While CAP seems to have taken the charges to heart, and is seeking to change its ways, the Obama/Soros-”firsters” at MMFA are digging in their heels.

This dual-loyalty charge, like most anti-Semitic claims, is even more abhorrent because it directly contradicts Jewish Law:

Seek the peace of the city where I have exiled you and pray for it to the Lord, for in its peace you shall have peace. -Jeremiah Chapter 29:7

And it is nothing new: the dual-loyalty charge made by these progressive groups have been around since biblical times, it was what caused enslavement of the Israelites by Egypt.

A new king arose over Egypt, who did not know about Joseph. He said to his people, “Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more numerous and stronger than we are. Get ready, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they increase, and a war befall us, and they join our enemies and depart from the land.” – Exodus Chapter 1:8-10

Jewish sources from all over the political spectrum have denounced the CAP and MMFA use of Antisemitism in their political writing.  Not many people were surprised when the Simon Wiesenthal Center denounced the use of the dual loyalty term, but when the very progressive magazine, The Tablet condemned CAP and MMFA for its use, eyebrows were raised.

The root of this problem is not a twenty-something blogger writing something stupid on the Internet. Rather, it is that anti-Semitic rhetoric and logic are being protected and justified by those who are supposed to be gatekeepers. These people, often in the service of their larger political aims, are willing to apologize for or ignore what is obviously Jew-baiting and Jew-hatred…..

…This isn’t how the world works. Americans’ sensitivity to racist language directed at African-Americans has not made Americans insensitive to “real” anti-black racism. Rather it has made us scrupulous about our language, and subsequently our beliefs and practices have come to reflect, if not wholly fulfill, the promises embodied in this country’s founding documents.

What makes people insensitive to racism is when American political and intellectual elites refuse to confront racist language. The use of phrases like “Israel Firster” and “dual loyalist” that are based on anti-Semitic tropes is anti-Semitic. So is the belief that Jews fan the flames of hatred for discussing the opinions of those who hate them

CAP has denounced the term and instituted “oversight” changes — while the staffer who used “Israel firster” on his Twitter account apologized, deleted the tweets and has since left CAP for another group. The Wiesenthal Center has applauded CAP for making the changes.

The Anti-Defamation League also said in a written statement that the Center for American Progress “took the matter seriously and understood the anti-Semitic nature of raising dual-loyalty canards.” The ADL praised CAP for taking “concrete steps” to address the problem.

But as for Media Matters and its “Israel-firster” user, MJ Rosenberg, the talons are out.  These pages have provided many examples over the years how Rosenberg accuses American Jews of dual loyalty with the term Israel-firsters), or how he claims the  “evil Zionist lobby” controls both the media and the U.S. foreign policy.

(more…)

Media Matters for America’s Senior Fellow MJ Rosenberg has become infamous for accusing any American Jews who support Israel of dual loyalty (he calls them Israel-firsters). He also has claimed the evil Israel lobby” controls both the media and the U.S. foreign policy. He also uses the term “neo-con” as a slang pejorative term for Jews who are politically conservative.  Rosenberg is not the only Jew-Basher at Media Matters, just the most vocal.

Rosenberg and his fellow progressives at MMFA and Center for American Progress have finally picked on the wrong Jews: The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC). Formed by the famous Nazi-hunter, the SWC’s only purpose is to preach tolerance. Unlike groups such as the ADL and the AJC, which often lean left, the Wiesenthal Center is non-political. Also unlike those groups, the Center will criticize and/or praise people on either side of the political aisle.

Last week, Politico published a piece about how the Progressive MMFA and CAP were fighting with the more mainstream Democrats about Israel.  They want to change the party to the Anti-Israel Party.  The article reported that the battle was being led by several bloggers at Media Matters and the Center for American Progress’s Think Progress blog.

