Double Standards, OUTRAGEOUS double-standards…and then there’s Jonathan Kay

I hate to criticize a book I haven’t read yet, even if those who have read it tell me I am libeled in its pages.

But if the author won’t send me the promised review copy in a timely manner…and then libels me in a TV interview….I had better respond sooner rather than later.

Last March, I emailed Jonathan Kay to ask for a review copy of Among the Truthers and a radio interview. (I had helped him with the book by agreeing to interviews, despite knowing that it was a hit piece in the making, so I figured the least he could do was provide an advance copy — as almost everyone does when I invite them on the radio to discuss a new book).

Kay replied:

“Youre in the book  (sic)
Im happy to send u a copy, but wont be able to till early May.”

On May 2nd I send Kay a reminder email. He replied:

“The publication date is May 17
But I bet I can get you one before that
Does this address still work:
Kevin Barrett
POB 221
Lone Rock, WI 53556″

I replied that yes, thank you, that address still worked, and I looked forward to the book.

Then on May 27th, I emailed him again and he replied:

“Yes — its in the mail
Sorry for delay”

Well, today is June 3rd, a week after it was supposed to be in the mail, and it still hasn’t arrived. So much for the pre-publication review copy!

Might Kay be unconsciously putting off mailing me his book because he has a bad conscience about how he treats me in its pages? Just because I’m a paranoid Freudian conspiracy theorist doesn’t mean Kay isn’t out to get me! Anthony Hall, after pointing out Kay’s Zionist commitments, writes:

Kay’s book, therefore, illustrates well his trepidation that the quest for 9/11 Truth, if allowed to gain yet more ground, might lead to increased criticisms of Israel. This line of analysis in Kay’s book finds its best target of attack in Kevin Barrett. Barrett is a convert to Islam with a Ph.D. in Arabic Studies. Barrett regularly receives much criticism even from fellow travelers in the quest for the truth of 9/11 because of his no-holds-barred approach to castigating the actions of the Israeli state whose agents, he alleges, were deeply involved in the terror plot of 9/11.

As Kay sees it, Barrett’s interpretive emphasis  “absolves Islam of a terrible crime.” (167) This turn of phrase suggests that Kay should answer to the same kind of criticisms he and others point at Barrett. The idea of 9/11 as a crime not of individual human beings but of a whole religion spells Trouble with a capital T. It illustrates the extremity of the threat posed to the continuing viability of our diverse, multicultural societies by leaving unaddressed the religious antagonisms embedded into the sacred myth of 9/11. What would have been the response if Kay had characterized the assaults on Blacks by the KKK as a crime of all Christians? Why are Muslims regularly subjected in the mainstream media like those that employ Kay and publicize his book to smears and slurs so extreme that they would be obviously unacceptable if directed at any other group?

Kay’s claim that ISLAM is guilty of the terrible crime of 9/11 would be a genocidal blood libel even if it were true that the people who committed the 9/11 crimes were in fact Muslims. But if we know anything about the alleged 9/11 hijackers — whether or not they had anything to do with 9/11 — it is that they (or those impersonating them using their stolen passports during the run-up to 9/11) were about the least Islamic young men on the planet. The alleged hijackers never prayed, never went near any mosques, never fasted or gave charity. Instead, they spent most of their time drinking, whoring, gambling, and snorting the cocaine with which they were being provided in unlimited quantities by the drug smugglers they associated with, including the Jewish-Zionist gangster Jack Abramoff. Muhammad Atta’s girlfriend, a stripper named Amanda Keller, tells us that the “Atta” she knew was a vicious, loudmouth, hard-drinking psychopath who spoke fluent Hebrew…and relished, as his very favorite food, the humble (and not very Islamic) pork chop. (All of this is detailed in Daniel Hopsicker’s Welcome to Terrorland).  Since the original, Egyptian Atta was a shy, sensitive, soft-spoken and kindly youth who was innocent of both the Hebrew language and the sorts of debauchery the alleged hijackers indulged in, it seems that he, like most of the other 19 original identities, may have fallen victim to passport theft, then murder.

