MuzzleWatch

My sister recently stumbled on a blog post by a far right pseudo-journalist that accused me, her peace-love-and-justice baby sister and the keeper of our family’s terrible Holocaust history archives, of being a Nazi sympathizer. Her reaction was a mix of horror at the viciousness of the post, and amusement at its unintentional camp hilarity. My response to her was, “Welcome to my world. This is what it’s like to work on Israel-Palestine issues. Every day.” (I am on staff with Jewish Voice for Peace, which works to end Israel’s 41-year occupation.)

Most journalists don’t cover Israel-Palestine every day, and so they are unaccustomed to the inevitable tsunami of hyperbolic nastiness sure to come their way should they dare to touch the topic.

Bill Moyers, however, one of America’s most respected journalists and moral voices, could not have been surprised by the response last week to his powerful video commentary in which he condemned Hamas and asserted Israel’s right to defend itself, but also said,

Brute force can turn self defense into state terrorism. It’s what the US did in Vietnam with B-52s and napalm, and again in Iraq with shock and awe. By killing indiscriminately, the elderly, kids, entire families… Israel did exactly what terrorists do and exactly what Hamas wanted. It spilled the blood that turns the wheel of retribution.

He presciently went on to describe exactly the muzzled world in which we live here in the U.S.

Our political elites show neither independence nor courage by challenging the consensus that Israel can do no wrong.  Although one recent poll found Democratic voters overwhelmingly oppose the Israeli offensive by a 24 point margin, Democratic party leaders in Congress nonetheless march in lockstep to the hardliners in Israel and the White House. Rarely does our mainstream media depart from the montonous monologue of the party line. Many American Jews know, as Aaron David Miller writes in the current edition of Newsweek, that the destruction in Gaza won’t do much to address Israel’s longer term needs. But those who raise questions are accused by a prominent reform rabbi of being “morally deficient“. One Jewish American activist told me this week, that never in 30 years has he seen such blind and binding conformity in his community. You’d never know, he says, that it is the Gazans who are doing most of the suffering.

Moyers’ analysis, it turned out, was prescient because the backlash of calls and letters calling him a rabid anti-Semite, and one would presume Nazi-sympathizer, was so strong–even good old Abe Foxman of the ADL got into the fight– forced him to take the rather unusual step of addressing the onslaught of criticism at the top of his next show. (Sorry Bill, welcome to my world.)

—

A satirical columnist for the SF Chronicle learned a similar lesson this week an off-hand reference about “recalcitrant Israelis,” part of a humorous litany.

I knew I’d hear from American supporters of Israel, because that’s what happens. Any journalist can tell you that - pro-Israeli journalists, Jewish journalists, any writer who says anything that might be taken by somebody as a criticism of Israel or its current policies is gonna get reamed out. Dead babies are frequently mentioned, and crazed Palestinian fanatics - these folks go right for the top of the rhetorical ladder.

—

Finally, we can only imagine what awaits 60 Minutes’ Bob Simon for this generally fantastic and in the U.S, downright courageous piece of journalism,  Time Running Out for a Two-State Solution? (I say generally, because at times it erroneously gives the impression that “reasonable” voices like Tzipi “there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza” Livni are drowned out by the extremist settlers. In fact, Likud, Labor and Kadima have all been deeply complicit in the settlement project and the violation of human rights of Palestinians.)

Send your support to Bob Simon by commenting here. Bill Moyers might like to hear from you as well. Comment here.

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In a follow-up to yesterday’s amusing yet scary interview with McCain spokesman Mike Goldfarb, CNN’s Rick Sanchez parried at length today with right-wing radio host Ben Ferguson about Obama pal and mysterious “anti-Semite” #2, Jeremiah Wright.

This is part of McCain strategy #273, painting Obama as a Jew-hater.

Sanchez asked, “Why is being against Israel’s policies being against Jews when in fact there there are Jews who live in Israel who are against Israel’s policies?” He went on to say, “The question is, isn’t it a huge deductive leap to think those people who think of…Israel and criticize their policies…are anti-Semites? It means they hate Jews!”

After showing Ferguson the equivalent of a papal dispensation for Wright, a statement from the Anti-Defamation League saying that they do “not consider Reverend Wright anti-Semitic,” Ferguson responded, “Those people [Obama’s close friends] do not like Israel, and they have very bad things to say about Jewish people in general.”

