As Israel’s genocide in Gaza, land theft in West Bank and violence across the region grows, supporters turn to evermore more distant Nazi crimes to defend the indefensible. A recent issue of the Montreal Gazette highlights the city’s “Holocaust Industry”.

Across the top of the front of the April 23 paper there was a photo of a 98-year-old survivor of the Nazis next to concentration camp garb. The article headlined “Antisemitism begins with Jews, it doesn’t end with Jews, Cotler says” promoted Federation Combined Jewish Appeal’s (CJA) “Remembrance to Celebration” campaign, which also marks Israel’s Memorial Day and Israel’s Independence Day. Ostensibly about Nazi crimes, the article largely quoted leading Zionist Irwin Cotler justifying Israeli brutality. The initiator of Canada’s Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism was quoted saying, “We’re also in the shadow and continuing pain of the unspeakable mass atrocities of Oct. 7, perpetrated, as you know, by a terrorist organization, Hamas, under Canadian law, but (also) an antisemitic genocidal terrorist group, not because I say so, but because Hamas has said so in its founding charter of 1988. And since Oct. 7, Hamas has committed itself — and I’m quoting them again — to commit Oct. 7 again and again and again until Israel’s annihilation… Iran is the sleeper, the elephant in the antisemitic room, where Iran is not only a leading state sponsor of international terrorism, including that of Hamas and Hezbollah, not only a leading exporter of transnational repression and assassination targeting Jews, but where Iran itself is a leading architect of what has come to be known — and I first called it as such 25 years ago — genocidal antisemitism.”

On the opinion page of that day’s paper the communications director of the Montreal Holocaust Museum (MHM) complained about groups backing away from partnerships with the museum amidst Israel’s horrors. In the wildly contradictory “Anti­semit­ism, loss of ally­ship are con­nec­ted” Sarah Fogg noted, “Holocaust museums do not have to pass a litmus test on the Middle East to do their crucial work… If a Holocaust museum’s commemoration inspires individuals to publicly question where its Gaza exhibit is, this demonstration of solidarity with Palestinian civilians is clouded by an antisemitic trope. For the record, it is valid and perfectly reasonable for Canadian Jews to care about Israel, worry about the hostages and to define as Zionists, meaning they support the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in their ancestral land.”

Two days later the Gazette reported on the MHM/CJA holocaust event. The story included a photo of an old man holding a sign saying “We will not be silent” above Israeli and Canadian flags. The caption read, “Holocaust survivor Andrew Fuchs, 89, attended a solemn Yom HaShoah event at the Montreal Holocaust Museum on Wednesday.”

The story quoted Cotler, Anthony Housefather, Neil Oberman and MHM president Jacques Saada, who compared Palestinians to Nazis. “One of the phrases we use is ‘never again,’” Saada told the crowd. “Unfortunately, on Oct. 7, 2023, it was the Holocaust all over again.”

Over the past year and a half Saada has repeatedly used Holocaust commemoration events to promote Israel’s genocide. In a speech to the Montreal Mayor’s Holocaust Remembrance Ceremony last year Saada declared: “We live in an upside down world…. A world where women sing the praises of Hamas, while it wants to enslave them. A world where members of the LGBTQ communities sing the praises of Hamas, while in Gaza it sentences them to death. … All this is also happening in the streets and on the campuses of Montreal. A world where university professors treat their Jewish students as prostitutes.”

Over the past eighteen months Saada has opposed a ceasefire in Gaza and has attended Israel rallies and events. When South Africa brought a case against Israel’s genocide to the International Court of Justice, Saada signed a message on behalf of the MHM labeling the legal effort a “revolting accusation” akin to “the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” Saada claimed, “The current war is the result of a pogrom deliberately carried out by Hamas against Israeli civilians. This pogrom directly meets the definition of genocide. Hamas makes no secret of its intent, its genocidal goals, even in its charter.”

After over 10,000 Palestinians had been killed in the latest round of Israeli barbarism directed at the besieged coastal strip, MHM released their position “on the continuing conflict in Israel”. The November 15 statement noted: “We have seen the worst terrorist attack committed against the Jewish people since the Holocaust, an escalating war in a place that many of us call a second home, images of extreme violence, the proliferation of hate propaganda, and the terrorizing of Jews around the world. We share the pain of the Israeli and Palestinian families, equally victimized by the cruelty of Hamas. We are heartbroken thinking of the innocent hostages being held by these ISIS emulators, and we pray for their immediate release back to the loving arms of their Israeli families.”

The MHM works with the English Montreal School Board (EMSB) to promote its Holocaust Education Program. They and other pro-Israel forces convinced the EMSB to make holocaust education mandatory. As part of the EMSB’s holocaust education program prominent Nazi hunter Steven Rambam told Westmount high school students in January 2023 that people say “Israel is a terrible country, [that] they’re abusing the Palestinians – which is a bunch of crap. I lived in Israel. Trust me they’re doing everything but abusing the Palestinians.”

EMSB’s holocaust education program was set up in conjunction with the Azrieli Foundation. The Azrieli Foundation has also been a major financier of the MHM and the lead private donor for its $120 million move and upgrade to a large new centrally located facility. (Federal, municipal and provincial governments have given tens of millions of dollars in grants — while subsidizing tens of millions of dollars more through donations to charities — to the MHM expansion.)

Worth more than $3 billion prior to his death, David Azrieli served in the paramilitary Haganah group during the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948. His unit was responsible for the Battle of Jerusalem, including forcibly displacing 10,000 Palestinians. A Montrealer who also owned property in Israel, Azrieli paid for an amphitheatre to be built in the occupied Golan Heights to commemorate his Haganah brigade and made a controversial donation to Im Tirtzu, which an Israeli court deemed a “fascist” group. In 2011 Azrieli gave Concordia University $5 million to establish the first minor in Israel Studies at a Canadian university. After attending an Association for Israel Studies’ conference organized by the Azrieli Institute, prominent anti-Palestinian activist Gerald Steinberg described the institute as part of a “counterattack” against pro-Palestinian activism at Concordia.

The MHM has many ties to Montreal’s main apartheid and genocide lobby organizations. The museum lists Federation CJA as its “Beneficiary” and has co-sponsored initiatives with B’nai Brith, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs and other anti-Palestinian groups.

Interestingly, the use and abuse of holocaust remembrance dates back primarily to 1967, not to the time Nazis were in power or once the death camps were liberated. Finkelstein shows how discussion of the Nazi Holocaust grew exponentially after the June 1967 Six Day war. Prior to that war, which provided a decisive service to US geopolitical aims in the Middle East, the genocide of European Jewry was a topic largely relegated to private forums and among left wing intellectuals. Paralleling the US, the Nazi Holocaust was not widely discussed in Canada in the two decades after World War II. In fact, the Canadian Jewish Congress consciously avoided the subject.

Numerous other commentators also trace the established Jewish community’s interest in Nazi crimes to the Six Day War. “The 1967 war,” explained Professor Cyril Leavitt, “alarmed Canadian Jews. Increasingly, the Holocaust was invoked as a reminder of the need to support the Jewish state.” President of the Vancouver Jewish Community Centre, Sam Rothstein concurred. “The 1967 war … was the one development that led to a commitment by community organizations to become more involved in Holocaust commemoration. … Stephen Cummings, the founder of the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Center, said that ‘consciousness [of the Holocaust] has changed. Jews are much more proud, and that’s a post-1967 [phenomenon]. It was the event that gave Jews around the world confidence.’”

Holocaust memorials proliferated after Israel smashed Egyptian-led pan-Arabism in six days of fighting. Nearly three decades after World War II, in 1972, the Canadian Jewish Congress and its local federations began to establish standing committees on the Nazi Holocaust. The first Canadian Holocaust memorial was established in Montreal in 1977.

Over the past 50 years a slew of holocaust museums and monuments have been established across the country. Canada now has a Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism and many institutions and governments have adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) anti-Palestinian definition of antisemitism.

The lesson? Knowledge production and dissemination is not apolitical. Even if it makes many uncomfortable, it’s imperative to challenge a “holocaust industry” enabling genocide and apartheid.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Yves Engler.

SPECIAL REPORT: By Wendy Bacon and Yaakov Aharon

While Australia’s universities continue to repress pro-Palestine peace protests, they gave the green light to pro-Israel events earlier this month, sparking outrage from anti-war protesters over the hypocrisy.

