Earlier today we landed on Jeffrey Goldberg’s saying that people who think the Israel lobby is important also believe that Jews have horns. Well here’s more: MJ Rosenberg has teed off on the piece at his site.
Check this out. It’s just a little piece by uber-neocon and Israel Firster Jeffrey Goldberg about sharing a moment with blogger Spencer Ackerman. These two don’t agree on much but, on Israel, they are one.
The little joke here is the two mocking the very idea that the Lobby exists or, perhaps, the idea that some of us think we can somehow control it. So funny, belly laughs all around.
Why is this important? It is important because the social element insiderness demonstrated here tends to keep would-be critics of Israeli policies (like Ackerman) in line — that and the fear that the lobby will block their careers. That is, of course, a legitimate fear. AIPAC has voluminous files and if, say, Spencer Ackerman, starts speaking out of turn, it won’t be good for his career, to put it mildly.
Career protection is the big reason pundits and commentators tend to avoid the lobby issue like the plague. (Note how Netanyahu’s attack on Obama was not news on MSNBC).
But don’t overlook the social element. Remember Judge Goldstone and his report on the Gaza war. He actually retracted it because his pals started dissing him.
So who will tell the truth about this issue? Tom Friedman does. He openly despises the lobby but no one can touch him and all his Pulitzers (I still give him credit. He is the most famous “dissident” and that can’t be fun all the time.) Joe Klein is big and can get away with it. Nick Kristof is good. Bill Moyers, a few others. The jury is out on Peter Beinart (the AIPAC crowd may get him in the end).
In any case, note the little Ackerman/Goldberg exchange. Multiply it by a few thousand and you might have some idea how the lobby works.
But remember, if you talk about it, you are a conspiracy nut or (if you are Jewish) a self-hating Jew or (if you are not Jewish) an ANTI-SEMITE. So be careful. This stuff is NSFW. Or NSF (keeping your) W.
I’m always amused by people like Goldberg.
Do he really think that it’s doable year 2012 to seriously try to pretend the Israel lobby doesn’t exist.
Even mainstream papers like the NYT openly write about AIPAC as ‘a powerful pro-Israel lobby’.
“I’m always amused by people like Goldberg.”
I would be, except that views like his still hold more influence than they should. As MJ points out, MSNBC is mostly awol on issues involving Israel, with the honorable exception of Chris Hayes (and even he didn’t raise it last Saturday on his show when he should have).
And try talking about this subject with liberals who don’t follow it closely (which I don’t blame them for–there are a lot of important issues and a person can’t follow all of them.) If you talked about the influence that the pro-Israel bias of much of the media they’d look at you like you just came from reading the stormfront website.
You’re right. But there are some areas where I disagree with you.
First, yes, there is an enforced mechanism of denial on matters concerning Israel.
Nonetheless, the issue of the Israel lobby isn’t really fringe in the media anymore. The Guardian even wrote of the ‘Jewish lobby’ a few weeks ago, but was panned on it(for understandable reasons, because even if AIPAC is a Jewish organization, it’s not the same as ‘The Jews’).
MSNBC is an interesting case, I think.
The VP of Comcast who is responsible for much of their TV programming(and who own NBC/MSNBC) is a fervent Zionist who even volunteered to get to UPenn to protest BDS.
So I think it’s comes from the top. A lot of the folks there, except Chris Hayes, are probably in the know on matters Israel.
Take Chris Matthews, as a good example. Or Rachel Maddow. The list goes on.
However, if you talk about the power of AIPAC instead of the ‘Israel lobby’(which is still loaded, but it shouldn’t be) I find that it’s much easier to open people with it.
Especially if you tie it in to Bibi Netanyahu and talk about he and AIPAC undermines Obama. Unless they’re stupid, ignorant or both, they will know what you’re talking about and many, motivated by political loyalty, will join you in your contempt against AIPAC.
And I think Goldberg underestimates severely the way lobbyists like him have already lost the battle in the court of public opinion.
AIPAC is now a household name. Within time, we’ll move more towards the truer phrase of the ‘Israel lobby’, since AIPAC is an integral part, but it’s not the whole part.
But for now, AIPAC is more than enough to talk openly about the subject.
