Obama's @TheIranDeal twitter shill tweets a link to anti-Semitic website
Among anti-Semitic websites, one Jewish one stands out: Mondoweiss. Don't take my word for it. Listen to MJ Rosenberg writing on the Far Left Tikkun website:
Lately I have been struck by the raw anti-semitism evinced on
anti-Israel websites (most egregious example, Mondoweiss).
http://mondoweiss.net/
There is nothing novel about it. It’s not “the new anti-semitism”
that the Anti-Defamation League likes to talk about. But the old kind,
masquerading as anti-Zionism but manifesting itself as support or, at
least, sympathy for every group or individual hostile to Jews: from Pat
Buchanan to Hizbullah.
On Tuesday, @TheIranDeal, which is the official White House twitter account that shills support for Hussein Obama's sellout to a nuclear Iran, tweeted this:
J Street Jan Schakowsky attacks former rival Joel Pollak for being 'Orthodox' Jew
Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-Il) thanked J Street for backing her Congressional campaign in 2010, and took the opportunity to attack her long-gone rival Joel Pollak for being 'Orthodox.' Pollak has moved to California and become an editor at Breitbart.com (Hat Tip: Mike P).
Schakowsky begins by thanking J Street for its backing of her positions when it comes to Israel.
“I’d like to begin with just a great thank you for J Street. I have
to tell you that the courage to take positions that I’ve been able to
take are [sic] really because of the space that, in a very short time, J
Street had opened for members of Congress to expand political
discussion about the State of Israel and our relationship to it.”
In the video—which was provided by Paul Miller, who served as a
senior policy adviser for Pollak’s campaign and is now the executive
director of the Salomon Center—the Democratic Rep. from Illinois rips
into the Breitbart editor.
“In 2010, I had an election… an election within our community. That
is, I ran against a Jewish-Orthodox, Tea Party Republican who made it
very clear that actually Jan Schakowsky was anti-Israel because of the
positions that she took,” the Congresswoman said of Pollak.
“J Street came to my rescue,” she added. “Not just with money, but
with the kind of moral support that was able to assure a substantial
victory in that election.”
Schakowsky represents a heavily Jewish district in the Chicago area. I hope that any Orthodox Jewish constituents will respond to her. She's disgusting.
Time to shoot the messenger: Jeffrey Goldberg's chickensh*t article
Since I started writing this blog, I have not often agreed with Jeffrey Goldberg except when he was discussing his former colleague Andrew Sullivan. But at least he generally seemed capable of independent thought. No more. Goldberg has become a tool of the lame duck Obama administration. He's become the kind of Jew we should all love to hate.
The other day I was talking to a senior Obama administration official
about the foreign leader who seems to frustrate the White House and the
State Department the most. “The thing about Bibi is, he’s a
chickenshit,” this official said, referring to the Israeli prime
minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, by his nickname.
This comment is representative of the gloves-off manner in which
American and Israeli officials now talk about each other behind closed
doors, and is yet another sign that relations between the Obama and
Netanyahu governments have moved toward a full-blown crisis. The
relationship between these two administrations— dual guarantors of the
putatively “unbreakable” bond between the U.S. and Israel—is now the
worst it's ever been, and it stands to get significantly worse after the
November midterm elections. By next year, the Obama administration may
actually withdraw diplomatic cover for Israel at the United Nations, but
even before that, both sides are expecting a showdown over Iran, should
an agreement be reached about the future of its nuclear program.
The fault for this breakdown in relations can be assigned in good
part to the junior partner in the relationship, Netanyahu, and in
particular, to the behavior of his cabinet. Netanyahu has told several
people I’ve spoken to in recent days that he has “written off” the Obama
administration, and plans to speak directly to Congress and to the
American people should an Iran nuclear deal be reached. For their part,
Obama administration officials express, in the words of one official, a
“red-hot anger” at Netanyahu for pursuing settlement policies on the
West Bank, and building policies in Jerusalem, that they believe have
fatally undermined Secretary of State John Kerry’s peace process.
...
