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Julian Assange’s antisemitic past resurfaces after his arrest
A reminder of the Wikileaks founder's past remarks and associations
April 17, 2019 10:24
A reminder of the Wikileaks founder's past remarks and associations
April 17, 2019 10:24As Julian Assange faces the possibility of extradition to either Sweden or the US, reminders of the Wikileaks founder’s connection with antisemites and antisemitism have re-emerged — in particular his association with a notorious antisemite and Holocaust denier, Israel Shamir.
Mr Assange, who had been living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012, was removed from the building last week after his asylum was revoked.
The self-declared whistleblower had taken refuge in the embassy in order to escape extradition to Sweden where he was due to stand trial on allegations of rape and sexual assault.
A 2011 column in Private Eye, republished by the magazine on social media on Monday, described Mr Assange’s relationship with Shamir, who was born Jewish but renounced his religion.
The article quoted an email Mr Assange wrote to Shamir in 2007 saying, “someone wrote saying they ‘refused to associate with an organisation that would work with an antisemite like Israel Shamir.’ From a brief sample of your writing… I did not find the allegation borne out.”
Before that point, Mr Shamir had written regularly about Jewish control of the media and argued that Jews sought to convince the public to back “Judaic goals”, such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
At a 2005 event at Parliament, to which he had been invited by Lord Nazir Ahmed, Shamir spoke about how “Jews indeed own, control and edit a big share of mass media” and claimed British and US foreign policy in the Middle East was driven by the “fight for ensuring Jewish supremacy”.
In a subsequent conversation with Ian Hislop, the editor of the Eye, Mr Assange reportedly accused the magazine of being part of a conspiracy “led by the Guardian including journalist David Leigh, editor Alan Rusbridger and John Kampfner from the Index on Censorship — ‘all of whom are Jewish’.
“I pointed out that Rusbridger is not actually Jewish, but Assange insisted he was ‘sort of Jewish’ because he was related to David Leigh (they are brothers in law).
“When I doubted whether his Jewish conspiracy would stand up against the facts, Assange suddenly conceded the point — ‘forget the Jewish thing’.”
In 2016, a journalist for AP, Raphael Satter, wrote a piece describing how Wikileaks had revealed information about teenage rape victims and an LGBT man in Saudi Arabia, a country in which homosexuality can be punished with death.
In subsequently revealed internal Wikileaks messages, Mr Assange reportedly said of Mr Satter: “He’s always been a rat. But he’s Jewish and engaged with the ((()))) issue.”
Earlier that year, the Wikileaks Twitter account mused about the three-brackets symbol, which had been adopted by Neo-Nazis to identify Jews, saying: “Tribalist symbol for establishment climbers? Most of our critics have 3 (((brackets around their names))) & have black-rim glasses. Bizarre.”
It later claimed that the tweet was not antisemitic, but “the opposite” and intended to “criticise the misappropriation of anti-Nazi critiques by social climbers.”