Netanyahu's Speech and Friedman’s Recycled Slurs

...It’s true that if Netanyahu or any friend of Israel were to speak at a leftist enclave such as the one in Madison, they would not be cheered. But who, other than Friedman, actually thinks that opinion there is representative of anything but the prejudices of liberal academics. But the truth is, as a poll suggest, most Americans agree with Netanyahu on Iran, not Obama or Friedman. That’s why Friedman’s canard about Congress, Adelson and the “Israel lobby” is a lie. But like Obama’s Iran policy, Friedman is as undaunted by the prospect of repeating untruths about Israel as his newspaper is unashamed about printing them.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
05 March '15..

The Obama administration is determined to treat Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech to Congress on Iran as a non-event. As negotiations with Iran continued, the White House and its apologists in both Congress and the press dismissed Netanyahu’s pointed criticisms of the nuclear deal President Obama is offering the Islamist regime and acted as if he hadn’t proposed a sensible alternative to his policy of appeasement and acceptance of Iran as a threshold nuclear power and, in the long run, one with weapons capacity. But that isn’t enough for some of Obama’s partisans in the media who aren’t satisfied merely to see the administration continue on its path to disaster but wish to use this controversy to delegitimize the entire pro-Israel coalition in Washington. Unsurprisingly, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman is at the head of the pack in this regard but his column about the speech was a triumph of incoherence and specious arguments even by the debased standards by which he has operated on the Grey Lady’s op-ed page. Worse than that, the speech gave the writer an excuse to recycle anti-Semitic slurs he floated the last time Netanyahu spoke to Congress.

Friedman didn’t claim that Netanyahu misrepresented the facts about the proposed Iran deal or even dispute the danger that an Iranian bomb would represent. His problem is with what is to him an even more dangerous idea: that the security interests of Israel and the United States might overlap. He asserts that a weak deal that might prevent Iran from getting a bomb for ten years would be perfectly adequate as far as defending American security even if, as he seems to be implying, it might not be what is good for Israel or the Arab nations in the region that are every bit as upset with the administration policy as the Jewish state. Demands that Iran give up its nuclear infrastructure, something that President Obama promised in his 2012 foreign policy debate with Mitt Romney would be integral to any deal struck by the United States, are simply unrealistic and therefore must be dismissed even if that’s what most Israelis and Arabs think is necessary for their security.

Friedman’s right about one thing. A nuclear deal with Iran would only work if the regime changed its nature and was ready to “get right with the rest of the world,” as President Obama put it. But though he likes to pose as a tough-minded analyst, he leaves unsaid the fact that no serious person thinks Iran is moderating under its current government. Nor is logical to believe that it would do so if that tyrannical, terror-supporting, anti-Semitic regime were to get the major economic boost and political prestige that would it get from a nuclear deal with the United States.

But by the end of his column, Friedman runs out of ideas or even the energy to try and square his prejudices with the facts and simply lets loose with an anti-Netanyahu rant. He argues that if Netanyahu really wanted support for his position on Iran, he’d make concessions to the Palestinians even though he knows very well that those wouldn’t bring the region one inch closer to peace. In fact, Netanyahu has the tacit support of most of the Arab world for his speech. It’s only the Obama administration and others obsessed with the idea that détente with Iran is possible that didn’t like it.

To Be Expected - Syria and Israel Lobby Conspiracy Theories

...But those willing to subscribe to conspiracy theories in which Israel provides the explanation for every mystery and misery on the planet now find themselves searching for an Israel angle about Syria. But other than the fact that Israel will be blamed for the outcome no matter what happens, there is none.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
28 August '13..

Israelis were lining up for gas masks and dusting out their air raid shelters today as the prospect of U.S. attacks on Syrian targets this week provoked threats of retaliation against the Jewish state. That Israelis as well as their neighbors seem to take the idea that they should be attacked because Bashar Assad used chemical weapons against Syrian civilians as nothing out of the ordinary. This is par for the course in the Middle East where Israelis have always served as the all-purpose scapegoats for everything that happens. But though Americans may not be quite as jaded to this sort of thing, some in our nation’s capital also seem to subscribe in some ways to the Arab world’s conspiratorial view of Israel. That was evident in a Politico story published last night that pondered why it was that the so-called “Israel lobby” was “silent on Syria.”

