Ali Gharib

The "utter inanity" of rape laws?

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 14:00:27 -0500

Sonny Bunch thinks that David Gregory getting a high-capacity magazine into D.C. despite its illegality demonstrates the “utter inanity of gun control legislation.” Later in the post, we hear that this is a ”demonstration of the inherent silliness of gun control legislation.”

In the same post, we learn, in a parenthetical interjection:

Strangely, crack cocaine is also illegal in D.C. Murders, rapes, robberies: All illegal. There’s no shortage of any of these, however.

How lovely, then, that we have demonstrated the “utter inanity” of drug laws, and the “inherent silliness” of rape laws, of laws against murder, and against robbery. Glad we can take them off the books and stop wasting any time on further legislating those matters.

Jerusalem Post, March 21, 2003, Stephens/Radler

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 13:17:21 -0400

The Jerusalem Post

March 21, 2003 Friday

The Zionist cabal

BYLINE: Bret Stephens; Melissa Radler

SECTION: FEATURES; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 4460 words

HIGHLIGHT: Are comments by American political and media figures fanning anti-Semitic embers? Two boxes at end of text by Melissa Radler.

Though he would wind up a rabid nationalist and die a darling of the Nazi establishment, the German sociologist Werner Sombart (1863-1941) got at least a few things right. In The Jewsand Modern Capitalism he argued that wherever Jews traveled, with them came prosperity. And in Why Is There No Socialism in the United States? he observed that “on rafts of beef and apple pie, socialist utopias of every description go down in destruction.” The United States, a country in which Jews have always been a presence and socialism has never been a force, is also one in which anti-Semitism - the proverbial socialism of fools - has never found fertile ground.

And yet as the US marches on Baghdad, suggestions - some intimated, some explicit - that Jews are driving Bush administration policy are being made with increasing frequency, at increasingly higher levels, and from both ends of the partisan spectrum. A sample of recent quotes:

* Democratic Congressman Jim Moran: “If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this.”

* The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd: “Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Bill Kristol [are]… the clique of conservative intellectuals pushing the war.”

* Conservative commentator Patrick J. Buchanan: “For whose benefit these endless wars in a region that holds nothing vital to America save oil, which the Arabs must sell us to survive? Who would benefit from a war of civilizations between the West and Islam? Answer: one nation, one leader, one party. Israel, Sharon, Likud.”

* Hardball host Chris Matthews: War is being driven by “conservative people out there, some of them Jewish, who… believe we should fight the Arabs and take them down. They believe that if we don’t fight Iraq, Israel will be in danger.”

* Meet the Press host Tim Russert, to Richard Perle: “Can you assure American viewers… that we’re in this situation against Saddam Hussein and his removal for American security interests. And what would be the link to Israel?”

* University of Chicago Professor Fred Donner in The Chicago Tribune: “The Bush administration paints a rosy scenario for the upcoming war against Iraq. It is a vision deriving from Likud-oriented members of the president’s team - particularly Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith.”

* The Washington Times columnist Georgie Anne Geyer: “The ‘Get Iraq’ campaign… emerged first and particularly from pro-Israeli hard-liners in the Pentagon such as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and adviser Richard Perle…”

* Former (and prospective) Democratic presidential candidate Gary Hart: We “must not let our role in the world be dictated by Americans who too often find it hard to distinguish their loyalties to their original homelands from their loyalties to America and its national interests.”

This is by no means an exhaustive list. It is a representative one. As political bedfellows go, Dowd and Buchanan, or Geyer and Hart, are the oddest couplings imaginable: Dowd has called Buchanan a “bully,” and there can hardly be two publications further apart editorially than The Washington Times and The Nation. Yet on this topic their views come into eerie proximity. Are they widely shared? Are they anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, or both? If so, are they wittingly anti-Israel and anti-Semitic? And what does it portend for America and American Jews?

‘The idea that this war is about Israel is persistent and more widely held than you may think,” writes Bill Keller in an essay in The New York Times. Just how widely held Keller doesn’t say, nor is there current polling data to give any sense of its scope. The nearest proxies - American attitudes toward Israel and toward a prospective war against Iraq - suggest it’s a minority position: Americans consistently hold a “favorable” view of Israel by two-to-one margins, and support for war now runs close to 60%. At the same time, a poll last year by the Anti- Defamation League found that 20% of Americans agree with the view that “Jews hold too much power in the US today.” It is here the idea that the war is being conducted at Israel’s behest most likely takes root.

The idea takes two general forms. The first is that the war is the work of the American-Jewish community generally acting out of concern for Israel. This, says the Anti-Defamation League’s Abe Foxman, is “the classic anti- Semitic canard that Jews are responsible for everything.” Implicit in it, too, is the notion of dual loyalty to which Hart alludes, the idea that American Jews confuse or conflate Israel’s interests and America’s, or otherwise suborn the latter to the former.

The second is that it is the handiwork of a select group of neoconservative thinkers - “some of them Jewish,” as Hardball host Matthews puts it - in the service of Ariel Sharon and his cohorts. This plays to another traditional anti-Semitic trope: the “court Jew” manipulating a government he pretends to serve in order to fulfill some ulterior personal or political objective.

In the current crisis, the court Jew par excellence is Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, a staunch advocate of military action against Iraq, and a director of Hollinger International, this newspaper’s parent company. Last October, Dowd wrote a column in which Perle played the part of a sinister, if slightly ridiculous tutor to “boy emperor” George Bush. In the current issue of The New Yorker, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh alleges that a venture capital firm in which Perle is managing partner “may gain from the war.” (Perle disputes the allegation and plans to sue Hersh; see box.)

In his article, Hersh describes the Defense Policy Board as a secretive group of about 30 advisers, none of whom are actually members of the government, with “access to classified information and to senior policymakers, [giving] advice not only on strategic policy but also on such matters as weapons procurement.”

This is formally accurate. At the same time, it plays into the classic Elders of Zion canard that Jews use shadowy groups to shape policy. In other words, not just one court Jew, but a cabal of like-minded Jews, acting in unison to advance their agenda. Take, for example, Jason Vest’s description in The Nation of JINSA, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs: “For this crew,” he writes,

“‘regime change’ by any means necessary in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority is an urgent imperative. Anyone who dissents - be it Colin Powell’s State Department, the CIA or career military officers - is committing heresy against articles of faith that effectively hold there is no difference between US and Israeli national security interests, and that the only way to assure continued safety and prosperity for both countries is through hegemony in the Middle East…”

Vest also writes of the close relationship between JINSA and the military-industrial complex, as well as “the influence of… far-right Zionist dollars.”

