Dar Al-hayat not quite ready to give up on Flemming Rose's Jewishness

Back when the cartoon controversy was raging, I posted about the assertion that Flemming Rose is Jewish. These ideas die hard. The present piece, by Jihad El-Khazen, is entitled "What is his descent?"

The authors James Petras and Robin Eastman-Abaya wrote an article claiming that Flemming Rose - the cultural editor of Jyllands-Posten who commissioned the Danish cartoons - is a Ukrainian-born Jew who is working with Mossad. The writer Christopher Bollyn wrote: "If this is true this confirms my suspicions and would prove that Rose has lied to me about his ethnic origin. It would also confirm my description of Rose as having a foreign agenda which has done immense damage to Danish prestige in the world." Rose denied in an e-mail to Bollyn that he was Jewish.

Rose may not be Jewish but in an article he wrote for the New York Times on May 31 headlined "Why I Published the Mohammed Cartoons" there are hints at his origin. He says: "I was raised on the ideals of the 1960s, in the midst of the Cold War. I saw life through the lens of the countercultural turmoil, adopting both the hippie pose and the political superiority complex of my generation. I and my high school peers believed that the West was imperialistic and racist. We analyzed decaying Western civilization through the texts of Marx and Engels and lionized John Lennon's beautiful but stupid tune about an ideal world without private property: Imagine no possessions/ I wonder if you can/ No need for greed or hunger/ A brotherhood of man/ Imagine all the people/ Sharing all the world.

"It took me only 10 months as a young student in the Soviet Union in 1980-81 to realize what a world without private property looks like, although many years had to pass until the full implications of the central Marxist dogma became clear to me."

He is describing a student in a country in the former Socialist camp reading Marx and being sent to study in Moscow, a country like Ukraine.

Ah yes, that Ukraine-like country called Moscow! There is good deal more to this article, including more on Daniel Pipes.

Tags: Flemming Rose, Jews, Ukraine, Moscow, Lennon, Prophet-cartoons