The Arab and Muslim world is awash with anti-Semitism. Some times it is blatant, sometimes it is in the guise of anti-Zionism. Sometimes it’s just plain ludicrous.
A video on the MEMRI website has been posted which shows an Egyptian cleric railing against Starbucks. This time the canard that Starbucks gave money to Israel and/or the Israeli Army is avoided. Instead Safwat Higazi concentrates on the Jewish symbolism of the Starbucks logo. Yes, you read correctly. Now read on.
Apparently the logo depicts Queen Esther.
This queen is the queen of the Jews. She is mentioned in the Torah, in the Book of Esther. The girl you see is Esther, the queen of the Jews in Persia.
the MEMRI video translates. He goes on to urge good Muslims to boycott the Starbucks stores in the Middle-East. After a complete misrepresentation of the Purim story, which he has clearly never read, thence to the peroration:
We Want Starbucks To Be Shut Down Throughout The Arab And Islamic World… Can you believe that in Mecca, Al-Madina, Cairo, Damascus, Kuwait, and all over the Islamic world there hangs the picture of beautiful Queen Esther, with a crown on her head, and we buy her products?
What do you notice about this story? Israel is not mentioned at all. It’s a rant against Jews. Why should this man be stirring up trouble without grounds (all puns intended, by the way)?
For some time rumours have been spread that Starbucks gave money to Israel and the IDF. This is denied on the Starbucks website:
Is it true that Starbucks provides financial support to Israel?
No. This is absolutely untrue. Rumors that Starbucks Coffee Company provides financial support to the Israeli government and/or the Israeli Army are unequivocally false. Starbucks is a publicly held company and as such, is required to disclose any corporate giving each year through a proxy statement. In addition, articles in the London Telegraph (U.K.), New Straits Times (Malaysia), and Spiked (online) provide an outside perspective on these false rumors.
Has Starbucks ever sent any of its profits to the Israeli government and/or Israeli army?
No. This is absolutely untrue.
Is it true that Starbucks is teaming with other American corporations to send their last several weeks of profits to the Israeli government and/or the Israeli Army?
No. This is absolutely untrue.
Clearly Mr Higazi has heard these rumours and presumably he has also heard the ones about the Jews being responsible for 9/11, World Wars I and II, global warming and the tooth fairy.
Anti-Semites will find whatever fuel they can to stoke their own prejudices. Please observe that this is a rant against Jews, so any pretence of anti-Zionism can go straight out of the window.
Anti-Semitism is rife in Egypt. Almost a national obsession. On the streets of Cairo you can easily find a copy of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion which is a best seller. Blood libels against the Jews abound. And all this is a nation that is Israel’s ‘peace partner’. Who knows to what extent this trash is believed in Egypt where there is a current battle between Islamists and the existing regime and political status quo. Mubarak’s government isn’t exactly a Western democracy but at least it provides some sort of stability and resistance to Jihadis.
But what about poor Queen Esther? Well, the current logo has moved on since the early days when the nature of the Queen Esther figure was a little more obvious. Wikipedia tells us:
Valerie O’Neil, a Starbucks spokeswoman, said that the logo is an image of a “twin-tailed siren” (the siren of Greek mythology).[25] The logo has been significantly streamlined over the years. In the first version, which gave the impression of an authentic 15th century European woodcut, the Starbucks siren was topless and had a fully visible double fish tail. The image also had a rough visual texture. In the second version, which was used from 1987-92, her breasts were covered by her flowing hair, but her navel was still visible, and the fish tail was cropped slightly. In the current version, used since 1992, her navel and breasts are not visible at all, and only vestiges remain of the fish tails.
Higazi is representative of a large group of Muslim clerics for whom the Jews are simply evil. Just consider: so what even if the logo DID represent Queen Esther, is that such a crime? No, the true crime is that because some of the founders and management of Starbucks are Jews that makes the company persona non grata in the Muslim world. But here’s the killer punch: the Starbucks website also tells us:
Do you work with a Middle East partner to operate Starbucks stores?
Through a licensing agreement with trading partner and licensee MH Alshaya WLL, a private Kuwait family business, Starbucks has operated in the Middle East since 1999. Today Alshaya Group, recognized as one of the leading and most influential retailing franchisees in the region, operates more than 274 Starbucks stores in the Middle East and Levant region. ….
