Blumenthal responds to Goldfarb n Goldberg

by on October 29, 2009 5

Max Blumenthal entertained everyone in D.C. the other day with his attack on John Hagee, the Christian Zionist who has praised Hitler. You may know that Elie Wiesel was at that very time breaking bread with Hagee in Texas, and Blumenthal mocked Wiesel for his faith in Hagee, saying he hadn’t trusted anyone this much since he’d trusted Bernie Madoff! Subsequently neocon Michael Goldfarb and neolib Jeffrey Goldberg wrote that you’re not allowed to mock a Holocaust survivor. New rule! Blumenthal dispenses with farb/berg here:

In his post, Goldfarb omitted the facts I introduced about Hagee’s anti-Semitism. Once again, ideology demanded forgetting history… Why is Wiesel palling around with Hagee? Why did I "mock" Wiesel? Both Goldfarb and Goldberg refused to address these questions and neglected to quote the facts I offered on Hagee. While Goldfarb assailed a J Street donor for controversial statements on Israel, they have never addressed Hagee’s anti-Semitic rants.

One other thing. Isabel Fonseca reported that Wiesel stood in the way of the Holocaust Memorial recognizing Roma, or Gypsy, victims of the Nazis. Jewish parochialism in powerful positions– never again.

About Philip Weiss

Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
Posted in Israel Lobby, US Politics

{ 5 comments... read them below or add one }

  1. MRW says:
    October 29, 2009 at 11:26 am

    jewsonfirst broke the story at the start of the primaries in Feb 2007 that the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) had teamed up with Hagee’s Christians United For Israel (CUFI) and former Israeli Ambassador to the US and Yisrael Beitenu Knnesset member, Danny Ayalon, to distribute the controversial anti-Muslim DVD Obsession. The head of Hagee’s CUFI org is David Brog, Jewish. Hundreds of thousands of the DVD were later sent out in the eastern seaboard weekend copies of major papers like the NYT, WaPo, and a couple of others. link to z.pe

    Republican Jewish Coalition responsible for mailing anti-Muslim film
    Mailing done in cooperation with Christian Zionist organization
    By JewsOnFirst.org, February 15, 2007

    The Republican Jewish Coalition is responsible for a mailing received by Reform rabbis and other Jews that included a DVD of the controversial anti-Muslim film Obsession, JewsOnFirst.org has learned. At least part of the mailing was sent under the postal permit of Christians United for Israel, a leading Christian Zionist organization.

    The DVD was packaged inside a book by David Brog (see scan below, at right), CUFI’s executive director. The package also contained a letter by a former Israeli ambassador to Washington, endorsing Brog’s book and calling on Jews to accept an alliance with Christian Zionists.

    The whole Obsession file is here: link to z.pe

    jewsonfirst director Rabbi Haim Dov Beliak talks to Max Blumenthal last week about Max’s book Republican Gommorah and Hagee beliefs and the RJC’s protection of him for 45 minutes. Great interview. link to z.pe

    Max mentions that Hagee is selling Wiesel’s and Hagee’s Sept 2007 conversationas a CD for $15 on Hagee’s site. I wouldn’t be surprised, however, if this was cooked up by Brog and others as a way to milk the supposed 70 million Hagee followers to get some dough into Wiesel’s hands after losing everything to Madoff. I mean, what organization does Wiesel have? These fundamentalists all have to stick together.

  2. MRW says:
    October 29, 2009 at 11:29 am

    [Whoops, I have to break this into two parts because of the links]
    jewsonfirst broke the story at the start of the primaries in Feb 2007 that the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) had teamed up with Hagee’s Christians United For Israel (CUFI) and former Israeli Ambassador to the US and Yisrael Beitenu Knnesset member, Danny Ayalon, to distribute the controversial anti-Muslim DVD Obsession. The head of Hagee’s CUFI org is David Brog, Jewish. Hundreds of thousands of the DVD were later sent out in the eastern seaboard weekend copies of major papers like the NYT, WaPo, and a couple of others. link to z.pe

    Republican Jewish Coalition responsible for mailing anti-Muslim film
    Mailing done in cooperation with Christian Zionist organization
    By JewsOnFirst.org, February 15, 2007

    The Republican Jewish Coalition is responsible for a mailing received by Reform rabbis and other Jews that included a DVD of the controversial anti-Muslim film Obsession, JewsOnFirst.org has learned. At least part of the mailing was sent under the postal permit of Christians United for Israel, a leading Christian Zionist organization.

    The DVD was packaged inside a book by David Brog (see scan below, at right), CUFI’s executive director. The package also contained a letter by a former Israeli ambassador to Washington, endorsing Brog’s book and calling on Jews to accept an alliance with Christian Zionists.

    The whole Obsession file is here: link to z.pe

  3. MRW says:
    October 29, 2009 at 11:30 am

    [Part 2]
    jewsonfirst director Rabbi Haim Dov Beliak talks to Max Blumenthal last week about Max’s book Republican Gommorah and Hagee beliefs and the RJC’s protection of him for 45 minutes. Great interview. link to z.pe

    Max mentions that Hagee is selling Wiesel’s and Hagee’s Sept 2007 conversationas a CD for $15 on Hagee’s site. I wouldn’t be surprised, however, if this was cooked up by Brog and others as a way to milk the supposed 70 million Hagee followers to get some dough into Wiesel’s hands after losing everything to Madoff. I mean, what organization does Wiesel have? These fundamentalists all have to stick together.

  4. MRW says:
    October 29, 2009 at 11:47 am

    Max asks in his post about farb/berg:

    But the absence of the facts from their blog posts does not allow them to evade the issue. Do they, like Wiesel and Oren, approve of Hagee? In defending Wiesel from criticism for his relationship with Hagee, they are also defending the relationship. Is this what they really mean to do? Then they must also disagree with John McCain’s severing of his ties with Hagee. What is it about Hagee that Goldfarb and Goldberg find acceptable, as Wiesel and Oren find him acceptable? Unless, of course, they don’t approve of Hagee or association with him at all, and were using criticism of those embracing him as a cudgel to beat up on J Street. Now that would be clownish.

    A year after Ayalon penned the RJC letter for CUFI, Akiva Eldar wrote in Haaretz in Feb 2008 that Ayalon and the Republican Jewish neocons were in full bore both in Israel and the US to dig up dirt on Obama. link to z.pe
    Eldar writes

    And after all that, surveys conducted by Jewish organizations show that the candidates’ positions on interior affairs, especially social issues like workers’ rights, abortion, stem cell research and medical insurance, interest the Jewish Democratic voters more than their positions on moving the American embassy to Jerusalem or evacuating some illegal outpost in the territories.

    That doesn’t deter a few Jewish political wheeler dealers (elected by no one) from stirring the boiling cauldron.

    So I would say that Goldberg and Goldfarb are Israeli stooges for Netanyahu’s party.

    Correction: The RJC subsequently distributed 28 million DVD copies of Obsession by the election, according to jewsonfirst.

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