Glenn Greenwald has a very Glenn Greenwaldesque post on the controversy over alleged use of anti-Semitic language by bloggers at the Center for American Progress, which I discussed last week.
One would never know from reading Greenwald’s piece that the controversy primarily revolved around the use of the term “Israel-firster” to describe supporters of Israel, much less that one can say two things about that term without much fear of contradiction: (1) it originated on the neo-Nazi fringe, and has only been adopted by left-wingers in the last few years; (2) it’s a term that not only substitutes insults for argument, but it implies loyalty to a foreign power, a longstanding theme in anti-Semitic literature.
As I said before, that doesn’t make the phrase somehow “objectively” anti-Semitic if used by individuals who had no anti-Jewish intent. However, as I also noted, most people of good will try to avoid using phrases related to Jews once they recognize that they have the odor of neo-Naziism about them (and indeed the CAP bloggers deleted the posts in question after the controversy broke). Others, however, like Greenwald, continue to think the phrase perfectly appropriate.
Moreover, left-wing writers tend to be especially sensitive about using language that has potentially racist implications, and also tend to be quick to accuse others of using “dog whistle” phrases–phrases that sound neutral, but are meant to stir racial animosity or invoke racial stereotypes.
In Greenwald’s defense, unlike many other left-wing anti-Israel writers who are quick to reject colorable charges of anti-Semitism, he has been a fearless opponent of political correctness, and has defended Republicans and conservatives from questionable charges of racism.
Actually, that’s not true. Actually, the opposite is true. Here, for example, is Glenn Greenwald in 2008, accusing John McCain of delivering “one of the ugliest, nastiest, most invective-filled” attacks “a major candidate has ever delivered, blatantly designed to stoke raw racial resentments.” The offending language? (Italics are Greenwald’s): It’s as if somehow the usual rules don’t apply, and where other candidates have to explain themselves and their records, Senator Obama seems to think he is above all that . . . His campaign had to return $33,000 in illegal foreign funds from Palestinian donors, and this weekend, we found out about another $28,000 in illegal donations. Why has Senator Obama refused to disclose the people who are funding his campaign? Again, the American people deserve answers.
Let’s get this straight. Suggesting that the usual rules don’t apply to Obama, stating that he returned illegal campaign contributions from Palestinian donors, and claiming that Obama refuses to disclose his funders isn’t just overheated (or silly) campaign rhetoric, isn’t even just ugly and nasty, but “is blatantly designed to stoke raw racial resentments.”
So, mentioning illegal Palestinian donations = blatant racism; adopting language appropriated from neo-Nazis within the decade about Israel’s supporters = clearly not anti-Semitic. Suggesting that a Obama has avoided “the usual rules” = blatant racism; suggesting that pro-Israel Americans care more about Israel than about the U.S. = clearly not anti-Semitic. Accusing someone of using anti-Semitism for using the Israel-firster slur makes you part of a “smear campaign”; accusing John McCain of blatant racism for claiming that Obama has not disclosed his campaign donors makes you a courageous left-wing blogger speaking truth to power.
I’m not going to argue that Greenwald’s racism argument is completely absurd–he’s a good lawyer, and he makes at least a marginally colorable argument in the rest of his post. But his argument is MUCH more of a stretch, or, if you will, much less well-founded, than the argument that “Israel-firster” is anti-Semitic language.
Obviously, Greenwald’s sensitivity to offensive language depends on whether he likes/agrees with the target. When his favored candidate, Barack Obama, was being attacked by John McCain, he was extremely quick to accuse McCain of using language designed to appeal to racist sentiment. When pro-Israel activists and politicians, a Greenwald-disfavored group, are being attacked by his anti-Israel compatriots, suddenly they are inherently immune from any hint of using anti-Semitic (a form, of course, of racism) language unless, perhaps, they are wearing swastikas and celebrating Hitler’s birthday. And the fact that Greenwald can and has come up with examples of where some of Israel’s supporters have used charges of anti-Semitism in inappropriate or exaggerated contexts is quite irrelevant to the point, just as it would be irrelevant to Greenwald’s post about McCain if someone pointed out that charges of racism against Obama’s opponents are at times inappropriate or exaggerated.
UPDATE: Here, in its entirety, is Greenwald’s response:
On a different note: both Jeffrey Goldberg and David Bernstein have posts about my arguments on the smearing of CAP that rest on the same premise: namely, that to point out that someone has “dual loyalties” is an accusation of disloyalty to their own country or even worse. As I explain here, that premise is false. There’s nothing inherently wrong with dual loyalties: those are common among many groups, especially in a country of immigrants, and are typically benign. What’s menacing is to smear those who discuss its existence and the way in which it influences our politics.
This would obviously be a more persuasive argument if the “Israel-firster” meme had not migrated to the left directly and very recently from the blatantly anti-Semitic right, a point Greenwald does not address. Indeed, the offensive aspect “Israel-firster” is not whether it’s inherently libelous to accuse someone of “dual loyalties,” any more than it’s inherently libelous to accuse someone of taking donations from foreign Palestinian sources. Rather, as Greenwald suggested with regard to McCain, the question is whether the use of the language is “designed to stoke raw racial [anti-Semitic] resentments.” Clearly this is the case when the language is used by the likes of David Duke, and the question then is whether the language magically is purged of such connotations when used by M.J. Rosenberg and others on the “mainstream” left.
[Additionally, a commenter points out that "Israel-firster" is not an accusation of "dual loyalties," but of primary loyalty to a foreign country.]
Randolph says:
Frankly this sounds like it’s true of both of you. I just can’t imagine you making this argument that if bad people were the first to use a word that use of the word is a general endorsement of said bad people against one of your ideological allies. [EDITOR: But, for that matter, I never even HINTED that using the phrase Israel-firster constitutes "a general endorsement" of Neo-Nazis.]
Few arguments have gotten more stale than than the charge of hypocrisy against someone for making two inconsistent decision, both of which you took the opposite side. [EDITOR: I haven't taken the "opposite" positions to Greenwald. I didn't accuse users of "Israel-firster" of blatant anti-Semitism, and, contrary to Greenwald's utter dismissal of anti-Semitism charges, I acknowledged that Greenwald made at least a marginally colorable claim that McCain used racially charged language.]
Note, I agree that calling someone an “Isreal-firster” is a despicable smear, but it has nothing to do with whether or not Nazis used to term. [EDITOR: You mean invented, and were the primary users until about three years ago.] There is just rarely any value in calling people’s loyalty into question. But I guess leaning on some esoteric etymology [EDITOR: Three years ago, and easily Googleable, is esoteric?] is safer because you don’t want to be in a position to have to call out all of you’re ideological allies that call into question the loyalty of Americans all the time. [EDITOR: My ideological allies are libertarian intellectuals, who not only are not prone to doing what you suggesting, but who are not even prone to thinking that "loyalty" to America, as such, is necessarily a virtue.]
[EDITOR: Other than all that, though, your comment is right on the money.]
January 20, 2012, 11:23 pmAlex says:
This is somewhat interesting, perhaps ironic, given Greenwald’s near-personal opposition to Obama and his administration. But I digress. . . I really would like to hear his response to this.
I think there’s a reasonable way to show that Bernstein is mistaken re: Glennwald’s apparent hypocrisy: The pro-McCain “dog whistle” issues in 2008 are distinct because they were not actually anti-black racist. Rather, the allegation is that they are calculated, cynical weapons used to appeal to the block of people who do indeed sympathize with anti-black views.
This is not at all the case with the dishonest “anti-Semetic” smears of the CAP/MM writers. The zionist defamation does not suggest tht they are pandering to a hidden jew-hating block. Quite the opposite, as such block does not exist in the U.S. in any meaningful sense. [EDITOR: With all due respect Alex, while I would be the first to acknowledge that racism against blacks is both more prevalent and far more politically salient than anti-Semitism, the idea that there is no substantial "block" of prejudiced opinion against Jews, ranging from mild to vicious is ridiculous--I'm still amazed, 20+ years later, at the volume of virulent anti-Jewish mail the philo-Semitic Jack Kemp received at his campaign headquarters where I volunteered. As I've pointed out before, the reason that otherwise well-meaning, non-anti-Semitic people who are strongly opposed to Israel and/or its current policies often finding themselves using arguably 'dog whistle' type (borderline anti-Semitic) arguments is that they are very effective, precisely because they appeal implicitly to existing prejudice. And note that while anti-Semitism may not have much political salience in general, it's a different story if the specific issue is America's support of Israel.] Rather, the allegation is that the writers are themselves actual anti-semites, which is very serious defamation. [EDITOR: No, the argument is that they used anti-Semitic language," which is no more calling the writers anti-Semites than Greenwald was calling McCain a racist. Admittedly, if you took Greenwald's post at face value, you'd conclude that all sots of people called the writers anti-Semites. Typical Greenwald.] It a qualitative difference from Glenn Greenwald’s observations–which really are not astouding–that some operatives in the GOP establishment will tailor their “messaging” in racial cues.
January 21, 2012, 12:42 amElliot says:
OK to say Major Nidal Malik Hasan is more loyal to the Islamist cause than to the US? OK to call him an American Islamist?
January 21, 2012, 12:56 amneurodoc says:
Glenn Greenwald serves an instructive purpose in a way not entirely unlike that of Galileo’s Simplicitus. Of course, there are some notable differences between Greenwald and Simplicitus, including that the latter was not a perverse and hateful piece of work.
January 21, 2012, 1:51 amtomemos says:
Meta-comment: I’m curious if any other readers, like me, would prefer for David Bernstein to post his own comments, rather than add responses from “EDITOR:” in brackets in the middle of the comments we put up here. Breaking up the text (in mid-sentence, even) not only makes it confusing to read, it also comes across as imperious and rude. It seems like common courtesy to let people state their case and then respond, rather than cutting in with rebuttals before they’ve finished. And surely cheap sarcasm like “Other than all that, though, your comment is right on the money” is unworthy of an “editor” in the first place? Anyway, that’s this reader’s request.
January 21, 2012, 2:06 amD.O. says:
You wouldn’t know from Prof. Bernstein’s post (but, of course, will easily find out through the link he provides) that Mr. Greenwald is not interested in the slightest what exactly were CAP bloggers accused of. As far as I get Mr. Greenwald’s meaning, he is campaigning for radically anti-Israel views to be let in the mainstream Democratic party debate. He is not happy that Jewish organizations are pushing back and that the White House would rather have none of it. If, even for a moment, I thought that radically anti-Israel point of view could be accepted as one of the possibilities for the mainstream Democrats, it would be a much bigger deal than who called whom what. Fortunately, it is not going to happen and we can all happily return to debating finer points of name calling ettiquette.
January 21, 2012, 2:13 amneurodoc says:
No, it is not. Hasan won’t go on trial for the premediated killing of 13 and attempted murder of 32 for another couple of months, so he stands convicted of nothing so far. If Hasan is convicted of those grievous charges, then almost certainly appeals will follow. And whatever the legal outcome, some who show up here will label you an “Islamophobe” for what you are suggesting, and even use you as an example to gainsay what Professor Bernstein has said about the use of “Israel First” (see TJ toward the end of the last thread on Gingrich speaking about the threat posed to Western civilization by “stealth” and “violent” jihadis.) Also, the Department of Defense would not like you to say it.
January 21, 2012, 2:14 amzuch says:
Absent evidence that “left-wingers” actually “adopted” the term, wouldn’t it be more accurate to say “only been used by left-wingers….”? The former word has a different … uhhh, connotation than the latter, if we want to start worrying about insinuations. And the neo-Nazis aren’t the only ones smart enough to come up with that word combination on their own.
Well, yes, it implies a primary allegiance to another country. How could it not? That’s what those two words together mean. But why is that insulting?
Cheers,
January 21, 2012, 3:02 amneurodoc says:
DNFTT
January 21, 2012, 3:26 amrilkefan says:
On the same topic, while I don’t always see eye-to-eye with Jeffrey Goldberg, I thought the Greenwald email and tweet quoted here were pretty low.
Please stop helping.
