Showing posts with label Israel lobby. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Israel lobby. Show all posts

Sunday, January 15, 2023



The timing of the current torrent of articles and posts about Harvard's Kennedy School denying a fellowship to Ken Roth is most curious.

According to the initial article that started this all off in The Nation, Roth was denied his fellowship in the end of July 2022. 

It took nearly six months for this news to hit the media.

What happened during those six months? Why didn't Roth lash out at the time - why was he silent for so long?

The answer can be seen in his history at Human Rights Watch.

HRW would issue many reports about human rights abuses worldwide. But only a subset of them would be turned into media events - with much longer reports, behind-the-scenes partnerships with other organizations, embargoed reports to be released on specific days to coincide with their splashy press conferences, and lining up sympathetic reporters and media outlets to publish their articles at the times that would maximize the impact of the campaign. 

A large proportion of these campaigns would be against Israel. Relatively minor issues with questionable human rights dimensions, such as the fact that Booking.com and AirBnB listed Jewish-owned properties in the territories, would be promoted far more than actual deadly attacks in Syria or elsewhere. 

In short, Ken Roth has a lot of experience creating campaigns that greatly exaggerate what he considers Zionist crimes.

A real victim of a real injustice does not have the luxury of creating a campaign to gain maximum publicity. They need to cry out and hope that a sympathetic person of prominence will help them get the message out to the world. Most of them fail, and real victims of real crimes are almost never heard from.

Every employer can choose not to hire any person for any (legally valid) reason, and they don't have to explain themselves to the world. And a university choosing not to hire someone is in no way "violating academic freedom" - that would mean that they have to hire everyone, no matter how toxic their ideas or methods. Academic freedom applies to faculty members and students, no one else.

Here is an extensive definition of academic freedom. In no universe did Harvard's dean violate it. 

In this case, all we know is the second-hand report that the reason for the decision was "anti-Israel bias" and "Roth’s tweets on Israel were of particular concern" - which no one can argue with!  Any analysis of his own tweets, in his own words, proves Roth's bias beyond a doubt.  This is why Roth and his defenders falsely claim that he wasn't chosen because he is a "critic of Israel," an absurd lie - there are plenty of critics of Israel at Harvard, including Stephen Walt himself, co-writer of the infamous Israel Lobby book, whose position includes the name of the supposed Harvard donor who (Massing guesses) didn't want Roth - yet he still holds that position 15 years after the book controversy.

If the rich Jews who fund Harvard have any say on the contents of Harvard's academic program, it sure isn't obvious how. 

Contrast this with the billions of dollars that pour into US universities from Saudi Arabia and especially Qatar, specifically to influence them politically.

For a wealthy, connected and privileged man like Ken Roth, it is not enough to just move on when he doesn't get a job and find the next one (which he did, at another Ivy League school.) He has to use all of his expertise to get revenge at the people who insulted him: the dean at Harvard and the rich Zionist Jews whom he believes (with zero proof!) were behind the decision. 

Campaigns take time.  Roth had to find a reporter and a media outlet that would maximize the impact of his newest attack on Zionist Jews. And he found both with Michael Massey, a reporter who defended Walt and Mearsheimer's "Israel Lobby" book, and The Nation, which publishes outrageously anti-Israel articles that include boldfaced lies. 

Roth made sure not only that they would promote his new jihad against the few Zionists left in academia - but that it would be a cover story.

Now the six month gap makes sense. Front page stories take time.

Note the irony of the illustration - Roth is the little guy, a victim of a God-like thumbs-down from Harvard. A little guy who has the connections to build a months-long campaign that gets him on the cover of The Nation!

The follow-on stories, some probably planted and the others naturally following what looks like news,  were a fait accompli. So was his own account of the episode for The Guardian, where he again falsely claims that he didn't get the job  "because of my criticism of Israel." That is not what The Nation reported.

He can't stop lying when it comes to Israel.

Roth, with half a million Twitter followers, has plenty of clout to do his own direct promotion as well.  And he is tweeting about this as much as he used to tweet his monomaniacal anti-Israel campaigns. 

And now he claims that this carefully choreographed campaign has created an "uproar." He's trying to make it  self-fulfilling prophecy.

As with the AirBnB campaign, the Harvard story is based on an inversion of reality. Boycotting only Jewish-owned businesses really is discrimination, and not allowing universities full latitude in hiring staff is itself a violation of academic freedom.

Ken Roth is not the victim of an all-powerful Zionist lobby. He is a vindictive, pathetic yet extraordinarily privileged antisemite who has carefully plotted his revenge at the rich Jews whom he thinks sabotaged the only job in the world he felt was worthy of him. 

And his actions today prove that Harvard was quite right in rejecting him.