The Nation sees itself as a “progressive” magazine. But Vest’s case is all but indistinguishable from Buchanan who, in The American Conservative, charges “a cabal of polemicists and public officials…. [with] colluding with Israel to ignite those wars and destroy the Oslo Accords.”

Yet if the anti-Semitic pedigree of these remarks is plain, it remains a question whether Moran, Dowd, Vest, and Buchanan speak or write with anti-Semitic intent. “One of the peculiar features of contemporary anti-Semitism,” says neoconservative writer Norman Podhoretz, “is that it almost never admits to being what it is.”

Thus Moran, in rebutting the charge of anti-Semitism, notes that his daughter is marrying a Jew and that she and her son intend to convert. And Buchanan, near the conclusion of his lengthy article, writes that “The Israeli people are America’s friends and have a right to peace and secure borders.”

In saying this, Buchanan plainly means to inoculate himself against the charge of being anti-Israel. He is not against Israel per se, but - like many Jews, Israelis, and other people of good faith and clear conscience - against the policies of the Sharon government. He does not object to Perle or Wolfowitz or Kristol as Jews, but as American citizens who put their allegiance to their ethnic homeland ahead of the interests of the US. As for charges of anti- Semitism, these, he writes, are “designed to nullify public discourse by smearing and intimidating foes and blacklisting them and any who would publish them.”

For better or worse, however, Buchanan’s anti-Semitism is not much in doubt. He has consistently defended accused Nazis living in the US. He has described Adolf Hitler as “an individual of great courage.” He has written that “Holocaust survivor syndrome involves ‘group fantasies of martyrdom and heroics.’” He has denounced efforts by the Catholic Church to make amends with Jews, writing, “If US Jewry takes the clucking appeasement of the Catholic cardinalate as indicative of our submission, it is mistaken.”

These and other comments have led Buchanan - once considered a mainstream figure on the Right - into the cultural and political wilderness. But aside from protests from the ADL, the same has not been true even of Moran. Thus, while The Washington Post editorialized that Moran is “unfit to serve in Congress,” Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote that “what I read in Moran’s remarks is not enmity or bigotry but rather a tin ear.” In the letters published by the Post on the subject, views on Moran were evenly split, with one reader calling Moran’s “a sinless remark” and another adding that “Moran was only saying out loud what a lot of people think.”

Nor has there been much protest over the comments by Hart, Russert, or Matthews, or over the writings of Vest, Donner, or Dowd. In part, this owes to the fact that none of these people have any documented record of patently anti-Semitic remarks. In the case of Russert, he was simply asking a provocative question; Dowd seems guilty of little more than flippancy. The fact that so many of the most prominent and articulate advocates of the war are Jews, with open and established ties to Likud party figures, acquits Vest, Donner, and Matthews of outright fabrication.

What it does not acquit them of, however, is a suspicious selectivity. When President Bush named his cabinet, it was widely commented that, unlike the Clinton administration, it included no Jews. As deputy defense secretary, Paul Wolfowitz is the most prominent Jewish member of the government, yet never before has so much influence been ascribed to someone in a deputy position. One is moved to wonder why equal attention has not been paid to deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who has, by most accounts, seen his views prevail in the Oval Office far more often than Wolfowitz.

Then, too, the fact that neither National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice nor Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld - both administration uberhawks - is Jewish does not seem to garner much notice from Geyer or Vest. JINSA, the group to which Vest devotes such exacting attention, has by his own reckoning a trivial budget of $1.4 million. As for Perle, it is an open question whether his ubiquity on TV is actually matched by real influence at the Pentagon. Nobody seems to have asked whether the Defense Policy Board, far from being a kind of government within a government, isn’t simply a sophisticated appendage to Rumsfeld’s PR operation.

Beyond the issue of selectivity, there is also the matter of improbability. If Jewish interests really are behind this war, evidence of the fact ought to pass the Ockham’s Razor test. Thus, to assume that Perle and Co. have steered the US to war must assume, first, that Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, Tenet, and Bush would have no better reason to go to war than to do Perle’s or Sharon’s bidding.

Yet if the administration seems to have done anyone’s bidding in recent weeks, it’s Tony Blair’s. Neither Geyer nor Vest nor Dowd have argued that the Bush administration is a shill for Great Britain. The argument is also made that Bush is going to war in order to woo critical Jewish support, particularly in Florida, for the 2004 election. Yet as London Times columnist Andrew Sullivan points out, “In 2000, George W. Bush’s main base in terms of Middle Eastern immigrants were Muslim, a group his political operation did a huge amount to reach out to and co-opt.”

Finally, according to polls, American Jews support the war in equivalent proportions to the American public as a whole; among Jews in Congress, proportionally fewer voted for last October’s war resolution than the body as a whole. “Funny thing about those Jews,” cracks Jonah Goldberg of National Review, “they can get 4,000 tribesmen out of the World Trade Center in time, but they can’t get them to vote for war when they need them.”

The suggestion that American Jews - whether as a class or as a cabal - are behind this war is so illogical, so unhinged from fact, and so peculiarly targeted that it’s difficult not to describe those who make it as anti- Semites. This is not to say that those who suggest as much consider themselves as such. Nor is it to say they wrote or spoke with anti-Semitic intent. But it is the case that the words they authored amounted to anti-Semitic innuendo.

And yet. It is not an anti- Semitic libel, but a statement of fact, to say that on both sides of the political divide, Jewish voices have been, if not decisive, then certainly prominent. If Perle and Kristol are among the most articulate supporters of war, some of its most powerful detractors are essayist Susan Sontag, playwright Tony Kushner, The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, and Tikkun editor Michael Lerner (interviewed below).

On neither side is the welfare of Israel more than an ancillary, if important, consideration. Rather, the arguments waged are a purely American affair; they echo and refine old American debates about how the country should assert itself in the world: the virtuous republic of Patrick Henry vs. the commercial one of Alexander Hamilton; John Quincy Adams’s America-as-paragon vs. the Manifest Destiny of James Polk; Theodore Roosevelt’s big stick vs. Woodrow Wilson’s multilateralism, and so on.

For years American Jews engaged in this debate, usually from one side only. But with the appearance of Jewish neoconservatives in the 1970s and the increasing grip their ideas had on America’s governing elites (though less so on Jewish voting patterns), the idea of a monolithic Jewish political “family” came unstuck. For those who once dominated and spoke for that family, this was bound to be enraging. For those who left (or were excommunicated from) the family, it was only natural that they would find new friendships elsewhere.