January 21, 2012, 3:52 amneurodoc says:
FWIW, Greenwald is wrong, MJ Rosenberg was never an employee of AIPAC. Rosenberg, who has gone from Left to quasi-Right and back to Left after a short stint as the American Jewish Committee’s Washgington representative, was the editor for awhile of the Near East Report back in the ’80s. AIPAC paid for and sent the NER to all its members, but at least technically, the NER was organized and operated as an entity separate and distinct from AIPAC, and AIPAC did not employ Rosenberg.
January 21, 2012, 4:06 amFloridian says:
I can buy the argument that the term “Israel-firster” is colored by its past.
My question regards DB’s use of the term “anti-Israel.” What does it take to be labeled such? If I oppose the building and expansion of West bank settlements, does that make me anti-Israel, even if I think my position is in the best interests of Israel (and the United States)?
January 21, 2012, 4:21 amjohnm says:
You know, on a political level, I very much approve of any attack against left-wing interests, particularly when it leverages their eternal hypocrisy, but in cases like these I also worry about legitimizing liberal language-warring (that is, obsessively manipulating language to engineer support for their ideology).
As someone (not Jewish) who strongly supports Israel, I have to say that I think it’s extremely unrealistic to believe that no meaningful number of Jewish-Americans in practice base some of their judgments on what they believe is in Israel’s interest rather than what they believe is in America’s interest (in my view, these two criteria typically align; not so much for most American liberals). My point is that a reasonable person (evaluating, for example, the amount of money donated to PACs dedicated to maintaining or increasing American support of Israel) could absolutely conclude that the prime motivator behind certain individuals’ behavior is concern Israel rather than the U.S.
I don’t believe that it is anti-Semitic to say this. In fact, it seems to be a characteristic of diaspora throughout history (e.g., Irish, funneling of cash and arms to the IRA; Cuban exiles; etc.). In my view, acceding to the notion that parts of the English language can be somehow tainted by history is very problematic, particularly for conservatives and the Right in general.
January 21, 2012, 5:43 amHankP says:
Pat Buchanan has been using phrases like this for the last 20 years, if not longer. Now you can call him a neo-Nazi if you’d like, but he did win the New Hampshire Republican primary in 1996. So if you’re looking to apportion blame between the “left” and the “right”, you might want to look to the side that employed him in two different administrations and ran for President twice, winning several caucuses and primaries as opposed to various unnamed commenters on the “left”.
Also, I’m wondering how you’d describe this guy.
January 21, 2012, 5:54 amjohnm says:
As a quick followup to my previous post, I want to add that I don’t believe it is generally wrong to support Israel against the interests of the United States. There may be some specific cases where this would not be the case (also, I am talking specifically about Israel here – most foreign countries, in my view, probably cannot justifiably be favored over the US).
However, particularly given the fact that Israel’s situation is so very much more tenuous than America’s, I think it is completely reasonable for someone, with or without strong personal ties to the country, to support it even in cases where its immediate interests may not clearly align with ours.
January 21, 2012, 7:35 amThe Helper says:
Greenwald has a valid point. Try expressing a comment in public or in a good law firm, college, or media setting, saying something like “I wish Israel would chill out with the KillDozers, and would lift embargoes on the people they have ghettoized–if they don’t maybe we should stop being 100% married to them”.
It will hit the fan. Fired, blacklisted, for racism. (Of course I exclude soc, eng, and CJ in colleges–they are mostly Arab, Indian, and Chinese now and would likely cheer)
Turning to the point of this post, there are people who are Israel first, last, and always. Saying so is entirely correct.
January 21, 2012, 7:39 amUS « MinReyes says:
[...] a different note: both Jeffrey Goldberg and David Bernstein have posts about my arguments on the smearing of CAP that rest on the same premise: namely, that [...]
January 21, 2012, 8:04 amMr. Whiskas says:
“Moreover, left-wing writers tend to be especially sensitive about using language that has potentially racist implications, and also tend to be quick to accuse others of using “dog whistle” phrases–phrases that sound neutral, but are meant to stir racial animosity or invoke racial stereotypes.”
This cuts both ways: right-wing (and libertarian) writers tend to criticize, lament and mock that kind of sensitivity about ostensibly neutral language that has “potentially racist implications.” So what’s going on here?
January 21, 2012, 8:28 amDavid Bernstein says:
What, you’re claiming that the left has appropriated rhetoric w/r/t Israel that once emanated almost exclusively from the anti-Semitic right, ranging from hard-core (neo-Nazis, the Spotlight), to mainstream with plausible deniability (Pat Buchanan)? I agree. The difference is that this rhetoric is increasingly becoming acceptable in the relatively mainstream left, while Buchanan’s views on Israel, much less his borderline rhetoric, have no base in mainstream conservatism.
January 21, 2012, 8:34 amMr. Whiskas says:
“there are people who are Israel first, last, and always. Saying so is entirely correct.”
I’m sure there are, I’m thinking of traitors like Pollard. But I think the argument is that most supporters of current Israeli policy (since we are suddenly very careful about terminology in this debate let’s, as properly suggested by Floridan above, take care not to throw out terms like “anti-Israel” or “enemy of Israel” about people who simply disagree with current Israeli policy), and this is true for most suporters of Israeli policy that are Jewish, do not actually put Israel’s interest ahead of US interests but genuinely think current policy promotes and protects both. Given it is incorrect in reference to most supporters and given its miring in a common anti-Semite smear, it’s likely to “stir racial animosity or invoke racial stereotypes.”
January 21, 2012, 8:44 amWatson Ladd says:
To people who aren’t aware of the history here: accusing a Jewish person of dual loyalty is very much like accusing a black man of being uppity: it’s the traditional slander that so much historical pain lies behind. And then saying that because they think the US should support a small country even if its expensive that they actually aren’t loyal to the US is ridiculous. We don’t say that Poles who want US to commit to NATO have dual loyalties. Yet somehow, when the country is Israel, it becomes acceptable to raise accusations that we otherwise wouldn’t tied in with the historical baggage of anti-Semitism.
January 21, 2012, 8:45 amBrutusettu says:
http://gawker.com/5877892/newspaper-editor-israel-should-consider-assassinating-obama
“You have got to believe, like I do, that all options are on the table.”
January 21, 2012, 8:58 amB-Rob says:
Since we don’t have his psych records public yet, I would hold off saying he was more loyal to the jihadist cause than the US because he may simply have been more loyal to the magic Koran troll that jumped out of the book and spoke to him periodically telling him that he was nothing and needed to die in a blaze of glory for God in order to be redeemed. In other words, let’s try not to label people before they have their say. You can label IDEAS and fight them out using facts, arguments, rhetoric, etc. But let’s try to skip labeling people.
January 21, 2012, 8:58 amB-Rob says:
Well let’s unravel this. What happened/happens when a Black person is “uppity”, as a GOPer Congressman from Georgia, Lynn Westmoreland, referred to Barack Obama and Rush Limbaugh referred to Michelle? “Uppity” Black people were punished, with loss of work, loss of opportunities to advance themselves, or worse.
What happens to Jewish people are are accused of “duel loyalties”? Anything other than a hurtful accusation? Any ramifications that flow with that?
In addition, “uppity” is a rather amorphous concept, one where the line is a bit hard to gauge. One definition is “rebelliously self-assertive; not inclined to be tractable or deferential.” Is it “uppity” to try to vote? Or to speak proper English? Lynn Westmoreland thought Obama was “uppity” for running for the presidency even though others had done that before; maybe his confidence that he could WIN, and his then serious efforts to do just that, was what was so off-putting to that Southern politician and many other GOPers who talk about Obama’s “arrogance”, i.e., not being servile. (Hell, Bill Clinton said “Five years ago, he would have been bringing US coffee” or some crap like that.)
“Duel loyalties”, though, is a bit more concrete. Case in point — to really be accused of that, you have to show . . . well, a loyalty to a country other than the United States. Hello! If a person has loyalty to another country whose interests do not align with the US, then they DO have duel loyalties! If you are showing allegiance with another country by trying to turn your country’s government from the current course aligned with its interests to some other course that benefits another country, then you do have duel loyalties. If Canadian born politician Jen Granholm was buttonholing congressmen on behalf of Canada, would there be any question that she had “duel loyalties”? No. But no one accuses her of that because she has never exhibited any such loyalties. Is it “unfair” to say that a politician who lobbies on behalf of the Saudis should be questioned where his loyalties lie? Of course not, because he is exhibiting loyalty to that country, and he is getting money to do it. In other words, if one wants to avoid the tag of having “duel loyalties,” then one should show allegiance to THIS COUNTRY and none other. You cannot serve two masters . . . .
January 21, 2012, 9:13 amNoga says:
“If I oppose the building and expansion of West bank settlements, does that make me anti-Israel, even if I think my position is in the best interests of Israel (and the United States)? ”
No. This is a perfectly legitimate criticism of Israel’s POLICIES which one may agree or disagree with but not feel insulted or threatened by them. It is possible to counter such a position with rational arguments, or to qualify one’s rejection of this type of blanket generalization (what is meant by “settlement”?) in ways that are fair and decent and relate to the substance of the opinion itself.
The “Israel-firster” criticism is impossible to refute because it is a suspicion that casts doubts on the very integrity of the person targeted by it (loyalty to one’s country is still an important virtue and value). Not only is it an ad-hom par excellence and therefore an inferior kind of argumentation; it also has ominous historical resonance for Jews in particular. The people who resort to this kind of “criticism” cannot be disabused of their opinion because nothing will do except for the accused to convert completely, openly and sincerely to the accuser’s POV, in a kind of modern day auto-da-fé.
January 21, 2012, 9:15 amBrutusettu says:
“So, mentioning illegal Palestinian donations = blatant racism”
How does anyone forget that in 2008 when Glenn wrote the article about the McCain quote, that there was widespread belief among many likely McCain voters that Obama was a secret Muslim?
i.e.
“So, mentioning illegal Palestinian donations [to a person many GOP voters thought was a secret Kenyan Muslim which would lead those particular GOP voters to think that "secret Muslim Kenyan" will surreptitiously destroy America from within] = blatant racism”
January 21, 2012, 9:17 amAsher says:
Hahahahahaha, that’s hilarious.
@ zuch
Please, don’t take his advice. You’re the reverse sock-puppet I’ve always wanted.
January 21, 2012, 9:59 amGiant Frog says:
So, mentioning illegal Palestinian donations = blatant racism; adopting language appropriated from neo-Nazis within the decade about Israel’s supporters = clearly not anti-Semitic..
The “racism”, as usual, is just psychological projection from hyperventilating Salon scribblers and their ilk, so the comparison is rather pointless.
January 21, 2012, 10:30 amAsher says:
Duel loyalties? Are you intending to shoot someone for someone else?
January 21, 2012, 10:31 amGoggins says:
Note that the past tense is used to describe the harm that the insult caused to black people (Black people “were” punished for being uppity) — obviously the Obamas weren’t actually harmed very much — but that the present tense is used to ask what harm is done to American Jews accused of dual loyalty. If you use the past tense in connection with dual-loyalty accusations directed at Jews, well then, you just MIGHT find that some harm was done to them. And the past is always with us, with both Blacks and Jews.
January 21, 2012, 11:09 amNick056 says:
So CAP totally disavows this anti-Semitic term, and rather than emphasizing what that disavowal might say about “the left,” DB just moves on to whoever else exemplifies the growing acceptance of anti-semitism by “the left.” In this case, it’s Glenn Greenwald, whose credentials as a member of the mainstream left are, at this point, pretty faded; to wit, I believe he’s accusing Obama of war crimes in Pakistan. Meanwhile, CAP is very much a mainstream left wing organization, and very much rejects “Israel-Firster.”
