MuzzleWatch

A week after his visit to AIPAC, I am left wondering if it is possible for anyone other than Bibi Netanyahu to so beautifully embody the notion of “strutting victimization”. And yet, it’s not just Bibi who can taunt Israel’s primary sponsor, the United States, with plans for endless settlement expansion while simultaneously playing the powerless victim. (I’m sure my Israeli friends have much to say on this phenomenon.) The people at Israel’s Reut Institute have also mastered this unpleasant juxtaposition of aggression and powerlessness.

As Carol Sanders put it so beautifully in The Only Democracy?:

Reut Institute, a leading Israeli national security and socioeconomic policy think tank, has released its preliminary report on “The Delegitimization Challenge:  Creating a Political Firewall” In an extraordinary exercise in doublethink, Reut scratches its head over Israel’s declining diplomatic status in the aftermath of its assault on Gaza and the Goldstone Report,  and concludes that,  yet again, it is the victim.

Among its key victimizers, and therefore targets? Human rights and peace organizations.

One of the Reut Institute report co-authors, a man named Eran Shayshon, probably had his dream come true when he picked a fight with journalist and activist Naomi Klein which we covered here on Muzzlewatch. Shayshon demonstrated one of the paper’s recommended attack techniques by going on Canada’s top radio show to make claims about what he’s certain Klein wants, in spite of her actual record of statements. But she fought back.

Now he’s taking it to the pages of Ha’aretz. It’s hard to know if Shayshon believes what he says, or if his lines are being fed to him by a Hasbara-Message-Scrambler which randomly spits out favorite Hasbara attack cliches. Keep in mind these fun tidbits about the report itself before we get into Shayshon’s attempt to regain his dignity by first dismissing Klein but then going on to write about her in-depth, and even attempting to introduce a new word into the lexicon, “Kleinism.” The Reut Report:

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Omar Barghouti got a “No thank you” response from the San Francisco area Jewish Community Relations Council head Rabbi Doug Kahn, the key author of recent McCarthyite Federation funding guidelines, but he did finally get his BDS debate– with well-known peacenik Rabbi Arthur Waskow–on Democracy Now. Meanwhile, here’s Barghouti’s Open Letter from Kabobfest:

by Omar Barghouti, a leader of the international movement to boycott Israel

Open Letter to Rabbi Doug Kahn

Executive Director of the Jewish Community Relations Council

It has recently come to my attention that pending the advice of a working group of which you were a member, the Jewish Community Federation has chosen to itself boycott groups advocating a Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) program targeting Israel. As one of the founding members of the global BDS campaign, I cannot but note the irony of your use of boycott as a tool to suppress views that support the boycott against Israel. I can only conclude that you do approve of the efficacy and appropriateness of boycotts, as a non-violent form of activism and a catalyst for change, but condemn them when the change they set out to achieve is related to ending Israel’s occupation as well as its grave violations of international law and Palestinian rights.

For years, Palestinian civil society has been advocating the tool of boycotts, divestment and sanctions, or BDS, as a means of challenging Israel’s impunity and redressing the wrongs done to the Palestinian people by the violent and oppressive Israeli policies and actions. Wouldn’t you agree, given you in-principle embrace of boycotts, that this effective, non-violent form of struggle is far superior, morally speaking, to the “tactics” of white phosphorous, Walls, siege, forced displacement and apartheid?

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A note from Muzzlewatch editor Cecilie Surasky

Hey friends, we rarely ask you for donations to support our work-but I’m going to ask you now. It takes a lot of hard work from a crew of great folks to maintain a blog like this. It costs money to report from the UN Conference Against Racism in Geneva (aka Durban II) or the J Street conference in Washington DC. It takes time to read news reports.

Donate here.

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Decades of determined silence, or aiding and abetting both illegal settlement expansion and vicious attacks on dissenting critics of Israeli state policy have created a kind of “blowback” in the institutional Jewish world.

The new targets of the settlers’ linguistic paramilitary forces, aka the rightwing pro-Israel punditocracy and their followers, aren’t just the usual suspects like Jimmy Carter or Archbishop Tutu. They’re now mainstream, moderate, demonstrably Israel-loving institutional Jews. This is a moment of truth for many of these targets. Faced with new pressure from their right-wing flank, some will fold and adapt to a more McCarthyite environment, especially if loss of funding is threatened. Others will stand strong and even be radicalized.

