Jonathan’s prediction that Andrew Adler’s disgraceful Obama assassination fantasy will be used to smear critics of the president’s Israel policy couldn’t have been more prescient. Here’s Yossi Gurvitz at 972 Magazine taking the first shot at the strawman:
The vast majority of American Jews will feel nothing but horror at Adler’s sick fantasy. Most of them would shudder at the idea of betraying their country like Jonathan Pollard did. A small number of them are, however, “Israel-firsters”: They put Israel’s interests – or, to be more precise, Greater Israel’s interest – ahead of their country’s. You can spot them easily: They generally doth protest too much about the usage of “Israel-firsters.”
Of course. Because if you didn’t secretly have a primary allegiance to Israel, why else would you possibly object to people saying you do?
As an Israeli, Gurvitz likely has little experience with accusations that he’s an insufficiently faithful American citizen. Maybe to him, this doesn’t seem like a very big deal. Sure, he writes, there are a “small number of American Jews” who put Israel’s interests ahead of the U.S. But like most defenders of the “Israel-first” charge, Gurvitz is careful to note that this doesn’t include the vast majority of American Jews.
This is exactly where the defense of this smear starts to break down. For some reason, there’s a perception that the term is only anti-Semitic if it’s directed at the entire Jewish community. Jeffrey Goldberg skewers this succinctly: “The mainstreaming of hostility toward any group of Jews leads inevitably to the mainstreaming of hostility to Jews generally.”
In fact, this is already playing out right before our own eyes. Gurvitz begins his piece the same way all defenders of the Israel-first slur tend to: by listing off a few strawman-dual-loyalists, including convicted spy Jonathan Pollard, and the latest example, newspaper publisher Andrew Adler. Gurvitz’s intention isn’t just to argue that Pollard and Adler are Israel firsters – that’s too easy. The real target of Gurvitz’s column is Jeffrey Goldberg, as if a liberal, Obama-supporting Zionist could reasonably be lumped into a category with the first two.
The Israel-firster smear has been thrown at everyone from Goldberg to Gary Ackerman to Bill Kristol to Dennis Ross, Anthony Weiner, Eliot Spitzer the Anti-Defamation League, AIPAC and the Republican Jewish Coalition. If anyone who falls under that wide spectrum of Israel policy views is an “Israel-firster,” then we’re not just talking about a “small number of American Jews,” as Gurvitz contends. We’re talking about almost every Jewish American who considers himself a Zionist, and nearly every Jewish American who exercises his constitutional right to speak freely and lobby in support of the Jewish state.
Israeli fringe leftists like Gurvitz should realize that they’re providing cover for an anti-Semitic term that was coined by American neo-Nazis decades ago, a term that’s designed to intimidate American Jews from voicing support for Israel. Maybe Gurvitz hasn’t grasped that piece of history. Or maybe he wants to marginalize American Jewish support for Israel. Either way this is a debate that doesn’t concern him.
972Rag and its ilk will of course demand that anyone who doesn't personally attack that Atlanta writer is a 'dual loyalty' hyper hyper mega ultra super uber right wing fascist who wants Obama dead and therefore cannot be trusted. The odd thing though is that these are the same people who will find a way to advocate putting other Jews in 'camps' come Jan 2013 to ensure the 'safety of the Obama administration' or some such idiocy.
Trudy, Obama doesn't need concentration camps to win this one. I don't think. The GOP is badly splintered. Poor old Commentary doesn't even know what the GOP or the conservative movement for whom it theoretically advocates is or is going. Who are these people? Who indeed. But anti-Semitism knows no political boundaries and flourishes across the fissiparous rights and lefts. Double standards, split thinking (the Jews are cowards and also ICBM-toting Nazi aggressors, incapable of real thought while being preternaturally cunning masters of deception, ruthless capitalists and dedicated Bolsheviks), and projection (they are the negative repository of hidden impulses, the ritual scapegoats of impurity)–these are ageless. Obama, for all his weaknesses, ain't that.
Israel Firster Andrew Adler has published a suggestion that may inspire any Lee Harvey Oswald or cover a Mossad impersonator thereof. Israel has made itself into an isolated militant supremacist theocracy/ethnocracy with ICBM nukes; a very real and rapidly increasing threat to itself and to the whole world. A pariah among nations. Justice demands that UN and NATO impose resolution just as involuntary, disruptive and humiliating to Israel as Israel has wreaked upon occupied Palestine for generations. The Jewish State must be made to recognize an armed Palestine with externally enforced autonomy, eviction of all settlers, true contiguity encompassing Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem together, neither pinched nor parceled, and pay punitive reparations.
