It looks like the Left-leaning Center for American Progress is under fire for “anti-Semitism.” The issue at hand is the use of rhetoric such as “Israel-Firster.” CAP’s problem is that it fancies itself a mainstream organization which endeavors to effect policy. That means an honest and candid assessment of America’s peculiar relationship with Israel, and the rather lopsided center of gravity of the American political landscape in relation this issue, is not politic. Over at Salon Glenn Greenwald outlines exactly how CAP and its junior staffers were subjected to a organized campaign by AIPAC and its fellow travelers. He relates the following:
Last month, my Salon colleague Justin Elliott revealed that AIPAC’s former spokesman, Josh Block, had been encouraging neoconservative journalists and pundits on a private email list to attack as “anti-Semites” various Middle East commentators employed by two of the most influential Democratic-Party-aligned organizations: the Center for American Progress (CAP) and Media Matters (MM). Block distributed a dossier containing posts by these CAP and MM writers about Israel and Iran that he claimed evince anti-Semitism, and then issued these marching orders (emphasis in original): “YOU SHOULD AMPLIFY this. And use the below [research] to attack the bad guys.” The predictable roster of neoconservative, hatemongering extremists on that email list – led by The Washington Post‘s Jennifer Rubin, who recruited the Simon Wiesenthal Center to the cause — dutifully spewed out articles echoing Block’s attacks against these mostly young, liberal writers: Matt Duss, Ali Gharib, Eli Clifton and Zaid Jilani at CAP’s ThinkProgress blog and Media Matters’ MJ Rosenberg (a former AIPAC employee).
You know what this reminded me of? Spencer Ackerman encouraging fellow liberal journalists to destroy a conservative pundit as a racist:
take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists. Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country? What lurks behind those problems? This makes *them* sputter with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction.
This is hardball. It’s American politics. “Discourse” if you will. Communist. Islamophobe. Socialist. Racist. Anti-Semite. Anti-Christian. Class-warfare. Anti-Catholic. Sexist. Homophobe. Where is the necessity for an argument if you can name the enemy? It doesn’t matter what they say, it matters who you define they are.
Hopefully, this will make the Left begin to understand that their concept of “offensive” speech is too broad, in that complaining about our Israeli foreign policy is not the same thing as saying Hitler was right.
The social environment for talking about any demographically-correlated issue in this country, has become less like the principles of robust debate than like the etiquette about not telling a man his wife is ugly. Whether it’s true, false, or an informed opinion, talking about some things just isn’t DONE.
i wonder if Ackerman views Eli Lake, noted conservative journalist, as a target worthy of destruction–oh wait, he did a bloggingheads.tv session with Lake quite recently (and has for some time), all the while agreeing on nearly everything and joshing like old chums.
http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/8754
well, they are old chums. and though lake is no longer a leftist, as he was when he was young, he retains conventional urban hipster cultural sensibilities. e.g., his deep interest in hip-hop.
Using term “Israel-firster” is not a disagreement about the relatoinship between US + Israel, it is calling your opponents traitors. That it was done in the belief that dumb goys too naive to realize that their opinions were moulded by Svengalis would pick up the thread of their presumed native anti-Semitism. It was the considered policy of CAP to discourage support for Israel among American Jews (by making them think that supporting Israel was too Jew-y) and American non-Jews (by making them think that cosmopolitites of dubious Americanism were manipulating them) as well as by making actual arguments. Poor Zaid Jilani was too naive to realize he was going out on a limb; Ali Gharib (seemingly safe, so far – and I’m glad he is) was more judicious and never used the racist taunt. Block was also naive in thinking that the anti-Zionism at CAP was something that could be excised, rather than a sentiment running all through the organization. Someone at the White House realized that although it wanted a detach-everyone-from-Israel campaign to work, this one wasn’t working, and the permitted behavior of a few was giving naive liberal Jews the idea that the White House wanted to detach everyone from Israel. So, as Electronic Infitada and Mondoweiss pointed out, the word came down from on high: the dialectic changed and a few counterrevolutionaries had to be purged. None of this is the fault of a conspiracy by Jennifer Rubin or Block; they were genuinely outraged by what was going on (given that they are morally blind to the outrage of Zionism).