“But for now, AIPAC is more than enough to talk openly about the subject.”
I agree with that. All the same, I see people claiming that the very phrase “the Israel Lobby” is anti-semitic, and when that happens I think one has to push back. There’s real anti-semitism and then there are fake accusations of anti-semitism and a lot of people have an interest in making sure no one can tell the difference.
On MSNBC they salute the lobby. Chris sneers a bit, Rachel Maddow salutes and rolls over as well as Ed, Al, Lawrence, Martin. Of course Chris Hayes is the only one who goes out on a limb in an honest and fact based way and hey he has not been fired yet. The rest of the MSNBC should be paying attention.
Oh yeah Dylan Ratigan and Cenk Uygar both went out on a limb several times on their programs about the lobby and the I/P issue. My favorite was when he and Glenn Greenwald mopped up the floor with Cliff May’s bullshit. Hey where is Cliff May. Not heard much from him on MSNBC. He used to be a regular guest it seemed
@ Krauss
“AIPAC is now a household name.”
You mean like Cheerios? Or CocoCola? Or “The Gun Lobby?” Or “ARRP”? Or Choice?
I don’t think so. I bet if you stood 100o Americans in a line, taken off the street, and ask each of them, “What is AIPAC?” They would go, “Huh? Never heard of it.”
Letterman would laugh at your notion that AIPAC is a household name. And rightfully so.
i adore you M.J. Rosenberg. you’re such a straight talker.
As shouted out in British Parliment, ” Hear Hear!”
x2
Me too.
No. He’s just more straight than other Zionists. Experiment: Reply to some of his Twitters. If he does not like your objective questions, or replies, he will cut you off his entry list of twitterers.
While there is much I admire and respect about MJ Rosenbergy, he is still a Zionist and two-stater. From his article in Al Jazeera “Can Israel Survive?”:
“There is nothing wrong about a Jewish city, just as there is nothing wrong (and plenty right) about a Jewish country (which the 20th century taught us is essential to Jewish life).
But that equation does not apply beyond the 1967 borders. The settlements and outposts in the West Bank – “legal” and “illegal” – are essential only to prevent Palestinians from having their own state and to make their lives as difficult as possible. The hundreds of checkpoints that divide one Arab town from another and not from Israel proper exist primarily to punish Palestinians. That is the prime purpose of the settlement enterprise. As for Jerusalem, which is now divided by walls of hate, it will only become one city when it is shared with the Palestinians.
That is why the two-state solution is critical.”
There’s also this from his September 12 blog post :
“Binyamin Netanyahu poses an existential threat to the Jewish state. Those who claim to care about Israel need to speak out. Will we really allow this rightist egomaniac to destroy a 2000 year old dream?”
For those of us who see Zionism as a colonial enterprise and form of nationalism based on religious and ethnic supremacy, both in concept and in practice, that 2000 year old “dream” is a nightmare. Ending the occupation and establishing the 67 line as Israel’s border isn’t going to change any of that. The only thing that will is establishing a State with equal rights for all its citizens, allowing the full right of return for all Palestinian refugees and reparations for those who choose not to return (basically implementing international law including the UN resolutions that have been on the books for 60+ years. )
The only two state solution I would support is if the West side of the green line becomes a binational State with equal rights for all and the East side of the line can become a Palestinian State for all those who are there lawfully under international law, refugees who wish to return and any of those who are there unlawfully that the Palestinian people decide may remain.
That’s my “dream.”
“That is, of course, a legitimate fear. AIPAC has voluminous files and if, say, Spencer Ackerman, starts speaking out of turn, it won’t be good for his career, to put it mildly.”
You call that “straight talk”? What exactly, is there in AIPACS “volumnimous files” on Spencer Ackerman which would be bad for his career if exposed? That he was once more to the left than he is now? He posted a picture of himself in a Speedo? He was caught with a live girl and a dead boy, or vice-versa (and you would have to be real well-versed in vice to be caught in flagrante delisciouso like that)?