Israeli lobby groups StandWithUs Australia (SWU) and Israel-IS organised a series of university events this week which featured Israel Defense Force (IDF) reservists who have served during the war in Gaza, two of whom lost family members in the Hamas resistance attack on October 7, 2023.

The events were promoted as “an immersive VR experience with an inspiring interfaith panel” discussing the importance of social cohesion, on and off campus.”

• READ MORE: Israeli activists infiltrate Labor Party in grassroots putsch to hit Greens
• Manufactured antisemitism. Universities relied on fudged numbers

Hundreds of staff and students at Monash, Sydney Uni, UNSW and UTS signed letters calling on their universities to “act swiftly to cancel the SWU event and make clear that organisations and individuals who worked with the Israel Defense Forces did not have a place on UNSW campuses.”

SWU is a global charity organisation which supports Israel and fights all conduct it perceives to be “antisemitic”. It campaigns against the United Nations and international NGOs’ findings against Israel and is currently supporting actions to suspend United States students supporting Palestine.

It established an office in Sydney in 2022 and Michael Gencher, who previously worked at the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, was appointed as CEO.

The event’s co-sponsor, Israel-IS, is a similar propaganda outfit whose mission is to “connect with people before they connect with ideas” particularly through “cutting edge technologies like VR and AI.”

Among their 18 staff, one employee’s role is “IDF coordinator’” while two employees serve as “heads of Influencer Academy”.

The events were a test for management at Monash, UTS, UNSW and USyd to see how far each would go in cooperating with the Israel lobby.

Some events cancelled
At Monash, an open letter criticising the event was circulated by staff and students. The event was then cancelled without explanation.

At UNSW, 51 staff and postgraduate students signed an open letter to vice-chancellor Atilla Brungs, calling for the event’s cancellation. It was signed on their behalf by Jessica Whyte, an associate professor of philosophy in arts and law and Noam Peleg, associate professor in the Faculty of Law and Justice.

Prior to the scheduled event, Michael West Media sent questions to UNSW. After the event was scheduled to occur, the university responded to MWM, informing us that it had not taken place.

As of today, two days after the event was scheduled, vice-chancellor Brungs has not responded to the letter.

UTS warning to students
The UTS branch of the Australasian Union of Jewish Students partnered with Israel-IS in organising the UTS event, in alignment with their core “pillars” of Zionism and activism. The student group seeks to “promote a positive image of Israel on campus” to achieve its vision of a world where Jewish students are committed to Israel.

UTS Students’ Association, Palestinian Youth Society and UTS Muslim Student Society wrote to management but deputy vice-chancellor Kylie Readman rejected pleas. She replied that the event’s organisers had guaranteed it would be “a small private event focused on minority Israeli perspectives” and that speakers would only speak in a personal capacity.

While acknowledging the conflict in the Middle East was stressful for many at UTS, she then warned students, “UTS has not received formal notification of any intent to protest, as is required under the campus policy. As such, I must advise that any protest activity planned for 2nd April will be unauthorised. I would urge you to encourage students not to participate in an unauthorised protest.”

Students who allegedly breach campus policies can face disciplinary proceedings that can lead to suspension.

UTS Student Association president Mia Campbell told MWM, “The warning given by UTS about protesting definitely felt intimidating and frightening to a number of students, including myself.

“Especially as a law student, misconduct allegations can affect your admission to the profession . . .  but with all other avenues of communication exhausted between us and the university, it felt like we didn’t have a choice.

I don’t want to look back on what I was doing during this genocide and have done any less than what was possible at the time.

Sombre, but quietly angry protest
The UTS protest was sombre but quietly angry. Speakers read from lists naming dead Palestinian children.

One speaker, who has lost 120 members of his extended family in Gaza, explained why he protested: “We have to be backed into a corner, told we can’t protest, told we can’t do anything. We’ve exhausted every single policy . . . Add to all that we are threatened with misconduct.”

Do you think we can stay silent while there are people on campus who may have played a part in the killings in Gaza?

SWU at University of Sydney
University of Sydney staff and students who signed an open letter received no reply before the event.

Activists from USyd staff in support of Palestine, Students Against War and Jews Against the Occupation ‘48 began protesting outside the Michael Spence building that houses the university’s senior executives on the Wednesday evening, April 2.

Escorted by UTS security, three SWU representatives arrived. A small group was admitted. Soon afterwards, the participants could be seen from below in the building’s meeting room.

A few protesters remained and booed the attendees as they left. These included Mark Leach, a far right Christian Zionist and founder of pro-Israeli group Never Again is Now. Later on X, he condemned the protesters and described Israel as a “multi-ethnic enclave of civilisation.”

Warning letters for students
Several student activists have received letters recently warning them about breaching the new USyd code of conduct regulating protests. USyd has also adopted a definition of anti-semitism which critics say could restrict criticism of Israel.

It has been slammed by the Jewish Council of Australia as “dangerous” and “unworkable”.

A Jews against Occupation ’48 speaker, Judith Treanor, said, “Welcoming this organisation makes a mockery of this university’s stated values of respect, non-harassment, and anti-racism.

“In the context of this university’s adoption of draconian measures to stifle freedom of expression in relation to Palestine, the decision to host this event promoting Israel reveals a shocking level of hypocrisy and a huge abuse of power.”

No stranger to USyd
Michael Gencher is no stranger to USyd. Since October 2023, he has opposed student encampments and street protests.

On one occasion, he visited the USyd protest student encampment in support of Palestine with Richard Kemp, a retired British army commander who tirelessly promotes the IDF. Kemp’s most recent X post congratulates Hungary for withdrawing from “the International Criminal Kangaroo Court. Other countries should reject this political court and follow suit.”

Kemp and Gencher filmed themselves attempting to interrogate students about their knowledge of conflict in the Middle East on May 21, 2024, but the students refused to be provoked and declined to engage.

In May 2024, Gercher helped organise a joint rally at USyd with Zionist Group Together with Israel, a partner of far-right group Australian Jewish Association. Extreme Zionist Ofir Birenbaum, who was recently exposed as covertly filming staff at an inner city cafe, Cairo Takeaway, helped organise the rally.

Students at the USyd encampment told MWM  that they experienced provocative behaviour towards them during the May rally.

Opposition to StandWithUs
Those who oppose the SWU campus events draw on international findings condemning Israel and its IDF, explained in similar letters to university leaders.

After the USyd event, those who signed a letter received a response from vice-chancellor Mark Scott.

He explained, “We host a broad range of activities that reflect different perspectives — we recognise our role as a place for debate and disagreeing well, which includes tolerance of varied opinions.”

His response ignored the concerns raised, which leaves this question: Why are organisations that reject all international and humanitarian legal findings, including ones of genocide and ethnic cleansing,

being made to feel ‘safe and welcome’ when their critics risk misconduct proceedings?

SWU CEO Michael Gencher went on the attack in the Jewish press:

“We’re seeing a coordinated attempt to intimidate universities into silencing Israeli voices simply because they don’t conform to a radical political narrative.” He accused the academics of spreading “provable lies, dangerous rhetoric, and blatant hypocrisy.”

SWU regards United Nations and other findings against Israel as false.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Photograph Source: Amy Nelson – CC BY 2.0

Israel’s renewed assault on Gaza comes several months after both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch issued reports concluding without equivocation that Israel was engaged in genocide. But very few members of Congress dare to acknowledge that reality, while their silence and denials scream out complicity.

In a New York Times interview last weekend, the Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer put deep moral evasion on display. Among the “slogans” that are used when criticizing Israel, he said, “The one that bothers me the most is genocide. Genocide is described as a country or some group tries to wipe out a whole race of people, a whole nationality of people. So, if Israel was not provoked and just invaded Gaza and shot at random Palestinians, Gazans, that would be genocide. That’s not what happened.”

Schumer is wrong. The international Genocide Convention defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” — with such actions as killing, “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,” and “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.”

Such actions by Israel have been accompanied by clear evidence of genocidal intent — underscored by hundreds of statements by Israeli leaders and policy shapers. Scarcely three months into the Israeli war on Gaza, scholars Raz Segal and Penny Green pointed out, a database compiled by the Law for Palestine human rights organization “meticulously documents and collates 500 statements that embody the Israeli state’s intention to commit genocide and incitement to genocide since October 7, 2023.”

