Media Analysis

ADL lies about me so as to shut down discussion of Israel’s role in Soleimani killing

The ADL has lumped me and Max Blumenthal and Jeff Morley in with rightwing antisemites because we said that Trump killed Qasem Soleimani out of concern for Israel’s interest. The ADL classifies us as the “anti-Zionist left,” but it associates us with nationalist Jew-hating rhetoric that has undoubtedly made Jews less safe in the United States. And the ADL specifically scores me for speaking of the number of Zionist Jews that Trump has in his administration.

I confess that this kind of attack hurts. I grew up in a very Jewish household that had a lot of respect for the ADL; and I carry a portion of that respect to this day for the ADL’s efforts fighting bigotry. When people hurl the antisemitism charge at me, as they often have, it doesn’t just bounce off lightly. I think of the former friends who have accused me, including my former editor who said I am being “used” by Palestinians against Jews, and of my own family members, one of whom called my work “vile,” while the others ignore it and have never given me an ounce of support.

But let’s move to the actual substance. First, the ADL is lying in bringing up my post of last summer, “Why are there so many Zionist Jews in the Trump administration?” That piece quoted two Zionist Jews raising this religious question, in considering Trump’s craven conduct in Palestine. Yaakov Katz of the Jerusalem Post said:

Do you understand where the Palestinians come from when they say for example you got three orthodox Jewish men, Jason Greenblatt, David Friedman, Jared Kushner, who are the point people on the Israeli Palestinian portfolio?

Michael Koplow of the IPF also cited Greenblatt and Friedman’s religious background when he criticized them for cavorting in their “historical and religious playground… in wildly inappropriate ways for U.S. diplomats.”

Religion is a perfectly legitimate issue to raise when it guides a public official’s behavior. And by the way, there’s a war on inside the Jewish community over Israel, and I take sides.

Now let’s move on to the more important question. The ADL doesn’t want me to bring up the fact that Sheldon Adelson and Bernard Marcus, Trump’s two biggest donors, hate Iran, and in fact Adelson called on the last president to strike Iran with a nuclear weapon. The ADL seems to believe that even mentioning these wealthy Zionists is going to foster antisemitism. The ADL and its friends have been effective in that tactic because No one is mentioning Adelson and Israel as factors in Trump’s decisionmaking, even as he sides with rightwing Israeli militant policies again and again and again.

This is crazy. While nobody can read Trump’s mind, the president is plainly a transactional egomaniac who himself once said of a report that Adelson was going to give Marco Rubio money that “he feels he can mold him into his perfect little puppet.” The media has a responsibility to examine the extent to which Trump has become Adelson’s tool, and Bernard Marcus’s and Paul Singer’s — the three billionaires who led Trump to trash the Iran deal. The media won’t touch the angle, and that’s a dereliction. Netanyahu was the only foreign leader consulted on the assassination, the New York Times tells us deep in its coverage. But imagine if this were Russia getting its wish. Or the Koch brothers buying a politician. Jeff Morley was doing fine journalism by showing how Israel had targeted Soleimani. Max Blumenthal was making a fine satirical point when he said that Trump mispelled the Israeli flag when he posted an image of the US flag post-Soleimani.

And yes, I insist on discussing this in Jewish terms. Zionism is a Jewish ideology chiefly. Today there is a war on it inside the Jewish community, and maybe Batya Ungar-Sargon and Jeffrey Goldberg and Bari Weiss are right that 95 percent of the Jewish community supports Israel blindly. But the righteous 5 percent are waging an idealistic struggle to save their ethnic/religious community from a grave historical error, the persecution of Palestinians as lesser human beings.

My allies who are demanding the rehiring of an anti-Zionist teacher who got fired by a New York private school frame the battle correctly, as one between wealthy Jews and the Jewish future. The Fieldston administrators who fired J.B. Brager were “signaling to conservative Jewish donors that the school will punish dissenters from those donors’ views,” writes a group of graduates. They call out the ADL for playing a regressive role.

This weaponization of anti-Semitism is the subject of a pitched battle within Jewish communities, with organizations like the Anti-Defamation League attacking tens of thousands of young, progressive, and Orthodox Jews as “anti-Semites.”