Hence, many of the accusations that a “neoconservative cabal” dominates Washington come from mainstays of the old Jewish Left - like The Nation. They are particularly upset with theneoconservative alliance with evangelical Christians, an alliance Harvard professor Shirley Williams calls “a drive that is almost as powerful as fundamentalist Islam itself.” As for the “paleo-” conservatives like Geyer and Buchanan, their hatred of neocons is rather like that of an aging courtesan, no longer in favor with the prince. Thus Buchanan dismisses them as “ex-liberals, socialists and Trotskyites, boat-people from the McGovern revolution who rafted over to the GOP at the end of conservatism’s long march to power with Ronald Reagan in 1980.”

“Though few in number,” he adds, “they wield disproportionate influence through control of the conservative foundations and magazines, through their syndicated columns, and by attaching themselves to men of power.” [emphasis added]

Aging courtesan, indeed.

As the neocons become increasingly prominent, moving in time from the second-ranks of the government to the first, they will rankle the old Left and the old Right all the more. All the same, their ascendancy might well be taken as a sign of the degree to which they have arrived in mainstream America, not a measure of how far they have to go or how easily they might fall. If this is a portent of a new anti-Semitism, it’s hardly an ominous one.

(BOX #1) ‘Prince of darkness’

What do you think of suggestions that a “cabal” of Jewish neoconservatives is leading the the United States to war for Israel’s interests?

I think the president has been very clear on the reasons for this war, and the Jewish neoconservatives I know are largely arguing on exactly the same basis. I don’t know anyone among Jewish neoconservatives who thinks that this war is beneficial for Israel and not for the US, or that there are even different degrees of benefit. We all think it’s highly beneficial and ideal for the US to remove Saddam.

This has not been the Israeli view. The Israeli view has been that Iran is the bigger problem. Moreover, I think the risks to Israel are not insignificant.

Do these suggestions indicate a serious upsurge in American anti-Semitism?

It’s hard to judge, because you can’t do opinion polls. There is anti-Semitism, there is no question about it, and the prospect of war heightens peoples’ passions and probably increases the blaming and the search for scapegoats. It’s hard to tell whether this has excited anti-Semitism which already exists or whether it is leading to new recruits.

Has anti-Israelism become a new breed of anti- Semitism?

There is no doubt that hostility to Israel is greater than I’ve ever seen it. I have no doubt that in some cases it’s an expression of an anti-Semitism that is less direct and blatant, and therefore more people are willing to engage in it.

You described reporter Seymour Hersh as the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist after Hersh suggested in The New Yorker that there were improprieties in your lunching with Saudi-born businessman Adnan Khashoggi and a Saudi industrialist interested in investing in a venture capital firm of which you are a managing partner.

The article is full of innuendo and quotations, many of which have been denied by the people reported to have said them. I have a four-page letter that amounts to a refutation - a list of remarks without which there would be no story. I think he has twisted things. That will all be laid out in the appropriate way in a legal proceeding.

What do you think was Hersh’s motivation?

I don’t know. The essence of the innuendo is that he purports to know my motivations, so I don’t want to turn it around and claim to know his.

The idea that my view on Iraq is the result of a profit motive is pretty scurrilous, and charges like that shouldn’t be made without a high degree of confidence. I’ve been looking back at his past work and don’t know any investigative reporter who has had so many problems with sources.

Richard Perle is the former assistant defense secretary. A businessman, he is also chairman of President George Bush’s Defense Policy Board.

(BOX #2) ‘The politics of meaning’

In February, as millions of anti-war demonstrators geared up to protest the US stance on Iraq, Rabbi Michael Lerner, the doyen of San Francisco’s ultra-liberal Tikkun community, suddenly, if fleetingly, became the darling of a more hawkish crowd.

In an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal, Lerner, a self-described advocate of the weak and a harsh critic of the US and Israel, announced that he had been banned from his city’s upcoming peace rally. An organizing group, International A.N.S.W.E.R., had declined to let him speak after he complained about their gratuitous Israel bashing on the anti-war stage, and The Wall Street Journal provided him a rare podium for his views.

“There is support on the Left for self-determination for every group in the world except the Jewish people,” Lerner wrote. “Fellow progressive Jews, some anxious to speak at these rallies, have urged me to keep quiet about anti-Semitism on the Left. After all, they say, stopping the war against Iraq is so much more important.”

Lerner, a disciple of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, rose to national prominence in 1993, when Hillary Clinton quoted his “politics of meaning.” Since then, he’s maintained a certain celebrity as editor of the bimonthly Tikkun magazine and as a pulpit rabbi who espouses an idealistic vision of world peace based on spiritual renewal, healing the world through social justice, and the famous Leviticus passage, “Love thy neighbor.”

In conversation, Lerner, 60, is charming and jovial as he laments the Americans’ obsessions with selfishness and materialism, flawed foreign policy, and success at brainwashing a gullible public. When it comes to Israel, Lerner, who has been criticized by US Jews for his pro- Palestinian stance, is a critic of both sides, denouncing Palestinian terror and Israeli settlements, and calling on Belgium to try Yasser Arafat for war crimes when its legal system is done with Ariel Sharon.

Lerner’s brief ideological love affair with his conservative detractors faded quickly, but as international strife continues to sow discord at home, his vision of the world may yet be embraced by the masses searching for meaning.

How did anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment find a home in the peace movement?

I always distinguish between anti-Israel sentiment and anti-Semitic anti-Israel sentiment. There’s a huge difference between strong criticism of Israel, which I believe to be totally legitimate, and anti-Semitic criticism of Israel. If you criticize Israel as a human rights violator in a public setting where the focus is supposed to be on Iraq and you suddenly raise the issue of Israel, the question is, why focus on Israel’s human rights violations separately from 50 other countries that are also human rights violators.

Israel is being blamed for the war in some circles. What are you hearing?

Israel has been the only real cheerleader in the whole world for the war in Iraq. Ariel Sharon is an advocate, many of the people in both Labor and Likud support the idea of such a war and many, many AIPAC-related Jews in this country have played a prominent role in pushing for this war.

The British are also behind the war, yet anti-British sentiment isn’t on the rise.

That’s part of why I’m calling it anti-Semitic. There is a sense that Blair is doing this because he wants to maintain his special friendship with the US, whereas in the case of Israel, there is at least some argument, which I don’t necessarily agree with, that Israel is one of the primary beneficiaries of this war.

In your opinion, what is the motivation for this war?

The Bush administration has a plan for political and economic hegemony over the world. They believe that the only way to make the world safe is to make it a unipower world. And anybody who is standing up to our power is seen as an enemy.

Saddam Hussein is clearly a bad guy. How would you propose to deal with him?