Those statements “by people with command authority — state leaders, war cabinet ministers and senior army officers — and by other politicians, army officers, journalists and public figures reveal the widespread commitment in Israel to the genocidal destruction of Gaza.”

Since March 2, the United Nations reports, “Israeli authorities have halted the entry of all lifesaving supplies, including food, medicine, fuel and cooking gas, for 2.1 million people.” Now, Israel’s horrendous crusade to destroy Palestinian people in Gaza — using starvation as a weapon of war and inflicting massive bombardment on civilians — has resumed after a two-month ceasefire.

On Tuesday, children were among the more than 400 people killed by Israeli airstrikes, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proclaimed that “this is only the beginning.”

It’s almost impossible to find a Republican in Congress willing to criticize the pivotal U.S. backing for Israel’s methodical killing of civilians. It’s much easier to find GOP lawmakers who sound bloodthirsty.

A growing number of congressional Democrats — still way too few — have expressed opposition. In mid-November, 17 Senate Democrats and two independents voted against offensive arms sales to Israel. But in reality, precious few Democratic legislators really pushed to impede such weapons shipments until after last November’s election. Deference to President Biden was the norm as he actively enabled the genocide to continue.

This week, renewal of Israel’s systematic massacres of Palestinian civilians has hardly sparked a congressional outcry. Silence or platitudes have been the usual.

For “pro-Israel, pro-peace” J Street, the largest and most influential liberal Zionist organization in the United States, evasions have remained along with expressions of anguish. On Tuesday the group’s founder and president, Jeremy Ben-Ami, issued a statement decrying “the decision by Netanyahu to reignite this horrific war” and calling for use of “all possible leverage to pressure each side to restore the ceasefire.” But, as always, J Street did not call for the U.S. government to stop providing the weapons that make the horrific war possible.

That’s where genocide denial comes in. For J Street, as for members of Congress who’ve kept voting to enable the carnage with the massive U.S.-to-Israel weapons pipeline, support for that pipeline requires pretending that genocide isn’t really happening.

While writing an article for The Nation (“Has J Street Gone Along With Genocide?”), I combed through 132 news releases from J Street between early October 2023 and the start of the now-broken ceasefire in late January of this year. I found that on the subject of whether Israel was committing genocide, J Street “aligned itself completely with the position of the U.S. and Israeli governments.”

J Street still maintains the position that it took last May, when the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to halt its military offensive in Rafah. “J Street continues to reject the allegation of genocide in this case,” a news release said.

It would be untenable to publicly acknowledge the reality of Israeli genocide while continuing to support shipping more weaponry for the genocide. That’s why those who claim to be “pro-peace” while supporting more weapons for war must deny the reality of genocide in Gaza.

The post Why “Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace” Advocates Cling to Genocide Denial appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Norman Solomon.

In the Arab American-majority city of Dearborn, Michigan, Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris by over six percentage points, with third-party candidate Jill Stein capturing nearly one-fifth of the vote. During the primary elections, a majority of Democratic voters in Dearborn selected “uncommitted” over then-presumptive nominee Joe Biden, citing disapproval of the president’s handling of Israel’s aggression in the Middle East. “Uncommitted” voters continued to press the Harris campaign to shift its Israel policy as the election went on, but were routinely ignored. Democrats “made a calculation that they did not need Arab American, Muslim American and Palestinian American voters,” says Palestinian American organizer Linda Sarsour, who was in Dearborn on election night. We speak to Sarsour about the Harris campaign’s failure to secure the support of a previously key part of the Democratic base. “We are going to be in big trouble, and I blame that solely on the Democratic Party and one of the worst campaigns I have seen in my 23 years in organizing.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

“The human rights violations taking place in Gaza have long been at catastrophic levels. Despite knowing this, the UK still hasn’t suspended all transfers of arms to Israel. Stopping some arms isn’t enough, there should be no loopholes and no UK arms to Israel

“The International Court of Justice has warned of a plausible risk of genocide against Palestinians by the Israeli authorities. Continuing to allow some arms transfers is not in line with international legal standards and demonstrates a dire need for accountability in arms transfers.”

Our newly-elected MP John Cooper, a Conservative, replied with the sort of pro-Israel froth we’ve heard many times before from his party. Here are some of his remarks, which presumably represent the ‘party line’, and my own responses….

JC began by saying: “Israel suffered the worst terror attack in its history at the hands of Hamas, and Palestinian civilians continue to face a devastating humanitarian crisis in Gaza. My thoughts are with the families of those still held hostage.”

Stuart Littlewood: What Israel suffered on October 7 last year was nothing compared with the terror, illegal occupation and dispossession inflicted on Palestinian civilians by Israel’s brutal occupation forces for the last 76 years. In the 23 years leading up to October 7, Israelis were slaughtering Palestinians at the rate of 8:1 and children at the rate of 16:1. Actual figures: Palestinians killed by Israelis 10,651 including 2,270 children and 6,656 women; Israelis killed by Palestinians 1,330 including 145 children and 261 women (source: Israel’s B’Tselem).

You seem worried only for Israeli hostages held by Hamas rather than the 7,200 Palestinian hostages, including 88 women and 250 children, languishing in Israeli jails on the day before the attack. Over 1,200 were imprisoned under ‘administrative detention’ without charge or trial and denied ‘due process’.

Add the fact that Gaza had been under cruel military blockade for 17 years with Israel regularly “mowing the grass” (you surely know what that means), and October 7 was clearly a retaliation. Or do you think the Palestinians should have taken all that lying down?

JC: “I want to see the Gaza conflict brought to a sustainable end as quickly as possible…. Pauses can also help to create the conditions necessary to bring about a permanent and sustainable end to hostilities.”

SL: How would pauses bring about a permanent end to hostilities? Under international law the correct way to deal with the threat posed by Hamas is by requiring Israel to immediately end its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory and theft of Palestinian resources. Wouldn’t that be a more sensible way forward?

JC: “In the longer term, I continue to support a credible and irreversible pathway towards a two-state solution of Israel and Palestine.”

SL: The Israeli regime has said repeatedly that it will not permit or accept a Palestinian state.

The only credible pathway was mapped by international law decades ago but never followed because it doesn’t suit Western powers’ ambitions in the region. They prefer lopsided negotiations through dishonest brokers like the US (and unfortunately the UK). This ensures the problem drags on indefinitely while Israel continues annexing Palestinian land and creating irreversible ‘facts on the ground’.

There can be no peace without law and justice. Failure to understand that simple truth has brought us all to the present horrific crisis.

JC: “I support Israel’s right to defend itself, in line with international humanitarian law. Indeed, it is important that international humanitarian law be respected and civilians protected….”

SL: Indeed it is. But Israel has no claim to self-defence against a threat from the territory it belligerently occupies. That has been made perfectly clear by the UN and many other authorities. It’s the Palestinians who have a cast-iron right to self-defence, using “armed struggle” if necessary, against Israel’s illegal military occupation and murderous oppression (UN Resolutions 37/43 and 3246). As China reminded everyone at the ICJ, “armed resistance against occupation is enshrined in international law and is not terrorism”.

It does no good to keep saying that Israel must abide by international humanitarian law. Israel has no intention of doing so, and everyone knows it. Israel wants to dominate the Holy Land and has advertised its evil intent very clearly for a very long time. As is well documented, it was a criminal enterprise from the start.

JC: “The UK’s position, which I support, is clear and longstanding. There should be a negotiated settlement leading to a safe and secure Israel living alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state, based on 1967 borders with agreed land swaps, with Jerusalem as the shared capital of both states, and a fair and realistic settlement for refugees. The UK has consistently called – bilaterally and via the UN – for an immediate end to all actions that undermine the viability of the two-state solution.”

Longstanding is the word. So longstanding that you might ask why it hasn’t happened yet. It’s because Britain has played a leading part in blocking the two-state idea. We promised a Palestinian state back in 1915 in return for Arab help in defeating the Turks but repeatedly reneged on it – in 1917, in 1923, in 1948 – and continue to sidestep the issue. The UK position is anything but clear.

