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.

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Tablet magazine, the new online Jewish-themed publication that focuses on a broad range of current affairs topics, has taken Media Matters for America (MMfA) and the Center for American Progress (CAP) to task for using antisemitic language in criticizing Israel.

Illustration from Tablet: Daniel Hertzberg

In two separate articles, Tablet takes on the organizations that are the core of the Democrats’ media and policy strategy, joining a debate in which the defenders of MMfA and CAP have resorted to the worn-out fallacy that their critics are trying to silence debate on Israel.

One article by Spencer Ackerman–whose blog was once hosted by CAP–addresses “fellow progressives” and insists that while criticism of Israel is sometimes appropriate, those who use anti-Jewish tropes–like specious charges of dual loyalty and “Israel first”–undermine the case they are trying to make. He singles out Media Matters, CAP, and the radical pro-Palestinian lobby J Street, among others, for their rhetorical record of bigotry:

Some on the left have recently taken to using the term “Israel Firster” and similar rhetoric to suggest that some conservative American Jewish reporters, pundits, and policymakers are more concerned with the interests of the Jewish state than those of the United States….

“Israel Firster” has a nasty anti-Semitic pedigree, one that many Jews will intuitively understand without knowing its specific history. It turns out white supremacist Willis Carto was reportedly the first to use it, and David Duke popularized it through his propaganda network. And yet [Media Matters' M.J.] Rosenberg and others actually claim they’re using it to stimulate “debate,” rather than effectively mirroring the tactics of some of the people they criticize….

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The Jerusalem Post reports today that Faiz Shakir, vice-president of the Center for American Progress (CAP) and editor of the ThinkProgress.com blog, had admitted that the term “Israel Firster,” which has been used by bloggers at CAP and Media Matters for America (MMfA), is “anti-Semitic.”

Faiz Shakir (Image: Press.tv)

The admission was made in an e-mail obtained by the newspaper:

The Jerusalem Post last week obtained the first CAP acknowledgment of Jewhatred stemming from a group of Mideast bloggers affiliated with CAP’s ThinkProgress website.

In the e-mail that the Post obtained exclusively from the CAP account of Faiz Shakir, who serves as editor-in-chief of the ThinkProgress.org website and is a vice president at CAP, he wrote, “Yes, I agree ‘Israel Firster’ is terrible, anti-Semitic language. And that’s why that language no longer exists on Zaid’s personal twitter feed, because he also knows and understands the implications.”

Zaid Jilani wrote on his Twitter account, where he identifies himself as a “Reporter-Blogger for ThinkProgress,” that “…Obama is still beloved by Israel-firsters and getting lots of their $$.”

The e-mail recognizing the anti-Semitism of a CAP blogger was sent from FShakir@americanprogress.org in December.

The term “Israel Firster” evokes old anti-Jewish slurs of “dual loyalty” and implies that Americans of all faiths who support Israel, and especially those who oppose the Obama administration’s hostility to Israel, are disloyal to the United States.

MMfA senior fellow M.J. Rosenberg is particularly fond of the term “Israel Firster,” and frequently uses it–and worse–terms to attack the pro-Israel cause.

Both CAP and MMfA are key to the Democratic Party’s policy and public relations strategies.

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Media Matters for America has had a bad year, with declining traffic and regular knocks from more notable media outlets. This week alone, MMfA was slammed by Politico and the Simon Wiesenthal Center for antisemitism, so they are eager to deflect by trumping up an attack on Big Journalism.

From Politico (emphasis added):

The Center for American Progress, the party’s key hub of ideas and strategy, and Media Matters, a central messaging organization, have emerged as vocal critics of their party’s staunchly pro-Israel congressional leadership and have been at odds, at times, with Barack Obama’s White House, which has acted as a reluctant ally to Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government …

“There’s two explanations here – either the inmates are running the asylum or the Center for American Progress has made a decision to be anti-Israel,” said Josh Block, a former spokesman for AIPAC who is now a fellow at the center-left Progressive Policy Institute. “Either they can allow people to say borderline anti-Semitic stuff” – a reference to what he described as conspiracy theorizing in the Alterman column – “and to say things that are antithetical to the fundamental values of the Democratic party, or they can fire them and stop it.”

As we wrote earlier this week:

Smith notes, for example, that MJ Rosenberg, “Senior Foreign Policy Fellow” at MMFA, “regularly heaps vitriol on those who disagree” with his radical left-wing views on Israel, including liberal pro-negotiation voices such as Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic.

In May 2011, Andrew Breitbart noted that Rosenberg had accused supporters of Israel of disloyalty to the U.S. and had called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “terrorist.”

Finally, from our post regarding the Simon Wisenthal Center’s criticism of MMfA:

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 …

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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…)

Politico’s Ben Smith writes today that Media Matters for America (MMfA) and the Center for American Progress (CAP), both “core institutions” of the Democratic Party, are pushing anti-Israel policies and downplaying the threat of a nuclear Iran.

