MJ Rosenberg says he won't be using the term Israel Firster but it was an effective tool in the work to stop a war on Iran.
It has proven to be a distraction, allowing the pro-war lobby to focus on my choice of words rather than the substance of my arguments. I will not be using it again, for many reasons including the fact that some good people were genuinely offended by it. That was not my intention. My intention is to focus like the proverbial laser on the threat posed by war with Iran and the 45 year occupation.
Perhaps I feel that threat more than some. My wife was born in a Displaced Persons camp in Germany to Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust. Many in the family didn't including my wife's uncle, for whom our oldest son is named, who was caught by the Nazis putting up posters in Warsaw urging resistance. He was gassed in Maidanek along with his young sister, just engaged to be married. They were both Zionists who dreamed of living in Israel. How amazed and happy they would be to know that a vibrant Israel exists. How horrified they would be to know that its existence is jeopardized by an unnecessary war, one that can be avoided by diplomacy....
My message is this.
Many of the same people who pushed us into Iraq are doing the same thing with Iran. They are pressuring Congress to prevent the president of the United States from negotiating with the Iranian government. They are banning diplomatic contacts. They are (as they have for a decade) hyping the Iranian threat, in part because they want a war and, in part, because they want to use President Obama's reluctance to jeopardize lives as a tool to defeat him In November. And they are demanding that should Iran develop a nuclear bomb, we must not contain the threat (as we did with the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Pakistan, etc) but should immediately go to war.
I have been fighting to help achieve a secure Israel, at peace with its neighbors, for more than 43 years. I continue to do that by fighting against a war that could eradicate Israel and endanger Jewish security in the United States and throughout the world. This war has to be prevented. The issue must not be what label I use to describe the war agitators. It is what the Iran war agitators are doing. They must be stopped.
MJ is a national treasure.
i agree, an american treasure.
When MJ helps the USS Liberty survivors and victims in finally achieving true justice, he’ll have my vote. Until then he’ll just be another white noise-maker.
This is by no means a sign of disrespect or personal vendetta, just my individual opinion.
I appreciate his latest offensive/attempt to administer verbal Thorazine to those people.
They remind me of a saying that someone sent me this morning: “Once you hate someone, everything they do is offensive.”
You’d think the Israel Firster’s would recognize the behavioral similarities with the U.S. Republican’s and mellow out.
There are no ‘good’ people offended by Israel- firster, only guilty people .
Too bad MJ backed down but the description is here to stay.
If we don’t use Israel firster people will use something even worse to describe them.
/There are no ‘good’ people offended by Israel- firster, only guilty people ./
If a woman is accused in witchcraft then you shell cast her into the lake.
If she drowns then she was innocent but if she floats then she is guilty
and must be burned at the stake.
>> If she drowns then she was innocent but if she floats then she is guilty and must be burned at the stake.
Proponents of offensive strikes against Iran use similar “logic”.
Actually, medieval jurist were pretty good in logic. Unlike neo-cons. Although my favorite was unresolved legal puzzle, namely what to conclude when both participants in a trial by fight got killed, but as the interested parties were no longer interested in mundane matters, the issue became moot.
Resolving issues of slander with mortal combat was very successful. The number of appeals was zero. What other system would give you 0% objections?
He had to back down to keep his job.
i don’t see this as backing down and i don’t know that it may have cost him his job had he not made this decision. he probably thought it was a good tactical move at this point going forward. it really caused a stir and i think the term will stick around even if he’s not using it. he’s got a message and he wants it heard so it’s time to move onto the message, that’s what i think.
If he backed down, still, it is better to live to fight another day, and better to win the war even if you must lose a battle.
Coaxing wall-flowers into the dance, winning allies from fence-sitters, is the purpose of what we do, not writing epistles to God or letters to be put in bottles and floated in the sea.
I try to imagine a person who really loves Israel (or his/her idealized Israel, myth, whatever) who reads MJR and learns something, gets a bit shaken, and says — I love Israel but not this dreadful occupation, I even love Israel FIRST, but not this dreadful occupation, and these dreadful settlers make me puke. Be a pity if THIS person were put off by a phrase, “Israel Firster”. Might just raise his hackles.
Is a tactical retreat…backing down?
