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No, liberals in good standing today simply can not come out and warn explicitly of Jewish control of the media.
But, many of them no longer feel constrained by the moral impulse to avoid such calumnies, and often fashion rhetoric which implicitly warns of Jews’ undue influence on the public debate about Israel.
And, sadly, even many Jews contribute to the chorus of antisemitic narratives concerning Jewish power.
One of the most extreme examples of leftist Jews who advance classic antisemitic tropes is Philip Weiss – creator of Mondoweiss - who literally argued for a limit to the number of Jews in the media allowed to comment on Israeli-related issues, to prevent their corrosive effect on the Israeli-Palestinian debate.
The Guardian’s Jonathan Steele was a bit more subtle, by merely blaming, as the cause of Obama’s failure to stand up to Israel (in a 2010 essay) ”the pressure that pro-Israel campaigners put on the mainstream US media.”
Daniel Levy doesn’t go as far as Weiss, but recently went further than Steele in his expression of concern about the effect of Jews on the I-P debate in the U.S.
Levy is the co-founder of left-wing Israel lobbying group, J Street.
Evidence of Levy’s hard left politics can be found in his comments mocking those who “believe” that Hamas is a terrorist group, his characterization of Israel’s creation as a “mistake”, and his view that maybe Israel’s continued existence within any borders may not be desirable.
Specifically, regarding the latter, Levy said:
“Maybe, if this collective Jewish presence [in the Middle East] can only survive by the sword, then Israel really ain’t a good idea.”
Yesterday, Sept. 20, Levy published a piece at CiF, “Obama and Israel: Why leading from behind won’t work“, on the degree to which reports about President Obama’s erosion of Jewish support is accurate.
In explaining why reports of American Jews’ defection from Obama (who received 78% of the Jewish vote in 2008), due to his policies towards Israel, are exaggerated, Levy positively cites a recent essay by John Heilemann (which he describes as “excellent”) – particularly his agreement with Heilemann’s complaint of:
“the outsize attention [Jews] command and the ear-splitting volume of the collective megaphone they (Jews) wield.”
So, Levy and Heilemann evidently believe that the only reason, it seems, that a good percentage of American Jews are concerned about U.S. policy on the I-P Conflict is due to Jews’ disproportionate influence on the media. (See a good take down of Heilemann’s logic, at Pajamas Media)
Can someone please explain to me how such words don’t conjure the political narrative about the “injurious” influence of Jews historically found on the far right?
Is this what the Jewish hard left in the U.S. has resorted to?
It’s as if, in the mind of people such as Levy and Heilemann, merely wearing the liberal uniform should axiomatically render charges of antisemitism against them as absurd.
Sorry, but nothing could be further from the truth. Their political orientation does not grant them such moral impunity.
In fact, while antisemitism of course exists on the right (particularly in some far-right parties in Europe), the central address of antisemitism, and their enablers, in the “respectable” Anglo, Western world – as this blog continually demonstrates – is the media institution which happens to fancy itself the “world’s leading liberal voice.”
Related articles
- Vile anti-Zionist logic at Guardian’s Comment is Free (cifwatch.com)
- +972 and a revealing Twitter exchange between CiF Watch and a radical left Israeli Jew (cifwatch.com)
- The tortured logic which informs yet another anti-Israel Guardian editorial (cifwatch.com)
- Another CiF columnist accuses Jewish lobby in the U.S. of stifling debate about Israel (cifwatch.com)
Daniel Levy is living proof that those who accuse some on the (Guardian-style) left of being humorless aren’t completely off base, as I can think of no other explanation for how such a seemingly rational man can not see that he’s become a living, breathing parody of the Jewish pro-Palestinian, Israel-loathing left.
Levy, one of the founder’s of J Street, who recently opined that maybe, just perhaps, Israel doesn’t deserve to exist – ”Maybe, if this collective Jewish presence [the Jewish State in the Middle East] can only survive by the sword, then Israel really ain’t a good idea.” – has surfaced at the Guardian to express something approaching euphoria over the recent announcement that Hamas has reconciled with Fatah and will now have a greater role in Palestinian affairs (How Hamas-Fatah unity could break Middle East deadlock, CiF, April 28).
Levy’s sense of relief that Palestinians will finally abandon the failed and craven “accommodationist approach” is palpable, seems almost giddy that there is finally an end to the artificial, conventional paradigm of “moderates” (Fatah) vs. “so-called” “extremists” (Hamas), mockingly refers to characterizations of Hamas as a terrorist group as mere “Israeli talking points,” is particularly confident that the inclusion of the Islamist group who openly seeks Israel’s destruction will reinvigorate the peace process, and at least hopeful that the Islamic Resistance Movement will be “non-violent”.
But, as sensitive souls like Levy are always saying – at least, that is, when they’re not questioning Israel’s right to exist - it may seem to the untrained eye that his support for Hamas is contrary to the Jewish state’s interests, but he’s really only practicing tough love. Levy, you see, is saving Israel from itself, from their ”false sense of permanent impunity” and their “most self-destructive tendencies” such as “settlement building” (which he ever so sensitively likens to a cancer) and “intolerant nationalism”.
Though, of note, Levy’s selflessness in volunteering to help states like Israel iron out their “issues” is oddly absent when it comes to helping Hamas with their unique brand of “intolerant nationalism”. Strangely, there is no offer from Levy to help the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood get over their addictive desire to rid the world of Israel, nor is concern expressed for the group’s paranoid belief that Jews are trying to take over the world.
(On this latter genocidal proclivity, I guess, in fairness, given our historical obstinateness, can you really blame them?)
Call Daniel Levy a dupe, a useful idiot, a Jewish scourge, or even self-hating, but I find him – in his exquisite representation of the extreme pathologies which haunt the Jewish far left – an interesting political specimen, and down right entertaining.
If he didn’t exist, I would SO try to invent him.