Meanwhile, an entertaining new video from the National Jewish Democratic Council assures voters that Obama has “a perfect voting reord” on Israel.

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A Time to Speak Out: Independent Jewish Voices on Israel, Zionism and Jewish Identity is a must-read new book featuring thought-provoking essays on a range of topics.

In “The ‘Arab Nazi’ and the ‘Nazi Jew’”, British sociologist Anne Karpf has written a nuanced exploration and condemnation of the ways in which the terms “The Holocaust” and “Nazis” have been nearly emptied of meaning through their political exploitation in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (Glenn Greewald has written about the freewheeling use of these images on Fox News to condemn liberals.) While Karpf documents the myriad ways in which Jewish and Israeli leaders have invoked this imagery to characterize Arabs and Palestinians, Karpf also looks at how Arab and Muslim leaders have characterized Israelis as Nazis and Palestinians as Jews, wondering how this comports with a policy Holocaust denial.

While Karpf largely considers the issue of name-calling and explosive imagery, we should also ask if there is a place for a thoughtful historical, political and even personal consideration of the relationship between the dehumanization practiced by the National Socialists, and that which is practiced by the Israeli military? In this country, self appointed thought police like the Anti-Defamation League would say no.

Hajo Meyer, a Dutch physicist from Germany who survived 10 months in Auschwitz in 1944, has answered this question with a resounding YES in his absolutely captivating memoir: The End of Judaism. An Ethical Tradition Betrayed. With tremendous love for the Jewish tradition he knew as a child, Meyer’s morally challenging and well documented book is not the kind that makes hyperbolic charges of equivalency between the gas chambers and Israel’s occupation that we have come to expect from the fringes. Far from it.

Rather, he poignantly describes the many years, prior to the mass murder of some 6 million Jews and 5 million others, of his own family’s experiences of dehumanization and humiliation at the hands of other Germans. He is fearless about making the connection to the callousness he sees displayed by many Israeli soldiers in the territories:

We are all too familiar with photographs of Germans in their immaculate uniforms making fun of destitute and frightened Jews. Jews in Germany could count on such humiliation at the hands of the authorities and their fellow citizens. The intimidation and harassment at Israeli checkpoints is not much different from what I experienced in my youth. I will never forget what I went through in this regard, even though it is no longer particularly painful. What I do find painful, however, is the knowledge that the Jews, who are my own people, are involved in similar humiliation of Palestinians.

(more…)

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Hat tip to Philip Weiss for uncovering Mother Jones’ documentation of the obvious: feeling subject to a settler-mentality lobby that is firmly planted in the US, the media and politicians collude in their own “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach to US foreign policy in Israel-Palestine. It’s hard not to envision candidates and major league media outlets as the infamous can’t hear-can’t speak-can’t talk monkeys.

Remember back when Howard Dean, running for president with a former president of AIPAC, no less, as his campaign co-chair, had the audacity to suggest a more “evenhanded” policy regarding Israel and Palestine. Within seconds, 34 Democratic members of Congress (and Abe Foxman) rushed to admonish him a warning letter affirming our unique, and anything but even-handed friendship with Israel. How DARE you suggest, well, balance?

Well, now we’ve got a parade of debates between presidential hopefuls, the perfect opportunity to once and for all get some clarity on candidates’ positions on the occupation, on Gaza, on Sderot, on peace negotiations. Right?

Wrong.

Justin Elliott at Mother Jones reports on 11 Democratic debates:

In nine of the 11 debates, the terms Israel, Palestinians, and Gaza were either never uttered or were mentioned once or twice peripherally. For instance, Joe Biden said at the October 30 NBC debate that Pakistan has missiles that can reach Israel. The two exceptions were the November 15 Democratic debate in Las Vegas, where Bill Richardson, unprompted, briefly outlined his ideas for a two-state solution, and the December 4 Democratic radio debate on NPR, in which moderator Robert Siegel posed the single question about Israel of the past 11 debates. Unfortunately, the query was effectively avoided.

