IRIS [the French "Institute for International and Strategic Relations"] on "ZOG"

Discussing Matthias Küntzel’s treatment of the Böckler Foundation controversy in “Looking Behind the Scenes of German Holocaust ‘Remembrance’”, I cited the query of one “M.”, a Böckler Foundation doctoral fellow convinced that the Iraq War was the product of Zionist control of the American government and who was looking for some literature that might help support his thesis. ““Are there any other books like They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby…?” M. asked his fellow participants on the Böckler mailing list. The volume in question is by Paul Findley, a former US Congressman. The fact that it was first published some 20 years ago seems not to have affected its timeliness in the opinion of M. And if one is to judge by the spanking new edition of the Findley volume published in 2003, M. is apparently not alone. Whence does this sudden renewal of interest in Findley’s volume come? Well, a simple Google search for “‘Paul Findley’ and ZOG” provides us some clues. ZOG, as will be recalled from Karl Pfeifer’s piece on “‘Israel Shamir’ and the Austrian Left”, is an acronym much favored in anti-Semitic, including self-styled Nazi, milieus. It stands for “Zionist Occupation Government” – by which is meant not the Israeli government, by the way, but the American one and/or the network of Zionist forces that are supposed to control the latter.

But Findley’s work is not only highly respected by radical Islamists and the members of the “Stormfront White Nationalist Community”. As Gudrun Eussner points out to me, it is also admired by the foreign policy specialists of France’s prestigious state-funded Institut de Relations Internationales et Stratégiques [Institute for International and Strategic Relations], known by its own acronym IRIS. Thus, in a contribution reproduced on the IRIS website [link in English], IRIS board member Luc Debieuvre notes approvingly: “But ‘the Middle East policy of the US is made in Israel and not in Washington’, former US Representative Paul Findley used to say (as cited by Pascal Boniface in his latest book Towards a Fourth World War?).” And in the same vein: “Sharon knows the combined strength of the Jewish lobby, the neo-conservatives and the Born Again Christians in the Bush administration. He knows he does not need to worry.”

Who is this Pascal Boniface from whom Luc Debieuvre takes the Findley quote? Has Debieuvre inadvertently cited a source from the French “far right”? A Lepeniste? Such a faux pas could surely put M. Debieuvre in difficulty with the powers-that-be at his research center. Well, M. Debieuvre need not worry. Pascal Boniface, formerly the leading foreign policy expert of the French Socialist Party, is in fact the Director of the IRIS.

It will also be of interest to regular readers of Trans-Int to know who the Honorary President of the IRIS is. None other than the incoming Director General of the WTO: Pascal Lamy.

(Vielen Dank Gudrun!)