This is cross posted by the always thoughtful Yaacov Lozowick, who blogs at Yaacov Lozowick’s Ruminations
A number of people, some quite thoughtful, disagreed with my position against J Street yesterday. Since I spent part of the day doing Pessach cleaning, I was able to listen to some of the sessions of the recent J Street conference. I heard Rabbi Saperstein, Jeremy Ben Ami, Peter Beinart, Bernard Avishai, Daniel Levy and Roger Cohen, and was also able to hear when the audience applauded for which statements.
Daniel Levy at one point made a statement about how if it were to be proven that the Arab world really isn’t willing to live in peace alongside Israel “then Israel wasn’t such a good idea, was it?” but then he went on to say that of course, the Arabs are willing. You’ll pardon me if I don’t feel compelled to regard Levy as a fellow Zionist in any form or way, even if he was once an aide to Yossie Beilin.
Apart from Levy, however, here’s what I found.
These J Street speakers and guest speakers are more or less aligned with the positions of Meretz, perhaps a shade to its left. Meretz, of course, is a legitimate Zionist party, even though it has lost almost all its Israeli voters and hovers near extinction. Yet J Street isn’t Meretz, it’s something much more troubling, and worthy of our disdain.
First, Meretz positions sound different and more acceptable from Israelis. The reason the party has lost most of its voters is that we’ve empirically tested its proposals, and lots of people have died as a result – not once, but repeatedly, in 1993-6, in 2000 (twice, once in Lebanon and once with the Palestinians), in 2002, in 2005, and in 2006; arguably also in 2008. Having its basic assumptions serially disproved has discredited Meretz, but if after all that some Israelis still wish to hang on, that’s their right; the rest of us don’t take them seriously, and that’s our right. It’s actually surprising how very little animosity Meretz generates these days, especially when compared to their heyday. They’re an oddity, and one doesn’t get aggravated about oddities; one pities them, or suffers them for the color they add.
The J Street people seem not to have noticed any of this, which is either very peculiar or very disturbing. If they’ve simply not been watching, what gives them the right to have an opinion about life and death matters they can’t make the effort to understand? If they’ve been watching and refuse to accept what is there to be seen, how exactly do they portray themselves as being on our side?
Second, there’s a consistent tone of disdain of Israeli society coming from these people who I find arrogant and very distasteful. Americans left and right have lost their civility in political discourse; Israelis, admittedly, never had it. Yet there are codes in language, deeper than mere words, and the subtext of these J Street spokesmen when discussing Jews from Russia, religious Jews and centrist Jews, is ugly. I find no other word for it. Just as their compassion for Israel’s Arabs (the citizens) is odd. There’s a level of identification with them which is totally lacking when they talk about the majority of the Israeli Jews. I say this as someone who wishes only the best for Israel’s Arabs.
Another widespread sentiment they’ve got about Israelis is moral superiority. We American Jews, we understand human rights, democracy, dignity and so on, not like our benighted Israeli cousins who need to learn from us because they’ve turned into an embarrassment. I”m not going to respond in detail to this, but it needs to be rejected vehemently. It’s the opposite which is true. Israeli Jews, unlike American ones, live in a hard reality which beats down on those admirable human values and could easily smother them. Yet it doesn’t. Israelis know more about raising children to be moral human beings at time of adversity, more about respecting one’s enemy’s dignity, more about respect for law under extreme duress, than most American Jews can even begin to imagine. How could they? When are they ever faced with true moral quandaries, or required to pay a price for preserving their values? Do Israelis sometimes fail? Of course. Are American Jews ever put in situations where they’re ever even tried? Perhaps, but they don’t spring to mind.
Then there’s the matter of having enemies. Nothing I heard in all those speeches gave any cause to believe the speakers understand what an enemy is; they certainly can’t imagine the Palestinians are such. To the best of my recollection, the word Hamas was never mentioned. The Palestinians, when they were talked about, are noble and suffering people who must be reached out to, must be embraced, must be comforted. I have Palestinian friends, and am seeking more of them; through them I try to understand how they see us and how they see themselves. Yet I never forget that so far, we’re at war. I’m convinced the ones I know personally are all right, but there are many in their society who would gladly kill me, my family, and my society. There’s a war on, it’s not over, and it’s not something that can be talked away with nice sentiments. War mean enemies: a concept – I repeat myself but it’s a crucial distinction – the J-Street people seem quite oblivious of. So far as I can tell, they can’t imagine an enemy, astonishing as that may sound.
All of this, serious as it is, perhaps still doesn’t justify the distaste I have for these people. So they disagree with me and with most Israelis on many matters: so what? You know how many things there are I disagree on with various factions of Israelis? Heaps and heaps.
The difference between those disagreements and J Street is in the reason J Street exists: to put pressure on the American government. I’d add, to put pressure on the American government to harm Israel, but my Meretz friends will tell me it won’t harm Israel. J Street isn’t a talk club, it’s a lobby, which intends to have an impact on policy.There’s an extreme irony in this, since what J Street is essentially saying – quite openly and explicitly – is that the sovereign political decisions of the Jewish State need to be upended. True, the Jews didn’t have the ability to make sovereign decisions until Zionism created Israel, but now that the Jews have Israel they’re making the wrong decisions and need the outsiders to correct their mistakes for them. If this isn’t anti-Zionism by Jews, I don’t know what it would look like.
Finally, to sum it all up, there’s the content of the pressure that needs to be put on Israel. All of the speakers I heard, and most of what I had previously heard and read about J Street, agree that the reason there’s no peace between Israel and Palestinians is that Israel isn’t interested, or isn’t serious. At the moment they blame “Netanyahu and Lieberman”, but Netanyahu and Lieberman were democratically elected (not by me – but they do represent a real majority). Should it be a different Israeli government, however, the J Streeters will say the same about them (since that government won’t make any more peace than this one). So let me return to my paragraph yesterday about the Big Lie: I’ve marked the parts which the J Streeters clearly seem to accept, in bold; the parts in italics some of the J Streeters seem to accept.
