The State Department’s press briefing on Monday showed the new mood in Washington: reporters repeatedly raised Israel policy as problematic.
Roger Waters’s advocacy for Palestine shook the briefing room, as a reporter questioned why a Biden aide, Deborah Lipstadt, has echoed the smear that Waters’s performance of “The Wall” is an example of Jew hatred, and failed to see that it is actually a denunciation of fascism akin to Charlie Chaplin’s parody of Hitler as “the great dictator.”
The reporter Sam Husseini accused the Biden administration of deploying the antisemitism charge as “a way of denouncing people who stand up for Palestinian rights.”
Lipstadt, the State Department’s envoy to “monitor and combat antisemitism,” issued her comment on Waters’s performances on May 24:
“I wholeheartedly concur with [the EU Commission on antisemitism’s] condemnation of Roger Waters and his despicable Holocaust distortion.”
Lipstadt retweeted the European commission’s comment:
“Roger Waters gig in Berlin. Is there anything more antisemitic than using Anne Frank as a prop on a German stage while prancing around in a Nazi uniform attacking Jews?”
Husseini, a reporter at the Institute for Public Accuracy, criticized Lipstadt’s comments at the State Department briefing Monday.
This is an incredible distortion of what happened. I don’t know if you’re familiar with The Wall, which is possibly the most classic rock opera in rock and roll history. So– unrelenting denunciation of fascism and racism, one of the songs in it features him as mocking a demagogue like Charlie Chaplin did, and talking to the crowd and saying, “Are there any queers, are there any Jews, are there any blacks in the audience tonight? Get them up against the wall.” And then he gets a machine gun and mows them down.
It’s an obvious attack on fascism, and yet your ambassador is denouncing it and pretending that Roger Waters, presumably because he defends Palestinian rights as well as other people’s rights, is an example of anti-Semitism. Are you going to distance yourself from this, or are you going to back down on this?
Vedant Patel of the State Department said he wasn’t familiar with “The Wall” and hadn’t seen Lipstadt’s tweet, so he wouldn’t weigh in.
Husseini said that the comment is very much State Department business.
This is her portfolio… She is beyond parody distorting anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel. He [Waters] used Anne Frank’s name as a list of people, of martyrs, who he reveres. It’s an incredible distortion. I think it’s imperative if the State Department isn’t going to wholeheartedly dispense with any pretense about anti-Semitism being an actual problem and only use it as a way of denouncing people who stand up for Palestinian rights, you’ve got to do something.
Patel said that was “absolutely not our approach” to antisemitism. And Husseini said, “Well, prove it.”
Matt Lee of the Associated Press also said State needed to answer for Lipstadt’s comment.
It is a situation where we’re talking about a British musician giving a concert in Germany, it doesn’t really have anything to do with the U.S., but the fact of the matter is, is that she did weigh in on it. So it’s a legitimate question.
Waters (a friend of our site) explained on May 26 that the depiction of an “unhinged fascist demagogue” has been an anti-fascist feature of The Wall since 1980.
The elements of my performance that have been questioned are quite clearly a statement in opposition to fascism, injustice, and bigotry in all its forms. Attempts to portray those elements as something else are disingenuous and politically motivated. The depiction of an unhinged fascist demagogue has been a feature of my shows since Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” in 1980.
I have spent my entire life speaking out against authoritarianism and oppression wherever I see it. When I was a child after the war, the name of Anne Frank was often spoken in our house, she became a permanent reminder of what happens when fascism is left unchecked. My parents fought the Nazis in World War II, with my father paying the ultimate price.
Matt Lee and Said Arikat also took the State Department to task.
Lee asked if the State Department had any concerns about Netanyahu’s appointment of a new media adviser, who has “apparently advanced election denial theories in the U.S.” Patel said No, “Personnel decisions for the prime minister’s office are for them to undertake.”
Lee was referring to a report about adviser Gilad Zwick, a journalist with a conservative Israeli TV station, who has called Biden “unfit” to rule and said that he was “slowly but surely destroying America.”
He also posted tweets suggesting he supported President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 U.S. election was rigged.
Said Arikat of Al-Quds said that Monday marked the 56th anniversary of the occupation of the West Bank. And he noted that a new report had been issued by Defense for Children International documenting mistreatment of Palestinian children. (“Arbitrary by Default” alleges systematic denial of fair trial rights to Palestinian children in Israeli courts.)
Arikat asked when the U.S. will enforce human rights concerns:
So my question to you is twofold. One, of course, we heard the Secretary speak today at AIPAC, and he talked about the two-state solution. He talked about opportunities of prosperity and safety and so on, security for Palestinians and Israeli alike and so on. And my question to you, when will this come to pass? I mean, do we have to wait another 56 years for the generations after 56 years to enjoy some of the stuff that the Secretary spoke about and for children – Palestinian children not to be tortured and maltreated?
Patel responded with the boilerplate: Palestinians and Israelis deserve equal measures of dignity and security, and we are committed to our support for Israel.
Arikat persisted by saying, “Really — you don’t have that much leverage with Israel?”
“That’s not what I said, Said,” Patel responded. “Our commitment to Israel and Israel’s security is ironclad. But we want to see a two-state solution.”
There was further pressure on the Biden administration this week from Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen over Israel’s killing of the Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh on May 11, 2022.
Last week Van Hollen said he was “at the end of my rope,” asking to see an official U.S. report on the killing. On Monday, Van Hollen said he’d now seen the report (by the State Department’s Security Coordinator), and he wants the government to declassify it because it contains important details.
Van Hollen also said that the Israelis have not provided full information to the State Department about the killing and have “rebuffed” Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s demand that Israel review its military engagement rules in the West Bank.