The piece highlighted several controversial comments that were made on Twitter by MJ Rosenberg and other MMFA and ThinkProgress bloggers calling groups that did not share their anti-Israel positions “Israel firsters” essentially repeating the antisemitic meme of dual loyalty.

In response to the progressive attacks sent to the Wapo’s Jennifer Rubin, Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center attacked “progressive” antisemitism:

“Unfortunately, it’s becoming increasingly difficult in this country to take a position sympathetic to the Jewish state and in favor of the continuation of America’s historic strong alliance with Israel without being called “an Israel Firster” and charged with “dual loyalties.” (more…)

Sometimes it astounds me the extent to which a progressive “journalist” will go to spin stories in their direction, thus putting politics before serving the readers. Sometimes it astounds me the extent to which a progressive Jew will go to promote their favorite politicians thus putting politics before either their home country, America or the Jewish people.

In his latest column in the paper he publishes, Gary Rosenblatt of the Jewish Week astounded me times two, as he talked about the disastrous ADL/Abe Foxman request for Jews to avoid criticizing the POTUS and warned that if American Jews upset President Obama, he might be really bad toward Israel in a second term.

Case in point: There are no more savvy experts on the mood and politics of the American Jewish community than Abe Foxman and David Harris, professional heads of the ADL and American Jewish Committee, respectively, our two leading mainstream national Jewish defense organizations.

But Foxman and Harris seem to have been caught off guard last month by the sharp criticism of their joint National Pledge for Unity on Israel, which they no doubt thought would be widely accepted in the Jewish community — a kind of motherhood-and-apple-pie affirmation of the ongoing power, and need, for bipartisan support in Washington for the Jewish state.

The outcries over the unity pledge, particularly on the right, have underscored just how fractured political activists in our community are over Israel. More specifically, the issue speaks to the debate over the wisdom of criticizing the Obama administration, and especially the president himself, as being Israel’s adversary as he seeks re-election.

Things need to be put in context. In this column a progressive publisher, is supporting a progressive advocate who is supporting a progressive president while not admitting to their political bias, which is a disservice to the readers, in the case of the Jewish Week and the donors in the case of the ADL.

As I pointed out when the “shut up pledge”  was first published, Abe Foxman has been running the ADL as his own personal progressive activist group. Indeed the organization spends as much time promoting progressive social issues such as abortion and illegal immigration as it does Jewish issues.  So of course Abe will do just about anything he can to get his progressive prophet re-elected.

(more…)

The Washington Post’s Richard Cohen puts on his blinders and takes a look at the Occupy Wall Street movement, concluding there is nothing to the many reports of antisemitism among participants, while also suggesting any outrage should be directed at those leveling the charge.

This was my second visit to the Occupy Wall Street site and the second time my keen reporter’s eye has failed to detect even a hint of the anti-Semitism that had been trumpeted by certain right-wing Web sites and bloggers, most prominently Bill Kristol. He is a founder of the Emergency Committee for Israel, which has been running cable TV ads alleging a virtual hate rally at the Occupy Wall Street site and calling on President Obama and other important Democrats to denounce what is — as it happens — not happening there. The commercial ran on Fox News the very day I was at the site.

The imputation of anti-Semitism, however, adds gravitas to this lighthearted event. The smear is in deadly earnest, a reminder that the devious tactics of the Old Left have been adopted by the New Right. (No accident, maybe, that the practitioners are the descendants of lefties.) It produced alarm on the Internet, Jewish smoke signals alerting the ethnically twitchy to the presence of enemies and the demand that Obama, already suspected of harboring furious anti-Israel sentiments, do something. But there is nothing to be done — except to condemn anyone who uses anti-Semitism to advance a political agenda. To quote some of them: Where’s the outrage?

Contrast Cohen’s account with this, reported by the Daily Caller just yesterday. One has to wonder how Cohen’s “keen” reporter’s eye seems to have missed this completely. Google Occupy and CAIR, or Occupy and antisemiticsm and you’ll find a multitude of links Cohen can’t quite seem to find, or make for himself.