The Big Lie of our day has a number or versions. The Jews are not a nation and deserve no state. The Jews have no historical rights to the land they call Israel, and even if they do, they’re anachronistic and cannot justify harming the Palestinians. The Palestinians have been in their homeland for time immemorial, and were pushed out by the Jews. The Jews continue to aspire to ever more control of the land, and to ever more oppression of the Palestinians. The Jews’ way in war is uniquely evil and cruel. The Palestinians yearn for peace, but the Israelis refuse to allow it, because they haven’t finished taking Palestinian land, or because they don’t recognize the Palestinians as equally human. The Jews protect their nefarious projects through sinister control of power-brokers, most importantly the United States.
I have no doubt many of the supporters of J Street mean well. Really and truly. But context is important, and when Jews say loudly that the Israelis are to blame for the lack of peace, or that they’re immoral or becoming so, and that foreign powers must restrain them: well, that’s anti Israel, and it plays into the lie of our day.
This is cross-posted by Lori Lowenthal Marcus at The American Thinker. Lowenthal Marcus is the President of the group, Z Street.
While attending the J Street conference I wondered whether I had entered some alternative dimension, where facts known by the rest of the world, and basic principles of reasoning, just didn’t operate in quite the same way as they do on the rest of planet Earth. I think I know what’s operating.
Psychologists teach that an obsession is “a persistent disturbing preoccupation with an often unreasonable idea or feeling.” There is a persistent theme on J Street: a Palestinian State must be created RIGHT NOW (“PSRN”), and it’s almost as if there is a complete memory block about the refusals of varying forms of the state, including the original offer by the United Nations of yet another Arab State in 1947.
That PSRN is J Street’s obsession is revealed by the fact that unanimity on that “solution” co-exists with radical disagreement about the nature of the problem. Here’s an abbreviated list of the ideological positions you pass as you walk down J Street:
Over here we have Daniel Levy, one of J Street’s founders, Advisory Board member and policy consultant (yes, the one who admitted forgiving the world for the mistake of Israel because he understood they were reeling from the nasties of the Holocaust). Levy peddles the principle that Hamas is a serious regional player and that Israel must include them in the negotiations to create a Palestinian State.
Levy is down the block from al-Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara who explains that Hamas is dedicated to Israel’s annihilation (which received applause from a J Street U member in the audience) and that the only way for Israel to protect itself from them is to create a Palestinian State.
Around the corner we learn from Knesset member Shlomo Molla that bilateral negotiations between Israel and the Arab Palestinians are the only way to move towards peace in the region.
Two houses down on the same street, Tom Dine of Search for Common Ground tells us that bilateral movement is impossible, and instead a regional approach is the only possibility for peace. And that the only choice open to Israel is to create a PSRN.
Just across J Street from these guys is New York Times reporter Roger Cohen who insists that the unrest in the Middle East is actually weakening Iran, while down the block we learn from the Saban Center’s Shibley Telhami that Iran is the main threat in the region. Iran is weaker, says Cohen, so now is the time to create a Palestinian State, and Iran is the major threat, says Telhami, so now is the time to create a Palestinian State. Polar opposite reasoning, yet naturally both ineluctably lead to the conclusion that the only possible answer is the immediate creation of a Palestinian State.
Hebrew University professor Bernard Avishai berated Dennis Ross for wimpishly claiming that “bilateral negotiations is the only mechanism” for achieving peace. Avishai instead called for an “Obama Blueprint” in which the US uses its bully pulpit to galvanize “international momentum and pressure” (on Israel, of course), to create a Palestinian State.
In the same building but down a few flights we heard from the ubiquitous Egyptian journalist Mona Eltahawy that the “West has become irrelevant” and that rather than the West, the region demands freedom and dignity for the Palestinians. Both agreed about one thing — wait, I’m trying to remember — oh yes, the need to create a PSRN.
Near the end of the block on J Street are two Israelis who insist that the world doesn’t distrust or dislike Israel, and that those who see such hostility are deluded by the evil Netanyahu who uses it to prevent an agreement on, you guessed it, the creation of a Palestinian State. One of these is Ron Pundak, the director general of the Peres Center for Peace. Pundak is convinced the world is full of love for the Jewish State and claims that Israel can survive just fine with a nuclearized Iran. The other, Knesset member Daniel Ben-Simon, insists that Israel is a world super power and has nothing to fear from anyone. They agree, however, that the beloved super power Israel must immediately create a Palestinian State or it will lose its standing.
And finally, at the end of J Street are several more Israelis, including Kadima party Members of Knesset Nachman Shai (who was unable to rouse any enthusiasm by demanding that Gilad Shalit be released before the restrictions on Gaza be eased) and Yoel Hasson. Both of these men claim that Fatah is the solution to the Arab-Israel conflict, and that Israel has to help them by creating a Palestinian State. These two are around the bend from Ophir Pines-Paz, former Labor Knesset member and Minister who intones that the Palestinians are entirely disunited and can’t deliver peace and security, so the solution is a Palestinian State.
In a world where Arab regimes are collapsing, or not collapsing because they’re bribing their people (Bahrain) or conciliating them (Jordan); where they are murdering their citizens (Libya) or not murdering them (Egypt); intimidating them into silence (Iran) or not intimidating them and letting them speak (Iraq) — no-one claims to know what the Arab world thinks or where it is headed.
And yet, in the middle of this storm there is one unalterable fact: the solution to Israel’s problems (whatever they may be), to the Arab world’s problems — and for many denizens of J Street, the solution to most of the world’s ills — is simply and only the creation, RIGHT NOW, of a Palestinian State. If that one thing happens then all will be well with the Jewish world, the Arab world, and much of the entire world; the lion (6 million Israeli Jews) will lie down with the lamb (338 million Arabs).
