Witch-Hunt Against CAP & Media Matters Escalates

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Mar 2, 2012
[Image from ECI`s NYT ad.] [Image from ECI`s NYT ad.]

Witch-Hunt Against CAP & Media Matters Escalates

By : Omar Baddar

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the smear campaign launched against two progressive groups, the Center for American Progress (CAP) and Media Matters, for the crime of permitting criticism of Israel to occasionally appear in their analyses. That “crime” is then grossly exaggerated not only into “anti-Israel” accusations, but also into accusations of “anti-Semitism.” The latter charge comes in line with a long history of baseless accusations of “anti-Semitism” leveled against groups, academics, and intellectuals who are critical of Israeli policies. The smear campaign has been exposed and combatted by many, perhaps most comprehensively by Glenn Greenwald of Salon. Well, yesterday the witch-hunt further escalated in the form of this full page ad in The New York Times.

The ad is paid for by the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI), a shady organization which is forever entangled in its own concocted emergencies, putting out silly ads attacking politicians they don’t deem to be sufficiently pro-Israel (i.e. politicians who are capable of critical thinking). A board member of ECI is Rachel Abrams, wife of Elliot Abrams, and author of a pretty despicable racist rant describing Palestinians as “savages” and “unmanned animals.” Classy!

The ad features Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz, the single most dishonest intellectual I’m familiar with. Just watching this 5-minute video I created would give you a pretty solid idea of his stunning and ongoing record of distorting facts and attacking his opponents with false charges. For this professional distorter of truth to be taken seriously by anyone when he’s running around accusing people of “anti-Semitism” (as he did in this ad) would be a travesty on its own.

The ad also features Wired writer Spencer Ackerman, who is widely acknowledged for his instrumental role in exposing Islamophobia within FBI training manuals. Ackerman is quoted for having taken issue with the term “Israel Firster,” but by no means is he a supporter of this ECI attack on CAP and Media Matters. Upon seeing the ad yesterday morning, he tweeted: “So apparently the Emergency Committee for Israel has hijacked a quote of mine for a NYTimes ad. I didnt approve that & ECI are clowns.” What an endorsement!

Also in the ad is the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC), which “condemned” President Obama for suggesting that Israel should withdraw to what SWC calls the “1967 ‘Auschwitz’ borders.” Really? Auschwitz? Apparently, for these reasonable people, suggesting that Israel should be held to the same responsibilities as other countries (abide by their legal borders) is the equivalent of calling for another Holocaust. How sensible and tasteful! The American Jewish Committee (AJC) is also in the ad, protesting the use of the word “apartheid” in relation to Israel. I guess we’re supposed to take the separate road systems, the diverting of 80% of Palestinian water to Israelis, the systematic denial of building permits for Palestinians while Israel expands illegal Jewish settlements, and the exclusively Jewish “right of return” all as examples of equality.

And of course, no such ad would be complete without the inclusion of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). That’s the group whose commitment to fighting bigotry and protecting religious freedom led them to stand with the bigots who opposed the establishment of a Muslim community center in lower Manhattan. What was their reasoning? It was that the anguish of relatives of terror victims “entitles them to a position that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted.” That position was so ridiculous that (I kid you not) even Alan Dershowitz came out against it. Of course, only the anti-Muslim sentiment is understandable to the ADL on those terms. Don’t expect them to defend anti-Semitism from some Palestinians on the grounds that Palestinians are regularly victims of Israeli state terrorism.

More humorous was the ADL’s grievance with CAP: “most of their blogs come from a perspective of blaming Israel for the lack of progress in Israeli-Palestinian affairs and minimizing or rationalizing the Iranian threat.” Translation: most of their blogs accurately fault Israel and its illegal occupation for the lack of positive progress in Israeli-Palestinian affairs and they refuse to exaggerate the Iranian threat to join the war-cheerleading. I tend to think these are praiseworthy accomplishments.

The charge these groups seem to be most amped up about is the one alleging that using the term “Israel Firster” makes one an anti-Semite. What they don’t seem to be getting (or maybe pretending not to get) is that the charge is not being made at “Jews,” but at individuals, regardless of their ethnic or religious background, whose blind commitment to unconditional support for any and all Israeli policies comes before virtually all other considerations, and is not always consistent with American interests and policy goals. Words are not, in and of themselves, racist; it’s the context in which they’re said that determines whether they’re racist. And the way individuals within CAP and Media Matters used the term “Israel Firster” is clearly not racist at all. Context matters. Meaning matters. While you can fairly accuse Media Matters’ MJ Rosenberg of being highly critical of Israeli policies and U.S. support for them, you cannot legitimately accuse him of anti-Semitism. It’s just preposterous to do so. And frankly, you can`t even call him anti-Israel, especially in light of his views on the BDS campaign.

