Once Lee Smith joined the Hitler orgy over the Israel Firster debate naturally it occurred to me, with gentiles joining, the conversation was wiiiiide open. (Unless you're Israeli, they've been ordered to " stay out of it" by gatekeeper Eli Lake) Everyone in the know knows this is an American conversation now, thank heavens!
Freddie deBoer, has a must read blogpost 'because policing the discourse is punk rock'. He weighs in on the the Firster crowd and he's scalding hot. Listen to him chew out Jeffrey Goldberg psychoanalyzing Glen Greenwald:
Once he knows a writer is Jewish, he feels that he has total authority to discuss that writer's character, beliefs, and psychology. That this is the elementary logic of bigotry-- the notion that one can know all of this intimate knowledge about someone thanks to his or her ethnic character-- seems not to bother Goldberg in the least. Perhaps I'll publish a piece psychoanalyzing Goldberg, each observation derived solely from his status as a Jew, and see how long I remain in polite society.
Freddie say Ackerman is a man obsessed and his "social positioning overwhelms his moral and philosophical understanding". There's so much more where that came from.
He skewers:
All of this happens for a purpose: to make it clear to anyone who might have a moral conviction about Israel's treatment of the Palestinians scared to talk about it. I know many people who have political stances on everything, and voice them without regard or fear, on questions of race, abortion, poverty, Afghanistan, gay rights, health care.... But about Israel, they won't speak. It has simply been drummed into their heads, by people like Spencer Ackerman, that this is no-go territory for them. They are mostly gentiles, as I am, and they know that speaking on this issue could easily result in accusations of anti-Semitism. So they shut up. And here comes Spencer Ackerman, and his red-baiting essay, and the predictable Hitler graphic. And so the task of pressuring "a recalcitrant Israel to come to its senses, especially about the insanity of attacking Iran" just becomes harder.
...........
Ackerman's piece is one written by someone who has become completely unmoored from the actual, physical, material reality that he is purportedly writing about. I assure you: Ackerman, in the context of the conflict, has already won. The losers are the people who live in cities subject to 24 hour curfew, whose communities are illegally encroached on by settlers, whose homes are bulldozed without due process or review, who are intermittently subject to the horrible bloodletting of another Israeli incursion, as they have been for over 40 years. There's none of them in Ackerman's piece. None of them at all.
This is a killer must read contribution in the Israel Firster debate.
Hat tip Joseph Dana
ps, in case anyone is curious why i linked to bachmann in my ‘wiiiide open’ link, it is because what i mean by wide open, i don’t just mean in terms of who’s critiquing this term. i mean who’s being labeled as israel firsters too. because as we all know there are plenty of israel firsters in and out of congress who are not jewish. that fight has not even started. obviously the neocons want to be the gatekeepers of this term but as i mentioned, this is an american conversation now.
this is an American conversation
That’s been my impression all along.
Exactly.
Perhaps I’ll publish a piece psychoanalyzing Goldberg, each observation derived solely from his status as a Jew,
that’s a hypothetical point i take issue with. no one needs to reduce their forensic psychoanalysis of goldenberg to ‘his status as a Jew’. his writing speaks for itself, every uninformed smear, every petty innuendo made without the least fear of repercussion. goldenberg is like some inbred brit demi-royal dipsomaniac, running over people’s character while he cracks the whip from the backseat of his chauffer-driven rolls. the man can’t speak, the man can’t write, and yet he has become the spokesperson for american jews on the subject of israel and ‘how high can you jump’ loyalty to the only jewish theocracy in the middle east. what a piece of crap, insinuating that greenwald is pathological, a neo-nazi in secular jew’s clothing.
That was poetry. I’m going to memorize that.