“They were both Zionists who dreamed of living in Israel. How amazed and happy they would be to know that a vibrant Israel exists”
Hard to know. They would have to understand that Judah Magnes lost. Begin won in the end. The result is the Jewish brotherhood. Those born into the wrong religion are persecuted. It is far from the Shangri la imagined in the 1940s.
As usual here on the Mondoweiss, selective reading and filtered hearing are the critical virtues of the community. Mr. Rosenberg clearly says that his goal is to protect Israel from the distruction and save American Jewery from the backslash of the public “possible” fury. Sounds good to me, but all is heard here is- no more “Israeli Firster” use, let’s find another term. Such a waist and pitiful effort.
“Such a waist…”
You “could span it with an embroidery hoop”. A regular egg-timer of a girl.
Dimadok, as usual your argument is to attack irrelevant references used to accurately describe large numbers of zionists instead of discussing the reason these terms exist. Or in other words SUBSTANCE. Which is a clear indication you lack a persuasive counter argument
“Let’s find another term [for Israel Firster].”
That’s fine. Can you suggest something pithy and equally hard hitting that still suggests that the welfare of America is not the primary concern of those people formerly known as Israel Firsters?
How about “liberal anarchist” like Mr. Chomsky – after all his primary concern is the welfare of the humans in general and not the welfare of the US as the country.
I don’t see anything wrong with Americans putting the welfare of America before the welfare of Israel. I’m sure Israelis don’t put the best interests of America before that of their country.
They are demanding (Senate Resolution 380) that Iran stop enriching uranium all together. Most of us know that Iran as a signatory to the Non Proliferation Treaty has the legal right to enrich uranium up to 20% for peaceful purposes. Many of the same individuals who lied this nation into Iraq (Liebermann, Kristol, Bolton, etc etc) are demanding that Iran stop enriching uranium all together. Not going to happen.
RE: “How horrified they would be to know that its [israel's] existence is jeopardized by an unnecessary war, one that can be avoided by diplomacy…” ~ M.J. Rosenberg
CHRIS HEDGES, 3/05/12: (excerpt)…The Israeli poet Aharon Shabtai, in his poem “Rypin,” translated by Peter Cole, examined what power, force and self-worship do to compassion, justice and human decency. Rypin was the Polish town his father escaped from during the pogroms.
SOURCE – link to commondreams.org
P.S. YOU CAN PUSH BACK AGAINST THE “AMERICA-SECONDERS” (LOL) BY SHOWING YOUR SUPPORT FOR MJ ROSENBERG!
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Beautiful.
Thanks.
A huge amount of praise is due from us to Mr. Rosenberg.
fyi
URI AVNERY: Iran has not attacked any other country in a thousand years.
link to counterpunch.org
A thanks to Annie and the folks here who told me to read his: “1948″
MJ’s decision to stop using ‘Israel firster’ makes perfect political sense. By introducing the term he helped open the question. Obvious the discussion caused many considerable pain — the old truth hurts problem. However, his primary message is to oppose war in Iran and he sees (correctly in my opinion) that further debate on loyalty to America distracts from that. Most protracted political campaigns adjust their messages over time. This does not mean that his initial use of the term was a political error, just that it has served its usefulness.
I thought the piece had echoes of Goldstone. Rosenberg has to pick his battles. But there was a tone of grovel.
The Ziobots are brutal . Zero tolerance of dissent.
Which is why the crash will be such a mess when it comes. Monocultures don’t do shocks well.
Seafoid as much as I agree with many things you say I have to disagree here. Goldstone retracted the conclusions he made in the Gaza report. MJ did not retract his earlier statements. He simply announced that he was not going to use the term “Israel firster” anymore. He was not apologizing for having used it before.
It’s still a pullback. The tone of the piece is very different to what he was writing last week. I presume someone had a word with him about Jewish unity. He seems to be writing to a very specific audience.
I was thinking of Phil Weiss’ mother and her circle for example.
And it reminded me of this :
“It was a technique which the Zionists were to employ throughout their struggle. The technique of promoting damaging personal attacks on those who stood in their way rather than trying to counter their arguments.”
