CNN’s Reality Check
John Avlon hosts a weekly segment on CNN called Reality Check. The series aims to “examine the rise in prominence of extremist groups and movements in the United States over the last 5 years.”
Avlon’s most recent episode claims that the “far-left” fizzled out during the Democratic primaries. In actuality he’s just talking about progressives as it’s debatable whether any member of congress could accurately described as far-left. “The mainstream of Democratic voters and party leadership is decidedly on the center-left, not the far-left,” Avlon told viewers. “Remember that’s how Joe Biden won the 2020 nomination, by ignoring the social media distortion field and instead appealing to actual Democratic primary voters.”
Avlon’s points to recent Democratic primaries as evidence of his claim. Among the races he cites are Hayley Stevens beating Andy Levin in Michigan, Shontel Brown’s win in Ohio, and Henry Cuellar narrowly defeating Jessica Cisneros. Avlon acknowledges that there are some exceptions. He mentions Summer Lee winning a House seat and progressive candidates prevailing in a number of local races throughout the country, but says these developments aren’t yet having an impact on the overall moderate trend. “Bottom line progressive have more cultural influence than political power right now,” concludes Avlon. “So despite all the noise about the far-left taking over the Democratic party the 2022 primary results show that’s not rooted in reality.”
Again, obviously Avlon’s right about the far-left not taking over the party as he’s obviously interpreting the term by standards of the U.S. mainstream media. However, his analysis has much deeper flaws. My rough math on the aforementioned moderate victories adds up to over $7 million in Israel lobby money. Surely this is a factor worth mentioning when discussing the most recent primaries.
You don’t have to dive very deep to see where Avlon is actually coming from. He presents himself as a dogged journalist cutting through the bias on both sides, but the man has politics. He was a speechwriter for Rudy Giuliani and has written multiple books extolling the virtues of dead end centrism. He was also a founding leader of No Labels, a political organization that claims to combat partisan dysfunction but actually just uses dark money to push the agenda of Wall Street.
This is purportedly a show about extremism and the implication is that extremists include…Andy Levin? At the beginning of the segment Avlon says there are 7 House Democrats who “officially” support funding the police (it’s unclear what on earth he’s talking about) and that there are 147 Republicans who voted to overturn the election results. The argument from centrist champion Avlon here is that Democrats are doing a good job preventing their party from being taken over by extremists and the extremists in this scenario are candidates who advocate for renewable energy. The Republicans are doing a worse job at preventing their party from being taken over by extremists and the extremists in this scenario are candidates actively working to torpedo what’s left of the democratic process.
Leaving all this nonsense logic aside for the moment, it’s telling that the extremism of a group like AIPAC does not factor into these metrics. The lobbying group is spending millions of dollars to help flip elections without revealing their actual motivations to voters. In New York’s recent 10th district primary the group was able to secretly spend money by funneling it through a local PAC. The group tried to stop Obama’s deal with Iran and now it’s trying to stop it from being resurrected. None of this is extremism of course. In fact, it’s not even worth being mentioned.
North Carolina Student Paper
On August 17 The Daily Tar Heel (the newspaper for University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) published an op-ed criticizing the school’s city abroad programs in Israel, but it was only online for a matter of days before the author asked for it to be taken down in response to his family receiving hateful messages.
“I’ve been following the Israel-Palestine conflict for a while now, but am admittedly no expert,” the author wrote. “This is, in part, due to the fact that Israel actively combats negative narratives through the use of propaganda on platforms like TikTok, like showing Israeli Defense Force soldiers engaging in popular dances and trends.”
“But you don’t have to be an expert to recognize the abhorrent things the Israeli government does, making any amount of time spent there a complicated question of moral culpability,” they continued. “It’s important to realize there are varying reasons why someone would visit the country, each with differing levels of moral responsibility.”
The paper put out a statement about the op-ed being unpublished: “The column in question was removed as a means to ensure the safety and well-being of its author, something The Daily Tar Heel will do whatever it takes to preserve. We stand proudly behind the work of our talented opinion editors, editorial board and columnists, and we are grateful for the exciting, thought-provoking work they have put in to make our paper better.”
“And again, to leave no room for interpretation: The Daily Tar Heel will not stand for any of its writers to be targeted individually for the work they do.”
The Daily Tar Heel also ran an op-ed from the campus Students for Justice in Palestine group, which explains how harassment of Palestine advocates is sadly commonplace. It also provides some important context regarding the university and North Carolina.
“North Carolina and UNC face intense surveillance by pro-Israel forces. In March 2022, UNC ranked among the ten worst campuses for free speech,” it explains. “The harassment campaigns perpetuated by Israel supporters centered on UNC’s campus contribute to this widespread atmosphere of censorship. For instance, in Fall 2021, UNC Ph.D. student Kylie Broderick taught a course about Palestine-Israel. She soon became the target of a smear campaign from pro-Israel organizations to pressure the university to fire her, which culminated in Rep. Kathy Manning (D-Greensboro) and a senior Israeli diplomat meeting with UNC officials. Broderick remained able to teach the class, but various pro-Israel organizations continued attempting to censor her academic freedom.”