Also meanwhile, Ron Paul constantly says questionable things about Israel, including asking why we have “an automatic commitment to send our kids and money endlessly to Israel. ” Of course, this blog and others have addressed Paul-on-Israel, and some credibly claim that advocating for Israeli independence from US interference is in harmony with Zionism. He also does not use Buchanan-level rhetoric. But let’s face facts: when you assert that we have an automatic commitment to send our kids to Israel endlessly, you are not tethered to reality, and you are dishonestly making it seem as though Israel is draining us of money and talent in exchange for “veto power” over their foreign policy. You are also — crucial to DB’s analysis — dealing in tropes about Israeli control over American foreign policy that have little basis in reality and have ultimately migrated from neo-Nazism. Bill Kristol thinks the Republican party should dump Paul because of thise types of arguments, so that Paul can no longer associate the party with precisely the kind of rhetoric that DB says mainstream Republicans are already no longer associated with. In fact, Kristol compared Paul to Buchanan.
So if you’re looking for bases for plausibile-deniability-style resentment toward Israel, the very visible Paul candidacy isn’t a far reach.
January 21, 2012, 11:24 amRobert says:
I thought this was a commonplace. Decades ago a Jewish friend told me derisively of the people he knew in the community who thought US foreign policy should exist exclusively for the interest of Israel.
Also, I’m sick of walking on eggs as to the use of phrases that might be the most accurate, just because they’ve been taken up by people I disagree with.
January 21, 2012, 11:26 amKen Arromdee says:
If you oppose gay rights, because you honestly believe homosexuality is immoral and that saving gays from their own folly is in their best interest, does that make you anti-gay?
January 21, 2012, 11:41 amJames Madison says:
Oh this is all about “Israel Firsters,” I thought all these posts were about “Israel Fisters” being anti-Semitic.
“Israel Firster” is a nice concise talking point which clearly conveys a point, much like “welfare queen,” “chicken-hawk” or “flip-flopper.” To the extent it substitutes insult for [long-winded] argument, it makes it an effective political argument for the masses. This type of argument has long been used to great effect in American politics, albeit over the objections of those so tagged.
The fact that arguments have been used by certain undesirable groups is no reason to foreswear them. Equating Tea Party ideas with racism has been a favorite hobby of Democratic talking heads; it doesn’t make the Tea Party’s ideas any less valid.
Similarly, this whole “Israel First” issue seems like an attempt to divert attention from the real issue: Calling out people because their loyalty to Israel is greater than their loyalty to the United States of America. It is no different than calling a biologist a “drill firster” because she is heavily funded by BP, or Aldrich Aimes a traitor because someone convinced him he should help America by helping the Soviet Union work closer with America.
You may be able to convince me that “Israel Fisting” is anti-Semitic, but not “Israel Firsting.”
January 21, 2012, 12:23 pmNick056 says:
Adding to my above comment, in 2009 Ron Paul said this on Iranian TV:
Okay, so can we agree that going on Iranian TV to call Gaza a concentration camp is pretty strongly anti-Israel. As to whether it’s also hateful toward Jews, well, here’s the video: Paul speaking. Suffice to say I have issues with the racial benevolence of a man willing to say Israel would be dealing better with the Arab League if only we withdrew our support, and that Israel is running a gigantic concentration camp and committing atrocious massacres.
But I don’t want to dwell on Paul — or the very strange bedfellows I’ve made in castigating his views — because this blog post isn’t about him specifically. It’s about a poorly supported allegation of a double standard existing on the left, and it’s weakened by a total failure to reckon with the apparently resilient popularity of extraordinary anti-Israel rhetoric — and with the popularity of those who speak the rhetoric — among some quarters of the Republican party. If views like this truly had no base in mainstream conservatism, Paul would have to say that his support comes from entirely outside the mainstream of conservatism. But polling indicates that isn’t so.
To the contrary, his support seems mostly drawn from fringe elements with a non-trivial number of supporters from the mainstream of conservatism, which is exactly like Kristol would like to expell him, so as to clarify boundaries and preserve the good name of the Republican party w/r/t Israel.
And of course, useage of “Israel-firster” on the left seems mostly prevalent among fringe elements and wehn it appears in mainstream places like CAP, it’s expelled, so that CAP can clarify boundaries and preserve the good name of liberalism w/r/t opposing bigotry.
So while I lament that the left is seeing more anti-semitism than it once did, DB’s account is biased and strange. It really doesn’t describe the facts very well.
January 21, 2012, 12:41 pmDavid Bernstein says:
Bernstein on Ron Paul and Israel. And, fwiw, it’s easy enough to find the polling statistics showing that American conservatives overwhelmingly support Israel, while American liberal opinion is still favorable but much more mixed. Which is exactly why the fringey right-wing anti-Israel people are hanging out with the Left these days–it’s where they can find an audience.
January 21, 2012, 12:53 pmJim Harrison says:
Surely the serious issue is whether unconditional support for Israel’s current policy of apartheid is good foreign policy for the U.S. In the context of this question, it is politically relevant to ask whether particular groups and individuals put the interests of Israel over those of the United States. Nevertheless, divided loyalty is a recurrent theme in our history, and its a little late to get hysterical about it from either side. Those of you who put Israel ahead of the U.S. have a perfect right to do so. I wish the argument weren’t about whose tribalism trumped whose, but about how we all get to a place where the issue is uninteresting.
January 21, 2012, 1:03 pmKane says:
Mr. Bernstein,
I know Mr. Greenwald sometimes can be caught up on trivialities, but your obsession is beyond anything I’ve seen from Mr. Greenwald. And Mr. Greenwald is much more principled commenter than you and he criticizes Mr. Obama as much as anyone I’ve seen. His criticism of U.S. policy and politicians do not know the party identity, unlike you and some other bloggers on this site. (Though you guys try by way of self-sensoring, it’s not something you can hide. You don’t need to confirm or deny because everyone sees it)
I am sorry this necessarily sounds like a personal attack, but I couldn’t help. While you’re accusing others’ “insensitivity” of choosing wrong vocabulary, those who you do choose not to mention (such as Ms. Rubin) keep spewing vile and evil languages out without any sense of humility or self-awareness. And their vile campaign do bring out actual results, which is all the more unfortunate.
Have you thought about yourself, and being open-minded and fair? Are you accusing Mr. Greenwald of anti-semitism? Of course you would say no. He’s just being “insensitive,” or “partisan.” Then what should we call Ms. Rubin? (I’d prefer something more specific than “lunatic”)
How about this one?
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/284979-ajt.html
January 21, 2012, 1:52 pmKane says:
Oh, I see Brutusettu beat me to it with the adler dude.
January 21, 2012, 1:57 pmMartinned says:
Thread winner!
I agree with the first part, but for the life of me I can’t make sense of the part between brackets.
The notion that your country is somehow automatically entitled to your loyalty makes very little sense to me. When it comes to candidates running for office, on the other hand, it’s a somewhat different story. Political office holders should serve the interests of the people. (Although even then there might be an exception imaginable in case those people want said office holder to promote the interests of some other group as well.)
What he said.
January 21, 2012, 2:15 pmKane says:
Mr. Bernstein,
I know Mr. Greenwald sometimes can be caught up on trivialities, but your obsession is beyond anything I’ve seen from Mr. Greenwald. And Mr. Greenwald is much more principled commenter than you and he criticizes Mr. Obama as much as anyone I’ve seen. His criticism of U.S. policy and politicians do not know the party identity, unlike you and some other bloggers on this site. (Though you guys try by way of self-sensoring, it’s not something you can hide. You don’t need to confirm or deny because everyone sees it)
I am sorry this necessarily sounds like a personal attack, but I couldn’t help. While you’re accusing others’ “insensitivity” of choosing wrong vocabulary, those who you do choose not to mention (such as Ms. Rubin) keep spewing vile and evil languages out without any sense of humility or self-awareness. And their vile campaign do bring out actual results, which is all the more unfortunate.
Have you thought about yourself, and being open-minded and fair? Are you accusing Mr. Greenwald of anti-semitism? Of course you would say no. He’s just being “insensitive,” or “partisan.” Then what should we call Ms. Rubin? (I’d prefer something more specific than “lunatic”)
How about this one?
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/284979-ajt.html
And you seriously think Israel (and her so-called allies in the U.S.) are a constant, not a variance? Why do you think the right-wing folks are becoming more “supportive” of Israel? (I guarantee you it has nothing to do with Israel itself, let alone Jews)
January 21, 2012, 2:19 pmKane says:
And you seriously think Israel (and her so-called allies in the U.S.) are a constant, not a variance? Why do you think the right-wing folks are becoming more “supportive” of Israel? (I guarantee you it has nothing to do with Israel itself, let alone Jews)
January 21, 2012, 2:20 pmCalderon says:
B-Rob said:
You’re really mixing time periods here, comparing what happened to black people in the “old days” to what happens to Jews now. Back in the “old days,” a black person considered uppity could be punished to some lesser or greater degree of severity, including lynching. And also back in the “old days” the belief that Jewish people had a commitment to their own “race” or religion rather than the dominant area that lived in led to mass progroms, mass exile, repression, legal discrimination, etc. (Obviously, the “old days” weren’t necessarily that long ago)
In modern days, some people who have prejudiced beliefs about black people may discriminate against so-called “uppity” black people socially or economically. And some people who have prejudiced beliefs about Jews may discriminate socially or economically against Jews who are seen as having “dual loyalties” and not fully committed to the US. Indeed, as immigration and acculturation debates show, criticism of people for loyalty to countries other than the US is voiced much more frequently and openly than criticizing someone for being “uppity.”
January 21, 2012, 2:21 pmDavid Bernstein says:
And I couldn’t help deleting the rest of your comment. I am sorry.
January 21, 2012, 2:27 pmHankP says:
What’s with “appropriation”? Buchanan has been saying stuff like this for a long time, that’s how it gets into general use. No one’s “appropriating” anything, just using terms that become common through usage. That’s why you’re aiming at the wrong target, “the left” didn’t popularize this term the way Buchanan did. And if Buchanan is so awful, you haven’t explained his prominence in Republican politics over several decades. For example, you haven’t identified a similarly prominent Democrat who has said the kind of things he’s said without being ostracized.
Also, I notice you didn’t address the guy who said that Obama should be assassinated by Israel. I think “Israel-firster” is the least that one could say of him.
This is all quite Orwellian, you’re just trying to control the language so that people can’t say what you don’t want to hear, regardless of whether the appellation fits or not.
January 21, 2012, 2:38 pmTom Rigid says:
David, the coming-together of fringe right anti-semites and fringe-left anti-Israel types doesn’t make the left anti-semitic. You’ve heard (too often, I’m sure) that the two are, though not mutually exclusive, quite distinct.
In my experience touring “Occupy” camps and range Republican social events, the two views are most thoroughly joined in the person and positions of Ron Paul, whose transformation from nativist rube to Libertarian folk hero follows the usual pattern of rural right-wing populists throughout American history.
While I might concede that “Israel First” has Google-able associations with the David Dukes, I feel certain that this is really about putting one over on CAP and Obama. Everybody has divided loyalties, including American Jews. We might be more sensitive than most, since before 1948 we were outsiders in every society and easy scapegoats for nativist resentment, but your conflation of insensitivity with racism seems a little too facile here.
After 1967 my grandparents were radicalized on behalf of Israel. They raised money for Israel and pushed the Israeli cause with their local and regional politicians. In this they seemed identical to their entire community of Jews, most of whom remained Democrats and passed their New Deal loyalties to their children and grandchildren. If you had asked my Grandmother before her death if she was “Israel First” in her political outlook I think she would have given you an unqualified “yes”. Did that make her unpatriotic? She’d have slapped you for the suggestion.
An adult is someone that can believe two conflicting ideas at once without crying.
January 21, 2012, 2:56 pmDavid Bernstein says:
Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton both have a history of more explicit anti-Semitism than Buchanan, and they’ve been players on the Democratic side. In their cases and w/r/t Buchanan, fortunately their political success, such as it is, has largely been despite, not because of, this factor. But any left-winger out there who wants to defend themselves by saying, “I’m no more anti-Semitic than Pat Buchanan,” please be my guest.
As for the editor in question, what he wrote was wildly inappropriate, but your description of what he wrote is inaccurate. Regardless, whether or not you think he should be described as an “Israel-firster” is entirely irrelevant regarding the issue at hand, which is whether that moniker is a fair, appropriate description of prominent American mainstream politicians, pundits, political activists, etc., or whether it is an offensive slur that at best is puerile and insulting, and at works reeks of its origins on the anti-Semitic far right.
