Bill Moyers has the temerity to attack Israel for killing 400 children in Gaza and suddenly he's being attacked all over for hunting up gay people in the White House 40 years ago. The timing is just too– perfect. Wall Street Journal: J Edgar Moyers. Slate too: "The Intolerable Smugness of Bill Moyers…" The inevitable Jeffrey Goldberg. (When will he accuse Moyers of New Testament antisemitism?) And Commentary.
Do I know that it's a conspiracy? No. Do I believe that it's a conspiracy? Yes. Lincoln said that, the first debate with Douglas, 1858. Smart guy.
Jack Ross adds: What better opportunity for Moyers to be the hero by owning up to it and maybe even calling these guys out on it!
Related posts:
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- ‘Lesser figure than Moyers would be blacklisted…’
- Moyers plays devil’s advocate with Goldstone
- Lincoln would have accepted the idea of a shadowy, powerful Israel lobby
- ‘Forward’ Editor Appears to Me to Exhibit Prejudice Against Non-Jews
{ 14 comments }
one can imagine how busy they were till they found this 40 year old "gem".
so if you do something awful, and later become a critic of Israel, does that mitigate your awfulness? Just trying to get hop with the moral universe of Phil Weiss.
The source, Laurence Silberman, is a former member of AEI and the Defense Policy Board, who voted to overturn Oliver North's conviction.
Moyers is the Lord High Dirty Trickster of the 20th Century. From bugging Martin Luther King to surveilling private citizens and journalists, that this hoodlum has become one of the great liberal voices of our times is the spin coup of the century. I guess all it takes is left wing pronouncements, a gentle southern lilt and screaming "dirty tricks" on the part of our culture's hackneyed boogeymen — Karl Rove, big oil, Israel etc. Moyers cannot write off the investigation of Valenti as a lone faux pas; if you look at the sheer tonnage of habitual black bag operations in his portfolio — confirmed by extensive documentation — the Left cannot possibly justify continued acceptance of this thug as a comrade-in-arms.
Barrens, operative much?
Moyers did not do anything awful considering the times. In 1964 homosexuals were denied security clearances. Exposure of officials in those days resulted in real scandal and automatic dismissal.
See if you can count the Hasbara 101 talking points, latest edition in this communication–I will be back later to give you your score:
LOGGERS
RAV YITZ GREENBERG’S RESPONSE TO BILL MOYERS.
01.21.09 | Comment?
This is a response to comments Bill Moyers recently made on his program in the States. The response comes from one of the most respected Rabbis in the US by all peoples of faith. This is a blurb by belief net on Rabbi Yitz Greenberg:
After the publication of “For the Sake of Heaven and Earth,” Rabbi Irving “Yitz” Greenberg spoke to Beliefnet senior editor Alice Chasan about the book, which traces the development of his thinking about Jewish-Christian relations and argues for a pluralist theology that commands followers of each religion to embrace the unique contributions of the other. Rabbi Yitz Greenberg answers Bill Moyers
Dear Bill Moyers,
I have been a long time fan of Bill Moyers and an admirer of your work in many areas – including the Genesis series in which my wife participated.
For this very reason, I was deeply dismayed to read an excerpt of the transcript of your comments on the Gaza war on the Friday night Journal program. I believe that you made a serious moral misjudgment on the invasion and then compounded your error with two applications that are beyond the pale – even more so for someone of your stature and judgment.
1. You acknowledge Israel’s right to defend its people but then allege that Israel’s decision to invade Gaza constitutes “waging war on an entire population.” You allege that “by killing indiscriminately the elderly, kids, entire families, by destroying schools and hospitals” Israel “spilled the blood that turns the wheel of retribution.”
You ignore that Israel has bombed only Hamas military posts, command headquarters and points of origin of Hamas fire – and does so with pinpoint accuracy. You ignore that the UN school shelling was a return of enemy fire from that school or a shell that went astray in an exchange of fire with Hamas shooters stationed nearby. Israel has not fired on hospitals or schools deliberately – though Hamas locates headquarters, war supplies and rocket launchers in such places. You ignore the New York Times report (1/11/09) that Hamas tells civilian Palestinians to go up on the roofs of homes where their fighters are located because it knows Israel will not fire when its soldiers or planes see civilians. By leaving out these facts, you shore up the false equation which underlies your whole text: Israel striking back with military force as a last resort at a group pledged to its destruction — and which has backed up that pledge by years of terror attacks, suicide bombers, and rocket showers — is equivalent to Israel consciously targeting civilians and casually initiating these attacks, which is then morally equated to Hamas’ deliberate terrorism, targeting civilians primarily.
Hamas’ strategy for destroying Israel incorporates the expectation that inevitable misjudgments and accidents in the course of fighting will evoke the kind of one sided outbursts such as yours which undermine Israel’s world standing. I, too, feel great pain and sympathy at the enormous suffering and losses of innocent Palestinians, but it is Hamas that has deliberately put them in harm’s way, not Israel as your words imply.