“Such non conformists were subtly made aware that their jobs might be at risk, their books unpublishable, their preferment out of the question, their public reputations vulnerable if they did not renounce the heresy of anti Zionism ”
Publish it not, Mayhew and Adams, 1975
“However, his primary message is to oppose war in Iran and he sees (correctly in my opinion) that further debate on loyalty to America distracts from that. ”
I don’t see how you can separate the issues. For people who care more about the welfare of Israel than they do that of the United States, the thought of a war on Iran is win-win. Because they care primarily for Israel it doesn’t bother them that America (and the rest of the world with it) would be plunged into a depression by oil at $300/barrel. Or that it is American pilots who will primarily die in the attacks (and soon after, American foot soldiers once it becomes clear the bombs didn’t suffice).
I’m troubled by the concept “Israel Firster”. America has become a place which celebrates (all too much) the individual, his/her wants, desires, pleasures, opinions, etc. Why shouldn’t a person, any person, be a champion of Israel’s interests — ahead of anything else which THAT person champions (and in THAT sense, Israel First) and ahead of anything which his neighbor champions? Isn’t that what politics is all about? ME, MINE, MY GROUP’s, MY CLASS’s (even if the 1% claim to be above class-warfare, I don’t and I think the 99% are wising up)? So why not Israel?
Unless and until — events show Israel’s demands and “asks” to be contrary to a widely agreed-to view of the American National Interest (for example, if we were at war with Israel, we’d not expect people still to be sticking up for Israel; recall the Japanese in WWII, and the internees — who didn’t een stick up for Japan!).
But THAT day has not arrived yet. Obama hinted at it. Our interests are different he said, suggesting that there IS a USA national interest, and he knows what it is, and it is NOT always to do what Israel asks.
The question of whether or not it is “in the USA’s national interest” to go to war soon with Iran is STILL AN OPEN QUESTION, and the Republicans have not yet backed away from demands for war. So it is too soon to say that Israel Firsters (in th normal sense) are traitors.
The thought of war with Iran is not an open question to me. Such a war would plunge us into a thirties-style depression and make the rest of the world hate us (especially those countries who are even more dependent on imported oil than we are). I agree that the Republican candidates are nuts for war but that just makes them nuts (not someone whose opinions we need take seriously).
are you saying that their beating the war drums isn’t enough to call out the israel firsters for the traitors they are? and is one’s judgement as to whether or not an iran war is in america’s best interest to be suspended until after our government decides, which way, war or peace? no trying to silence those drums by taking on the drumbeaters? and are you suggesting that we leave it to the politicians to decide? the same people who gave the green light to the iraq war? despite millions of americans motivated enough to join the protest marches? “the Republicans have not yet backed away from demands for war?” are you expecting them to?
U go MJ, get’er dun.
Jeremiah Haber of the Magneszionist writes on MJ.
link to jeremiahhaber.com
“M J allegedly tweeted in response to Dershowitz’s threats that he can go to hell. Dershowitz has responded by going nuclear. Because of his fury at Rosenberg, he is willing to attempt to cost Obama the election if the White House doesn’t publicly distance itself from Media Matters, or if Media Matters doesn’t fire Rosenberg, such is his fervor of the heresy hunter scorned. This time he has set the bar high, and, optimist that I am, I trust that he will fail.
Liberal Zionists, I am talking to you! Stand up for M. J. and you are standing up for your own against the like of those who delude themselves into thinking they are liberal Zionists. Otherwise you will end up by saying
I was silent when Dershowitz went after Norman Finkelstein because I am not Norman Finkelstein. I was silent when he came for Matar, Giora, and Sand because, well, I had never heard of them. I was silent when he came for a liberal Zionist like M. J. Rosenberg because I don’t tweet. Then when he went after me, nobody was there to help me….
[Update, March 8: Perhaps the Forward’s J. J. Goldberg’s heard this call, but whether he did or not, he has written a beautiful defense of M. J. here.]
Perhaps there is a ray of light in all this. The Israeli Reut Institute last year outlined an Israel advocacy strategy of driving a wedge between the liberal Zionist and the extreme left in Israel and abroad. For the most part, it hasn’t worked. There is indeed a gap, but it is between the real liberal Zionists like M.J., Peter Beinart, Naomi Hazan, Larry Derfner, Michael Lerner, Leibel Fein, David Grossman, Amos Oz, as well as the activist groups in Israel like B’Tselem, Rabbis for Human Rights, Breaking the Silence, on the one hand, and the faux liberal Zionists like Dershowitz, Abe Foxman, Benny Morris, Ari Shavit, and all those members of the so-called “disappointed left” in Israel, on the other.