NPR reported on Van Hollen’s demands and said that State Department had no comment.
h/t Mitchell Plitnick.
It is like a breath of fresh air to see these reporters ask the hard questions, something that should have been done a long, long time ago by our not so courageous media. Patel’s answers sounded weak and ridiculous. He seems unable to explain why there are no equal rights for the Palestinians, something that has been spoken about by our esteemed leaders, and spokespersons, like Blinken. They keep talking and talking (ad nauseam) about equal rights for decades, and doing absolutely NOTHING to achieve that, EVEN WHEN THE OPPORTUNITY PRESENTS ITSELF. Is the US so afraid of this piddling apartheid nation, that they cannot threaten to stop funding its violent crimes, until they end the occupation, and give the Palestinians freedom and EQUAL RIGHTS? Basic needs for long suffering people that we preach about to the rest of the world?
Why does the US keep acting/talking like they care about the Palestinians, but act in a totally different way, by funding, arming, and defending their occupier, and even now showing acceptance of their ultra right wing religious government, which is similar to Iran.They are not fooling the rest of the world.
America’s hypocrisy when it comes to Israel is obvious, and has been the same for decades. Nothing will change for the millions of Palestinians suffering greatly because of Israel’s violent tendencies, greed for lands, and the inhumane treatment of occupied people.
The Zionists’ deceptive strategy from the start has been to negotiate an inch and then take a mile. As a result the Palestinians are living under a blatant Zionist tyranny. The US government’s lying Zionist State Department, with its very thinly veiled support for Israel’s tyranny, makes the US look like a mere vassal state.
The smear campaign against Roger Waters is well underway. The Lobby knows full well what Water’s stage show is about, but they know if they throw enough anti Semitic mud around, their useful idiots in the media will make sure some of it sticks. The Lobby is doing to Waters what it (successfully) did to Jeremy Corbyn. Hopefully Waters will not back down. It is about time people started suing when they are falsely charged with the vicious lie of being an anti Semite. Roger has the resources. I hope he goes for them, all those lazy, incompetent journalists, or those journalists and opinion writers who are little more than Israeli government mouthpieces. The attacks on Waters infuriates me for their sheer brazen dishonesty. Water has been performing this show in one form or another for over 40 years, and anyone who has watched the movie of The Wall knows what his stage show is about, but the Zionists don’t care. They have always bullied, threatened and intimidated as well as destroying the careers, businesses and reputations of anyone who criticises Israel. They are evil.
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MAD respect for Roger Waters!
Perhaps someone can write in and explain why defaming a person with an unjust/unjustifiable accusation of “antisemite” is not a legally actionable assault?
Why aren’t newspapers/media required to research the publication of such accusations before they disseminate what may be, and frequently are, attempts to intimidate, humiliate or silence ordinary people carrying out civic, and civically protected speech? And why are they not required to present the accused’s response or counter-argument?
Why is there no legal check on groups such as ADL, AIPAC, ZOA, etc., for consistently and publicly accusing people of antisemitism – “anti-Jewish bias” in the legal terminology used by the DOJ/FBI – for voicing support for the human rights of the Palestinian people? Why isn’t the accusation of antisemitism, unsupported by evidence and almost predictable in its frequency and application, treated in the same way as other triggering or assaultive language?
The current situation in the discourse is akin to how Southerners in the antebellum US reacted to Abolitionists and anyone who voiced concern or compassion for enslaved people: with verbal smears, shunning and threats of violence. Or outright violence, as in the case of Senator Charles Sumner.
As I see it, the anti-Palestinian statements of actors such as Jonathan Greenblatt of ADL, Senator Chuck Schumer, Ambassador Antony Blinken, columnist Bret Stephens, and the feckless, clueless Congressman Ritchie Torres, et. al., are little more than sanitized-for-domestic-consumption manifestations of the “Price Tag” violence waged by Zionist colonizers against the Palestinians in Palestine every day. While differing significantly in physical terms the psychological and political objectives are identical: crushing dissent.
And by Zionist violence I mean to include threats to reputation, future and current employment/promotion as well as social mobility and personal security, among other forms of harm.
Zionist efforts to influence the discourse are marked by the almost universal tactic of employing authoritative, if unwitting and perhaps even unwilling, proxies in this case the hapless State Department spokesperson Mr. Vedant Patel, to defend the ugly, untrue and intentionally hurtful statements of another State Department employee, Ms. Deborah Lipstadt, Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism who said:
(cont.)
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“I wholeheartedly concur with [the EU Commission on antisemitism’s] condemnation of Roger Waters and his despicable Holocaust distortion.”
Ms. Lipstadt gets paid to say such things and was in all likelihood hired owing to her readiness to serve as a propagandist. I get that. What I do not get is why the EU Commission, the State Department, Ms. Lipstadt and by extension the Biden Administration are not forced to issue an immediate, public apology to Mr. Waters and his accompanists?
Of course, none of this rabidly absurdist theater would even be possible without the magical, mystical Deus ex machina of the infamous IHRA “definition” of antisemitism. Such a timely gift!
Mr. Patel and Ms. Lipstadt’s boss, Joe “I Am A Zionist” Biden is, at least vis-à-vis Zionism, a rank coward and we should not expect courage or even honesty from him. But does anti-defamation law offer Mr. Waters, and the wider public, any protection from assaultive, destructive accusations from ideologically-driven agents?
Question for Any Zionist: Is it antisemitic according to IHRA to suggest that American institutions of public authority have been co-opted by Zionism to camouflage its objectives and grant it a veneer of legitimacy? Or is it antisemitic to fail/refuse to say this in public?
View here 47 Palestine posters on the theme of Zionism = Racism