Kay believes, or pretends to believe, that the 9/11 criminals were fanatical Arab Muslims acting on behalf of “radical Islam”; while after seven years of research I have concluded, and cite evidence to back it up, that the most important group of 9/11 criminals were fanatical Jewish Zionists acting on behalf of what they took to be the interests of the state of Israel. Yet while Kay asserts that the whole religion of Islam (and by extension all Muslims, or Muslims in general) is somehow guilty of the “terrible crime” of 9/11, I would never assert such a thing about the religion of Judaism (or all Jews, or Jews in general).

If I had said that Kay’s official conspiracy theory “absolves Jews and Judaism of a terrible crime,” I would expect to be called a bigot. But the fact is that I have never said any such thing, or anything remotely like it. So how can Kay try to blame a terrible crime, committed by a small number of individuals, on a whole religion of 1.5 billion people…and then call ME a bigot for simply mentioning the ethnicity (Jewish) and national loyalty (Israeli) of such key 9/11 suspects as Dov Zakheim, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Phillip Zelikow, Larry Silverstein, Benjamin Netanyahu, and so on? (In my speeches and writings, I also regularly mention that several non-Jews, including Cheney and Rumsfeld, are high on the list of suspects.)

Kay and many of his fellow Jews, and the media they dominate, never miss a chance to emphasize the alleged Islamic identity of those they blame for 9/11–and often cross the line into blatant bigotry by blaming a whole religion, or a “radical” portion of it, for the crimes of a few dozen individuals. Indeed, they have created a monstrous wave of Islamophobia, and sparked the murder of roughly two million Muslims, by blaming Muslims and Islam for 9/11. Yet they claim it’s unfair and bigoted for those of us who have actually investigated the crime to mention the Jewish-Zionist identity of most of the actual suspects! Isn’t sauce for the goose sauce for the gander? Listen to Kay libel me by distorting my words in an effort to paint me as a bigot on the Michael Coren Show:

I was at a 9/11 truth convention in New York City, and one of the presenters, Kevin Barrett, was saying “that one is an ethnic Jew, that one is an ethnic Jew, ethnic Jew.” As I say, he wasn’t even bothering to hide by euphemism.

It was actually very interesting. There was a novelist in the crowd, a guy by the name of Alten…he became famous many years ago for writing novels about giant crocodiles…they were called the Meg novels, M-E_G. You can google him. I only found out this later, because I interviewed him. And he actually got up at the convention and gave this speech and said ‘Kevin, you’re disgracing the 9/11 truth movement, you know, I came here to learn the truth about 9/11, and here we are in New York City’ — this was 2009 — ‘and you’re giving this speech about the Jews. No one can discredit our movement more than you can with this sort of hate speech.’ And then they got into this huge fight. And I was in the bizarre position of cheering on the virtuous conspiracy theorist, they guy who merely believed 9/11 was the work of the CIA. And he was the good guy, because the other guy believed 9/11 was the work of the Jews. And I actually got drawn into the conversation, because I had appeared on Kevin Barrett’s internet radio show, and he knew me, and he brought me in to adjudicate some point of Israeli history. And it was one of the most surreal moments I had in writing this book. But it actually was very instructive, because it showed me that in this day and age, anti-Semitism has become so taboo that even conspiracy theorists — many of them at least — draw a line and will call each other out on it. So actually that was kind of gratifying to see.

Kay’s description of my talk is wildly distorted, as I will soon show by posting the entire power-point and narration at TruthJihad.com. First, he fails to mention that my talk, entitled “A Muslim View of the 9/11 Truth Movement,” described not so much my own viewpoint, but what I take to be the Muslim-majority viewpoint based on various polls as well as my own experience as a member of the Muslim community. My point in mentioning the Jewish ethnicity and Zionist loyalty of key 9/11 suspects was that this is what most Muslims focus on. (The truth of this assertion was borne out by my recent trip to Turkey, during which most of the Turkish Muslims I met said they knew 9/11 was yet another Zionist false-flag operation from the moment it happened.)

