This morning, the Washington Post’s Peter Wallsten followed up on never-ending controversy about the Center for American Progress’s anti-Israel bloggers, and what it means for the Obama administration’s close ties to the think tank. (Incidentally, I wrote about this topic yesterday for the New York Post as well.)
According to WaPo, the scandal has caused a lot of hand-wringing in the administration – the White House’s Jewish community liaison reportedly told the Wiesenthal Center’s Rabbi Abraham Cooper that the situation at CAP was “troubling,” adding “that is not this administration.”
The article is worth reading in full, but this quote from J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami tucked all the way at the end of the piece was particularly interesting:
Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street, a left-leaning voice on Israel issues, said he had no problem with “Israel-Firster.”
“If the charge is that you’re putting the interests of another country before the interests of the United States in the way you would advocate that, it’s a legitimate question,” Ben-Ami said.
Ben-Ami added that Jewish groups “should tread lightly” when they make accusations of anti-Semitism. “Because when they do need to use that word, people won’t take you seriously,” he said.
J Street has pretty much vanished from the scene during the past year, so it’s mystifying why Ben-Ami would want to reenter the picture with a quote like that. He must have realized the problem, because later today he walked it back on his website (or, rather, he acknowledged that the term “Israel-Firster” was offensive and immediately demanded everyone change the subject).
But Ben-Ami’s argument that accusations of anti-Semitism are being used too loosely is becoming standard fare on the left. Glenn Greenwald wrote something similar in his own piece on the CAP scandal today:
[S]mearing those with policy disagreements as anti-Semites has become a leading tactic in these precincts. And the prime purveyors are those who have anointed themselves as the guardians and arbiters of the term, and have thus done more to dilute and trivialize it than any actual anti-Semites could ever dream of achieving. It’s the classic Boy Who Cried Wolf syndrome: if you scream “anti-Semite” in order to prohibit perfectly valid ideas from being expressed, then nobody will listen or care when you scream it in order to highlight its genuine manifestations. …
So this smear campaign not only threatens to suppress legitimate debate about crucial policy matters in the U.S., but it also is aimed at the reputations and careers of numerous young liberal writers who have done absolutely nothing wrong.
If Greenwald doesn’t think any of the CAP or Media Matters comments were offensive, that’s fine. But calling criticism of the writing a “smear campaign” is simply inaccurate, since CAP officials and the writers themselves have already conceded some of the remarks crossed the line.
His claim that critics of CAP and Media Matters are looking to collect “scalps” or ruin reputations also strikes me as paranoid nonsense. The criticism over the past month hasn’t been focused on the writers themselves, but on the ideas CAP has started channeling into the mainstream.
These weren’t ideas CAP bloggers personally invented, or even necessarily realized the anti-Semitic connotations. But they’re concepts steeped in anti-Jewish tropes that have grown increasingly prevalent on the left in recent years. It would be wrong to let these ideas go unchallenged, simply because they’re being voiced by people who don’t necessarily have bad intentions.
When Zaid Jilani told me he didn’t realize the connotation behind his “Israel-Firster” comments, I believed him, and still do. I know and like some of the writers at CAP, and while I don’t agree with them on Israel, they’re not anti-Semites.
But I strongly disagree with Greenwald. Suggesting that American supporters of Israel are disloyal citizens is not a “perfectly valid idea.” Claiming that AIPAC is marching the U.S. into war with Iran on behalf of Israel is not a “perfectly valid idea.” And characterizing Israel as an apartheid state is not a “perfectly valid idea.” These notions are false and offensive, and saying so publicly doesn’t mean you’re “prohibiting” free discussion. People who honestly believe those conspiratorial ideas about the Israel lobby and dual-loyalty – who aren’t just repeating them without considering the meaning behind them – have plenty of extremist right-wing and left-wing outlets to push their message out. An influential Democratic think tank should not be one of them.
This has become a familiar canard by the left during the Obama administration. it started with the whisper campaign against Dennis Ross.It went silent for awhile when there was an uproar but it always rears its ugly head. I suspect we will see more of this from the Obamabots in the year to come. its all he has when it comes to Israel since Obama's Mid East policy has proven so disastrous. Nothing is Obama's fault it is always someone else's and you are either a racist or a traitor to America to criticize him. n nAlso remember JStreet was created initially by NJDC as cover for Obama. It is funded by that ultimate Jew-Hating-Jew Soros…you do need to take everything from whence it comes….