January 21, 2012, 2:57 pmOrenWithAnE says:
In the sense that it avoid all the difficult policy decisions regarding welfare, foreign policy or pragmatism, yes, it’s a nice talking point.
Perhaps that’s because talking points are generally designed to avoid hard issues in favor of more limbic persuasion.
January 21, 2012, 2:59 pmHankP says:
Jesse Jackson is an example of someone who lost all national appeal to Democrats after his statements, so thanks for making my point. Al Sharpton never had any national appeal to begin with.
How you can say I mischaracterized someone who wrote that Israel should assassinate Obama to advance their interests is ridiculous.
I get that you don’t like the term and are trying to associate it exclusively with neo-Nazis in the hope that it will make it unavailable for anyone to use. But it’s in common usage, it’s descriptive and it’s appropriate to use as a descriptive term. The fact that it’s derogatory is neither here nor there, so are many popular political labels. It’s use is hardly limited to or applied to Jews exclusively so I can’t see how “anti-Semitic” applies.
There are people who go way overboard in advancing far right Israeli policies. The only legitimate attack on the phrase would be that it’s more appropriate to use a term like “Likud-firster”.
January 21, 2012, 3:26 pmMDJD from NY says:
Surely a serious issue can’t be based on an unserious allegation such as this apartheid crap.
January 21, 2012, 3:27 pmRandolph says:
Ok, so what is the neutral nonspecific formulation of this theory of inappropriate language? Keep in mind all the phrases originating in antebellum and Jim Crow South. You wouldn't want to condemn terms like "states rights" would you?
Libertarian intellectuals are also not particularly prone to being pro-Israel either, which might lead an honest reader to think that wasn’t what I meant by ideological allies.
January 21, 2012, 3:32 pmBeldar says:
I have seen no evidence to support the assertion that Greenwald is a good lawyer. I’ve seen quite a bit of contrary evidence, in the form of his own assertions about legal matters that are preposterously wrong.
January 21, 2012, 3:40 pmrilkefan says:
That’s not a call you get to make in civil discourse. You can say you disagree with so-and-so’s opinion about America’s policies concerning Israel, but you can’t do it by calling so-and-so a traitor. And you can’t use terminology echoing age-old anti-Semitic rhetoric without being called on it, however useful the term is to your politics.
I can’t really imagine Orwell would have been in favor of debasing the language by mainstreaming hard-right-wing hate speech.
You do know that there have been four attacks on synagogues in NJ in the last month or so? That anti-Semitism is still easily observable in the far ends of the political spectrum here and in Europe? Really you should be saying, “Yep, bad term” and argue another day on better territory.
January 21, 2012, 3:51 pmArthur Kirkland says:
I am beginning to believe that many conservatives toss the term “libertarian” about nearly randomly, suggesting an ideological Tourette syndrome.
[If I misread the attributions, Prof. Bernstein, and you did not make this assertion, I apologize to you and redirect my denigration at whomever appears to claim that libertarian means “conservative, but not necessarily full-blown social conservative” and “fond of Israel’s current government policies and of the increasing tie between Israel’s right-wing politics and conservative American politics.”
January 21, 2012, 4:02 pmMartinned says:
How does the term “Israel firster” imply an accusation of treason? Treason is a lack of loyalty (i.e. a more than total absence thereof) versus the United States. I don’t see why being loyal to another country as well would make one a traitor towards the United States, even if that other loyalty is greater than one’s loyalty to the US. AFAIK, the US is not a jealous mistress.
January 21, 2012, 4:14 pmneumann103 says:
I don’t know whether it is true or not, but I think it is a reasonable assertion to allow into the debate. eg it ought not to be considered so outside the “mainstream consensus” that it is poisonous to the debate to suggest that someone allegedly shooting up an army post for reasons apparently motivated by support for Islamic jihadist objectives might be described as an “American Islamist”.
On the other hand if you had a group of American Muslims who expressed the thought that maybe invading half a dozen Muslim countries for trumped up reasons might not be the greatest idea for the interest of either the US or those countries, and they were derided as “American Islamists” as part of the effort to marginalize them then I think it would be within reason to describe this as bigoted, with a purpose to silence.
That to me is what this tempest is about: is the shackled consensus of Washington interest politics so restricted by requirement to support specific policies of a specific foreign government (even if those same policies are opposed by substantial numbers of citizens of that country) that you cannot even raise the issue of “whose interests do you serve”?
I think “I am an American Jew and I believe that this policy serves both US and Israeli interest” is a valid position. I think that “Americans have to support, subsidize and back with military force if necessary the specific policies of the current Likud government even when conterfactual or opposed by millions of Israelis, or against the interest of the US, or in violation of International standards and laws dating back to at least Geneva IV 1949 or else you are an anti-semite and your views must be excluded” is a bit over the top. Again, with a purpose.
And there is a very real cry wolf risk here.
And my reading of Greenwald is along those lines.
January 21, 2012, 4:52 pmDavid Bernstein says:
[1] Jackson received 29%+ of the vote in the 1988 presidential primaries. Pat Buchanan received a bit more than 20% of the vote in the 1996 Republican primaries.
January 21, 2012, 5:03 pm[2] Because I actually read the column, and that’s not what he said, though what he did write was quite stupid and thoughtless.
David Bernstein says:
Sure they are, though there is a noisy contrary minority who are basically Chomskyites on foreign policy in general.
January 21, 2012, 5:07 pmrilkefan says:
This is all wrong, and bizarrely so. It’s “Israel First“, not “Israel Equal” or “Israel Primus Inter Pares”. And the term echoes the isolationist xenophobic “America First”. And unless I’m confused the US doesn’t even recognize dual citizenship. Maybe it doesn’t rise to constitutional muster, but acting in the interest of a foreign power against the interests of the US strikes me as being what people mean when they use “treason” (not a word I can recall ever using in anger myself). Then there’s the obvious echo of standard anti-Semitic John-Bircher-paranoid-right rhetoric. To my (American, multilingual, unacknowledged legislator of the world) ears the term is simply useless for anyone who thinks it important to stay ten-foot-pole distance away from bad bad stuff.
January 21, 2012, 5:13 pmKen Arromdee says:
Your reasoning is correct, but your conclusion doesn’t fit it.
Just like it would be wrong to call someone an Islamist for their opinions on US policy towards Islamic countries (with the insinuation that they have loyalty towards those countries instead of towards the US), it would also be wrong to call someone an Israel-Firster for their opinions on US policy towards Israel. By your own reasoning, you would have to limit use of the term to people who killed Americans in the name of Israel or otherwise acted in a very direct manner against the US.
January 21, 2012, 5:15 pmrilkefan says:
The thing people on the far sides of the spectrum who make transparently ridiculous strawman arguments like you have here neglect is that folks in the middle come to discount your entire argument. You’ve lost on this tiny bit of rhetorical ground. Attempting to fight to the death over it just makes it look like you don’t care about the truth and justice of the situation. When Olmert offers a 100% area-equivalent peace, cheer the Israeli govt. When Netanyahu does pretty much anything, decry it. Be aware of, and acknowledge the good arguments and inconvenient facts on the other side. People advocating for a compromise involving real-world sacrifices by the folks on the ground have to be willing to do the much less painful equivalent in argument.
January 21, 2012, 5:32 pmElliot says:
“Israel-Firster” and “anti-Semite” are both pejoratives aimed at an individual. Which one is acceptable? Why?
How about “Israel-Firstic” and “anti-Semitic” as applied to ideas?
January 21, 2012, 6:21 pmDavid Sucher says:
Just for frame-of-reference, could you offer some phrases which you think are accurate but which you fear to use?
January 21, 2012, 6:21 pmJustin L says:
So any response to his larger argument that any criticism of Israeli policies or taking of any but the hardest line position adopted by Israeli policy groups is shouted down by spurious accusations of anti-semitism? Or the more acceptable phrase, which you seem to be fine with using, of accusing them of being “anti-Israel” for those positions?
Apparently it’s better to have another round about a phrase that has been disowned by the people who used it, and ignore the rest of his argument. Even though that phrase is but a very minor piece in a much larger and more important argument.
January 21, 2012, 6:47 pmChris Travers says:
Prof. Bernstein, I am interested in what you think on this thesis:
As you know during the Israeli war of Independence, LEHI viewed Hitler as a mere Jew-hater, while Churchill was seen as the real enemy of the Jewish people. Given the fact that there was an Israeli war of independence against Britain which coincided with WWII, I cannot accept that this view would have been seen as extremist in its day among those fighting for independence for Israel. In other words the other Zionist military groups must have had similar viewpoints or they would have aided Britain rather than fighting against her.
My view then is that Israeli policy has more or less always assumed that the entire rest of the world is deeply anti-Semitic. This makes perfect sense when you look at the few millenia of Jewish experience.
So from this viewpoint, it seems to me that if it has been institutionalized to any great extent, it means that there is likely to be a significant set of Jews who still feel this way, and who therefore equate opposition to Israel in any shape with an overt showing of anti-Semitism, as opposed to the hidden anti-Semitism that everyone else carries with them.
But the problem is that if one adopts that sort of aggressive in-group defensiveness, does the term Antisemitic become so generic as to be meaningless? Does it simply end up meaning “Non-Jewish?”
January 21, 2012, 8:09 pmMDT says:
martinned,
What rilkefan said. “Israel-firster” implies primary loyalty to Israel. If you are an American citizen, and your primary loyalty is to a foreign power, you aren’t a loyal American citizen. Ergo, you are not literally a traitor, if you haven’t committed actual treason; but at least you are someone who wouldn’t especially mind committing treason if there were a reasonable chance of getting away with it.
January 21, 2012, 8:13 pmDavid Bernstein says:
I don’t know who the quote is from, but the premise is inaccurate. Lehi was a small fringe group. Both the mainstream Hagannah and the less mainstream Irgun suspended their dispute with the British for the duration of WWII. More generally, the Israeli War of Independence was vs. the Arab armies in 1948, there was an armed revolt against the British, but it wasn’t during WWII, it was after WWII and before the end of the Palestine mandate. The bulk of the anti-British action, however, was smuggling Holocaust survivors past the British blockade.
In short, quoting someone utterly ignorant of actual Israeli history who instead makes up his own history to buttress a point about “aggressive [Jewish] in group defensiveness” is probably not a good idea.
January 21, 2012, 8:36 pmneurodoc says:
Toward the end of the previous thread on this subject, neurodoc asked a question about the American First Committee, to which he thinks you may be alluding. It went unresponded to and he’d like to try again, if he may:
neurodoc always thought that the AFC was an unequivocal expression of isolationism and xenophobia, while being pro-German and antisemitic. Wikipedia portrays it as not that at all, though, but instead an entirely respectable movement of responsible citizens, unfairly remembered as otherwise because of an unrepresentative speech given by Charles Lindberg saying that it was only Britain, Jews, and FDR who wanted to see the US dragged into to war against Germany and the US’s own best interests. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_Committee
And then years later Pat Buchanan lauded the AFC, furthering impression that the organization was a hateful expression of American sentiments pre-WWII.
Is the Wikipedia account reasonably reliable, or is it a whitewash of the AFC and a huge distortion of history?
January 21, 2012, 9:10 pmneurodoc says:
When speaking of Major Hasan, do we need “allegedly” in a conversation like this one? Hasan afterall is what he is and did what he did, isn’t/didn’t he, while those you think might be unfairly labeled “American Islamists” by some Americans are only hypothesized, aren’t they?
January 21, 2012, 9:22 pmleo marvin says:
Paul also gives special salience to the “Israel-firster” meme, while burnshing his conspiracy theory mongering credentials, with his accusation that Israel sold the explosives terrorists used to blow up the US Marine barracks in Lebanon.