Count me in on the struggle against Zionism inside the Jewish community. And in the struggle against the Israel lobby inside US foreign policy making. The ADL is on the wrong side on these issues. It has won a lot of battles over the last ten years including keeping the criticism of the Israel lobby in the margins. But it knows that bit by bit it is losing the Democratic Party and young Jews. So it lashes out.

H/t James North, Scott Roth, Adam Horowitz and Jeff Morley.

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Timely:

https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2020/01/09/israel-and-its-us-lobby-finally-achieve-a-long-term-objective-direct-us-iranian-military-conflict/

“Israel and Its US Lobby Finally Achieve a Long-Term Objective: Direct US-Iranian Military Conflict” by Grant Smith, Posted, January 9, 2020, Antiwar Blog.

“In 1953 the United States and United Kingdom overthrew the democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. The catalyst was the Iranian government’s decision to exert more sovereign control over the extraction, export and revenues from its domestic energy industry, which British Petroleum and the UK opposed.

“The dictatorial rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi featured massive embezzlement, graft, corruption and repression. Brutal SAVAK crackdowns on popular dissent were aided and abetted by Israeli intelligence operatives that flooded into the regime. Yaakov Nimrodi, a long time intelligence and military operative and arms merchant, was posted to Tehran in 1955 for 13 years. According to Nimrodi, ‘When one day we shall be permitted to talk about all that we have done in Iran, you will be horrified…It is beyond your imagination.’

“Iranian Israel relations were so close, that when American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Executive Director Isaiah Kenen was under U.S. investigation as an Israeli foreign agent in 1961, he fled to Iran to thwart a subpoena.

“’In 1961, it was rumored that [Senator J. William] Fulbright intended to investigate foreign agents. I was subjected to a barrage of inquiries from friends and foes wherever I went, and while I was confident that I would survive the attack I decided to vanish from the scene. Coincidentally, I was invited that year to visit Iran as a guest of the Iranian government. I accepted the invitation…’ Source, “All my causes in an 80-Year Life Span” Washington, DC, Near East Research, 1985, p 103.

“AIPAC was not incorporated at the time, and its host organization the American Zionist Council (AZC) was ordered to register as an Israeli foreign agent in 1962. Though covered by the order, AIPAC quickly split off and took over as the lead Israel lobbying organization in the US The Department of Justice never enforced its FARA order.

“Israeli arms sales to Iran under the Shah were extremely lucrative. In 1977, Israeli Defense Minister Shimon Peres signed a secret agreement for advanced technology transfer of an Israeli missile design that had been underway since the 1950s. This ‘turn-key’ package included a special airport, a missile assembly plant, and a long-range test site in exchange for $1 billion in Iranian oil. Israel even attempted to interest Iran in Israel’s US funded, but doomed, Lavi jet fighter project.

“The 1979 Iranian Revolution finally ousted the Shah. Fifty-two American diplomats and citizens were held hostage for 444 days during the hostage crisis. But Israel in the 1980s, with a failing economy and desperate to salvage its partnership with a major regional oil producer, helped orchestrate a secret ‘arms for hostages’ deal to the Ayatollah purported to help free Americans kidnapped in Lebanon. In concert with Reagan administration operatives, profits from Israeli stocks of US supplied missiles sold to Iran partially helped fund the Nicaraguan Contras after Congress outlawed US support.

“After Israeli influence over Iran ended, Israel’s US lobby AIPAC began working to precipitate a U.S.-Iran military confrontation in order to improve Israel’s strategic position. The most recent of these efforts included:

“1. Lobbying to create the US Treasury Department’s “Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence” unit in the aftermath of 9/11 to wage US economic warfare against Iran. The unit has until recently been led by a string of Zionist ideologues. See ‘Treasury Sanctions Foreigners for Israel’ Antiwar.com, August 30, 2018.

“2. Stealing Department of Defense secrets in concert with convicted spy for Israel Col. Lawrence Franklin. AIPAC intended to channel the secrets to the Washington Post in 2004 to convince Americans that it was time for troops fighting in Iraq to pivot to Iran. Though the Pentagon source was convicted, the two AIPAC officials involved in espionage escaped justice after a series of judicial contortions. See Congressmen Pressed Obama to Pardon Spy Lawrence Franklin Antiwar.com, November 27, 2017.