“like some inbred brit demi-royal dipsomaniac, running over people’s character while he cracks the whip from the backseat of his chauffer-driven rolls”
haha
It’s not just Zionists who use psychoanalysis to explain away opinions they disagree with. It has a long pedigree. The eminently left-wing Frankfurt School used it in ‘The Authoritarian Personality’ to delegitimize conservative white people in the fifties. More recently, Naomi Klein in ‘the Nation’ claimed that ‘conservative white men’ have a psychological problem which prevents them from seeing the truth of the theory of global warming. So Goldberg’s in good company. And no, you can’t psychoanalyse back. I can’t say ‘liberal Jewish women’ like Klein have a need to believe in climate change theory.
annie, typo in your last sentence.
thank you so much patm, appreciated
Israel-firsters are oblivious to the world around them
As to Israel coming to its senses, there are many “theaters” for such coming to senses. Gaza. Occupation. Settlement-Expansion. settlements generally. Wall.
And war with Iran, as mentioned. As to that, it is time for the USA to come to its own senses, both as to war and as to sanctions.
Gentiles and some Jews have been meeting with and petitioning their Reps etc for decades on this issue.
“Perhaps I’ll publish a piece psychoanalyzing Goldberg, each observation derived solely from his status as a Jew, and see how long I remain in polite society.”
I can tell you what he reminds me of. He reminds me of a certain class of ‘boss hogg’ white men in the Jim Crow days I saw as a kid that wanted blacks to approach them with hat in hand and bowed heads and downcast eyes to acknowledge their superiority just cause they were white.
Like commoners kneeling to the King or kissing the Pope’s ring.
He’s a sick assh*** , period.
Have to say this kind of gave me a laugh.
Of course deBoer’s piece is greatly intentioned, but even as regards same I see the same sort of gooey, self-regarding, ridiculous Progressive PC sensibility (and fear) that makes Progressives so ineffectual in the simple lack of good, analytical, hard-nosed thinking in his piece missing that at bottom what Ackerman is doing is purely and simply saying that it’s wrong to call someone an Israel-Firster—No matter how true that may be, period.
And yet deBoer misses this, and later muddles around it further. And so then do even the other clearly Progressive types who write in trying to support him.
Indeed, much worse than deBoer, oh-so-concerned about displaying the purity of their souls and their sensitivity to Correctness and their nuance and blah blah blah, they get into the metaphysical question of whether, if it *is* okay to *ever* call someone an Israeli-Firster, precisely what overwhelming evidence must first be shown proving beyond a a shadow of a doubt not only that such person is indeed an Israeli-Firster but also that you yourself are not an anti-semite and how you should have proof of that and even so blah blah blah….
Gee, real hard for Israeli-Firsters—experts at the game anyway—to throw a cloud of sand into *that* conversation and turn it from its potential of being a hard-hitting and tough-supported piece whacking Ackerman’s thesis into a meaningless muddle.
Navel-gazers; you gotta love ‘em but….
i don’t think he misses it at all american. his opening is very clear to me (read his first two paragraphs, and then this again:
then he calls ackerman obsessed and “completely unmoored “.
seems to me he made it very clear ackerman was wrong.
Annie I think you ‘re talking to SN, not me…..
oops, you’re right american. no wonder i found that a little surprising.
Apropos of my post saying that as well-intentioned as deBoer’s piece was it still managed to mangle what’s wrong with Ackerman’s “Israel-Firster is an anti-semetic smear term” Annie wrote:
“i don’t think he misses it at all … seems to me he made it very clear ackerman was wrong.”
Well yes, Annie, he made it clear he thought Ackerman was wrong, but despite *how* wrong (indeed worse than wrong) Ackerman was, de Boer still managed to do so in about the most ineffectual way possible.
I.e., not by whacking Ackerman as defending the right of Israel-First jews to never be validly identified, but instead by some mumbled argle-bargle just making it seem as if Ackerman went a little overboard or something.
I’ll just leave it to anyone so interested to go look at deBoer’s words themselves on this, noting the number of times he had to respond to critical pro-Ackerman posts *because* his original comment was so misdirected and weak. (Only eventually it seems to me, and even then in a rather cloudy way, did he finally come around to getting at the heart of Ackerman’s assertion which again is essentially defending the right of some to never be called what they are.)