Rational political discourse tries to define problems and propose solutions — and we can assess the quality of the discourse by looking to see whether the problems and solutions are logically connected to each other. But when the same solution is offered to solve every problem in the world and its exact opposite, it becomes clear that what’s operating in the mind of the people proffering that solution is not logic. It’s an obsession with that solution.
The J Street conference was not an exercise in political discussion; it was a ward, holding but not treating people suffering from an intellectual monomania.
H/T Israel Matzav
This is cross posted by David Suissa
I was watching the J Street convention on their Web site the other day, and it reminded me a little of those underground meetings among religious settlers in the West Bank. That is, a constant flow of red meat served to the fervent and the like-minded.
In the case of J Street, this red meat can be boiled down to this: It is really, really, really, really important that Israel reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians.
One fervent speaker after another came down from the mountaintop to convince an already convinced audience of how really important this goal is. Whether it was Peter Beinart fearing for Israel’s democratic future, or Rabbi David Saperstein appealing to our highest Jewish values, or Sara Benninga finding her meaning in life by leading weekly demonstrations at Sheikh Jarrah, the theme was the same: Israel must make peace and end the occupation as soon as possible.
And who’s the bad guy in all of this? Take a guess. With the J Street crowd, the underlying assumption is always that the major obstacle to peace is Israel. Palestinian obstacles to peace? They’re as likely to be mentioned at a J Street convention as Avigdor Lieberman is of being invited.
Sometimes I wonder what it must feel like after three days of one of these J Street smugfests. How do you go from feeling absolutely certain that you are right to feeling even more certain that you are right?
I remember when Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun invited me to speak several years ago at one of their peace conventions in New York City. I was glad that he did, because it gave me a chance to ask a few hundred peaceniks a question they probably rarely hear: “When is the last time any of you woke up in the morning and asked yourself: ‘What if I’m wrong?’ “
No one raised their hand.
Yes, compassion is a great Jewish virtue, I told them, but so is humility. I confessed that, initially, I didn’t believe in the Oslo peace process (because I didn’t trust Arafat), but I asked myself, “What if I’m wrong?” and I ended up going along with it. So, I suggested, “What would happen if you all asked yourselves that same question?”
When I look at J Street now, I see some obviously good intentions (“We want peace!”), but not much humility. What comes across more than anything is an orgy of ideological self-confirmation toward pressuring Israel.
That’s disappointing. I expect more from open-minded liberals who claim to care for the “other side.” For one thing, I expect they would also care for the other side of an argument.
Have they studied, for example, the Palestinian Authority’s global campaign to undermine and demonize Israel and the corrosive effect this has had on the peace process? Have they studied why the Palestinians have consistently rejected offers to end the occupation and make peace with a Jewish state?
As a “pro-Israel” group, why hasn’t J Street pressured the Palestinians to end their glorification of terror and indoctrination of Jew-hatred that has made so many Jews reluctant to take more risks for peace?
As a “pro-peace” group, why did they not pressure the Palestinians to return to the peace table during the first nine months of a unilateral 10-month settlement freeze which the Obama administration itself lauded as “unprecedented”?
To balance their countless speakers who advocate putting more pressure on Israel, why haven’t they included speakers like Itamar Marcus of Palestinian Media Watch, who has documented the continued anti-Semitic incitement in official Palestinian media, or an award-winning Mideast journalist like Khaled Abu Toameh, who makes a powerful case that the Palestinian Authority’s primary interest is not to make peace with Israel – but to delegitimize the Jewish state?
If the goal is to bring together two sides, isn’t it important to scrutinize both sides?
Why doesn’t J Street bring in experts to explain the danger of Hamas taking over a Palestinian West Bank and pointing 10,000 rockets at Israel’s nuclear installations, potentially creating a catastrophic meltdown in the Jewish state? Talk about fearing for a country’s democratic future.
J Street’s relentless focus on pressuring Israel isn’t only unfair, it’s also remarkably ineffective. A couple of years ago, Palestinian and Israeli leaders were negotiating directly as a matter of course. Now, in the face of the enormous and single-minded global pressure on Israel, Palestinians are negotiating in international forums on how best to demonize Israel. They won’t even consider talking to Israel until it commits to freezing all construction in disputed territory, including, I presume, freezing any renovation of the restrooms at the Western Wall.
We’ve seen that the greater the pressure on Israel, the faster the cockier-than-ever Palestinians have run away from the peace table. J Street’s reaction to all this is to bring 2,000 people together in Washington, D.C., to put even more pressure on Israel and urge the Obama administration to do the same.
In other words, after two years of generating bumper-to-bumper traffic on the failed road called “let’s pressure Israel,” J Street has decided that the best thing to do is to attract even more traffic to that road.
Maybe they ought to consider adding another lane to their congested highway and calling it “Let’s pressure the Palestinians to stop undermining Israel and return immediately to the peace table.”
In Los Angeles, we would call that the carpool lane.
H/T Israel Matzav
If you want to get a glimpse into the mind of many who align themselves with the group J Street, go to the 4:40 mark of this video and listen to the applause during journalist Mona Eltahawy’s chilling justification of Egyptians’ hatred of Israel.
Please keep in mind while watching this that, per a 2010 Pew Global Survey, anti-Semitism (no not merely Israel hatred) is nearly universal in Egyptian society, with a staggering 95% of those surveyed expressing animosity towards Jews.
That a journalist would fan the flames of hatred even further is bad enough, but please remember that Ms. Eltahawy’s remarks, and subsequent applause – simply dripping with contempt for the Jewish state – took place at a major conference for an organization which describes itself as pro-Israel.
I’d like someone to explain to me why, during the course of Eltahawy’s diatribe against Israel, there doesn’t appear to have been even one hoot, jeer, or protest from this progressive and supposedly independent thinking crowd.
