Pioneer of Global Peace Studies Turns Out To Be Anti-Semitic Bigot

COURTESY OF IAN REIFOWITZ OVER AT DAILY KOS

This news is beyond disappointing and disheartening. Not much to add, other than to share the story.
From Haaretz:

Johan Galtung, Norwegian sociologist nicknamed the “father of peace studies,” made anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli remarks while lecturing at the University of Oslo, in an article published afterward in the Norwegian press and in an interview with Haaretz that followed.

Among other statements, Galtung claimed that a possible connection exists between the terrorist responsible for the massacre of children in Norway last summer, and the Mossad. “The Jews control U.S. media, and divert for the sake of Israel,” wrote Galtung in an article published in Norway.

He pointed out 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. Galtung also recommended reading “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” – one of the most popular anti-Semitic texts in the world.

Who is Johan Galtung? From wikipedia:

Johan Galtung (born 24 October 1930) is a Norwegian sociologist and the principal founder of the discipline of peace and conflict studies. He founded the Peace Research Institute Oslo in 1959, serving as its Director until 1970, and established the Journal of Peace Research in 1964. In 1969, he was appointed by the King-in-Council to the world's first chair in peace and conflict studies, at the University of Oslo. He resigned his professorship in 1977, and has since held professorships at several universities around the world. Galtung is a prolific researcher, having made contributions to many fields in sociology. He has published more than 1000 articles and over 100 books. He was awarded the Alternative Nobel Prize in 1987, and has received many other accolades.

The details of Galtung's statements are even beyond what you are thinking. He claims as his authority on Jews the writings of white supremacist William Luther Pierce, leader of the white separatist organization National Alliance.  Pierce is the author of The Turner Diaries, which the Southern Poverty Law Center called the "bible of the racist right," and which inspired Timothy McVeigh.

As for the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, it is a well-established fact that it is a forgery. From wikipedia:

The Protocols is a fabricated document purporting to be factual. It was originally produced in Russia between 1897 and 1903, possibly by Pyotr Ivanovich Rachkovsky, head of the Paris office of the Russian Secret Police, and unknown others.

Source material for the forgery consisted jointly of Dialogue aux enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu or Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, an 1864 political satire by Maurice Joly and a chapter from Biarritz, an 1868 novel by the antisemitic German novelist Hermann Goedsche, which had been translated into Russian in 1872.

Galtung, however, stated: "It is hard to believe that the Russian secret police was able to be so specific," and when Haaretz followed up with him he continued to hold on to this sickening fantasy: "I don’t know exactly who wrote the protocols."
For those unfamiliar with exactly what the Protocols are and have meant in history, again from wikipedia:

Adolf Hitler and the Nazis were major proponents of the text. It was studied, as if a factual document, in German classrooms after the Nazi Party came to power in 1933, despite having been exposed as fraudulent years before. In the opinion of historian Norman Cohn, the Protocols was Hitler's primary justification for initiating the Holocaust—his "warrant for genocide."

As I said, I have nothing to add. This is a truly devastating thing to hear, in particular coming from someone who has been such a strong advocate for peace.