This is interesting. Mike McMahon, a first-term Democratic congressman from New York, fired a staffer after she said that McMahon's Republican challenger was getting a lot of out-of-state donors and "Jewish money." NY Observer:
The file, labeled "[Mike] Grimm Jewish Money Q2," for the second quarter fundraising period, shows a list of over 80 names, a half-dozen of which in fact do hail from Staten Island, and a handful of others that list Brooklyn as home.
"Where is Grimm's money coming from," said Jennifer Nelson, McMahon's campaign spokeman. "There is a lot of Jewish money, a lot of money from people in Florida and Manhattan, retirees."
Haaretz details the wrath that came down on Nelson:
Republican Jewish Coalition Executive Director Matthew Brooks said on Friday in a statement that "in more than 25 years in politics I have never seen anything more despicable and offensive than this”...
"Congressman McMahon has fired his communications director, but what about the other staff involved? Who asked for that list to be compiled? Who approved that action? Congressman McMahon needs to do more than apologize for 'inappropriate comments' - he must be held accountable for actions that his campaign staff took to count Jews supporting his rival," Brooks said. “I don't think this is something that should be swept under the rug. Seeing such bigotry from a sitting congressman's campaign is deeply troubling."
Even the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) President and CEO, David Harris, had to denounce the McMahon campaign’s lapse.
”It is never acceptable to 'count Jews' in this way or to perpetuate age-old stereotypes about the Jewish community”, he said.
But if Jewish money is a stereotype, god knows it's one that many political people employ. It is often noted that more than half of Democratic campaign-giving comes from Jews; and just the other day, Martin Indyk raised the "Jewish factor" in campaign spending with that same Haaretz reporter, to explain Obama's collapse on confronting Israel: "American Jews...provide a good deal of funding for political campaigns. So the Jewish factor is always a critical factor for Democratic candidates. I don't think it's telling any secrets that there are a lot of people who have been upset with President Obama. And I think that the White House came to the understanding that they have a real problem there and they are going out of their way trying to show they are friendly to Israel and committed to peace. Republicans will try to exploit the anger."
Exactly: Republicans like Mike Grimm. So I don't think Jennifer Nelson is an anti-semite, a lot of people in American politics think hard about this question. Despite their claims, the NJDC and RJC both count Jews; and they do so because the Jewish community is still monolithic on the Israel question, big Jewish givers tend to be extremely conservative on the question; and these organizations can use the idea of Jewish money just as Indyk does, to try and impose a pro-Israel line on all candidates.
It gives me no pleasure to do a post like this. I seek diversity in Jewish life, so that a term like "Jewish money" has no significance. But right now it means something, and something important. Seymour Hersh used the term "Jewish money" a year or so back on Amy Goodman, when explaining the political pressure building for war against Iran. He wasn't using an old anti-Semitic stereotype, he was trying to explain how the policymaking works.
I wonder how much of a real factor Jewish money is in the Grimm-McMahon race. I've met Arab-Americans in McMahon's district. They told me he won in 2008 in a traditionally-Republican district in part through the support of the big Muslim community in the Bay Ridge neighborhood. He turned out to disappoint on foreign policy: McMahon has lately stated that members of the flotilla are "supporters of Hamas."
Why do you think he's making such statements? And do you really think Jennifer Nelson came up with that category of political gifts on her own?
If it was just the money….
The controls are much more extensive and insidious than through campaign finance.
Hayate, your comment crosses the line, the supposition that Jewish control of government is extensive and insidious has no place in modern discourse.
You’re funny, maxine. How’s the storm trooper training going?
“Throughout the history of America, there have been many successful revolutions that never heard a shot fired. We must accept our roles as the leaders and front-line stormtroopers in what is nothing less than a cultural revolution. We must liberate our great nation from the left-wing elitists who control her. Our foes are well-entrenched in the news media, Hollywood, the teachers’ unions and our government. Our weapons are the ballot box, our voices, our pens and, more and more, our computers and the Internet. Our ammunition is the plain, unvarnished truth. It does them a lot of damage and there’s plenty to go around. FIRE AWAY! And you don’t have to wait until you see the whites of their eyes.”
