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Nina Turner was hurt in closing weeks by flood of negative Israel lobby ads that didn’t mention Israel

Michael Arria is on vacation, so I’m pinch-hitting this weekPhil Weiss.

Two narratives on the Cleveland-Akron state of mind…

Two narratives are playing out in the aftermath of the dramatic race in a northeast Ohio congressional district that the establishment Democrat, Shontel Brown, won by 5 points on Tuesday night after trailing to the progressive, Nina Turner, during most of the campaign.

The mainstream press casts the race as a negative verdict on the left wing of the Democratic Party. The Squad rose in response to the Trump presidency– well now Trump is gone thanks to a pragmatic moderate in Joe Biden and if you’re not loyal to Biden and a moderate yourself, the voters are turned off! And yes, that means be moderate on Israel. Don’t say a word against Israel even when it’s slaughtering civilians in Gaza. Look: Nina Turner dared to speak up in May against Israel; and Jewish voters in the Cleveland suburbs made her pay for that, they supplied Shontel Brown’s margin of victory– 4,000 votes out of a mere 71,000 cast for the two candidates. Brown ran up the score in the wealthy white suburbs.

The progressive narrative is altogether different, of course.

Nina Turner was running way ahead of Shontel Brown till Brown “red-boxed” her in May. That’s when Brown put up a list of negative talking points about Nina Turner’s views of the Democratic establishment in a red box on her website, with a quote from Mark Mellman of Democratic Majority for Israel, saying that Brown would be good for Israel, and as the Intercept reported at the time, the red box was there to help outside PACs: Here are the lines you should use when you put unlimited outside “independent” spending into the election.

Shontel Brown embraced Israel in over-the-top ways, saying the country was a model for black people fighting “hatred” and “persecution” here; and the Democratic Majority for Israel PAC poured nearly $2 million into her cause. And the key is that it came in the last month of the campaign, and inundated northeast Ohio with negative ads about Nina Turner’s alleged unreliability as a Democrat.

And of course not a word about Israel. Democratic Majority for Israel labeled itself “DMFI PAC” in all those ads about Nina Turner not being a good Democrat. Though DMFI’s funding comes from some Republicans.

Alexandra Sammon at the Prospect calls DMFI “a famed anti-progressive super PAC” that went under the radar:

Notably absent from all of those ads is any mention of Israel, a consequential omission for a group called Democratic Majority for Israel. Instead, those messaging points were all lifted, nearly verbatim, from the redbox on Brown’s website. (DMFI briefly attacked Turner for refusing to condemn the BDS movement and endorsing conditions-based aid to Israel when they endorsed Brown back in February, but it was not a major factor in the race.)….

What hasn’t yet been reported is how DMFI’s ads, which flooded television, Facebook, Google, YouTube, radio, and mailers throughout June and July, followed the themes and messaging that Brown’s site offered up nearly to the letter.

The New York Times, adhering to the mainstream narrative, mentions Israel only in passing. And it doesn’t identify Democratic Majority for Israel beyond saying that a “pro-Israel super PAC… ran advertisements reminding voters about Ms. Turner’s hostility toward Mr. Biden.”

The Times allows Rep. Hakeem Jeffries to make the race into a morality play about centrists being pragmatic and lefties being mean to Biden and how bad that is.  

“The extreme left is obsessed with talking trash about mainstream Democrats on Twitter, when the majority of the electorate constitute mainstream Democrats at the polls,” Mr. Jeffries said. “In the post-Trump era, the anti-establishment line of attack is lame.”

Josh Kraushaar of the National Journal offers an important insight into the race: Nina Turner spent as much as Shontel Brown, but she spent her money in the spring to get a knockout punch and had no answer as Brown flooded the airwaves in July.

Turner raised millions of dollars and spent it early… [S]he ran low on money. Shontel Brown spent more money than her in week after week of the campaign…She spent her money more wisely and critically than Nina Turner did… in the home stretch.”

Though Kraushaar, speaking to Jewish Insider, then does some pro-Israel-moralizing about Israel. Don’t go near the issue, progressives.

One thing that struck me… in the spring during the Israel Gaza war Nina Turner was out of control on twitter attacking Israel when she’s running for office in a district with a significant Jewish constituency that cares a lot about Israel. That is political malpractice no matter how you cut it. She couldn’t keep herself disciplined enough not to get on the keyboard, not to gratuitously call Israel an apartheid state– to help herself, when you have a lot of Jewish voters, a lot of voters who care about Israel.