Israel Firster? Ahhh let's spread those me-me-memes around. Israel is not a theocracy. Your bosum buddies in Tehran actually are. The second largest party in the new Egyptian parliament interprets Sharia as demoting Coptic Christians to second-class citizenship and banning bikinis. You fail to mention that the Gulf Sunni emirates are not afraid of Israel's nukes they fear Iran's and on an on. n nIn an Arab world shaken by tribal warfare and regime snipers shooting down civilians in the street Israel is … well, Israel is … well Israel is building apartments for Jews where Palestinians don't want the Jews to live. Whoooaaaa. But no, Israel is not occupying the PA, it is not occupying Gaza, but Johnnie Pupik, a nobody from nowheres demands the US, NATO, the UN, the cosmos, God, the united Hobbits of Hobbitry and his mom punish Israel for an imaginary Torquemedan reign of terror and force the Jewish state to surrender to the Al Asqa Brigade and the armed mlitias of Hamas and pave over the Kotel quarter. Yes, the Jews must do this, they must do that. Justice demands. Of course. And Freedom. And the Rights of Man. And mom. n nOh yeah, the Jewish traitors want to bring over that notorious Mossad false-flag unit to follow up 9-11 with an assassination. Oh, and the Jews did in JFK too. No doubt Abe Lincoln. We'll let little Andy talk over his literary inspiration with the Secret Service, though, if memory serves, the anti-Zionists thought an actual movie about assassinating that Zionist President George W. was perfectly OK. n nLook, "anti-Zionists" are like puppies. They refuse to go for the eyedropper with that nice woofer adderal mister vetman prescribed to for their tummy indigestion and make a beeline to slurp the table scraps of somebody else's anti-Zionist factoid solipsistic doggerel hallucination bumper-sticker slogans off the kitchen floor, throw up–rrg rgg rrg!–and then they lap it up, again. It must be true, see here it is again on the tiles next to my chew-toy!!!. So nutritious! n nBut why are you guys piddling over here? Doesn't anyone have a rolled up newspaper? n nBad doggie! Bad doggie!
Thank you for replying Besht. No cause to insult me just because our perspectives differ. Yours, I suspect, sanctions all things Israeli or Jewish be they true or false, right or wrong. Dick Goldstone recently joined you in this. Its a tribal thing and was rampant in Wiemar Germany with unfortunate consequences.
"well Israel is building apartments for Jews where Palestinians don't want the Jews to live." n nWhile this statement is factually true, why do you insist on omitting the bigger picture? While there are no restrictions on where Jews live in Jerusalem, Palestinians are restricted to living in East Jerusalem and building permits that allow for building apartments for Palestinians to live are never granted. Why wouldn't Palestinians not want Jews to build apartments to live in their designated living area when they are prevented from living anywhere else?
How was the popcorn for that movie?
wow. n nnot only are you a bigot and a racist, but you called for the ethnic cleansing of jews from the west bank n nhow effed up you are
If anyone doubts that "Israel-firster" is in and of itself an anti-Semitic appellation, tell me just who has ever been called an "Ireland-firster," or an "Italy-firster?" Hell, if anyone dared to call an illegal alien a "Mexico-firster," he would immediately be denounced as a bigot. No, this special treatment, like many others, is reserved exclusively for Jews.
Whatever happened to Raviv? Talk about an agent provocateur gone rogue. Very strange.
Historians generally presume that Hitler and/or his National Socialist buddies were responsible for the Reichstag fire — he blamed it on the Communists whom he was then able to round up and, well, kill. nPresident James Garfield was assassinated by someone who did not want to see the spoils system ended, but Chester Arthur surprised everyone and instituted the Civil Service system. Jack Kennedy was probably going to loose to Barry Goldwater in the 1964 election, and was really worried about the election — from everything I have seen he was no where near as popular as people make him out to be now. nElvis Presley was scheduled to play the Portland Civics Center the next day when he died — back in the '70s, that was the ultimate low-rent dive, Elvis was a has-been and they were almost handing the tickets out for free. But when he died, he instantly became super popular. n nI am terrified that B. Hussain is going to do — well, what John Kerry just did, only worse. Perish the thought that something happens to the man — we want him to be healty and to live to old age — to live in infamy to old age, but to live to it. n nRemember one other thing — there already has been one perp arrested for shooting at the White House — with an AK-47, one round went into a window, another into the building, and heaven knows where the rest of the clip went, but the good thing is that the perp got caught. Guess what — it was an Occupy Wall Street person. And while I like to think that my government is competent enough to armor the White House to withstand at least a standard 7.62 round, I would have thought they would have caught the muzzle flash, the good thing is that they caught/arrested the schmuck who did it. n nDid I mention that he was associated with Occupy Wall Street/DC?