(Update: Seth Mandel, at NewsRealBlog, has a great take on the J. Street crowd’s roaring approval for Eltahawy’s anti-Israel diatribe, here.)
H/T Mere Rhetoric
With the liberal lobbying group, J Street, still reeling from revelations that their director, Jeremy Ben-Ami, wasn’t truthful about funding the group received from George Soros, a video has surfaced of J Street’s co-founder, Daniel Levy (who’s been fawned over by the Guardian’s Michael Tomasky and Chris McGreal) which again reveal the group’s true colors.
At a Q+A of “Palestinian Politics and Obama’s Peace Plans,” an event held in October 2009 by Levy’s The Century Foundation (cached event page here, PDF of quotes here, full video here and here), Levy – who recently caused problems for J Street when he referred to Israel’s entire creation as “an act that was wrong” – accused Israel of doing everything in their power “to try to turn the Palestinians violent.” Here’s the exchange:
DANIEL LEVY: So Fatah is irretrievably bought into a negotiations-only strategy. What if the negotiations don’t deliver? And Hamas into an illegitimate strategy that includes use of violence against civilians.
BASSIM KHOURY: We Palestinians have part of the blame with where we are now because of our homicide bombings in Israel.
DANIEL LEVY: The Palestinian side has failed to produce a third alternative. The third alternative inside the territories is about nonviolent resistance which is why Israel does everything to try and turn nonviolent resistance into violence.
Of course, CiF Watch is not unfamiliar with tropes – by Israel haters both above and below the line at the Guardian – suggesting Israeli culpability for Palestinian terrorism and extremism. But, when the leader of a large, well-funded, lobbying group, which claims to be pro-Israel, advances such a narrative it is especially troubling.
No comment necessary.
This is cross-posted from the blog, Mere Rhetoric
Daniel Levy
Quite the few days that J Street had last week, what with all the admitting they’re foot soldiers in Soros’s anti-Israel army after lying about it for years and then trying to get ahead of the story by lying about it some more. Most of the criticism has focused on co-founder Jeremy Ben-Ami, who did not exactly fall on his sword and instead tried to hamfistedly change the subject. But it’s probably unfair to blame him for all of J Street’s failings, from rigging polls to being more anti-Israel than the Saudis to expressing fake confusion about Hamas’s intentions.
Per Eli Lake’s first story, Ben-Ami seems to have been the one who did most of the “misleading” about J Street’s fundraising, from furtively squirreling away Soros’s cash to opaquely raising 50% of the group’s 2008 money from a single foreign source.
But per Lake’s second article, when it came time to shuttle Goldstone around DC and peddle his endlessly inaccurate and venomously biased libels around the Hill, J Street delegated the task to one of the adults in the organization. It was J Street co-founder, advisory board member, and international socialite Daniel Levy “who accompanied the judge to several of the [10-12] parleys” with Congress. It was also Levy’s New America Foundation that hosted a high-caliber lunch for Goldstone with “a group of analysts and Middle East wonks.”
The Goldstone tour wasn’t the first time that Levy willingly served as a channel for de facto Hamas propaganda. He’s been a tireless advocate of pro-Hamas diplomacy, and sees the Iranian proxy as an integral part of Palestinian civil society. A few years ago Noah Pollak took him out to the woodshed for historical revisionism that seemed jarringly anti-Israel and borderline anti-Zionist.
If sometimes it seems like Levy doesn’t really think that the modern Jewish State deserves defending, it’s because he kind of doesn’t really think that the modern Jewish State deserves defending. You can be confident on that point because he said so himself – quite definitively – at last May’s Fifth Al Jazeera Forum. Levy was on a panel with Al-Quds Al-Arabi editor-in-chief Abdel Bari Atwan, NAF Strategic Program Director Steve Clemons, surrealHamas apologist and one-stater Allister Sparks, and accused terrorist Basheer Nafi.
Mere Rhetoric has obtained a transcript of Levy’s remarks. They conclude with him asserting that it’s “natural” for Gazans to want to attack Israelis on account of the ostensibly unbearable situation in the Strip or something, and with him nonetheless urging Palestinians to hold off on their genocidal campaigns because those aren’t very strategic or disciplined.
But the most ideologically pointed part was just before those musings. Levy quite explicitly revealed that he thinks that Israel’s creation was a “an act that was wrong.” Quote unquote. For good measure he added that “there’s no reason a Palestinian should think there was justice” in Israel’s founding. Gamely, he also implied that had he been a diplomat in 1948, he would have been so overwrought at the incineration of six million Jewish souls that he would have deemed the reestablishment of Jewish sovereignty in the ancestral Jewish homeland “excused.” Generous!
I’ve put the full quote, in all of its prevaricating nuance, at the bottom. Begin reading it for the risible claims of Hamas pragmatism, and stay around for the spectacle of a “pro-Israel” activist dismissing the moral basis for Israel as misguided and historically fleeting. In the middle, don’t miss how the only flavor of Zionism he’s willing to support is a kind that exists only in his mind.
In fairness, you can’t blame him for the “natural” violence stuff too much. There aren’t a lot of places you can argumentatively go after something as blunt as “an act that was wrong.” Once you’ve embraced the anti-Israel version of Middle East history – where the revival of the Jewish State was an ethically injudicious colonialist overreaction to the Holocaust rather than a centuries-old legally-codified international movement – you can’t then forcefully insist that Jews have an ethical right to live securely in the Holy Land. Because those two things mean the opposite of each other.
No wonder J Street wants to redefine “pro-Israel” to justify their rhetorically creepy “we beat up Israelis for their own good, and it hurts us more than it hurts them” campaign. The group’s directors are beholden to major anti-Israel donors. They have political skin in anti-Israel diplomatic gambits. And their personal feelings about the Jewish State leave them no room for speaking out in defense of Israel’s ethical legitimacy, legal basis, or strategic importance. So they end up shilling for Hamas in Congress. At least that’s consistent.