:D
I’m glad this story has gained a thread of its own. Now, Mr or Ms Maximalist, you have crossed one of my own red lines (I have plenty). You are engaging, not at all surprisingly, in ‘the big bluff’. Your version of it is that, although (if we have to) we can talk about the relatively limited issue of politically coordinated jewish campaign contributions, we mustn’t talk about jewish wealth in general, about the extent to which politically coordinated jewish wealth may dominate the entire USA, not just its political processes in the narrow formal sense, but every part of it. To do so, according to ‘the big bluff’, is to switch on the intercontinental time machine and transform the USA into a clone of Europe in the 1920s. Well, this bluff has no substance. It is perfectly possibly to discuss the extent of jewish wealth and its resulting general influence, in any country, anywhere, without having to go up to the attic and dig out grandpa’s old Iron Cross. It can be done quite rationally, within the specific real context of the present day, without any time warp into the 1920s being involved.
Yeah, George Soros is living now.
That’s right Max, the truth no longer has a place in modern discourse because too many people are afraid of the agents of the lie.
Max,
Martin Indyk said it, does it make him an anti-semite (Abe Foxman definition):
link to mondoweiss.net
Crossing what line? Through the years, Jewish voters in America have contributed as much as 40 percent of the funds for the Democratic Party on an annualized basis. This is an astounding figure given the fact that people who identify their faith as Jewish in census forms amount to only about two percent of the U.S. population.
as i mentioned yesterday when first encountering this story it immediately reminded me of the massive shitstorm that was definitely covered in the msm about the mormom contributions to shut prop 8 the marriage initiative. the mormons are anti gay marriage. yes lists were published and yes lots of those names were from utah. but nobody said it was racist to go after the mormons for doing that. nobody lost there job pointing out donations were coming in from utah. they were screaming it out all over the airwaves. but jewish folks???
shhhhhhhh big secret/not. total double standard.
and what of evangelicals? of course they pool for donations. i worked on a political campaign once and we targeted churches directly. we had lists of them and their congregants.
if someone wrote a story about these evangelical lists would it be a big hit story? get real and nobody would be fired over it.
i forgot to mention that was california’s prop 8. you can google ‘prop 8 mormons’ and read all about it. big news here in this state.
Of course, no lack of hysterical screaming over Muslim donors:
Cynthia McKinney’s Arab and Islamist Donors
by Daniel Pipes
July 9, 2004
updated Oct 25, 2007
link to danielpipes.org
hey maxnarrative,
I don’t want to get into this argument. but you said some kind words to me the other day and I wanted to return the favor. keep your chin up!
All the better to make it a target!
Yeah. Reasonable rational Zionist my ass.
“keep your chin up!”
Oy, the nachos I get from this, with extra jalepenos, already! Our two plucky Zioshills will make the desert of our discourse bloom. Hasta valisa a shalom guys. Oy, now I’m getting kemperer. I’ll go have a root beer.
Max
Sure it does. It has every place. It was this ”Jewish Control“ that caused the president’s choice of Chas Freeman for the NSC to go south. It controls the effort to go to war against Iran right now, to the detriment of the American public, and for paranoiac Israeli reasons. This ”Jewish Control“ can get laws for Israel passed in the US Congress, almost unanimously, in under 10 days, since the recession started but won’t lift a finger to fight against, ease, the economic blight 40% of the citizens are going through. You want proof? Read JewsOnFirst about the actions of the Republican Jewish Coalition who spent ??$$$ to put 35+ million DVDs against Muslims and Obama in the Sunday paper under the aegis of Hagee’s CUFI. A former Israeli Ambassador to the US wrote and accompanying letter; it’s against the law for foreign countries to participate in slanting US elections.
