opinion
The Exhausting, Never-ending Job
of Debunking Antisemitic
Conspiracy Theories
By Andrew Silow-Carroll
A few days after the comedian Dave Chappelle
appeared to justify the never-ending appeal of
Jewish conspiracy theories, this sentence appeared
in the New York Times: “Bankman-Fried is already
drawing comparisons to Bernie Madoff.”
I’ll explain: Sam Bankman-Fried is the 30-year-
old founder of FTX, the crypto-currency exchange
that vaporized overnight, leaving more than 1
million creditors on the hook. Bernie Madoff, is, of
course, Bernie Madoff, the financier who defrauded
thousands of investors through a multibillion-dol-
lar Ponzi scheme and died in prison.

It’s a fair comparison, as a former regulator tells
CNN: “Bankman-Fried, like Madoff, proved adept
at using his pedigree and connections to seduce
sophisticated investors and regulators into missing
‘red flags,’ hiding in plain sight.”
Nevertheless, seeing these Jewish figures lumped
together, I braced myself for the inevitable: nasty
tweets about Jews and money. Slander from white
supremacists. Plausibly deniable chin-scratching
from more “mainstream” commentators.

What comes next is a familiar script: Jewish
defense groups issue statements saying conspiracy
theories traffic in centuries-old antisemitic tropes
and pose a danger to the Jews. Jewish news outlets
like ours post “explainers” describing how these
myths take hold.

It’s exhausting, having to deny the obvious: that a
group of people who don’t even agree on what kind
of starch to eat on Passover regularly scheme to bilk
innocents, manipulate markets or control the world.

And it often seems the very attempt to explain these
lies and their popularity ends up feeding the beast.

Chappelle’s now notorious monologue on
“Saturday Night Live” is a case in point. At first pass,
it is a characteristically mischievous attempt to
both mock the rapper Kanye West for his antisemi-
tism and to push boundaries to explain why a trou-
bled Black entertainer might feel aggrieved in an
industry with a historic over-representation of Jews.

That is a useful message, but consider the mes-
senger. Chappelle appears to disapprove of West’s
conspiracy-mongering, but never once discusses
the harm it might cause to the actual targets of the
conspiracies. Instead, he focuses on the threat such
ideas pose to the careers and reputations of enter-
tainers like him and West. The “delusion that Jews
run show business,” said Chappelle, is “not a crazy
14 DECEMBER 1, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
thing to think,” but “it’s a crazy thing to say out
loud.” He ends the routine by ominously invoking
the “they” who might end his career.

That’s what critics meant when they said
Chappelle “normalized” antisemitism: He described
where it’s coming from, explained why his peers
might feel that way and only criticized it to the
degree that it could lead the purveyors to be can-
celed. It’s like saying, “You don’t have to vaccinate
your kids. Just don’t tell anybody.”
This week I worked with a colleague on an article
about how the “Jews control Hollywood” myth took
hold and, at each step of the way, I wondered if we
were stoking the fire we were trying to put out.

A documentary shown at the DOC NYC festival
with that red thread familiar from cop shows and
horror films, I can well imagine an uninformed
viewer asking why members of this tiny minority
seem to be at the center of so many major events
of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The poet and essayist Clint Smith, whose cover
story in next month’s Atlantic explores the mean-
ings of Holocaust museums in Germany, makes a
similar point. After visiting the museum in Wannsee
documenting the infamous meeting in which the
Nazis plotted the Final Solution, he wonders:
“Might someone come to a museum like this and be
inspired by what they saw?”
The makers of “The Conspiracy” (oy, that title)
obviously intend the very opposite. In an interview
It’s exhausting, having to deny the obvious:
that a group of people who don’t even agree on
what kind of starch to eat on Passover regularly
scheme to bilk innocents, manipulate markets
or control the world.

in New York teeters on the edge of the same trap.

“The Conspiracy,” directed by the Russian-American
filmmaker Maxim Pozdorovkin and narrated by
Mayim Bialik, uses 3-D animation to explain how
conspiracists ranging from a 19th-century French
priest to American industrialist Henry Ford placed
three Jews — German financier Max Warburg,
Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and falsely
accused French soldier Alfred Dreyfus — at the
center of a vast, contradictory and preposterous
scheme to take over the world. It connects age-old
Christian animosity toward the Jews to centuries of
antisemitic paranoia and fear-mongering that led
to unspeakable violence at Kishinev, Auschwitz and
Pittsburgh. “This myth has plagued the world for
centuries,” Pozdorovkin explains.

Or at least that’s the message you and I might
have gotten. But I can also see someone stumbling
on this film and being seduced by the rage and cyn-
icism of the conspiracy mongers — who, I should
note, are quoted at length. Part of the problem is
the film’s aesthetic: a consistently dark palette and
a “camera” that lingers on ugly examples of antise-
mitic propaganda. Even though these images are
seen on a creepy “conspiracy wall” and connected
with the Forward, Pozdorovkin agrees with the
interviewer’s suggestion that those “who most
need to see this film might be the least likely to be
convinced by it.”
“My hope is that this film has a trickle-down
effect,” he explains.

The fault lies not with those who seek to expose
antisemitism but with a society that relies on the
victims to explain why they shouldn’t be victim-
ized. As many have pointed out, antisemitism isn’t
a Jewish problem; it’s a problem for the individuals
and societies who pin their unhappiness and neu-
roses on a convenient scapegoat.