By promoting views once confined to the extreme left and isolationist right, MMfA and CAP are dividing the Democratic Party and isolating themselves on the margins of American political debate.

Smith notes, for example, that MJ Rosenberg, “Senior Foreign Policy Fellow” at MMFA, “regularly heaps vitriol on those who disagree” with his radical left-wing views on Israel, including liberal pro-negotiation voices such as Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic. In May 2011, Andrew Breitbart noted that Rosenberg had accused supporters of Israel of disloyalty to the U.S. and called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “terrorist.”

Though CAP “tends to walk a more careful line,” Smith notes that CAP policy analyst Matt Duss, who directs the Middle East Progress blog, called Israel’s blockade against terrorist-controlled Gaza a “moral outrage” and likened it to “segregation in the American South.” CAP has also accused pro-Israel organizations, such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), of agitating for war with Iraq and Iran.

Smith reports that CAP chairman John Podesta has faced complaints over “borderline anti-Semitic stuff” about Israel published on his organization’s website: (more…)

I read the Washington Post’s article, “Violence and the occupy movement,” expecting to see a discussion of the sexual assaults and rapes being reported during the Wall Street protests. Instead, the author, Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, writes about “the violence of systems that create and sustain economic and social injustice on a wide scale.” She is apparently talking about capitalism, a system that has lifted more people out of poverty than any in human history.

Brandon Darby broke the story at Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com that the protests “pose special dangers for women” because of the rapes and sexual assaults taking place. He notes several such incidents:

• A 14-year-old runaway was allegedly sexually assaulted at Occupy Dallas.
• A 19-year-old student activist was allegedly raped at Occupy Cleveland.
• A man was arrested on charges of indecent exposure to children at Occupy Seattle.
• A female reporter was threatened by activists at Occupy Oakland.

Also at BigGovernment, John Nolte wrote about the protesters’ “rap sheet,” which numbers 119 cases of sexual assault, violence, vandalism, anti-Semitism, extortion, perversion, and lawlessness. These are hardly law-abiding protesters, as the lawyers at the National Lawyers Guild and Center for Constitutional Rights maintain. These incidents are occurring because of the complete breakdown of law and order in the makeshift tent cities of the Occupy movement. Under political pressure, the local and even federal authorities have ceded the space to the protesters, effectively abdicating law enforcement’s role. As a result, when police finally do move into these places, as we saw in Oakland, they are met with violence from organizers of the protests. When the police defend themselves, they are accused of police brutality. This accusation was a prominent charge made in Thistlethwaite’s piece.

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George Soros has spent an inordinate amount of his life trying to change the landscape of economics to his benefit. Now he’s attempting to manipulate the sentiments surrounding the 9/11 anniversary.

As the U.S prepares to acknowledge the 9-11 10th Anniversary,  multi-billionaire financier George Soros released a report that claims a conservative cabal of groups and individuals are Islamophobic and the 9-11 memorials are more about hatred for Muslims than commemorating the killing of close to 3,000 Americans by radical Islamists.

Soros calls these Americans, most of whom are conservatives, Fear Incorporated.

The Soros group known as the Center for American Progress (CAP) is deliberately attempting to take attention away from events in the U.S. that are in progress to commemorate the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, and focus that attention on claims of Muslim-bashing by members of counterterrorism think-tanks, terrorism analysts and some members of the news media such as Fox News Channel.

That one of the report’s authors is in custody due to a suspected relationship with Hamas says it all.

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I give all but one of the GOP candidates an “F” for last night’s performance.

The very premise of the Republican presidential debate, hosted by NBC/Politico and broadcast by corporate welfare queen MSNBC proves that conservatives don’t understand the power the media is trying to exert over the next election.

It is an insult to the house of Reagan that MSNBC would try to pass itself off as a fair news organization with the eight Republican candidates giving the sneering, snobby and snide enemy a certain imprimatur of legitimacy.

The only reason the GOP is in a fighting stance in the 2012 presidential election is the Tea Party. The alternative narrative-drivers at MSNBC have spent much of the last two-plus years trying to frame millions and millions of patriotic and concerned Americans as violent, racist knuckle-draggers.

To dignify those habitual and unaccountable slanderers by appearing on that stage shows that apparently these Republicans and daily MSNBC punching bags don’t comprehend the scope of the media problem.

Barack Obama was elected due to the work of the media in 2008. Barack Obama will not cross the finish line in 2012 without the help of that same media–with MSNBC leaning forward as it pushes their wildly unpopular President from behind. (more…)

He has written about having sex with an underage girl, and claims he once threatened to kill a pregnant girlfriend unless she had an abortion. He claims to hate marijuana, but recommends heroin as the cure for suburban boredom. He mocks “Tea Baggers” and scorns “hippies.” His Russian newspaper was shuttered after a government crackdown, and he’s a regular on The Dylan Ratigan Show on MSNBC.

