There is no issue like the Israel issue on which deviation from the line will likely get you fired unless you are big enough, like Tom Friedman, that you are untouchable. Look at Congressional Democrats like Al Franken and Barbara Boxer pretending to be Likud zealots out of fear. (The Republicans don’t have to fake it! ) Look at MSNBC which never even mentions the lobby that is controlling US Mideast policy– with the great exception of Chris Hayes the other night at DNC. Look at the big name bloggers with the exceptions of Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Sullivan.Not even the NRA exerts this kind of control and, in any case, it represents a domestic not a foreign issue. The good news is this. The lobby is terrified by us. That is why the Israel Firster meme caused them to go into purge overdrive.But it’s too late. We have succeeded in making them self conscious and nervous. And it has affected the drive to war with Iran because they know that this time there will be no argument about who coerced us into war. Everyone knows it is them.
As a progressive Democrat, I am convinced that on issues as important as the US-Israel alliance and the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program, there is no room for uncivil discourse or name calling, like ‘Israel Firster or ‘Likudnik’, and policy or political rhetoric that is hostile to Israel, or suggests that Iran has no nuclear weapons program, has no place in the mainstream Democratic party discourse. I also believe that when it occurs, progressive institutions, have a responsibility not to tolerate such speech or arguments
Block paid for the campaign by losing a job of his own– he had to resign from a thinktank because of his tactics. (Though he keeps landing on his feet; he is now head of the rightwing Israel Project.) His smear campaign was soon joined by Commentary magazine and Kristol’s Emergency Committee for Israel, which published a full-page ad in the New York Times attacking the Center for American Progress as a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
After that Block’s antisemitism charge was echoed by another “liberal” Democrat, Spencer Ackerman in Tablet.
In February Alan Dershowitz said that Media Matters should fire MJ Rosenberg, and he was going to the president about it.
“I don’t know whether President Obama has any idea that Media Matters has turned the corner against Israel in this way,” he said. “I can tell you this, he will know very shortly because I am beginning a serious campaign on this issue and I will not let it drop until and unless Rosenberg is fired from Media Matters, or Media Matters changes its policy or the White House disassociates itself from Media Matters.”
First, in a full-page ad in the New York Times—featuring an image of a particularly malevolent-looking wolf, attired in a suit and tie, and holding a sheep mask—E.C.I. attacked two liberal advocacy organizations, the Center for American Progress (closely aligned with the White House) and Media Matters. It quoted the American Jewish Committee; the Anti-Defamation League; Alan Dershowitz, of Harvard Law School; and others, denouncing the groups’ work as anti-Israel and even anti-Semitic. Listing some of CAP’s and Media Matters’ donors, and their phone numbers, E.C.I. demanded, “Call these foundations and ask them: Why are you funding bigotry and anti-Israel extremism?”
Ms Bruck, time to follow that up!
Great piece of journalism, Phil.
There are very, very clear echoes of the early nineties but when it came to conservatives. As Kristol alluded to, he and his friends(like David Frum, who these days try to pretend to be a wounded moderate wanting a sensible GOP, instead of the extremism we have today, an extremism he worked overtime to bring about) purged significant numbers of paleoconservative writers.
Some of them were clearly reactionary, but that isn’t the point. The point is that their reactionary politics had the wrong angle. On issue after issue, various pretexts were being trumped out but there was a common thread: they weren’t buying the Likudnik line. Back then, William Buckley was the useful tool of the neocons, doing their dirty work.
This time, there is no such easy tool. Sure, Podesta is spineless, but he isn’t eager about this. Second, the radicalism of the Likudniks today are far more clearer. It isn’t as theoretical as it was back then, the Oslo sham process had just begun.
Today we know what happened – settlements increased by a record amount – and the 2SS is all but dead. Second, even if those conservatives were paleocons, they weren’t exactly human rights activists. They were moderate realists, concerned with the welfare of the U.S, rather than Israel and didn’t buy the propaganda line of “idenitcal interests”(they were too smart to fall for that obvious crap).
Today, you have not only moderates but genuine liberals. People who aren’t only mostly looking out for the U.S. but want a just and peaceful solution for it’s own sake.
Because it is the liberal position.
And these people know who the true liberals are – and it sure hell ain’t Spencer Ackerman, Dershowitz, Goldberg and their neocon alliance with Kristol and the other Likudniks.
Despite a few tactical noises employed, when it chips are down, you know which side they are going to take and sure enough, they lined up exactly how we thought – together with the neocons.
The second part is that the internet allows people to stay relevant, MJ is a case in point. People read him because he’s smart and he knows those people. You can’t quote him, he’s too toxic for that, but people do read him.
The campaigns are very similar in structure. The neocons(who are in both parties and draw considerable support from ‘liberal’ organizations like the ADL – which never bats an eye to support Christian fundies if they are pro-Likudniks – and other mainstream Jewish organizations) never believed in open discussion.
They never have. They may have rejected the Stalinist left’s politics but they never forgot to use the Stalinist methods of silencing dissent.
I don’t think it will work this time around for the reasons stated above, Israel is today much further along the Apartheid line and it’s very hard to protect Apartheid in the name of anti-Semitism; the counter-question becomes obvious: are Jews and Apartheid naturals together? If no, then why do you treat it like that?
This time they’re forced to rely more on brutal power, donor power and organizational heft. It can carry them some way, but something that has changed now is the soft alliance between realists(from both parties) and the left on foreign policy and especially on I/P.
You have a good chunk of writers from the Atlantic writing on Israel as it is(the Atlantic was always too WASPish to follow the Likudnik line, is that partly of the reason why Goldberg diversified to Bloomberg?). You have people from the National Interest writing about Israel as it is. The American Conservative mag, still on the margins, but less so among the young.
It’s a broader coalition. The targets may be specific, but the sentiment around Israel, it’s obvious Apartheid(just today the government officially approved Ariel University and cemented it further) is simply too large an issue to hide.
The RNC never had a moment like the DNC had last week.
This time, there are simply too many targets to shoot.
And the fortress to defend is uglier than ever – with no improvement in sight for embattled.
grrrreat post phil
It’s a political disaster for Israel, and for American Jews, that controversies over Israeli politics have escalated to this level of noisiness and ugliness in American politics. It will be all downhill from here for the Israel lobby, which needs to operate entirely in the shadows to survive.
Alan Dershowitz and William Kristol bragging, boasting and gloating before the entire world about the power of the Israel lobby to crush its political opponents strikes one as being quite mad. Pro-Israel militants, as they have become increasingly strident and shrill, have gradually lost their bearings and situational awareness.
If the American Jewish community doesn’t cut loose from the Israel lobby, the Israel lobby will severely damage the American Jewish community.
Good putting together Phil.
Now why doesn’t the Media corner of Garfield and Gladstone on NRP do this story….like to see a media interviewing of the character assassins and their victims re journalism and the media.
If Dershowitz, Block, Kristol and the rest of the rest of the gang go ballistic over the I-Firster designation wonder how they’re gonna like being designated Anti- American.
The Neos and Zios are Anti American– censorship, war, torture, empire, I-First, racism, elitness– all of it Anti American.
Obama needs to kick it up a notch and introduce ‘ Anti American’ into the debate, put it into play against Romney and the zio -neos, so we can have that national conversation about what America is suppose to be and what it’s real interest are.