Controversy and Criticism
The Anti-Defamation League alleges that the center regularly published anti-Semitic and conspiracy-theory literature, and promulgated anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism through its speakers and official publications.
According to the ADL website, speakers at the center have described Jews as "enemies of all nations" and "cheaters whose greed knows no bounds." The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an infamous anti-Semitic forgery created in the 19th century to vilify Jews, was held up as a factual account of a Jewish plan to "control the world." Speakers accused Israel of trying to sterilize Palestinian children by lacing the water "used by some Palestinian schools" with chemicals. Some Zayed speakers engaged in attempts to deny the Holocaust.
Speakers included Mr. Rami Tahbob, advisor to Al Quds' File on Arab Affairs, who claimed that Israel was trying to control the Palestinian population through the use of "chemical drugs," according to the Zayed Center website; Michael Collins Piper, a Washington-based a political writer and conspiracy theorist,, who claimed the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are "not a theory but a real fact," that Israel is developing an ethnic bomb that will kill only Arabs. and that the Mossad was responsible for the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Watergate scandal and the Monica Lewinsky affair; and Lyndon LaRouche, who spoke about global finance and his proposal for a transcontinental highway. The ADL reports that LaRouche also said that the September 11, 2001 attacks could not have happened without the "connivance" of highly placed U.S. officials, that Osama bin Laden "could never have" organized the attacks, and that the foreign policy of the U.S. has been purchased by "Jewish gangsters" and "Christian Zionists." LaRouche opposed its closing down.
Read more about this topic: Zayed Center For Coordination And Follow-Up
Famous quotes containing the words controversy and/or criticism:
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)
“Good criticism is very rare and always precious.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)