The assumption behind the story and the headline seems to be that anything that happens in the Middle East or any foreign policy initiative undertaken by the United States has to be in some way the result of machinations by supporters of Israel even if the conflict in question is one on which they have no rooting interest. That Jerusalem doesn’t have a favorite in a fight between a genocidal maniac dictator and an opposition that is heavily infiltrated by people related to Al Qaeda is a given. But the fact that backers of Israel are as divided about what the U.S. should do about Assad’s atrocities as the rest of the country is seen as somehow anomalous. But, like the Iraq War, which was, contrary to the anti-Semitic conspiracy mongers, not fought at Israel’s behest, there seems to be no stopping those who subscribe to the Walt-Mearsheimer “Israel Lobby” thesis that claims the Jewish state and the wall-to-wall bipartisan coalition that supports it somehow manipulates U.S. foreign policy against the best interests of the nation. However, in this case the slow march of the Obama administration to act on Syria gives the lie to the idea that Israel is the tail that wags the dog in Washington.

Apparently for the editors of Politico, the lack of a concerted effort on the part of pro-Israel groups either in favor of or against intervention in Syria is like the dog that doesn’t bark in Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles. If you start thinking in Walt-Mearsheimer terms in which everything revolves around Israel, then the absence of pro-Israel groups in a debate must seem suspicious or at least odd. But there’s nothing unusual about neutrality on Syria, especially since the Jewish state has good reason to distrust both sides in the civil war and will probably suffer if the U.S. attacks.

Fresnozionism - Clinton: Candidates pander to Zionists, just ignore them

Fresnozionism.org..
05 March '12..





This is (unfortunately) too good to hold back (h/t: Challah Hu Akbar):

In my previous post I said that politicians tailor their speeches to their audiences. Well, get a load of this snippet from a “Town Hall with Tunisian Youth” held by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on February 25 of this year (emphasis added by me):

QUESTION: My name is Ivan. After the electoral campaign starts in the United States – it started some time ago – we noticed here in Tunisia that most of the candidates from the both sides run towards the Zionist lobbies to get their support in the States. And afterwards, once they are elected, they come to show their support for countries like Tunisia and Egypt for a common Tunisian or a common Arab citizen. How would you reassure and gain his trust again once given the fact that you are supporting his enemy as well at the same time?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, first, let me say you will learn as your democracy develops that a lot of things are said in political campaigns that should not bear a lot of attention. There are comments made that certainly don’t reflect the United States, don’t reflect our foreign policy, don’t reflect who we are as a people. I mean, if you go to the United States, you see mosques everywhere, you see Muslim Americans everywhere. That’s the fact. So I would not pay attention to the rhetoric.

Secondly, I would say watch what President Obama says and does. He’s our President. He represents all of the United States, and he will be reelected President, so I think that that will be a very clear signal to the entire world as to what our values are and what our President believes. So I think it’s a fair question because I know that – I sometimes am a little surprised that people around the world pay more attention to what is said in our political campaigns than most Americans, say, are paying attention. So I think you have to shut out some of the rhetoric and just focus on what we’re doing and what we stand for, and particularly what our President represents.

Thank you, Ms. Clinton, for responding to the ‘fair question’, and making sure that we Zionists understand not to listen to what the candidates say, but to pay attention to what they really stand for. Perhaps we should apply this advice to your boss as well.

Link: http://fresnozionism.org/2012/03/clinton-obama-panders-to-zionists-just-ignore-it/

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John Mearsheimer: Often in error, never in doubt

Alex Safian PHD
CAMERA
12 November '10

Professor John Mearsheimer, since co-authoring The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, has written extensively about Israel's military and diplomatic history, often displaying in all this work a surprising unfamiliarity with basic facts that are well-known to specialists in the field.

