In my series on hasbara culture, I have documented how the wrong people are speaking for the Jews on antisemitism. Last week those people were once again being empowered at the expense of Jewish sanity.
On Jan 15th, Malik Faisal Akram, an armed British Muslim, took a number of Jews hostage in a Colleyville, Texas, synagogue. He espoused conspiratorial fantasies about Jews in the hopes of freeing a federal inmate. Ultimately the hostages escaped and Akram was killed. What happened next is of great cultural and political significance. Because the “larger meaning” of the event still has to be determined. And who gets to determine the meaning of Texas?
That’s where hasbara culture comes in. Hasbara culture claims expertise on the Texas event. “Antisemitism” is their field of study. Bari Weiss, Yair Rosenberg and Bret Stephens are what the Washingtonian magazine once called Jeffrey Goldberg: “Never Again” journalists. They speak for the lessons of Jewish history. And Never Again journalists have the most cultural sway in determining the “meaning” of events like Colleyville. “What does Texas say about the world and the Jews living in it?” they ask. “How does antisemitism in history explain issues related to Jews today?” Or as Bret Stephens’s headline in the New York Times asks, “What an Antisemite’s Fantasy Says About Jewish Reality.”
The problem is that Never Again journalists have a unique view of antisemitism, one that is not that of actual scholars. Scholars would like to see the writings and interviews of Malik Faisal Akram. They would try to determine where he got his ideas from. How prevalent are those ideas? They would hope to determine whether Akram is mentally ill. Besides hating Jews and thinking they control the world, does he believe in other conspiracy theories? How many of Akram’s friends believe the same things he does? That’s how the truth and meaning of Akram’s act should be determined.
Unfortunately, it’s not experts who inform people about these questions. Because it is taboo to try to understand the antisemites. That’s what Hannah Arendt was guilty of, trying to figure out what was going on in Adolf Eichmann’s head.
These days Never Again journalists have become the authorities on the antisemites. The decoders of the (accused) antisemite. Just as it was taboo to think of Eichmann’s perspective, so it has now become taboo to delve into an anti-Zionist’s perspective.
That’s why the question is not asked what Rep. Ilhan Omar “was thinking” when she committed her alleged trope and canard violations. When she made her famous comment, “It’s all about the Benjamins,” was she thinking of “the Jews” or actually about the Israel lobby group AIPAC. Was she really thinking of “the Jews” when she tweeted that Israel had “hypnotized” the world years ago, or was she thinking of Israel?
That question is not asked, because it is Never Again journalists who are the authority on antisemitism and the antisemites. “Ilhan Omar Knows Exactly What She Is Doing” was Bret Stephens’s verdict. And similarly, here is Yair Rosenberg being a Never again journalist on the Omar controversy, “demonstrating” that she has antisemitic intentions.
And that’s why Hasbara culture has no need to interview Malik Faisal Akram. The special nature of antisemitism explains Akram. Akram is an idea, not a person for hasbara culture. As Jeffrey Goldberg, one of hasbara culture’s most important practitioners, put it:
“Anti Semitism is a sui generis hatred, one that is shape-shifting, impervious to logic and eternal.”
Never Again journalists proselytize their ideas about antisemitism to the world. But those ideas originate in ideology, not scholarship.
In a review of Dara Horn’s People Love Dead Jews, Shaul Magid, an actual scholar of Judaism, was stunned by Never again journalists’ sense of everlasting victimhood:
“In fact, in reading Horn’s book one might think the only thing that all peoples share, from Russia to America, from Manchuria to Jersey City, is that they love dead Jews. Dead Jews is the subject of the book; not, mind you, antisemitism, but literally: dead Jews. That seems to be for Horn the common denominator of human civilization.”
Magid said that this new “anti-Semitism literature” genre is now driving Jewish identity:
“The basic Judaism genre seems today to be replaced with books like Horn’s People Love Dead Jews. Books about antisemitism lurking here, there, and everywhere. Almost every month another title that quickly climbs the charts. Middlebrow books recounting the Greatest Hits of Jew hatred. . . Horn’s book is sadly a well-written addition to the growing body of literature that seems to be driving Jewish identity.”