As an observer to the American scene it appears to me that Ben Ami and Greenwald are doing the work of the real antisemites and helping incite against, ultimately, Jews in general.r nThey are, what some Jews are calling, Kapos.r nIf Jews, as loyal citizens of the United States, support Israel why is it considered “putting the interests of another country before the interests of the United States”?r nIs that because the interests of the United States is counter to the interests of the Jewish State?r nThe existence then of the Jewish state something the United States considers negative in its relations with the World?r nThat there is a double standard where Jews are concerned that is not applied to Muslims citizens, whose allegiance is to Islam and not the US?
Lest we forget that Greenwald also wrote on Salon.com several months back, almost in passing that one of the great regrets of his own life is that he's not old enough to have been able to help the Nazis march in Skokie, Il. Those are the words he used. So being loyal to Hitler isn't a 'dual loyalty' but being a victim of Hitler is.
Do you have a link to that article?
I was going to stay out of this until I saw that rather disgusting Atlantic article and I think that the bigger question then becomes one of exactly who is trying to smear whom. And why. n nA century ago it was Catholics and dual loyalty to the Pope. Now it is Jews and Israel. The new "know nothings" are no less ignorant than their earlier incarnation. n nBut the larger issue is this — the very same people so offended by the Post article have no problem throwing around words like 'racist', "sexist" and "homopobic" whenever it is to their advantage. I wonder — I really wonder — if a conservative administration would be given similar leeway if it did half the things this one has …
Ben Ami is moving into sleaze country. Just who decides what is US national interests and how the decisions are made are important issues. But Ben Ami knows that whatever obama decides is ipso facto US national interest. Ben Ami is still pimping for Judeophobes and is probably still slopping at the White House's hog trough for journalists and political activists. n n“If the charge is that you’re putting the interests of another country before the interests of the United States. . ." n nIt is curious that Leftists in the old days would frankly deny that they cared at all about US national interests. We have a new kind of "leftist" who poses as the greatest defender of the national interest. Ben Ami is not the only one. What does this right-left terminology mean anyhow?
“If the charge is that you’re putting the interests of another country before the interests of the United States. . ." n nIrving is a huge Canadian company that is into (amongst other things) petroleum and timber. There are Irving gasoline stations all through New England, and look at the end of a 2X3 or 2X4 and you may well see it stamped "Irving" — truckload after truckload clears customs in Houlton and comes down I-95. n nFrom the person punching the cash register at 2AM to the regional managers and the rest, Irving employs a lot of people — most of whom are probably doing their best to make Irving successful and to advance its interests. To advance its *CANADIAN* interests. And they have driven American companies out of business, it is called "competition." n nHow is this different? Isn't this putting the interests of another country ahead of America?
I realized why I was upset and disgusted by the Atlantic article. I know why I am so disgusted with the term "Israel First" — once you have spent an evening sitting across the conference table from someone like Hussain Ibish — and he was a *lot* worse when he was at UMass — one has to say something pretty far out there to upset me. (Back in the '90s,.UMass Amherst had a Hamas chapter in our grad dorm — and they were hired to run the security desk. I am not making this up…) n nNo, the Atlantic article and some of this other stuff, including the term "Israel First" itself is nothing less than an open accusation of treason. Treason, the crime of betraying one's country — the allegation is that certain Americans are attempting to betray America so as to benefit a foreign power (ie Israel) and if these allegations were made in as blunt a language as this, there would be the legitimate demand for such serious allegations to be supported with something resembling evidence. Treason is a very serous charge — people would demand an explanation or an apology. But when you start using the fuzzy logic that the Left loves to employ, you can imply rather than state the allegation, with folk never really seeing the ad hominem contained therein. n nLets go one step further — the US Constitution defines "treason" very carefully, for good historical reasons. Article 3, Section three states that "treason" "shall consist only in levying War against [the US], or in adhering to [America's] Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." n nIs Israel an enemy of the United States? Do we have an embassy there? n nIs Iran an enemy of the United States? Do we have an embassy there? And does anyone care to remember what happened to the last embassy we had there? (That was an act of war, folks — an embassy is considered sovereign territory of the country it belongs to, and 33 years ago the Iranians seized American territory every bit as much as if they had seized Georgetown.) And there is considerable evidence that the schmucks currently running Iran are the very people who were involved in this war crime in 1979. n nObama or not, Israel versus Iran, which country would you define as an "enemy" of the United States and which one would you not? (Which country do we have diplomatic relations with?) Gives an interesting spin on any concept of treason, does it not??? n