I can only imagine what its like for people in the Media, our Colleges and Universities and especially for Politicians when the reality is that the LOBBY AIPAC and its miriad of satalite groups are even busy shutting down discussions on everyday site forums accross the net. I’ve taken note of this on many a site but its most obvious on right leaning sites like WND, all it takes is one phrase containing criticism of Israel, or about the connection between the NEO CON groups and AIPAC or their membership consisting of a lot of dual US/Israeli Citizens. Recently I was made well acquainted with a member RLD on the gay athletic site REALJOCK who was removed by LIL’AIPAC’ers who complained even though his critical quotes regarding Israel were coming mostly from Mondoweiss, Haaretz News and the Jewish Daily Forward.
There is you know an Israeli Propaganda ministry that puts out information for their LIL’AIPAC’s to plant on sites all over the internet. There is also a grant system to recruite college aged students to forward propaganda at our Universities. A simple Google search will bear me out on this.
Its time we in the US have a very blunt conversation about rooting these factions out of our media, politics and anywhere else they exist and are so ready with the anti this, that and the other charge, everytime the facts about Israel and the damage done to our country by being subservient to Israeli Firster rhetoric. We are Americans after all and it should be to Americas interests we are forwarding, not to any other country’s interests.
It is our patriotic duty after all to be against those who would influence and lead us to such wars as the NEO CON Dual US/Israeli citizens did as in Iraq and all the other misadventures in the Middle East.
Campus Watch etc has done their best to shut down the debate for decades. Will never forget when some student working on his PhD at Ohio University put together a panel about the I/P issues. Several Jewish professors screamed as loud as they could to keep Art Gish off the panel. Going back at least 12 years. Art had had plenty to say about the government of Israel for decades. But I don’t know a soul who had ever heard Art say anything anti Jewish. Not ever. And I had spent and enormous amount of time with him going to D.C. to lobby and protest a few issues. At that point had been a witness to very serious abuse in Hebron etc for several decades. Many of us in the community howled about these professors keeping him off the panel (he had been on hundreds of panels in Ohio and around the nation talking about this issue) Anyway Art came into the room with a piece of duct tape across his mouth just before the talk and sat in the front row right in front of the speakers. Classic. He basically stole the show. During the panel Professor Israel Ureilli was repeating the most serious of falsehoods about the I/P conflict that most of us had ever heard at that time. Many of us had a few things to say to him and the panel during the question and answer period. Know this has happened on college campuses across the country for decades up until the last 10 or so years. Ureilli and a few others were successful at keeping the truth off the panel but not out of our community, local newspapers etc. Had a great walk and talk afterwards with a woman Rabbi from the Hillel house in our town. We started talking and she called Art an “anti semite” I asked her please give me an exact and direct statement or action that she had heard Art say or do that was “anti semitic” Her answer well he says “Shalom” to me. I looked at her in utter shock. My response “you are a well educated person and this is what you call anti semitic? You have to be kidding me. You are a religious Jew and is this not the appropriate and respectful greeting? ” Anyway she and I walked and talked for about an hour. She was about to adopt a little girl from China. Hope all is going well for her where ever she is.
Our community and people in Hebron etc all miss Art and his living example of love and justice in action so much. But his actions have left an indelible mark on hundreds if not thousands
@ Kathleen
Ugh, that woman Rabbi from Hillel house. Pity the adopted kid. Maybe John Voight will be his step-father?
I wonder, do the ultra-religious, or the settler’s, have woman Rabbi’s? Or do they make do with men only?
Career protection is the big reason pundits and commentators tend to avoid the lobby issue like the plague.
Just listen to the ‘humner, humner, humners’ on Morning Joe. Except for Joe Klein.
I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Joe Klein masterfully take some party mouthpiece spouting talking points to task (he did it to Donny Deutsch pushing for war with Iran, of all things). It is a beauty to behold. Each time it sounds something like this –
Principal: Mr. Madison, what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
Billy Madison: Okay, a simple “wrong” would’ve done just fine.
I don’t know who “Billy Madison” is (or is supposed to be) but if anyone invited him to speak on TV as a sensible or informed person and he was incoherent, etc., the response should have been
.A simple “wrong” would not have been enough.
It was just a pop culture reference. “Billy Madison” is an Adam Sandler movie. The quote skewers dumb statements.
