As a college student in 1990, Klein wrote an editorial (see http://www.unwatch.org/naomiklein)for the University of Toronto's student newspaper The Varsity, entitled "Victim to victimizer." In her various accounts, Klein describes a simple op-ed that urged Israel to "end the occupation not only for the Palestinians, but also for its own people, especially its women." To organize a response, she claims, no less than 500 Jewish students gathered for a "lynch mob" meeting. However, she showed up herself, unrecognized, and stood up and told them off. "I was 19," Klein told the Guardian, "and it made me tough." The experience "prepared me for controversy," empowering her to take on multinationals and the World Bank. Heroic stuff.

The facts, though, tell a very different story.

Klein's article was anything but normal. Its thesis sentence and blaring headline: "What Israel has become: Racism and misogyny at the core of its being."

"Israeli men," she said, "reach maturity by brutalizing and degrading Palestinians." Then there was "Israeli men's misogyny toward Israeli women."

Most disturbing, said Klein, "is something known to Israeli women as 'Holocaust pornography,' where images of emaciated women near ovens, shower heads, cattle cars and the like are used to sell clothing and other products." Jewish women, she informed her readers, "are sexualized as Holocaust victims for Israeli men to masturbate over ... the themes are fire, gas, trains, emaciation and death."

If such aberrant ads or magazines ever existed, they were well hidden. But Klein was looking to demonize – not only Israel, but Judaism, and Jews.

"A Jewish education is an education of fear," continued Klein. "Jews made the shift from victims to victimizers with terrifying ease."

"I wish to be saved from Israel," she concluded. "I am a Jew against Israel – just as Israel repeatedly proves itself to be against me."