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Tuesday, December 20, 2022




A statement was just released by "64 scholars denouncing the smear campaign against UN human rights rapporteur Francesca Albanese."

Of course, they have to somehow skate around the fact that she wrote that America is subjugated by the Jewish lobby, a classic antisemitic trope.

So they try to gaslight the world:
Once again, a high-ranking UN official defending the human rights of the Palestinians is being castigated, based on disingenuous allegations of antisemitism. This time, the trigger for such allegations is a statement Ms. Albanese made in 2014, excavated from a personal letter about Israel’s attack on Gaza she had shared on Facebook. 

Indeed, Ms. Albanese said therein ‘America is subjugated by the Jewish lobby’. But first, she has rightly distanced herself from this inappropriate choice of words, and second, it is clear from the context of her statement that she was referring to pressure groups that are commonly referred to as the ‘Israel lobby’. Books have been written including by Jewish scholars about such groups. They legitimately exist and their influence, however effective, on American foreign policy towards Israel is real, in particular when it comes to blocking any initiatives aimed at holding Israel accountable for its inhumane treatment of the Palestinians.
When Special Rapporteur Albanese is delegitimized and stigmatized as an antisemite based on isolated and decontextualized statements, this amounts to political abuse of antisemitism, which fundamentally harms the urgent and important fight against antisemitism.
Let's look at their defense of Albanese.

First, they claim that it was "excavated" from a "personal letter" she shared. No, by definition, sharing a letter makes it an open letter, written to the world, to raise funds for UNWRA. 

Then they claim that she  "distanced herself" from that choice of words. Yes, but only when she was called on it - and even then, she denied that the phrase was antisemitic.

Third, they claim that in the context of the statement she was clearly talking about the "Israel lobby," not the "Jewish lobby," and that her critics are taking it out of context. This is another lie: in context, she wrote, "America and Europe, subjugated by both the Jewish lobby and the guilt for the Holocaust, remain on the sidelines and continue to condemn the oppressed - the Palestinians - who defend themselves with the only means they have..."

She is saying that Europe is "subjugated" by guilt for the Holocaust in the same breath that America is "subjugated" by the "Jewish lobby." She is saying that America and Europe are both beholden to not upsetting Jews. In context, it is very obvious that her "Jewish lobby" comment refers to Jews, not AIPAC, or else the Europe part of the sentence makes no sense.

But let's pretend that Albanese really meant "Israel Lobby," not "Jewish Lobby." It is still antisemitic - even according to these "scholars!"

You see, many of the same "scholars" who signed this letter also signed the  Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, which is meant as an anti-Zionst alternative to the IHRA Working Definition. Aleida Assmann, Leora Auslander, Angelika Bammer, Omer Bartov, Peter Beinart, Michael Berkowitz, Daniel Boyarin, Jose Brunner, Stephen Clingman, Raya Cohen, Alon Confino, all signed  both - and that is only through "C." There is a very large overlap between the signatories to this statement and the JDA.

Now, what does the Jerusalem Declaration say about examples of speech about Israel "that, on the face of it, are antisemitic"?  The first one is, "Applying the symbols, images and negative stereotypes of classical antisemitism (see guidelines 2 and 3) to the State of Israel."

Guideline 2 says, "What is particular in classic antisemitism is the idea that Jews are linked to the forces of evil. This stands at the core of many anti-Jewish fantasies, such as the idea of a Jewish conspiracy in which “the Jews” possess hidden power that they use to promote their own collective agenda at the expense of other people. This linkage between Jews and evil continues in the present: in the fantasy that “the Jews” control governments with a “hidden hand,”... 

Albanese is saying that Jews/Israelis have power over both the US and Europe, power that she is exposing in her letter. Note that she didn't say that the US and Europe are "influenced"  (as the statement claims) or even "pressured" by the Lobby - she says that they are subjugated. That means that Jews/"Zionists" control the US and Europe

Even dedicated anti-Zionists are on the record as saying that this is antisemitic - including many of the people who signed this statement!

These hypocritical scholars are ignoring their own definition of antisemitism in their zeal to exonerate Albanese.

Ironically, the JDA was written to allow people to freely attack (and boycott) Israel without being called antisemitic, but Albanese even crossed their own extraordinarily high bar for when attacking Israel is considered antisemitic.  

They themselves are guilty of what they accuse Albanese's critics of: "this amounts to political abuse of antisemitism, which fundamentally harms the urgent and important fight against antisemitism."

Which shows the level of integrity of the anti-Israel crowd: Exactly zero.

(h/t GnasherJew)




Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Thursday, July 28, 2022









Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Monday, July 25, 2022

The Israel Lobby is in the news again, as left-wing media has become obsessed with AIPAC's spending to promote pro-Israel candidates for Congress.