These middlebrow Jewish journalists are the people in American and Jewish life with the most influence over the issue: How safe or unsafe are Jews in America? Can there be any less objective people? I have demonstrated that Jeffrey Goldberg has cultivated a moral panic because of his misunderstanding of the world.
On her influential Substack Bari Weiss seized on Colleyville to warn of another Holocaust unfolding.
“The attack in Texas, the reaction to it . . . augurs a darkening reality for the six million Jews living in what the Founders insisted was a new Jerusalem.”
It’s no accident that Weiss deploys the six million figure. According to hasbara culture it is always the 1930’s.
Bret Stephens took a similar lesson. In the New York Times he warned that the Jews’ “luck in America may run out.”
“Anyone with a long view of Jewish history should know how quickly economic and social privilege can turn to political and personal ruin, even — or especially — in countries where it might seem unthinkable.
“But the wise counsel for Jews is to be grateful for last week’s good luck, while taking it as a warning that our luck in America may run out”.
And even before the events in Texas, Yair Rosenberg was raising the possible genocide of Jews in the Washington Post. After the attack, NPR turned to Yair Rosenberg last weekend to explain Colleyville.
This victimhood perspective is more than an ideology; as Magid says, it is now a chief source of Jewish identity. The idea that everyone hates the Jews is highly appealing to many Jews. Magid:
“What is perhaps most striking about Horn’s book isn’t the book itself . . . but how badly Jews want to read it. That is, how Jews seem to love to read about how people love dead Jews. It sounds kind of ghoulish, but it’s true. The comments on the reviews on Amazon are off the charts, almost in a macabre way; it made me feel strangely uncomfortable reading them. It is as if they’re all saying, in myriad ways, ‘you see, we were right, everyone hates the Jews.’”
There’s a reason these ideas are so popular. In the Manichean universe of hasbara culture, antisemitism confirms the idea that Jews are special. Recall what Bari Weiss told Jake Tapper at the 92d Street Y two years ago:
“Our specialness is frankly why we drive people crazy still.”
In Victimhood Discourse in Contemporary Israel, the scholar Ilan Peleg connects Jewish victimhood to the idea of Jewish chosenness:
“Victimhood is often related to “chosenness” (Bechira in Hebrew). In studying the Israeli right, I have noticed that its strong sense of victimhood is complimented by an equally strong sense of “chosenness.”
And that’s why Akram is such a celebrity for hasbara culture. Because hasbara culture claims expertise on his craziness. And his craziness is what all antisemites are inflicted with: Because Israel and the Jewish people are outside history. And nothing Israel does causes resentment and hatred. It’s always “incitement” and irrational antisemitism that cause Palestinians and their allies to hate.
Peter Beinart reflects the non-hasbara culture reality in this tweet about a Palestinian mother who was attacked by Israeli soldiers for trying to hug her 20-year-old son as he was taken off to prison. “If you watch videos like this — and you can see them every day — you get a sense of why U.S. opinion on Israel-Palestine is shifting. Alternatively, you can pretend they don’t exist and chalk up the shift to woke antisemitism,” Beinart wrote.
And that’s why I have argued that Peter Beinart is such an important, ideological threat to hasbara culture. He is the most influential Jewish figure without hasbara culture’s sacred victimhood perspective. Last week, the opinion editor of the Forward raised Dara Horn’s view that everyone loves dead Jews in the context of Colleyville, and Beinart bridled:
Did a President call for banning Jews from entering the US or say we’re all “rapists”? Is the GOP passing laws aimed at preventing Jews from voting? Antisemitism scares me too but the idea that people in power cater to every minority group but Jews is absurd.
Beinart represents the silent majority. Here another Jewish writer rejects the claims post-Colleyville that “the condition of being a ‘real Jew’ in America is being terrified all the time. I’m not, and I genuinely don’t think I have a reason to be.”
But as Magid tells us the hasbara culture fearmongering has swept many up in its wave.
