The Simon Wiesenthal Center has denounced anti-Semitic diatribes of a respected Norwegian academic who linked Anders Behring Breivik, the anti-Muslim Norwegian terrorist who killed 77 people, mostly children, last year and Israel's Mossad.
Prof. Johan Galtung, a sociologist known as "the father of peace studies", made the anti-Semitic and anti-Israel statements in an article published in the Norwegian magazine Humanist.
Galtung is one of the founders of the discipline called "Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution," as well as a founder of the international Peace Research Institute in Oslo.
"Six Jewish companies control 96% of the media," wrote the 86-year-old Galtung. He included the names of journalists, publishers, TV networks, and movie studios, that he claims are controlled by Jews.
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch was also included on the list. "He’s not Jewish, but many of the people under him are," he wrote."Many of them are fanatically pro-Israel," he said.
He also wrote that "70 % of the professors at the 20 most important American universities are Jewish."
"The anti-Semitic ravings of Professor Galtung disqualify him from being considered as a respectable participant in any field of study, especially one that deals with peace," declared Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the Wiesenthal Center’s associate dean and Mark Weitzman, the Center’s Director of Government Affairs.
"His promotion of hate-filled canards such as The Protocols of Zion demonstrates that he cannot distinguish between reality and fantasy," they added.
Galtung wrote that one of the factors behind the anti-Semitic sentiment that led to Auschwitz was the fact that Jews held influential positions in German society."It was not unproblematic that Jews had key niches in a society humiliated by defeat at Versailles following World War I," he wrote. "In no way, absolutely no way, does this justify the atrocities. But it created anti-Semitism that could have been predicted."
He recommended that people read the anti-Semitic "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" and said that "It is impossible to do so today without thinking of Goldman Sachs,” the international investment bank.
In an email exchange with Israeli daily Haaretz on Sunday, Galtung requested to clear up his claims. "When we know nothing about who is behind Breivik, including whether there is anybody at all, any hypothesis is legitimate; that is in the nature of research," he wrote.
"I consider the Mossad highly unlikely, but it is illegitimate to eliminate it as a hypothesis with no evidence," continued Galtung.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center officials said that Galtung’s attempt to link Israel to the acts of a Norwegian mass murderer is "simply an updated version of the anti-Jewish medieval blood libel."
"We hope that Norwegian academia, the media and the rest of Norwegian society will repudiate these pernicious stereotypes," thy said.
"The next book that Professor Galtung should be required to read is Dismantling the Big Lie: the Protocols of the Elders of Zion which is the first full length refutation of theProtocols. It might actually inject a dose of historical reality into the anti-Semitic conspiratorial theories that dominate his world view," they concluded.