A lot of Jewish money goes into influencing the government and elections. Deal with it.
There should have been a paragraph break after ”going through.“
jewsonfirst is not proof of the getting laws passed for Israel statement.
Nice post. What is most disturbing about the intimidation by Jewish entities like the ADL and others is that it seems very similar to the Soviet Union of the Moscow Trials era, “Darkness At Noon”. This is the USA we prize freedom of speech and the vulgar threatening slandering language that has been directed at anyone who wishes to point out the egregious behavior of Israelis or Jewish, or to point out obvious points such as the Congress is beholden to AIPAC and does so because of the links it has to the media, which is controlled by Jewish interests. Haim Saban can point this out in a presentation, but for some reason Oliver Stone can’t say it. This type of slandering is just a version of the brownshirt behavior in Germany during the 30s. Instead of intimidating and smashing up meetings with sticks and knives, the Zionist brownshirts intimidate and smash their opponents with lies and character assassination.
Maximus Pilatus, every one who has eyes, ears and patience to read a little knows that Jewish power and money has totally hijacked the US congress, is busy dictating foreign policy and is right now holding the president of the US effectively captive to democratic monied contributors – who have no mall overlap with wall street. This blog, FYI, was started as a reaction to the realization that neocons – of whom the majority were jewish likud loyalists masquerading a americans – got the US to invade, conquer and occupy Iraq, causing the wholesale massacres of Iraqi people and destroying the country. Israel i a key reason the US is still mired there, even as it eggs on the misadventure in Afganistan.
Far from crossing the line, hayate – and others – open the circle beginning the long process of accountability. It’ s time for you to see what’s happening. If you don’t believe what zionist collusion with money has done to the US, just watch the war drums tolling for attacking Iran and killing more people – a country that is absolutely no threat to the US.
Most of us believe that the neocons should have been tried and jailed for war crimes and incitement. If you support these thugs – as represented by rags like the Weekly standard, NYPost and way too often, the commentary and TNR, then you share in their malfeasance and we have every right to denounce your narrow minded tribal hatred and bigotry.
I should have qualified “Jewish” because the majority of American Jewish people do not, in fact, participate in these power shenanigans, and it’s certainly not fair to lump them all into one. As this and other blogs like this attest to daily, there are quite a few Jewish people who fight day and night against the evil represented by the likud, nationalitic, parochial and religious zealot mind frame. My ire was entirely meant for the zionista brand, of course. It is truly unfortunate that they have hijacked the Jewish brand. That should be added to their list of crimes – a most grievous one indeed – as it snares even the best intentioned.
Lemme guess, “age-old stereo-types” am I right?
”It is never acceptable to ‘count Jews’ in this way…”
Wow, I never thought it was going to be that easy to defuse the Palestinian Demographic Time Bomb! Seven little words, and the entire thing is no more than a squib.
It didn’t even require my plan for Jewish State Sponsored Ashkenazi Promiscuity.
But they’re always right over at Haaretz: Since the world will immediately bomb Israel cause they think it’s full of Jews, the best thing to do is emphasize how many Palestinians there are, and hide behind them. No Jew counting.
Zionist thinking is one long ride on a Mobius roller-coaster.
These days people are accused of anti-semitism if they talk about FACTS that might raise public ire towards warmongering Zionist plutocrats.
fillmorehagen, in many cases the “anti-Semitism” consists of a lamentable (but hardly murderous) mis-precision in the use of the terms “Jews” “the Jews” “Zionists” and “Israelis”. Plus, I hear the echos of classic anti-Semitic tropes now and again. The echoes.
And before anybody gets all upset, they really need to think back to the discourse among white liberals and supporters during the civil rights struggles. Some of it was very clumsy, unconsciously full of racial tropes and memes as people used the only language they had to do the job they wanted to do, and get to a new place with a new language.
I just convolved the groups myself. It’ hard to remember to always put in the appropriate qualifiers.