Rep. Andy Levin is a scion of a powerhouse Michigan political family. His father Sander was a member of Congress for 36 years and was twice the Democratic candidate for governor of Michigan. His uncle Carl Levin was a powerful senator for Michigan for 36 years as well. 

He is one powerful Jew.

Yet he is portraying himself as a victim of the evil, all powerful, Israel lobby, whining on MSNBC that "AIPAC can't stand the idea that I am the strongest Jewish voice in Congress standing for... human rights for the Palestinian people." He's saying this behind a graphic warning about "DC's Dark Money."


Left unsaid, of course, is that Levin introduced a bill to consider the Jewish Quarter, the Western Wall and all the Jewish holy spots in Jerusalem as "occupied Palestinian territory." The bill has no other sponsors and has garnered zero support from his fellow members of Congress, proving that Levin's ideas are an outlier and his ideas are extreme. AIPAC isn't opposing him because he is pro-Palestinian - they are opposing him because he wants to rip Jerusalem away from the Jewish state, something no "pro-Israel" politician would ever demand.

AIPAC's new PAC is indeed spending millions - $22 million so far this election cycle, more of it to promote pro-Israel candidates than to oppose anti-Israel candidates. This is only about 4% of all outside spending for this election cycle. It is virtually the same amount spent by the Protect Our Future liberal SuperPAC

But only AIPAC is being singled out for doing what every single other political lobby does by definition - spend money to influence the government. 

If you look at the major lobbyists in Washington, AIPAC and its UDP SuperPAC are powerful but hardly unique. The media attention given to them is definitely unique. Because the meme of powerful Jews controlling who gets elected is as irresistible to modern antisemites as it is to classic antisemites. 

Also interesting is what doesn't get reported. 

The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) requires any country that spends money to influence Americans politically (or even to encourage tourism) to report how much it is spending. 

In 2018, the State of Israel was the top spender of any government, spending $35 million directly in the US according to FARA filings with another $15 million from the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency for Israel.

That number has plummeted to practically nothing - $16 million in 2019, $2 million in 2020, $600,000 in 2021 and a mere $263,000 so far this year from the government of Israel.

The literal Israel lobby spending has gone practically to zero. But the media won't report that, because it doesn't fit the narrative of Israel controlling the US. 

Now, how much do you hear about how much these countries spend to influence US policies last year?

Country2021 Spending
China$84,376,408
Qatar$46,687,439
Japan$46,426,178
Russia$36,657,417
South Korea$33,694,710
United Arab Emirates$31,544,866
Marshall Islands$30,032,779
Liberia$29,868,477
Canada$26,721,869
Saudi Arabia$25,006,629


The obsession we are seeing with the Israel lobby cannot be explained by its actual influence. It can only be explained by wanting to convince people that powerful Jews are controlling American politics. 

There's a name for that.




Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Sunday, July 17, 2022

Last week, the New York Times wrote yet another article about how influential and powerful pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC is.


Notice that the headline doesn't say that AIPAC supports pro-Israel candidates - but tries to defeat candidates that don't pass their litmus test. This emphasis supports the idea of the group being a menace to good, honorable candidates who think for themselves.

To say that the New York Times is obsessed with AIPAC is an understatement. Earlier this year we saw:



Anti-AIPAC sentiment also was obvious throughout its fawning article this year on Rashida Tlaib, and the pro-Israel lobby was the subject of another article about local New York elections. 

The underlying but largely unspoken theme is how the Israel lobby is the Jewish lobby, as was made explicit in this 2019 article about Ilhan Omar's antisemitic statement that concentrated on whether she was correct, asking whether AIPAC was "too powerful," that featured this photo of an AIPAC activist praying:


According to OpenSecrets, AIPAC is number 5 in spending money among ideology/ single issue groups in the 2022 election cycle:




#1, spending far more than AIPAC, is the Fund for Policy Reform. You probably haven't heard of it because it has only been mentioned once in the New York Times, in the last paragraph of a 2015 article about Bill DeBlasio's consultants - not even about lobbying. 

That fund, which spent $75 million in 2020, is a George Soros organization within his Open Society Foundations network, with a definite political bias towards far Left causes.

That money being spent to influence elections, which dwarfs the Israel lobby, gets literally no coverage in the New York Times.

Similarly, Majority Forward, another pro-Democrat lobbying group, is only mentioned once this past year, as an aside in an article about Latino voters in Nevada.

The New York Times is insinuating that the pro-Israel lobby has inordinate and malicious influence over elections with their immense budgets - but it is almost completely silent on liberal lobby groups, more likely to be anti-Israel, who spend far more on their lobbying.

Rarely has bias been so obvious as with how the New York Times covers political lobbying.





Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

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