I don’t think you can solve the problem of Saddam Hussein without solving the problem of the American relationship with the rest of the world. This country should be a leading force for three issues: ending global poverty, ending ecological destruction of the planet, and becoming the embodiment of a new ethos of generosity in the world. The Saddam Husseins and the Osama bin Ladens of the world only get recruits because people look at the world and say, ‘Look, this world is being dominated by a power that totally doesn’t care about us and wants to screw us and only get wealth for itself.’

The Bush administration has argued that this is a war of liberation. I don’t think that it’s our business to be liberating the people of Iraq unless the people of Iraq ask us to liberate them. Let’s say that there’s a struggle like the battle of the Warsaw Ghetto. At that moment, it’s certainly appropriate to come in on one side of that struggle. There have been national liberation struggles that were civil wars in the past. There is no such struggle going on there.

Iraqi-Americans aren’t represented in the anti-war movement. What do you make of that?

Are you in touch with this population? I don’t look at people in that way [on the basis of nationality]. I don’t shape my view on it through that kind of conversation. I wasn’t basing my opposition to the war in Vietnam on what Vietnamese living in the US were saying.

I’m in favor of George Bush spending the next six months in Baghdad before he starts anything.

You are advocating a policy that affects the Iraqi people. Should you spend time there?

That’s twisted logic. I think the notion of needing to spend time there is ludicrous. The notion that you should spend time in every place you have a policy is self- defeating.

You’ve advocated sending a multinational force to Israel to separate the two sides. In proposing that, should you spend time in the region?

I don’t think I need to spend any more time there to know that the killing needs to be stopped, and there’s no chance that’s going to happen as long as the current government of Israel is in power and the current government of Palestine is in power.

Have you ever met Yasser Arafat?

I haven’t met Arafat. I think Arafat, like Sharon, should be brought up on war crimes charges before an international tribunal. He’s a disgusting war criminal.

Have you ever considered making aliya?

My son made aliya and served in the IDF. He’s an only child, so in order to serve in a combat unit, the parents must agree. I signed the consent and my son served in tsanhanim [paratroopers].

When I hear these American Jews that are big Zionists criticizing me, saying, ‘You hate Israel,’ I think, when would you risk anything for Israel besides a bit of money.

What about you? Did you ever consider moving to Israel?

My experience in Israel is that no matter how long you’ve lived there, unless you were born there it’s very, very difficult to be accepted as a legitimate voice in the society. It seems as though I could serve the Jewish people much better in the galut [Diaspora] than in Israel.

Is there a political party in Israel that you identify with?

As far as I know, there’s no political movement in Israel that’s based on Judaism, on spiritual values. I am committed to a different voice coming out of Zion, a voice that takes seriously the commandment in Torah that says, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor.’

Your ideological line is more The New York Times than The Wall Street Journal. How did your op-ed piece end up in The Journal?

I sent it out to a list of 100 publications. When they [The Journal] responded, I thought, well, this is a good opportunity to present to The Wall Street Journal crowd some arguments against the war. I think they took it [in order] to use me to hurt the anti-war movement. I would have preferred had The New York Times taken it.

Washington Post, Jan. 31, 2003, Kagan

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 23:35:23 -0400

The Washington Post

January 31, 2003 Friday

Final Edition

Politicians With Guts

BYLINE: Robert Kagan

SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. A27

LENGTH: 1029 words

DATELINE: BRUSSELS

To appreciate fully the unparalleled political and moral courage of Tony Blair, Jose Maria Aznar and the other six European leaders who called for solidarity with the United States in a statement published in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, you really have to live in Europe and feel the mood out here. Never mind that Blair, Aznar, Silvio Berlusconi, et al. planted themselves at the side of President Bush in the coming confrontation with Iraq — at a time when polls in Britain, Spain, Italy and elsewhere around Europe show opposition to American policy running at 70 percent or higher. And never mind that they insisted America’s war on terrorism must be Europe’s war, too — at a time when, as EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana recently conceded, most Europeans do not feel the slightest bit threatened by international terrorism and, indeed, fear Bush more than they fear Osama bin Laden.

This was nothing compared with the unabashed pro-Americanism of their declaration. The eight European leaders actually wrote of “American bravery, generosity and farsightedness” in setting Europe free from Nazism and communism in the last century and in keeping the peace in Europe for the past six decades. By using the word “generosity,” they even implied that Europeans might now owe the United States a little generosity in return.

Such sentiments are pure heresy these days in Europe, where anti-Americanism has reached a fevered intensity. I live in Brussels, famed “capital of Europe,” and have traveled across the continent over the past year, speaking with intellectuals, journalists, foreign policy analysts and government officials at the endless merry-go-round of highbrow European conferences. The settings couldn’t be nicer; the food and wine couldn’t be better; the conversations couldn’t be more polite. And the suspicion, fear and loathing of the United States couldn’t be thicker. In London, where Tony Blair has to go to work every day, one finds Britain’s finest minds propounding, in sophisticated language and melodious Oxbridge accents, the conspiracy theories of Pat Buchanan concerning the “neoconservative” (read: Jewish) hijacking of American foreign policy. Britain’s most gifted scholars sift through American writings about Europe searching for signs of derogatory “sexual imagery.” In Paris, all the talk is of oil and “imperialism” (and Jews). In Madrid, it’s oil, imperialism, past American support for Franco (and Jews). At a conference I recently attended in Barcelona, an esteemed Spanish intellectual earnestly asked why, if the United States wants to topple vicious dictatorships that manufacture weapons of mass destruction, it is not also invading Israel.

Yes, I know, there are Americans who ask such questions, too. We have our Buchanans and our Gore Vidals. But here’s what Americans need to understand: In Europe, this paranoid, conspiratorial anti-Americanism is not a far-left or far-right phenomenon. It’s the mainstream view. When Gerhard Schroeder campaigns on an anti-American platform in Germany, he’s not just “mobilizing his base” or reaching out to fringe Greens and Socialists. He’s talking to the man and woman on the street, left, right and center. When Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin publicly humiliate Colin Powell, they’re playing to the gallery. The “European street” is more anti-American than ever before. Even in the 1960s at the height of the anti-Vietnam War protests or in the early 1980s at the height of the “nuclear freeze” movement, European anti-Americanism was always more than counterbalanced by European anti-communism. Most Europeans believed the real problem was the Red Army and Soviet totalitarianism, not Nixon or Reagan, and the United States, whatever its flaws, was defending them from those twin evils. When Helmut Kohl, Margaret Thatcher and even Francois Mitterrand stood with Reagan in the waning years of the Cold War, theirs was a courageous and vitally important but not a politically risky stand.

