MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Posts Tagged ‘anti-semitism’

TGIF: Bigotry versus Social Cooperation

Posted by M. C. on November 17, 2023

Let’s not have our mutual interest get lost in the heat of controversy.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/tgif-bigotry-versus-cooperation/

by Sheldon Richman

mises2

We who value individualism, freedom, and social cooperation as essential to flourishing should be distressed by the hostile bigotry that has lately reared its ugly head, to some uncertain extent, on the streets and campuses of America and abroad. This is not new. In America we’ve seen it intermittently in both directions on racial issues just in this century. It seems related to an intolerant, zero-nuance, take-no-prisoners, and glib attitude among many contenders over racial, religious, and ethnic controversies.

Now it is showing itself in ugly group chants and more personal communication calling for violence against Jews and Arabs, and perhaps even direct harassment and assault. A couple of people have died. Anti-Semitism and anti-Arabism should be off-limits. Regardless of the target, the unrestrained hostility is frightening on many counts, not least of which is its ominous implications for spontaneous social /market cooperation.

I couldn’t possibly know whether these clashes are common or just fringe opportunism — let’s hope the latter. In the heat of a controversy it is possible to misread innocent events and words. The principle of charitable interpretation ought to apply unless solid evidence to the contrary revokes it. We should also be aware that government officials and the news media, for obvious reasons, might be inclined to exaggerate.

The point is that much could be at stake if impressions are not exaggerated — including the trust and cooperation that characterize market-oriented societies. Social strife can have severe consequences. Even public demonstrations can create rippling animosity.

mises2

We who value individualism, freedom, and social cooperation as essential to flourishing should be distressed by the hostile bigotry that has lately reared its ugly head, to some uncertain extent, on the streets and campuses of America and abroad. This is not new. In America we’ve seen it intermittently in both directions on racial issues just in this century. It seems related to an intolerant, zero-nuance, take-no-prisoners, and glib attitude among many contenders over racial, religious, and ethnic controversies.

Now it is showing itself in ugly group chants and more personal communication calling for violence against Jews and Arabs, and perhaps even direct harassment and assault. A couple of people have died. Anti-Semitism and anti-Arabism should be off-limits. Regardless of the target, the unrestrained hostility is frightening on many counts, not least of which is its ominous implications for spontaneous social /market cooperation.

I couldn’t possibly know whether these clashes are common or just fringe opportunism — let’s hope the latter. In the heat of a controversy it is possible to misread innocent events and words. The principle of charitable interpretation ought to apply unless solid evidence to the contrary revokes it. We should also be aware that government officials and the news media, for obvious reasons, might be inclined to exaggerate.

The point is that much could be at stake if impressions are not exaggerated — including the trust and cooperation that characterize market-oriented societies. Social strife can have severe consequences. Even public demonstrations can create rippling animosity.

See the rest here

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TGIF: Congress Again Rewards Israel’s Misdeeds

Posted by M. C. on March 18, 2022

The Abraham Accords just happen to be one Trump accomplishment that most Democrats, including Joe Biden, love. In January the House and Senate both created bipartisan Abraham Accords Caucuses “to build on the success of the historic” agreements. According to the House news release:

For decades, Congress [back pat] has played a key role in promoting peace between Israel and its neighbors. The Caucus will provide an opportunity to strengthen the Abraham Accords by encouraging and [sic] partnerships among the existing Abraham Accords countries and expanding the agreement to include countries that do not currently have diplomatic relations with Israel.

I can hear the cha-ching already.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/tgif-congress-again-rewards-israels-misdeeds/

by Sheldon Richman

To judge by what Congress is up to these days, one would think that it wants to reward Israel for its relentless confiscation of Palestinian land and continued ethnic cleansing.

Congress — which is not only interested in “the Benjamins,” that is, Israel Lobby contributions — is surely operating in what Yakov Hirsch calls “hasbara culture,” according to which anyone who objects to any action of the state of Israel, especially where the Palestinians are concerned, is without question an anti-Semite. In this view, the presence of anti-Semitism is a certainty; the only question is how it manifests itself in any given situation. (The resemblance to critical race theory is striking.)

How do hasbara culturalists know that Israel’s critics are anti-Semites?