Kay’s memory and/or notes are also flawed concerning my conversation with him and Steve Alten following my presentation. Alten claimed that I was distorting the Muslim-majority position on 9/11 and Zionism. I called on Kay not to “adjudicate some point of Israeli history,” but to counter Alten’s argument that most Muslims have a positive view of the state of Israel and certainly don’t blame Israel for 9/11! Kay supported me by telling Alten in so many words that “yes, unfortunately Kevin is right, most Muslims are anti-Zionist and probably suspect an Israeli hand in 9/11.”  (Listen to my interview with Steve Alten, conducted a few weeks after this conversation.)

By claiming that I stated that 9/11 was “the work of the Jews” — a ludicrous, defamatory, and completely unsubstantiated assertion — Kay commits libel.

Is Kay claiming that I think 9/11 was the work of Peymon Muttahadah, my (Iranian-Jewish) co-host of Truth Jihad Radio and the new Coordinator of the Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth, which I co-founded? Is he claiming I think 9/11 was the work of my many Jewish friends and radio guests including Rabbi Weiss, Richard Falk, Richard Curtis, Elias Davidsson (the son of holocaust refugees), Lenni Brenner, Henry Makow, Steve Bhaerman, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Lloyd DeMause, Leland Lehrman, Paul Levy, Hannah Mermelstein, Martin Schotz, Carl Weiss, Jonathan Elinoff, Adam Stulberg, Peter Kirstein, William Blum, Leonard Horowitz, Alan Sabrosky, Ira Chernus, Max Ajl, Jeff Blankfort, Adam Shapiro, Andrew Mathis, Stephen Lendman, Douglas Rushkoff, Philip Weiss, Barry Shainbaum, Ken Biegeleisen, Brad Friedman, and probably quite a few others?  If I were such a bigot, why would I value hearing what these Jewish folks had to say, and why would they want to talk to me?

Does Kay think that if a Muslim commits a crime, it’s okay to say (or even emphasize) their Islamic identity — but if a Jew commits a similar crime, only an anti-Semite would mention the Jewish ethnicity of the criminal?! Does Kay think that any crime purportedly committed by one or more Muslims can be ascribed to the entire religion of Islam — whereas we must not even mention the Jewish ethnicity of such criminals as:

*All but one of the Russian gangster “oligarchs” who looted the national wealth of the former Soviet Union.

*The top tier of organized crime in North America (i.e. the heirs of Meyer Lansky and subsidiaries like the Canadian Bronfman family, who supplied Lansky with illegal booze during prohibition, and continue to run the Canadian mob while also sponsoring Zionism in Canada).

*The majority of leading neocons–including most of the members of Project for a New American Century (PNAC), the group that called for a “New Pearl Harbor” in September, 2000 and is widely viewed as the intellectual author of 9/11 — the criminals with whom Kay disports at the new, renamed PNAC, the “Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.”

*The leadership of the criminal state of Israel since its foundation, as documented by Jeff Gates in Guilt By Association and Alan Hart in Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews.

The Jewish ethnicity and accompanying Zionist loyalties of these specific individual criminals is obviously relevant — just as the Columbian ethnicity of “the Columbian cartel” is relevant, only more so due to the more extreme tribal loyalty of Jewish Zionist extremists, and their association with a rogue nuclear-armed state with a powerful and murderous intelligence service.

Likewise, the fact that the mainstream media is dominated by Jewish people is supremely relevant to any discussion of how that media reports Middle East related issues–including the question of what really happened on 9/11…just as it would be supremely relevant if suddenly the media were bought up by Muslims, and most of the editors and key reporters were replaced by people with names like Abdul-Aziz.  If Muslims rather than Jews had dominated the media on 9/11/01, I have no doubt that the crime would have been reported very differently, with the “Dancing Israelis” getting screaming front page headlines and the “19 carousers” being consigned to the memory hole (or quickly unmasked as Mossad agents using stolen passports).

