This is the graphic at the start of a piece by Spencer Ackerman at Tablet decrying the use of the term “Israel firster.”
Hitler graphic at Tablet for Israel firster piece
I would point out only one absurd statement in Spencer Ackerman’s argument:
On Tuesday, writer Max Blumenthal used a gross phrase to describe Goldberg: “former Israeli prison guard.”
Does Ackerman actually believe this? Goldberg himself wrote a book called Prisoners. I will quote you the cover of the galley when Knopf published it in 2006:
They met in 1990 during the first Palestinian uprising. One was an American Jew who served as a prison guard in Ketziot; the other was his prisoner– a leader of the PLO.
As always, Haaretz is more intelligent. Here is Mairav Zonszein of +972 wrestling with Israel firster and finding some merit in the expression:
When progressive entities like the Center for American Progress and figures like M.J. Rosenberg use the term “Israel-firster,” they are attempting to deconstruct and challenge the notion that being “pro-Israel” means demanding unchecked support for Israeli policies, even when they directly conflict with the U.S. administration’s stated positions and its declared role as an arbiter in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Such people are trying to dismantle the equation between opposition to Israel’s current reckless agenda, and concern for Israel’s long-term interests and impact on American geopolitics. They are identifying those, whether Jewish or Christian, Democrat or Republican, who, as Rosenberg put it, “consistently – and without exception – thwart the efforts of U.S. presidents to achieve Middle East peace.” “Israel-firsters” are not those who put Israel first, but rather those who put an Israeli right-wing agenda first, even at the expense of American interests.
Or as a Jewish speaker at last night’s event for Jack Ross in Brooklyn said, The issue of dual loyalty is at the heart of the suggestion by the publisher of an Atlanta Jewish newspaper that Mossad agents based in the U.S. assassinate Barack Obama because he is too tepid on Iran.
So what are we supposed to think when an American says something like this…
“In a talk to an Israeli group in July, 2010, Adelson said he wished he had served in the Israeli Army rather than the U.S. military—and that he hoped his young son would come back to Israel and “be a sniper for the IDF,” a reference to the Israel Defense Forces.
(YouTube video of speech http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EGgCdChPOw)
“I am not Israeli. The uniform that I wore in the military, unfortunately, was not an Israeli uniform. It was an American uniform, although my wife was in the IDF and one of my daughters was in the IDF … our two little boys, one of whom will be bar mitzvahed tomorrow, hopefully he’ll come back– his hobby is shooting — and he’ll come back and be a sniper for the IDF,” Adelson said at the event.
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/27/10249298-gingrich-funder-isnt-trying-to-buy-the-presidency-aide-says
All this prostration before the golden calf of Zionism for Jewish money and Evangelical votes
http://www.haaretz.com/news/u-s-elections-2012/romney-palestinians-don-t-want-two-state-solution-they-want-to-eliminate-israel-1.409459
Governor Mitt Romney said on Thursday that the Palestinians are not interested in a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, rather that they are interested in the elimination of the State of Israel.
The leading candidate in the race to become the Republican candidate for presidency was prompted by a question posed by a Palestinian-American Republican at a CNN-sponsored debate in Jacksonville, Florida on Thursday night.
What do you think of Romney’s remarks? Visit Haaretz.com on Facebook and share your views.
“Israelis would be happy to have a two-state solution. It’s the Palestinians who don’t want a two-state solution; they want to eliminate the State of Israel,” Romney said.
Romney was responding when the man asked, “How would a Republican administration help bring peace to Palestine and Israel, when most candidates barely recognize the existence of Palestine or its people?”
Romney went on to say that “whether it’s in the political discourse that is spoken either from Fatah or from Hamas, there is a belief that the Jewish people do not have the right to have a Jewish state.”
“I believe the best way to have peace in the Middle East is not for us to vacillate and to appease, but is to say we stand with our friend Israel; we are committed to a Jewish state in Israel; we will not have an inch of difference between ourselves and our ally Israel,” he added.
Romney attacked President Barack Obama’s policy saying,”This president went before the United Nations and castigated Israel for building settlements. He said nothing about thousands of rockets being rained on Israel from the Gaza Strip.”
“This president threw Israel under the bus with regards to defining the ’67 borders as the starting point of negotiations. I think he disrespected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Bibi Netanyahu. I think he has time and time again shown distance from Israel, and that created, in my view, a greater sense of aggression on the part of the Palestinians,” Romney added.
Former Speaker of House Newt Gingrich, who was asked to comment on his statement calling Palestinians “an invented people,” stood by his controversial remarks.
“It was technically an invention of the late 1970s,” Gingrich explained. “Prior to that they were Arabs.”
Glen Greenwald has a good column about this:
“The predictable aftermath of the anti-CAP smear” at
http://www.salon.com/writer/glenn_greenwald/
You know you’ve been reading too many books on the Nazi Era and Second World War when the first thing you think in looking at that graphic is that it must be flipped because Hitler’s part is on the wrong side…
It just ought to be remembered in talking about this what the Spencer Ackermans on this issue are effectively saying: To wit, that no matter how true it is that a jewish person puts Israel first in all things—that indeed no matter if they stand up and say “I’m an Israeli Firster!,” you cannot call them that if they are jewish because that plays into “an anti-semitic trope.”
In other words, jews have a special dispensation: One should not be able to properly, validly identify them in a certain way no matter how indisputably or even admittedly true it is.
And, it should be further noted, Ackerman is a smart guy. He knows full well this is what he’s saying. And he knows full well that it is that he believes jews simply have some superior moral status than everyone else. That, in essence, in this regard at least, he is a “Jewish Firster.”
The only thing he doesn’t say is all the other things he believes jews are entitled to as a result of their superior moral status and what other double standards that he believes jews should enjoy—with his silence of course leading to the implication that he grants none of them in his writings.
But, on the other hand, in keeping with his belief that jews simply can’t be properly identified in some ways no matter how valid, it isn’t hard to believe that, being jewish, he also sees no obligation to tell us what special dispensations he grants to jews and jewish issues in his writings either.
Gee, how nice. A journalist openly telling us that he would refuse to report accurately as to at least some people regarding some things. And all us stupid goyim are supposed not to notice any of this, ha ha ha.