“3. Demanding cyber-attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities under threat of Israeli military action, costing the US billions of dollars, unintentionally unleashing sophisticated cyber weapons across global computer networks. See ‘Israel and the Trillion-Dollar 2005-2018 US Intelligence Budget’ Antiwar.com, November 7, 2018.

“4. Coordinated opposition to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) designed to provide transparency into Iran’s nuclear program and avert war. While Israel spied on negotiations, releasing them to US operatives. AIPAC corralled mainstream Israel lobby opposition to the deal, and helped insert a ‘poison pill’ requiring proactive action in the form of a presidential waiver to keep the deal from expiring. President Trump withdrew from the deal to thunderous Israel lobby applause in May of 2018.

“5. Demanding the US designation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organization. AIPAC began demanding sanctions on the IRGC through the Treasury Department in 2007. The April 2019 Trump administration formal designation of IRGC cleared the way for the US to assassinate Iranian leaders as part of the ‘War on Terror.’

“Israel and its lobby will likely labor mightily to keep U.S.-Iran hostilities going, while attempting to avoid blame for the conflict they labored so mightily to precipitate. This will have many ancillary benefits for Israel and its lobby. Armed conflict will empower additional Israeli demands for US foreign aid. Israel has received more than $282.4 billion in unclassified aid since 1948. Conflict will boost the prospects of Israeli military contractors in Israel and those streaming into the US under various state subsidy programs. Most of all, the conflict will allow Israel to divert world attention away from its brutal ongoing ethnic cleansing of the native populations in Palestine and ever more robust systematized apartheid.”

I politely disagree that Zionism is a chiefly Jewish ideology. While Zionist Jews may have spearheaded the movement in Palestine including the ethnic cleansing, I really think a lot of the impetus for sending Jews to Palestine is Christian Zionism. They with otherwise unfounded bible-based ideas.

Phil: “I confess that this kind of attack hurts. ”

Phil, you’re doing the right and honorable thing, even if many people don’t find the time or the courage to tell you so. Don’t judge yourself through the eyes of those who have allready lost their humanity and are blatantly racist and vile. Just think what you would do, if the roles were reversed and the Jews were the victims of oppression in Palestine.

Phil: “The ADL seems to believe that even mentioning these wealthy Zionists is going to foster antisemitism. ”

The ADL’s Jewish racism: “You can mention anybody, but only if s/he’s not Jewish.”

Phil: “But the righteous 5 percent are waging an idealistic struggle to save their ethnic/religious community from a grave historical error, the persecution of Palestinians as lesser human beings.”

Eactly. Like the few Germans who fought the persecution of Jews as lesser human beings.

Phil: “The ADL is on the wrong side on these issues.”

I would rank the ADL’s actions in the yellow level according to their pyramid of hatred:
https://static.timesofisrael.com/jewishwdev/uploads/2018/11/ADL-pyramid-of-hate.jpg

A Zionist “anti-defamation” organization engages in selective defamation. Imagine that.

Phil, fwiw, it’s more important to be a good person than it is to be a “good Jew”. And it seems to me that you are – or at least that you strive to be – consistently a good person. Don’t ever let the people who, for whatever (questionable) motive, accuse you of being a “bad Jew” change that.

Found this at the ADL website: https://www.adl.org/news/media-watch/philip-weiss-wrong-choice-for-on-the-media

Philip Weiss is in fact a longtime critic of Israel, whose website features a wide variety of anti-Israel themes, including claims of Israeli apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide. He is also a frequent speaker at anti-Israel programs and conferences across the United States. ….He has accused Israel of abusing the memory of the Holocaust in order to justify the “endless mistreatment of Palestinians,” claimed that Israeli policy toward the Palestinians is an example of the “abused becoming the abuser” and described Israeli military action as reminiscent of “the run-up to the Second World War. Those Jews were persecuted; and these Palestinians were too.”…..His blatant, one-sided advocacy against Israel and its policies should have, at the very least, been identified, and another perspective been provided in the segment….

Sincerely,
Abraham H. Foxman