I particularly like the part about, Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it.
@MJ: prost!
MJ Rosenberg: do you allow non-Jews into the discussion? Could they have an argument at all?
@ eGuard
Simple answer from the way MJ Rosenberg handles his Twitter Account: NO.
Citizen, remember when Rosenberg showed up here to declare the anti-circumcision “movement” (what was the word he used, was it ‘rife’? or ‘filled’ ?) anti-Semitic and Islamophobic? Both! That was a red-letter day around here. I learned so much about tribal unity that day.
IINM he phrased as a stern personal intra-faith warning to Phil, warning of the evil forces he might be aligning himself with. Damned if I’ll look it up, those long threads take forever to load, and paralyse my computer until they do. Shoulda book-marked that one right away.
O.K….so any ideas about how we ordinary non Jewish and not in the insider circle of Goldberg&Spencer and immune to their insider assassinations of their fellow Jews can price tag these pieces of crap?
Put something in the suggestion box and we’ll do it.
@ American
Sorry, you don’t count, don’t register at all. Nobody important cares about you at all. Have you not figured that out yet?
@ citizen
They only ‘think’ we don’t count…..the fat lady hasn’t sung yet…:)
“They only ‘think’ we don’t count…..the fat lady hasn’t sung yet…:)”
Got to admit, in terms of what I see every day, that is a very threatening warning.
It was Cockburn who lost big in 80s. That career was destroyed by AIPAC .
” While most others on the left were largely ignoring, obscuring, or misrepresenting the facts on this issue, Cockburn was exposing them.In fact, he lost his first major position in the U.S., as a writer for the Village Voice, because of his articles discussing Israel-Palestine and Israel’s ruthless invasion of Lebanon. His pieces earned the enmity of both Zionists and those who claimed they weren’t, but who had what former Voice writer James Wolcott describes as a “gravitational pull to Israel.”
When Cockburn received a $10,000 research grant from the Massachusetts-based Institute for Arab Studies to investigate Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, Israel partisans saw this as a way to get rid of him. (He had been recommended for the grant by Columbia professor Edward Said.)
An article published by the Boston Phoenix after Cockburn’s death, “How the Boston Phoenix Got Alexander Cockburn Fired from the Village Voice,” gives some of the details.
The Phoenix, which was then published by Israel partisan Stephen Mindich (and now by his son), reported on the grant in an article written by Alan Lupo, a writer with a record of consistent pro-Israel bias in his articles. The piece was headlined “Alexander Cockburn’s $10,000 Arab connection” and subtitled “A question of propriety.” For his story Lupo phoned Village Voice Editor David Schneiderman, who eventually suspended Cockburn because of an alleged “conflict of interest.”
Other pro-Israel journalists gleefully took up the refrain, suggesting that Cockburn had acted improperly in accepting money from “the Arabs.” Recent obituaries mentioned the incident and continued this spin.
The validity of this charge, however, is significantly diminished by the fact that receiving a grant from an American foundation is normal, acceptable, and standard practice, as evidenced by the multitude of books in which author acknowledgements thank the various foundations that have funded their research.
As James Wolcott pointed out in his Vanity Fair blog: “Much handwringing to-do was made at the time of the incident about the need for journalistic transparency and accountability and such but let’s be honest — if it had been a Jewish-American organization or Israel front forking off the relative piddling sum of $10 thou, there hardly would have been this gummy uproar.”
Wolcott went on to note, “Imagine how many Beltway pundits, commentators, consultants and the like are on the take today via speaking fees, serving on panels, free fact-finding trips to the Mideast, etc. Alex’s sin was in aligning with the wrong team.”
The articles in 1984 and since that focused on Cockburn’s alleged “impropriety” failed to mention the fact that, according to prominent pro-Israel journalist Michael Kinsley, numerous journalists have gone to Israel on trips financed by the Israeli government – a far sketchier proposition. *
Governmental funding of journalism, in fact, is considered so problematic that a number of Israel Lobby organizations such as Act for Israel and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy have now stepped in to finance such journalistic junkets to Israel, removing the need for the Israeli government to be directly involved.
