On July 2nd we posted about a shameful smear, by the Independent’s “award-winning” Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk, of Canada’s leading Jewish human rights organization, B’nai Brith.
B’nai Brith’s crime, per Fisk, is that they used the “disease” metaphor when characterizing antisemitism – in the context of commenting on an ADL commissioned poll which found that 4 million Canadians are antisemitic.
Fisk:
Not long ago, I was handed the most outrageous, vile, dishonest and slanderous calumny uttered against the people of Canada. It was contained in a full-page advertisement in the National Post (founder, Conrad Black), a newspaper handed out – free, I’m happy to say – on my Air France flight out of Toronto. Here is the headline: “Almost 4 million Canadians are afflicted by this disease.”
…
the “disease” afflicting “almost 4 million Canadians” is “anti-Semitism” and this disgusting advertisement – published without comment by one of Canada’s leading right-wing newspapers – was produced by B’nai Brith Canada and the “Jewish Christian Alliance”.
…
But what, we have to ask, possesses Israel’s “friends” to publish this pernicious material about 4 million “diseased” Canadians? Does B’nai Brith Canada not realise that these very same despicable lies were used by the Nazis in their hate propaganda against the Jews of Europe? In Hitler’s Germany, Jews were described as microbes. Jews, according to Julius Streicher, were “the carriers of disease and vermin among men”. In August 1941, Goebbels called Jews “the carriers of infectious diseases” and two weeks later referred to Jews as “parasites”. By November, he was calling them “lice”. But now, 4 million Canadians carry “disease”. Undiagnosed “infections” will be passed on to children and grandchildren. The “community” is in danger of being “contaminated”.
We noted that Fisk’s facile logic suggested that since both groups (B’nai Brith and the Nazis) used the disease metaphor in some manner – albeit one to characterize Jews and another to characterize those who hate Jews – both are nonetheless guilty of using Nazi-style propaganda.
Following our post, the Indy published a letter by Yiftah Curiel, Spokesperson for the Israel Embassy in London, which also demonstrates Fisk’s egregious hypocrisy in leveling such a charge:
Robert Fisk (30 June) is disgusted at the use by B’nei Brith Canada of terms such as “disease”, “contamination”, and “infection”, to describe the worrying phenomenon of anti-Semitism. He bemoans the fact that these terms were used by the Nazis against Jews.
Interestingly, Fisk has used the same terminology himself, referring to his wish “not to be contaminated by the war crimes of Israel’s pilots” (Voices, 20 November 2012), and when referring to Israel’s “cancerous threat of war” against Iran (24 November 2013).
The logic is as follows: a Jewish organisation is wrong to use terms used by the Nazis, while he, Fisk, is at liberty to use these very “Nazi” terms when discussing Israel.
Yiftah Curiel
Spokesperson, Embassy of Israel, London W8