And, like I said originally too—and with few exceptions say again now as regards the later posts that came in on deBoer’s blog—it’s damn near humorous seeing the ineffectualness of most of the critics of Ackerman on de Boer’s blog as well. Gee, all they can seem to do is worry worry worry that someone someday who calls out another as an Israeli Firster might just might possess a molecule of anti-semitic intent in doing so … gasp.
No wonder I think the Palestinians are goners: The Israelis are stamping on their necks and stealing ‘em blind, and anyone who says a peep about same is immediately attacked en masse by those using the most evocative, visceral, violent-even and *effective* language imaginable, and … in large measure those who see what is going on and utter a few peeps about same get the nervous shakes, wet their pants and start to endlessly debate amongst themselves about whether the mildest language they’ve thought of using might theoretically be said to possess some quark of objectionableness to someone who once walked the earth.
And meanwhile the Israelis are running bulldozers over people.
Talk about asymmetrical warfare; this is like seeing chipmunks debating just what version of the Marquess of Queensberry Rules to employ against a herd of wolverines.
The grotesque Dershowitz comes out and tells liberals and the Left that no matter what you can’t compare the Israelis to the Nazis and … not only does it get published in what is perhaps the most prominent liberal/Lefty outlet … so far as I can tell not one liberal/Lefty comes out strongly saying they will stop using that language when the Israelis stop some of their Nazi-like behavior. (Such as territorial aggrandizement, with the Nazi’s history of same essentially being *the* reason why the entire world now including even the U.S. condemns Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.)
And now Ackerman comes out and says jews have the right to not be accurately identified as Israeli-Firsters even if (as does THE major backer of an American politician) they admit it, and … the liberal/Left gets itself tied in knots debating this?
Or … AIPAC is caught trafficking in American secrets and … the liberal/Left *still* can’t seem to utter the words “traitors” or “treason” or “Fifth Column”?
What a larf.
any resolution to the argument will come about with a meeting of minds of the majority of American jews, however … it is long past time that the American jews take control of the politics of I/P in the national interests of the United States – you cannot be an American jew and an israel-firster – they are mutually exclusive … thus, American jews must have that hard conversion and divorce themselves form the policies of the Likkud and ongoing warcrimes and occupation and this means they have to stop the flow of money to settler groups and the israeli right-wing and demand of israel that they finally make the peace/land deal that has been on the table for years and begin to dismantle the bunker state and create a secular, pluralistic society with equal rights for all … it is only in this form that israel as a nation will survive and thrive and that a new round of anti-jew feeling is kept from manifesting into actions against jews directly as a result of zionism and the policies of israel
RE: “Once Lee Smith joined the Hitler orgy over the Israel Firster debate naturally it occurred to me, with gentiles joining, the conversation was wiiiiide open.” – Annie Robbins
QUESTION: So the proto-fascist Lee Smith is a gentile?
Lee Smith – link to hudson.org
dickerson, the end of his hitler essay:
link to tabletmag.com
facts, like truth, are neither gentile nor Jewish.
I would change one word in Smith’s bravura declaration:
*aka lies
Jews AND non-Jews should be concerned that lies are told about Muslims, about Palestine, about Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya as well as Jews.
“Especially those who are not Jewish” SHOULD consider this their problem because there are far more Jewish protectorates like ADL, CAMERA, minders in news rooms, CampusWatch monitors in universities throughout the US, and Hannah Rosenthal’s office at State Department who are “concerned with” “Jewish” interests than are concerned with all other categories combined.
“And there is something wrong with anyone, especially those who are not Jewish, who thinks this isn’t their problem as well”. Well, I do think anti-Semitism isn’t my problem. Thanks for the psychoanalysis, Mr. Smith.
Thanks, I have a very difficult time reading anything by Lee Smith. Let’s call it the “cringe factor”.