January 21, 2012, 9:30 pmDavid G. Epstein says:
We should abandon our hypocritical pussyfooting about race, antisemitism, “homophobia” and the rest of it. The President wrote a whole best-seller about race. Why shouldn’t his opponents talk about it? Why shouldn’t opponents of Zionism be free to point out what they see are its flaws and fallacies, and if the facts support the dual loyalties or Israel-first positions of people like Sen. Schumer and the guy who called for the Mossad to kill Obama, to point out the same? Why can’t I point out that Jews in the US by and large favor liberal immigration policies but support Israel, which is highly restrictive of immigration other than that of Jews, and call them out?
We need a lot more open debate about race, ethnicity, and the proper role of ethnic pressure groups on foreign affairs, of which the Zionists have the most powerful (and the most dangerous, I believe), but the Cubans, East Indians, Greeks, Armenians have also mounted.
Less fear, more candidness.
January 21, 2012, 9:36 pmDavid G. Epstein says:
As to the origin of a term calling its use into question, should its proponents stop using the term “American exceptionalism” because of its Stalinist origin–as the idea that communists had to adopt a different strategy in the US because it was exceptional.
January 21, 2012, 9:42 pmDavid G. Epstein says:
As to the origin of a term calling its use into question, should its proponents stop using the term “American exceptionalism” because of its Stalinist origin–as the idea that communists had to adopt a different strategy in the US because it was exceptional.
January 21, 2012, 9:42 pmDavid G. Epstein says:
“American exceptionalism” was an invention of the Stalinists, to criticize the view that communism needed a different strategy in the United States because it was different from Europe. Shall we tar anyone who uses the term with the communist sympathizer brush?
January 21, 2012, 10:42 pmDavid G. Epstein says:
“American exceptionalism” was an invention of the Stalinists, to criticize the view that communism needed a different strategy in the United States because it was different from Europe. Shall we tar anyone who uses the term with the communist sympathizer brush?
January 21, 2012, 10:42 pmrilkefan says:
Dunno. Here‘s a take that suggests the movement was intended by its leadership to avoid anti-Semitism (e.g., rejecting Henry Ford) but didn’t in the main disagree with Lindbergh’s speech at the time it was given.
January 22, 2012, 12:38 amzuch says:
“[N]o evidence”. “[N]o evidence”. Hmmm. What does that phrase mean? I wonder where I might find an exemplar of such “no evidence”. Hmmmmm……
Cheers,
January 22, 2012, 1:07 amJNCC says:
“[EDITOR: My ideological allies are libertarian intellectuals, who not only are not prone to doing what you suggesting, but who are not even prone to thinking that “loyalty” to America, as such, is necessarily a virtue.”
In other words: “my allies are not prone to thinking that loyalty to America is necessarily a virtue.”
And this person is upset that people dare to imply that he puts the interests of another country ahead of America’s?
Why? He just said that he (assuming he thinks the same way as his “allies”) doesn’t think loyalty to America is a virtue.
January 22, 2012, 1:27 amRobert says:
I’ve been upbraided for “Negro”, but that’s not such a bad problem because the apparently acceptable “black” is just as (in)accurate.
People impute meaning to “extremist” that I don’t intend. I can usually substitute “radical”, though that’s often not exactly what I mean.
Women particularly seem to be bothered by accurate, non-demeaning terms for female genital anatomy. This is especially vexing when precision is called for.
“Fascist” seems hopelessly lost as applied to contemporaries.
“Oriental” is on the edge now as applied to persons. I’d like a word that distinguishes Chinese, Japanese, and Korean from other Asian types when it comes to appearance of the face. Seems I can just say the person looked Chinese and that fairly well covers it.
“Bomb” as applied to certain peaceful devices is scary now.
We keep running out of nouns & adjectives for persons of low intelligence.
This online editor is really a pain for a modem cx. Next time I’m stuck in this position, is composing offline better?
January 22, 2012, 1:34 amChris Travers says:
I went back and re-read Greenwald’s piece, and the following bit struck me not just as to what was said but as to what Greenwald chose to emphasize in the Josh Block quote.
I see this as seeing him call out the idea that calling someone a ‘Israel Firster’ or a ‘Likudnik’ is in the same category as saying ‘Iran isn’t trying to build nuclear weapons.’ I think Greenwald is right to be concerned about the labelling of such things as antisemitic. As I read Bernstein’s view, he is not clear that the first is clearly antisemitic, and therefore seems to discount the link to the second.
But more to the point, I think Block comes across as slightly unhinged here. If we read this as the substance of antisemitism, then it would have been antisemitic to say in 2003 “We don’t like the fact that Israel is threatening war with Lebanon over water and Israel needs to stop.” But it is just fine to send in negotiators to tell Israel to stop and broker a deal undermining Israeli water rights (as Bush in fact did because to do otherwise would have meant delaying the invasion of Iraq). I don’t understand this difference. Maybe someone can explain it to me.
January 22, 2012, 1:37 amzuch says:
From here:
Is this bio clip wrong? Or does AIPAC not pay their editors?
Cheers,
January 22, 2012, 1:55 amneurodoc says:
Rosenberg was editor of the Near East Report; the Near East Report was an entity separate and distinct from AIPAC, as its incorporation documents reflect; Rosenberg was not a subordinate of Tom Dine, AIPAC’s executive director at the time; AIPAC was not the source of Rosenberg’s pay.
January 22, 2012, 2:17 amTwo lessons from the Megaupload seizure | government liquidation says:
[...] a different note: both Jeffrey Goldberg and David Bernstein have posts about my arguments on the smearing of CAP that rest on the same premise: namely, that to [...]
January 22, 2012, 7:59 amMenlo says:
I refuse to in fear of using words that offend others. They offend me with their endless bitching about perfectly understandable terms. Israel firsters perfectly describes a set of individuals. If it walks like a duck you’re not allowed to say so because Hitler liked ducks.
January 22, 2012, 8:29 amHere come the Judge: says:
The injection of Ron Paul into this argument may be a good time to discuss the difference between Libertarians and Conservatives, which Nick056 does not appear to understand. Ron Paul has a strong and steadfast following among Libertarians; you know, the kind of people who the sponsors of this blog profess to be. There is some overlap between Conservatism and Libertarianism, but they are not congruent; far from it. Please don’t misunderstand me; I’m not in this way accusing the Conspirators of anti-Semitism, especially in a post by Professor Bernstein. However, Paul represents a distilled and concentrated form of Libertarianism that believes that America belongs at home, that “foreign entanglements” (George Washington’s phrase) leads to the violation of this country’s basic principles. The part of Paul’s philosophy that may draw him some support among Conservatives is his fiscal policy which has an appeal, not because Conservatives oppose all government programs and all taxation, but because of the excesses of the Liberal state on both issues.
Ron Paul will never get the Republican nomination because he is not a Conservative. He is a Libertarian who has taken Libertarian principles and applied them both at home and abroad. He is the Libertarian end-point, the embodiment of Libertarian ideals in the raw; an America-Firster. He’s yours, my friends, you own him.
January 22, 2012, 9:07 amDavid Bernstein says:
Of course Greenwald focuses on Josh Block, but the reason the story went “viral” is not because of Block, but because mainstream organizations, including ones not prone to get involved in partisan food fights like the Simon Wiesenthal Center, jumped in to denounce the “Israel-firster” meme. Like any good lawyer, Greenwald focuses on the weakest element of the other side (Block), but if he were at oral argument, a good panel would ask him what Block’s role in the controversy has to do with the actual merit of the charge that some very dubious rhetoric historically found on the anti-Semitic right is slipping into to “liberal” discourse about Israel.
In fact, in debate, it’s sometimes better to concede your opponents strongest arguments. What if Greenwald had said: (1) yes, Israel-firster is over the line; but (2) going from that to suggesting that language very critical of Israel that doesn’t use such rhetoric is somehow beyond the scope of appropriate rational debate in liberal circles is ridiculous.
January 22, 2012, 9:19 amDavid Bernstein says:
Libertarians don’t see the world in terms of the interests of “countries,” i.e., “governments.” And of course, it’s not libertarians to who the term “Israel firster” is being applied.
January 22, 2012, 9:46 amFloridian says:
One can only imagine the conversation that leads to this “vexing” problem.
January 22, 2012, 10:13 amSDN says:
“Al Sharpton never had any national appeal to begin with.”
Ah, but he does have a national microphone. Of course, that’s probably a good example of why many find the MSM irrelevant… to the point that they’re going out of business for lack of audience.
January 22, 2012, 10:30 ammj says:
Note his defense of dual loyalties as benign. That might be an accurate desciption of an accusation of Israel-seconders, but that wasn’t the assertion was it? When you have to change the inherent nature of your own argument in order to defend it it’s a pretty good sign you can’t defend the original. It’s a standard spin tactic. First generalize, then deconstruct the generalization to a position different than your original and defend that.
Greenwald’s such aterrible thinker he might not even realize he’s doing it.
January 22, 2012, 10:32 amSDN says:
And a better reason never to vote for one, such as Dr Paul, for President could never be articulated… unless you want your country destroyed.
January 22, 2012, 10:33 amzuch says:
Thanks. Do you have any cites or links to back this up? But I’d note that Greenwald was not the author of that bio; perhaps Greenwald just repeated what he thought was accurate? Maybe your beef here ought to be with the Huffington Post or even M.J. Rosenburg (who might have forgotten who employed him) rather than Greenwald … at least on this issue.
Cheers,
January 22, 2012, 11:48 amDavid M. Nieporent says:
Paul can also credibly claim — unlike most — that he is not singling out Israel. He advocates — loudly, not merely as an afterthought — ending all foreign aid, and pulling our troops out of every country. Whereas most of these people never say a word about the U.S. troop presence in Germany or Korea or Turkey or the military aid sent to Egypt or elsewhere.
January 22, 2012, 12:15 pmB says:
“As I explain here, that premise is false. There’s nothing inherently wrong with dual loyalties: those are common among many groups, especially in a country of immigrants, and are typically benign.”
Oh, really? Quoth the US State Department:
“The evaluation element presented by dual citizenship is that it could raise an issue of possible divided loyalty to the United States.”
source: http://careers.state.gov/index/download-center4/dualcitizenship.pdf
The whole document dances around the issue, naturally, but the fact is that the US Government has an official policy of subjecting people with dual-citizenships to greater scrutiny when entrusting them with secrets.
So if people with dual-loyalties are believed to be security risks and likely to betray the US, that’s hardly “benign.”
January 22, 2012, 12:33 pmMDJD from NY says:
Maybe neurodoc doesn’t have a beef. Maybe he’s just trying to correct your honest mistake.
January 22, 2012, 12:34 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
This is why you’re justifiably called a troll. All you’re interested in is one-liner pathetic attempt at gotchas. If you had read the entire comment that you were replying to, you would have seen the answer to your question. But you deleted that part and then pretended it hadn’t been said.
January 22, 2012, 12:35 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
What I love about that update is its patented Greenwaldian (*) tactic of trying to justify a claim by linking to… himself. And then claiming it’s “explained” at the link when really it’s just asserted.
(*) Actually, I can think of two other people who do the same thing.
January 22, 2012, 12:51 pmJohn David Galt says:
Just because some person or nation belongs to a minority race does not mean that all criticism of him/her/it (or his/her/its policies) is “racism”. Nor does a clear, descriptive term such as “Israel-firster” become wrong in any sense just because bad guys have used it.
Such accusations insult every hearer’s intelligence, and speak volumes about both the meanness and dishonesty of the people playing the race card. I say they are always the racists until proven innocent.
January 22, 2012, 1:00 pmJames Madison says:
Talking points win arguments and get people elected president, writing peer-reviewed articles advocating difficult policy decisions means most of the general public will never hear of you. I won’t begrudge anyone for using talking points. Especially, if they are prepared to follow it up.
I don’t have a problem questioning someone’s motives, which is what I assume you mean when you say calling so and so a traitor. Insinuating that anyone who does so by “echoing age-old anti-Semitic rhetoric” is a paranoid bigot, is exactly the same thing, it is questioning the persons motives.