The ad unsurprisingly ends by calling for pressure to be placed on the foundations supporting CAP and Media Matters for allegedly supporting “bigotry” and “extremism.” But the ad opens more interestingly by questioning whether CAP’s and Media Matters’ views really represent “the liberal mainstream.” In effect, the ad is pushing for the American liberal mainstream (including liberal media) to distance themselves from progressive groups that criticize Israel if they want to remain in the mainstream and avoid charges of “anti-Semitism.” Dershowitz has gone even further, explicitly saying that he will campaign to make Media Matters a problem for the Democrats and President Obama in the upcoming election.  Getting a little desperate, aren’t they?

As far as I’m concerned, this ad’s silly attempt at stifling criticism of Israel is reflective of the contemptible attitude of the demagogues who stand behind it, and I hope that CAP and Media Matters (and the American liberal mainstream at large) will not cave to this nonsense. Recent reactions to earlier smear efforts against the organizations leave us hopeful on that front. It is essential to the health of our public discourse that open and honest discussion about Israel’s policies (and our role in them) not be censored or stifled.
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Jan 9, 2012 Lebanon
Maya Mikdashi By :
Maya Mikdashi

American Elections Watch 1: Rick Santorum and The Dangers of Theocracy

One day after returning to the United States after a trip to Lebanon, I watched the latest Republican Presidential Primary Debate. Unsurprisingly, Iran loomed large in questions related to foreign policy. One by one (with the exception of Ron Paul) the candidates repeated President Obama`s demand that Iran not block access to the Strait of Hormuz and allow the shipping of oil across this strategic waterway. Watching them, I was reminded of Israel`s demand that Lebanon not exploit its own water resources in 2001-2002. Israel`s position was basically that Lebanon`s sovereign decisions over the management of Lebanese water resources was a cause for war. In an area where water is increasingly the most valuable resource, Israel could not risk the possibility that its water rich neighbor might disrupt Israel`s ability to access Lebanese water resources through acts of occupation, underground piping, or unmitigated (because the Lebanese government has been negligent in exploiting its own water resources) river flow. In 2012, the United States has adopted a similar attitude towards Iran, even though the legal question of sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz is much more complicated and involves international maritime law in addition to Omani and Iranian claims of sovereignty. But still, US posturing towards Iran is reminiscent of Israeli posturing towards Lebanon. It goes something like this: while the US retains the right to impose sanctions on Iran and continuously threaten war over its alleged pursuit of a nuclear weapon, Iran should not dare to assume that it can demand the removal of US warships from its shores and, more importantly, should not dream of retaliating in any way to punitive sanctions imposed on it. One can almost hear Team America`s animated crew breaking into song . . . “America . . . Fuck Yeah!”

During the debate in New Hampshire, Rick Santorum offered a concise answer as to why a nuclear Iran would not be tolerated and why the United States-the only state in the world that has actually used nuclear weapons, as it did when it dropped them on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki- should go to war over this issue. Comparing Iran to other nuclear countries that the United States has learned to “tolerate” and “live with” such as Pakistan and North Korea, Santorum offered this succinct nugget of wisdom: Iran is a theocracy. Coming from a man who has stated that Intelligent Design should be taught in schools, that President Obama is a secular fanatic, that the United States is witnessing a war on religion, and that God designed men and women in order to reproduce and thus marriage should be only procreative (and thus heterosexual and “fertile”), Santorum`s conflation of “theocracy” with “irrationality” seemed odd. But of course, that is not what he was saying. When Santorum said that Iran was a theocracy what he meant is that Iran is an Islamic theocracy, and thus its leaders are irrational, violent, and apparently (In Santorum`s eyes) martyrdom junkies. Because Iran is an Islamic theocracy, it cannot be “trusted” by the United States to have nuclear weapons. Apparently, settler colonial states such as Israel (whose claim to “liberal “secularism” is tenuous at best), totalitarian states such as North Korea, or unstable states such as Pakistan (which the United States regularly bombs via drones and that is currently falling apart because, as Santorum stated, it does not know how to behave without a “strong” America) do not cause the same radioactive anxiety. In Santorum`s opinion, a nuclear Iran would not view the cold war logic of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) as a deterrent. Instead, the nation of Iran would rush to die under American or Israeli nuclear bombs because martyrdom is a religious (not national, Santorum was quick to state, perhaps realizing that martyrdom for nation is an ideal woven into the tapestry of American ideology) imperative. Santorum`s views on Iran can be seen one hour and two minutes into the debate.