“UNC’s administration hasn’t made a statement on the harassment leveled at the author’s family,” it continues. “Despite UNC’s proclaimed commitment to free speech, there is no right to it regarding Israel. Outside of a narrow window approved by pro-Israel actors, those questioning anti-Palestinian racism normalized on college campuses face repercussions.”
We’ll be following this story closely if there are any developments.
Odds & Ends
?? A Google worker who protested a company contract with the Israeli military has quit. “Due to retaliation, a hostile environment, and illegal actions by the company, I cannot continue to work at Google and have no choice but to leave the company at the end of this week,” wrote Ariel Koren in a post on Medium. “Instead of listening to employees who want Google to live up to its ethical principles, Google is aggressively pursuing military contracts and stripping away the voices of its employees through a pattern of silencing and retaliation towards me and many others.”
? At a town hall in Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren was questioned about support for giving Israel military aid. Warren said she couldn’t remember whether she supported the $38 billion agreement between the United States and Israel. In fact, she cosponsored legislation aimed at codifying the deal.
✉️ This week nearly 300 organizations (including Adalah Justice Project, American Friends Service Committee, Center for Constitutional Rights, and the National Lawyers Guild) sent President Biden demanding action in response to the Israeli government’s latest assault on Palestinian civil society groups. “As groups committed to social justice, civil rights, and universal human rights, we have seen first hand the ways that the charge of ‘terrorist’ and the so-called ‘war on terror’ threatens not only international human rights defenders, but also social movements and marginalized communities here in the U.S.: Indigenous, Black, brown, Muslim, and Arab activists and communities have similarly faced silencing, intimidation, criminalization and surveillance under such baseless charges,” it reads. “A threat against the Palestinian human rights movement is a threat against movements for social justice everywhere, and in order to protect human rights and human rights defenders, all states must be held accountable for taking such manifestly unjust actions.”
? Some interesting stuff in this Jewish Insider piece on Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), who just won his primary decisively:
For DMFI, which is typically cautious about opposing incumbents, the result was proof enough that pursuing a rematch with Bowman would almost certainly have been ill-advised, particularly after an embarrassing defeat two years ago. It was “clear that this was not a race in which” DMFI was “going to make a difference,” said a pro-Israel strategist familiar with the group’s thinking who spoke with Jewish Insider on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations. “Obviously, other people disagreed with that assessment.”
Meanwhile, AIPAC conducted polling in the district and came to a similar conclusion, according to several people who conferred with the pro-Israel lobbying group throughout the race. The polling, which has not been released publicly, broadly indicated that Bowman would win unless one of his opponents dropped out.
? After years of lobbying Anaheim has officially designated an area of the city Little Arabia. Arab-Americans have long been pushing for this official recognition of the cultural and economic contributions of the neighborhood. “We come from a community that a lot of people come from different countries where they’re running away from their governments, where their identities have been stripped, their homes have been taken away and this is their home,” one organizer told NBC.
?? Glenn Ivey is soon to become the Democratic representative for Maryland’s 4th district, after beating Donna Edwards with the help of $6 million in AIPAC money. He’s a good person to pay attention to because he has yet to develop the art of providing uninformative and unsatisfactory answers. One assumes he will pick up this skill once he arrives in Washington, but until then he continually runs the risk of accidentally saying some interesting things. For instance, he was recently interviewed by AIPAC and this to say about their spending in the race.
“AIPAC and others decided to join with us,” he explained. “We had a long track record on that front. Donna had a long track too and I think mine was better than hers. That led people to really step up and support our campaign in a surprising way. We deeply appreciated the support. I think in some ways it was unexpected at that level and maybe unprecedented. I haven’t really looked around but we have independent expenditures that were run.”
Ivey was also asked about Israel’s recent assault on Gaza, which he compared to the recent U.S. drone attack that killed Ayman al-Zawahiri. “The Israeli strike came around the same time that the United killed…I forget the guy’s name,” said Ivey. “The United States was happy about that. It’s a death but it’s someone who needed to be brought to justice. There was no real pushback anywhere in the United States or even in the international community with respect to that.”
“The Israeli strike seemed to be pretty much the same thing to me and done for the same reasons,” he continued. “So the fact that there would be such a different reaction for something that’s morally..equivalent. I think it says more about people who are after Israel and looking for reasons to complain and argue against them.”
?? Of course Ivey doesn’t mention the 49 Palestinians (17 of them children) who were killed in that three-day assault. If you read one piece at our site this week please make it Tareq Hajjaj’s profile on each of their lives.
Stay safe out there,
Michael