The fact that many journalists go on these Lobby-financed junkets also went unmentioned in the articles that brought up Cockburn’s allegedly improper grant and supposed conflict of interest. Also unmentioned was the fact that many journalists reporting on Israel-Palestine have close family – and sometimes personal – ties to the Israel military.
And there is still more to the story – which also is not referenced in recent obituaries. According to a 1992 article by former AIPAC insider Gregory Slabodkin, “AIPAC [the American Israel Public Affairs Committee] was the source of the original Phoenix story.” AIPAC is a leading institution in the Israel Lobby.
In his article, “The Secret Section in Israel’s U.S. Lobby That Stifles American Debate” published by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Slabodkin described how AIPAC secretly monitors individuals critical of Israel and feeds negative information about them to the media.” A.Weir in link to counterpunch.org
His career was destroyed, perhaps. But he was able to work at a left-wing rag called the Nation for many years, before it became a shallow partisan Democratic mouthpiece. He was able to reach young radicals at Counterpunch. He found readers on the right, particularly among paleoconservatives and isolationists. He made an impact.
Between the lives of the many well heeled, but forgettable journalists at the New York Times and the life of a radical gadfly like Cockburn, there is no choice.
Is it career suicide to challenge the lobby? It’s time for mass suicide. Life is short anyway – make it shorter for a cause. Let’s be honest: America is going down at this rate, anyway.
Sorry Train but Alex’s career was not destroyed. He may have suffered some set backs, but he emerged as a major voice for many of us. We continued to buy his books and we helped make Counterpunch one of the more successful internet outlets for progressive and radical voices.
@ ToivioS
Except that Counterpunch is always begging for money to support it, while Zionist Websites have no such problem. It’s the Adelson iron butterfly effect–very heavy, very direct.
So just today, well actually yesterday now, in my “free elective” world politics class, the last credit I need to graduate, we were talking about the attack in Libya the other day, the military-industrial complex, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and the billions sent from American taxpayers to fund these wars. And as my professor shows a movie clip that blames neo-cons like Rumsfeld for the lies concerning WMDs, I’m thinking to myself, I’m the only person in the entire room who knows the real reason for all our involvement in the Middle East. My heart starts to race because everyone including my professor are blind to the fact that the Zionist lobby is the reason for all of this. I don’t know how I break it to all these people that the reason for all these calamities in the Middle East and the decline of the U.S. is because of The Israel Lobby. Its downright frightening when you have information that know one else in the room has and sharing that information can get you in trouble with those higher up. And yes, based on a few comments from my professor (its only been a week or two of school) I can tell she’s positive or neutral on whether she supports Israel and she just doesn’t know the entire story of the Zionist financiers. What a situation we’re in.
Your professor knows it, he just didn’t want to bring the subject up.
YMJ,
Good to have you back, I missed your input.
You are so young to be bearing so much of a load of the making of others.
I wish you ‘Bon Courage’! I wish you a good life and Lots of success!
@ YoungMassJew
Yours is not a new seat to be in; I was in it back in ’68-69 undergrad school in certain classes, and again, back in law school, in Jurisprudence elective class in 1971.
Please keep us informed—we appreciate it.
YMJ, introduce it slowly and gauge the reaction. Ask pointed questions. If someone says something stupid, ask “What does that mean…?” or “Are you saying that such and such has no impact?” Draw them and the information you want out without committing much of your own take. #unsolicitedfreeadvice
Thanks for posting. Good luck.
YoungMassJew: “…I can tell she’s positive or neutral on whether she supports Israel and she just doesn’t know the entire story of the Zionist financiers…”
Give your professor some credit. She could be perfectly well aware of the the things you mention. It’s just that unless she both has tenure and actually enjoys getting hate mail, she knows she’d best keep quiet.
“Today a man only talks freely to his wife – at night, with the blankets pulled over his head”
It must be comic to see the caution with which upwardly mobile associate professors share their thoughts on this subject.
You could accost her privately and ask. Of course, then it might be your ox that gets gored: she might be a mighty warrior for Zion.
To be fair, in my college days, I made a career of disagreeing with my professors: I can’t say it improved my grades, but they were reasonably fair-minded. Of course, I wasn’t arguing about anything anyone actually cared about.