What would this “negotiated” two-state solution look like? Our Government can’t or won’t describe it. Why must Israel be “safe and secure” and Palestine only “viable”? One’s security is no more important than the other’s. The UK still stands in the way of Palestinian statehood while 140+ other nations have recognised it. At the same time the UK has done nothing to prevent Israel overstepping its 1947 UN Partition boundaries and seizing swathes of Palestinian land and key resources at gunpoint. And the UKGov (of both flavours) has been shamefully supportive of Israel’s year-long genocide and war of extermination which has sickened all decent-minded people.

In any case, why should Palestinians have to negotiate their freedom in their own homeland? Notice how keywords like law and justice are always missing in the UK’s position statements.

JC: “The Government’s decision to announce an arms embargo on the day that Israel was burying murdered hostages, and within weeks of British military personnel and arms defending Israel from Iranian attack, was difficult to swallow…. We must be clear that there is no moral equivalence between Hamas and the democratically elected Government of Israel.”

SL: Yes indeed, there is no moral equivalence. Hamas were democratically elected under the scrutiny of international observers at the last election permitted in Palestine (2006). Israel is no Western-style democracy with Western values — it is an unpleasant ethnocracy which recently enacted discriminatory nation state laws to prove it.

‘Think Hamas, think terror’ is what UKGov and mainstream media teach us. Branding Hamas a terrorist organisation was a propaganda masterstroke. It has allowed Zionists and other pro-Israel elements within our Government to avoid having to explain Israel’s far greater terror record, and instead focus hatred on Hamas (and now Hezbollah).

But the inescapable fact is, the Israelis wrote the manual on terrorism long before Hamas (and Hezbollah) came into being. Read their Dalet Plan, or ‘Plan D’. This was the Zionists’ blueprint for the violent and bloody takeover of the Palestinian homeland drawn up in early 1948 by the Jewish underground militia, the Haganah, at the behest of David Ben-Gurion, then boss of the Jewish Agency. Plan D anticipated the British mandate government’s withdrawal and the Zionists’ declaration of Israeli statehood, and plotted the ethnic cleansing that was to follow. They have pursued it relentlessly ever since.

You mention British military personnel and arms defending Israel from Iranian counter-attack. Why weren’t they defending Palestinian women and children from Israeli genocide?

JC: “For many years, the UK has been very clear that Settlements are illegal under international law, present an obstacle to peace and threaten the physical viability and delivery of a two-state solution. Settler violence and the demolition of Palestinian homes is intolerable, and I expect to see Ministers firmly raising these issues with the Israeli Government, and taking robust action where necessary.”

SL: Agreed. But it’s pointless merely “raising” these issues with the Israeli Government. Settlements have been key to Israel’s expansionist ambitions since 1967. Pointless also sanctioning settler organisations. Many of the settlers are racist thugs on a terror mission. You need to sanction the criminals who send them into Palestinian territory, pay them and arm them – and that’s the Israeli Government itself.

Respected legal opinion (Ralph Wilde) puts it this way:

“There is no right under international law to maintain the occupation pending a peace agreement, or for creating ‘facts on the ground’ that might give Israel advantages in relation to such an agreement, or as a means of coercing the Palestinian people into agreeing on a situation they would not accept otherwise.

“Implanting settlers in the hope of eventually acquiring territory is a violation of occupation law by Israel and a war crime on the part of the individuals involved. And it is a violation of Israel’s legal obligation to respect the sovereignty of another state and a violation of Israel’s legal obligation to respect the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people; also a violation of Israel’s obligations in the international law on the use of force. Ending these violations involves immediate removal of the settlers and the settlements from occupied land and an immediate end to Israel’s exercise of control, including its use of military force.…”

JC also mentioned: “the planned new Free Trade Agreement with Israel”.

SL: This is now is being championed by Jonathan Reynolds, the new Business Secretary. For him and the Starmer Government it’s business as usual with the apartheid regime while it conducts its non-stop genocide against the women and children of the Holy Land. No surprise there when you realise that Reynolds is a vice-chair of Labour Friends of Israel which, it seems to me, puts him in breach of the Government’s Ministerial Code and Principles of Public Life which (see ‘Integrity’) state: “Holders of public office must avoid placing themselves under any obligation to people or organisations that might try inappropriately to influence them in their work….. They must declare and resolve any interests and relationships.” Like all the other Israel stooges embedded in Westminster he doesn’t.

Question 1 – Why is the UK so head-over-heels in love with a depraved, criminal regime like Israel?

It is certainly not because we the British people share the Israelis’ moral values (although some in leadership positions at Westminster apparently do). The answer is probably to be found in America’s QME doctrine. In 2008 Congress enacted legislation requiring that US arms sales to any country in the Middle East other than Israel must not adversely affect Israel’s “qualitative military edge” (QME). This ensures the apartheid state always has the upper hand over it neighbours. It is central to US Middle East policy and guaranteed to keep the region at or near boiling point and ripe for exploitation.

The UK seems to have superglued itself to America’s cynical partnership with Israel for security reasons and in the hope of profiting from the misery and unrest, though it would never admit this. But the world, and especially the Middle East, is changing. Our track record out there is abysmal and we’re increasingly disliked.

Question 2 – Why prolong the UK’s century of betrayal by still not recognising Palestinian statehood?

Freedom and self-determination are a basic right which doesn’t depend on anyone else, such as the US-UK-Israel axis, agreeing to it. The UK thinks otherwise when we should be among the vast majority of nations that have already recognised Palestinian statehood. When 138 of the world’s states at the UN General Assembly voted in 2012 to re-designate Palestine’s status from ‘non-member Entity’ to ‘non-member State’, it had the legal effect of establishing statehood. But the UK and other Western influencers who are dragging their feet need to finally accept it before statehood become effective on the world stage.

UKGov recognised Israeli statehood quickly enough in 1949 after Zionist gangs carried out countless atrocities including massacres at the King David Hotel, Deir Yassin, Lydda and elsewhere, trashed 500 Palestinian towns and villages, drove 700,000 civilians out of their national homeland, and made clear Israel’s ambition to dominate the entire Holy Land “from the river to the sea”.

It’s time our political leaders understood that the British public don’t want to be tainted by defending and protecting a so-called ally that’s bent on genocide and the wanton destruction of another people’s homeland and heritage, and has been contemptuous of human rights and norms of decency for as long as most of us can remember.

Kind regards, etc.

Stuart Littlewood

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Stuart Littlewood.

Britain’s best-known Jewish newspaper has found itself thrust into the centre of an embarrassing and long-overdue storm over its involvement with the shadowy manoeuvrings of the pro-Israel lobby.

It raises questions about the degree to which parts of the British media are – inadvertently or otherwise – colluding in Israeli disinformation.

The 180-year-old Jewish Chronicle, or JC as it is now known, lost four of its big-name columnists on Sunday, after it was revealed that the paper had published a story based on a forged document concerning Israel’s war on Gaza. Jonathan Freedland, David Aaronovitch, Hadley Freeman and David Baddiel swiftly quit the paper.

The Chronicle, it emerged, had apparently failed to make the most rudimentary checks on Elon Perry, a mysterious British-based Israeli freelance journalist who has written nine stories for the paper since Israel’s war on Gaza began nearly a year ago. All have now been excised from its website.

Investigations by the Israeli media revealed that Perry’s CV, which included claims that he had been a professor at Tel Aviv University, a former elite Israeli commando and a longtime journalist, was a tissue of all-too-obvious lies. His only journalism appears to be the nine stories he published in the JC.

The Chronicle similarly failed to check before publication the veracity of his most recent article, which cited a Hamas document supposedly in the possession of Israeli intelligence. But the Israeli military says it has never seen such a document.

The forgery did, however, neatly bolster a narrative Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been desperate to build – one that allows him to avoid engaging in negotiations with Hamas that could end the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza. The International Court of Justice, the world’s highest court, has ruled Israel’s actions there to be a “plausible” genocide.

Netanyahu is under huge pressure – both from his own generals and from large sections of the Israeli public – to negotiate a ceasefire so that dozens of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza can be released. Their families have been leading ever-larger protests in Israel against the government.

‘Wild fabrication’

According to Perry’s report for the Chronicle, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was planning, under cover of negotiations, to smuggle himself, other Hamas leaders and Israeli hostages out of Gaza through its border with Egypt. They would then have been spirited away to Iran.

Happily for Netanyahu, the report closely echoed his own claims about Hamas’s intentions.