Staying “ten-foot-pole distance away from [obvious echos of] bad bad stuff” is not possible in American politics. It smacks of attempting to shame people away from honest discourse about hard decisions because of insinuations that they may be a bigot, or are too uneducated to know that they sound like a bigot.
January 22, 2012, 1:00 pmRobert says:
I find it a lot in discussion of a topic of commercial & scientific interest to me: urogenital irrit’n from surfactant-based products. You should see the baby talk women use online: “va-jay-jay”, “tu-tu”, and the like.
January 22, 2012, 1:08 pmOrenWithAnE says:
Because it implies that the individual in question would, if the case arose, pursue policies or actions that benefited Israel to the detriment of the US. It’s not jealousy to say that US citizens should not actively harm the US in the course of furthering whatever other (legitimate) interests they have.
[ Of course, this construction is itself silly since the individual in question almost certainly believes that their chosen position benefits both countries. ]
January 22, 2012, 1:39 pmyankev says:
sometimes the only reponse to a vile lie is to point out that it is a vile lie. Saying that Israel’s policy is or ever was apartheid is a vile lie.
January 22, 2012, 2:29 pmEli Rabett says:
Oh well maybe this is what Greenwald was pointing to.
January 22, 2012, 3:29 pmEli Rabett says:
Perhaps this fellow is the one Greenwald was writing about
January 22, 2012, 3:42 pmOrenWithAnE says:
But every reasonable interlocutor has already stipulated (2). What does he stand to gain from arguing something that’s already agreed-to?
January 22, 2012, 4:23 pmEli Rabett says:
Perhaps this is what Greenwald was commenting on
January 22, 2012, 4:59 pmCan't find a good name says:
This post could really use “blockquote” tags around the McCain quote.
January 22, 2012, 5:47 pmOur Cute Democracy | RevolutioNation says:
[...] a different note: both Jeffrey Goldberg and David Bernstein have posts about my arguments on the smearing of CAP that rest on the same premise: namely, that [...]
January 22, 2012, 6:00 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
Hey, Eli, maybe if you post it six more times, people will pay attention to you. Sheesh. It’s not like it was a computer glitch causing your comment to be reposted, because each comment is different. It’s like you just felt like you wanted more attention. Perhaps you weren’t getting it because you were a day late and a dollar short; that story was already posted above, by HankP, Brutusettu, and Kane. But I’m sure if you post a few more times, people will acknowledge your insight.
January 22, 2012, 6:03 pmDave2 says:
Why not simply come up with another term? I see three different objections to using ‘Israel-Firster’:
1. The term smacks of anti-Semitism. This is because of its history in white nationalist communities, and its proximity with ‘dual loyalty’ smears.
2. The term is pejorative namecalling. It’s like ‘chicken-hawk’ or ‘welfare queen’.
3. The term is used to make silly claims. It’s not actually true that there are lots of people out there with a mindset that tends to favor Israel’s interests over all other interests.
1 seems like a good enough reason to drop the term. No sense in making people uncomfortable for no reason. Might as well just use a synonym. 2 seems like overkill. Politics needs pejorative terms: they’re highly useful shorthand for referring to people while criticizing what you find objectionable about them. 3 strikes me as unrealistic. America is filled with “we’re #1″ morons, and so I would expect there are a good number of people like that in Israel.
So what could we use as a substitute?
* ‘Israeli Nazis’, The ‘Israel über alles’ mindset, …?: Obviously not. Associating Israelis with Nazi Germany is clearly out of bounds.
* ‘Israeli fascists’?: Maybe this is still too close for comfort.
* ‘Israeli ultranationalists’?: This seems pretty safe to me.
* ‘Likudnik’?: Some find this objectionable. I honestly don’t see why. Is there something sleazy about the Slavic -nik suffix, perhaps? Maybe ‘Likudite’ instead?
Any other ideas?
January 22, 2012, 6:17 pmYankev says:
Are you kidding? Not long after he made his Hymietown remarks, Walter Mondale still kowtowed to him in hopes of getting his endorsement. Jackson lost appeal decades later because he became irrelevant. If anything, his anti-Semitic attitudes became more acceptable, not less.
January 22, 2012, 7:15 pmzuch says:
Perhaps you ought to take up your complaints about “one-liners” with Neurodoc, as much as he ought to take up his complaint with HuffPo or Rosenberg.
Why do you seem to think that a concern with actual facts is not welcome here?
Why do you say that? I presented an actual link to a site that states something somewhat different. And I asked if that information was wrong. And I asked for some evidence to support that other than ipse dixit from Neurodoc. Haven’t seen it yet. May be that Neurodoc is right, but pardon me if I want to see something other than just his assertion for it, particularly when I presented a link to something that says something else.
What’s my honest mistake? Do you have evidence that I’m wrong other than just assertion? If so, out with it.
Cheers,
January 22, 2012, 7:16 pmYankev says:
Let’s call it what it is; not just crap, but a vile lie told with no repsect for the truth nor for the intelligence of the people it is told to or the people it is told about.
January 22, 2012, 7:17 pmYankev says:
So you are saying either that Pollard waged war on the US or that Israel is an enemy of the US? Or are you saying that you either don’t know or don’t care how the US Consitution defines treason?
January 22, 2012, 7:21 pmYankev says:
Yes. That more often than not the argument is advanced — often in advance of any charges of anti-Semitism — by those whose criticism of Israel is based on double standard, or on non-existent or ditorted “facts”, or is expressed in terms chosen to ridicule the Jewish religion or history (“chosen people”, “eye for an eye (or for a tooth)”, kosher, persecution complex and Nazi or holocaust analogies are particular favorites), or that make use of classic anti-Semitic memes such as the international banker Jew using money and nefarious influence to manipulate Christians into dying in wars for the Jews’ benefit. And that although it does on occassion happen, the argument is a favorite of conspiracy theorists and anti-Semites.
January 22, 2012, 7:29 pmYankev says:
It also does not explain the high participation of Hagannah and future IDF members in Britain’s Jewish Legion during WWII.
Perhaps Chris never read the slogan “We will fight the war as if there were no White Paper, and we will fight the White Paper as if there were no war.”
January 22, 2012, 7:33 pmYankev says:
Who was it who recently equated Paul’s view that the US has a problem with Islamism because we are too closely tied to Israel to positing in 1938 that Britain had a problem with the Nazis because it was too closely tied to Czechoslovakia?
January 22, 2012, 7:36 pmYankev says:
Maybe not ajnit-Semitic, but completely divorced from reality.
January 22, 2012, 7:39 pmOrenWithAnE says:
He said he was a traitor, not that he committed treason. Not everyone that is the former is guilty of the latter.
[ Not that I don't agree with your premises, only your conclusion. Pollard is a traitor, there's no question about it. ]
January 22, 2012, 8:19 pmaeolius says:
Is this from your famous “left-wing”anti-Semites.
January 22, 2012, 9:40 pmDo you not think that “Israel first” is appropriate for this dude?
Noga says:
There were many calls to assassinate George Bush, too. There were video games and even a play about it in Broadway. Nobody took this very seriously. Everyone mocked those who did take it seriously.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cygd64B617Y
http://victorhanson.com/articles/hanson092904.html
January 22, 2012, 9:53 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
I think he’s saying that Pollard was a traitor. The U.S. Constitution defines the statutory crime of treason; it does not define the word ‘treason’ — which is not, in any case, synonymous with the word ‘traitor.’ A traitor can be one who commits treason; it can also be one who betrays a trust.
This seems like a silly nitpick on your part. Surely a better argument for you to have made would have been that Pollard was not motivated by animus towards the U.S., nor was he trying to harm the U.S. (Nevertheless, even if both of those claims are correct, it’s true that Pollard put Israel’s interests ahead of those of the U.S., which would make it reasonable to call him an Israel-firster.)
January 22, 2012, 10:08 pmDavidBernstein says:
You’re starting from the wildly inaccurate premise that some substantial number of individuals who have been tagged as “Israel-firsters” have actually engaged in any behavior that would justify that moniker, beyond having views on Israel to the “right” of the likes of M.J. Rosenberg and Glenn Greenwald.
[As an aside, I don't want to get off track by explaining in detail that Mr. Adler, did not actually "suggest" that Israel assassinate Obama, as has been wildly misreported, but I can't resist at least mentioning it. In short, he said that he believes that this is an option that Netanyahu in undoubtedly considering, an incredibly stupid thing to say--Israel is certainly NOT contemplating dealing with a long-term Iranian threat by engaging in an immediate act of War against the U.S.--but is not the same as recommending such a course of action.]
January 22, 2012, 10:31 pmzuch says:
And in other news:
No kidding. Thank goodness for that.
Cheers,
January 23, 2012, 1:04 amzuch says:
No. The year: 2017 (which would not be Obama, absent a Constitutional amendment). A hypothetical (some would say counter-factual) scenario. You know, like the Iraq invasion.
But Adler did say: “You have got to believe, like I do, that all options are on the table.” And one of the three named options was assassinating the U.S. president:
Just so we’re clear on what this guy thinks is appropriate.
Cheers,
January 23, 2012, 1:17 amEli Rabett says:
OK, the software delays the appearance of posting, so Eli made a mistake thinking his first two posts went down the memory hole, but now that Mr. Adler’s putting the assassination of Obama into play is in play, the reaction of DB is pure IF, never mind, keep moving.
January 23, 2012, 4:46 amDavid Bernstein says:
I.e., that the Iran threat is so serious that Netanyahu would do ANYTHING to stop it. Which again, shows, that Adler is an idiot.
January 23, 2012, 5:07 amneurodoc says:
Thanks for that link. If one believes what is there, and neurodoc has no reason to doubt any of it, then it seems that the Wiki piece is a very sanitized account of the America First Committee. Interesting how many different and diverse were the elements and personages.
One wonders if the author of the Wikipedia piece (one can somehow trace the provenance of Wiki entries?) consciously intended to cast the AFC in a more favorable light than it deserves or was that the person’s (mis)understanding based on the sources they relied on? How many times have people encountered Wikipedia pieces they thought were clearly biased, and what were the subjects?
January 23, 2012, 7:15 amStones Cry Out - If they keep silent… » Things Heard: e205v1 says:
[...] Hashing out Antisemitism. [...]
January 23, 2012, 9:15 amyankev says:
Sorry, DB – no fair actually reading the articles, let alone pointing out what the words actually mean.
January 23, 2012, 9:40 amyankev says:
No, we are clear on what options he thinks Israel may be analyzing, not on what options he thinks they should be analyzing and certainly not on what options he thinks it is appropriate for Israel to take.
(Not to disagree with DB that it was an incredibly dumb speculation, and that printing it was even dumber.)
See the difference between “Here’s what options I think they may be weighing” and “Here’s what I think they should do”?
No, I didn’t think you would.
January 23, 2012, 9:43 amMDJD from NY says:
OK with me. I’m just trying to be polite.
January 23, 2012, 9:54 amyankev says:
I agree with every word (and not just the parts that I have quoted) that Jonathan Tobin wrote here: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/01/22/assassination-fantasies-obama-israel-atlanta-jewish-paper/#more-781560
January 23, 2012, 10:25 amDotar Sojat says:
What a dull weekend you people had.
January 23, 2012, 10:44 amHarold Quinn says:
As someone who hasn’t studied the Israel-US relationship in great detail, and also as someone who is not a Jew, I don’t really understand the debate at question over the term “Isreal-Firster.”
Surely, the fact that some neo-Nazi/white supremacy group used the term to denigrate Jews and Jewish-Americans is a fair one, but its current usage seems to be appropriate – there are people who feel that the US is beholden without question to the Jewish state and should supply whatever the state demands, regardless of how damaging this support might be to the US overall. This can be accurately captured by saying that these people put Israel first.
I’m not stating this because I’m anti-Semite (which I believe is a term that applies to other cultural groups in the Middle East as well), but because it is true. I have no ill will towards the Jewish population or the Jewish culture, but I do take umbrage that the people who put Israel first will assume I harbor enmity simply because I don’t agree with their position. Shame on these people for smearing dissenting opinions unfairly.