Kraushaar refers to this tweet by Nina Turner during the Gaza onslaught, when she wrote “Solidarity is a verb,” and retweeted a comment from the young Jewish group IfNotNow:

NOW: American Jews are joining with Palestinians and others in front of the State Department to say #SaveSheikhJarrah and #EndApartheid. The Jewish moral tradition demands action.

At that time Jewish Insider quoted a pro-Israel Jewish city council member alleging that “Her views are uninformed and out of step with the Jewish community she wishes to represent.”

At the same time, Shontel Brown was blaming Hamas for the fighting and saying Israel has a right to defend itself.

Kraushaar’s line is not convincing imho. It must be noted here that by four to one, Democratic voters blame Israel not Palestinians for the war in May, and that two-thirds of Democratic voters say their congressperson leans more toward Israel than they do. The same polling showed that a “significant number” of Democratic voters, 43 percent, support conditioning American aid to Israel over its conduct.

As for “apartheid,” leading human rights groups have called Israel an apartheid state.; and IfNotNow echoes these objective assessments. It’s about time our politicians discussed these realities.


IfNotNow demonstrates against apartheid in May 2021. From its twitter feed.

Kraushaar concedes that the Biden-Pelosi establishment can’t shut down the Israel criticism.

The biggest question after last night is how does this afffect the pro-Israel Democrat’s community looking at 2022….. While I think this is encouraging for the pro-Israel Democratic community that they were able to win a very important race, they’re still playing defense a lot. I think you’re going to see a lot more emphasis on protecting incumbents that are pro-Israel, rather than going after left-wing Squad lawmakers who have made antisemitic comments. I just think that’s the reality within the party, that…

The Squad has the energy, they have the activism on their side…. It was a big win for Democrats in Ohio last night, but it’s a different story if you are thinking of going after Rashida Tlaib or Ilhan Omar, one of those leftwing anti-Israel lawmakers….

[The] ascendant left wing… [is] a minority but it’s a vocal minority and they’re very good at leveraging influence on social media and even in the regular media.”

It’s a sad reflection on the mainstream press that a reporter for the National Journal can so casually characterize leftwing politicians as “antisemitic” and “anti-Israel” because they criticize human rights violations or talk about all the money the Israel lobby raises– a key dimension of Democratic politics, as demonstrated on Tuesday in Ohio. Kraushaar also accuses Cori Bush of “incendiary comments” about Israel, because she spoke out during the last massacre of Palestinians.

It’s tragic that such voices have such power to shape the discourse; and that there is Zero cost for the anti-Palestinian rhetoric spouted by leading liberal Democrats.

Ben & Jerry’s story has legs

If the Shontel Brown victory is a shift in a rightwing direction in the U.S. discourse, the Ben & Jerry’s decision to stop selling ice cream in occupied territories signals progressive movement. Mark Hage, an activist with Vermonters for Justice in Palestine, explains how a 10-year campaign yielded results, in the Guardian.

For years the group pushed Ben & Jerry’s privately. Then:

In 2014, after Israel’s assault on Gaza killed 2,200 Palestinians, including more than 500 children, we launched a boycott.

The campaign gained traction this spring, as Human Rights Watch declared that Israel practices apartheid and Israel killed 67 children in indiscriminate bombings of civilian areas in Gaza.

Israel has oppressed Palestinians for decades, but the groundswell of support for Palestinian freedom has reached new levels. It’s only a matter of time before other companies take Ben & Jerry’s lead. It might be surprising that an ice cream company could cause such a meltdown, but Ben & Jerry’s set a remarkable precedent, one worth learning from.

Ronnie Olesker, an associate prof of government at St. Lawrence University, writes at “The Conversation”, that the “Ben & Jerry’s decision hints at a watershed moment in the BDS campaign…” in which Israel finally loses the battle for public opinion in the U.S.

The Israeli government’s rage over Ben & Jerry’s decision is backfiring with Americans, says Olesker:

The rhetoric of Israeli politicians condemning companies like Ben & Jerry’s that join the boycott of settlements – such as calling it a form of antisemitism or equating it with terrorism – makes the problem worse. In my own research, I found that it validates and perpetuates the illiberal image of Israel that the BDS movement paints.