Have a go, and tell us how it turns out. I’m curious.
Yeah Colin, I might talk to her privately.
It could be comic. She might think you’re from ‘Stand with us.’ There to check on her.
It’s getting to be a lovely world.
“Yeah Colin, I might talk to her privately.”
Big mistake. Or for G-ds sake, at least make sure the door is fully open and you keep both feet on the floor at all times. And no, I’m not talking about that drawing (No. 23, I believe) in the Kama Sutra.
Be very careful, or you will be compromised.
“Of course, I wasn’t arguing about anything anyone actually cared about.”
Big difference from the passion and commitment of the discussions you have these days, huh Colin? It’s no longer academic, now it’s real.
YMJ
This might be the wrong message: “I don’t know how I break it to all these people that the reason for all these calamities in the Middle East and the decline of the U.S. is because of The Israel Lobby. ”
The US has many lobby groups running around. Ultimately, the US Government/Congress is responsible for their own policies. Not a lobby group, no matter how rich. And if we want to call Israeli lobby groups powerful, it is because they are given power. It has not been taken.
So in your shoes, one might want to frame the discussion without blame onto others, but instead a bit of self examination, with:
“I don’t know how I break it to all these people that the reason for all these calamities in the Middle East and the decline of the U.S. is because of disastrous foreign policy the US has perused over the past 60-70 years in the ME.” The state of affairs speak for themselves, no one can deny that, and thinking heads connect the dots.
Earlier this week, there were links here to articles written in the 40′s I think that you might want to check out and share with your class. I think it was seafoid who made the post. I have saved them, but on another computer, if interested and not able to find the links, let me know and will will dig it out. In short — where we are now in the ME was seen decades ago as a direct result for a misguided mentality of mucking around with an anachronistic, ethno-nationalistic Zionist colonial enterprise for cold war motivations. Plus the conflict is a big industry, where few benefit at the expense of all.
We cannot say were were not warned. And ultimately no one can blame “The Israel Lobby,” but only our own feckless leaders.
“We cannot say were were not warned. And ultimately no one can blame “The Israel Lobby,” but only our own feckless leaders.”
Lemme get this straight, our own leaders are “feckless” enough to give them the power, but they’re not feckless enough to blame “the Jews” when it goes wrong? And more especially since the Zionists have prepared the ground for them so well.
@ Mooser
Yeah, like there’s no historical examples of just how purely feckless the royal/power Christian elite can be in exploiting both their fellow Christians and their licensed Jews, each according to their lack of means, and limited means as well, and the notion of scapegoat has always been merely a metaphor. And peasant revolts and pogroms are never related.
@ Mooser
““We cannot say were were not warned. And ultimately no one can blame “The Israel Lobby,” but only our own feckless leaders.”
Yea they will blame someone else, even if it isn’t the Jews.
But the truth is it is they who are utlimately responsible for Israel firstdom and I/P. They are suppose to be the gatekeepers for the US against foreign influences like US zionist and they betrayed their duty for crass political benefits.
This why I repeat that the politicians should be the target of our Israel firstdom I/P attacks…..the link in the chain ends with them in the final showdown or resolution anyway.
YMJ,
Use Petraeus’ statement before the Senate in early 2010. Google it. Petraeus said the problems in the ME are because Israel refuses to make peace with Palestinians, and that every country knows it and decries it, and that it threatens American national security. If you can’t find it Mark Perry at foreignpolicy.com might have the link. He broke the story.
‘Natch, Petraeus had to do some back-pedalling later to assuage some Lobby complainants, but the key here is that this was Petraeus’ unclassified public statement. What the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mullen reported to Obama, his direct superior, was likely far more trenchant and detailed.