So, who are the new targets of occupation-supporters like Caroline Glick (Whither American Jewry?) and Isi Liebler (Candidly Speaking: Marginalize the renegades) of the Jerusalem Post and Walter Bingham (Expose the Renegades) in Arutz Sheva? For starters, there’s former Jewish Council for Public Affairs director Hannah Rosenthal, whose principled concern for the Jewish community and  for Israel is undeniable. She is the newly appointed head of the US Office to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism:

Shortly after the announcement of Rosenthal’s nomination, conservative Jewish web sites began to attack her, some of them declaring that Obama appointed an anti-Israeli to fight anti-Semitism. Rumors brewed that she had accused Israel of systemically strengthening anti-Semitism. Bloggers argued that her appointment would cause Jews and Israelis to cast doubt on Obama and his relationship with Israel.

Then there’s the the popular San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, known for its diverse approach to programming, and the Jewish Federation in San Francisco, which (lightly) funds the Festival. Not used to getting hate mail from Jews, and being called anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli, the Federation has been under tremendous pressure to cave in to calls for excessively McCarthyite control over funding recipients; the Film Festival has already lost tens of thousands of dollars and half its board, with no sign of the campaign dying any time soon.

The Federation board wisely said no to an absurd proposal to bar partnerships with any individuals or groups who “defame Israel” (good luck defining that), but they did support a resolution passed by the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America barring partnerships with groups that support Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions.

(Presumably, Time’s Joe Klein, who recently came out in support of a suspension of aid as a way to get the Israelis to actually freeze settlements, could still speak at a Federation-supported venue. Jewish Voice for Peace, however, which promotes selective divestment and sanctions as a way to end Israel’s occupation, would continue to get no funds or support from the Federation. In fact, the Federation would be duty-bound to oppose JVP, according to the resolution. As more mainstream Jewish groups openly advocate against support for 501c3s that support extremist settlers, it’s not clear how this resolution will play out.) Of course, there is the unprecedented smear campaign against Richard Goldstone, including coordinated condemnation of his report in Conservative synagogues across America, and yet he has continued to hold strong and defend his work with tremendous integrity. And then, there are the ongoing attacks on the new moderate AIPAC alternative, J Street, which puts forth an agenda not entirely different from what Netanyahu himself at least says he wants - two states that preserve as they call it, “a Jewish democracy”. Finally, there is the very surprising Glenn Beck (pictured above) attack on the Anti-Defamation League for their new report “Rage Grows in America: Anti-Government Conspiracies,” which calls out Beck in particular in a wide-ranging condemnation of hate-mongers. Surprising because the ADL can typically be counted on to overlook hate-mongering and Holocaust-abuse in the service of a rightwing “pro-Israel” agenda, but in this case has done the right thing in identifying this truly scary trend for which Beck has become the figurehead. As MJ Rosenberg writes in his new column at Media Matters

:

Glenn Beck is, not surprisingly, in a state of rage about the ADL report. He defends himself by asking the ADL to “name the person who has been more friendly to Israel” (the predictable defense). This, of course, is utterly irrelevant.  The issue here is not Israel but the United States.  It is here where Beck spreads his hate, not Israel. And then Beck turns on the ADL itself.  Beck said that the Anti-Defamation League itself has “much to do with the plight of the Jewish people.”  I don’t know what plight Beck is referring to, perhaps the Holocaust which so often pops into his head and out of his mouth.  But, obviously, the ADL fought for the victims of the Holocaust, not its perpetrators.  The Holocaust was the product of professional hate mongers, the mob who listened to them, and politicians who came to power on their backs. That is precisely the combination the ADL is worried about now.

It’s tempting to sit back and say, “I told you so.” As Israel is learning all too well regarding increasing numbers of intransigent settlers  and religious fanatics who profess open contempt for their own country, you can’t help create a monster and then expect it not to try to devour you. But one hopes that all of the targets of these nasty charges will a) put into perspective the war of words versus the war of lives and homes being waged, for example, in Sheikh Jarakh in East Jerusalem right now and that b) they’ll resist efforts at intimidation precisely because Jews who love Israel should care about the rights of  Palestinian Israelis getting evicted from Sheikh Jarakh, as well as the rights of their peace-loving Jewish neighbors. There is only one logical conclusion after reading Rabbi Arik Ascherman’s moving and terrifying account of what’s happening in East Jerusalem:  justice for Palestinians is justice, and peace, for Jews. Supporting the ongoing evictions and terrorization of Palestinians is the last way in the world to show love of Israel.