A few days after the JC’s article was published, his wife, Sara, reportedly met with the families of the hostages, citing the story as confirmation that Netanyahu could not compromise on his tough stance on negotiations.

But the credibility of the Chronicle’s story fell apart the moment it was subjected to the simplest scrutiny.

According to the Israeli media, Israeli intelligence and military sources described the story as a “wild fabrication” and “100 percent lies”. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military’s spokesperson, also discounted the story as baseless.

As has been noted in these pages before, Israeli officials, including Hagari, are no stranger to falsehoods and deceptions themselves, especially during Israel’s nearly year-long war on Gaza.

The reason this particular deception has come unstuck so quickly, it seems, is only because Netanyahu and Israel’s top brass have been feuding for weeks over the prime minister’s refusal to negotiate the hostages’ release and reach a ceasefire.

The generals are reported to be increasingly incensed by Netanyahu’s intransigence, and his determination to widen the war on Gaza into a dangerous regional confrontation to save his own skin.

They believe he is putting his own narrow, selfish interests – keeping his ultra-rightwing coalition together and himself in power, thereby delaying his corruption trial – before national security.

The likelihood of a regional war increased dramatically this week when ordinary electronic devices exploded across Lebanon, killing more than 30 people and wounding thousands more. Israel has not admitted responsibility, but no one is in any doubt it was behind the attack.

The Israeli military might have seen a chance to settle scores and embarrass Netanyahu by exposing the Chronicle’s report as fake news.

Israeli disinformation

Military sources have also derided another, earlier report by Perry, calling it “bullshit”. That story claimed many of the surviving hostages were being used as human shields to protect Sinwar.

And it is not just the JC peddling Israeli disinformation. The Israeli military criticised a report on Hamas published this month by Germany’s Bild newspaper, which alleged that another “Hamas document” – this one supposedly found on Sinwar’s computer – showed the group was negotiating in bad faith and “manipulating the international community”.

Again, usefully for Netanyahu, this fabricated story suggested that any effort to secure the hostages’ release through negotiations was futile.

The JC’s editor, Jake Wallis Simons, has responded to the spate of resignations at his publication by blaming Perry: “Obviously it’s every newspaper editor’s worst nightmare to be deceived by a journalist.”

The issue, however, is not that Perry perpetrated a sophisticated deception on the JC. Rather, the paper apparently failed to make even the most cursory checks that his “exclusives” were grounded in fact.

At the very least, a routine call to the Israeli military spokesperson’s office should have sufficed to discount Perry’s last two articles.

It looks suspiciously like the Chronicle, which over the past two decades has been growing ever-more hawkish on matters relating to Israel, had no interest in checking the truth of the story, because it fitted its own preferred narrative.

But potentially, the JC’s failings were worse. There is more than a suspicion that Netanyahu’s office was behind the forgeries, using them as part of an influence campaign.

That is a conclusion reached by several senior Israeli analysts.

One, Shlomi Eldar, wrote on X (formerly Twitter): “It was clear to me this was a leak from the Israeli prime minister’s office, which is using deception to manipulate the foreign press into further tearing apart Israel’s divided society and saving Netanyahu from the intensifying protests.”

Lack of scrutiny

The question is: had the Chronicle grown so used to publishing as news what amounted to undeclared press releases from Netanyahu’s office that it had become largely indifferent as to whether the information it received was actually true?

Given the lack of scrutiny from other British media outlets about the veracity of the JC’s stories, had it grown complacent, certain it could regurgitate Israeli government disinformation with no danger of being exposed?

It is unlikely we will ever know. But the implications were certainly troubling enough that four of its leading columnists felt that remaining with the paper would damage their reputations.

Freedland, who is also a columnist at the Guardian, wrote an open letter to Wallis Simons on social media, in which he observed: “Too often, the JC reads like a partisan, ideological instrument, its judgements political rather than journalistic.”

One such example was a tweet (since deleted) from Wallis Simons last December, when Israel had already killed thousands of Palestinian men, women and children. Over a video of a huge explosion killing untold numbers of Palestinians in Gaza City, the JC’s editor wrote: “Onwards to victory.”

Freedland is certainly right that the Chronicle has long promoted a highly partisan, hardline, pro-Israel agenda – one that has helped stoke a climate of fear among British Jews and readied them to be more indulgent of Israel’s genocidal policies.

Collapse of journalism

So why did Freedland find no reason to resign until now, if the Chronicle’s partisan journalism began long before the latest scandal?

I and others have been noting for some time scandalous breaches of both the law and media ethics by the JC.

Over the past six years, the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), the feeble “regulator” created and financed by the billionaire-owned corporate media, has repeatedly found the paper guilty of breaching its code of practice.

According to the research of journalist and academic Brian Cathcart, in the five years to 2023, the paper broke the code an astonishing 41 times. The Chronicle has also lost, or been forced to settle, at least four libel cases.

Writing about these failings, Cathcart called the large number of violations “off the scale” for a small weekly publication. He further noted that the spate of serious findings by IPSO against the JC should be seen in the context of the media regulator’s dismal record in upholding complaints – 99 percent are dismissed.

Notably, despite the JC’s unprecedented violations of the code, IPSO has refused to launch an investigation or exercise its powers to fine the paper.

The Chronicle subsequently went on the offensive against those it had defamed: “In a climate of rising antisemitism, we will never be cowed by attempts to bully us into silence.”

A spokesperson for IPSO told MEE it was “carefully reviewing developments at the Jewish Chronicle”, adding: “We have no further comment to share at this time.”

Chief attack dog

There are reasons for the great latitude IPSO has shown the Chronicle.

As Cathcart has noted, were the press “regulator” to investigate the JC for its journalistic failings, it would be hard to stop there. Other outlets, such as Rupert Murdoch’s titles, would have to be investigated too.

Critics contend that the whole purpose of IPSO, established a decade ago, was to stop meaningful media regulation in the wake of the Leveson Inquiry into abuses such as the phone-hacking scandal.

But there is another reason for IPSO’s endless indulgence. The Chronicle played a critical role in advancing one of the British establishment’s most important recent disinformation campaigns: making former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn unelectable by smearing him and his supporters as antisemites.

Notably, many of the JC’s press-code violations and libel settlements related to its false allegations against either Palestinian solidarity organisations or members of the Labour left. The Chronicle served as the chief attack dog on Corbyn and his allies, stoking fears among prominent sections of the Jewish community. It began that campaign early on, when Corbyn first emerged as a candidate for the leadership.

Those fears were then cited by the rest of the corporate media as evidence that Labour was riding roughshod over the Jewish community’s “sensitivities”. And in turn, the Labour left’s supposed indifference to Jewish sensitivities could be ascribed to its rampant antisemitism.

The more the left denied it was antisemitic, the more its denials were cited as proof that it was.

The four columnists who quit the JC on the weekend all actively contributed to fomenting a political climate in which Corbyn’s leadership could be depicted as an existential threat to British Jews.

In 2019, Stephen Pollard, Wallis Simons’s predecessor as editor of the JC, was open about his paper’s crucial role against Corbyn: “There’s certainly been a huge need for the journalism that the JC does in especially looking at the antisemitism in the Labour Party and elsewhere.”

A year later, as he stepped down as the paper’s chairman, Alan Jacobs made the same point. Wealthy donors who had been bailing the paper out financially “can be proud that their combined generosity allowed the JC to survive long enough to help to see off Jeremy Corbyn and friends”, he noted.

Israeli meddling

There is already plenty of evidence that, during Corbyn’s time as Labour leader, Israeli officials were actively meddling in British politics to stop him from reaching power.

Corbyn, as a longtime and vocal critic of Israel’s illegal occupation and an advocate of Palestinian rights, was seen as too much of a threat.

Shai Masot, a spy operating out of Israel’s London embassy, was secretly filmed by an undercover Al Jazeera reporter orchestrating a smear campaign against Corbyn, using pro-Israel lobby groups inside the Labour Party.

Despite its devastating revelations airing in 2017, Al Jazeera’s four-part documentary was mostly ignored by an establishment media that was actively helping to propagate such smears.

The JC played a critical role in all this. It led the pressure on British institutions, including the Labour Party, to adopt a new definition of antisemitism that conflated criticism of Israel with hatred of Jews. Israel was the original driving force behind this new definition.

