Israel Matzav: But I thought there was no anti-Semitism at CAP

Sunday, March 11, 2012

But I thought there was no anti-Semitism at CAP

On Friday, Benny Weinthal reported that the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League and Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz had all attacked the Emergency Committee for Israel for its full page New York Times ad asking why Jewish Federations are funding the anti-Semites at the Center for American Progress and Media Matters for America.

The AJC, which was quoted in the ad talking about perceived bias against Israel in several specific CAP media products, issued a statement saying, “No one from the sponsoring group [ECI], an ideologically-driven organization to judge from its ads and other public activities, sought AJC’s consent to include reference to us in today’s ad.”

CAP officials have “acknowledged the inappropriateness of such bias” and they have implemented personnel and policy changes, the AJC noted.

Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, told JTA that the ADL quote slamming CAP in the ad for anti- Semitism was issued before CAP dealt with prejudices against Israel in its publications.

“After we raised concerns, initially we felt that the Center for American Progress took the matter seriously and understood the anti-Semitic nature of raising dual-loyalty canards and made sure terms like ‘Israel-firster’ were deleted from the Twitter accounts of CAP staffers where they appeared,” Foxman wrote in an email to The Jerusalem Post.

Harvard law Prof. Alan Dershowitz told The Boston Globe that he did not authorize the use of his quote for the ECI ad. “MM is doubling down. MJ [Rosenberg] is seeking support from left. CAP is trying hard to undo damage. Very different responses from them requires different responses from their critics,” Dershowitz said in an email to the Post on Thursday.

Critics accuse MJ Rosenberg of using anti-Semitic language to denigrate supporters of Israel.

So CAP and Media Matters are going to be good boys from now on and they're not going to do anything anti-Semitic. Right? Well, here's Benny an hour later.

A Center for American Progress Mideast writer Matt Duss generated criticism on Wednesday for a tweet that praised an article slamming Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu for "religious incitement" because he gave President Obama the Book on Esther for the Purim Holiday.

Duss later clarified his tweet by issuing a statement saying, "The Iranian regime
regularly states as a goal the destruction of the state of Israel, and therefore, Israel clearly has legitimate concerns about Iran and its nuclear ambitions. My tweet only meant to say that biblical analogies may be unhelpful to the current moment if they do not distinguish the Iranian regime from all Iranians. Of course, I did not mean to suggest criticism of the story of Esther."

Rabbi Abraham Cooper from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who had a conference call with CAP officials on Thursday, told The Jerusalem Post that the tweet was discussed. "I explained during the call that what spurred my comment was the fact that last Purim there were demonstrations in front of Esther and Morechai's Mausoleum in Shushan who depicted the book of Esther as the story of a Jewish genocide against Persians. This was followed by online discussions in Farsi pushing this perversion of history."

"The Bottom line is that the young generation of bloggers and tweeters, must be
accountable for their words...and in this case the parroting of someone else's words depicting the gift of Megillat Esther as 'religious incitement' is a slur against a religion and the leader of Israel. I am happy to hear that this was not Mr. Duss's intention but it was also clear that in referencing Robert Wright's disgusting article, he knew virtually nothing about Purim."

The ECI ad was published on March 1. When - exactly - did CAP (and for that matter Media Matters) stop being anti-Semitic between March 1 and March 9?

What's more likely is that Rabbi Cooper and the Wiesenthal Center are the only watchdogs against anti-Semitism who aren't in bed with the Democratic party and don't place the interests of the Democratic party and Barack Obama above fighting anti-Semitism.

I know - it's not politically correct to say that, but it's the truth.

Labels: American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League, anti-Semitism, Barack Hussein Obama, National Democratic Party, Simon Wiesenthal Center