Let’s face it, whatever the facts of 9/11, Palestine, etc.,  Muslims and Jews have different world-views — and Jews have largely inflicted their Jewish worldview on the non-Jewish portion of the American public, at least as far as Middle East issues are concerned, by way of their domination of big media. My favorite essayist (since Gore Vidal slowed down) happens to be a Jewish guy named Morris Berman, who points out that Jews, like everybody else only more so, see the world through the filter of “tribal consciousness”:

…Proust argues that we should hardly be surprised, for example, to learn that some Jewish person we might know (this around 1900, say) is heatedly on the side of Alfred Dreyfus. For this is pre-ordained, he says; it’s in the blood…The claim here is that we would expect Jews to be on the side of Dreyfus without worrying too much about the evidence pro or con, in the same way that it is not too much of a shock to learn that 96% of the black American population voted for Barack Obama. These are not really freely chosen rational decisions, in short, and we are kidding ourselves if we think they are.
(A Question of Values, pp 199-200).

The problem is that the Jewish domination of big media is invisible, and kept invisible by the threat to sic attack dogs like Kay on anyone who, like me, is impolite enough to mention it. So Americans have no idea that their picture of the world in general, and Middle East issues in particular, is largely the product of Jewish tribal consciousness.

This point was driven home to me during one of my first-ever 9/11 radio interviews. It took place, at least a year before I attained notoriety, in the studios of Pacifica affiliate WORT in my hometown of Madison, Wisconsin. The interviewer, a nice, slow-talking old lady named Leah Zeldin (who has since passed away, Allah yarhamha) began the interview roughly as follows:

Leah Zeldin: Today we’re here with Kevin Barrett, an Arabic scholar who has some unusual views on 9/11. Now I want to begin by saying that I believe in full disclosure. Before you state your opinions, I think our listeners need to know exactly who you are and where you’re coming from. They need to know that you are a Muslim. So in the interest of full disclosure, Kevin, isn’t it true that you are a Muslim?


Kevin Barrett: Honestly, Leah, I didn’t think I was coming here to talk about my religion. I’ve never heard anybody on WORT, anybody who was here to talk about a political issue, have to tell the listeners about their religion.


Leah Zeldin: Well, I don’t know about other radio hosts, but I believe in full disclosure. Full disclosure! So is it or is it not true that you are a Muslim?


Kevin Barrett: Yes, I am. I came to Islam in 1993 after I lost faith in nihilism. But I thought I was here to talk about the empirical facts of 9/11, not religion.

After the show, I told Leah that I had felt uncomfortable with her “full disclosure,” and she reiterated that she felt it was necessary.  Then I asked: “By the way, Leah, I’ve been listening to your shows for the past ten years and I never knew what religious or ethnic background you were from.”  “I’m Jewish,” she said. “Really?” I said. “I never knew that! So much for ‘full disclosure’.”

For Leah, a certain kind of Jewish tribal consciousness — secularized left-leaning Midwestern variety — was as natural as the air she breathed. She took no more note of it than a fish takes note of the water, and the idea that “full disclosure” would require her to reveal her Jewishness, in the same way that she insisted that I reveal my Muslim identity, was simply incomprehensible to her, no matter how many times I tried to explain.

Leah Zeldin was a very sweet, kind woman — a friend of mine and especially of my wife. But she was the unconscious prisoner of an atrocious double-standard, a good person who just didn’t realize how outrageously bigoted she was. Our friendship with her was not unlike a black couple’s friendship with a sweet old incorrigibly racist white woman in the old South.

Speaking openly and honestly of such matters does not indict all or most Jews, or the religion of Judaism, in any way, shape or form, any more than pointing out the Jewish identity and Zionist loyalties of most 9/11 suspects means that Jews or Judaism in general were responsible for 9/11.

Blaming “Islam” for the “terrible crime” of 9/11 DOES indict an entire religion and an entire people.

If Jonathan Kay wants to go after a bigoted 9/11 conspiracy theorist, he should look in the mirror.

# # #

[Note: My invitation to Jonathan Kay to discuss his book on my radio show still stands, assuming the book finally arrives; perhaps he will also be able to explain why he feels he can blame Islam and all Muslims for 9/11, while at the same time charging me with bigotry for mentioning that specific 9/11 suspects are Jewish Zionists. Meanwhile, while we’re waiting for the book to arrive, check out my Jonathan Kay interview from last year.]