Faced with a barrage of criticism from the JC and the wider establishment media, as well as from pro-Israel lobby groups inside his own party, Corbyn walked into the trap set for him.

The new definition adopted by Labour made it impossible to engage in meaningful support for the Palestinian people without violating one of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s examples of antisemitism related to criticism of Israel.

Despite this new skewed definition, the JC still felt the need to push further in advancing its smear campaign – the main reason it has been found by IPSO to have broken its code of practice so frequently, and been forced to settle libel cases in recent years.

The JC had not responded to a request from MEE for comment by the time of publication.

Huge losses

The Chronicle was incurring huge losses even before it had to pay out large sums in legal bills. In 2020, the Kessler Foundation finally put it into liquidation.

Since then, it has been unclear who owns the paper. Whoever it is, they appear to have very deep pockets.

The consortium that acted as a front for the real buyer included a who’s who of public figures deeply opposed to Corbyn.

The head of the consortium was Robbie Gibb, a former Conservative spin doctor who now sits on the BBC Board, overseeing editorial standards.

Many observers are now, belatedly, pointing out Gibb’s deep conflict of interest. He is closely associated with the JC and its highly partisan, pro-Netanyahu agenda, while also holding a key position in guiding the BBC’s supposedly impartial editorial standards on Israel and Gaza.

Gibb had not replied to a request for comment from MEE by the time of publication.

‘Wrong sort of Jew’

Freedland and the other JC columnists who resigned last weekend expressed no public concerns earlier about the systematic editorial failings at the JC over many years because, it looks to me like those failings sat just fine with them – as they did with the British establishment.

Getting rid of Corbyn was a goal shared across the narrow political spectrum of the two main establishment tribes in the Conservative and Labour parties. The means – any means, it seems – justified that end.

Freedland had not replied to a request for comment from MEE by the time of publication.

On Monday, after resigning from the JC, columnist Hadley Freeman expressed concern that the paper had become a vehicle for Netanyahu’s agenda and was now failing to represent much of the British Jewish community.

“I strongly want there to be a mainstream Jewish national newspaper in this country that represents the plurality of views of Jews in this country,” she told BBC Radio 4. She went on to note: “That’s not why I joined a British Jewish newspaper, to represent the views of Netanyahu.”

And yet, she and other JC columnists spent years denying that very same “pluralism” to the substantial number of left-wing Jews who supported Corbyn, including the group Jewish Voice for Labour. Their voices were either ignored, or dismissed because they were considered the “wrong sort of Jew”.

Under Corbyn’s successor, Keir Starmer, left-wing Jewish members of Labour have been almost five times more likely to be investigated for antisemitism by the party than non-Jewish members.

None of the JC’s columnists appear to have raised concerns about this pattern of discrimination, or the party’s institutional attacks on the rights of its Jewish members to express their political views.

Over the past year, that trend has continued. The “wrong sort of Jews” have once again found themselves ignored by the establishment media when taking part by their thousands in marches against the genocide in Gaza, or helping to lead protests on British and US campuses.

In an article published by the Times of Israel in June, Freeman asserted that “the progressive left hates the Jews”. She forgot to mention that the many Jews attending the Gaza protests and student encampments also belong to that progressive left.

Siding with the generals

The JC’s demonisation of fellow Jews in the Labour Party was not a red line for its celebrated columnists – nor was the paper’s cheering on of what the World Court has called a “plausible” genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

In fact, it was precisely the relentless bullying and silencing of voices critical of Israel through the Corbyn years that helped pave the way for Israel’s current slaughter and maiming of tens of thousands of Palestinian children.

With almost any criticism of Israel denounced as antisemitism, Netanyahu’s ultra-right government was given a free hand to indiscriminately pulverise the enclave.

It could rely on western politicians like Starmer, now Britain’s prime minister, to rewrite international law and defend as a “right” Israel’s decision to starve Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants through a blockade on food, water and power.

So why have the JC’s four columnists suddenly found a backbone and decided to quit? The answer appears to be far less principled than they would have us believe.

The JC is finally in crisis, beset by scandal, only because the Israeli establishment is deeply split on negotiating a ceasefire and bringing home the hostages.

Israel’s parade of lies as it carried out a genocide in Gaza disturbed no one in power; it passed without comment, prompting no significant investigations by the western media.

The lies have registered on this occasion because Israel’s generals have decided that this one time, the truth matters – and only because the top brass have a score to settle with Netanyahu.

Are the JC’s columnists really taking a belated stand for journalistic integrity? Or have they simply been forced to choose a side as the rift within the Israeli establishment deepens – on one side, the generals who carried out the slaughter of Gaza’s civilians, and on the other, a far-right prime minister who wants that slaughter to continue indefinitely?

The columnists might have changed camps, but both camps are led by monsters.

• First published in Middle East Eye

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

As voters in several states cast their ballots in primary elections Tuesday, we look at one of the most high-profile races between Missouri Congressmember Cori Bush and St. Louis County prosecuting attorney Wesley Bell, who is challenging her for the Democratic nomination. Bush, a member of the progressive “Squad,” is one of the most outspoken advocates for Palestine in Congress, and the powerful pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC has poured over $8 million into the race in an effort to defeat her. “It’s all meant to push out someone who stands up for Palestinian rights,” says Michael Berg, a Bush supporter, whose recent essay in The Nation is titled “I’m a St. Louis Jew. Here’s Why I’m Backing Cori Bush.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

We go to Gaza to speak with Palestinian journalist Maha Hussaini after the International Women’s Media Foundation came under fire for rescinding its Courage in Journalism Award to her following a smear campaign. Hussaini is an award-winning journalist and human rights advocate who has extensively documented Israel’s war on Gaza since October, including reporting on the mass displacement of Palestinians while being repeatedly displaced herself. “This is not the first time, by the way, that I have been subjected to such smear campaigns,” says Hussaini, who recounts a career spent defending her work against attacks and intimidations from Israel and its supporters. Hussaini speaks to us from Deir al-Balah in central Gaza and reports on dire conditions there. “The war waged on the Gaza Strip is not a war against particular armed factions, but against the entire population of 2.3 million residents,” Hussaini says.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Tuesday is the culmination of the most expensive primary race in U.S. history in New York’s 16th Congressional District. Democratic Congressmember Jamaal Bowman, a former Bronx middle school principal and one of the first to call for a ceasefire in Gaza in October, is being challenged by a former corporate executive, George Latimer, who was encouraged to run by the Democratic Majority for Israel PAC. Outside spending in the race has topped $23 million, much of it from pro-Israel groups like AIPAC. Bowman, a recent guest on Democracy Now!, is a member of the progressive “Squad” in Congress, a coalition of congressional representatives that includes New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who campaigned for Bowman at a reelection rally in New York City Saturday, and Massachusetts’s Ayanna Pressley. Bowman “needs to be decisively returned” to Congress, says Pressley, who joins Democracy Now! to discuss the final push to get out the vote for Bowman and characterizes him as the “pro-peace, pro-humanity, pro-justice candidate.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

After pro-Israel billionaires and millionaires met with Eric Adams, one attendee summarized “items ‘discussed today,’ including donating to Adams, using group members’ ‘leverage’ to help persuade Columbia’s president to let New York police back on campus, and paying for ‘investigative efforts’ to assist the city.” (Washington Post, 5/16/24)

An exposé by the Washington Post (5/16/24) showed the degree to which wealthy pro-Israel businesspeople coordinated with each other to pressure New York City Mayor Eric Adams to take drastic action against college campus protests against the genocide of Palestinians.

It’s a remarkable piece of reporting, by Hannah Natanson and Emmanuel Felton, that points to a pervasive problem in American politics: that the wealthy enjoy outsized influence with the political class, while the rest of us drift in the wind. 

The story is based on transcripts of a WhatsApp groupchat called “Israel Current Events,” whose participants included “billionaires and business titans.” One message by a billionaire’s staffer “told the others the goal of the group was to ‘change the narrative’ in favor of Israel,” the Post reported. A person identified only as “a staffer” told the group, “While Israel worked to ‘win the physical war,’ the chat group’s members would ‘help win the war’ of US public opinion by funding an information campaign against Hamas.”

The article reported that the chats revealed collaboration with Adams:

“He’s open to any ideas we have,” chat member [Joseph] Sitt, founder of the retail chain Ashley Stewart and the global real estate company Thor Equities, wrote April 27, the day after the group’s Zoom call with Adams. “As you saw he’s OK if we hire private investigators to then have his police force intel team work with them.”

