days ago, in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an important all-Jewish conference on anti-Semitism took place under the auspicious aegis of the Sasson Centre. The talk given by the French Jewish historian Simcha Epstein dealt with pre-war France but pertained more immediately to America. This is what Epstein said:



The pre-war anti-Semites said that the Jews of France organized a syndicate secretly bankrolling and subverting the press. And what did the Jews say at that time? They said: "Of course not! No, it's a lie, of course not! We are not engaged in conspiracies!" And what did the historians and the Jewish historiography coming afterwards say? "Of course not! It is anti-Semitic drivel!" But we know now from Jewish sources that before the WWII the Jews of France secretly financed the press.
Since the end of 19th century, there was a secret Jewish organization, well financed, which bought and bankrolled newspapers. Sometimes it took over existing newspapers, which suddenly became pro-Dreifus because they received Jewish subsidies. New papers were created especially by the Jews. Two very important papers of the period, one was called Les Droits de l'Homme, the Rights of Man, was financed by the Jews, and L'Humanité, which was the Socialist and then the Communist newspaper of France, was also financed by Jews. I say this on the authority Jewish sources of course.

And this brings us to a dramatic dilemma of historiography. Saying this, saying what I said, is something horrible and unacceptable, because it means that the Jews organized a conspiracy and secretly bought the media, or part of the media. That was precisely what the anti-Semites said at that time, and what they still say today. And we know now from Jewish sources that the allegations were true, that there was a Jewish clandestine activity of bankrolling the press.





Some people perceive every suggestion that Jews are able to act together as a mad conspiracy theory. Let them read and re-read this report by a Jewish historian made at a Jewish conference. If it is proven now beyond any reasonable doubt that the Jews of France secretly bought and subverted French media for many years in order to distort the national discourse and eventually push unprepared France into the horrible and unneeded World War Two, is it impossible to consider that the Jews of the US have secretly taken over their national media and are now pushing the US into a horrible and unneeded World War Three?



Actually there is no need for secrecy. One of the chief Zionist ideologists, Zeev Hefetz (ex-spokesman of PM Begin), wrote in an American daily: "Disarming Iraq is only a start in Middle East" as “the Arab and Iranian (sic!) cultures” are "irrational" and that nothing can be done, short of war, to "improve the collective mental health of Arab societies". [v]Certainly this massive ‘disarmament’ will be carried out by American soldiers, though the commands will be given by the Jewish chicken-hawks roosting in Pentagon. As for reasons for the war, they were eloquently stated by a keynote speaker at a conference on anti-Semitism by Yehuda Bauer, the director of the Holocaust Memorial Institute Yad va-Shem in Jerusalem:


The Jews are not a nation, neither a religion, he said. They are a civilisation, and they have their civilising mission. They cannot tolerate the competing civilisation of Islam, as they could not tolerate Christendom or Communism. That is why the war with Islam is unavoidable.
But the war is avoidable. Even today, at minutes before H-hour, the war is avoidable. And if fire is unavoidable, let the Jewish advisers of President Bush be fired. Let this Purim see the great Exodus of the "Wolfowitz Cabal" from the Pentagon. Excluding the clinical possibility of his actual zombification, G W Bush should be able to understand that he has been misled by this powerful, un-elected minority. They cannot deliver what they promised. Moreover, their own days at the helm of the Republic are numbered. They over-estimated their abilities, and pushed too hard. As the frog of La Fontaine, they can blow up. Bush still can do a U-turn, and save himself and his country.


In a way, today’s America reminds of Russia in 1986, at the beginning of glasnost. After the Soviet citizens were allowed to learn who rules them and how, the days of the Soviet regime were counted. Glasnost gave place to perestroika. Now, for the first time in a generation, Americans are allowed to see the men in power, the toxic combination of the Right-Wing Democrats of Lieberman, the Republican neo-liberals, the Neo-Cons and plain Con-men. The Iraqi War brought them forward and presented them in clear light. Now is the time to undo their hold.



It can’t be postponed for the divisive presidency of G W Bush is perceived as the period of ‘White’ Protestant Anglo-Saxon rule, despite the prevalence of his Jewish advisers. All available contenders for the next elections - Lieberman, Kelly and even Kuchinich – claim their Jewish connections and declare their undivided loyalty to Jewry and to the state of Israel. In the present political setup of America, there will be no real alternative to Jewish ascendancy. If Bush flops, it will be construed by the media as a WASP flop. If he succeeds, it will be seen as success of his Jewish advisers.