They know because, by unexamined yet indefeasible assumption, no other explanation is conceivable. If you offer an alternative, good-faith explanation for the objection, then you too must be an anti-Semite. After all, again by indefeasible assumption, if Israel is the paragon of virtue, if its military is the most moral military on earth, how could any objection be made in good faith? It certainly can’t be that Zionists, whether acting individually or through the Jewish State, could have done anything wrong. That would be blaming the victim, which is (in this case only) is strictly forbidden. (I say Zionist because not all Jews are Zionists — far from it — and not all Zionists are Jews, even if most are. And yet even that term is unsatisfactory because some self-identified “liberal Zionists” also condemn Israeli apartheid.)

Of course, the flip side of hasbara culture is the dehumanization of Palestinians, who are always to blame — even when they appear to be victims. (Readers can sort out that horrifying irony for themselves.) One must never regard the Palestinians as bonafide rights-bearing individuals and members of an ethnic group who could have real century-old grievances against the Zionist movement, the group of European Jews who settler-colonized Arab-majority Palestine and created a Jewish State (in an ethnic, not religious, sense). Rather, the Palestinians are merely the latest rightless embodiments of a permanent and evil, almost nonmaterial, historical force — anti-Semitism — that has taken different physical forms throughout history. By that assumption, Palestinian anger at the self-proclaimed Jewish State can be nothing but anti-Semitism, full stop.

The Viennese social critic Karl Kraus (1874-1936) once said that you can identify a madman by how agitated he becomes when locked up in a madhouse. By the same token, you can identify an anti-Semite by how agitated he becomes when dispossessed by a Zionist settler. Only an anti-Semite would fuss about that rigged game.

Anyway, though the year is still young, members of the House and Senate have been busy finding ways to help Israel. Understanding hasbara culture helps us make sense of it.

Just a few days ago the House and Senate passed the Israel Relations Normalization Act of 2021 (H.R. 2748). Writing at Mondoweiss.net, the invaluable watchdog site for Israel’s apartheid oppression of Palestinians, Nadya Tannous and Cat Knarr point out that the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights has dubbed the bill  “the Normalizing Israeli Ethnic Cleansing Act.”

The bill would accomplish several things. For example, Tannous and Knarr write, it

expands the Abraham Accords, Trump-era weapons and business deals between apartheid Israel and other authoritarian regimes. These deals bribe Arab countries in the region to both ignore Israel’s settler colonialism and constant human rights violations and, indeed, to regionally align with the US and Israeli policy and aspirations for the region in exchange for large weapons packages.

You’ll recall that when Donald Trump and his underachiever son-in-law, Jared Kushner, failed to broker the “real estate deal of the century” between the Israelis and Palestinians — because it ignored Palestinians’ rights — Team Trump tried something else: so-called peace deals between Israel and (so far) these Arab states: the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco. These are the Abraham Accords, which entail allegedly breakthrough mutual diplomatic recognition. Saudi Arabia already has a close working relationship with Israel.

How did Trump do it? As Tannous and Knarr note, by offering arms and business deals to the participants. The Trump administration, in other words, bought the cynical Arab regimes, which have always been ready to sell out the Palestinians for the right price. And what did Israel get? Further Arab acquiescence in its intolerable treatment of the Palestinians.

See the rest here

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AIPAC Finally Gets the Best of Ilhan Omar | The American Conservative

Posted by M. C. on May 7, 2020

This is what AIPAC wants. It sent out this letter and got 390 members of Congress to sign it, including Omar. The fact AIPAC was able to get these signatures is a testament to its influence and the hurt that it can bring down on politicians when comes to re-election. Like Omar.

That will ensure that the other embargoes, the ones that affect food, medicine, basic necessities, continue to strangle ordinary Iranians. This is about “maximum pressure” and it’s what AIPAC and the hawks in Congress want. In her own “narrow” way, Omar is supporting their vicious cycle, one that she has already admitted, will not work. 

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/state-of-the-union/aipac-finally-gets-the-best-of-ilhan-omar/

The Congresswoman has signed onto one of the lobby’s letters calling for an extended embargo on Iran.