As frightening and as terrible as the past year’s antisemitic incidents are, any objective person understands that the view that Jews are a powerless minority with complete vulnerability is absurd — although for Rosenberg and Stephens, this is a core belief, Jews are in great danger.
Rosenberg and Stephens tell us that the conspiracy theory that Jews have too much power is what has plagued the Jews forever. It is this conspiracy theory about Jewish influence that makes antisemitism different than other hatreds, says Rosenberg:
“Unlike many other bigotries, anti-Semitism is not merely a social prejudice; it is a conspiracy theory about how the world operates.”
It sounds like Rosenberg is saying is that what makes antisemitism sui generis is the idea that Jews control the world. He writes that that idea is “one of the most durable and deadly conspiracy theories in human history,” and leads to genocide. According to hasbara culture, this fantastical idea of conspiratorial Jewish power is highly seductive and that’s we must be so vigilant against it. Antisemitism is a virus, according to hasbara culture.
Rosenberg doesn’t tell us where he gets these ideas of Jews outside history, but nobody asks. “Never again” journalists have become the new Jewish clergy. As my hasbara culture investigations have shown, the history of Jew hatred is a subject that should be left to the experts, but that’s not the world we live. Yair Rosenberg is now the interpreter of antisemitism for American political culture. He was handpicked for the Atlantic by Jeffrey Goldberg for his expertise in imparting the hasbara culture worldview, and on NPR he tells us that Colleyville is all about a conspiracy theory that Jews control politics.
Watch out, warns Rosenberg: “The fevered fantasy of Jewish domination is incredibly malleable, which makes it incredibly attractive.”
Rosenberg’s mocks the idea of Jewish power in his article:
“We do not spend our days huddled in smoke-filled rooms plotting world domination while Jared Kushner plays dreidel in the back with Noam Chomsky and George Soros sneaks the last latke.”
The real-world effect of his joke is that it cultivates the idea that recognizing the reality of the Israel Lobby is as crazy, evil, and conspiratorial as Malik Faisal Akram. That stating that Sheldon Adelson or Jared Kushner played outsize roles in forming U.S. policy in the Middle East in the last five years — a Republican policy inherited and extended by Biden — is a hateful fantasy.
Here is Bret Stephens on the relationship of Jewish power to antisemitism—and to anti-Zionism too. Stephens:
The common denominator in each of these mutations is an idea, based in fantasy and conspiracy, about Jewish power. The old-fashioned religious antisemite believed Jews had the power to kill Christ. The 19th-century antisemites who were the forerunners to the Nazis believed Jews had the power to start wars, manipulate kings, and swindle native people of their patrimony . . . Present-day anti-Zionists attribute to Israel and its supporters in the United States vast powers that they do not possess.
Notice that last sentence. Believing in the power of the “Israel lobby,” believing in the extraordinary influence of AIPAC and other such organizations devoted to keeping Israel a bipartisan cause adored by all White Houses and State Departments is believing in an ago old and dangerous conspiracy theory. Whether you know it or not:
“The fantasy about Jewish power may seem outlandish, but it’s far more pervasive than many think — which gets to the point of people participating in antisemitism even when they aren’t knowingly perpetrating it.”
It’s not only Jew haters like Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib and Jewish Voice for Peace that cultivate the conspiracy theory about Jewish influence, it’s innocents as well, according to hasbara culture. Stephens:
“Or take another example: if you think the reason Israel gets so much support in Congress is the money and influence of the pro-Israel lobby, you might be surprised to learn that that lobby ranks 20th on the most recent list of congressional donors, giving away a paltry $4.5 million compared with the $95 million that retiree interest groups donated. “All about the Benjamins” it is not, no matter what Representative Ilhan Omar might suppose.”
Bret Stephens demands we deny the reality of the power of the Israel lobby on the altar of hasbara culture’s misunderstanding of how the world works. And in that way, it is Stephens who cultivates antisemitism, not Omar and Tlaib. By using Jewish power to ritually defame enemies and critics of Israel, by using Jewish power to demand that everyone agree that Jewish power doesn’t exists, Stephens just feeds antisemites and antisemitism.