-Cecilie Surasky

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The words of condemnation against Ben Gurion University’s President, Prof. Rivka Carmi, for her incendiary attack against Dr. Neve Gordon continue to pour in. You may recall that in response to the op-ed he printed in the Los Angeles Times endorsing boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel, Prof. Carmi issued the following statement,

“We are shocked and outraged by his remarks, which are both irresponsible and morally reprehensible. We strongly disassociate BGU from Gordon’s destructive views that abuse the freedom of speech prevailing in Israel and at BGU.”

She added that,

BGU is a Zionist institution that is fulfilling David Ben-Gurion’s vision on a daily basis, promoting the development of the Negev and Israel and reiterated its commitment to advancing research and activities that benefit all of the residents of the region. This kind of Israel-bashing detracts from the wonderful work that is being done at BGU and at all Israeli universities. Academics who entertain such resentment towards their country are welcome to consider another professional and personal home.”

In a period of 48 hours, Prof. Carmi received over 4,000 emails of protest.

Over 180 Israeli professors — many from BGU — have signed a petition in defense of Dr. Gordon.
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Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League is urging Michigan State University and the University of North Carolina to deny Nobel Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu a spot at the podium:

“Desmond Tutu is a poor choice for commencement speaker. His statements about Israel have time and again conveyed outright bigotry against the Jewish homeland and the Jewish people, and his deepening involvement in the anti-Israel boycott effort should have raised a red flag. This is not someone to be held up as a model or awarded an honorary degree, given his history of bombastic rhetoric and unceasing support for the anti-Israel boycott effort.”

Yes, the exact same Abe Foxman, who less than 2 years earlier, under pressure from national media coverage and Jewish Voice for Peace’s campaign, defended Tutu’s right to speak at a university.

NEW YORK (JTA) – The Anti-Defamation League is urging the president of a Minnesota university to invite Archbishop Desmond Tutu to speak just days after it was revealed that he had been disinvited because of fears he might offend Jews.

Tutu had been slated to visit the University of St. Thomas next spring as part of a program that brings Nobel laureates to teach youth about peace and justice. But university administrators, after consulting with Minnesota Jewish leaders, concluded that Tutu has made hurtful comments about Israel and the Jewish people that rendered him inappropriate as a speaker.

“Tutu has certainly been an outspoken, sometimes very harsh critic of Israel and Israeli policies, and has sometimes also used examples which may cross the line,” said Abraham Foxman, the ADL’s national director. But, he added, Tutu “certainly is not an anti-Semite and should not be so characterized and therefore refused a platform.”

And the difference, Abe, would be???

The good news? Two years ago, the Minnesota university banned Tutu, but then reversed the decision under immense pressure. This time, both Michigan and North Carolina have told the ADL, “thanks but no thanks. Tutu is our man.” It’s a good time to revisit South African journalist Tony Karon’s piece, My Favorite ‘Anti-Semite’.

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In the immediate aftermath of Chas Freeman’s decision to step down from consideration as top intelligence analyst, there is a lot of finger-pointing about who is to blame.

There is no doubt that there was a campaign led by former AIPAC operative Steve Rosen to discredit Freeman because of reasonable statements he has made about Israel and US foreign policy.  Rosen is a man, mind you, soon going to trial for spying. In fact, Max Blumenthal’s excellent piece on Rosen’s bullying tactics uncovered this juicy tidbit:

The one-time power broker suddenly became persona non grata on Capitol Hill. In 2007, Rosen announced a new mission to The Forward’s Nathan Guttman: avenging “the strong anti-Israel sentiment among individuals in America’s intelligence community, which he believes is what led to the investigation against him in the first place.”

Blumenthal also looked under the rock to find this other AIPAC tie to the campaign:

Spencer Ackerman, a national-security reporter for the Washington Independent, first reported the rumors. “Reporter friends of mine have told me that AIPAC has been shopping oppo research on Freeman around,” Ackerman wrote on March 5.

Writers like The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, The New Republic’s Marty Peretz, Rich Lowery at The National Review and The Weekly Standard’s Michael Goldfarb, happily joined in and within minutes, the anti-Freeman chorus was singing in tune.