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-MN. (Screenshot from Al Jazeera, via CBN)

It looks like AIPAC, the most influential pro-Israel organization in the U.S., has gotten to Rep Ilhan Omar.

The Muslim-American congresswoman who had been targeted by the lobbying behemoth a year ago for her “anti-Semitic” comments about “dual loyalty” in regards to members of Congress supporting a ban on American’s boycotting Israel businesses (BDS), has now signed onto a typically loaded AIPAC letter calling for the extension of a UN arms embargo against Iran.

The move has her supporters and political observers scratching their heads. The wider sanctions regime against Tehran, by all reports, was crushing the Iranian people long before the COVID virus began spreading through the country. Oil revenues, imports of basic necessities, all have been brought to a grinding halt thanks to the Trump Administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign. Now Iranians are struggling for life-saving equipment and medicines in the wake of a pandemic.

In a tweet on April 22 she seemed to be of the mind that sanctions are a dead end:

 

Omar’s office released a statement after the AIPAC letter story broke, saying  the congresswoman still opposes wider economic sanctions, but “has consistently, for a long time, supported arms embargoes against human rights abusers.” It is not that she “supports [Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo’s tactics or that her position on sanctions has changed, or that she is not in support of the [nuclear deal]. It was just a narrow ask that we couldn’t find anything wrong with.”

So what is this “narrow ask”? AIPAC, which has spent millions of dollars opposing the JCPOA, otherwise known as the “Iran nuclear deal,” wants to make sure a United Nations weapons embargo on Iran does not sunset as proscribed in the agreement, this fall. That will mean whatever is remaining of the deal since the U.S. unilaterally withdrew from it in 2018 will fall apart. That will likely trigger an escalation in the Iranians’ uranium enrichment, which was capped in the deal, and likewise lock all economic sanctions in, this time with the wider support of the other P5+1 countries that originally signed onto it (China, Russia, Germany, the European Union, the UK, and France).

This is what AIPAC wants. It sent out this letter and got 390 members of Congress to sign it, including Omar. The fact AIPAC was able to get these signatures is a testament to its influence and the hurt that it can bring down on politicians when comes to re-election. Like Omar. A tough Democratic primary candidate has emerged in Antone Melton-Meaux, an African-American attorney and civil rights mediator who said in an April op-edin the Minnesota Star-Tribune that Omar was disconnected from her district, has gotten no legislation passed for Minnesota, and  cut a divisive figure on Capitol Hill. Furthermore, Melton-Meaux said:

Omar has repeatedly made divisive statements that have been hurtful to members of our Jewish community. She creates distraction and drama, not results. That doesn’t work for us.

Rep. Omar believes that sanctions are economic warfare and is a vocal advocate for abolishing them, particularly for Iran. Yet she supports sanctions on Israel. She has repeatedly refused to explain this inconsistency. That doesn’t work for us.

Melton-Meaux is one of three primary challengers, but he has already raised nearly $500,000, more than any of them. He seems to have touched a nerve and is not afraid to use Omar’s reported issues with the pro-Israel crowd to his political advantage. According to a glowing profile in the Jewish Insider, Melton-Meaux already “has the endorsement of “pro-Israel America.” More:

In 2012, during a Jewish Community Relations Council meeting in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Melton-Meaux delivered a Dvar Torah, expounding on the connections between Leviticus 19 and Matthew 26, which calls for all people to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” He added: “If there was ever a time when Jews, Christians, and all people of faith need to be reminded that we share a common bond, the time is now.”

And:

Melton-Meaux alleges that his opponent, who has risen to prominence as a member of “The Squad,” has not worked to find common ground with others, including many of her Jewish constituents.

“Omar has made statements that have been reckless and harmful to the Jewish community,” Melton-Meaux told Jewish Insider. “I have spent time with the Jewish community and have met with Jewish leaders, and there’s a deep sense of betrayal by her actions and displeasure with the way that she has handled herself in the process with regard to the residents in this district.”

And according to Gateway Pundit, Omar’s top Republican opponent, Lacy Johnson, got a huge boost from donors this week after an endorsement from President Trump.