“The good thing about Netanyahu is that he’s scared to launch wars,”
the official said, expanding the definition of what a chickenshit
Israeli prime minister looks like. “The bad thing about him is that he
won’t do anything to reach an accommodation with the Palestinians or
with the Sunni Arab states. The only thing he’s interested in is
protecting himself from political defeat. He’s not [Yitzhak] Rabin, he’s
not [Ariel] Sharon, he’s certainly no [Menachem] Begin. He’s got no
guts.”
I ran this notion by another senior official who deals with the
Israel file regularly. This official agreed that Netanyahu is a
“chickenshit” on matters related to the comatose peace process, but
added that he’s also a “coward” on the issue of Iran’s nuclear threat.
The official said the Obama administration no longer believes that
Netanyahu would launch a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities
in order to keep the regime in Tehran from building an atomic arsenal.
“It’s too late for him to do anything. Two, three years ago, this was a
possibility. But ultimately he couldn’t bring himself to pull the
trigger. It was a combination of our pressure and his own unwillingness
to do anything dramatic. Now it’s too late.”
...
Israel and the U.S., like all close allies, have disagreed from time to
time on important issues. But I don’t remember such a period of
sustained and mutual contempt. Much of the anger felt by Obama
administration officials is rooted in the Netanyahu government’s
periodic explosions of anti-American condescension. The Israeli defense
minister, Moshe Ya’alon, in particular, has publicly castigated the
Obama administration as naive, or worse, on matters related to U.S.
policy in the Middle East. Last week, senior officials including Kerry
(who was labeled as “obsessive” and “messianic” by Ya’alon) and Susan
Rice, the national security advisor, refused to meet with Ya’alon on his
trip to Washington, and it’s hard to blame them. (Kerry, the U.S.
official most often targeted for criticism by right-wing Israeli
politicians, is the only remaining figure of importance in the Obama
administration who still believes that Netanyahu is capable of making
bold compromises, which might explain why he’s been targeted.)
And then... OOPS!
One of the more notable aspects of the current tension between Israel
and the U.S. is the unease felt by mainstream American Jewish leaders
about recent Israeli government behavior. “The Israelis do not show
sufficient appreciation for America’s role in backing Israel,
economically, militarily and politically,” Abraham Foxman, the head of
the Anti-Defamation League, told me. (UPDATE: Foxman just e-mailed me
this statement: "The quote is accurate, but the context is wrong. I was
referring to what troubles this administration about Israel, not what
troubles leaders in the American Jewish community.")
And then Goldberg passes along Obama's threats.
What does all this unhappiness mean for the near future? For one
thing, it means that Netanyahu—who has preemptively “written off” the
Obama administration—will almost certainly have a harder time than usual
making his case against a potentially weak Iran nuclear deal, once he
realizes that writing off the administration was an unwise thing to do.
This also means that the post-November White House will be much less
interested in defending Israel from hostile resolutions at the United
Nations, where Israel is regularly scapegoated. The Obama administration
may be looking to make Israel pay direct costs for its settlement
policies.
Next year, the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas,
will quite possibly seek full UN recognition for Palestine. I imagine
that the U.S. will still try to block such a move in the Security
Council, but it might do so by helping to craft a stridently
anti-settlement resolution in its place. Such a resolution would isolate
Israel from the international community.
It would also be unsurprising, post-November, to see the Obama
administration take a step Netanyahu is loath to see it take: a public,
full lay-down of the administration’s vision for a two-state solution,
including maps delineating Israel’s borders. These borders, to
Netanyahu's horror, would be based on 1967 lines, with significant West
Bank settlement blocs attached to Israel in exchange for swapped land
elsewhere. Such a lay-down would make explicit to Israel what the U.S.
expects of it.
Let Hussein Obama lay down his 'vision.' After 2016, Obama's vision would have about as much meaning as George W. Bush's 2004 letter had after 2008. That letter was endorsed by Congress. The odds of any 'vision' Obama lays down for the Middle East being endorsed by what is almost certainly going to be a Republican-controlled House and Senate come January is somewhere between 'slim' and none.