How do you distinguish between the genuine and the fake liberal Zionist? After all, both kinds say that they are for two states, oppose settlements and settlers, support territorial compromise, etc. It’s very simple: if they publicly criticize Israel’s human rights violations; if they support groups that expose such violations; if they call out Israel’s elected leaders on matters of policy and morality — in short, if they adopt the stance of moral critic because that is deep in their Jewish and mentshlich soul – then they are true liberal Zionists. All the others are deluded into thinking they are.
And no one is more deluded into thinking he is a liberal Zionist than Alan Dershowitz, who never ceases to remind his readers that he opposes the settlements and supports the two-state solution. Sorry, Professor, that is not enough to qualify. You also have to support harsh measures against the state if the settlements continue. You can’t be a liberal Zionist and support Binyamin Netanyahu, the arch-enemy of liberal Zionists.If you care about Israel as Jewish and democratic, to borrow the language of the liberal Zionists, you will – like M. J. and the others – have to fight against those Israeli government policies that are destroying the democratic nature of the state. You will join hands with human right activists, Jewish and Palestinian, who are fighting for justice. You will support, like M.J., Peter Beinart, David Grossman, and Amos Oz, boycotts against the settlers and the settlements. You will support pressure from the Americans and the European states to stop Israel’s slide into a Putin-style democracy,
If, Prof. Dershowitz, you are all about carrots but refuse to use sticks – no, even twigs – in dealings with Israel, then your “liberal Zionism” is humbug and self-delusion that is designed for one thing – to allow you to face yourself in the mirror next time you read of some outrage in Haaretz, and say,
‘Hey, I’m a liberal Zionist. I am against the Occupation.”
so with zionists reeling under the assault of a label, israel firster, a label that exposes them for the traitors they are, we’re to pull back, stop using it? so as not to hurt the feelings of the settler entity’s supporters here in the u.s. of a.? when all they have to do to get us to quit using israel firster is to surrender their israel firstness and, instead, join the ranks of those of us who seek a just and peaceful world? no, israel firster has to remain in the vocabulary of those who struggle to sever the u.s.-israel special relationship. were we not using this expression, last week would president obama have said that american and israeli interests are not always the same, or that he has to think carefully before risking the lives of u.s. troops in a war on iran? surrender this word to the very people who would have us waste our* loved ones in another war, one that could lead to wwiii en route to doomsday? what the hell is this back-tracking all about? staying on good terms with these israel firsters? the same ones who championed the iraq war? come on, ye faint-hearted, don’t you realize you’re asking us to cave? with one hand tied behind our backs we’re supposed to continue the struggle? are you for real?
*our = the daughters and sons of mostly poor, rural and inner city america
let me clue you in as to why this appeal is out there to stop using “israel firster”
“they” as in the israel firsters being singled out, have a firewall, a scapehatch, behind which they try to hide, sort of like a cloak of invisibility that they believe they can stand behind and disappear ( think of a two year old hiding behind a blanket only much more sophisticated) it is fear of anti semitism which they use to their benefit only to stop any finger pointing, a la “the dreyfuss affair” which according to the fearmongers would or could lead to a holocaust, cause one never knows how these goying would react once that strand in their dna is activated.
so in short it is used as a tactic to allow the israel firsters (neocons) to avoid prosecution, one could almost believe that it is a legal defense of sorts for them.
thinking of it in banking terms then it is similar to too big to fail, if you let them fail by being singled out then the whole edifice would come crashing down on the rest of the banks.
therefore do not use that term cause it could hurt the entire community, back to the shet’l, hunker down for the sake of the clan and whatever you do, do not air out our dirty laundry in front of the goy.
this is just an attempt to explain the what and why of the stopping of the usage of israel firsters is used as an appeal to the entire community, when it only applies to the leaders of the groups.
so if this was an aesops fables cartoon what would the moral of this story be?
“this is just an attempt to explain the what and why of the stopping of the usage of israel firsters is used as an appeal to the entire community, when it only applies to the leaders of the groups.”
If this community’s reaction is as you suggest, then it is really time for them to grow the hell up and stop jumping at shadows.