But Never Again journalists are not done yet. Because if the idea of Jewish power is so virulent and contagious, what is to be done about it? How to fight antisemitism? Never Again journalists have the answer. And it is this answer that has turned the world on its head. According to hasbara culture, any hint of Jewish power should be battered and suppressed lest it spread the virus that empowers antisemites. That’s what Jeffrey Goldberg has spent the last 25 years doing.
Think about what Hasbara culture is asking of us. In the real-world Benjamin Netanyahu, when he thought he was off camera, confided that “America is a thing you can move very easily.” But thanks to hasbara culture Netanyahu can’t be confronted with that statement. Because it will “empower the antisemites.” Believing that Netanyahu was successfully meddling in American politics will empower the dangerous idea that Jews control America. So what are the eight hundred thousand people who saw that video supposed to think?
Now imagine a world where journalists would be allowed to hound Benjamin Netanyahu to explain how “America can be easily moved.” Would that be a healthier or unhealthier world for Jews and everyone else?
In the real world there would be no outbreak of antisemitism if Netanyahu was forced to answer that question. But it certainly would make Israel less popular.
Hasbara culture claims that people can’t be trusted with Netanyahu’s machinations. They can’t be trusted with the truth about the Israel lobby. They can’t be trusted with Israel’s unconscionable behavior.
In the real world when people look at Israel, they see Israel. But hasbara culture insists they really see Jews. Do you know what happens when the real world is suppressed? It cultivates antisemitism. It turns good people bad.
The same thing happened with the suppression of the Israel Lobby documentary that Al Jazeera produced and then put in a black box under political pressure. What would any objective person make of the suppression of the investigation of the Israel lobby here and in England? Wouldn’t they actually be more likely to believe in a Jewish conspiracy? According to hasbara culture the more you know about Jews and Israel the more likely you will be an antisemite. That is the world hasbara culture insists we live in. Hasbara culture is the reason Israel has the impunity and immunity it has: no one’s allowed to talk about its power in our discourse.
That’s why Atlantic magazine has to hide the NSO story. Because it will make Israel look bad and empower the antisemites. Recall, this is why Goldberg “left Haaretz behind.” It was talking down Israel too much.
Haaretz has too many stories and opinions that empower the antisemites. And that’s why you won’t find the Atlantic digging into the NSO story, it empowers anti-Israelism and antisemitism.
Goldberg has been a reliable pipeline for Netanyahu’s view of history. During the Obama administration, thanks to Goldberg, an Obama official calling Netanyahu “chickenshit” led to an international incident. And now the Atlantic’s contribution to future historians about the Netanyahu and Trump time together is testimony to the statesmanship of the rightwing Israeli leader: “Bibi Was Right The arc of history has bent toward authoritarianism.”
Is it any wonder that the American Israeli relationship is so fucked up? As Andrew Sullivan said of Jeffrey Goldberg back in 2013:
“Jeffrey really believes that there is a high-priest caste of journalists at a certain elite level, whose job it is to tell people what they need to know.”
And the less those people know about Netanyahu the better.
At that same time, the late former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski tweeted rather blandly about Netanyahu’s meddling in American politics:
“Obama/Kerry = best policy team since Bush I/Jim Baker. Congress is finally becoming embarrassed by Netanyahu’s efforts to dictate US policy.”
Now look at Jeffrey Goldberg’s reaction to that comment.
“Jews run America, suggests ex-national security adviser: https://t.co/1ZH2R7jyuC”
— Jeffrey Goldberg (@JeffreyGoldberg) November 24, 2013
Goldberg is deploying hasbara culture tropes to taboo Brzezinski’s criticism of Netanyahu for his intervention in U.S. politics — and this in the period when Netanyahu ultimately went to Congress in defiance of the Obama administration to try and stop the Iran deal.
Recall how Logan Bayroff of J Street responded to Goldberg:
“@JeffreyGoldberg He doesn’t say or even imply that. Willingness to accuse everyone of anti-Semitism makes it impossible to respect you.”