Check out the comments to the Haaretz article:
link to haaretz.com
I guess it’s not polite to dissect where any US politician gets his or her campaign money from? What’s wrong with such a rule? God forbid any American not take at face value what the politician says, which is always they are only there to help you.
The list was originally made to point out the out-of-district contributors to Grimm’s campaign. Who just happened -Surprise!- to be largely Jews.
The real point here is that Jewish money has indeed bought Congress, when we see them pandering to Jewish contributors rather than their own Muslim constituents. I’d like to see the list of McMahon’s contributors.
Gawker has a story on this so full of involuted jewish snark that I can hardly make head or tail of it:
link to gawker.com
My recommendation is that you look at opensecrets.org, there you will find a pretty blatant expose of funding to candidates and incumbents. As an example, Nanci Pelosi, it designates the third largest group of money givers as Pro-Israel. Now, this does not mean that the ranks of the pro-Israel individuals cannot raise from other industries, like health professionals and lawyers – that is what makes giving so porous, it can come from any direction (and can still be co-oped).
NANCY PELOSI
OPEN SECRETS
It was the Washington Post seveal years ago that did an article on the Dems getting 60% of their total campaign money from Jews.
I love all the little Israeli activist you see on the net who threaten to leave the dems if they don’t cowtow to Israel …where would you dems be without our jewish money and vote, etc.,etc…… ad nausum.
The bigger the zionist hubris gets the longer the way down is gonna be. Everything flips eventually.
The dangerous part is this -”out of the district”. So money from east coast can influence election in west coast and vice versa. Did Liberman enjoy something of that nature after losing to democrat challenger?
Of course they send funding requests to the blue haired ladies in Boca. And use all the ‘is it good for Israel’ buzzwords that get them opening the checkbooks and closing minds.
This case reminds me of the early 70′s when Nixon had the IRS conduct audits on major Jewish contributors to the Democratic Party. Targeting people, like McMahon and Nixon did, is sleazy and deserves contempt.
On the other hand, there are plenty of marketing firms which will sell you a list of “Jewish contributors,” and I would think that political campaigns would be buying up lists of the most influential donors of every color and creed.
link to negevdirect.com
Wondering Jew,
Will you return a favor to a person on a wrong issue, just because they supported you on something? That’s thinking like a politician. Where are you critical thinking skills?
Will you be silent in the face of a wrong because of a favor a some future goodwill expectation?
A staffer was fired for mentioning Jewish money. If the money would have been from Muslims, the staffer would have been fired for accepting Muslim money.
Saleema, those plucky Zionists have to stick together. Since they’re both chained to their keyboards, and destined to spend their lives here, where the food tastes like poison, yet the portions are so small!
Since they can’t go anywhere else, and nothing here makes them happy, at least they can have the benefits of notes passed to each other through the barbed wire when the moser isn’t looking.
I said something nice about him a bit ago, he never thanked me. Maybe he didn’t see it?
I didn’t find the quote [it's in my link library now]– but it truly shows the hypocrisy over this cough cough ‘Jewish conspiratory’ — your eyes have just gotta roll on this.
While reading Haim Sabin’s [the “I'm a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel"] hit piece in Huffingtonpost: “Shame on Oliver Stone “
A blogger had this to say back to Saban:
Priceless.
Source: The New Yorker: The Influencer
An entertainment mogul sets his sights on foreign policy.
by Connie Bruck
link to newyorker.com
credit:
link to huffingtonpost.com
sorry — Conspiracy — I was laughing too much.
Campaigns are most definitely buying lists of Jewish donors:
link to negevdirect.com
to be fair, Republican Jewish Coalition Executive Director Matthew Brooks was equally exercised and fulminating at the mouth about, oh, Emily Henochowitz being wounded by IDF and about IDF killing an American 18-year old, wasn’t he? wasn’t he??? NO???
you mean he’s more concerned about a list of names with the word “Jewish” beside it than the maiming and killing of Two young Americans?
got it.