The Occupy Wall Street organizers have invited support from Muslim groups, and on Friday, their camp in New York City’s Zuccotti Park played host to an Islamist group with ties to Islamist anti-Semites, radicals and terrorists. The Islamic group held a small prayer service that featured roughly 30 men and 30 women. As required by Islamist rules, the women sat in the back and wore head coverings, as the prayer leader cried out “Allahu Akbar,” or “Allah is the Most Powerful of All.”

Given the increasing amount of documentation demonstrating how members of the media have helped shape and guide the movement all along, including a reporter working on the story for the New York Times before they scrubbed her, and some working behind the scenes from the very beginning, it should come as no surprise that one of their own would circle back in a weak attempt to shift the narrative now that, perhaps, some of the more blatant displays of antisemitism have been pushed underground.

“The one of the irate anti-Semitic dipshit with the “Nazi bankers” sign” Here I agree with Dave, that guy is a dipshit. So were all of the other anti-Semitic “dipshits” who happen to show up at these rallies. The Teacher in LA who thought Zionist Jews should be driven out of the country was a dipshit, so was that large chunk of the Occupy Chicago protesters who joined the hate Israel rally.

Perhaps Cohen would like to see this video scrubbed from the Internet, as well – much as the teacher in question was scrubbed from her job.

(more…)

Yesterday Eric Boehlert made the mistake of trying to equate media coverage of the tea party to NBC’s Dylan Ratigan helping the occupy movement write their messaging while reporting on said movement. Boehlert has yet to provide examples of Fox actively writing tea party messaging. Boehlert is quick to defend NBC as it’s the only network that will consider having him on, albeit rarely.

Today Boehlert takes issue with my remark from last night that the Nazi Party USA endorsed the occupy movement, which they did, on Twitter and their website.

Boehlert’s response:

Obsessive, isn't he?

David Duke says that “thousands of tea partiers” asked him to run, yet never produced a single name from those thousands of tea partiers. Because he says it happened it must be true! When did Eric Boehlert begin listening to and believing a white supremacist? Very telling. Says more about his belief system than that of a tea partier’s.

The guy speaking at the Phoenix tea party apparently showed up when they were allowing citizens to line up and address people via an open mic. No one realized who he was until it was too late. The thing about these instances is though, the tea party runs off crazies. Boehlert defends them.

We also realize that many of these instances were LaRouche plants and progressives which attempted to crash tea parties, get film and photo of themselves doing it, and then later edit it altogether and make it appear as though Nazis, etc., were attending rallies. Lee Fang of Think Progress used without permission video from Adam Sharp who took video of a prog doing just this. Fang dishonestly presented the guy as a real Nazi instead of one of the tea party crashers from the Tea Party Crashers website and short-lived, epically failed movement.

The bottom line is that Media Matters established the yardstick which defines any group that has even the perception of the above as “racist.” The danger in using this yardstick, as demonstrated by my first image, is that it can go both ways. Progressives rarely think about things like that; they’re instant satisfaction, do now think later-type folks. So I’m going to use the yardstick that progressives insist we use and in doing so, progressives come off as exponentially worse in this story.

From my post yesterday:

There is only one group endorsed by the Nazi Party, supported by communists, a group that has scored over athousand arrests, a group where felons are arrested with guns, a group that threatens to kill people, a group where they desecrate the flag and defecate on cop cars, spit on uniformed Coast Guard members, and that group is the Obama-endorsed, cop-killer endorsed, Pelosi-blessed occupy movement for which NBC’s Dylan Ratigan served in some capacity as an editor while reporting on them.

Progressives have had communists march with them and President Obama himself appeared at a rally with hate leader Malik Shabazz, the same NBPP who intimidated voters and hollered about “killing white people” and their babies. We’ve seen numerous instances of antisemitism at these occupy rallies:

(more…)

- Big Government takes on the ADL. It’s worth noting here, as the media is every bit at fault in this regard, as are they.