We partner with Alshaya Group to operate Starbucks stores in Egypt, Kuwait, KSA, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, UAE, Jordan and Lebanon in the Middle East region….
We are also committed to hiring locally, providing jobs to thousands of local citizens in the countries where we operate.
In other words, the operation in the Middle East is merely a franchise operated by a Kuwaiti company and provides employment for thousands of people. But Mr Higazi isn’t interested in that, he is only interested in his narrow-minded Jew-hatred.
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For those of you who doubt that anti-Zionism does not equate to anti-Semitism just look at a recent TimesOnline article by Daniel Finkelstein here:
http://timesonline.typepad.com/comment/2009/02/harry-potter-an.html
Iranian TV is ludicrously promulgating Harry Potter movies as part of the Zionist global conspiracy, Jewish corruption of the world’s moral fibre and so on and so on into ever more demented rhetoric. (NB that Zionist=Jewish and please note carefully what is said in the video which makes it clear that Iran makes no distinction between Zionists, Israelis and Jews)
And all this is done by seeming academics in smart suits speaking calmly and eruditely. It would be hard to keep a straight face if it were not so scary.
Although I can’t believe that many Iranians really believe this sort of twaddle, nevertheless, it can, drip by poisonous drip, erode their ability to think rationally.
In the Arab world especially there is an ongoing vicious Jew-hating propaganda industry which now seems to have spread to Iran (which is not an Arab state, of course).
In 1933 much of Europe was primed for genocide. In 2009 it seems that much of the world is moving inexorably toward agitating for a second Holocaust whilst the would-be perpetrators deny the first one.
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… no it is not.
This is his statement as reported by the BBC to be on the SSPX (Society of St Pius X) website – although I can’t find it anywhere:
In a statement published on the SSPX website, the bishop says his superior, Bishop Bernard Fellay, and the Pope “requested that I reconsider the remarks I made on Swedish television four months ago, because their consequences have been so heavy”.
“Observing these consequences I can truthfully say that I regret having made such remarks, and that if I had known beforehand the full harm and hurt to which they would give rise, especially to the Church, but also to survivors and relatives of victims of injustice under the Third Reich, I would not have made them.”
He added: “On Swedish television I gave only the opinion… of a non-historian, an opinion formed 20 years ago on the basis of evidence then available and rarely expressed in public since.
“However, the events of recent weeks and the advice of senior members of the Society of St Pius X have persuaded me of my responsibility for much distress caused. To all souls that took honest scandal from what I said before God I apologise.
Basically he is saying he stands by everything he said but he’s sorry if he offended anyone. Sorry, I’m still offended.
Bishop Williamson seems to have problems with the historical truth of the most well documented event in human history but believes the accounts of miracles in second-hand accounts written two thousand years ago about the divinity of Christ. His not being an historian does not seem to have affected him when it comes to the truth of Christ’s ministry of which there are no living witnesses, but he can’t believe the evidence of hundreds of thousands of witnesses, survivors and documents or the confessions of the perpetrators of an event which took place just 70 years ago. He only has to read Rudolf Hoess’s ‘Commandant of Auschwitz’ to gain a little historical insight. I urge him to do so. There are several museums of the Holocaust around the world, including one in the UK. I think he’d find a visit enlightening. Or why not ask one of the small group of survivors in his home country about gas chambers and death marches and executions and ghettos.
But if you want to know what Williamson really believes about the Jews then here is a little taster:
“However, until they re-discover their true Messianic vocation, they may be expected to continue fanatically agitating, in accordance with their false messianic vocation of Jewish world-dominion, to prepare the Anti-Christ’s throne in Jerusalem. So we may fear their continuing to play their major part in the agitation of the East and in the corruption of the West. Here the wise Catholic will remember that, again, the ex-Christian nations have only their own Liberalism to blame for allowing free circulation within Christendom to the enemies of Christ.”
And Pope Benedict has rehabilitated this man! It’s outrageous.
Oh, and if you are still not convinced; remember Paul Touvier, wanted for war crimes and crimes against humanity for his involvement with the Vichy government and collaboration with the Nazis, deportations of Jews from France and the murder of Jewish hostages at Rillieux-la-Pape. He was indicted and went into hiding. In 1989 he was discovered – in the Society of Saint Pius X Priory in Nice.
I rest my case.
Continue reading about Bishop Willamson apologizes – so that’s all right then…?