Anyway, to preempt the inevitable claim that Levy was taken out of context, here’s the extended quote:
“One can be a utilitarian two-stater, in other words think that the practical pragmatic way forward is two states. This is my understanding of the current Hamas position. One can be an ideological two-stater, someone who believes in exclusively the Palestinian self-determination and in Zionism; I don’t believe that it’s impossible to have a progressive Zionism. Or one can be a one-stater. But in either of those outcomes we’re going to live next door to each other or in a one state disposition. And that means wrapping one’s head around the humanity of both sides. I believe the way Jewish history was in 1948 excused – for me, it was good enough for me – an act that was wrong. I don’t expect Palestinians to think that. I have no reason – there’s no reason a Palestinian should think there was justice in the creation of Israel.”
This is a cross-post by Dr. Phyllis Chesler, writing at The Jewish Press.
Our beloved, miraculous Jewish state is under siege.
It was assumed that the ceaseless persecution of the Jews in exile would cease once we again had our own sovereign homeland, our own army, navy, and air force.
Now, 62 years after its establishment, it is abundantly clear that Israel has become the “Jew” of the world: Defamed, demonized, shunned, shamed, accused of countless blood libels, refused the right to defend itself, blamed when it does.
Daily, hourly, Israel is cursed in all the world’s languages, scapegoated for the crimes and sins of the Arab and Muslim world.
Old-style anti-Semitism is still with us but now there’s a “new” anti-Semitism coming at us from the progressive left, the intelligentsia, the “good” people. It is also coming at us from the Arab and Islamic world, enhanced by the Internet, television, radio and films.
I have been challenging anti-Semitism among leftists and feminists since the early 1970s. I first began to document the “new” anti-Semitism in 2000, right after the Palestinians launched the Second Intifada that year.
At first, I was something of a lone voice. The organized Jewish world either denied or minimized the rise of anti-Semitism and the existential threat that Israel might face. By standing up for Israel, Jews and America, I sacrificed my reputation as a politically correct intellectual. I lost publishing opportunities and most of my former friends and allies.
Why? Because we live in a time when objective truth does not count anymore, when only Big Lies matter.
For example, Islam is the world’s largest practitioner of both religious and gender apartheid. Say this on most campuses, as I have, and you will be jeered, booed, possibly physically menaced, certainly demonized as a “racist” and “Islamophobe.”
The politically correct line is that Israel is a “Nazi apartheid state.” The brainwashing has worked. Sixty years’ worth of Arab League and Saudi funding has accomplished the unbelievable: Israel is not only the bad guy, it is the very worst bad guy in the entire universe.
This is a guest post by AKUS
There’s a well-known radio show in the US featuring Garrison Keillor called “A Prairie Home Companion” that has a weekly roundup of generally depressing news from a little town called Lake Wobegon, “where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.” There were a few things happening in a couple of our favorite British media sources that for some reason made me think of Lake Wobegon – the home of some of the “frozen people”, as Garrison likes to call his fellow Lutherans.
The Guardian, a paper at Loch Wobegan known familiarly as the Daily Groan for its rich helpings of Lutheran-like misery-guts reporting, where it often seems to me that none of its women (or men) are good-looking, even if they are strong, and certainly many of its columnists are not above average, had one of its faux-pas moments when it printed a report by the Press Association on a fascinating study of the attitudes of British Jews towards Israel just released by the British research group, JPR . (Yes – that JPR – the one Antony Lerman spends so much of his time attacking after he left). The study included the responses from 4081 self-selecting Jews out of a population of, say 300,000, a number which provides a margin of error of only 1.5%.
To put the rigor of the JPR study in context, many polls carried out in the US regarding important issues such as, say, the President’s popularity or Lindsey Lohan’s jail time will include less than 1,500 responses and have a margin of error of 3%. The JPR survey is far more rigorous than the incredibly cooked and utterly unrepresentative effort put together in the US by JStreet which has been so widely circulated. It was puffed up by the Guardian – e.g., this article by none other than Antony Lerman. CiF Watch noted a poll the Guardian ran “under a picture of a torn and tattered Israeli flag” about JStreet at Enforcing the GWV: the Guardian J Street Poll . That JStreet study had 800 respondents representing a population of 3 million US Jews. The small sample size, unlike the large British sample size, did not permit a really good breakdown by various Jewish subgroups, and on two of the most critical questions about the I/P issues only 354 responses were collected. The margin of error is at least 5%, very significant when so many responses on critical issues involving Israel in that study hovered around the 50% mark.
J-Street is one of the Guardian’s pet Jewish organizations. Here’s one of the reasons why:
If you thought that Brian Whitaker, the commissioning editor of “Comment is Free”, could not make more of a fool of himself than he has done so far, then think again.
Yesterday in the Michelle Goldberg thread on yet another article about J Street, we were graced with Brian’s presence no less than five times! It all started when blankedout complained that Israel was attacked with rockets yesterday and that there was no mention of it in the Guardian. It seems that Brian is a tad sensitive to the very serious and unanswered charges that CiF Watch and others have been levelling against ‘Comment is Free’ and the Guardian. So in jumps Brian with this:
BrianWhit 28 Oct 09, 2:07pm
Israel was attacked with rockets yesterday from Lebanon
why no mention in the Guardianblankedout: Probably it wasn’t considered newsworthy because the rocket didn’t cause any damage or hurt anyone. As far as I can see from Google, no British newspaper reported the incident.
StaffWell not exactly Brian. The BBC reported a follow up to the incident as pointed out on the thread by Sabraguy. And it was newsworthy enough for the New York Times and numerous other news outlets. Moreover, as acklothandsashes adds “no other British newspaper has this obsession with Israel and everything that happens there has it? So shelling of Israel is ignored because it shines a negative light on our neighbors. That rocket could have killed tens of Israelis Brian. Imagine if Israel had fired a similar rocket into Lebanon.”
