The last thing Netanyahu’s longtime enablers in the U.S. want to do is call attention to the madness going on in Israel. The most “pro-Israel” journalists in America would prefer Israel implode than have an embarrassing public debate about what’s happening in the Jewish state.
It is a cultural tragedy that Yair Rosenberg is the Atlantic’s antisemitism expert. He is an agitator. His job is to stir up the antiZionism=antisemitism and the BDS=antisemitism claims by baiting anti-Zionists, but when these discussions become real issues, he slinks away, because he is not prepared to defend the claims in a real world discussion. His baiting of the Institute for Middle East Understanding demonstrates that intellectual irresponsibility.
After the synagogue attack in Texas, Yair Rosenberg and other “Never Again” journalists rushed in to explain that antisemitism is a belief in Jewish control that permeates America and transcends history. According to the hasbara culture these authorities propagate, it is always the 1930’s. And isn’t that convenient for Israel and its lobby: Never Again journalists seek to make it taboo to mention Israel’s political power in the U.S.
Yair Rosenberg has routinely described Palestinian leaders as terrorists and antisemites and characterized Palestinian resistance to occupation as stemming from ancient historical hatred of Jews. He is now ensconced at the Atlantic spreading his misunderstanding of the world into American opinion, for years to come.
The Democratic Majority for Israel group has been celebrated by Biden and Pelosi though it spreads a vicious lie with a tweet saying that Rep. Rashida Tlaib is complicit in terrorism because she is appearing with Mohammed El-Kurd, the face of resistance to the expulsions of Palestinians from Jerusalem.
Rashida Tlaib had sound reasons to call Israel an apartheid state, including Human Rights Watch’s report saying as much. But politicians and journalists don’t defend her because pro-Israel journalists like Bret Stephens have viciously attributed all criticism of Israel to its status as a Jewish state, and said the critics are motivated by antisemitism.
The pogroms against Palestinians that are a weekly occurrence, and the long reign of Netanyahu, have all been rendered “understandable” by a crew of hasbara culture journalists like Yair Rosenberg, Bret Stephens, David Frum, and Jeffrey Goldberg, who have purveyed a mythology of Jews as the sacred special victims of history. The ethnocentricity has laid waste to Jewish political culture.
Pro-Israel writers have dismissed all criticism, opposition and even enmity to Israel and its actions as springing from an ancient malady, antisemitism. They thereby erase the true history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, in a so-far successful effort to discredit the critics. Israel’s actions exist very much in history, and its supporters use very sharp elbows and knees to get its way.
When Rep. Rashida Tlaib faulted people for making record profits from Gaza tp Detroit, Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL accused her of antisemitic “dogwhistling.” And Bari Weiss joined in the smear campaign, saying, “So many people have been willfully blind toward the worldview of this congresswoman.” Tlaib’s actual crime is being Palestinian.
Saying that the dehumanization of Palestinians is a cancer in the Jewish community, Peter Beinart is no longer showing deference to the Jewish guardians of the communal victimhood discourse. This is his cultural importance,” claiming Jewish authority for himself and discrediting Bari Weiss’s discourse of victimhood.