And now notice how Goldberg then threw his weight around in the Jewish tent, to shut down Bayroff:
Meaning: The idea that Brzezinski’s Netanyahu tweet isn’t antisemitic is enough to be kept out of the tribe.
Because believing that those supposed antisemitic tropes are so dangerous is what it means to be a good Jew these days.
And Jewish heresy is objecting to hasbara culture’s sacred victimhood social construction of alternative reality.
Goldberg used the same hasbara culture tactic on Andrew Sullivan when he was criticizing Israel in an effort to push the two-state solution, accusing him too of spreading antisemitism: giving “comfort to some very repulsive people.”
[H]e sometimes uses his blog to disseminate calumnies that can cause hatred of Jews, and of Israel . . . Andrew’s posts on Israel and on Jewish political power in America have lately given comfort to some very repulsive people.
This is why I say that the real power of the Israel lobby is not AIPAC, it’s the power to declare what’s permissible and what’s verboten in the discourse about Israel. When the Obama administration dared to attack AIPAC for using money and political machinations to attempt to derail the Iran deal, Goldberg promptly warned of dangerous tropes. Obama, Goldberg said, “may empower actual anti-Semites not only in the Middle East, but at home as well.” And according to Jeffrey Goldberg and hasbara culture’s ideas about antisemitism, Iran is willing sacrifice its entire population as long as they can take a few Jews with them. This is what Goldberg lectured to Obama and Kerry.
Today these cultural interventions by Goldberg and other Never Again journalists shape Jewish and American political culture.
And the reason it’s possible to make BDS all-but-illegal in so many states is because Jeffrey Goldberg and hasbara culture claimed boycotting Israel was reminiscent of the Nazis. And that’s also why Ben and Jerry’s are turned into Nazis for boycotting the settlements.
That’s why the Atlantic can’t adequately cover the laws against BDS or the Ben and Jerry’s story and so much else. Jeffrey Goldberg is implicated in all of it.
Jeffrey Goldberg is frightened of the truth.
This order can only end badly. There is a better way and that is to let real experts on antisemitism educate the rest of us on antisemitism. Hasbara culture insists people can’t be trusted with the truth — that reality is antisemitic.
While the truth is that Jews covering up the truth empowers antisemitism.
The ideas in this article shape the world every day. It’s why Israel is heading to a very dark place, dragging America along, and no one can do anything to stop it. Reality needs to stand up to hasbara culture before it’s too late.
The bottom line is, they are using the Holocaust card to protect Israel, and justify its occupation, land theft, and the killing of unarmed civilians by the hundreds. The Holocaust was a dark and horrible time in the history of the world, but in its own way, so is Israel’s occupation that has lasted for decades, when helpless civilians are being are kept in open prisons, unable to move about within their territories without endless checkpoints, (where even pregnant women have been killed), have no rights, freedom, have their lands stolen on a daily basis, see their children (and medical personnel) being killed by snipers, or precision bombs that have wiped out entire families, and babies. So why does this not bother these “wonderful” journalists? Are these not victims too?
When Israel starts mowing the lawn and killing dozens of civilians, Weiss is tearful that her beloved Israel is “defending” itself again, from those unarmed civilians.
These American journalists have been noted for being apologists, justifying Israel’s crimes, and blaming the victims. They speak as if all Palestinians are terrorists, they blame the massacre of civilians on the victims, and NEVER refer to the occupation, or the land grabs, as reasons for the rockets or stones, nor do they admit that the massacre is always one sided, and that the home made rockets hardly hit their target, unlike Israel’s precision bombs.
Stephens will always support and justify Israel’s violence, after all his son joined Israel’s military.
As for Weiss, it seems she makes a regular appearance with the well known anti Muslim/pro Israel joker Bill Maher, and her fairy tales are never challenged by him.
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Meanwhile:
Jerusalem: evictions show how urban planning is being weaponised against Palestinians (theconversation.com)
EXCERPT:
“Jerusalem: evictions show how urban planning is being weaponised against Palestinians” January 27/2022
‘One olive in my garden is better than anything material in the whole world.’