The Anti-Defamation League is one of the most powerful and authoritative voices against bigotry of all kinds–not just in the United States, but throughout the world. Yet the ADL’s message has been compromised by left-wing political bias, most recently in its failure to denounce the evident antisemitism of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement.

- NewsBusters weighs in with more.

Given that excessive, disproportionate outrage, the press should be truly disgusted by videos that have been taken of overt racism and anti-Semitism occurring at various Occupy Wall Street protests and associated jobs rallies from coast to coast (multi-clip video follows with commentary, extreme vulgarity warning):

- A response to the AP hit piece on Herman Cain.

- Will the media eventually abandon the good ship agitprop for Obama? Some good analysis from AIM.

But as Obama’s exchange with Henry showed, the administration is clearly feeling the pressure of failed policies and expectations and the eroding confidence of not only the public, but of their liberal media allies. When asked a straightforward question, Obama chose to deflect it with a joke rather than answer it head on.

(more…)

I don’t know if its 2,000 years of Jewish guilt or something in our DNA but the Jewish people have a history of being our own worst enemies. Nowhere is that proven more clearly than in the Jewish press. For any anti-Semites that may be reading this article, I realize that you believe that all media is controlled by the Jews, but for the purpose of this article, we are talking about media specifically and targeted toward Jews, such as the JTA on the internet and the newspaper, The Jewish Week.

The Jewish Week could be much more profitable if most of the reporters were fired and replaced with press releases from Media Matters, J Street and other progressive organizations. And the best part of it all the readers wouldn’t be able to detect anything different.

In 2007, I  was involved in the leadership of an umbrella organization called Coordinating Council for Jerusalem (CCJ). It was an activist group trying to prevent the division of Jerusalem. The leadership consisted of representatives from organizations comprising all levels of  Jewish observance and political persuasion. There was no agenda beyond Jerusalem.

A Jewish Week reporter, James Besser however, wrote an article implying that the CCJ was comprised of only Orthodox organizations (along with a bunch of right wing crazies)  whose only purpose was to prevent a Middle East peace deal. This contention was absurd, In fact if there was any inkling that we were trying to prevent a peace treaty,  half of the organization’s membership would have walked out.  Besser’s contention could have only come from his own imagination.

(more…)

Friday, Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League did what he’s most fond of doing: he focused his ire on a friend of Israel rather than an enemy in order to protect his allies in the Democratic Party.  This time, he’s attacked staunch philo-Semite and pro-Israel bulwark Rush Limbaugh.  Here’s Rush’s statement:

To some people, banker is a code word for Jewish; and guess who Obama is assaulting?  He’s assaulting bankers.  He’s assaulting money people.  And a lot of those people on Wall Street are Jewish. So I wonder if there’s – if there’s starting to be some buyer’s remorse there.

Here’s the relevant portion of the ADL press release: (more…)

Abe Foxman has come out against a great and wonderful friend of the Jews, Rush Limbaugh.  That is bad enough, but it is symptomatic of a deeper problem: I have for years derided Jews in America and the Jewish lay leadership for tolerating and supporting clear and present enemies of the Jewish people among our senior ranks. It is a sickness of the soul. The liberal Jew worships at the church of human secularism. These lost souls are married to their liberal dogma.

One of the most odious of the bunch, Abe Foxman, uses the might and the soapbox of the Anti-Defamation League in an attempt to destroy friends and supporters of the Jewish people, in order to garner favor with our enemies.

On Friday Norman Podhoretz, whom I rarely cite, as his capitulation on Gaza and other existential matters of grave concern to the Jewish people have been most damaging, called Foxman out on the ADL chief’s denunciation of Rush Limbaugh as an anti-Semite.  The author of the book Why Are Jews Liberals? (from which Rush was quoting), Podhoretz called Foxman’s attack on Rush “vile” and noted that Foxman has: (more…)