Omar has been accused of anti-Semitic comments, but a closer look of course reveals a muddier picture. In an all-consuming debate last year on whether banning U.S. companies and citizens from boycotting Israeli businesses for its treatment of Palestinians was an infringement of Constitutional rights, the tweets and public attacks on both sides were flying. Omar made comments about AIPAC “funding” Republican support for Israel and decried its influence operations (which are notorious by the way on Capitol Hill, described by one former Hill staffer and AIPAC as a system of “rewards and retribution”). After this, Omar  was accused by other members of Congress and by AIPAC of promulgating the trope that some Jewish-Americans have “dual loyalty,” and her words were condemned as anti-Semitic.

She ended up apologizing for a February 2019 tweet saying that support for Israel was “all about the Benjamins.”

“Anti-Semitism is real and I am grateful for Jewish allies and colleagues who are educating me on the painful history of anti-Semitic tropes,” Omar said in a statement released on Twitter, after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the entire Democratic leadership publicly scolded her for engaging in “deeply offensive” anti-Semitic tropes.

“My intention is never to offend my constituents or Jewish Americans as a whole,” Ms. Omar wrote, adding, “I unequivocally apologize.”

But she did not take back her comments about AIPAC.

Omar’s recent signature on a letter that would have garnered hundreds of her colleagues’ support and made a splash with or without her, is a signal to AIPAC that she knows her seat is at risk, and that she would rather neutralize the feud with the pro-Israel powerhouse than send it flocking to the aid of her opponents. AIPAC spends millions each year lobbying Congress on behalf of its agenda, but does not give directly to candidates. However, its members do, and it works with other pro-Israel groups and individuals who give tons of money each election cycle (more than $12.4 million so far in 2020, compared to $15.5 million in all of 2016). Omar’s comments about “the Benjamins” could come back to bite her, and it will be, all about the Benjamins. That’s how campaigns rise and fall.

So why should we care? Omar says it’s a “narrow ask” to support extending the arms embargo, but it’s clear the Trump Administration is using this embargo to further kill the deal. If the deal is crushed, the hardliners in Iran will blow through uranium enrichment restrictions (in fact they already have, in response to U.S. sanctions). That will ensure that the other embargoes, the ones that affect food, medicine, basic necessities, continue to strangle ordinary Iranians. This is about “maximum pressure” and it’s what AIPAC and the hawks in Congress want. In her own “narrow” way, Omar is supporting their vicious cycle, one that she has already admitted, will not work.

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Democrats and Republicans Agree: It’s Time to Throw White People In Gulags, by Eric Striker – The Unz Review

Posted by M. C. on March 2, 2020

The truth is, as Tucker Carlson has remarked, that “white terrorism” alarmism is nothing more than a politically motivated hoax comparable to the “8 intelligence agencies” claiming Russia stole the 2016 election for Donald Trump.

In it, the FBI admits to playing a prominent role in influencing social media companies in their decisions on who can and cannot use their platforms: 

They assure the public that they are protecting First Amendment speech and privacy, but do not detail how. They expect us to take their word for it.

https://www.unz.com/estriker/democrats-and-republicans-agree-its-time-to-throw-white-people-in-gulags/

Yesterday, the FBI made a big show of arresting multiple alleged members of a “white supremacist” group they have designated as a national security threat equivalent to ISIS.

Federal prosecutors have charged black metal fan Cameron Denton, the Nazi Al-Baghdadi, with telling the police to send SWAT teams after a journalist and a politician as a childish prank.

Four other cohorts in “AtomWaffen,” mostly young Chan trolls, were also taken into custody in the multi-state terror raid over mailing the Israeli lobbyists at the Anti-Defamation League edgy fliers that say “Our Patience Has Its Limits.”

House Representative Karen Bass has complained loudly about the FBI’s lack of transparency regarding arrest statistics related to “white supremacist terrorism.” Her implication is that the career girls, left-wing crusaders and Zionist lickspittles in federaI law enforcement – some who have proudly accepted awards from the Anti-Defamation League for railroading James Fields – are “protecting” these supposed dangerous white supremacists.

The truth is, as Tucker Carlson has remarked, that “white terrorism” alarmism is nothing more than a politically motivated hoax comparable to the “8 intelligence agencies” claiming Russia stole the 2016 election for Donald Trump.