The piece revealed that groupchat members, aware that “Columbia had to grant Adams permission before he could send city police to the campus,” strategized about how to apply the group’s “leverage” to Columbia president Minouche Shafik, including contacting the university’s board of trustees.

‘An all-too-familiar trope’

The New York Post (5/17/24)—which regularly accuses George Soros of being the puppet master behind all progressive causes—attacked the Washington Post: “Intimating that a mainly Jewish bunch of wealthy power-players were quietly pulling a politician’s strings is a classic trope of Jew-hate.”

Needless to say, City Hall wasn’t too happy about the piece. One of the mayor’s deputies, Fabien Levy, quickly responded on Twitter (5/16/24) that “the insinuation that Jewish donors secretly plotted to influence government operations is an all-too-familiar antisemitic trope.” 

His multi-post thread concluded: 

@WashingtonPost & others can make editorial decisions to disagree with the decisions by universities to ask the NYPD to clear unlawful encampments on campuses, but saying Jews “wielded their money and power in an effort to shape American views” is offensive on so many levels.

The Washington Post, of course, did not report that “Jews” had “wielded their money and power”—but that “some prominent individuals” had, distinguished not by religion or ethnicity, but by their politics.

The mayor himself called the story “antisemitic in its core” (Good Day New York, 5/20/24) and doubled down on this point when speaking to reporters (New York Post, 5/21/24). The Anti-Defamation League (Twitter, 5/20/24) said that the Washington Post should be 

ashamed of publishing an article that unabashedly (and almost entirely on anonymous sources) plays into antisemitic tropes by inferring a secret cabal of Jews is using wealth & power to influence governments, the media, the business world & academia.

The Adams administration’s effort to redirect scrutiny away from the latest credible charge of coziness with wealthy donors found a friendly audience in right-wing media. Fox News (5/17/24) gave Levy’s claims headline status, and the New York Post editorial board (5/17/24) said that the Adams administration “smells a whiff of antisemitism in the WaPo report,” because “intimating that a mainly Jewish bunch of wealthy power-players were quietly pulling a politician’s strings is a classic trope of Jew-hate.”

Yes, that’s the same New York Post that obsessively ties every political cause to the left of Emperor Palpatine to the Jewish philanthropist George Soros (e.g., 8/1/22, 1/22/23, 1/25/23, 7/24/23, 12/9/23, 4/26/24, 4/26/24). It is also interesting to note that two Rupert Murdoch outlets, thought to be Republican stalwarts, are once again acting as in-kind public relations agents for a Democratic mayor, a testament to Adams’ right-wing agenda—the New York Post endorsed him (5/20/21) and continues to cheerlead for him (1/27/24) as he approaches the end of his first term. For the Murdoch empire, politics (including shielding Israel) sometimes comes before party. 

ABC (4/24/24) reported that at Passover Seders celebrated in campus antiwar encampments, “some set aside an empty seat at the Seder table for hostages abducted from Israel on October 7, when Hamas launched a surprise terror attack. Others put an olive on the Seder plate to recognize solidarity with Palestinians.”

A tired accusation

The accusation that the student protest movement against the genocide of Palestinians is “antisemitic” has become more and more tired. Many Jews are mobilizing in these protests (ABC, 4/24/24). As a result, many Jewish protesters face state violence (Al Jazeera, 5/3/24) and censorship (FAIR.org, 12/15/23) for speaking out against the Israeli military. Yet the Adams administration, Fox and the New York Post continue to hurl the insult, this time at the Washington Post, signaling that they have no more honest way to defend the behavior exposed by the Post.

It would be just as ridiculous to claim that Jeff Sharlet’s reporting (Washington Post, 8/16/19) on the influence of Christian lobbying in Washington is anti-Christian, or investigations into the millions of dollars Saudi Arabia spends in the US to sanitize its image (Guardian, 12/22/22) are anti-Muslim. Federal investigators are probing Adams’ financial relationship with Turkey (Politico, 12/22/23; New York Times, 5/20/24), and there’s been no serious discourse that the scrutiny is somehow anti-Muslim. Is reporting on the growing influence of the Indian BJP and the Indian nationalist government in Washington (Intercept, 3/16/20; Jacobin, 3/4/23) anti-Hindu?

When we talk about the Israel lobby, we don’t even necessarily mean Jewish advocates; that lobby consists heavily of right-wing evangelical Christians (Jerusalem Post, 1/27/24). Ken Griffin, the hedge fund billionaire who announced he wouldn’t hire Harvard grads who signed a letter critical of Israel (New York Post, 10/16/23), is Presbyterian. The arms industry supports Israel as well, strictly from the profit potential of protracted violence in the Middle East (Reuters, 10/16/23).

Establishment attacks on outlets that expose corruption are evidence of good journalism (FAIR.org, 6/17/21, 1/12/24,  2/2/24). Such attacks are meant to stifle the press, and keep them from being a check on power. In this case, they are meant to shut down dissent against the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. 

False charges of antisemitism have been an effective tool for the right in the past (FAIR.org, 8/26/20). The good news is that this may be starting to change.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Ari Paul.

Demonstration at campaign fundraiser for Rep. Jared Huffman at Lagunitas Brewery in Petaluma, California. Photo: Peter Byrne

Protestors probe his political psyche and we follow the money

Northern California congressperson Jared Huffman, 60, held his annual “Hootenanny” campaign fundraiser at Lagunitas Brewery in Petaluma, California.

Press were denied entry to the private party, but the real story was outside, as CounterPunch discovered.

The fundraising event did not go karmically well for the occasionally progressive Democrat who has represented Marin, Sonoma, Mendocino and other North Coast counties since 2013. About 80 of Huffman’s constituents were motivated to attend his fundraiser—not to donate money, but to protest his political stance regarding what he labels a “justified war” on the people of Gaza. Huffman consistently votes to fund Israeli war machinery that targets Palestinian civilians, and he is opposes an unconditional ceasefire.

Confined inside a barricaded “free speech” zone patrolled by heavily armed Petaluma police officers, the youthful, keffiyeh wearing crowd waved Palestinian flags and brandished signs calling for a ceasefire and freeing Palestine from decades of Israeli occupation, ethnic cleansing, and genocidal warfare. The protest chants and songs could be heard inside the restaurant as Huffman worked a microphone, thanking about 150 attendees for donating money to his 2024 campaign.

ATM politics

Huffman’s campaign treasury is flush, holding more than $1 million in cash. Operating expenses for his 2022 campaign were $580,000, according to Federal Elections Commission datasets. But political coffers are always in need of lucre. That is because donations to Huffman are purchasing much more than streams of pan-handling email spam generated by his blue world marketing consultants. Cash is the arterial blood of influence and power in the purportedly democratic plutocracies of the West. Cash pays for newspaper, television, and social media advertising, gifting political allies, and more fundraising affairs. Without oodles of cash on hand to purchase media attention and generate popularity, a member of Congress is constantly at risk of becoming yesterday’s loser, a sudden nobody with only a phat pension left as the remainder of congressional power perks. As Bob Dylan’s immortal song about America’s propagandized culture observes, “Money doesn’t talk, it swears”. It also seduces; without buckets of cash to spill, there simply are no votes to be had, Ma. Hence, most politicians will kiss anyone who flashes a Benjamin while police are keeping constituents carrying protest signs at bay.

Down home with Jared

The loud and lively demonstration calling for Huffman to stop supporting killing the people of Gaza was organized by Sonoma County for Palestine and Marin County Democratic Socialists of America. At the request of U.S. Capital Police, the Petaluma Police Department assigned five officers to back up private security hired to deal with political disruption. Petaluma chief of police, Brian Murphy, confirmed that the Huffman campaign is not covering the cost of providing police protection at the private party. But why did Huffman order up the police in such force?

By comparison, in 2021, a Huffman town hall meeting in San Rafael was disrupted by a mob of hundreds of enraged anti-vaxxers who rushed the stage. One person attacked an elderly, masked man; the MAGA mood was rude and ugly. Huffman gamely tried to debate with the protestors, but they were rambunctious, uncontrollable. Pointedly, Huffman declined to call in the police, who were staged a few blocks away. Take a note: these were mostly middle aged, white home-owner types living in the heart of Marin—not Black Lives Matter or “pro-Palestinian” radicals or politically awakening Generation Zs.