Florida governor makes Ben & Jerry’s a front in the culture war

The Huffington Post’s Ed Mazza mocks Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s meltdown over the Ben & Jerry’s boycott at a time when the state is experiencing a surge in COVID cases.

[A]s cases continue to climb, DeSantis has prioritized his culture war with Ben & Jerry’s.

“I will not stand idly by as woke corporate ideologues seek to boycott and divest from our ally, Israel,” DeSantis stated.

DeSantis added the Ben & Jerry’s parent company, Unilever, to Florida’s list of “scrutinized companies.” Says Huffpo: “The move could ultimately prohibit Florida from having investments in Unilever or any contracts with the company and its subsidiaries if it doesn’t reverse course in 90 days.”

The Israel lobby freaks out over polls showing 1/4 Jews sees Israel as apartheid state

As U.S. public opinion turns, the Israel lobby is freaking out. Eric Yoffie, a stalwart in the liberal Zionist camp, writes an urgent letter in Haaretz to Prime Minister Naftali Bennett telling him to make a commitment to a Palestinian state or U.S. Jewish support will collapse.

[T]hose of us in the pro-Israel camp know, difficult times are ahead. Israel’s position in America is much weaker now than it seems… [Young Jews] wonder why Israel builds settlement after settlement, creating facts on the ground that make a viable Palestinian state impossible. And they are concerned that Israel’s leaders seem, so often, to be indifferent to issues of democracy and the oppression of their Palestinian neighbors. 

Yoffie is openly desperate:

[American Jews] desperately need an Israeli leader who will say to American Jews and to all Americans: The territories are not Israel. We Israelis have no desire to rule over the Palestinian people

Yoffie says that the Gaza war and the unending occupation are turning Americans against Israel as an “occupying power” at last. He is shocked by the poll showing 38 percent of young Jews say Israel is an apartheid state. And 25 percent of all Jews.

Smearing Rashida Tlaib

The Israel lobby group the Anti-Defamation League jumped on Ben & Jerry’s for its decision not to sell in occupied territory, and now it is smearing Rashida Tlaib for daring to relate the persecution of her family in Palestine to racial issues in the U.S.

Tlaib spoke to the convention of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) on August 1 and addressed white supremacy as an economic issue. Here’s the excerpt that the ADL posted.

We also need to recognize– this is for me as a Palestinian-American. As I think about my family in Palestine, that continue to live under military occupation and how that really interacts with this beautiful Black city I grew up in, I always tell people that cutting people off from water is violence, and they do it from Gaza to Detroit, and it’s a way to control people, to oppress people, and it’s those structures that we continue to fight against. So I know you all understand the structure we’ve been living under right now is designed by those that exploit the rest of us for their own profit. I always say to people, you know I don’t care if it’s the issue around global human rights and our fight to free Palestine, or to pushing back against those that don’t believe in a minimum wage, or those that believe that people have a right to health care and so much more… If you open the curtain and look behind the curtain, it’s the same people that make money, and yes they do, off of racism. Off of these broken policies. There is someone there making money. You saw it, it was so exposed curing the pandemic, because all those structures, everything that was set up they made record profit while we were having some of the most challenging most difficult times in our lifetime.

Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL says that’s ugly antisemitic dogwhistling.

“Stunning to hear @RashidaTlaib claim “behind the curtain,” those who prevent a “free Palestine” are the “same people” who exploit “regular Americans.” We’ve heard this kind of ugly #antisemitic dog whistling before, but it’s appalling when it comes from a member of Congress.

Greenblatt is reading secret meanings into a very direct statement about economic exploitation that in Tlaib’s view has a racial character. She is speaking about an oligarchic structure. And Looking behind the curtain– that’s as American as the Wizard of Oz…

But because Tlaib dared to mention her own family in Palestine, she’s anti-Jewish. The Israel lobby is determined to smear anyone with prominence who stands up for Palestine. The clear message is that you must not speak up for Palestinian human rights. It’s time we called out their anti-Palestinian bigotry.

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No big loss on the face of it. Judging from past behavior, she wouldn’t have been any better than the Omar-Ocasio-Bush-Sanders etc. Dim frauds, who have so far consistently managed to split their votes so as to always tilt the decision for war and giving more money to the Zionists. Especially every time they held the deciding vote.

Check out a detailed review of their voting pattern: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-Nz3beJZug