What is shocking and new is that any reporter even dared to ask a candidate about these things at all. Even then, NPR’s Robert Siegal hedged his bets, affirming the “rationality” of supporting illegal settlement growth and land grabs in a question presented first to John Edwards:

“When we do things that policymakers in Washington may think are rational, like very strong support of Israel, that also upsets a lot of those 1 billion Muslims you’ve described. How would you, Senator Edwards … answer the complaint that the U.S., in its support of Israel, is so pro-Israeli, it can’t be an evenhanded, honest broker of matters and is anti-Muslim?”

And still, Justin Elliott at Mother Jones writes:

Edwards proceeds to ignore the question, makes a point about Ahmadinejad and says to improve relations with Muslims we must “help make education available to fight global poverty.” He makes no mention of Israel/Palestine. Siegel then turns to Obama. The senator says we need to close Guantanamo and talk not just to our friends but to our enemies. He, like Edwards, doesn’t touch the Israel issue. To their credit, Dodd and Kucinich do a much better job at engaging.

So in the past 11 debates the grand total of references to the Gaza Strip is zero. Considering that Israel is our biggest ally in the Middle East and the biggest recipient of U.S. aid in the world, isn’t it about time the candidates were asked what they think of our ally’s destructive policies in Gaza? Will any moderator have the courage to pose the question?

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American Jewish Life magazine, which seeks to be the “Jewish Rolling Stone”, printed Bradley Pilcher’s extraordinary take-down of Abe Foxman for turning the ADL away from the important work of fighting anti-Semitism and bigotry, and into a group that deploys Holocaust remembrance and Armenian genocide denial in its overarching quest to “support” Israel. In The Day the Holocaust Died, Pilcher writes that the well-documented fact of Armenian genocide

…hasn’t stopped Foxman - and other Jewish leaders - from acting like nothing ever happened. When he was asked in July if the Armenian slaughter was genocide, his answer was a short, “I don’t know.” The ADL has joined other Jewish groups, such as the American Jewish Committee, in opposing efforts at recognizing the Armenian genocide.

Stop for a moment and think about the reaction of the Jewish community to Holocaust deniers. Every time the Iranian president spouts off about the “myth” of the Holocaust, Jewish groups - the Anti-Defamation League at the front of the line - roundly condemns him. So why would an organization that fights so hard against those who would deny the Holocaust, become an adamant denier of another genocide? The answer is simple, if ugly. They didn’t want to offend Turkey, a major ally of Israel in the Middle East.

Pilcher, former editor of the Jewish book blog TribeWrite, is done with Holocaust remembrance and the immoral use of moral authority by Foxman et al.

This is why the Holocaust no longer matters to me, why I’d just as soon we forget about it, if this is what we’re going to do with it. By this, I mean put it in museums, memorialize it to the point of irrelevance, and use it as a platform for moral authoritarianism. By this, I mean use it as a cudgel to silence critics we don’t want to hear from, all the while ignoring the crimes of people who support us - or support Israel, which isn’t necessarily the same as supporting us. By this, I mean render the Holocaust from a disaster of human action and inaction to be learned from into some kind of memorial flame, too hot to touch and too fragile to light the way to a better tomorrow.

I’m not hopeless about this. Abe Foxman and his ilk can’t occupy the stage forever. At the very least, perhaps he could get laryngitis. But I’m not particularly hopeful either. We’ve made a civic religion, eagerly adopted by plenty of Jews who can’t be bothered to meander into a synagogue more than a couple times a year, out of Holocaust remembrance. We’ve replaced a wandering Diaspora of Torah scholars with an affluent American populace of Jews holding up the flame for the Holocaust without bothering to ask ourselves what moral imperatives that memory requires of us.

If we’re not going to ask those questions, and listen to the difficult answers, then we’re probably better off not remembering at all. After all, a false veneer of moral authority in the absence of moral action may be the most immoral thing of all.

Over at Jewschool, where he observes that he’s only gotten positive feedback for his piece, he asks:

Now, what does that [fighting bigotry] have to do with Israel? Seriously. I’m asking. Exactly what in the ADL’s mandate or organizational mission gives it a reason to speak up as a proponent of Israel?

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So much good news to report for a change.
We had a back and forth with folks at the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about the false Tutu quote after they used it in a release. Well, these guys are good and went to the source, the Zionist Organization of America, and finally put to bed this terrible smear against Tutu.