Nowhere in Goldberg's article is there any acknowledgment that Gaza
rockets, Hamas tunnels, and Fatah/PA incitement are what have made a
Palestinian state in the West Bank unthinkable, for the moment, to the vast majority
of Israelis. Nor is there any admission that Obama--and Vice President
Joe Biden, and Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry--have
inflamed relations by publicly berating Israel on various occasions.
Goldberg also omits Obama's Cairo speech in 2009, which cast Israel in the Arab mould, as a post-Holocaust sop; his disastrous display of contempt
for Bibi at the White House in 2010; or his attempt to sandbag Bibi in
2011 with a proposal for peace on the 1967 lines (which Goldberg says
today would be a new idea). Obama did some work last year to undo the
damage--then re-did it by cozying up to Qatar and Turkey in the recent
war.
The list goes on: Obama's repeated leaks to forestall any Israeli
preemptive strike on Iran (which Goldberg omits, preferring the White
House narrative that Bibi was afraid to act), Obama's decision to join
the Durban II conference and the UN Human Rights Council long after both
had been established to be anti-Israel farces; and on and on. There are
no equivalents on the Israeli side, and few precedents in any prior
U.S. administration.
It would be a refreshing change if Goldberg were to stop acting as Obama-Kerry's mouthpiece. Don't hold your breath waiting for it to happen.
You may recall that in the 2010 elections, Republican Joel Pollak was defeated by Democrat 'J Street Jan' Schakowsky in Illinois' heavily Jewish 9th Congressional district. Now, things have gotten so bad that the Jews of Chicago's northern suburbs are finally voting Republican (Hat Tip: Soccer Dad via Twitter and Instapundit).
Mitt Romney is receiving support from Jewish voters not seen for a Republican candidate in 24 years. Although a sizable majority of Jewish Americans will still cast their ballots for Barack Obama, the erosion of Obama’s solid foundation in the Jewish community is a political phenomenon worthy of commentary. It is also one that can make a striking difference in an electoral race polling within sampling error.
Nowhere is this phenomenon as visible as in Chicago’s heavily Jewish and Democratic northern suburbs. There, the Jewish embrace of the Republicans has reached such significant numbers that the Daily Herald, Chicago’s largest and most prestigious suburban newspaper, ran the topic as its lead story in its Sunday edition (July 8): “More suburban Jews turning to the Republican Party.”
Beneath the headline ran a picture of Arie Friedman, a prominent pediatrician and Republican candidate for the Illinois state Senate in the 29th district. Friedman — like Jewish candidate Jonathan Greenberg, an ordained rabbi who is running for the state house in the newly formed 57th district — is a fiscal conservative who is strong on national defense and liberal on social issues.
But while both candidates are Jewish in districts with large numbers of Jewish voters, they are not running on Jewish issues. They are running against a runaway fiscal policy that has ruined a great state. Illinois’ bloated pension system, mountain of debt, and soaring taxes are as much local issues as they are national. What propels Jews toward Romney also propels them toward the local Republican candidates. The hope of the local candidates is that Democratic identifiers who vote for Romney will continue to vote for Republicans at the local level and for the same reasons.
When pundits speak of Jews deserting Obama, his tenuous policies on Israel come to mind. Yet Paul Miller, a political consultant to both the Greenberg and Friedman campaigns who has long been involved in Illinois politics (disclosure: he is a relative), sees things differently. To Miller, Jews are first and foremost experiencing politics as would any American citizen, and Illinois rivals California for the state in the most dire economic condition.
And in a bit that could have been written by my regular commenter, Sunlight...
Jews are slowly beginning to understand that compassion and social justice cannot mean a coerced transfer of the benefits of their labor to someone else. The concepts of tzedakah (charity) and tikkun olam (repairing the world) are moral obligations of the individual, not obligations imposed on the individual by the state. As Jews see the administrative costs of government, the debt, and the economic chaos, they are beginning to understand unrestrained leftism has nothing to do with their values. One can better repair the world by creating economic conditions where people have the opportunity to prosper.
