Israel Matzav

The baddest post in the blogosphere

Bad Rachel wrote a heck of a post about Gilad Shalit last week, which for some reason started to attract a lot of attention on Monday.

Then round up his captors, the slaughtering, death-worshiping, innocent-butchering, child-sacrificing savages who dip their hands in blood and use women—those who aren’t strapping bombs to their own devils’ spawn and sending them out to meet their seventy-two virgins by taking the lives of the school-bus-riding, heart-drawing, Transformer-doodling, homework-losing children of Others—and their offspring—those who haven’t already been pimped out by their mothers to the murder god—as shields, hiding behind their burkas and cradles like the unmanned animals they are, and throw them not into your prisons, where they can bide until they’re traded by the thousands for another child of Israel, but into the sea, to float there, food for sharks, stargazers, and whatever other oceanic carnivores God has put there for the purpose.

One reason why the post attracted so much attention is that Rachel (Abrams) is a board member of the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI), and J Street used the post as an occasion to attack ECI.

“J Street is appalled by the unhinged rant filled with incitement and hate speech posted this past week by the founder of the Emergency Committee for Israel, Rachel Abrams, on her personal blog.

While Israelis and Jews around the world were rejoicing in the safe return of captured Israeli soldier Sergeant Gilad Shalit, Abrams used the occasion to launch a tirade calling Palestinian children ‘devil’s spawn’ and accusing Palestinian mothers of ‘pimping’ out their children to ‘the murder god.’

This tirade comes the same week ECI slandered the social justice movement Occupy Wall Street for—of all things—bigotry. The hypocrisy could not be more obvious.

Nothing more clearly captures the insanity that J Street will be trying to counter with our Campaign for Sanity on the Middle East in 2012.

The organized Jewish community is actively promoting campaigns to foster civility and to highlight unity. Ms. Abrams’ incendiary words couldn’t be a starker example of behavior that violates these norms and values.

It is bad enough that the Emergency Committee for Israel already has a proven track record of making Israel a wedge issue in American politics. If they hope to have any credible claim to a place in the pro-Israel community, they must cut ties with Ms. Abrams immediately.

If they don’t, we call on politicians and community leaders to refuse any further connection with ECI.”

ECI hit back hard.

"We have no idea why J Street seems so eager to leap to the defense of terrorists and those who excuse and even celebrate them, while denouncing those who fight terror," Michael Goldfarb, an ECI spokesperson, told me in a statement. "We do recall that when terrorists were raining rockets on Israeli civilians, necessitating an Israeli military response, J Street condemned Israel."

Added Goldfarb: "Now J Street chooses to deliberately and viciously slander Rachel Abrams, accusing her of directing her words at all Palestinians when she was clearly speaking about the terrorists who abducted Gilad Shalit and those who celebrated that deed and other acts of terror. ECI supports Israeli efforts to kill or capture terrorists, including those responsible for abducting Gilad Shalit. And we look forward to many years of working under the leadership of Rachel Abrams, Bill Kristol, and Gary Bauer to support a strong and democratic Israel living at peace with non-terrorist neighbors."

For what it's worth, I thought Rachel was condemning the terrorists - those who kidnapped Shalit, those who were released in the terrorists for Gilad trade and those who - God forbid - are likely to attack us in the future in reliance upon being freed by another Shalit-like kidnapping.

J Street has responded again.

"The American Jewish community has a choice politically in 2012 and in the years ahead.

There's a part of our community - represented by the Emergency Committee for Israel - whose supporters led the charge to war in Iraq, who ally with the Christian Zionist movement, and who affiliate with the Tea Party. This part of the community sees nothing wrong with unlimited settlement expansion and no need to actively pursue a two-state resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They seem perfectly content to affiliate with those who engage in hate-filled harangues and to demonize Palestinians - and Arabs and Muslims generally - without reservation and to engage in campaigns of smears against their opponents.

There's another part of our community - for which J Street speaks - that believes that Israel's security and survival depends on ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a two-state solution and that is deeply committed to American leadership in helping that to happen. We think settlement expansion is wrong, demonization and slander of Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims should be condemned, and that core Jewish values argue for reaching a just and peaceful two-state resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We don't equate love of Israel with support for the policies of its government - particularly when those policies are damaging to Israeli and American interests and counter to basic Jewish and democratic values.

This is a fundamental political choice for Jewish Americans - and we believe the solid majority of Jewish Americans support J Street's views not ECI's."

Funny, unlike Occupy Wall Street, I don't recall seeing anti-Semitism at Tea Party events. But it's even funnier to see J Street trying to marginalize ECI as out of the mainstream of the Jewish community. You will recall that most of J Street's funding comes from outside the Jewish community.

And to Bad Rachel: When you're good, you're very good, but when you're bad, you're better. Heh.

Labels: Bad Rachel, Emergency Committee for Israel, J Street, Occupy Wall Street

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:40 AM