January 23, 2012, 11:24 amSteve says:
I agree with everything you posted here, and as a lurker who has never posted before, it was so offensive and rude that it made me feel the need to denounce such poor behavior.
January 23, 2012, 12:38 pmAdam says:
I don’t understand. Do you mean to suggest that these left-leaning bloggers are really secretly dog-whistling to right-leaning bigots? Because that seems to be what you are suggesting.
Or you think they are dog whistling to left leaning bigots? Why would they have to?
Also, personally, “Israel-firster” is not a term I’m particularly familiar with, nor is it one whose history I would have known. Is there some reason to expect that these bloggers are differently positioned?
Without that history, it certainly seems like it could be a useful description of a particular set of political views, which is by no means an inherently bigoted thing to do.
January 23, 2012, 2:48 pmyankev says:
I see. And here I naively thought that at least some of these people believed that a strong relationship with the Israel was to the benefit (whether military, economic, political, moral or otherwise) of the US, and that these benefits offset the perceived damage. Much as there might have been good reason to support Czechoslavakia in 1938, apart from any treasonous motives favoring Czech or Slovak interests above those of the US or UK.
But now that you have set me straight, here is a useful link for finding out who those people are who who feel that the US is beholden without question to the Jew state and should supply whatever the state demands. http://www.israelfirsters.com/
January 23, 2012, 3:15 pmzuch says:
From above:
But I repeat myself.
AAMOF, yes. I think I made that clear. Did you have a point?
Cheers,
January 23, 2012, 3:38 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
But no more sensibly. You seem to have trouble parsing the English language. Believing that the options are on the table is not the same as agreeing with those options.
(Incidentally, he has resigned.)
January 23, 2012, 3:43 pmyankev says:
Yes, the same one that David Nieropont just made.
By the way
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/
Again, note the subtle difference between “speculated Israel would consider assassinating” “said Israek should consider assassinating” and “said Israel should assassinate”. What Adler did – #1 – was bad enough. But it takes a certain degree of malice to say that he did #2 or #3, and a certain degree of I know not what to maintain that when people call you on it.
January 23, 2012, 4:12 pmzuch says:
As I pointed out here, Adler was talking about some hypothetical situation in the year 2017 (not about assassinating Obama). As such, the ‘interpretation’ that he was just describing ‘facts on the ground’ (when all ‘facts’ are just those he’s made up) makes no sense, and it looks more like his “options are on the table” is prescriptive, not descriptive; a statement of what he thinks should happen at such a pass.
Cheers,
January 23, 2012, 4:29 pmzuch says:
Now why would he do such a thing? I can’t imagine. He was only reporting on the unfortunate state of real world, no?
Cheers,
January 23, 2012, 4:38 pmyankev says:
According to the home page at VC, there are three more comments than the ones displaying on my screen right now. The last one I can see is David Nieropont from 3:43 pm today.
January 23, 2012, 5:53 pmEli Rabett says:
Sister Soljah sends greetings
January 23, 2012, 7:23 pmNoga says:
Thought experiments, a la Adler, are very dangerous because most people are devoid of any sense of irony and cannot distinguish between an outlandish speculation, even when it openly designates itself as such, from a straightforward statement of recommended action.
January 23, 2012, 7:47 pmzuch says:
Well, yes, and thanks for recognising that this was a “thought experiment” and not a call for imminent action. The reaction to a “thought experiment” by those that take it more seriously than they should might outstrip its own significance.
Here you start to lose me, though. I didn’t see any irony or sarcasm in Adler’s musings. This wasn’t speculation. It was a “worst case, what if?” type question. It was directed towards Benjamin Netanyahu (and any other potential Netanyahus out there or their supporters):
Adler then gives his take on what are the alternatives (graciously allowing that they’re all terrible … but amasing, isn’t it?, that such trifurcation pertains and maybe, just maybe one of these options might not be quite as horrid as the others so you just gotta get “realpolitiky” and think seriously about it).
He goes on later:
He’s addressing this at Netanyahu (and any other ‘Netanyahus’). He’s not saying that they are already contemplating these options. Why would he be pointing that out to them if they were? No, the “[Y]ou have got to believe, like I do” is a prescription, not an observation. He’s telling Netanyahu: “You have three options [I say]; you need to choose one. Which would it be?”
The answer is interesting. Read the whole article if you want a clue as to what Adler thinks.
Cheers,
January 23, 2012, 9:51 pmdanper says:
I think it would be in the interest of the pro-Israel posters to just ignore any commentary on Adler’s dumb article. The reason why trolls like Eli and Zuch keep bringing it up, despite the barest tangential link to the Greenwald post, is a transparent attempt to derail the conversation. They will continue to respond any time they can. The quote from Tobin above is unfortunately being proven prescient.
Shorter version: don’t feed the trolls.
January 24, 2012, 12:28 amOrenWithAnE says:
I don’t know anyone that claims that the US should do whatever Israel demands no matter how detrimental to US interests it is. I know plenty that claim that the US should help Israel because it is beneficial to US interests to do so. If you disagree as to whether a particular policy is beneficial or detrimental to US interests, you ought to do so on fair ground instead of hurling aspersions at the motives of those with which you disagree.
January 24, 2012, 1:07 amzuch says:
“… because we really don’t want to talk about incredibly stupid things that RW Israel supporters in Florida might say. That might detract from the cogency of our strident complaints about a couple of people using words like ‘Israel-firster’….”
I’ve commented about the Greenwald stuff too. Too bad you missed it.
There is a middle ground here, you know. Such as thinking that things that are in Israel’s (or its present government’s) interests ought to weigh more heavily than U.S. interests. Or thinking that the U.S. ought to incur a small price for a greater benefit to Israel. Or that the U.S. ought to support Israel for reasons aside from the U.S.’s own interests, particularly when the latter are not even at stake. Plenty of room to stake out a position.
Perhaps now is the time to touch on this in some greater depth. I might fairly be called a “Norwegian-firster”, in part because I just happen to be a Norwegian citizen (and that pretty much by choice). Not that there’s anything wrong with that. This, as was pointed out above, doesn’t prevent me from wanting for the U.S. what I think would be good for the U.S., and if I thought it in the U.S.’s interest and not at an unacceptable cost to Norway, I’d favour Norwegian support to the U.S. for such … but not if I thought such policy wrong (such as, oh, say, invading other countries like Iraq). It certainly doesn’t prevent me from urging on the U.S. policies that I think are in its best interest … or even contributing to political campaigns (which I am allowed to do as a U.S. permanent resident). Many people have “divided loyalties”, as has been pointed out by a number of people above. And there’s no requirement anywhere (at least for nominally free countries) that everyone within them (much less others) support that country above all others. Particularly when there’s no agreement within such countries as to exactly what is support, what is honest criticism, what is derogatory, what is libelous, and what is downright seditious. And if we can’t see the good — nay, the better — sometimes elsewhere, how can we learn from others? Have others nothing to teach us? If other countries thought the same of the U.S., how could they learn to adopt the wonderful inventions of democracy and constitutions and all that are the U.S.’s gift to the world (along with Reza Pahlavi, Pinochet, Rios-Montt, Marcos, etc.)
Thus I personally think it’s silly to use the appellation “Israel-firster”. And it’s pretty much pointless of anyone accused of such to take much offence … whether the charge is reasonably accurate or not.
I know that patriotism is often the last refuge of the scoundrel, and that accusations of insufficient patriotism are quite overused in some circles to daemonise opponents … heck, there was a recent thread where things blew up grandly over my comments that certain political cadres were … uhhh, following in the grand traditions of Joseph McCarthy, Father Coughlin, Robert Welsh, anonanon. I say the answer to any such charges of lack of team spirit is: “I think for myself, thank you, and life is not a football game. I call things as I see them, and if you choose to don a costume and smear your naked body in blue and orange body paint at 30 degrees, it is you that will look the clown.”
Cheers,
January 24, 2012, 1:52 amClark says:
Is somebody who spends $10 million to prop up an amoral hypocrite to lead the US simply because he thinks it would be good for Israel an Israel-firster? Just asking…
January 24, 2012, 8:07 amPDFE says:
Interesting that in Zuch’s rather lengthy exposition, he never once mentions the core argument about the history of the term “Israel-firster” and the message of what it was meant to convey. The use of the term is not, as Zuch unpersuasively claims “silly”. It is an intentional slur aimed at sending a particular message to an audience. That Zuch apparently believes that it is copacetic for a US citizen to put another country’s interests above his own is quite irrelevant as Zuch is almost certainly in a tiny minority. The “Israel-firster” epithet repeats an age-old slur against Jews associated, yes, with anti-semitism and worse. If Zuch doesn’t realize why people genuinely take offense against this, he is just clueless.
January 24, 2012, 8:50 amyankev says:
On another thread, Zuch also said that it was silly to say that Jews in Norway are at any risk of anti-Semitism simply because they are attacked in the streets and their synagogues need armed guards, “Jew” is commonly used as an insult in the public schools (toward Jews and gentiles alike) and Jewish students are harrassed and beaten for being Jewish, and government officials have blasted the Jewish religion in editorials as the source of Israel’s supposed theft, murder, racial superiority and general misanthropy. In the same thread, he argued that Jews cause anti-Semitism by being clannish, considering themselves superior to the rest of humanity, and by objecting to perceived anti-Semitism; all would be well if Jews simply behaved themselves.
I guess in his view, you know, it’s not REAL anti-Semitism unless a guy wearing a swastika is herding people into gas ovens.
January 24, 2012, 6:22 pmTJ says:
Rush Limbaugh says Ron Paul sounds like an Islamic terrorist. No problem. But don’t you dare suggest that Sheldon Adelson and Newt Gingrich may be more loyal to Israel, Zionism, Netanyahu, or Likud than they are to the people and Constitution of the United States.
January 24, 2012, 7:20 pmGlenn Greenwald> Two lessons from the Megaupload seizure « WAMMToday says:
[...] a different note: both Jeffrey Goldberg and David Bernstein have posts about my arguments on the smearing of CAP that rest on the same premise: namely, that [...]
January 24, 2012, 7:37 pmyankev says:
But not to the Rothchilds and the other International Bankers? How about the Tri-Lateral Commission?
Careful, TJ — don’t let the black helicopters get you.
January 24, 2012, 7:42 pmNoga says:
Israel-firster resonates in the same way that the term “rootless cosmopolitan” was widely used in Stalin’s anti-Semitic campaign of 1948–1953. The “rootless cosmopolitan” was designated towards Jewish intellectuals suspected for not being patriotic or loyal enough to the Soviet Union.
It also resonates in the same way that suspects of “unamerican activities” were so often Jews that to this day American Jews carry the burn of that stigma and are horrified by it.
Or in the way in which it resonated in 1945, when Gerald L. K. Smith, founder of the neofascist America First Party, began giving speeches in Los Angeles assailing the “alien minded Russian Jews in Hollywood”. (wiki)
It is about the Jew always being a foreigner, who cannot be trusted, whose allegiance is always tied up somewhere else, with some nefarious foreign power. (The Dreyfuss trial is another historical example of the ubiquity of the concept of the unpatriotic Jew).
So please, don’t let anyone tell me this is not an antisemitic slur.
January 24, 2012, 10:18 pmzuch says:
Not quite true. I do address at least part of what it was “meant to convey”:
I understand (and in fact pointed it out) that this is held up by those that tend towards
extreme nationalismpatriotic fervour as some kind of character defect. And there’s unfortunately too many people that find it easy to daemonise others for fun or profit or just plain nastiness, and are perfectly happy to engage in the “last refuge of the scoundrel” (but is it really the “last refuge”?).I think this is silly:
The people that do it obviously don’t. Nor did I claim that they do. But why should I let a bunch of scoundrels tell me what I should think of their actions, eh? Why do you?
Yes, it’s an “intentional slur”. One of the ways that you defuse an intentional slur is to show that it is silly (or inappropriate … or pathetic … or whatever).
Guess what? I really don’t give a fig.