Perhaps this is because Mearsheimer and his co-author Stephen Walt seemingly shy away from the basic research that is the stock-in-trade of most historians and political scientists. For example, in writing about the alleged power of the "Israel Lobby" to coerce and influence U.S. policymakers, there is no evidence that they actually talked to any actual U.S. policymakers, whether serving or retired. Walt and Mearsheimer seem strangely uninterested in whether these policymakers believe that they were forced by the "Lobby" to pursue policies at variance with U.S. interests.

And when they do try to deal with facts, the historical examples they cite often actually contradict their claims, and show the U.S. (quite reasonably, since this is what countries usually do) pursuing its own interests with little regard for the policies favored by Israel.

A case in point can be found in Mearsheimer's speech this summer titled "Israel's Nukes Harm US National Interests." To support the claim of his title, Mearsheimer offers his version of the 1973 war (which was provoked by simultaneous attacks against Israel by Egypt and Syria).

(Read full article)

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The New Media Giveth, The New Media Taketh Away

Judeosphere
19 June '10

( Interesting point, good ending.)

Critics of Israel who believe that the “mainstream media” (whatever that is, these days) is “controlled” by the minions of the Israel Lobby tend to cite a one-word solution to this alleged stranglehold on the news: Internet.

In his recent editorial declaring his “break-up” with Israel, Andrew Sullivan noted:

The blogosphere has also mattered. Before the internet, opinion journalism in Washington was dominated by a few organs, almost all of which were fanatically pro-Israel. The Washington Post, The New Republic, The Weekly Standard and National Review were all neoconservative on the Israel question – and The New York Times wasn’t far behind. You could barely get any criticism of the Jewish state into the American press. Now, an entire generation of younger writers – Jewish and Gentile – has emerged online outside of the old media gatekeepers to kick-start a real debate.

Likewise, here’s John Mearsheimer:

But the Internet is a game changer. It not only makes it easy for the opponents of [Israeli] apartheid to get the real story out to the world, but it also allows Americans to learn the story that the New York Times and the Washington Post have been hiding from them.

(Read full post)

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I Confess: I Am A Member Of Opus Judaei

Marty Peretz
New Republic
30 April '10

John J. Mearsheimer, who is co-author (with Stephen Walt) of The Israel Lobby, a who’s who they’d rather have called The Jewish Lobby, has finally come clean and done a morphology of American Jewry, splitting it into two schools each personified by perhaps a dozen individual Jews.

The first he calls “righteous Jews.” This list includes Noam Chomsky, Richard Falk, Norman Finkelstein, Tony Judt, a certified nutcase named Philip Weiss, and other more-or-less unknowns—Naomi Klein, for example. Given the thesis of his book—that the other lobby is more than indifferent to American interests—it’s illuminating to examine whom he considers upright, even seraphic, with regard to these interests. It is telling to note that Chomsky is the first of these supposed patriots. The others, please believe me, are roughly of the same ken. I’d bet anything that Professor Falk, just as one other instance, has never, ever paused to think of what might be an American interest he could support in a foreign controversy.

Mearsheimer’s morphology was made public on April 29 at his Hisham Sharabi Memorial Lecture to the Palestine Center in Washington, D.C. Sponsored by the Jerusalem Fund—I myself was for more than a decade chairman of the Jerusalem Foundation, another charitable organization with a different agenda that also included excellent medical facilities, schools, parks, batter women’s shelters, youth clubs, sports centers for the city’s Arab neighborhoods—the lectureship honored a professor at Georgetown who had left Palestine in 1947 (just like Edward Said’s family) even before there was a war in the country, refugees avant la guerre. These upper-class deserters carried the psychological burden of abandoning the cause and leaving the fellahin to fight for it. Said lived out his life with the at last exhausted dogma of “Orientalism” as his creed and screed.

(Read full story)

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CNNsored

Ben Cohen
Z-Word Blog
17 March '10

To anyone who knows the medium of television, the statement that a news program is probably the last place to have a serious discussion about a serious matter is hardly a revelation. The allotted timeframe, generally three or four minutes, precludes any in-depth analysis. Discussants are acutely aware that they have to communicate in soundbites, so rather than engaging with each other, they artfully twist the presenter’s questions into answers that emphasize the talking points they arrived at the studio with. That’s how it’s always been.