Warren Buffett once famously said “if a cop follows you for 500 miles, you’re getting a ticket,” and the string of marijuana arrests, coercing teenagers and the mentally ill into bogus pleas, prosecuting people for their answers to confusing questions on federal forms, and various other pedestrian crimes don’t begin to justify the amount of federal resources being flushed down the toilet in surveilling and intimidating those the SPLC and ADL classify as “white nationalists.” The FBI is hiding its statistics because they know what they’re doing is wrong.

Since 2016, no member of a (white) nationalist organization has committed an act of terrorism with the possible exception of James Fields, who was loosely affiliated with Vanguard America and who would’ve beaten his trumped up political charges in any other time period.

Republicans Are No Ally

There is a House Bill on the docket intended to heed the call of the FBI Agents Association for a “domestic terrorism” law.

The Domestic Terrorism Penalties Act of 2019, introduced by Texas Republican Randy K. Weber with the support of 14 other GOP lawmakers and one Democrat, is perhaps the most dangerous piece of legislation drafted in decades.

This bill seeks to take regular crimes and add a “terrorism” enhancement if the suspect has dissident political views or belongs to an organization advocating for them. According to the language of the bill, domestic terrorism is defined as: “Whoever, with respect to a circumstance described in subsection (b), and with the intent to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or influence, affect, or retaliate against the policy or conduct of a government.”

The crime of kidnapping, which the state tried to slap on Augustus Invictus and failed, would potentially get the accused life in prison.

The crime of Assault becomes “domestic terrorist assault,” and gets you 30 years in the big house.

Political vandalism? 25 years. That’s not a typo.

In practice, if this bill were made into law, a member of the Proud Boys – who the FBI would like to classify as a domestic terror group – could get 30 years in prison for punching an anarchist heckler in self-defense at a political rally.

Paint a political slogan on a piece of property? 25 years. For perspective, the average convicted rapist serves 5.4 years. The typical child molester serves 3 years. The median time done by a 1st degree murderer? 17.3 years.

The law also has a “conspiracy” clause. If you “conspire” to commit an assault, which according to ADL SHIELD recipient Thomas T. Cullen’s legal reasoning can be uncharitably defined as members of the Rise Above Movement texting each other “Smash the Reds,” you are punished as harshly as if you had committed the act.

Institutions associated with conservatism, like the Marine Corps, are also implementing draconian rules and regulations. 44% of all military recruits hail from the South, but Commandant General David Berger has recently announced a plan to thoroughly eradicate all symbols of Southern and Confederate heritage from bases.

At CPAC, the convention of the supposed conservative “grassroots,” early supporters of President Trump like Alex Jones and Gavin McInnes have been “canceled” by the conservative movement and forcefully bounced, while left-wing extremists like Jared Holt have been given press credentials.

In “respectable” conservative media, not a single person has made a peep in defense of the Constitution.

The only response to the elite agenda to punish white men for their political beliefs has come from Kyle Shideler, the Director and Senior Analyst for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism at the Center for Security Policy.

In The Federalist, a pseudo right-wing publication famous for hiding its donors, Shideler responds to the New Jersey Department of Homeland Security’s decision to elevate “white supremacy” as a “high-level threat” in response to Black Israelites killing Jews not with civil liberties concerns, but ideological ones.

According to Shideler, the problem is that groups the federal government defers to for classifying groups as terrorist have a bias against “conservatives” and “libertarians.”

Shideler would like catches in any new legislation that would clearly protect the rights of anti-Muslim neo-cons like himself from terrorism prosecutions, by clearly designating “Islamists, Antifa, national socialists, black nationalists, or white supremacist groups” as groups who are not “committed” to the US Constitution, and thus fair game for persecution.

This appears to be inspired by Germany’s law for the “protection of the Constitution,” which gives the BRD’s intelligence services a free hand to censor and arrest critics of the government. The milquetoast conservative challengers to Angela Merkel’s highly unpopular immigration policy, Alternativ Fur Deutschland, have been subjected to extensive surveillance and pressure from the secret police thanks to this law.

Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) Designations

An article in the New York Times criticizes the strategy of using Congress to visibly legislate our rights away due to the potential for public scrutiny and backlash.