Absolutely.
To which Brian retorted with this:
BrianWhit 28 Oct 09, 3:16pm
Imagine if Israel had fired a similar rocket into Lebanon.
acklothandsashes: Exactly. Israel did fire back and that wasn’t reported either. As international news goes, it was a pretty minor story.
Totally disengenous response Brian. Though Israel shelled the Shaba Farms area from where the Kaytusha was launched, it was in response to an indiscriminate attack that barely missed Kiryat Shmona – not that you would care. Israel does not indiscriminately fire rockets directed at civilian targets as does Israel’s enemies. Acklothandashes point was simply that if Israel were to engage in such provocation you can be assured that ‘Comment is Free’ would be all over it. Not only that but since when has the extent of coverage of a news story been the measuring stick by which ‘Comment is Free’ determines whether or not to publish? Remember for example when you published a story by Seth Freedman about the “mentally disabled teenager” who was supposedly beaten up by border police. I don’t think any other news agency reported that one.
Anyway, MindTheCrap then joins in on the discussion ratcheting up the charges:
Please explain why during the week prior to the start of Cast Lead, when Hamas was firing 70+ rockets daily into Israel, the Guardian did not report these events, even though its full-time reporters in the area were obviously aware of the pending Israeli reaction?
“Probably it wasn’t considered newsworthy” ????
To which Brian responded as follows:
28 Oct 09, 4:14pm
the Guardian did not report these events,
MindTheCrap: You’re just making this rubbish up and it doesn’t fool anyone.Here’s one of the Guardian’s reports:
<a href=”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/19/israel-hamas-gaza-violenceand here’s another
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/20/gaza-truce-ends-rockets-fired
Now go and compare that with the coverage in other newspapers.
Rubbish. Oh really. The sheer arrogance. Well this is what MindTheCrap had to say in response:
MindTheCrap 28 Oct 09, 4:37pm
BrianWhit:
MindTheCrap: You’re just making this rubbish up and it doesn’t fool anyone.
Now go and compare that with the coverage in other newspapers.The problem is that the articles that you cite are from Dec 19 & 20; Cast Lead started on Dec 27. During that week there were 70+ rockets fired daily on Sderot and environs from Gaza. A quick check of the Guardian archives shows that there were no reports on these attacks between Dec 21 and 26.
I check the facts before I make any claims.
Now go and compare that with the coverage in other newspapers.
MindTheCrap is spot on here. You see between December 21 and December 27, there were over 120 rockets and mortars fired into Israel and during the preceding week almost 100 rockets and mortars attacks. The impact upon daily life in Israel was devastating and diplomatic activity in the Middle East during this period was frenetic in an attempt to avert an Israeli defensive operation. Even the BBC were reporting what was going on. Here’s an example news report from them on December 25.
And a review of the archives section of ‘Comment is Free’ Middle East is even more damning. It shows that in the two weeks prior to the outbreak of Operation Cast Lead there was not one article discussing the rocket attacks and every single one was anti-Israel in its bias. Here’s the list: an article on December 15 by Tony Klug calling for an Israeli peace initiative; an article on December 15 by Seth Freedman discussing life behind the green line; an article on December 16 by Ben White on the Shministim; an article on December 16 by Simon Tisdall discussing the failure of Middle East peace efforts; an article on December 17 by Jonathan Freedland discussing a four-state solution; an article on December 17 by Seth Freedman discussing his personal mission against Israel; an article on December 19 by Seth Freedman discussing gyms in Ramallah (another highly newsworthy piece); another article on December 19 by Richard Falk complaining about being denied entry into Israel. And wait it gets even better. The last article before Operation Cast Lead was on December 22 from none other than Brian Whitaker who was taking a gratuitous swipe at Bibi Netanyahu.
Meanwhile over at Ha’aretz in their Read & React section, on December 26, they were reporting that “a “limited operation” will begin within days that will combine an air attack with some ground operations against Hamas and other Gaza terror groups”.
Was this perhaps not newsworthy because the lead in to the article was that “Palestinian militants fired 22 mortar shells from the Gaza strip overnight”?
Or how about The Huffington Post which on December 25 had a comment thread entitled “Israel Moving Closer To Invading Gaza“. According to the article “Israel moved closer to invading Gaza, saying Thursday it had wrapped up preparations for a broad offensive after Palestinian militants fired about 100 rockets and mortar shells across the border in two days”.
Talk about dereliction of duty. So caught up in its visceral hatred of the Jewish state ”Comment is Free’ completely ignored the biggest news coming out of Israel in years!!
Of course Brian Whitaker never responded to MindTheCrap’s comment. Maybe Bella M, the staff Mod, had a quiet word with Brian to tell him to shut up because he was making an utter fool of himself plus he was derailing the thread undermining poor Bella’s protestations to stay on topic (thanks Bella by the way for the plug (didn’t Brian tell you not to mention us)).
Now Brian if you really want to defend the charge that the Guardian promotes antisemitic discourse both above the line and below the line you are more than welcome to defend the indefensible.
Here’s an offer. Why don’t you write an article for us explaining why you think this is not case? I’ll publish whatever you write. In particular, our readers would be intrigued to know the following: Why do you feature a disproportionate number of writers deeply hostile to Israel’s existence as a Jewish state many of whom are self-hating Jews and have a track record of antisemitism? Why do you tolerate antisemitism in the comment threads? Why for example have the numerous antisemitic commenters that populate CiF not been permanently banned – its not as if you are oblivious to this? Why do you delete comments putting forward a pro-Israel position? Why did you ban AKUS, Cityca and others? And why do you insinuate that pro-Israel posters are paid agents of the Israeli government?
You can email me at contactus@cifwatch.com with your submission. I’m standing by.