Not so today for Messrs. Blair, Aznar and Berlusconi or for Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Danish prime minister. For leaders in Western Europe, more so than for their Central and Eastern European colleagues, standing with Bush in the present Iraq crisis is political poison, at least in the short run. With the Soviet and communist threats safely behind them and the Balkan crises settled, most Western Europeans either don’t remember, don’t choose to remember or perhaps even resent America’s long record of strategic “generosity” toward them. Certainly they do not feel a scintilla of generosity toward the United States. Instead, as keen observers such as Christopher Caldwell have noted, anti-Americanism has become the organizing theme for all European grievances about their world. And just as Arab leaders channel domestic unhappiness with their rule into anti-Americanism as a kind of safety valve for discontent, so, in perhaps more subtle ways, do European leaders. Schroeder surely hopes his impoverished constituents in the former East Germany can be encouraged to vent their anger at Bush and not at their own chancellor. French anxieties about France’s growing Muslim population are channeled into hostility toward Israel and the Bush administration’s Middle East policies.

History offers few examples of democratic political leaders willing to sail head-on into such gale-force winds. That is why Blair and his colleagues deserve so much admiration, even more than Thatcher and hers. While Chirac and Schroeder simultaneously feed and feed on anti-Americanism, Blair, Aznar and their colleagues have taken the much harder and much lonelier road. Appealing to what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature,” they ask Europeans to rise above pettiness and insecurity. In the long run, political courage may have a political payoff. In a few months, Blair and his colleagues may come out of this stronger for having the guts to take an unpopular stand now. Let’s just pray they survive the effort.

The writer is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of “Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order.”

Washington Post, Feb. 18, 2003, Kaplan

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 23:00:11 -0400

The Washington Post

February 18, 2003 Tuesday

Final Edition

Toxic Talk on War

BYLINE: Lawrence F. Kaplan

SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. A25

LENGTH: 1031 words

Who is driving this rush to war in Iraq? A decade ago, on the eve of the last Persian Gulf War, conservative firebrand Pat Buchanan alleged that Israel and its “amen corner” were to blame. A media firestorm ensued, with condemnations pouring in from across the political spectrum. Now, on the eve of yet another Gulf war, Buchanan has revived the claim. Only this time a chorus of voices from the left, right and center has emerged to echo it.

From the musty precincts of the Old Right, the contention that Israel and a powerful “cabal” of its American supporters have manufactured the present crisis with Iraq has become canonical. Buchanan, who writes that President Bush has become a client of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the “neoconservative war party,” has transformed his new magazine, the American Conservative, into a regular forum for those who share this conviction. One of its contributors, University of Illinois history professor Paul W. Schroeder, deems it self-evident that the plan for an invasion “is being promoted in the interests of Israel.”

“Certainly it is being pushed very hard by a number of influential supporters of Israel of the hawkish neoconservative stripe in and outside the administration (Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol, and others),” Schroeder writes.

Seconding this appraisal, conservative writer Georgie Anne Geyer, whose column appears weekly in the Washington Times, reveals how “the fanatic neoconservatives around the administration, the rabid Israel supporters in the White House and the Pentagon,” plan to wage war in Iraq and then to “democratize the entire Middle East, including Syria and Saudi Arabia, if necessary by military means, in order to secure Ariel Sharon’s Israel.”

Meanwhile on the left — where many cannot fathom why, absent the urging of Israelis and their American co-religionists, the Bush administration would be so eager to topple Saddam Hussein — the socialism of fools has been enjoying something of a vogue. Writing in the Nation, Jason Vest reports that the Bush team’s “attack-Iraq chorus,” working in tandem with “far-right American Zionists,” subscribes to “articles of faith that effectively hold there is no difference between U.S. and Israeli national security interests.” The respected liberal intellectual Ian Buruma has managed to locate the reasons for a U.S. war against Iraq in, among other places, “Jewish-American hysteria” and the fact that “macho images of suntanned Jewish soldiers gathered round laughing tough guys such as Ariel Sharon wiped out, as it were, 2,000 years of being Woody Allen.”

Nor is this sort of fare the exclusive property of the political fringe. The ubiquitous talk-show host Chris Matthews pins blame for the impending war on “conservative people out there, some of them Jewish, who are very tough on foreign policy. They believe we should fight the Arabs and take them down. They believe that if we don’t fight Iraq, Israel will be in danger.” Matthews even thinks that Sharon is “writing [Bush’s] speeches sometimes” and that Sharon’s cabinet ministers are “in bed with the vice president’s office and the Defense Department.” Syndicated columnist Robert Novak has described the U.S conflict with Iraq as “Sharon’s war,” adding that national security adviser Condoleezza Rice’s branding of Hezbollah as the world’s most dangerous terrorist organization suggests that “the U.S. war against terrorism, accused of being Iraq-centric, actually is Israel-centric.” Twice in recent speeches, former senator Gary Hart has said that we “must not let our role in the world be dictated by Americans who too often find it hard to distinguish their loyalties to their original homelands from their loyalties to America and its national interests.”

Does all this add up to an echo of Charles Lindbergh’s charge that the clamor to wage war against Hitler was being stirred by “the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration”? Not necessarily. How the Bush administration has arrived at the brink of war with Saddam Hussein, and to what extent Israeli influence has brought it there, is a legitimate question about which there is ample room for disagreement.

The problem here is the implication that some members of the Bush team have been doing Israel’s bidding and, by extension, harbor dual loyalties. The charge that the administration’s “rabid Israel supporters” are behind the drive to war is risible. Perle and Wolfowitz and their fellow Jewish neoconservatives are surely hawks — but not merely on Iraq. Their expansive view of America’s overseas obligations has in the past led them to support interventions wherever America’s interests and ideals have been threatened: Grenada, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Bosnia, Kosovo — in the last two cases for the explicit purpose of protecting Muslims. Many of these officials have also had profound disagreements with their Israeli counterparts — not least on the question of whether Iran or Iraq presents the greater threat. Then, too, the Cabinet-level officials driving the current debate have mostly been non-Jewish Goldwater Republicans whose brand of conservatism hardly qualifies as “neo.” In fact, the claim that Jewish officials with close ties to Israel have been driving the Bush team’s policy toward Iraqcould just as easily have been leveled against the previous administration, whose Iraq policy was the opposite of the current one. For that matter, a cursory review of the literature opposing war in Iraq reveals that the charge of “Jewish-American hysteria” could just as easily apply to opponents of an invasion.