Instead, they recommend an idea previously proposed by General John Rutherford Allen, which is to create a list of foreign nationalist groups and then prosecute Americans in contact with them (which is inevitable thanks to the global nature of the internet) as enablers of terrorism. This gives the government extensive powers to suspend your constitutional rights.

To understand the ramifications of a Foreign Terrorist Organization classification, when Trump issued an empty threat to add Mexican drug cartels to the list of FTOs, the media and Mexican government understood it as a warning that he was going to order drone strikes and send troops to kill drug lords.

They have good reason to believe this. A few months after Trump added the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as an FTO, he greenlit the assassination of Iranian state official General Qassem Soleimani, who led the group.

Representative Max Rose has already drafted suggestions for groups to add to the list: Azov Battalion, an anti-Russian militia that receives weapons from the US and Ukrainian governments, National Action, a defunct British based group that was primarily internet based, and the Nordic Resistance Movement, an above ground Scandinavian protest group that is legally permitted in Sweden.

These groups are wildly disparate and, with the exception of Azov, are not waging armed struggle. The choice of adding an organization like NRM appears to be motivated by the fact that they have many American fans and supporters who Rose would like to see droned or tortured in Guantanamo Bay. In the case of National Action, which was founded on the internet forum Iron March, they also had extensive online ties with people from all over the world

State Department designations are completely arbitrary and decided by the president without oversight. The executive office could for example find that the Scandza Forum, a gathering of nationalist intellectuals from around the world, is a terrorist organization without giving a reason, and then subject everyone who sends money or attends the conference as material supporters of terrorism.

The Real Motive

On February 26th, the FBI gave a presentation to the House of Representatives detailing what they are doing to fight “anti-Semitism.”

In it, the FBI admits to playing a prominent role in influencing social media companies in their decisions on who can and cannot use their platforms:

It is also important to highlight our outreach to social media and technology companies. FBI interactions with social media companies center on education and capacity building, in line with our goal to assist companies in developing or enhancing their terms of service to address violent extremist exploitation of their platforms.

They assure the public that they are protecting First Amendment speech and privacy, but do not detail how. They expect us to take their word for it.

It is unknown how significant the role of the government is in the mass censorship of dissidents from social media, but it isn’t relevant. As Mike Enoch has said, the distinction between private and public is irrelevant, it is a “system.”

Amazon, the book vending monopoly, has given Jewish organizations the right to engage in cyber book burnings without much in the way of government pressure. Most of Counter-Currents’ catalogue has been eliminated, as has the written work of various journalists, scholars and historians like Colin Flaherty, Kevin MacDonald, Jared Taylor, and multiple Holocaust revisionists. Even materials of primary historical value, like collections of speeches by Third Reich officials, are in their iron sights. This is not a war on terrorism, it’s a war on ideas.

In a time where government officials across the country are emptying their jail cells and “law and order” Republican Donald Trump has implemented “criminal justice reform,” (which he admitted is highly unpopular) public safety is clearly not why our oligarchs are having this conversation.

A better explanation can be found in the work of University of Connecticut academic Peter Turchin.

According to Turchin, who combines historicism with mathematics to draw forecasts of political stability, the United States and other liberal Western nations are due for “popular mobilizations,” potentially violent, starting in the 2020s. Turchin famously predicted the rise of the 2016 Trump populist movement and Brexit.

The thesis of Turchin’s book, Ages of Discord, states that declining living standards, mass immigration, the corruption of liberal institutions and polarization in general have primed the United States and other liberal plutocracies for collapse.

The fall may be bloody, or it could be a less dramatic Soviet-style downfall, but it’s happening, says Turchin. He has lectured to Jews and members of the managerial elite in Washington and New York, who in turn have debated his work in the publications they read. A handful of billionaires, thanks to the internet, have been exposed as the architects of our nation’s decline. They know they have lost the public’s consent to rule and are preparing for war against their subjects as a list ditch effort to cling to power.

Telling the truth has never been cheap. Dissidents should mentally prepare to withstand the erratic spasms of a monster in its death throes. The coming years are bound to be trying times for those who refuse to submit to the doctrines and dogmas of an immoral and oppressive system.