A key assumption here is that the anchor will keep a respectful distance, editorially-speaking, between his or her guests. The anchor will allow each guest equal time to speak. Whether the anchor is in passive listening mode or acting like an amphetamine-fueled interrogator, the accepted norm is that all guests will receive the same treatment.

True, this conception of the anchor’s role now seems almost quaint, a throwback to the days when journalism placed a supreme value on objectivity. Nonetheless, it remains valid, particularly when it comes to straight news shows (as distinct from the more charged talk show environments.)

Keeping the above template in mind, I want to relate what happened to me when I appeared, in my capacity as AJC’s Associate Director of Communications, on CNN International earlier this week. In a segment anchored by Jim Clancy, Jeremy Ben Ami of J Street and myself were discussing the diplomatic row between the US and Israel sparked by the announcement, during Vice President Biden’s visit to Israel, of a new housing development in the east Jerusalem district of Ramat Shlomo.

I expected a rough ride as I watched the introductory clips: Palestinian propagandist Rami Khouri, Israel Lobby author Stephen Walt and some Italian journalist I’d never heard of called Loretta Napoleoni, all waxing lyrical about the inordinate power of the Israel Lobby. There was no dissenting view.

(Read full post)
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United against Britain's 'Israel lobby'

Petra Marquardt-Bigman
The Warped Mirror
22 November 09

Lavish praise was heaped on some of Britain's media in the English-language Saudi Arab News, where columnist Neil Berry hailed last week's screening of "a groundbreaking Dispatches documentary for Britain's Channel 4 television, trailed by an article in The Guardian newspaper, [that] investigated the covert influence of Britain's 'Israel lobby.'"

If you take Berry's word for it, Tony Blair was a Zionist stooge, the British Labor party is run by the "Israel lobby," and if the Conservatives come to power in Britain, things will get even worse - if that's at all possible. But Berry assures his readers that not all is lost: he describes the publication of the Mearsheimer/Walt book on "The Israel Lobby" in the US as "an epoch-making event" that has led over the past few years "to a sea change in the climate of Western intellectual, as well as general public opinion, vis-à-vis the boundaries of debate about the Jewish state."

Indeed, relating to another event that caused much debate in Britain last week - namely the publication of the English translation of Shlomo Sand's new book, The Invention of the Jewish People - Berry confidently asserts that this book "is of similarly cardinal significance."

So let's try to get this straight: first the Jews (or maybe the Zionists?) invented the Jewish people, then the Jewish people and/or the Zionists proceeded to invent the Jewish Lobby - no, make this the "Israel lobby" - and then all these inventions went on to control much of the world.

Obviously, the idea that every Jewish achievement, including nowadays the Jewish state, comes at the expense of non-Jews and is somehow due to one big conspiracy that needs to be uncovered and undone, is hardly new. It unmistakably echoes the idea "Die Juden sind unser Unglück," that is: "the Jews are our misfortune," a concept first made popular by the German historian Heinrich von Treitschke in the 1880s and later adopted by the Nazis.

The makers of the British documentary on the "Israel lobby" were clearly well aware of the sordid history of this calumny, and therefore emphasized in an article published before the program aired: "It is important to say what we did not find. There is no conspiracy, and nothing resembling a conspiracy."

Mind you, this statement comes right after a paragraph that includes claims of an "operation" that is supposedly "carried on against media organisations that criticise Israel's foreign policy," and there is also the assertion that "Israel has a long reputation for bullying the BBC." It's a pretty clever formulation, because all it says is that there are people who believe that Israel is bullying the BBC - and no doubt, there are people who believe that.

Criticism of the program's "barely concealed antisemitic undertones" is thus hardly unfair. That this criticism is indeed richly deserved is also illustrated in an excellent post at the CST blog that examines the question "Who liked Dispatches?"

(Full article)

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