But it is also true that the campaign against him started gaining ground in Congress when additional concerns surfaced regarding his financial relationships with Saudi Arabia and China. Despite Freeman’s statement to the contrary, many will insist to the bitter end that he was taken down, not by his Israel politics, but by these other concerns:

“This was not about Israel, it was about a revolving door through which Freeman rotated and was paid handsomely,” said Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), after Freeman withdrew his name from consideration on Tuesday. The New York congressman was referring to the idea of the former ambassador to Saudi Arabia going from serving the U.S. government, to being paid by foreign governments and then returning to government service.

“There was a steady revelation of financial conflicts of interest involving foreign powers that were troubling,” said Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), who along with Israel, led the opposition in Congress. “If it had simply been a dispute about Middle East policy, he would have survived.”

But the reasoning is false. And its untrue.  Somebody started the pile-on and as conservative journalist Andrew Sullivan, Max Blumenthal and others have identified, it’s clear who it was. Not people concerned about financial ties of public servants, or as MJ Rosenberg points out, people who give 2 cents about human rights, but rather those concerned with protecting the terrible status quo of unconditional US support for Israel–even when Israel shoots itself and everyone else in the foot time and time again. Others may, thankfully, have authentic concerns about human rights in China and Saudi Arabia, but they did not create this campaign.

Further, Freeman himself blamed the Israel Lobby in no uncertain terms, which means that he stepped down, clearly devastated by the personal attacks and smears about his relationship to Israel, exactly as he was meant to. This is the goal of intimidation through these full throttle attacks- just ask Jimmy Carter, or Archbishop Tutu or Bill Moyers for heaven’s sake. Even if a former Nobel-prize winning president can survive the onslaught, as painful as it has personally been for Carter, the lesson to the rest of us is clear. Don’t even try.

From Freeman’s statement:

The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth. The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors.”

This has been a litmus test to see if a new order of reality-based policymakers has once and for all moved back to DC after the last very long exile. The answer, for the time being, isn’t very pretty. It’s not just the Palestinians who are the most obvious losers. It’s certainly the US, but also Israel.

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Jeff Halper has been one of the foremost voices against Israeli destruction of Palestinian homes, as well as being an astute commentator on the nuts and bolts of the US supported Israeli settler colonial project. While striving against terrible injustice committed against a mostly incarcerated people, he has acted with dignity and perseverance, not only on behalf of Palestinians but more generally on behalf of a just and stable peace in the region  -  a peace that would benefit people on both sides of the green line. His tireless efforts are a beacon of hope in very dark times. Unfortunately, it comes as no surprise that a mainstream Canadian Jewish group (similar to the JCRC) effectively censored a scheduled talk with no reason except the seeming fear of hearing an alternative viewpoint. We have seen such censoring myriad times before, whether it is Desmond Tutu our own Joel Beinin.  A primary focus of muzzlewatch is to report on just such incidents. Implicitly, it is our hope that such efforts will help to expand the discussion, to push the envelope of what is considered acceptable debate about the middle east. The following article details the recent cancellation of a scheduled speech Jeff Halper was to give in Canada.

Tuesday, January 13, 2008

Independent Jewish Voices Montreal condemns political
censorship of Israeli peace activist Jeff Halper: calls on Gelber
Centre to allow Halper to address the Jewish community in
Montreal.

Israeli peace activist and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Jeff
Halper and Independent Jewish Voices Montreal (IJVM) will
hold a press conference at noon in front of the Gelber Centre,
to condemn the Federation Combined Jewish Appeal’s (FCJA)
last-minute cancellation of Halper’s public presentation to the
Jewish community at the Centre on January 15.   IJVM had
previously arranged and advertised Halper’s presentation,
“Peace in Israel? Peace with Gaza? Yes We Can.”  As
cause for the cancellation, the FCJA initially cited safety
concerns about hosting the Halper presentation at the same
time as an event of conservative group Amiti’s Quebec-Israel,
even though no threats were issued. Later, they said Amiti’s
Quebec-Israel simply objected to the presentation.

(more…)

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No matter one’s opinion about the nature of the illegal Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, there should be little controversy regarding the ability to discuss this situation on a University campus. Free speech is the life’s blood of any institution of higher learning (as it is of a functioning democracy). Apparently, there are instances when free speech can almost casually be set aside. Recently, at MacMaster University in Canada, the phrase “Israeli Apartheid” was banned from being used on campus. This decisions was made by the Provost office and endorsed (and enforced) by the student Union. The reasons for this are, unsurprisingly, weak. Further, such rabble rousers as noble prize winners Jimmy Carter and Bishop Desmund Tutu have used this phrase recently to describe the conditions Palestinians live under in the west bank. The following is from a MacMaster student group press release.
UNITED FOR STUDENT RIGHTS (U4SR) PRESENTS

A Public Forum

Rights & Responsibilities in Political Discussion on Campus:
Who Speaks for McMaster?