I guess if I had a name like Lee Smith (or John Smith, Jim Jones, Joe Blow, etc), I would be really messed up too! I wonder how tall (more likely short) he is. A certain percentage of short men try to (over)compensate by becoming über-authoritarians.
have israel’s supporters ever gone as ape shit over the use of a word as they now are in regards to israel firster? do they know something we don’t know, like this is the make or break moment for the zionist entity? or, if this were a chess match, would this represent our side being one move short of calling checkmate? why are israel firsters feeling so desperate and vulnerable? perhaps because they realize that once their u.s. patriotism is doubted, like puncturing a hot air balloon, they’ll go flat, busted, dereft of their form bravado and in complete disarray. what this means is that ours is not to denounce the use of the label israel firster, ours is to denounce israel firsters.
“I know many people who have political stances on everything, and voice them without regard or fear, on questions of race, abortion, poverty, Afghanistan, gay rights, health care…. But about Israel, they won’t speak.”
If you break this silence once and for all, the Israel Lobby will be toast.
unfortunately, Justice Please, “breaking the silence once and for all” is going to be a long, slow process requiring repeated “breakings of the silence.”
People in my community are aware that I advocate for justice in US policy toward Iran. At a recent community gathering, a neighbor grabbed me by the arm and gave me a tongue-lashing for not demonstrating American patriotism. She gets her information from Rush Limbaugh; I spend 4-5 hours a day in libraries, conferences, watching House, Senate hearings, reading Mondoweiss & a dozen other blogs.
How do you get the message down to the Limbaugh set, especially when they’re minds are poisoned like crack addicts with demonizing information?
“How do you get the message down to the Limbaugh set”? Easy. You approach them from the right. You explain how they’re unpatriotic.
““breaking the silence once and for all” is going to be a long, slow process requiring repeated “breakings of the silence.” ..teta
It might be true it’s going to take repeated breakings but I think it’s going much faster now than before.
When I started out on this subject years ago just saying what I say now about US-Isr not being identical and foreign loyalties influence within a nation being dangerous ,I got called every name in the book by the zios and even a few non Jewish others who though it was some kind of holocaust hersey to criticize the Jewish state and Israel influence at all.
But I don’t see as much of that any more in the public discussion –it comes now from the professional public mouthpieces. Cause they have lost or are losing the debate on I/P as well as the US -Isr relationship.
The actual facts just need to spread to the public so they have the facts to back up their ‘ emotional’ feelings on Israel- first also.
‘Israel-firster’ in context: A response to rightist ‘pro-Israel’ rhetoric
link to 972mag.com
John you are an american living in palestine(called israel) and you are debatingthe notion of israel-firster?Can’t you see the irony? I suppose as a liberal jew you are closer to the demonstration during the evictions. The more i look at this the more i see the logic of Gilad Atzmon
No, not guilty, quebecleft! I am not an american living in palestine, but did quote from the one I linked to…
Mairav Zonszein is an Israeli-American native of New York City, living in Israel since 1999.
Her research focuses on the role of Israel in Jewish identity politics. She wrote her MA thesis on the changing definition of being “pro-Israel” in American Jewry.
Your confusion is understandable if you didn’t open the link given. Guess I should have made it clearer, so it’s my oops rather than yours.
Annie.
You and your fellow travelers on Mondoweiss are far more concerned about Israel than you are concerned about what is happening in your own countries or anywhere else around the world.
You are the real ‘Israel Firsters’.
Palestine firsters please. Ta
Some people look here, there, and everywhere proudzionist.
And you want these people to only look over ‘here’ cuz you don’t want them to see and therefore talk about the (proud) zionist crimes against humanity committed ‘over there’.
Fair enough. BUT THEY WON’T! The cat’s outta the bag. Deal with it. Stop ‘attempting’ to distract. It’s an intellectually immature argument you make.
you got it blake. i already came out
link to mondoweiss.net
The US is right to be concerned about Israel Firsters. They are pushing for a war with Iran which the US doesn’t need and can’t afford. It will send the world price of oil to $300 a barrel or greater and plunge the US economy into a decades long depression.