Thanks everyone for the encouragement. I’ve always been here. Schools been busy. A couple of things. So yeah it’s really a low level class, so who knows how much influence I can have, but I guess the hope is for it to be grassroots. My professor is a genuinely nice lady I can tell who I’m hoping will trust me. She has to deal with a bigtime Zionist in the other section of the class right before mine who talks about how Israel is just soooooo unfairly treated by the media. I got locked out of that section when registering for it late, so sadly I won’t get to confront her in realtime. Anyway, I will keep everyone posted. I won’t hold back anything. My school, in my opinion, is pretty tolerant of dissent. Not a big time Ivy- league, but still quality. There’s a Jewish professor, non-European background, who gave a talk about the Occupation a year or so ago where I showed up. Not too many showed up due to being apathetic, but no one complained to adminstration or cried anti-Semitism either. Also, a Palestinian professor whose class I took said to the effect “I don’t know why the Arab Israeli conflict has been so intractable. Some people say it’s the Israel Lobby, but if you have different information please, please share.” I think he was nervous about possible Jewish students complaining in class. Nice guy, used to take students to Egypt during school break for study abroad until Arab Spring caused tourism to drop off, according to him. And thanks everyone for the sources I can use. Much appreciated.
Whether Cockburn’s career was spoiled or ended is not quite the issue. What happened to him is/was a warning to others, and it’s the thousands of others who support Israel and the USA’s pro-Israel stance (or fail to tell the truth about them) — without personal conviction but from fear — which matters most. And while you’re up, say hello to Terry Gross, Rachel Maddow, et al.
Mr Rosenberg, you are deffinitely the point man confronting aipac and israel firsters…in your opinion who are the most influential neocons?
@ atime forpeace
You think when it comes to Israel, there’s a difference between moneybags Soros, and Adelson, or Koch Bros?
If so, what is it?
Cockburn’s career was not wrecked, a man dedicated to truth and unwilling to write in the service of a cause or belief he does not hold, is a career not worth having. Professor Finkelstein is another so called victim, I don’t buy that, he is a far better human being and can at least live with himself and his opinions knowing a life devoted to truth is far more fulfilling than job security at the cost of self respect and honesty.
I am hoping the good professor would say Hari Krishna to that.
I’ve heard that security clearances are affected as well.
In which direction?
Negatively.
Given Jonathan Pollard et al, there’s a definite irony there.
One more things guys. So I was thinking about it some more today and I think the best way to go about it in my opinion is how Citizen wrote about it in his response to David Brooks. Just like it isn’t Anti-Protestant to say that Anglo-Saxon Protestant English controlled much of the world via the British Empire in the 19th to mid 20th centuries, it is not Anti-Semitic to say that Jewish Americans via Zionism are at the seat of Empire through the Zionist Israel lobby and their war profiteering in the Middle East through the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It’s the same thing. I’ll have to assert that I’ve been to Israel, I was a Zionist by default of being Jewish and going to Hebrew School for about 10 years, but I’ve came to my senses. Zionism is the same as the volkisch (sp, I can’t do those accents)and Zionists believe that Jews are the superior race,etc. It’s going to get interesting this week.
sure ymj, let us know how that works for you.
“I’ll have to assert that I’ve been to Israel, I was a Zionist by default of being Jewish and going to Hebrew School…”
That’s only if you really enjoy mentioning that kind of stuff: You don’t “have to”. Every time you do that servile homage to the Stone Age Tribe, you implicitly reinforce the (not entirely) unwritten law that says that only bona fide “Jews” can talk about anything touching Zionism or Palestine. Screw that.
“servile homage to the Stone Age Tribe”
Well, unless you are willing to indict my Temple’s Judaica Shop for historical fraud, as far as I can see, it was a cheap Bronze and cast pot-meta age. Plus, they sat around putting multi-colored sand in bottles.
Not the artefacts, my friend. The brain. Even though I know that such a slur on the Stone Age man is unpardonable ageism, one simply has to have some whipping boy to call a barbarian.
YoungMassJew says: “… it is not Anti-Semitic to say that Jewish Americans via Zionism are at the seat of Empire through the Zionist Israel lobby and their war profiteering in the Middle East through the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. ..”
There is the point that even if one grants the validity of the notion that there is an Oberkommando der Juden at work, its power is limited by the fact that they have to manufacture consensus among the great uncircumcised first.
This promptly becomes clear whenever they get happy and overreach themselves. Like now. Their attempts to inveigle us into going to war with Iran are turning into the most appalling (for them) fiasco. We don’t want to, and we’re not going to do it.