They also broke the story that Abe Foxman came out in support of Tutu speaking. (We’re in the piece as well.)  The extreme rightwing ZOA still insists Tutu is an anti-Semite.
Mitchell Plitnick and I wrote an op-ed that appeared in the Minneapolis/St Paul Star Tribune today suggesting that silencing Tutu and silencing debate is not the best way to be a friend to Jews.
Best of all — and the timing is no coincidence — this afternoon, the University of St Thomas announced a reversal of their decision.

I’ll leave you with a link to Tony Karon’s piece, My Favorite ‘Anti-Semite’, which I’ve been wanting to highlight since he write it about Archbishop Tutu when the story broke. Karon, a Time.com senior editor, is Jewish and a former anti-apartheid activist from south Africa.

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All roads lead to Minnesota today. First, we wrote recently about the country’s first Muslim Congressman, Minnesota’s Keith Ellison, who got publicly whacked at the knees by the ADL’s Abe Foxman for comparing 9/11 to the burning of the Reichstag, Bush to Hitler. (In a despicable move, after hours of negotiations with Ellison, the ADL still released a press release excoriating him. The ADL apparently owns the trademark to “Hitler” and even “Reichstag”)

Now in Salon, best-selling author Glenn Greenwald documents in detail the appalling frequency of right-wing attacks on liberal groups, using, yes, words like Holocaust, Nazi, Gestapo and Hitler. The juicy part? The almost daily barrage of Nazi language is coming from many Fox News personalities. And who appears frequently at ADL events and got the highest award possible from the Simon Wiesenthal Center? Fox News owner, Rupert Murdoch. (Meanwhile Ted Turner of CNN got an Abe Foxman letter for comparing Murdoch to Hitler.) Gee, think there’s anything political here?

Now - the disgusting anatomy of a smear against Tutu, who, as we reported, was banned from Minnesota’s U. of St Thomas because of criticism of Israeli human rights violations.
My colleague Mitchell Plitnick has written about this and the reprehensible charges of anti-Semitism in his blog, The Third Way.

(As I was finishing this, I also got an email alert on an article of the same name by Richard Silverstein at Tikun Olam, about the same story. Let’s hope others pick this up and we can put an end to this disgusting lie about Archbishop Tutu. Digg these articles, Stumble them, Reddit- whatever you can.)

First: the lie, the Zionist Organization of America, and its circulation in the right-wing echo chamber

In defending the decision to bar Tutu from speaking, Doug Hennes of St Thomas said:

“But he’s compared the state of Israel to Hitler and our feeling was that making moral equivalencies like that are hurtful to some members of the Jewish community.”

(more…)

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The San Francisco Examiner reports:

An emotional battle over a new mural in San Francisco’s Mission district that depicts the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been squelched after the supporting organization had its funding stalled and agreed to alter the controversial image.

The San Francisco Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) and the SF office of the Anti-Defamation League pressed the SF Arts Commission to change what they deemed offensive imagery in a new mural made by some 200 residents of San Francisco’s diverse Mission district under the auspices of HOMEY-Homies Organizing the Mission to Empower Youth.

JCRC’s Abby Porth said, “The imagery took a radical position on a complex geopolitical issue that was out of touch with the international community, San Francisco and the overwhelming majority of Jews.”

In fact, a number of Jews in the Bay Area took issue with either any efforts to change the mural, or the range of objections to the mural presented by opponents, and testified to that effect at the recent Arts Commission hearing. Members of Jewish Voice for Peace also wrote in a letter to the Arts Commission:

As Jews living in San Francisco and other parts of the Bay Area, we wish you to know that the complaints of the Jewish Community Relations Council and the Anti-Defamation League do not reflect our views, nor do they reflect the consensus of the Jewish community in San Francisco, or in the Bay Area. We ask you not to accept the opinions of the JCRC and ADL uncritically, and ask you to listen to the concerns of others in the community, including both Jews and others, who do not share a negative interpretation of the mural.

In the end, the Examiner reports:

HOMEY and [artist] Norberg, however, have agreed to alter the images that some called divisive and hostile. The group has agreed to change the shape of the crack so it does not resemble a silhouette of Israel, add blue sky where the wall towered to reflect a brighter future, add an olive tree to symbolize peace, and remove the headscarf from the woman’s face. The Arts Commission approved the revisions Wednesday.

