Jewish AND Anti-semitic

This news item really takes the...er, kugel.

THE son of the violinist and humanist Yehudi Menuhin has been ousted as head of the German branch of his father’s foundation because of his extreme right-wing views.

Gerard Menuhin, 57, caused uproar by suggesting that Germany was being blackmailed by an international Jewish conspiracy preying on the country’s war guilt. He was forced to resign as chairman of the Yehudi Menuhin Foundation (YMF) in Germany, which was established to encourage the musical talent of young immigrants...

...One of his more vitriolic columns condemned Jewish “souvenir hunters” who gather evidence in Germany to help them to lodge financial claims for wartime persecution.

...Mr Menuhin outed himself as a clear sympathiser with the neo-Nazi cause in two published interviews this month. In Deutsche Stimme, voice of the National Party of Germany, he used classical anti-Semitic language while still staying within the boundaries of German law.

“An international lobby of influential people and organisations is trying to keep the Germans under pressure,” he said. “Some nations — mainly America, but other Europeans, too — are profiting from an obedient Germany.”

...There has, in fact, been a history of family sympathy for German nationalists. Mr Menuhin’s grandfather, Moshe, was a determined anti-Zionist and expounded his views in the National Zeitung; he was arts editor from 1968 to 1970 although he was aware of its extreme German nationalism. He left the job only because the paper was not anti-Zionist enough.