Well, those of us who study the sources saw that a long time ago.... J
ews are beginning to untie their Democratic moorings, because this is now not the party of JFK, but of Jimmy Carter. That is Barack Obama’s unique contribution to the transformation of the Jewish vote.
...
Most Jews will vote for Obama, but American elections generally have been about the margins. And the difference between 88% and 60% of the Jewish vote certainly can make a difference, especially if that translates to other contests down the ballot.
Indeed.
Now, lest you all get your hopes up, I asked Joel Pollak a while back if he would consider challenging Schakowsky again. Joel, who is now at Breitbart.com, told me that, for now at least, he's not thinking about it. Maybe we can get him to reconsider?
Breitbart not only carved out a new mixture of investigative journalism, combining the mediums of video and the microblogging website Twitter with huge scoops, he was slated to start a Big Jerusalem website to fight the seemingly endless mainstream media distortions of the Jewish state.
Adopted by a Jewish family in Los Angeles, Breitbart equated the preservation of liberty and freedom in the US with safeguarding liberties and security in the Jewish state. “Israel is in the right” and “If Israel goes, so will America,” he said during a lively speech last year at a meeting of Republican Jewish Coalition in Beverly Hills.
In this speech, Breitbart said of Israelis: “I just don’t understand how an inherently decent and free people could be the bad guy... This doesn’t make sense to me... I’m glad I’ve become a journalist because I’d like to fight on behalf on the Israeli people...I’ve been there. And the Israeli people, I adore and I love.”
I asked Breitbart’s colleague Joel B. Pollak – editor- in-chief and general counsel for Breitbart’s online media empire, which publishes the websites Breitbart.com, Breitbart.tv, Big Government, Big Journalism, Big Hollywood and Big Peace – to tell me about Breitbart and his relationship with Israel and Judaism. He emailed me on Friday: “Andrew only visited Israel once, a few years ago, but instantly fell in love with the country and its people.”
“He was the best kind of Jew and human being you could ever meet, one who created opportunities for people in whom he saw a spark – which Maimonides called the highest form of charity,” Pollak wrote. “He carried his faith as he carried all his convictions: with a lighthearted touch but a deep commitment.”
...
Pollak wrote about how that life and fire extended to Judaism: “Andrew was proudly, and playfully, Jewish. In the last days of his life he wondered openly about observing Shabbat, even as he continued to tease me about not eating bacon and shrimp cocktails. More than once he burst into a Hebrew school song or parts of his bar mitzva portion while working at his desk across from mine – partly to amuse me and partly to entertain himself.”
“He often told an amusing story about meeting Idan Raichel [an Israeli singer-songwriter] in a restaurant where he had been dining with fellow conservative bloggers, and how surprised and inspired they were that the lanky, dreadlocked musician was an ardent and natural patriot,” he said.
“Andrew rejected the knee-jerk liberalism of the Jewish community in which he had been raised but never felt distant from his fellow Jews, no matter what background, and two of his closest colleagues were both Orthodox Jews whose levels of observance both amused and intrigued him.”
“We had a common Jewish kinship even though we lived our lives rather differently and I can say confidently that I’ve never met a finer soul, Jewish or otherwise,” Pollak continued.
Pollak, who ran for Congress in Illinois against J Street Jan Shakowsky in 2010, is one of the Orthodox Jews. I don't know who the other one is. I hope someone is making sure that Breitbart's kids get a Jewish education and that someone is taking any sons to shul to say Kaddish.
Here's a video tribute to Breitbart. Let's go to the videotape (Hat Tip: All American Blogger).
Israeli diplomat walks out on Jewish Leftist group
Israel's Deputy Consul General in New York City, Shlomi Kofman, walked out of a speech by Jewish Labor Committee Chairman Stuart Applebaum after Applebaum launched a vicious attack on the Netanyahu government.
Speaking before more than 350 guests, most of them from various trade unions, Appelbaum condemned what he called “new expressions of contempt for Israel within the Arab world,” a reference to the movement to delegitimize Israel. That contempt, he said, is at least partly rooted “in the conviction that Israel will never accept the right of the Palestinians to an independent state.”