That is why American patriot forces should not wait for the next elections, or for the end of war. They must act now, by calling the war off. They have an enemy, but he is not in Iraq. What is called for is a new American revolution, on a par with the New Deal and abolition of slavery, with de-monopolisation of the discourse; that is of media and universities, for starters. In the beginning of the Twentieth Century, Americans undid the mighty Standard Oil. They created new anti-monopoly laws and terminated the threat to democracy. This achievement could be repeated now.




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[i] Kathleen and Bill Christison, `A Rose By Another Name: The Bush Administration's Dual Loyalties’, Counterpunch, Dec. 13, 2002).

[ii]  http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/628/op2.htm

[iii] Here is enough sampling to indicate that it is not:

First of all, Sumner Redstone ( né Murray Rothstein) owns $8 billion dollars worth of Viacom, which gives him the controlling interest in CBS, Viacom, MTV worldwide (Brian Graden, president), and most recently he bought Black Entertainment Television and proceeded immediately to cut down its public-affairs programming. The president of CBS is Leslie Moonves, the great nephew of David Ben-Gurion.

Michael Eisner is the major owner of Disney-Capitol Cities, which owns ABC. David Westin is the president of ABC News. Although it has lost viewers, Nightline host Ted Koppel is a strong supporter of Israel. Lloyd Braun is chair of ABC Entertainment. And there is the perennial Barbara Walters.

Neil Shapiro is the president of NBC News. Jeffrey Zucker is the head of NBC Entertainment and Jack Myers has some important post there, as well.

Although Rupert Murdoch of Fox is not Jewish, Mel Karamazin, the president of the corporation is, as is Peter Chernin, the second in command at Murdoch's News Corps.

Sandy Grushow is chairman of Fox Entertainment, and Gail Berman is president. Murtdoch has received numerous awards from various Jewish charities.

Jamie Kellner is chair and CEO of Turner Broadcasting.

Walter Issacson is the News Director of CNN which also has Wolf Blitzer, host of Late Edition, Larry King of Larry King Live, Paula Zahn, and Andrea Koppel, Ted's daughter.

Jordan Levin is chairman of Warner Bros. Entertainment.

Howard Stringer is chair of Sony Corp. of America.

Robert Sillerman is the founder of Clear Channel Communications,

Ivan Seidenberg is chair of Verizon Communications

Terry Semel, former co-chair of Warners is CEO of Yahoo.

Barry Diller, former owner of Universal Entertainment, is the chair of USA Interactive.

Joel Klein is chair and CEO of Bertelsmann's American operations, the largest publishing conglomerate in the world.

Mort Zuckerman, the Chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish American Organizations, owns US News and World Report and the NY Daily News.

Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. publishes the NY Times, the Boston Globe and a host of other publications.

Marty Peretz publishes the New Republic, which is unabashedly pro-Israel, as is

William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard.

Donald Graham, Jr. is the chair and CEO of Newsweek and the Washington Post.

Michael Ledeen, of Iran-Contra fame, edits National Review.

Ron Rosenthal is the Managing Editor of the SF Chronicle and Phil Bronstein is the Executive Editor.

David Schneiderman owns the Village Voice and a number of other "alternative" weeklies.

Columnist William Safire, Tom Freidman, Charles Krauthammer, Richard Cohen, Jeff Jacoby, are among the most widely syndicated columnists.

There are a number of widely syndicated talk show hosts such as Michael Savage (ABC) on more than 100 stations, Michael Medved, 124 stations, and Dennis Prager who has an Israeli flag on his website. Others include Ron Owens, Ben Wattenberg, and former ZOA official Jon Rothman, all in San Francisco on ABC.

In Hollywood, which was founded by Jews, there is of course, Stephen Spielberg, David Geffen, and Jeffrey Kranzberg of Dreamworks, Eisner of Disney, Amy Pascal, chair of Columbia, and many, many more.

For the intellectuals, we have NPR, with pundit Daniel Schorr and weekend hosts Scott Simon and Liane Hansen, Robert Segal, Susan Stanberg, Eric Weiner, Daniel Lev, Linda Gradstein (a well-known speaker at pro-Israel events) covering Jerusalem, Mike Schuster (whose soft-ball interview with Ariel Sharon after Sabra and Shatila should have brought him before the court of Hamarabi). Brook Gladstein.

And that's just for starters. From the boss to the delivery it's an impressive list. While they certainly can't be put in the same box when it comes to Israel, they more or less guarantee that there will be limits to any criticism they may make of Israel”.

[iv] NY Post 22.02.03

[v] November 12, 2002 The New Haven Register