Meet Mark Ames, the provocateur who created the Koch brothers conspiracy theory.

Long before John Podesta’s Center for American Progress began targeting the Koch brothers for their supposed role in the Tea Party, and two years before the Kochs were cast as the villains of public sector union protests in Wisconsin, Ames had already shaped the Koch brothers meme.

Ames and co-author Yasha Levine launched the conspiracy theory–and its twin themes of drug abuse and gay sex–with a blog post (now removed) at Playboy.com in February 2009, entitled: “Backstabber: Is Rick Santelli High on Koch?” They published almost exactly the same article at their own site, exiledonline.com, as “Exposing the Rightwing PR Machine: Is CNBC’s Rick Santelli Sucking Koch?”

Ames and Levine alleged that Santelli’s famous “rant heard around the world” that inspired the Tea Party movement “was not at all spontaneous as his alleged fans claim, but rather it was a carefully-planned trigger” for an “anti-Obama campaign.” That campaign, they claimed, had been planned for months before the 2008 election, and funded by “the Koch family, the multibilllionaire owners of the largest private corporation in America, and funders of scores of rightwing thinktanks and advocacy groups.”

Ames would later explain that he had been inspired to write about the Kochs by his experiences in post-Soviet Moscow, when he edited a sensational newspaper, the eXile–described last year by Vanity Fair as “arguably the most abusive, defamatory, un-evenhanded, and crassest publication in Russia” before it closed in 2008. (more…)

The conservative blogosphere is delirious over the recent screed by right-wing pseudo-scholar Tim Groseclose, Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind. Groseclose claims to use statistical methods to prove that the American media is biased towards the left. He even claims that if the U.S. had a truly “fair and balanced” media, it would feel, sound (and smell?) like the sweaty semi-literate simians at a NASCAR rally.

In a devious bit of agitprop arithmetic, Groseclose uses the political scale developed by a liberal pressure group, the hypergeriatric Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), to describe the “political quotient” (PQ) of politicians on a scale of 0 to 100, with 0 being conservative (appropriately) and 100 being liberal. He then derives a similar measure to describe media bias: the “slant quotient” (SQ), using think tank citations as data points.

Groseclose–who does not bother to hide his right wing bias–arrives at the convenient conclusion that 18 out of 20 major media sources are biased to the left. Only Fox News Special Report and the Washington Times are conservative, i.e. have SQ scores below 50; the rest are all above the allegedly centrist 50. Meanwhile, Groseclose claims, the average American’s has a PQ of about 25–like Ben Stein. Bill O’Reilly, or Dennis Miller.

Then, in a petulant fit of anti-progressive pique, Groseclose takes on Eric Alterman of Media Matters. Alterman’s claim that Groseclose is a slave to right-wing plutocrats–a claim he repeated at the Center for American Progress–must have hit close to home. Alterman doesn’t answer Groseclose’s factual criticisms; he doesn’t need to, because Groseclose has published at Powerline, that bastion of “right-wing know-nothingism.” (more…)

My wife says that I am too much of a worrier. Usually my concern surrounds my kids, family, or a close friend. Very rarely have I worried about a public figure and certainly never worried about an entire website.  During the past few days this worrying has caused a loss of sleep and it’s not even a “someone,” it’s a web site. Something horrible must have happened to Media Matters, the protectors of the Jewish people.

You may remember in a recent story about Helen Thomas’ anti-Semitic comments, I concluded with challenge:

… allow me to send a shout-out to the hypocritical folks at Media Matters, you enjoy blasting conservative figures such as Glenn Beck with trumped up charges of Antisemitism, along with writing up one-sided editorials about people throwing around Nazi-related terms.  Since you folks have set yourselves up as the “protector of all Jews” will you now write something that criticizes real Antisemitism spewed out by the progressive Helen Thomas? ….So my progressive friends are you going to finally accept the fact that it is humanly possible for a progressive to be a hater? Maybe after you are done with Helen you can go two of the most Anti-Semitic sites on the internet, the progressive Daily Kos, and the progressive Huffington Post.

That’s if George Soros allows you to.

There is no doubt that Media Matters would read and respond to my challenge, after all they have read and criticized my posts before.   Based on their fake criticism of people like Glenn Beck, one would think they would just love to sink their teeth into a real case of Antisemitism, after all they are the protector of all things Jewish in America. Media Matters truly cares about Antisemitism, that’s why they spend all of that time protecting George Soros, calling almost everyone who criticizes “the spooky dude” a Jew hater.

Despite their desire to protect all things Jewish (and my little challenge) Media Matters has been strangely silent. And the longer their silence, the more I am concerned for their well-being. (more…)

The New York Times has just published another in a series of establishment press missives seeking to marginalize — from the perspective of establishment press-types — tea party activists and politicians who embrace or are embraced by them.