The whole thing was a disaster waiting to happen that comepetent management would never have permitted – even Democratic loyalist Jewish organizations devoted to looking the other way were going to notice sooner or later – and the White House and CAP is lucky that it took place during the hoopla over the GOP primaries rather than closer to the election.
Man, most of us are just bored to shit about Israel, to be honest. Israel should do whatever the hell it thinks is best for Israel, on its own dime, and be prepared to face the consequences itself.
But if “Israel Firster” is offensive, I will be happy to give it up. But you’ll have to pry “America Seconder” from my cold, dead hands.
To say that calling someone an Israel firster a traitor is a huge exaggeration. It is no such thing. It is suggesting though that the person’s policy recommendations cannot be necessarily assumed to have the best interests of America as opposed to Israel as their primary motivation. Hence their recommendations should be looked at with suspicion.
To say that calling someone an Israel firster is anti-Semitic is ridiculous. It’s no such thing. Not all American Jews are Israel firsters. It is in fact calling anyone who’s not himself an Israel firster an anti-Semite.
There’s a Jewish (convert) literary scholar specializing in the Holocaust who argues in a recent book that the basis of ALL explicitly secular thought is anti-Semitism and hatred of holiness as exemplified by the Jewish religion.
Seriously.
Re: Narr
Sounds like a guy who understands science about as well as Sarah Palin.
I dissent from the view that calling someone an “Israel-firster” is vanilla disagreement with his foreign policy priorities, having absolutely zero appeal to latent anti-Semitism and merely intended to wake up reflexive Zionists to the fact they’re being manipulated by AIPAC.
To me the label is just an echo of Buchanan’s “amen corner” trope.
Norman Podhoretz has argued that anti-Zionism is, objectively, anti-Semitism. I wouldn’t go that far, but the accusation of dual-loyalty is just too loaded with historical baggage to survive the claim that it has no ethnic content whatever.
Sorry, but what is the appeal of the the whole Walt/Mearsheimer/J Street/Peace Process advocacy all about? Isn’t it just a bit convenient that the alleged fifth column in the U.S. whose alleged outsized influence is preventing a ME peace settlement happens to be composed of a bunch of Jews?
But as David Hume says, this is hardball American politics. You put yourself out there, and you may get a label. Getting all huffy about it, full of fake indignation (like Gingrich the other night) might get you some support, but I’ve not an ounce of sympathy to spare for CAP’s injured feelings.
Norman Podhoretz has argued that anti-Zionism is, objectively, anti-Semitism.
norman podhoretz is a retard. (i don’t consider myself anti-zionist, because i don’t think israel is illegitimate) and of course *some* jews have dual loyalty or are israel-first. one of my best friends from college interned at AIPAC and asked her up front her priorities, and she admitted *if* she had to pick she’d pick israel (what if you made a roman catholic pick the US vs. the vatican?). that’s a legit choice, but troubling from my perspective.
Would it have been “anti-Semitic” (or even factually erroneous) to have called Marty Peretz an “Israel-firster” 10 years ago? How about now? Is there some point where it is fair?
America Seconders are doing their cause no favors in the long run by basically labeling everyone that calls them on it as something akin to Nazis.
When people give lots of indications that they are Israel-firsters, it’s perflectly legitimate to say they are. It’s legitimate because there is genuine reason to be skeptical that there arguments are necessarily made with the best interests of America top most in their priorities, essentially by definition of the term.
It’s completely illegitimate to try to smear those who use that term for those whom in seems legitimately to apply, as being the equivalent of evil irrationally prejudiced, hate filled racists. That is however a style of argument that the left uses all the time, mostly against conservatives. But yeah Jews use it against opponents of their ethnic interests having a privileged and illegitimate to criticize, protected, status as well.