It’s no surprise that many of us are so concerned about Israel. All Netanyahu has to do is give the order to bomb Iran and Iran will attack US forces in the area on the quite reasonable assumption that Israel would never pull a stunt like this without our tacit approval. In response we will enter the war on Israel’s side, thus guaranteeing that the entire Baby Boomer generation will see their comfortable retirements vanish into poverty.
pz,
I’ve made my concern plain — I’m “far more concerned about Israel” precisely because of what US involvement with Israel is doing to the USA. Zionism has way more power and influence over US government and media than is warranted by “its proportion in the nation or its skill and contribution,” to quote William Dodd.
I’m an ‘America firster.’ That’s why I want zionism out of US government, politics, policy, finance, media. And no, I don’t think the US has any obligation to Israel whatsoever. The only “special” that I would attach to Israel involves the short bus.
Israel is happening in our own countries.
If you were an Israeli citizen and a lobbying group financed by Hamas sympathizers bought 99% of your politicians and took control of all your major media outlets, and pushed the agenda of a nuclear free Middle East and complete military disarmament for Israel, would you be mildly concerned by such circumstances? Probably not, since you don’t think its a problem in the United States for foreign special interest groups to possess heavy influence over a nation’s policies.
putzracist666, If you people would stop mooching on the US and would stop your serial oppression of the Palestinian and start acting like decent humans, maybe no one would give a damn about your shitty little state.
So which is worse for an American: to be called an anti-semite or an israel-firster?
Cuz some under-informed goy are gonna be plenty confused and hesitant when discussing the I/P conflict in public.
And to all them confused ‘gentiles’ out there I say to you: truth is golden. Read up, get informed, aspire to fairness when assessing, then tell the TRUTH.
Oh yeah, and take responsibility for your views.
The debate about PC rhetoric, this policing of language that is the subject of today’s post here, arises so that the American public are never given a factual discussion as to just what is, or is not, in America’s best interest. link to mycatbirdseat.com
In, short, what is America’s interest in rubber-stamping Israel’s policies and conduct?
For example, on the Israeli settlements, which has long been against official US policy and recognized by the whole world except for Israel & sometimes, the US–as illegal under international law?
citizen, check out ‘Raimondo: ‘Israel firster’ did not originate with neo-Nazis as Kirchick and Ackerman claim, but rather with an anti-Zionist Jew’
link to mondoweiss.net
I’ll try again. Raimondo implies it’s OK to use the term ‘Israel firster’ because it was invented by an anti-Zionist Jew – otherwise, why mention it? Which means that, if a Zionist could prove otherwise, one would feel less able to use it. You’ve given too much ground. ‘Israel firster’ is a useful shorthand for a person who puts Israel first. It doesn’t matter from whence it came.
Raimondo implies it’s OK to use the term ‘Israel firster’ because it was invented by an anti-Zionist Jew
sorry, i don’t read it that way. the origin of the argument wrt where the term originated began w/the neocons. raimondo cites James Kirchick and both ackerman and a slew of others parroting this justification for anti-usage of the term. raimondo simply decimates their argument by proving them wrong and then on to clearly state his reasons why it is justified (in bold).
so i don’t see this implication. also, the italics in blockquotes do not show up here but raimondo italiced “by policing the language of the debate“. i think his point is their is good reason to use the term and don’t put restrictions on the language we use to communicate.
“national interests of the United States”—I don’t recognize the concept. I understand my own interests (more or less), the interests of my friends and family, even the interests of my working-class sisters and brothers around the world—but the “national interests”?—sorry, I don’t get it.
This is way o/t, and I already got snipped once, but here goes. I used to agree exactly with ‘notatall’ (12:38pm). “Working-class brothers and sisters” – yes I agree. I’d like to see the end of nation states too. Ben Anderson’s “Imagined Communities” is a nice expression of Marxist incomprehension of their remarkable persistence. There must be an explanation, and it will come from evolutionary theory. What is it in our stone-age-made genes that enables us to substitute a diverse nation of 350 million for a small tribe?