This latest entry is an embarrassment, if a rather typical one as I detail on Chapter 1 of Red Hot Lies, “Media on a Mission.” Here are some problems with the article:

“Climate change is real, and man is causing it,” [Dem. Congressman and pro-cap-and-trade voter Baron] Hill said, echoing most climate scientists.

The author does not point to any survey of “most climate scientists,” challenge or even inquire about the source for or other evidence to support that claim. That is because there is no such survey or collective assertion by the critical masses of “climate scientists.” Period. It’s a talking point. But he’s a reporter. If he wanted to be straight about the issue he would at the very least turn to the very inconvenient statement by the Association of State Climatologists. But, again, it’s inconvenient.

When pressed, those who scribble or utter this shibboleth generally expand the universe of “climate scientist” to include anyone who is willing to go on record agreeing in return for being called one of the world’s leading climate scientists. Even if they are anthropology teaching assistants. Read on.

That is, they revert to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a collection of (as its name indicates) representatives appointed by governments, which itself appoints anthropology TAs, instructors in “the human dimension of environmental change” (bring own incense, please) and transport policy instructors, for example, to achieve great if still exaggerated (why is that necessary?) numbers of supporters who supposedly (but didn’t) write its proclamations? The IPCC’s “chief climate scientist” and chief “climatologist,” according to outlets like the New York Times and USA Today is, just for the record, actually a… railway engineer.

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“Where were you when George Bush was President?” You know that question well. It’s been asked of each of us more times than any of us would care to count. Do you know how I usually answer it?

I was home, enjoying my life. I went to work every day and focused on doing the best job that I could do. When I wasn’t working, I hung out with family and friends. I went to baseball games, and barbecues, and obscure little hole-in-the-wall joints to hear some of my favorite live music over a couple of Guinnesses. Yum.

Why? Because while George Bush was president, we had a media establishment that was challenging our government, not our citizens.

I wasn’t necessarily happy with the direction of the country in those days. But I could sleep at night, knowing that we had media that pressed George Bush and our Congress on every single issue. I could know at any given moment what the “death count” was in Iraq because just about every channel splashed a persistent counter in the bottom corner of the television screen. When bills like the Patriot Act were first introduced in Congress, I never lacked for any detail on the dangers of the legislation. There was barely a single detail that went uncovered in the daily political grind. When there was a scandal to research and report, I certainly never had to do that myself. There were reporters who did all that.

Yep, I’m actually missing the Bush days now. I had so much more free time. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always done my homework and researched issues on my own anyway. I recognize that all media is biased to some degree (and has been for quite some time). But I could always count on the media to challenge the government in the days of George Bush. I wrote my fair share of letters, I called and complained about the spending, even attended a few protests, but I can’t say that I ever felt there just wasn’t anyone challenging the president in the mainstream media. Quite the contrary, there was never any lack of DC pushback from the collective press in those days.

But we live in extraordinary times today. There now exists this giant, open cavity where that healthy pushback against government used to be. And when the mainstream media stepped away from that opening in 2008, two things happened:

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On Friday, former president Bill Clinton delivered a speech at the seven-year-old Center for American Progress, a left-wing advocacy organization based in Washington, in a symposium on the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing and what lessons can be drawn from this tragic event.

In his address, Clinton proved why he is still the George Jessel of American politics, mixing just the right proportions of disingenuous self-deprecation and “good old boy” Southern charm with presidential gravitas in a 6,000-word political mint julep. And not unlike a good strong mint julep, you may think it tastes pretty good while it’s going down, but before long you realize you’ve been slipped a mickey and are nursing quite the skull-cruncher.

Throughout his speech, Clinton consistently returns to the theme that “the words we use really do matter.”  Toward the end of his oration he reiterates: “words have consequences just as much as actions do.” (Italics added.)

Really, Mr. President? Just as much? But that flies in the face of what I learned at my mother’s knee: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” (more…)

There are only two choices: either Attorney General Eric Holder has nothing to hide, or he is trying to hide something. If the former is true, why does Holder refuse to put names to the seven anonymous Department of Justice attorneys whom he admits once represented terrorist detainees before joining the Obama administration? If the latter is the case, why is the old media ignoring the story?

Responding to an inquiry from Senator Charles Grassley, Holder admitted that nine DOJ attorneys had previously been involved defending detainees:

“To the best of our knowledge, during their employment prior to joining the government, only five of the lawyers who serve as political appointees in those components represented detainees,” Holder said in a letter dated Feb. 18. “Four others contributed to amicus briefs in detainee-related cases involved in advocacy on behalf of detainees.”

Who are these attorneys? How deeply were they committed to protecting the “rights” of irregular troops bent on destruction of western civilization? (more…)