But the real problem with claims such as these is not just that they are untrue. The problem is that they are toxic. Invoking the specter of dual loyalty to quiet criticism and debate amounts to more than the everyday pollution of public discourse. It is the nullification of public discourse, for how can one refute accusations grounded in ethnicity? The charges are, ipso facto, impossible to disprove. And so they are meant to be.

The writer is a senior editor at the New Republic and co-author, with William Kristol, of the forthcoming book “The War Over Iraq.”

Washington Post, March 12, 2003 Editorial

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 23:00:00 -0400

The Washington Post

March 12, 2003 Wednesday

Final Edition

Blaming the Jews

SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. A20

LENGTH: 713 words

OUR VIEW THAT Rep. James P. Moran Jr. is unfit to serve in Congress is not new. Last July, citing Mr. Moran’s ethical obtuseness, we urged Democrats in Alexandria and surrounding neighborhoods to find another candidate for the fall election. Now, by blaming American Jews for an Iraq policy he opposes, the seven-term congressman has confirmed our opinion about him. House Democratic leaders quickly dissociated themselves from his remark; it will be interesting to see whether they, and Northern Virginia Democrats, will make an effort to find a better candidate to run in 2004.

Meanwhile it may be useful to examine Mr. Moran’s assertion, for he is far from alone in his view. “If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this,” Mr. Moran said, as reported first by the Reston Connection newspaper. “The leaders of the Jewish community are influential enough that they could change the direction of where this is going, and I think they should.” The comment perpetuates a stereotype of Jews as a unified bloc steering the world in their interest and against everyone else’s. Over the centuries anti-Semites have used this libel to distract attention from their own failings and to instigate violence and discrimination against Jews. In the United States today, though anti-Semitism is far from eradicated, such violence may seem a mercifully distant danger. But Mr. Moran’s comment will be used to concentrate the poison of anti-Semitism in many parts of the world where it remains virulent and dangerous.

Jews in fact are far from unified in their opinion of President Bush’s Iraq policy. Nonetheless many people argue, often in more sophisticated ways than Mr. Moran, that the Bush policy is being engineered by and on behalf of Jews or Israel. At its most conspiratorial, the theory goes like this: A small group of Jews (sometimes referred to, in a kind of code, as “neoconservatives” or “neocons”) decided years ago that Saddam Hussein should be overthrown to improve Israeli security. Evidence is contained in a memo that some of them wrote in 1996 for Israeli politician Binyamin Netanyahu. These “neocons” then insinuated themselves into the Bush administration and seized on 9/11 as the pretext to put their plan into motion. Mr. Bush and his top foreign-policy team — Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and CIA Director George J. Tenet — are presumably too weak and gullible to evade the manipulations of these Jews.

Unfortunately for this theory, overthrowing Saddam Hussein was a very minor part of the memo in question, and many Israeli officials never accepted the American view of Iraq; they regard Iran as a greater threat to Israel. Moreover, those who wrote the Netanyahu memo are but part of a far larger group of American conservatives who for years have campaigned loudly and openly in Washington for the removal of Saddam Hussein. In a public letter on Jan. 26, 1998, they urged President Clinton to adopt regime change in Iraq as a goal, arguing that Iraq threatened Israel — and also American troops, moderate Arab states, much of the world’s oil supply and, ultimately, “the security of the world.” Signatories included a number of people, Jews and non-Jews, who have since moved into government: Richard L. Armitage, John R. Bolton, Zalmay Khalilzad, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Robert B. Zoellick.

It’s perfectly legitimate to debate Israel’s place in U.S. Mideast policy, or Israel’s own behavior; charges of anti-Semitism shouldn’t be permitted to stifle criticism. It’s not anti-Semitic to stand up for Palestinians’ human rights. It wouldn’t necessarily be anti-Semitic — just demonstrably wrong — to argue that Mr. Bush’s Iraq policy is motivated primarily by a desire to protect Israel. But the argument moves from merely wrong to patently offensive when it attributes to Jews or “the Jewish community” a single view and a nefarious influence. Some Jews and some non-Jews, in Israel and America and Europe, support disarming Iraq; some don’t. In their respective countries, they try to make the arguments on their merits. Mr. Moran and his ilk should do the same.

LOAD-DATE: March 12, 2003

2006 Rocky Mountain News Article on MEMRI

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 07:37:18 -0400

(Accessed via LexisNexis)

Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO)

March 27, 2006 Monday

Final Edition

SECTION: COMMENTARY/EDITORIAL; Pg. 35A

LENGTH: 773 words

HEADLINE: MEMRI’s systematic distortions

BYLINE: Rima Barakat

BODY:

As soon as the word came out regarding the upcoming visit to Denver of Dr. Ekrima Sabri, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine, the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League sprang into action to disrupt the visit. Both groups immediately sent letters accusing the Grand Mufti of being anti-Semitic and asking co-sponsors to withdraw their support. A press release was sent to the media denouncing the visit. The finishing touches were in News columns by Vincent Carroll (March 7) and Dave Kopel (March 11) that simply seconded the pro-Israeli lobby sentiment. All of their “evidence” seemed to be a regurgitation of the same quotes and accusations. This leads me to suppose that the critics either carbon-copied each other’s statements or that they acquired most of their “translation” from one special source: The Middle East Media Research Institute.

MEMRI claims to be an independent nonpartisan research institution. One of the co-founders of the organization, Yigal Carmon, is a retired Israeli military intelligence Colonel. Checking the MEMRI website, I found it served up blatant, unbalanced propaganda and was littered with inflammatory articles aimed to incite hate and bigotry toward any person whom MEMRI considers anti-Israeli or anti-Zionist.

Academics as well as professional journalists have repeatedly censured the organization’s quality and integrity. Brian Whitaker of the Guardian questioned the honesty of some “translations” posted by MEMRI. Whitaker, specifically, referred to an interview with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Sheikh Ekrima Sabri by Al-Ahram Al-Arabi in Oct. 2000 - the same interview quoted by the ADL, the AJC and Carroll.

Al-Ahram: Q: How do you deal with the Jews who are besieging al-Aqsa and are scattered around it?

A: I enter the mosque of Al-Aqsa with my head up…I have never greeted them when I came near one. I never will.

MEMRI’s version: Q: How do you feel about the Jews?

A: I have never greeted a Jew when I came near one. I never will. They cannot even dream that I will. The Jews do not dare to bother me.

It is worthy to note that Carmon has admitted this “translation” mistake. Still, it remains uncorrected on his website.