“These sad words were uttered by Mahmoud Salhiya after his home in Sheikh Jarrah was recently demolished by Israeli forces.
“Sheikh Jarrah is a Palestinian neighbourhood of 3,000 inhabitants at the eastern part of Road 1 that runs north to south through Jerusalem & separates Israeli & Palestinian sectors. The neighbourhood has two distinctive sections: the north is the part inhabited by wealthier Palestinians while the poorer, southern part is populated by hundreds of Palestinian refugees from 1948.
“The Salhiya family house is in Sheikh Jarrah’s southern area on land designated by an old urban scheme authorised in the 1980s for the construction of a public building. But part of the house already existed, along with some other structures, when the plan was being prepared. In fact, the house & the other buildings on the plot are already visible on maps of Jerusalem from the 1930s.
“Importantly, according to the Jerusalem Municipality itself, Palestinian houses built in East Jerusalem before 1967 are considered legal & therefore cannot be demolished. But zoning the Salhiya plot for public use – which ignored the fact of the existing residential property already on the site – is indicative of a common practice that has characterised Israeli planning of East Jerusalem since 1967.
“The Israeli authorities argued that the Salhiya property had been expropriated to establish a ‘special needs’ school for the benefit of the neighbourhood’s residents. But this ‘top-down’ planning did not include any consultation with the family or the community.
“The police are reported to have arrived at the property in the early hours of what was one of the coldest nights so far this winter, and forcibly removed 15 members of the Salhiya family before bulldozing the house. They arrested Mahmoud Salhiya and five members of his family, as well as some of their supporters, both Palestinian and Israeli activists.” (cont’d)
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“This traumatic event is part of an ongoing attempt of displacing Palestinians from their homes – not only in Sheikh Jarrah but also in other neighbourhoods such as Silwan, on the outskirts of the Old City, which is the subject of the continuing conflict between Jewish settlers & the local Palestinian community over archaeology, tourism development & housing.
“Housing demolitions have become an all-too-regular occurrence. According to a report by B’tselem (the Israeli information centre for human rights in the occupied territories) between 2006 & November 2021, Israeli authorities demolished at least 1,176 Palestinian housing units in East Jerusalem. At least 3,769 people lost their homes – including 1,996 children. Housing demolition serves Israel’s attempt to control the city’s ‘demographic balance‘ – keeping a Jewish majority within Jerusalem’s municipal territory back to the 70:30 ratio that has driven Israeli policy since 1967.
“The Salhiya family’s case should be understood within a wider context of the political processes taking place in Jerusalem since June 1967 & the declaration of the city as Israel’s unified capital. The expropriation of Palestinian land by the state through legal measures was central to the colonisation of East Jerusalem at this stage.
“Planning further contributed to the colonisation of the city & was characterised by the construction of settlements (‘satellite neighbourhoods’). Since 1967, Israel has expropriated over one-third of the Palestinian land that was annexed to Jerusalem’s municipality new boundaries – 24.5 square kilometres – most of it privately owned by Palestinians. Some 11 neighbourhoods have been erected for Jewish inhabitants only.
“Under international law, the status of these neighbourhoods is the same as the Israeli illegal settlements throughout the West Bank…masterplans were drawn that have effectively limited the growth of Palestinian neighbourhoods by limiting construction rights and defining most Palestinian land as not eligible for housing construction.”
Thanks for this excellent analysis. I’m wondering if these folks ever consider the possibility that Americans who happen to know the actual facts of the history of the Zionists and the Palestinians might not appreciate the way that Zionists have suppressed these facts in the American mainstream media, and replaced them with a false history. For example,
“Terrorism: How the Israeli state was won”
https://mondoweiss.net/2017/01/terrorism-israeli-state
and
“It’s time for American Jews to recognize they have been duped”
https://mondoweiss.net/2015/07/american-recognize-duped
Well, Jews DO have the power to “swindle native people of their patrimony” – they’re doing it every day.
Re Never Again: I have a button that says NEVER AGAIN FOR ANYONE, and one that says NEVER AGAIN BY ANYONE. My Zionist friends don’t know what those buttons are about.