But as long as scapegoating remains popular and
deadly, the victims have to keep explaining and
explaining the obvious — that, for instance, the
fact that Sam Bankman-Fried and Bernie Madoff
are Jewish is no more significant than the fact
that Henry Ford and Elon Musk, two people who
founded car companies, are gentiles.

The question is, who is listening? JE
Andrew Silow-Carroll is the editor-in-chief of the New
York Jewish Week and senior editor of the Jewish
Telegraphic Agency.




opinion
Why Sic the FBI on the IDF?
By Clifford D. May
Mauro Rodrigues / AdobeStock
C overing armed conflicts is a risky
business. Shireen Abu Akleh, a
reporter for Al-Jazeera, must have known
that. A Jerusalem-born, naturalized U.S. cit-
izen, Abu Akleh went to the West Bank
town of Jenin on May 11 to cover a clash
between the Israeli Defense Forces and
members of a Palestinian terrorist cell
responsible for more than a dozen recent
murders of Israeli civilians in Israeli cit-
ies. A bullet struck and killed her.

She was the 13th Al-Jazeera jour-
nalist killed in a conflict zone some-
where around the world since the
news-and-propaganda outlet, owned by
the state of Qatar, was founded in 1996.

Palestinian Authority spokesmen
immediately claimed that Abu Akleh had
been murdered by an Israeli soldier, and the PA
refused to cooperate with the IDF’s investigation.

On May 19, 57 Democratic House members
called on the FBI and State Department to launch
an investigation into Abu Akleh’s death.

On June 23, two dozen Democratic senators, led
by Sen. Chris Van Hollen, called on President Biden
to “ensure the direct involvement of the United
States in the investigation.”
What did these letters say about Israelis being
attacked from the West Bank, about their right to
defend themselves and about the responsibility of
the Palestinian Authority to deal with terrorists in
the territories it governs? Not a word.

In July, the U.S. Security Coordinator for Israel
and the Palestinian Authority (USSC) — a highly
respected three-star general — concluded that
“gunfire from IDF positions was likely responsible
for the death of Shireen Abu Akleh.”
The State Department added that there was
“no reason to believe that this was intentional but
rather the result of tragic circumstances during
an IDF-led military operation against factions of
Palestinian Islamic Jihad,” a U.S.-designated foreign
terrorist organization.

Nevertheless, the IDF continued to investigate
and, in September, acknowledged “a high possi-
bility that Ms. Abu Akleh was accidentally hit by
IDF gunfire aimed at suspects identified as armed
Palestinian gunmen.”
So, case closed, right? Apparently not. The U.S.

Justice Department recently informed the Israeli
Justice Ministry that the FBI has opened another
investigation. Last week, outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Yair
Lapid responded.

“The IDF thoroughly investigates any irregular
event and is committed to the values and laws of
democracy,” he said. “Our soldiers will not be inves-
tigated by the FBI or by any other foreign country
or entity, however friendly it may be. We will not
abandon our soldiers to foreign investigations,” he
said. The United States follows the same policy, based
on the principle that the legitimacy of the justice
systems of free and democratic nations deserve
respect. Americans — and only Americans — inves-
tigate and discipline American service members.

This policy has been put into practice on numerous
occasions. The Committee to Protect Journalists has docu-
mented 13 reporters killed by the American mili-
tary in Iraq. One example: In 2003, Tareq Ayyoub, a
Jordanian working for Al Jazeera, was killed when
an American missile struck the station’s Baghdad
bureau. More recently, the United States has declined to
cooperate with investigations by the International
Criminal Court involving American troops and CIA
officers accused of war crimes in Afghanistan.

Neither the United States nor Israel rec-
ognizes the authority of the ICC.

So, why go after Israel? According to
Axios, both the White House and the
State Department have told the Israeli
government that “they were not behind
the FBI decision.”
Who was? Van Hollen has been ada-
mant that the United States must dis-
trust Israel. “There are a number of
us that are not going to allow this to
be swept under the rug,” he said at an
August Senate sub-panel hearing that
was intended to focus on China.

He might consider the root cause of
this tragedy. Last week, two people
were killed in Poland by what was
likely a surface-to-air missile misfired
by Ukrainians attempting to defend
themselves from Russian missiles. Rep.

Adam Smith, Democratic chairman of
the House Armed Services Committee,
observed that blame for the tragedy should fall on
Russia for “invading and attacking Ukraine.”
As noted above, terrorists from the West Bank
have for months been infiltrating into Israel and
murdering Israelis.

Why is Van Hollen giving them a pass?
Final question: Did no one from the FBI or the
Justice Department think to have a discussion
with the White House or State Department before
proceeding with a probe sure to damage America’s
relations with its closest Middle Eastern ally?
The least bad — and perhaps most likely — end
to this episode: The FBI takes one more look at the
evidence, finds nothing new or surprising, and then
quietly closes the case, confirming the conclusions
of the USSC and the IDF.

Some of us, however, will continue to wonder:
Why were Van Hollen and his colleagues so deter-
mined to sic the FBI on the IDF? JE
Clifford D. May is founder and president of the
Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a colum-
nist for the Washington Times.

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