 

 

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Exposing Israeli interference in the US | The Electronic Intifada

Posted by M. C. on March 26, 2019

In the context of the mosque massacres by a white supremacist in Christchurch, New Zealand, earlier this month, and concern about growing anti-Semitism, I also talked about how Israel is a force today promoting and inspiring Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, white supremacy and extremism that is destabilizing the world.

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/exposing-israeli-interference-us

 

After more than two years of media hype and hyperventilation, special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation has finally concluded that there was no collusion between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia to subvert the 2016 US election.

There is however plenty of evidence of foreign interference and collusion in US politics, except it is being ignored by establishment media and politicians because the state doing it is not Russia, but Israel.

Last Friday, I spoke in Washington at the Israel Lobby and American Policy Conference 2019 about Al Jazeera’s undercover documentary into the activities of the Israel lobby in the United States.

The film was made during 2016 and completed in 2017, but then it was suppressed after Qatar, Al Jazeera’s sponsor, came under intense pressure from that same lobby.

However this effort at censorship failed: The Electronic Intifada was the first to publish details of the film in March last year.

In August, we were the first to publish video excerpts, and finally in November we published all four episodes of the film online for anyone to watch.

I began my talk – which like the rest of the conference was carried live nationally on C-SPAN – by asking the audience in the room of more than 300 how many had watched the Al Jazeera film in whole or in part. I estimated that about a quarter put up their hands.

That’s a great start, but it shows that many more people still need to see this bombshell documentary exposing the efforts of Israel and its lobbyists to spy on, smear and intimidate US citizens who support Palestinian human rights, especially BDS – the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement…

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aipac

 

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Keep It Up, Ilhan Omar

Posted by M. C. on March 13, 2019

When will the world dare to distinguish between legitimate criticism of an illegitimate Israeli reality and anti-Semitism?

https://outline.com/vhPJhk

haaretz.com

Maybe Mogadishu will turn out to be the source of hope. This war-torn city was the birthplace of the most promising U.S. congresswoman today.

Ilhan Omar is not only one of the first two female Muslim members of the House of Representatives, she may herald a dramatic change in that body. “Hamas has entered the House,” Roseanne Barr was quick to cry out; “A black day for Israel,” tweeted Donald Trump. Neither Hamas nor a black day, but a glimmer of hope on Capitol Hill.

Maybe, for the first time in history, someone will dare tell the truth to the American people, absorbing scathing accusations of anti-Semitism, without bowing her head. The chances of this happening aren’t great; the savage engine of the Jewish lobby and of Israel’s “friends” is already doing everything it can to trample her. Read the rest of this entry »

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Report: Democrats to Condemn ‘All Hate,’ Not Anti-Semitism Specifically, in Resolution

Posted by M. C. on March 7, 2019

No one hates more than the hating haters that hate the haters.

No mention of antifa.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/03/06/dems-condemn-all-hate-not-anti-semitism-specifically-resolution/

by Justin Caruso

According to a report, House Democrats will not condemn anti-Semitism specifically following the controversy over Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), but will instead condemn “all hate” in general.

Last month, Ilhan Omar created fresh controversy by making an anti-Semitic comment implying that pro-Israel Americans had an “allegiance to a foreign country.”

Omar suggested earlier in February that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) was bribing politicians into supporting Israel and as a result was widely criticized as anti-Semitic…

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antifa

The ISIS head chopper look. Cultural appropriation!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Israel Lobby Rebuts Omar’s Claims About Its Immense Influence By Exerting Its Immense Influence – Caitlin Johnstone

Posted by M. C. on March 6, 2019

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/03/05/israel-lobby-refutes-omars-claims-about-its-immense-influence-by-exerting-its-immense-influence/

In response to criticisms made by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar that US political leaders have too much allegiance to Israel and its lobbying groups, House Democrats have put forward an entire House resolution in accordance with demands made by AIPAC and the Anti-Defamation League.

“The backlash [over Omar’s comments] continued on Monday, as the Anti-Defamation League wrote a letter to Pelosi calling for a House resolution to specifically reject what the organization calls Omar’s ‘latest slur,’” Politico reports. “‘We urge you and your colleagues to send the unambiguous message that the United States Congress is no place for hate,’ the group’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, wrote in a letter.”

