The Review - TALMUDIC TERRORS

June 1999

TALMUDIC TERRORS

By Jeremy Jones

The World Serbian Voice Newspaper, published in Melbourne and distributed internationally, joined the least desirable of company with its May 4 issue.

Other than advertisements, an entire page of the newspaper consisted of a long submission under the title 'New World Order dominated by Talmudic-Zionist Jews', written by a person who is neither Serbian nor in any other way qualified to be published in this way, Jack King. It should be noted that King has conducted a long-term crusade to expose Judaism, Zionism and whatever else catches his fancy, and his lack of impact is a tribute to the common-sense and decency of the rest of the Australian population.

In this article he claimed that "A main feature of Talmudic Jewish religion (Judaism) is hatred of Christians", which allegedly is using its "domination" of the United Nations to destroy "Christian Yugoslavia" as part of "consolidating the New World Order - a world dominated by Christian-hating Zionists".

It should be mind-boggling to find, in 1999 in modern Australia, long-discredited misrepresentations, distortions and fraudulent "citations" from the Talmud appearing as the basis of an article in a community newspaper, but unfortunately this most medieval of myths has a real currency amongst Australia's extremist groups, as it does in the international world of hate propaganda.

The Adelaide Institute newsletter, the contents of which serve as the basis for Fredrick Toben's arrest in Germany, has contained a number of prime distortions of the Talmud and uses "Talmudic" as a catch-all insult.

Another Australian who makes a mark internationally, Theodore Schineis, included a very long, very bizarre, very offensive item, 'Wall Street's Talmudic Success Religion -Unveiled', in a February issue of his widely-distributed Diplomatic Panorama newsletter.

Schineis offered for sale "a copy of the original script Talmud Unmasked written in English by Orthodox Priest I.B. Pranaitis, St Petersburg, Russia". Pranaitis, who compiled his defamation of Judaism in 1892 in Latin, was effectively laughed out of court during the famous 'Blood Libel' trial of Mendel Beilis, in 1912. Pranaitis showed himself to be not only a fraud and a liar, but a fool, and would have disappeared into the dustbins of history if not for antisemitic propagandists working on the assumption that there will always be people without the will, desire or intellectual capacity to examine sources of material placed before them.

In this country, his most enthusiastic promoter is Anthony Grigor-Scott, who calls himself "Reverend" and runs his own antisemitic pseudo-Christian 'Ministry', the 'Bible Believers'. Grigor-Scott's website describes a man who, as the court transcript of the Beilis trial made clear, wouldn’t have recognised an extract from the Talmud if all the volumes of the Jerusalem and the Babylonian Talmud had landed on his head, as "the greatest of the students of the Talmud".

In the League of Rights' Melbourne bookshop, recent reprints of Prainitis' slanders are also promoted and sold, together with a series of other books on the theme, such as Des Griffin's Anti-Semitism and the Babylonian Connection and Israel Shahak's Jewish History, Jewish Religion, the latter attempting to promote the view that no matter how secular, non-religious or irreligious a political opponent of Shahak's maybe, it is the Talmud which makes them evil.

Shahak gained some-time favouritism with Scott Balson, the One Nation Webmaster who issues a daily Internet newspaper. In his obsession with Rupert Murdoch, Balson donned the mantle of Talmudic scholar to declare Murdoch a "mamzer Jew" (as wrong-headed as he was abusive) and in his defence against demonstrable charges that he has published antisemitism, put on his site material from Shahak which Balson claimed illustrated there are "hateful Judaic laws against Christians, laws that permit Jews to cheat, to steal, to rob, to kill, to rape, to lie, to even enslave Christians."

As mentioned above, depicting the Talmud and thereby Judaism as evil, antisocial and existentially opposed to all which is good and proper, has a tradition over hundreds of years. In the minority of historical situations where Jews were anything other than totally subject to the whims of the authorities, the Talmud has been successfully defended in academia, through the courts and in public forums.

Which brings us to the dissemination of antisemitism based on slandering the Talmud, using the Internet.

The dissemination of non-English language newspapers, hate-sheets circulated by far-right wing groups, and newsletters, newspapers and books servicing the extremist fringes have relatively limited circulations, but the various newsgroups on the Internet have potentially unlimited audiences and the websites can be visited by anyone from anywhere.

For this reason, material which has been laughed out of the academic arena, driven out of public discourse and exposed as nothing more than anti-Jewish defamation wherever it has raised its ugly head, has been given a new lease of life.

If any reader doubts the maliciousness, virulence and prevalence of such material in cyber-space, it is well worth a visit to the Internet site known as Talmud Expose (www.geocities.com/Athens/Cyprus/8815), in which Melbourne's David Maddison has performed the Herculean task of responding, one by one, to the hundreds of "anti-Talmud" quotes, lies and themes he has encountered on the Internet.

Serving as testimony to the amazing contribution one dedicated individual can make to efforts to expose antisemites for the liars and frauds they are, this site provides material which should have been accessed by any editor thinking of including letters such as that by Jack King and anyone else who might think that there is something new or newsworthy in this vicious form of incitement against the Jewish religion and Jewish people.

Antisemites constantly receive reinforcement for their view that there is enough intellectually laziness, bigotry and mean-spiritedness around to give their campaigns some chance of success. Dr Maddison's work, if supplemented by informed responses and leadership by genuine Christian authorities and others with an interest in informed and honest debate, should be enough to send the message that liars and hate-mongers will not be allowed to propagate their slanders without being exposed and being held accountable for any harm they cause to individuals or to the quality of our society.