“Our intention was to draw parallels between the issues at the U.S.-Mexico border and the Israeli-Palestinian security barrier,” said Nancy Hernandez, youth program coordinator at HOMEY. “We consider this section … to be a statement of solidarity between the residents of the San Francisco Mission district and global movements for oppressed peoples to gain self-determination.”

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It’s clear why the folks at CAIR, the country’s largest Islamic civil rights group, finally decided they’ve had enough. It’s impossible to argue with their recent press statement accusing

the Anti-Defamation League (ADL http://www.adl.org/) of seeking to hinder the due process rights of American Muslims by using “smears and exclusionary tactics” that exploit growing Islamophobia in American society.

CAIR went on:

… those smears appeared in a recent ADL news release targeting members of a coalition defending the legal rights of officials of the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) Muslim charity currently on trial in Texas. In its release, the ADL falsely claimed that members of the coalition have been “tainted by their own murky associations with radical organizations and individuals.”

(As the Los Angeles Times just reported, an Israeli intelligence officer testified that “none of the overseas charities [The Holy Land Foundation] supported has appeared among hundreds of names on U.S. government terrorist lists.” This severely weakened the government’s case against the Holy Land Foundation).

Much of Abe Foxman’s press release features unsubstantiated innuendo more worthy of a tabloid than a civil rights organization (which, again, is a terrible waste, because it makes it impossible to separate the valuable things the ADL says about genuine hate groups from this sort of blatant propaganda).

Foxman said

“These groups are tainted by their own murky associations with radical organizations and individuals and, in some cases, expressions of solidarity with terrorist groups targeting Israelis.”

Foxman offers little evidence for his accusations. But in the current climate, simply accusing a person or group of sanctioning terrorism has the same effect that tossing around accusations of communism did fifty years ago.

The ADL backgrounder on CAIR on which the press release is based is even worse.

Filled with chains of associated people and controversial issues on which CAIR takes “the wrong side,” the list is long and, in fairness, certainly does show that CAIR, reflecting much of the Muslim community, is deeply critical of Israel and its practices. This will fill many with a feeling that, yes, CAIR does condone terrorism or does not object to targeting Israeli civilians, despite the clear stances by CAIR opposing such things. At no point, however, does the ADL backgrounder offer a shred of evidence to support the accusation that CAIR is anti-Semitic, that CAIR supports terrorism, or even that CAIR questions Israel’s right to exist.

(more…)

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The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports:

In a dramatic reversal, the Anti-Defamation League’s national director issued a statement Tuesday using the term “genocide” to describe the massacres perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians.

The ADL and its national director, Abraham Foxman, have faced mounting criticism in recent weeks for refusing to use the genocide label and essentially opposing a proposed congressional resolution that would do so. The controversy heated up last week when Foxman fired the director of the ADL’s New England region for denouncing the organization’s position in an interview with the Boston Globe.

“In light of the heated controversy that has surrounded the Turkish-Armenian issue in recent weeks, and because of our concern for the unity of the Jewish community at a time of increased threats against the Jewish people, ADL has decided to revisit the tragedy that befell the Armenians,” Foxman said in his statement.

“We have never negated but have always described the painful events of 1915-1918 perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians as massacres and atrocities,” Foxman said. “On reflection, we have come to share the view of Henry Morgenthau, Sr. that the consequences of those actions were indeed tantamount to genocide. If the word genocide had existed then, they would have called it genocide.”

Foxman said that he had consulted with “friend and mentor Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel and other respected historians who acknowledge this consensus.”

Criticism reached a high point when it became public that the ADL and 3 other Jewish groups were lobbying against Congressional recognition of the Armenian genocide. The ADL’s position on the resolution appears to not have substantively changed.

The JTA went on:

The ADL leader said the organization still believes “that a Congressional resolution on such matters is a counterproductive diversion and will not foster reconciliation between Turks and Armenians and may put at risk the Turkish Jewish community and the important multilateral relationship between Turkey, Israel and the United States.”

While the Armenian community of Watertown in particular should be acknowledged for their tremendous and often painful work on this issue, it should be remembered that Foxman likely changed his position because it caused so much outrage in the Jewish community, and among ADL members and supporters, who understood full well that refusing to use the genocide word was simply unconscionable.

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