In another instance, Halim Barakat (no relation), a professor at Georgetown University, published an article in Al-Hayat Daily of London titled “The wild beast that Zionism created: Self-destruction.” By the time MEMRI “translated” it, the title was distorted to “Jews have lost their humanity.” Barakat objected, “Every time I wrote Zionism, MEMRI replaced the word by Jew or Judaism. They want to give the impression that I’m not criticizing Israeli policy, but that what I’m saying is anti-Semitic.” It seems obvious that MEMRI is adamant on stigmatizing anyone who criticizes Israel and/or Zionism as being anti Jewish.

Similar conclusions were echoed in the January 2005 Greater London Authority report. A study was commissioned to investigate the “Islamic conspiracy dossier.” This dossier was compiled to defame a renowned Muslim scholar and was presented to British officials in an attempt to prevent a renowned Muslim scholar, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, from entering Britain to participate in a London conference. The report found that “nearly all the distortions came from material produced by the Middle East Research Institute.”

Today, the standards of Israeli-Palestinian political and religious discussions have been redefined by pro-Israeli organizations that are working amongst us. If non-Jews voice disagreement with Zionist ideology or expressed moral outrage against Israeli oppressive policies, they are immediately accused of being anti-Semitic and /or anti-Jewish. If one happens to be Jewish, one is branded as being “fringe” or a “self-hating” Jew.

The continuous attempts of the AJC and the ADL to hinder frank academic discussions pertaining to Israeli government policies may further undermine their credibility. Last October, pro-Israeli organizations tried to interfere with the Friends of Sabeel conference in Denver. Priests and academics were, again, accused of being anti-Semitic or “fringe” Jews. Co-sponsors were asked to withdraw. Among the 70-plus co-sponsors, nobody withdrew.

Sabri’s visit offered the opportunity for Christians representing many denominations,who gathered recently, alongside their Muslim brethren, to hear his message. He told us that his “Hands are extended with love and peace” and so should ours be.

We pray and hope that political negativity and Islamophobic stands would not cause the local Muslim-Jewish communities to miss future opportunities to foster greater mutual understandings.

NOTES: Rima Barakat is a Denver-area Muslim activist.; SPEAKOUT

LOAD-DATE: March 27, 2006

The Wall Street Journal’s since-rewritten editorial on the...

Sat, 23 Jul 2011 14:34:54 -0400

The Wall Street Journal’s since-rewritten editorial on the Norway attacks. Saturday, July 23, 2011.

hunterwalker: “Calypso Blues” - Calypso Rose Not only is my...

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 00:24:55 -0400

hunterwalker:

“Calypso Blues” - Calypso Rose

Not only is my man Hunter Walker the best entertainment reporter (and gossip, too), but he’s also got killer taste in music.

Bush's Roadmap and 1967

Fri, 20 May 2011 13:09:16 -0400

Bush, April 4, 2002:

Consistent with the Mitchell plan, Israeli settlement activity in occupied territories must stop. And the occupation must end through withdrawal to secure and recognize boundaries consistent with United Nations Resolutions 242 and 338. Ultimately, this approach should be the basis of agreements between Israel and Syria and Israel and Lebanon.

Bush, June 24, 2002:

Ultimately, Israelis and Palestinians must address the core issues that divide them if there is to be a real peace, resolving all claims and ending the conflict between them. This means that the Israeli occupation that began in 1967 will be ended through a settlement negotiated between the parties, based on U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338, with Israeli withdrawal to secure and recognize borders.

Draft plan of Bush Roadmap leaked to NYT:

The settlement will end the occupation that began in 1967, based on the Madrid Conference terms of reference and the principle of land for peace, UNSCRs 242, 338 and 1397, agreements previously reached by the parties, and the Arab initiative proposed by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah and endorsed by the Arab Summit in Beirut.

Doesn’t reflect reality. Doesn’t care.

Thu, 19 May 2011 13:10:15 -0400

Doesn’t reflect reality. Doesn’t care.

New Egypt, Same old Israel

Fri, 06 May 2011 03:44:09 -0400

lurey:

WSJ:

The leading candidate in Egypt’s presidential race said that if he was elected he would break with former President Hosni Mubarak’s reliably amenable policies toward Israel.

Amr Moussa, the 74-year-old outgoing head of the Arab League, said the former regime’s attempts to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict had “led nowhere” and that Egypt now needs policies that “reflect the consensus of the people.”

Lufthansa: Don't be scared if we start to run out of gas...

Thu, 05 May 2011 12:38:22 -0400

International and U.S. extra-territorial sanctions against Iran are often credited with making travel on Iranian commercial airlines relatively unsafe. International companies won’t sell Iran spare parts for even routine maintenance on their fleet.

But a new potential side effect of energy sanctions against Iran are causing worries about more than just Iran’s domestic fleet of passenger aircraft.

Because of sanctions, international flights no longer refuel at Iranian airports. That means that for European airlines, they either have to depart with enough fuel for both legs of the long journey or add refueling stops to their heretofore direct flights.

A source in Iran recently forwarded me an e-mail from German carrier Lufthansa, Europe’s largest, making clear that though the airline intends to fill the tank for both legs, unscheduled stops may still be necessary. The message is clear: Please don’t be scared if we start to run out of gas on the way home!

The e-mail reads (with my emphasis):

Due to non-availability of fuel from Tehran, following actions have been implemented by Lufthansa:

Lufthansa takes substantial additional fuel in Frankfurt on the flight leg to Tehran. This ensures Lufthansa aircraft have sufficient fuel for both the legs Frankfurt to Tehran and Tehran to Frankfurt. As such, there is no need for a change in our schedule and our flights Frankfurt-Tehran-Frankfurt operate nonstop in both directions.

Nevertheless, there might be very exceptional cases when additional fueling en route to Frankfurt might be required, in which case the pilot will make the decision to land at an airport on the way back to Frankfurt. We would, however, like to stress that such occasions are expected to be very rare.

Lee Smith: In Bin Laden-ruled Syria, No Cell Phone Camera = Death Sentence...

Wed, 04 May 2011 17:16:42 -0400

Why? you might ask. Well, because they can share their story and what’s going on. So writes our dear Lee:

You starve a population by denying it food and water, but to cut off its electricity is, in today’s media climate, effectively a death sentence. Without the ability to recharge the cell-phone cameras that have documented the Syrian uprising from its outset, demonstrators will be consigned to a silent death.

This is quite a remark for Smith, who literally sighed with exasperation as he declared recently that the uprising in Egypt was not driven by social media (‘driven by’ is his strawman formulation; ‘facilitated by’ is what most observers say). Okay, he doesn’t say here that the Syrian uprising is ‘driven by Twitter’, but surely it’s these cellphone camera videos are important not just for historical documentation, but also because they are distributed to the public via social media.