When it comes to Islam, religion is scary, violent and irrational, says the American Presidential candidate who is largely running on his “faith based” convictions. This contradiction is not surprising, given that in the United States fundamentalist Christians regularly and without irony cite the danger that American muslims pose-fifth column style- to American secularism. After all, recently Christian fundamentalist groups succeeded in pressuring advertisers to abandon a reality show that (tediously) chronicled the lives of “American Muslims” living in Detroit. The great sin committed by these American Muslims was that they were too damn normal. Instead of plotting to inject sharia law into the United States Constitution, they were busy shopping at mid-western malls. Instead of marrying four women at a time and vacationing at Al-Qaeda training camps in (nuclear, but not troublingly so) Pakistan, these “American Muslims” were eating (halal) hotdogs and worrying about the mortgages on their homes and the rising costs of college tuition. Fundamentalist Christians watched this boring consumer driven normalcy with horror and deduced that it must be a plot to make Islam appear compatible with American secularism. The real aim of the show, these Christian fundamentalists (who Rick Santorum banks on for political and financial support) reasoned, was to make Islam appear “normal” and a viable religious option for American citizens. Thus the reality show “All American Muslim” was revealed to be a sinister attempt at Islamic proselytizing. This in a country where Christian proselytizing is almost unavoidable. From television to subways to doorbell rings to presidential debates to busses to street corners and dinner tables-there is always someone in America who wants to share the “good news” with a stranger. Faced with such a blatant, and common, double standard, we should continue to ask “If Muslim proselytizers threaten our secular paradise, why do Christian proselytizers not threaten our secular paradise?”

As the United States Presidential Elections kick into gear, we can expect the Middle East to take pride of place in questions pertaining to foreign policy. Already, Newt Gingrich who, if you forgot, has a PhD in history, has decided for all of us, once and for all, that the Palestinians alone in this world of nations are an invented people. Palestinians are not only a fraudulent people, Gingrich has taught us, they are terrorists as well. Candidates stumble over each other in a race to come up with more creative ways to pledge America`s undying support for Israel. Iran is the big baddie with much too much facial hair and weird hats. America is held hostage to Muslim and Arab oil, and must become “energy efficient” in order to free itself from the unsavory political relationships that come with such dependancy. Candidates will continue to argue over whether or not President Obama should have or should not have withdrawn US troops from Iraq, but no one will bring up the reality that the US occupation of Iraq is anything but over. But despite the interest that the Middle East will invite in the coming election cycle, there are a few questions that we can confidently assume will not be asked or addressed. Here are a few predictions. We welcome additional questions from readers.

Question: What is the difference between Christian Fundamentalism and Muslim Fundamentalism? Which is the greater “threat” to American secularism, and why?

Question: The United States` strongest Arab ally is Saudi Arabia, an Islamic theocracy and authoritarian monarchy which (falsely) cites Islamic law to prohibit women from driving cars, voting, but has recently (yay!) allowed women to sell underwear to other women. In addition, Saudi Arabia has been fanning the flames of sectarianism across the region, is the main center of financial and moral support for Al-Qaeda and is studying ways to “obtain” (the Saudi way, just buy it) a nuclear weapon-all as part and parcel of a not so cold war with Iran. Given these facts, how do you respond to critics that doubt the United States` stated goals of promoting democracy, human rights, women`s rights, and “moderate” (whatever that is) Islam?

Question: Israel has nuclear weapons and has threatened to use them in the past. True or false?

Question: How are Rick Santorum`s views on homosexuality (or the Christian right`s views more generally) different than President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad`s or King Abdullah`s? Can you help us tease out the differences when all three have said that as long as homosexuals do not engage in homosexual sex, it`s all good?

Question: Is the special relationship between the United States and Israel more special because they are both settler colonies, or is something else going on?