“{A]nd worse”? You mean, like this:
You know, that’s really a pretty damn vile accusation. Perhaps a bit beyond being called an “Israel-firster”, don’t you think? Maybe I oughtta write a whole bunch of articles denouncing such a vile slur, and start passing round “fact sheets” to one and all with all the details on the utter depravity of this person who uttered such a vile thing. Or I can just laugh it off, toss a few bon mots their way, and give them exactly the respect and attention they deserve.
Oh, I do. But I have some advice for them. Capece?
Now back to the OP, I would state that the case hasn’t been made that everyone ought to know about the disreputable character of the first principal (or is it just most prominent?) users of said phrase under discussion. And thus, attributing kinship to those that have used it without reasonable proof of such may be going too far. And demanding that the phrase not be used, just because some baddies have supposedly invented it, may be a bit of overkill as well … oh, you know, unless the indignation and circulation of “fact sheets” and all is just a means of sliming others and perhaps cowing them, in which case, it really doesn’t matter what these others may have had in mind or known of the phrase’s origins as long as fingers can be pointed and tongues wagged and the end result desired is more pragmatic than forensic, hmmmmm…. Let’s see how this plays out fi everyone plays the game:
A> “Israel-firster!”
B> “anti-Semite!”
A> “Israel-firster!”
B> “anti-Semite!”
[anonanon]
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Cheers,
January 24, 2012, 10:59 pmzuch says:
Actually, I didn’t say that. IOW, that’s a lie. You can look it up. What I said was that in fact it seems that there’s another segment of the population that might have been better served with armed guards … because, uhhh, there was some nutcase who was extremely prejudiced (and listened to the likes of Pam Geller) who thought that killing liberals was going to cure the Moooooosssslllimmmm infestation.
Cheers,
January 25, 2012, 1:46 amzuch says:
Another lie. You can look it up.
Cheers,
January 25, 2012, 1:47 amPDFE says:
It is incredibly difficult to make sense of Zuch’s jumbled ramblings (at January 24, 2012, 10:59 pm), but it appears to me that he completely misses the point. In a rather narcissistic way, he seems to think this is all about him. When pointed out that his view would be an extreme minority he “doesn’t give a fig” and also states: “But why should I let a bunch of scoundrels tell me what I should think of their actions, eh? Why do you?”. This is just silly. The real world is not about Zuch and his far-out views. He would do well to google the term “Keynesian beauty contest”. What Zuch feels (sorry to hurt his feelings) is basically irrelevant. Even if Zuch’s views were completely correct, there are real world implications to the epithet “Israel-firster”.
An admittedly extreme, but true, example is the infamous Blood Libel (the claim that Jews kill Christian children for blood to bake matzoh). If I understand Zuch’s logic, this is an obviously spurious claim so it would be “pointless” and silly to take offense. Why should we care what a bunch of scoundrels say, eh? But there were tragic real implications to this libel, including mob violence, torture and murder.
The “Israel-firster” slur is quite unlikely to result in mob violence. But it would be silly to believe that a general acceptance of this claim and its more extreme variations (e.g. American kids are sent to fight wars and die to protect Israel) would not have real implications. Zuch, that’s why Jews care what these scoundrels say. To use your own word “Capece?”
As regards your last paragraph, I really can’t make heads or tails about what you are saying. To extend your example to the Blood Libel, we would get:
A> “Jews kill kids for blood for matzoh“
B> “anti-Semite!“
A> “Jews kill kids for blood for matzoh“
B> “anti-Semite!“
I cannot for the life of me work out what point you are trying to make with this and how this fits in with the rest of that paragraph.
January 25, 2012, 8:42 amyankev says:
I’m not familiar with that word. I wonder if he means capisce?
But it does fit in nicely with his delusion that anti-Semitism is caused by Jews failing to ignore it.
January 25, 2012, 11:28 amzuch says:
I pointed it out because I said previously that this is what I thought, and you didn’t seem to understand this concept.
You’re free to think as you please, of course, but I’m suggesting that you might consider my POV. It’s healthier. Less stressful. IMNSHO.
Once again, you’re free to let this bother the heck out of you. You can also get frustrated with people that chew with their mouth open, and queue-jumpers. Or even people that use “irregardless” and “their” for “they’re”. Life is too short, so consider your options for outrage carefully.
How about the libel that I think it’s a “feature” that six million Jews were gassed? No comment on that one? That came from one of our regulars here. Is that better or worse than an “Israel-firster” epithet?
I’m not saying that such libels are not disgusting and wrong. I just differ in what the response ought to be. You give too much power to your detractors when you let them get your panties in a twist. I though I’d made that clear.
If you’re worried about any collateral damage from such, you ought to look to education and enlightenment. The “blood libel” has been around for centuries, but is not very common at all in the U.S., and perhaps down in the statistical noise floor that will never be eliminated absent compulsory neuroleptics for those with issues. That is really a more permanent cure. Sad to say, that isn’t a high priority with the RW in the U.S. nowadays.
Are you saying that it’s impossible that American kids would be sent to fight wars and die to “protect Israel”? Looking back at the last century, I’d note that American kids have often been sent to die for others (or for something….)
And I won’t say that it’s impossible that even I would approve such support under certain circumstances. I think I said above that we can and perhaps ought to consider the interests of others, even at some price to ourselves. You know, WWII was like that to some extent … even if the RW at the time was less than enthusiastic.
Given this, I’d leave out the epithet “Israel-firster” and insist on talking about the actual interests and values at stake. By insisting that “Israel-firster”ness is some kind of valid criticism, it is you that insist that the U.S. ought to look to U.S. interests alone. And that would hardly suit you, I’d think, if actually applied.
One guy I work with is Israeli, and lives there, but he is also a U.S. citizen. I understand why many Israelis have dual citizenship, and I understand why the U.S. permits such dual citizenship (Norway nominally does not, FWIW). If his primary allegiance is to Israeli interests, so be it, and best wishes. It would seem that you are not in favour of such, no? It just stokes the fires of those that would perpetuate the “Israel-firster” libel, right?
I was saying that leveling the “anti-Semite” retort in response to an “Israel-first” appellation simply devolves into name-calling. Not particularly enlightening nor productive. But maybe that was the original intent (as I hinted above), I dunno….
Cheers,
January 25, 2012, 11:41 amPDFE says:
It is difficult to respect any of the arguments that Zuch raises. He seriously seems to equate the charge that a US citizen puts another country’s interest above his own with annoyance at the misuse of “irregardless”. I know he thinks himself some sort of master at sarcasm, but really, this is beyond stupid.
It has been explained to him multiple times how sensitive a charge this has been to Jews and the sordid history of this slur. But to him, it is no more than a grammatical error. I don’t think I will be able to take much he says seriously in the future.
Zuch asks me a question:
Are you saying that it’s impossible that American kids would be sent to fight wars and die to “protect Israel”? Looking back at the last century, I’d note that American kids have often been sent to die for others (or for something….)
This is quite a stunning strawman. I never said anything of the kind. I was referring to the not infrequent (and odious) claims that US Jewish neocons, both inside and outside of the US government, have pushed the US into war primarily to serve Israel’s interests and against the US’s own. I think that claim is particularly objectionable (and is a natural extension of calling said neocons ““Israel-firster”). I honestly don’t get what Zuch’s position is. Is he saying: (1) the claim is true; (2) it doesn’t matter if is true, because there is nothing wrong with this behavior anyway; (3) some combination of (1) and (2); (4) it doesn’t matter because it is the same as eating with your mouth open.
As regards Zuch’s insisting that I comment on the rather serious holocaust charge against him, please would he leave me out of his personal feuds. I have no idea what he has written on other threads and have zero inclination to go look (just reading what he has written in this thread gives me a headache. He seriously needs an editor).
January 25, 2012, 4:49 pmyankev says:
The fact is that I overstated when I said the to Zuch, the death of Jews is a feature not a bug. But I am convinced that to him it is neither. He has repeatedly shown that he discounts anti-Semitism when it demonstrably occurs, that he considers Jews to be a cause of anti-Semitism, and that he considers using anti-Semitic charges or themes to be no more than a breach of etiquette at worst, comparable (as he recently put it) to chewing with one’s mouth open, and certainly no more objectionable than pointing out anti-Semitism when it occurs. Rather than “Jews out!” and “The Jews are our ungluck”, his rallying cries seem to be “Jews stop whining” and “The Jewish state and its supporters are our ungluck”.
Whether Zuch personally holds animus against Jews is in my mind an open question. For a time I was quite certain he does. Now I can only say that I am by no means certain that he does not. He has certainly shown himself capable of playing into the hands of anti-Semites, whether Norwegian, Islamic, or American nativist, and willing to excuse anti-Semitism when it occurs, or to downplay its significance or divert attention from it.
Perhaps he is merely an anti-Semite firster.
January 25, 2012, 5:36 pmTJ says:
I have yet to see the proof of this. If someone did the work needed to prove this to themselves to the point where they felt comfortable attacking others over it — why wouldn’t they show the work they did?
Should Zionism be beyond the pale because of the racist individuals who created the the idea and the terrorist ethnic cleansers who implemented it?
Maybe because the left-wingers believe that the people described by the term have been over the past few years causing harm to the country.
The term seems to be rather descriptive and is not intrinsically insulting (as Zuch pointed out). There are some American Jews who are more concerned about the security of fellow Jews overseas than they are about the interests of the United States. I have no major problem with this. Some Christians believe that the modern nation of Israel has special religious significance and they Christians have special duties towards the Jewish people. A bit odd to me, but whatever.
But when politicians, political financiers, and government officials with these loyalties and beliefs actively damage my country, violate the US Constitution and rule of law, threaten my freedom, intrude on my privacy, put the American public and American soldiers at increased risk of retaliatory attacks, put my country on the road to bankruptcy, lie and lie again to distract from the previous lie, damage the moral standing of America, try to remake my country in the image of an unjust foreign power, and send my friends and relatives overseas to kill or be killed — I do not appreciate it.
According to the Zionist literature that helped bring about the State of Israel — America not Israel would be the foreign power for American Jews. Zionism, at least originally, was based largely on the idea that Jews were a separate race and nation and that diaspora Jews were therefore always foreigners in the countries in which they lived.
Charges of racism, bigotry, and anti-semitism to attack ideas and words are longstanding themes in anti-freedom, anti-American, anti-Palestinian, anti-Conservative, anti-Libertarian, anti-Capitalist, anti-peace, anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, apartheid apologist, ethnic cleansing apologist, and Nakba denialist literature.
It might have been easier for me to take all this brouhaha over the term Israel firster seriously if I had not been watching the Republican Presidential debates.
January 25, 2012, 8:42 pmzuch says:
It’s difficult to respect any of the ‘arguments’ that PDFE raises.
See, that was easy.
Here’s what you did say (and what I was responding to):
You seem to suggest here that it’s an extreme view that U.S. troops might be sent to defend Israel, a view so “extreme” that suggesting that it is a valid possibility that such could occur is simply over-the-top demagoguery that might even stoke up violence amongst those so inclined.
I just said that similar things have occurred and are rather unremarkable. What don’t you understand about this?
This is a rather different claim. And subject to dispute as well. FWIW, any people that have done such (or have been accused of such) may well feel that anything in Israel’s interest is per se in the U.S. interest … or at least the actions in question. Others may disagree.
Jut want to know your threshold for what is truly “over-the-top” in baseless character attacks. After all isn’t it the claim here that the “Israel-firster” appellation is exceedingly slanderous or something like that?
Cheers,
January 25, 2012, 11:16 pmzuch says:
Don’t look now, Yankev, but you’re still “overstating” … so to speak.
Cheers,
January 25, 2012, 11:19 pmTJ says:
Prof. Bernstein,
Why do comments on your posts keep disappearing? I have never noticed this happening on the posts of any other Volokh Conspirators.
January 26, 2012, 6:40 pmMore on Glenn Greenwald, ‘Israel-Firsters,’ and Idiot Editors (Updated) – Jeffrey Goldberg – The Atlantic « says:
[...] he is being intellectually honest when he defends the use of the term “Israel-firster.” David Bernstein has an interesting look at Greenwald’s hypocritical double-standard: Obviously, [...]
January 28, 2012, 2:01 am