Anyone who drinks Pepsi and eats at McDonald's is supporting a Zionist conspiracy to undermine our glorious nation's collective good health. And while we're so earnestly thwarting those evil plotters let us at the same time ban Nike and Reebok footwear to protect our toes from American contamination.

In associating Chinese student groups with Jewish interests purportedly working to undermine the nation's security, it is obvious our Boleh (or anything is possible) government is both singing its all too familiar bogeyman tune as well as taking a well-worn leaf from the Arabic script.

'Arab leaders have always used the Arab-Israeli conflict not only as a means of ensuring the legitimacy of their rule, but also as a convenient excuse for the shortcomings of their regime. Everything from unemployment to the price of bread was put down to the Zionists. Sadly this strategy was shown to work, and Arab leaders have refined it and fine-tuned it over the years, and it remains largely in place today.'

The truism above was observed by Neill Lochery, author of a required reading - Why Blame Israel? The Facts Behind the Headlines .* In recycling the blame-the-Jews game, 'elements' in the Abdullah Administration have shown that they are no better than an anachronistic holdover from the Mahathir era.

Those of us with a longer memory than the average Malaysian voter may remember our former prime minister's infamous anti-Jew diatribe at the OIC summit and his earlier pronouncements on George Soros. In this latest round, we can clearly see that not only has Pak Lah inherited the Mahathir- tinted civil service, but judging from his own XXL-sized Cabinet and planned absorption of tens of thousands of unemployable graduates, our current prime minister has and will further bloat this sinecure network so bankrupt of ideas.

Malaysian authorities, who catch glimpses of a Jewish hand behind every shadow, draw an impeccable syllogism: Universiti Sains Malaysia's (USM) Chinese language society is a branch of the Malaysia Youth and Student Democratic Movement which is a member of the Asian Students Association which is sponsored by the non-profit National Endowment for Democracy which is in turn sponsored by the United States and Jewish elements.

Voila! And our powers-that-be whisks from its magician's hat the logical conclusion that Malaysian Chinese undergraduates are linked to foreign elements who want to see demonstrations and chaos in this country.

Great Satan, Little Satan

Isn't it all too convenient to simply say 'the Jews did it!'? When the Black Death cut its scythe across Europe, it was Jews who poisoned the wells killing between a quarter and half of the continent's population. Put the calumny down to ignorance when 14th century doctors could not fathom the cause of the devastating bubonic plague. That lack of certainty and knowledge in the Dark Ages did not however spare Europe's Jews from being made scapegoats for the pandemic, and massacred.

In this present day and age, what excuse can government bureaus operating in our own Cloud-Cuckoo Land conjure up for their spurious spin about Jewish elements destabilising Malaysia? That they would weave such an irresponsible web implicating students who have no voice to defend themselves, gagged as they are under the University and University Colleges Act, is bad enough.

More perfidious is throwing the "anti-Islam" taboo into the mix. Was it to further obscure a preposterous non-issue and pre-empt the more clear-headed among us from questioning the rationale (or lack thereof of) behind the far-fetched conspiracy theory?

Grandstanding and showboating on the race platform - be it at Umno Youth rallies, in Parliament or halls of academia - occurs because our socio- political environment enables and sustains such grievous assaults on common sense.

Adding the Chinese component to the cocktail, as the indoctrination session at USM illustrates, takes the bigotry we have grown accustomed to one step up. Combining the Chinese bogeyman stratagem is not altogether surprising either in the light of Bolehland's race dynamics.

Cracked mirror

Malaysia's Biro Tatanegara may paint a demonic picture of Jews for our internal consumption, and the rakyat (certainly not confined to Malays alone) will, to a great extent, swallow this noxious snake-oil concoction.

However, Malaysia's warped value judgment of the Jewish race is as vile as the confession forced upon on Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. In the grisly video of his beheading, Pearl whispered in his last breath: "I'm a Jew. My mother is a Jew" before one of his jihadist captors in Pakistan slit his throat.

Pearl was kidnapped because he was 'anti-Islam and a Jew.' Commenting on Pearl's death, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen writes: "This caricature - devious, diabolical, intent on world domination and in total control of the world's financial system - appears so often in the Islamic world's press that it can be, and maybe was, used to justify the murder of an innocent man."

Here too this peccadillo reigns and informs the world of our shallow, stunted mentality. From popular stereotyping purveyed by our mass media, it appears that Israeli Jews are a homogenous bloc of gun-toting jack-booted soldiers. The truth is doing national service is a patriotic duty but not all called up are required to go to the frontline. Two young women from Tel Aviv whom I met in Berlin completed their one-and-half year compulsory defence forces stint at communications posts.

Nor are all Jews cast in the mould of Golda Meir and Ariel Sharon in terms of looks. Art student Veled, 26, has dark curly hair and Arabic features. Indeed her forebears are from Iraq and Veled's parents had to flee the Arab country where they had lived for generations due to persecution from rising tensions in the region. Her family arrived in the newly birthed Jewish state with nothing more than the shirts on their back.

Veled's friend Nogah, 24, is blond and fair. She's Ashkenazi, descended from Europeans. There are Oriental Jews, Sephardic Jews, Ladino (correct) Jews, Caribbean Jews, Ethiopian and North African Jews, and more recently Russian Jews have immigrated to Israel. For many Malaysians, there is only one type of Jew the one 'out to get us'.

Deliberate distortion

Zionism has been made out to be a dirty word when in effect it is nothing more than the expression of the Jews' desperate need for a homeland so that the Holocaust need never be repeated. Malaysians do not care to be aware as learning from history has never been our strong suit, or oftentimes we prefer to just embrace revisionist versions anyway.

Most Malaysians, I'll hazard, agree with the Muslim community's stance in Britain vehemently objecting to the marking of Holocaust Day. Such denial is misguided as it's important for all to remember that the Holocaust was not an aberration and German history has seen other outbreaks of murderous rage when Jews were killed for no other reason than being who they were (ethnically). Christian soldiers on the march to Jerusalem for holy Crusades slew thousands of Jewish villagers along their path.

Anti-Semitism is well and alive still in parts of Europe. In Palestine, children are taught that Jews are pigs. In the Muslim world, the hatred is all but palpable.

Many of today's generation of Israeli Jews want nothing more than to have peace and to get on with life. They concede the two-state solution to be the most viable option and have genuine sympathy for their Palestinian counterparts living in the more restive areas although Tel Aviv is no peach either with its strict security checks to deter suicide bombers.

If you met them, you'd find my two Jewish acquaintances not unlike your girls next door in Subang Jaya. Valed is warm and friendly, Nogah intelligent and articulate. In fact, they had been in Germany to attend an outreach seminar comprising Palestinians and Jews with liberal leftist leanings (that is, those willing to go far at great cost to accommodate Palestinian demands).

While the youth-level discussion programme had been well-intentioned, the two students found their goodwill not reciprocated in equal measure by their opposite numbers who came with hardened attitudes and sporting intifada emblems.

Veled explains with animated passion, "I tried so hard to make them see me as a person, a human being not some monster. If only they would, there could begin to be a better understanding between us." Not exactly the words to come from an evil, sinister Jew, are they?

When bigoted Malaysia turns to the world a face twisted with irrational hatred, it's ultimately its own humanity, not that of the race it vilifies, which will be judged wanting.

Note: * It's regrettable that I need even to mention this aspect of Neil Lochery's background but I shall duly note here - given Malaysian readers' well-known prejudices and perennial obsession with race that Lochery is neither Jew nor American but an Irish lecturer at University College London.