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His resume says he is a professor of the history of science and technology and contemporary Russian history. He also claims to be some sort of authority on modern Jewish history at the University of Montreal. He lived in Israel for a while, where he was evidently later rejected for an academic position. Yakov Rabkin has just released a book, A Threat From Within: A History Of Jewish Opposition To Zionism, a tome about how real Jews should seek the dissolution of the Jewish state of Israel. Purporting to be a scholarly work on Jewish history and its rejection of Zionism, it is an anti-Israel propaganda screed against Israel, closely mimicking the sort of things the Neturei Karta cult churns out, by someone who has made his sinecure attacking the Jewish state.

It’s one thing for a Jew to claim he is anti-Zionist and doesn’t believe Israel should exist before the coming of the Moshiach (Messiah). But it’s another to enable Jew-killers and terrorists warring against fellow Jews living in Israel. There are indeed some Orthodox Jews who believe Israel should not exist --- yet. The most bizarre sect is Neturei Karta (NK), who openly work in support of Israel’s most anti-Semitic and bloodthirsty enemies who murder Jews. Neturei Karta is a tiny pseudo-Jewish religious sect of about 100 adults with maybe 1500 women and children worldwide, mainly in New York and London. .The NK’s are well-funded by anti-Semites, including the PLO. They dress up in 16th century ultra-Orthodox garb with sidecurls and parade in front of the cameras at anti-Israel events. The NK’s world leader, “Rabbi” Moshe Hirsch, was paid $50,000 a year as Arafat’s Minister for Jewish Affairs, a nice euphemism for a Jew whose real job was to give credibility to Arab terrorism. The NK’s websites were designed and paid for by the Palestinian Chamber of Commerce in the US. To see the NK’s in action recently with Ahmadinejad click here

Yacov Rabkin has close ties with Neturei Karta (NK) and promotes the same agenda as do they. Rabkin does not adopt the Neturei Karta’s 16th century fashion statement. He travels around the world on anti-Israel speaking tours, in close coordination with his Neturei Karta buddies. The NK’s feature Rabkin’s new anti-Israel book on their web site and even sell it there, in five different langauges. “Samurai Mohel,” a nom de plume for a blogger in Toronto who follows Rabkin closely, claims that, having been rejected for an academic position in Israel once, Rabkin seeks to get even by peddling hate for Israel and Zionism.

Here is one example of a comment Rabkin made about Israeli and American concern over Iranian nukes: “To justify an assault on Iran, one has to present the Iranian president as an anti-Semite. While overtly anti-Zionist, he is not anti-Jewish. Indeed, had he been anti-Semitic, he would harass Iran’s Jews rather than challenge a nuclear-armed regional power.”

Actually Iran’s Jews are harassed all the time. Meanwhile, Hizballah serves as an Iranian terrorism proxy in Lebanon, controlled from Tehran. Hasan Nasrallah, the head of Hizballah, has stated that he wishes all the world’s Jews would move to Israel so he could kill them all in one place.

Rabkin adds, “While Iran has signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty and publicly refused to develop nuclear weapons, Israel possesses such weapons and has not signed the treaty. Moreover, Iran has not attacked another country for centuries.” Gosh, that sure reassures us!

Here is a quote from Rabkin at a seminar: “One should not mistake a wish to see a regime change for a physical threat to Israeli civilians.” Iran just wants to nuke Zionism, not Jews, if we are to believe Rabkin. Anyway, who cares? Buy his book!

Like some other anti-Zionist Jews, Rabkin claims that he just wants Israel to “evolve from a state for the Jews – a major source of the Israel/Palestine conflict – to an inclusive state of all its citizens.” He does not insist that France stop being a state for the French or the British a state for the British or explain why the Palestinian Authority cannot be a state for all its citizens also—instead only for Arabs and Muslims.

Samurai Mohel writes:

“Rabkin used to be a strong Zionist when he came from Russia to Montreal during Joe Clark’s tenure. He then started studying Judaism with a priest, picked up Hebrew along the way and then soured on Israel when it wouldn’t give him an academic spot. His non-scholarly writings on Israel have been panned by all leading rabbis and historians. Why? Because he distorted the views of the Agudat Israel and Lubavitch rabbis before the coming of the Nazis. After the Holocaust, the Aguda and Lubavitch were all pro-Israel. He also misquoted hundreds of passages from the Tanach and Talmud about the Messiah seeking to prove it was against Jewish law to have a Jewish homeland. These fraudulent writings were part of the demonization conspiracy by the all-powerful Palestine Lobby to destroy Israel by demonstrating its religion was against having a state. Rabkin is an ignoramus when it come to Jewish history. There are at least 236 factual errors in his book which have been circulated to the Jerusalem Post talk back file. Well, that’s what we can expect from an individual who arrived in Canada from Russia as a Zionist, then learned his Judaism from a Roman Catholic priest in Montreal. That priest for the last 10 years has disavowed Rabkin’s hateful ideology!”

On one webposting Rabkin calls for a so-called “one-state solution,” meaning the dismantling of the Jewish state. There he bases his argument on quotes from Mazen Qumsiyeh, the founder of Al Awda, a group that is part of the ISM and virulently anti-Semitic. Qumsiyeh speaks of liberating Palestine “from the river to the sea.” Qumsiyeh, a geneticist who was fired by Yale for anti-Semitic postings on the university’s computer, was a known member of the terrorist PFLP. In a posting on Indymedia, another virulently anti-Semitic, anarchist-communist-web network, Rabkin extols the virtues of the Ayatollahs: “The rapprochement activities of the Jews who reject Zionism tend to undercut the image of an intrinsically evil enemy and to show that one can talk with the other side.”

Rabkin claims that anti-Semitism is something the “Zionists” want, as it helps them to justify a Jewish state. Elsewhere Rabkin has stated that when Neturei Karta meet with Ahmadinejhad to voice support for him and his regime against Israel, “There is no indication that these activities enhance anti-Jewish sentiment” in the Muslim world. Perish the thought.

For a more detailed look at Rabkin’s pseudo-research, Yisrael Medad does a good job of pointing out the historical inconsistencies and mistakes in Rabkin’s book. What a shame that the anti-Israel crowd helps sustain such a sloppy “scholar” on worldwide tours against the Jewish state. We are sure they can find better, less-pathetic Israel bashers than this.

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