I don’t want to be crass, but I think Smith is just pissed that he’s not getting pictures and videos for his demonization campaign against the Syrian government. It’s not as if the Syrian authorities need any help looking like assholes, but Smith is happy to oblige by tapping into the recently re-exposed nerve of 9/11 (as, let’s be honest, neoconservatives are wont to do). The headline on his piece reads: “Bin Laden Lives in Syria”. I guess it’s fair enough to give Smith his totally unnecessary smear campaign, but I shudder to think what his policy prescriptions would be.

No word yet from Smith about how his Strong Horse theory about Arabs is holding up (hint: it’s like a chocolate chip cookie that’s been left in milk overnight).

The May Issue of Commentary from Outside the (Pay) Wall...

Sun, 01 May 2011 17:42:00 -0400

Ahh, that time of the month again when the new issue of Commentary drops, filled as always with long-form attacks on anyone left of Paul Wolfowitz as anti-Semitic…while, of course, the Commentary crowd seems to hate most Jews much more than anyone they ever write about.

To wit: the May issue issue has an apparently long piece (behind the pay wall) by Noah Pollak attacking B’Tselem. Here’s the blurb:

The B’Tselem Witch Trials

NOAH POLLAK

The world’s most destructive anti-Israel organization isn’t run by Arabs or Europeans. It’s run by Israelis.

If anyone has a sub or works for an organization that does, I’d love to get a copy of the piece.

Otherwise, I’ll just content myself with this essay from John Podhoretz attacking not only Goldstone, but the choice to put him in charge of the mission at all. If you forget about the author for a moment, the first three grafs reads like they could have come from an anti-Zionist conspiracy theory website. The line peddled, though, might not be a just a theory after all, and some people I know and like have criticized this very issue from its other side.

Podhoretz is his usual nasty self. His rather delusional and repeated assertion that Goldstone was ‘plucked from obscurity’ is pretty ridiculous (though I’m open to the notion that anyone who’s achieved fame on the international human rights scene might indeed be obscure to most neocons). But he does also twice refer to the Goldstone op-ed as a “partial retraction” (“recantation” the second time), and I consider this as something of a victory for honesty insofar as Commentary is capable of such things.

Rabin called them the 'Three Musketeers'...

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 16:48:58 -0400

For Sam Schulman, one of my favorite interlocutors on the Twitter:

“Whoever was out of power in Israel would come over here to drum up support when they felt they couldn’t do anything at home,” said Samuel Lewis, the former American ambassador to Israel.

In the 1980s, it was the Labor Party….

In the next decade, it was Likud’s turn. Three former Shamir aides — Yoram Ettinger, Yigal Carmon and Yossi Ben-Aharon — and followers of Netanyahu, the opposition leader then as now, were dispatched to Washington to thwart the peace policies of the Clinton and Rabin-Peres governments. Rabin accused them of waging a “campaign of disinformation.”

Netanyahu himself worked closely with Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich to undermine Clinton and Rabin.

From “When It Comes to U.S.-Israel Relations, Interference Works Both Ways,” by Douglas M. Bloomfield in the January 24, 2008, on the Jewish Exponent’s website.

Journalism 101 for POLITICO's benefit: Call bullshit...

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 22:42:10 -0400

…when you see it right in front of your face.

Politico’s Juana Summers covered apparent presidential hopeful and Christian right crazy Rick Santorum’s “foreign policy” speech today (yes, I am normally against skeptical quotes, but addressing Santorum’s ideas as ‘foreign policy’ is like referring to ‘heroin addiction’ as ‘self help’):

In his scorching critique of Obama’s foreign policy, Santorum said the president isn’t qualified to advance Americans’ interests because he doesn’t believe America is an exceptional nation.

“He was asked point-blank whether he believed in American exceptionalism and his answer was people of every culture thinks they are exceptional,” Santorum said. “A president who doesn’t understand the greatness of the American experiment cannot confidently advance her interests.”

Except he did clearly say he understood just that in the same press conference Sanotrum is talking about:

I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism. I’m enormously proud of my country and its role and history in the world. … I don’t think America should be embarrassed to see evidence of the sacrifices of our troops, the enormous amount of resources that were put into Europe postwar, and our leadership in crafting an Alliance that ultimately led to the unification of Europe. We should take great pride in that.

And if you think of our current situation, the United States remains the largest economy in the world. We have unmatched military capability. And I think that we have a core set of values that are enshrined in our Constitution, in our body of law, in our democratic practices, in our belief in free speech and equality, that, though imperfect, are exceptional.

Now, the fact that I am very proud of my country and I think that we’ve got a whole lot to offer the world does not lessen my interest in recognizing the value and wonderful qualities of other countries…

But Politico, mistaking stenography for truth-telling journalism, dropped the issue at the same place I clipped their piece.

The whole fiasco over the comments Santorum cherry picks, which has gone on since the April 4, 2009 presser, was even in the news again recently. WaPo columnist Kathleen Parker attacked Obama for it while, thankfully, admitting a paragraph later that Obama had indeed gone a bit further.

That a conservative columnist cops to a truth that Politco, for whatever reason, can’t call bullshit on is ridiculous. Do your job, Politico!

I've never read anything by Franzen and I'm not going to...

Sun, 24 Apr 2011 17:03:53 -0400

I've never read anything by Franzen and I'm not going to...:

Ifelixsalmon:

I’m a fan of the New Yorker on Facebook. So I should be able to read the Jonathan Franzen essay about David Foster Wallace and Robinson Crusoe, no? No. Turns out that TNY’s clever gimmick about opening the essay up only to FB fans only lasted a week. And now it’s gone. So that makes me angry at…

Validation.

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 00:11:40 -0400

Validation.

"The global war on terror has acquired a life of its own,” says Colonel Lang. “It’s a self-licking..."

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 13:36:32 -0400

““The global war on terror has acquired a life of its own,” says Colonel Lang. “It’s a self-licking ice cream cone. And the fact that this counterterrorism/counterinsurgency industry evolved into this kind of thing, involving all these people—the foundations and the journalists and the book writers and the generals and the guys doing the shooting—all of that together has a great, tremendous amount of inertia that tends to keep it going in the same direction.” He adds, “It continues to roll. It will take a conscious decision on the part of civilian policy-makers, somebody like the president, for example, to decide that, ‘OK, boys, the show’s over.’” But Obama, he says, is far from deciding the show’s over. “It seems that this is going to go on for a long time.””

- This kicker quote from Pat Lang in Jeremy Scahill’s new must-read piece on Yemen is a hell of a thing.

Lieberman shits hasbara.

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 12:12:54 -0400

Lieberman shits hasbara.