Sry one more thing. If they bring up the pres. of Iran’s statement about supposedly saying he’s going to wipe Israel off the map, I can mention Dan Meridor saying he never said what he said. Plus, the Jews in Israel/Palestine aren’t in the same condition as they were in the 30s-40s cause there’s a 24/7 news cycle and Israel is the only one who currently has the operational capacity to unleash a genocide through its nukes, not Iran. The radiation would kill millions of Muslims too if Iran were to do that. There’s no network of railroad tracks from Persia to Israel where they could do that to Jews again. No hasbara gets past me.
Just remember, YMJ as a wise (if not righteous, but I haven’t checked) Gentile once said: “It is better to marry than burn out, and even if you do, the thought of your mortgage, kids, bills, will keep you going.”
YoungMassJew says: “Sry one more thing. If they bring up the pres. of Iran’s statement about supposedly saying he’s going to wipe Israel off the map, I can mention Dan Meridor saying he never said what he said…”
Well, that’s history anyway — or should be. Ahmadinejad just said that Israel is not something Iran cares about. He said it as rudely as possible, but he said it:
“… “They have no roots there in history,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said of the Israelis, according to Reuters. “They do not even enter the equation for Iran.”
In a meeting with Iranian expatriates in New York on Sunday evening, Mr. Ahmadinejad belittled Israel’s significance and the military threats Israel has made against his country over its disputed nuclear program. “A number of uncultured Zionists that threaten the Iranian nation today are never counted and are never paid any attention in the equations of the Iranian nation,”…”
– NYT
@ ColinWright
Ahmadinejad said in recent CNN interview that by “wipe” he means “wipe out the [Israeli] occupation.” In his subsequent UN speech he characterized Israel as a “fake” state. Read the UN transcript; it’s full of good questions which form the big picture Iran has of the root causes of ME tension. The usual suspects, beginning with US and Israel, walked out on it, of course. Canada did not even bother to attend.
OTOH, here it says only Israel walked out on Ahmadinejad’s UN speech:
link to veteransnewsnow.com
Something’s wrong here; is it me or what I read much earlier this morning?
I guess he gave two speeches at the UN, and in one only the Israeli envoy walked out: link to mfs-theothernews.com
At any rate, it’s still significant since the US usually walks out on his speeches at the UN.
UPDATE:
So last week the possible Israeli/U.S. attack on Iran came up in current events and I mentioned how although the president of Iran is a digusting man who has questioned the Holocaust, he said that Zionism as an ideology will be destroyed, not the Jewish people. Plus, the radiation from a nuclear blast in the Holy Land will kill Muslims and Jews so Iran would never do that. I don’t think my professor is Zionist-oriented per se. She’s a smart cookie I can tell who I think sees through the Israeli hasbara. No problems so far. No one said anything in response to my statements. Of course it will get more interesting once I mention how American Jews are now the WASP upper crust and uber-rich Zionist Jewish financiers are the reason we went into Iraq and Afghanistan. You have to warm people up to these ideas and can’t throw it at them at once. I know the clock is ticking and the presidential election is coming up, don’t worry I’ll give them the full story before election day so they can make their decision and live with the consequence. Too bad Stein has no change of winning. The habitability of the world is dependent on Mittens not being elected.
@ YMJ
Keep it up. BTW, can you give me a source as to what exactly Iran’s president said about the holocaust? I keep thinking how his speech about “wiping Israel off the map” was intentionally misinterpret, both as to his context, and as to what he actually said.
And, a reminder: Iran’s president does not have the power a US president has.
I know Iran’s president is a figurehead and a lame duck figurehead at that.
YoungMassJew says: “… The habitability of the world is dependent on Mittens not being elected.”
As so often of late, people say things at first glance seem to be wildly exaggerated, but upon due reflection, turn out to be all too accurate.
…It’s great that Israel is becoming his cause, though. You can almost see the smoke rising from the ears of every PEP in the country from all the mental short-circuits.
Go Bibi!
@ ColinWright
I agree. Mittens is truly deadly.
@ Citizen
Looks that way. But be on the lookout for voter fraud and rigging, particulary in mailed ballots…..remember who is involved in Mitts campaign..neo and zio mafia who play dirty and crooked.