Hawkeye
Omar2
WellofSense
Medusa
The Alchemist
Louise
Tosca
Maimon
Telling the Truth
Israelinurse
Adam Levick
Margie in Tel Aviv
Guest/Cross Post
Hadar Sela
More proof that J Street is clearly outside even the broadest Zionist tent
February 11, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: Boycott, Cross Post, J Street, BDS, Delegitimization, anti-Zionism, Lori Lowenthal Marcus, University of Pennsylvania, Z Street, American Thinker | by Guest/Cross Post | 3 comments
The following essay, by Lori Lowenthal Marcus of the group Z Street, was published at American Thinker
Given the ideological bedlam often seen even within individual Jewish organizations, just imagine trying to get an entire community of Jewish organizations together to sign a several-paragraphs-long statement reflecting a single position — and to do that within a matter of weeks.
That miracle almost happened recently, when the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia gathered practically every Jewish organization in the Philadelphia community to send a message of strong disapproval to an anti-Israel coalition known as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which is holding a three-day conference at the University of Pennsylvania on February 3-5. But the “almost” is necessary because one significant local group refused to join in. Understanding who, and why, reveals important lessons that must be taken to heart.
Penn BDS was thrown together by a single undergraduate student with the goal of luring the BDS conference to the University of Pennsylvania campus. BDS is a global, largely unsuccessful but widely publicized menace with the ultimate goal of demonizing, demoralizing, and destroying the state of Israel. BDS proponents claim that their methods constitute a tool to achieve justice for those oppressed by Israel; they take their cue from the effort to overthrow the racist South African government during the 1980s. But BDS is, in fact, merely a thin mask over enmity against any effective haven for the Jewish people.
Last month, when the Penn Hillel leadership learned that the BDS conference was to take place on their campus, the Philadelphia Jewish leadership was alerted, as was the Israeli Consulate. A broad spectrum of at least nominally pro-Israel local organizations was quickly called together with the goal of creating a strong communal response.
Mainstream local groups such as the Jewish Federation, the Anti-Defamation League, and Scholars for Peace in the Middle East — as well as those on the far left of the spectrum, such as the New Israel Fund and J Street, and those on the right end, such as Z STREET and the Zionist Organization of America — were included in this call to action. Several decisions were reached: there would be a communal statement of solidarity condemning the BDS conference; there would be an event showcasing communal support for Israel just prior to the conference; and, to counter the campaign of boycotting Israeli goods, there would be a concerted effort to encourage people to purchase Israeli products.
The crafting of the communal statement took two rounds of drafts and delicate negotiations with each organization involved. It fell to David Cohen, the senior associate for Israel and Middle East Affairs at the Philadelphia Federation, to ferret out each group’s rock-bottom red lines, then artfully craft changes to avoid crossing any of those lines, and finally to come up with a document that avoided all the pitfalls but still clearly condemned the strategy of BDS generally, and the holding of the BDS conference at Penn specifically.
I was present at and participated in the meetings as the Z STREET representative. In response to the first draft, I told Cohen that Z STREET objected to an emphasis on the ubiquitous “two state” mantra. We think the one clear goal of the peace process should be peace for Israel. Z STREET believes that the pro-Israel community disserves that goal by adding an additional goal which may not — and in our view, clearly does not — ensure that such peace will be attained. While disappointed to see the “two states” language as part of the final version of the community statement, we decided that a show of community-wide solidarity is important. More than two dozen other organizations felt the same, with each no doubt making its own ideological compromises so that the Jewish community could say something with one voice.
But there was a conspicuous absence from the Philadelphia Community Statement’s list of signatures. Although its representative was present at the community-wide meeting and was included in the community phone calls, J Street refused to be a part of the community and would not sign the joint statement of condemnation. Instead, J Street Philly issued a separate statement – one very different from the community’s in title, in tone, and in apportionment of blame. As the local representative stated clearly, J Street wanted to “maintain the integrity of our values” and their “unique position on this issue.”
Whereas the Philadelphia Community Statement is officially one of solidarity with Israel and of condemnation of the BDS Conference, J Street’s is neither.
The Philadelphia Community Statement unequivocally condemns boycotting Israel, disinvesting from its companies, or sanctioning it. J Street’s statement criticizes the BDS tactics but explicitly recognizes, validates, and agrees with the underlying sentiments expressed by those advocating BDS, which include “the ongoing occupation and diplomatic stagnation” and the “legitimate and warranted” and shared “concern about the present and future of the Palestinian people.”
Of particular concern to J Street was a broad condemnation of BDS — one that lacked “nuance,” such as making exceptions for boycotting goods made in Judea and Samaria. Also, J Street refused to criticize Penn, even subtly, for allowing the conference to be held there. J Street was unwilling to include its voice in stating that “the outrageous claims of BDS campaigns do not stand up to the rigors of academic inquiry and as such, go against the sophisticated civil discourse that is a core element of the University of Pennsylvania.”
Worse, J Street seems to have issued even its own tepid statement with not even enough enthusiasm as to post it; the J Street statement does not appear on the J Street Philadelphia website or on J Street’s Facebook page. J Street also refused to be one of the more than thirty co-sponsors of the “We Are One ” event with Alan Dershowitz.
Much has been about why and whether J Street is allowed in the “big tent” of Jewish communal organizations. The argument in favor, of course, is the desire to expand the marketplace of ideas, to be as inclusive as possible, and simply to give a respectful hearing even to those with whom one disagrees. But we now know what happened when J Street was unquestioningly welcomed into the Philadelphia community tent. When given the first opportunity to stand as one with the community and speak with one voice from one tent, J Street snuck out the back and pitched its own tent instead
(Editor’s note: Also, see following clip, from the PennBDS conference, at a breakout session on the “Academic Boycott of Israel”. During the Q&A session, a teacher asked Amy Kaplan, professor of English at Penn, how to incorporate BDS narratives delegitimizing Israel into college courses, even when the course has nothing to do with “Palestine.”)
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