“The charge of dual loyalty not only raises the ominous specter of classic anti-Semitism, but it is also deeply insulting to the millions upon millions of patriotic Americans, Jewish and non-Jewish, who stand by our democratic ally, Israel,” tweeted the Israel lobbying group AIPAC on Friday in response to Omar’s comments.

“I hope @AIPAC isn’t too angry that it took Democratic House leaders almost 48 whole hours to do what they’re told to condemn their own member and will instead be understanding that it was a weekend and that’s what caused the delay,” snarked journalist Glenn Greenwald in response to the news of the House resolution.

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How U.S. politicians use charges of anti-Semitism as a political weapon

Posted by M. C. on February 16, 2019

https://outline.com/KLmAdB

Less than 24 hours after Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) sent out tweets implying that AIPAC pays off American politicians to defend Israel, she had already apologized, in response to a swift rebuke from House Democratic leaders. Just like that.

Her initial remark that Republican attacks on her for criticizing Israel were “all about the Benjamins baby” did not strike me as anti-Semitic (unlike her 2012 tweet on how Israel “hypnotized” the world, which did). It read that way to others, though, which Omar stressed on Monday wasn’t her intention; she thanked “Jewish allies and colleagues who are educating me on the painful history of anti-Semitic tropes,” such as the notion of powerful Jews using money to get their way that some people thought her tweet played on. Omar did not actually call out Jews, only AIPAC — which does not define itself as a Jewish lobby — but her critics immediately translated it into “Jewish money.” AIPAC even went so far as to send an email Tuesday using Omar to raise money: The message said Omar suggested that the “U.S. government supports Israel only because of Jewish money,” and then proceeded to ask for money.

But the wider frenzy betrayed the cynical ways that charges of anti-Semitism and claims to be standing up for Israel are so often wielded by U.S. politicians — especially, but not exclusively, by Republicans. Israel, and by extension Israelis and American Jews, gets used as a wedge by pretty much anyone who chooses to pick up the cause in service of their own political agendas. The ironic result, for a fight about anti-Semitism, is that Jews are treated simply as a monolithic object, as a group that’s somehow different from other American ethnic or religious minorities.

Some of the loudest voices condemning Omar on Monday have espoused anti-Semitic imagery and stereotypes in the past themselves. Read the rest of this entry »

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The Pro-Israel Push to Purge US Campus Critics | by Katherine Franke | NYR Daily | The New York Review of Books

Posted by M. C. on December 14, 2018

Especially chilling, the US Department of Education recently adopted a new definition of anti-Semitism, one that equates any criticism of Israel with a hatred of Jews. 

USDOE as a government propaganda machine.

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/12/12/the-pro-israel-push-to-purge-us-campus-critics/

Katherine Franke

There are signs that we’ve reached a tipping point in US public recognition of Israel’s suppression of the rights of Palestinians as a legitimate human rights concern. Increasingly, students on campuses across the country are calling on their universities to divest from companies that do business in Israel. Newly elected members of Congress are saying what was once unsayable: that perhaps the US should question its unqualified diplomatic and financial support for Israel, our closest ally in the Middle East, and hold it to the same human rights scrutiny we apply to other nations around the globe. Global companies such as Airbnb have recognized that their business practices must reflect international condemnation of the illegality of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Natalie PortmanLorde, and other celebrities have declined appearances in Israel, acknowledging the call to boycott the Israeli government on account of its human rights violations. And The New York Times published a column arguing, with unprecedented forthrightness, that criticism of ethno-nationalism in Israel (for example, defining Israel exclusively as a “Jewish state”) isn’t necessarily anti-Semitic.

At the same time, discussions on college campuses about the complexities of freedom, history, and belonging in Israel and Palestine are under increasing pressure and potential censorship from right-wing entitiesIn fact, new policies adopted by the US and Israeli governments are intended to eliminate any rigorous discussion of Israeli–Palestinian politics in university settings. Not since the McCarthyite anti-Communist purges have we seen such an aggressive effort to censor teaching and learning on topics the government disfavors… Read the rest of this entry »

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