Thursday, February 28, 2008 at 12:00pm
Details to be determined

United for Student Rights (U4SR) is holding a Public Forum to discuss
the recent shocking decision by McMaster Student Union (MSU) and
administration to unequivocally ban on campus the usage of the phrase
“Israeli Apartheid”. This decision was first passed by the McMaster
Provost office, which is second in authority only to that of the
President’s office. It has been accepted by McMaster Human Rights &
Equity Services (HRES) and, in turn, the MSU. This information was
communicated to Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) and
McMaster Muslims for Peace & Justice (MMPJ) early in February 2008 by
the MSU and HRES. Due to this decision, these MSU approved clubs have
not been able to get approval for various initiatives related to Israeli
Apartheid. It is the MSU that is directly enforcing this decision, as it
is the only campus body with jurisdiction over student clubs. MSU
President, Ryan Moran, explained that though the MSU is not bound by
this decision, i! t has chosen to implement it none the less. U4SR is
calling on the MSU to rescind this decision immediately as part of
opening up the discussion for all to decide.

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To our many email and RSS feed subscribers and readers:

As I write this, it is barely 24 hours until New Years Eve. For those of you who deduct your taxes, that means you still have time to decide how much of your income can go to a project you believe in.

Here are 5 reasons to donate now to Muzzlewatch.

1) We’ve been running this website for just about a year now, and we’ve never ever asked you for one penny, even though running the site and researching and writing stories takes literally hundreds of hours.

2) Muzzlewatch has been successful beyond our wildest dreams. We’ve broken important stories in the mainstream press, have been covered on international radio and in numerous news outlets including the Forward, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, San Jose Mercury News, the UK Guardian, Fort Worth Star-Telegram and more. We’ve been linked to from major sites like Crooks and Liars, Buzzfeed, Alternet, Juan Cole’s Informed Consent, Talking Points Memo Cafe, Daily Kos, Huffington Post, The Washington Post’s Bookworld Live and many more. Academics, activists and journalists use us as a research resource.

Click here to donate now: http://tinyurl.com/ynmecl

3) Muzzlewatch has won support and derision from key players across the map. We were nominated in 3 categories for best new Jewish blog, and have won kudos from people across the ideological spectrum. (Of course, I’m also, it turns out, a finalist for Self Hating Jew of 2007…And no, we didn’t pay the folks running the contest to make our point about the charges of anti-Semitism or self-hatred that await critics of Israeli human rights violations.)

4) We dealt a significant body blow to the forces of censorship when we led the global campaign to reverse the University of St Thomas’s decision to bar Desmond Tutu from speaking on campus. Only AFTER the president of the university received thousands of letters from around the world that Muzzlewatch/Jewish Voice for Peace generated; only after the issue received global media attention after we spent hours pushing the story to progressive bloggers, religion reporters, op-ed editors and the international media; only after the Jewish Telegraphic Agency printed an expose of the false quote attributed to Tutu that compared Israel to Hitler– based on our media advocacy; only after the Minneapolis Star Tribune printed an op-ed we wrote condemning the University of St Thomas’ decision and clearing Tutu of false charges; only after Abe Foxman, following international coverage of our campaign and increased criticism of the decision, took our lead and came out in favor of letting Tutu speak, did the University’s president reverse his decision.

5) We realize what an important tool Muzzlewatch has become in light of the ongoing assaults against academic and artistic freedom, media independence, Muslims and Arab Americans and progressive Jews and more… so we have big plans to turn this into a much stronger (and prettier) tool this coming year, with plans to bring on new editors and integrate activism tools. We want to repeat the successful campaign in support of Tutu, on behalf of academics fighting for tenure, institutions fighting for the right of religious expression, artists fighting to tell their story and more.

All of this means time and money. Please give generously if you believe in this work. (And thank you to those of you who have already given so generously to Jewish Voice for Peace.)

Go to this Jewish Voice for Peace page and Donate now to Muzzlewatch.

To a year of new beginnings.

Cecilie Surasky
Jewish Voice for Peace

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