2. Equally distressing is your use of the phrase ‘[Israel] spilled the blood that turns the wheel of retribution”. Had you used the word revenge, you would have made your point that Israel’s attacks inflame Hamas and others, a cause of grave concern to Israelis and to all who seek and love peace. But the word ‘retribution’ really means this: justified punishment for bad behavior. That tone of justification – terror [justifiably] evokes terror – is all over your next paragraph which subtly suggests that assaults on Jews in Europe are the to-be-expected outgrowth of Israel’s attacks and not the excuse used by anti-Semites to continue attacks they have been carrying on for years.
3. Most disturbing of all: You describe Gaza “as the latest battle in the oldest family quarrel on record” – as if modern day Israel was motivated not by self-defense but by the Biblical account of Isaac conflicting with Ishmael; as if Israelis are following the ancient Israelite’ “leaders [who] urged violence against its inhabitants;” as if Israelis are following Deuteronomy’s instruction to wipe out idolatry. Does Israel smash the religious places of the Palestinians? There is not a political figure in Israel – not even a marginalized extremist – who invokes Deuteronomy as a motivation or justification for behavior toward Palestinians.
You ignore that more than two millennia have passed since Judaism, in its rabbinic development, declared that these Deuteronomic laws applied only to idol worshippers in those previous millennia; that Islam has been treated with great respect by Judaism and specifically honored as a monotheistic religion, never equated with idolatry; that in the Talmud it is ruled that the seven nations referred to in Deuteronomy’s injunction to “wipe out their name from that place” no longer exist, and that these instructions may not be applied to any other nation. In short, perhaps out of ignorance, you besmirch Judaism as a blood thirsty religion — using selected texts that have long been nullified. With your words, you strengthen the hands of contemporary haters who seek to portray Judaism and Jews as blood thirsty murderers – this, in order to legitimate their unspeakable desire to actually wipe Israel and Jews off the face of the earth.
4. This brings me to your climactic disturbing comment. You follow the Deuteronomy quote with the following statement. “So God-soaked violence became genetically coded.” What that means in plain language is: that Jews are genetically coded to be violent and totally wipe out their opponents. Do you believe that?; that [all] Jews are genetically coded to violence, to assault civilian populations? I cannot believe that you believe that. Then you are all the more guilty, out of anger, of willfully degrading a whole people and lending your eloquent voice and stature for the cruel mission of those who seek the destruction of my people.
You may try to claim that your next sentence states: “A radical stream of Islam now seeks to obliterate Israel from the face of the earth” to argue that you were not speaking just about Jews. But in the context of the previous and ensuing paragraphs which are all about Israel’s violence, you tear off that fig leaf. It comes out all Israel, all the time. You have made a shocking departure from the minimum standards of responsibility in your words – and all in the name of speaking up for victims.
I plead with you to rescue your moral standing and your record of working to improve the world . Reflect on your loss of balance. Restore your credibility. As part of your reparation, you certainly should apologize for labeling Jews as genetically encoded for violence.
Yours truly,
Rabbi Irving Greenberg
I really should have followed up on the NYU story
http://gawker.com/5159003/the-painfully-ridiculous-end-to-the-nyu-revolution
Miami Herald got the memo too, their tv critic chimes in.
who knew there were all these people harboring such rage over Moyers' role 40 years ago, when many are the same people urging us to look forward and forget the poisonous 8 years under Bush.
Seems to me that Moyers didn't want to ruin a good story just because it was a string of lies.
Similar criticisms of Moyers have been mentioned for decades. There is some content in them.
The Christian right and the neo-orthodox right conflates Biblical story to current politics. Who would have thought that Moyers would INVEST in that?
It is so horrible to read the Commentary rants. How obsessed they ar that Moyers is paid from "their" taxes. This is what it must feel like for some here to read our comments: pure hate speech. I wonder what the story would look like had it been written e.g. by Jane Mayer, how she would have put things into context. But maybe there wasn't much time. This obviously has no other intention but to smear. But he must be used to it by now.
A rare comment among the many and the response:
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Bill Says:
February 19th, 2009 at 5:03 PM
“Um, who cares? Seriously, is Bill Moyers that influential today that we need to be so vexed about 45 years ago? I agree, he’s a sanctimonious a**, but then so are most liberals from inside the beltway. But this seems like a completely useless piece of information.
Tell me what I’m missing.”
Until we kill them all (liberals) no one is safe.
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@ Witty
"The Christian right and the neo-orthodox right conflates Biblical story to current politics. Who would have thought that Moyers would INVEST in that?"
The neocons? And, now, post-Obama, the neocoms? Since when did, you witty, not conflate biblical stories
with the current reality? Your comments for the last two years on this bog, imply, or directly state, that this is your SOP.
That means I agree with your statement about the Christian end-timers. You just conveniently forgot
to mention your own enmeshment in partnering with narrowly described christian universalism with your own ethnocentric verbiage and narrative.
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