The Washington Free Beacon’s Adam Kredo went public yesterday about an increasingly pitched family feud in the Jewish world. In 1,100 words, Kredo cataloged the decline of the once-proud and now largely irrelevant Forward newspaper, which has gone from being one of America’s top Jewish outlets to publishing left-wing wishful thinking and agitprop. The responses from the Forward’s defenders have begun pouring in, including this frankly shrill outburst from Tablet’s Dan Klein.
Before getting to the substance of the debate: no one expects the anti-Israel wing of the pro-Israel community to make good arguments. They’re cooking with bad ingredients. But is it too much to ask that they limit themselves to mumbling through pro-forma talking points rather than launching sneering attacks? The choice should be between terrible arguments or smug self-satisfaction. Not both.
Kredo traced the Forward’s free fall to the tenure of editor Jane Eisner. Eisner has not been bashful about turning her paper into an oleaginous politicized echo chamber. To take a small example, last year she sneered at Contentions for once calling a Forward cartoon by Eli Valley–whom she was at the time installing as the paper’s artist in residence –”ferociously repugnant.” She didn’t link to our 2008 post, which she said Valley could consider a “compliment,” so that her readers could judge the controversy for themselves. It’s here.
You almost get the sense that at some point Kredo just had to stop listing scandals out of exhaustion. He talked about the Forward’s distressingly uncritical showcasing of “Israel apartheid” accusations, but not about its work on behalf of Peter Beinart’s colossal flop of a BDS campaign. He outlined many of the paper’s attacks on conservative funders and activists, but didn’t get to its pro-Obama water-carrying during the ADL/AJC’s “don’t criticize Obama” dustup, which Contentions by turns criticized and mocked. He noted the Forward’s glowing profile of Hamas supporter and one-stater Ali Abunimah, but not the paper’s equally execrable defense of M.J. Rosenberg’s anti-Semitic and anti-Israel ravings (Rosenberg and his Media Matters then-employers eventually parted ways, marking the left-wing think tank as more sensitive to anti-Jewish and anti-Israel incitement than the ostensibly pro-Jewish and pro-Israel Forward).
Klein’s Tablet defense of the Forward began with a bombastic headline announcing that yesterday was the “wrong day to attack the ‘Forward.’” Apparently just that morning a Forward writer had taken a victory lap after tracking down George Washington’s 1790 letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport and arranging to have it publicly displayed. To be clear and explicit: Klein dismissed how the Forward has transformed itself into a platform for “Israel apartheid” propaganda, anti-Semitic rhetoric, and terrorist apologism — because the paper helped find a late 18th-century letter by George Washington. Mordant analysis, that.
Klein even wrote that he was “not going to defend” the damning Forward articles exposed by the WFB. He might at least have tried. If the Jewish far left is going to circle its wagons on the basis of transparent bluster, they ought to do so with a little less smugness. George Washington’s letter. Come on.
Do you expect anything but shrill whining from anyone on the left when they are brought to task or shown to be hypocrites, liars and antisemitic Jews? So the Forward found a letter by George Washington and that excuses lauding Jew-haters and partaking in the dehumanization of another 6 million Jews? They and Tablet embrace themselves once again.
Sounds like you're the Jew hater. The Forward has integrity. Self-hating Jews like you do not. Israel is a murderously racist neo-Nazi State that people of your ilk cheer on. You support Genocide against the Palestinians which means you're a very bad person, scum, in fact. And, The Forward calls you out. A JEWISH newspaper calls you out for your complicity with Evil. They oughta get a medal. You're a damn judenrat. We didn't need you then, and we want no part of you now.
"The responses from the Forward’s defenders have begun pouring in, including this frankly shrill outburst from Tablet’s Dan Klein." n nI just read Klein's piece, and frankly, I find nothing "shrill" about it. On the other hand, and frankly, this post about Klein's piece sounds rather strongly shrill to me. "Left-wing wishful thinking and agitprop"? "Oleaginous politicized echo chamber"? I mean, what words are left to describe Commentary? The entire second paragraph is a substance-free ad hominem attack on the motives of anyone who criticizes Israel.
Commentary is flailing. It's desire to exterminate the people it calls "filthy shvatz goyim" (the Palestinians) has failed. It's a judenrat rag that's going down with the ship (Nazi Israel).
I don't see an essential difference between Nazi & Communist Judeophobia, and the gross lies told by "Israeli100". I welcome informed and reasoned discussion of all issues and have my own criticisms of Israel. I have never seen anybody at Commentary call anybody "filthy shvatz goyim" nor any equivalent. By the way, I live in Israel, in Jerusalem, and have Arab neighbors on my street and nearby who also shop in our neighborhood shopping malls, ride the buses and trams, eat at cafes, etc. alongside Jews. So calling Israel an apartheid state is a gross lie that reveals the gross bigotry and/or deep credulity –deriving from preexisting prejudice– of those who utter it. Since "Israeli100" comments on Contentions purely to make propaganda and insult Jews and is always short on facts and weak on reasoning, I see no reason why Commentary has to tolerate his filth.
I grew up at the other end of the state, blissfully unaware of the Forward or the type who are its readers, in a Jewish community dominated by Israelis, post-war immigrants and academics. I subsequently spent some time abroad, getting to know the Jews of central Europe. n nI first read the Forward last year at the urging of a cousin, who felt strongly about it for reasons that are not, to be honest, clear to me even yet. So I signed up for one of those free trial subscriptions. n nI was shocked: parochial, self-satisfied, concerned with the unimportant, completely lacking understanding of the world beyond the five boroughs of The City or an outlook that doesn't differentiate between the various unimportant historical branches of socialism… Useful to a cultural anthropologist as an example of a vanishing sub-species, I suppose, but not to someone interested in understanding the great big world beyond that particular milieu. I cancelled the trial immediately, not wanting to waste my time or my recycler's truck space on the additional paper.
Thank you Israeli100. nYou illustrate and punctuate the article extremely well. nAs for genocide I suggest you look at the Congo, Rwanda or Sudan. You make excuses for the worst in human nature, usually Muslim. And then of course you blame the Jews. Have you stopped frothing yet?
Just where has Commentary called Palestinians or anyone else "filthy shvatz goyim"? nLet's see n- Lies about what Commentary has published – check! n- Projecting onto both Israel and Commentary the racism, contempt for human life and exterminationist goals of Hamas, the PA and the other Jew-haters — check! n- Gratutious use of mis-spelled Yiddhish – check! n- Name calling and outright long-ago debunked lies substituted for fact and reasoned argument – check! n- antisemitic use of Nazi inversion – Check! n- casual acceptance and use of anti-semitic themes with token nods toward "good" Jews — Check! nYep, its Israel100 all right. Or any reasonably intelligent 12 year old child who decided to copy Israel100's style of posting.
I really wonder if George Soros funds the Forward.Everybody was startled when they heard that he funded "J STREET".They don't have sponsor or ad revenue.Very mysterious .