But Appelbaum added that Israel was “cursed with a right-wing coalition government that’s regularly giving credence” to that point of view. While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “talks a good game about a two-state solution,” he said, his administration “shamelessly” promotes “the construction of illegal settlements on the West Bank” — a policy that “severely impedes negotiations.” It’s a situation that Appelbaum likened to the employer “who comes to the bargaining table, telling us he wants a contract that’s a win-win for both sides, while, at the same time,” instructing his lawyers to work on petitions that would decertify the union.
As a result, he said, Hamas, which he branded a “terrorist” organization, is winning new support, while moderates who were once ready to negotiate peace are now backing away from that stance.
As Appelbaum concluded his remarks, calling on guests “to send a message” to the Israeli government in favor of “good-faith negotiations,” Shlomi Kofman, Israel’s deputy consul general in New York, rose from his table and walked out of the event. Meanwhile, the remarks seemed to elicit a lukewarm response, failing to win the robust applause that followed other speeches.
Joel Pollak writes that Kofman should not have been surprised by Applebaum's attack. And Pollak fills in some more details of what Applebaum said, so let's go to that first.
We all know Benjamin Netanyahu talks a good game about a two-state solution, but, at the very same time, his administration continues to shamelessly promote the construction of illegal settlements on the West Bank – a policy that no severely impedes negotiations…
Netanyahu’s right-wing supporters in this country have pulled out the stops to slander the president as some kind of enemy of Israel. They hope that if they repeat that lie long and loud enough that some Jews might actually fall for it … enough, maybe, to flip Florida against President Obama this fall.
Who would they replace him with? Maybe a guy like Rick Santorum – a man who said that allowing Palestinians to have their own country on the West Bank would be like the U.S. giving Texas back to Mexico.
[Which, come to think of it, may not be that bad of an idea.]
Here's why Pollak says Kaufman should not have been surprised.
But Israel’s envoy should not have expected anything different from an event honoring AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka as an authority on “human rights.”
Trumka has a history of thuggish tactics that promote the interests of union bosses at the expense of workers. Most recently, Trumka supported the Occupy Wall Street movement, which embraced anti-Israel and antisemitic radicals. The Jewish Labor Committee seemed not to have noticed.
Nor has it noticed the anti-Israel fervor of union leaders such as the SEIU’s Joe Iosbaker in Chicago, or the anti-Israel activism of the California Faculty Association, among others, even though Appelbaum claims that American unions have not fallen prey to anti-Israel prejudice.
Moreover, though the Jewish Labor Committee is a 501(c)3 tax-exempt organization, Appelbaum delivered an explicitly political message, following the dubious example recently set by White House adviser Valerie Jarrett at a church on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
The controversy stirred by Appelbaum’s remarks reflects a crisis within the Jewish community, particularly among leaders and organizations that have invested in the political success of President Barack Obama. Obama’s failure to grapple with the country’s economic and fiscal challenges, as well as his determined but hapless attempts to force Israel to accept peace on dangerous terms, has supporters considering their options.
Indeed.
Pretending that Obama support Israel is a useless charade that will come back to bite us if God forbid he wins reelection. It's time to stop pretending and to let people draw their own conclusions from our lack of pretense.
The American Left is anti-Israel and it's time for all of us to stop pretending otherwise.
If you had any doubts that MJ Rosenberg is a Jewish anti-Semite, this video should dispel them.
Let's go to the videotape. I'll have more after the video.
Notice the continual references to the 'Israel Lobby.' Rosenberg is the initiator of the term 'Israel firsters' - a term which implies dual loyalty by any American who supports Israel.
Joel Pollak adds:
Supporters of CAP and MMfA accuse critics of trying to shut down debate on Israel–ironically, while celebrating the removal of one of their critics, Josh Block, from the listserv of the Truman National Security Project.
Block, a Democrat, had been quoted in the Politico article describing some of CAP’s views as “borderline anti-Semitic stuff.” His removal was described by the Truman Project as punishment for a “personal attack”–when, in fact, his comments were not personal at all in nature, and have been substantiated and supported by mainstream American Jewish organizations.
