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Jew Watch is a website that makes many negative claims and conspiracy theories about Jews, including allegations that Jews control the media and banking industries, accusations of Jewish involvement in terrorist groups and genocides, and Holocaust denial. The site describes itself as “The Internet's Largest Scholarly Collection of Articles on Jewish History" and as “a Not-For-Profit Library for private study, scholarship, or research.” The site is widely categorized as an antisemitic hate site.^[1]

The site became notorious in April 2004 when it emerged as the first result in a Google search for the word “Jew”. A scandal in 2006 involved solicitations for donations to aid victims of Hurricane Katrina being redirected to Jew Watch.

Ownership

The website is owned and maintained by Frank Weltner of St. Louis, Missouri. Weltner is a member of the National Alliance, a white nationalist organization.^[2][3][4]

Themes

Jew Watch features an archive of writings, articles, videos, and links, organized in the form of a Web directory. The material is organized under topic headings such as Jewish Controlled Press, Jewish Entertainment, Jewish Banking & Financial Manipulations, Jewish-Zionist-Soviet Anti-American Spies, Jewish Communist Rulers & Killers, Jewish Terrorists, Zionist Occupied Governments, Jewish Communists, Jewish Atrocities, and so on.

Jew Watch claims that Communism as invented by Karl Marx^[5] was a Jewish plot to enslave the world,^[6] and that Jews control the world's financial systems and media.^[7] It also claims that the "All Anti-Christian Jewish Red Commissars" killed 100 million Christians in Russia from 1917-1945 under the orders of "Trotsky, the Jewish Commissar of Commissars".^[8] It also makes the suggestion that global Jewry is the driving force behind both global capitalism and communism.^[9] The site links to others which speculate that Jews have committed or are planning genocide against the Palestinian people;^[10] the site also promotes Holocaust denial, maintaining that the Holocaust either never happened or was greatly exaggerated.^[11]

Jew Watch also has a large list of names of celebrities and historical figures which it claims are Jewish or of Jewish descent—for example, it claims that individuals such as Joseph Stalin,^[12] Dwight David Eisenhower,^[13] Franklin Delano Roosevelt,^[14] and Winston Churchill^[15] were Jewish. The website also describes Christianity as a "Jewish Religion."^[16]

In addition, the website claims that the former Soviet Union, the United States, the former Soviet CIS states, Austria, Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia, and France are "Zionist Occupied Governments."^[17]

Jew Watch also links to a host of YouTube clips recorded by Weltner, in which he claims, among others, that Zionists planned and carried out the September 11 terrorist attacks, were responsible for the Armenian Genocide, are forcing the United States into a war with Iran, are responsible for stock market fluctuations, and so forth. Weltner also links to another website of his where he posted his "Relevations",^[18] among which God told him that "Hitler was a Saint," that the Jews were responsible for the Waco Siege, and that black Africans are "the abomination of Noah".

Google controversy

The increasing publicity has resulted in many news sources, weblogs, and general information sites to link to Jew Watch, and thus created a Google bomb. In May 2004, Steven Weinstock launched an online petition to remove Jew Watch from Google. "When performing a search for the word 'Jew' on Google, the first Web site listed is JewWatch.com, a site that has been notorious for being anti-Semitic," Weinstock wrote in a widely disseminated e-mail.

"In order for Google to remove this, they would need a petition of over 50,000 requests," Weinstock said. He set up an online petition site called RemoveJewWatch.com. Within a few days 2,000 signatures had been added to the list. By mid-2004 the site had collected over 125,000 signatures.^[19] RemoveJewWatch.com went offline, but a preserved version remains.^[20]

Google's response has been a sponsored link for the search term since 2004 which explains how Google results are automatically ranked by computer algorithms.^[21]

National Vanguard writer Kevin Strom claimed that Weinstock's efforts resulted in a "censor-fest" of Jew Watch and insisted "Our race deserves to live in freedom, and no trickster, thug, or con man can stop us from achieving that goal. We are going to win."^[22] John Goth, in the same publication, described his "disgust" as a "loyal White man" at "the recent Jewish attacks on free speech and particularly, on JewWatch.com."^[23]

In December 2004, OSCE's Sandy Starr addressed the issues of freedom of speech in his article Understanding Hate Speech, Hate Speech on the Internet:

When it transpired that the anti-Semitic website Jew Watch ranked highest in the search engine Google’s results for the search term “Jew”, a Remove Jew Watch campaign was established, to demand that Google remove the offending website from its listings. Fortunately for the principle of free speech, Google did not capitulate to this particular demand... Forced to act on its own initiative, Remove Jew Watch successfully used Googlebombing... Better still would have been either a proper contest of ideas between Jew Watch and Remove Jew Watch, or alternatively a decision that Jew Watch was beneath contempt and should simply be ignored. Not every crank and extremist warrants attention, even if they do occasionally manage to spoof search engine rankings.^[24]

During this time, Jew Watch's ranking fluctuated in the top three to five positions for the search term "Jew" on the American Google site, along with two Wikipedia articles for "Jew" and "Judaism".^[25] The website's position continues to fluctuate in search results: during early 2009, Jew Watch dropped below the top 50 positions for the search term "Jew" on Google^[26] but has made its way back to second place as of November 2009.

The Katrina controversy

St. Louis City Circuit Judge Julian L. Bush permanently barred Frank Weltner and his site InternetDonation.org from soliciting funds in Missouri for charitable purposes after it was revealed by State Attorney General Jay Nixon that Frank Weltner had set up multiple websites soliciting funds for Katrina victims and then redirected those wishing to donate to his site that collected money for Jew Watch.^[27] A press release from the Attorney General said: "Anyone who takes advantage of the generosity and compassion of his fellow citizens in an attempt to fund his hate-filled Web site should never again be in the position to solicit charitable funds from well-meaning Missourians".^[28]

See also

• Antisemitism
• History of antisemitism
• Timeline of antisemitism
• Antisemitic canard

References

External links

• Watching Jew Watch
• Official letter to Anti-Defamation League from Google's president
• Jew Watch, Google, and Search Engine Optimization by Seth Finkelstein