Regardless, both CAP and MMfA are, as Politico points out, “[t]wo of the Democratic Party’s core institutions,” providing policy ideas, media talking points, and support staff to push the left’s agenda in Washington.
Until recently, the anti-Israel views espoused by CAP and MMfA were on the far-radical fringe of American political debate. As CAP and MMfA have grown in importance, however, their anti-Israel agendas have become more prominent within the Obama administration and the Democratic Party as a whole, leading to a rift that has already had electoral consequences.
Unless Democrats act to contain the damage, the controversy over charges of antisemitism at CAP and MMfA could affect debates–and votes–in the crucial campaign of 2012.
Read the whole thing. I'm not sure the Democrats care about accusations of anti-Semitism. They certainly won't stop American Jews from voting for them.
In November, the ADL issued a “special report” on the Tea Party and “anti-government conspiracies.” The ADL noted that “extremists were a tiny minority of Tea Party protesters,” but claimed Tea Party members were filled with “rage” and held ideas that “fall outside the mainstream.”
As of this writing, the ADL has said nothing about the “rage” and bigotry on display at several “Occupy” rallies. Instead, it is minimizing the antisemitism on display, effectively helping “Occupy” do damage control.
“We have seen instances of individuals promoting these [antisemitic] views. We do not think that it is or has been institutionalized in the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movements,” she said. “But I think the bigger issue is sort of that when there is a heightened focus economic strife and the financial industry it is not surprising to see these messages. Yet, we will continue to be diligent, looking for them and combating the promotion of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories should they arise.”
Todd Gutnick, ADL’s media relations director, confirmed this morning: “Aside from the story in the Daily Caller in which we were quoted, ADL has made no statements on the Occupy movement.”
That is alarming, given the explicit anti-Jewish hatred on display at Occupy rallies across the country.
So why isn't the ADL speaking out? After all, Foxman often finds anti-Semites where the rest of us can't find them. Could it be that the ADL has joined the Red-Green alliance?
Here are some very interesting remarks by Joel Pollak about his recent election battle with J Street Jan Schakowsky.
Let's go to the videotape.
Joel has also written an article about his campaign. There's one small line about Israel.
We also sent a powerful message to the Obama administration about the need for stronger U.S. support for Israel. While Israel was never the focus of the campaign, it was an important priority. We led a nationwide push-back against the far-left J Street organization, which supported Schakowsky lavishly. In so doing, we helped Republicans defeat J Street Democrats in races across the country, further marginalizing the group.
On his Facebook page, Joel Pollak expresses surprise that Jan Schakowsky felt that an Israel forum that the two attended was 'an enemy camp.' Schakowsky defeated Pollak in Illinois' 9th Congressional district on Tuesday.
It’s an odd description, considering that she had reserved 200 seats for her supporters, and that J Street also reserved 100 seats for her cheering section. Some of the people in attendance were undecided as to whom they would support.
So what made it an “enemy camp”? Here is her full, unedited quote:
“It was the oddest feeling, that somehow I was in an enemy camp. It was really unsettling. He was saying some really awful things. I mean, I went to Zionist camp as a kid.” (Source: http://blogs.forward.com/mitz-vote/132805/#ixzz14K7DBZJW)
Those who wish to debunk Schakowsky’s ridiculous description for themselves should review the video of the forum at: http://www.youtube.com/toprotectourheritage
Schakowsky also says that my position on Israel was "an effort to try to pander to Jewish donors, voters, to split off the Jews." That shows, more than anything else, how little she understands the issue.
...
The reason Israel is becoming a partisan issue is not because of Republican criticism of the Obama administration’s policy, but because of the policy itself, and the way it is being pushed through groups like J Street and far-left ideologues like Schakowsky.
If you oppose, or even criticize, that policy, you are an “enemy.” President Obama himself has used similar language to describe opposition.
(J Street's supporters complain that Israel's defenders treat them the same way. I disagree, but if anything, J Street and Schakowsky have shown that they are at least as bad as those they oppose.)
It's a pity that she won and he lost and that so many Jews voted for her. Hopefully in 2012 the result will be different.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