Inside the police-protected Lagunitas party were two dozen elected officials hailing from Marin and Sonoma counties, including four members of the Marin Board of Supervisors, Mayor Kevin McDonnell of Petaluma, and three Petaluma City Council members. Since October, many of these gray-haired, aging officials have successfully agitated to keep ceasefire in Gaza resolutions off their meeting dockets.

Outside the party, the crowed was loud, but peaceful and polite. Norman Solomon of Roots Action—who ran against Huffman in his first race for Congress in 2012—coolly handed out “Ceasefire in Gaza” signs. Two MAGA-type scowling provocateurs faced passing cars wielding an American flag and “Fuck Huffman” placards; they did not share the other protestor’s agenda. The mostly white, middle aged and elderly Huffman doners were compelled by the presence of the demonstration to park hundreds of feet away and to walk in front of the protestors to gain entrance to the Hootenanny. Many strode by with their heads down, perhaps chagrined, perhaps angry, but some shot the protestors “V for Peace” finger signs, as if to indicate that they, too, oppose the slaughter in Gaza, really.

Inside the brewery hall, the guests were entertained by SoloRio, billed as “a rock gospel stone soup band.” According to a Hootenanny attendee, Huffman himself plucked a guitar, singing a hobo ballad, “Wagon Wheel.” Huffman’s media campaign portrays the bookish lawyer cum politician as a down home, folksy yet progressive kind of farm-lover who likes to sport fish, play volleyball, josh and hootenanny with the country guys and gals.

Outside, the protestors portrayed Huffman onomatopoeically as “Genocide Jared,” noting that he had broken with 33 members of the House Progressive Caucus in an April vote to give Israel $17 billion in bombs, weapons, and infrastructural support to wage its explosively industrialized war on starving, thirsty, environmentally decimated, wounded and grieving Gazans, who were definitely not invited to the Hootenanny.

Generation Z objects to Huffman’s support of Israeli war machine at Huffman fundraiser protest. Photo: Peter Byrne

The protestors were also upset with Huffman because he has long opposed calling for a ceasefire in Gaza unless the negotiated terms are greenlighted by the Netanyahu administration; permanently disarm Hamas, but not Israel; call for the release of hostages held by Hamas, but not Palestinians held by Israeli Defense Forces.

Huffman also voted for a controversial bill equating criticism of Israeli militarism and apartheid practices with antisemitism.

Cognitive dissonances

Leading up to Lagunitas demonstration, Huffman twice engaged in candid colloquies with members of the Marin Country DSA. The participants failed to find much in the way of political common ground with their representative regarding Israel and Palestine, but transcripts provided by the Marin County DSA reveal the process by which Huffman masticates facts as he ponders how to vote on politically controversial issues.

On Netanyahu

In a May 10 interview on Zoom with members of the Palestine Solidarity Committee of the Marin County DSA, Huffman said, “I really don’t like Netanyahu. I think he is a thug and a fascist.” He said this while doubling down on affirming his support for giving Netanyahu and his generals the means to continue their collocated wars on Gaza, the Occupied West Bank, Syria, Lebanon, and Iran. Huffman described himself as “heartbroken and concerned” about the annihilation of Palestinians at the same time that he is legislating their continued destruction as a people, which many genocide scholars argue is isomorphic to genocide, although Huffman does not agree with that analysis.

On geography

Huffman told the DSA interlocutors, “There are better ways to pressure Israel’s war plans than a full withholding of [military] aid and the reason is I want Israel to be able to defend itself … it’s a pretty delicate time for a country that is about the size of Marin County.”

Fact: Marin County population is 262,231; its land mass is 520 square miles. Israel’s internal population of Jews and Arabs is 10 million; its land mass is 8,019 square miles. Israel has 38 times the population of Marin County and 15 times the land mass.

On Biden

Huffman said he steadfastly supports the Biden administration’s actions regarding the war on Gaza, claiming that Biden “passionately wants to protect Palestinian lives … and try to get a ceasefire.”

Fact: The Biden administration has vetoed multiple calls for a ceasefire at the United Nations as it continues to arm Israel with bombs to explode Gazans. Biden and his Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken—whom Huffman referred to as “Tony” during the conversation—refuse to effectively condition supplying weapons to Isreal upon Netanyahu re-opening the sealed borders of Gaza to allow humanitarian aid to flow, preventing mass starvation and even more deaths from disease, wounds, hunger and despair.

On apartheid

Huffman insists that Israel is a democracy and not an apartheid or settler colonial state, but that the West Bank “looks a lot more like apartheid [and] the occupation is a disaster.”

Fact: Israel is a fundamentally theocratic government created through acts of terrorism and population removal and expanded by IDF-backed settlers violently seizing and colonizing Palestinian lands. According to the Council of Foreign Relations, Israel denies equal rights to Arabs living inside its borders under socially and economically segregated conditions. Inside its national borders and in Gaza and the West Bank, “Greater” Israel has erected a vast military, digital and architectural apparatus to separate populations based upon ethnicity. The Israeli state regularly “mows the lawn” in Gaza and the West Bank, which means blowing up and bulldozing residences and businesses of Palestinians and murdering, torturing, and incarcerating stone-throwing resisters, including thousands of teenagers and children. Huffman claims to oppose these current and historical depredations, even as he votes for funding them.

On antisemitism

Huffman strongly opposes the nonviolent Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, which he (incorrectly) labels as antisemitic. Huffman voted for a controversial congressional bill that equates criticism of Israel with antisemitism. In that regard, he told the DSA, “I’m a lawyer so I speak with a little bit of authority: the bill does not codify a definition of antisemitism. … It requires consideration of that definition … and I do want to show support for addressing antisemitism because it’s a thing, it’s real, and it’s raging right now.”

Fact: President Biden and most members of Congress regularly equate criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

On campus protests

Huffman opined that some of the pro-Palestine protestors “want world peace and are wonderful non-violent ideologues … others are nihilists and haters and want to fight and destroy things … Some police forces have shown incredible restraint … in allowing protest … others have not.” Regarding the politically reactionary mob of white males that attacked the student encampment at UCLA, Huffman “deplored” their violent actions, and he also “deplored the assault reportedly on the one Jewish student that the counter protestors thought justified their violence.”

Fact: There is no evidence of any assault prior to the mobs’ violent attack and beating of protestors, in fact, it is the so called “counter protestors,” many identified as right wing provocateurs, who initiated the fighting and assaulted the peacefully protesting students as the LAPD watched and did nothing.

Fact: On November 6, Huffman issued an apology to “my friends in the Jewish Community” for voting against a bill proposed by Burgess Owens, a Trump supporting Republican representative from Utah that had condemned Students for Justice in Palestine and professors at major universities as Hamas supporters. The Owens resolution subsequently supported by Huffman falsely accused universities of “the glorification of violence and usage of antisemitic rhetoric [which] creates a hostile learning and working environment for Jewish students, faculty, and staff.” Huffman explained in the local press that he now regretted not voting for the MAGA bill because it “was seen by many in the Jewish Community as a test of where members of Congress stand on growing scourge of college antisemitism.” Perhaps a few campaign funders put Huffman to the test.

On self-defense

Huffman, self-described as a “lawyer with a little bit of authority” said he does not support the right of Palestinians to armed self-defense against attacks by Israel’s military forces or settler militias.

Fact: International law supports the legal right of occupied people to resist attacks by colonizers and oppressors.

On the Nakba

Huffman said, “The Nakba was a real thing … And I think there are interesting debates about the scale and the reasons for it. But … many of those folks were told to leave by the Arab countries. There are some people in other countries who said, uh, we will destroy Israel and you’ll be able to return when we do. [There are] nuanced counter narratives [and] I have heard them and I’ve found some credibility there.”

Fact: Huffman holds an ahistorical view of the Nakba which occurred in 1947-48. The catastrophic ethnic cleansing, forcible expulsion and murder of indigenous people by the Jewish colonialists is exhaustively documented.

On international law

Huffman participated in another interview with Marin DSA on February 29, the day of the Flour Massacre, when the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) shot and killed 188 Gazans and injured hundreds of civilians who were seeking food for their starving families from the trickle of humanitarian aid trucks that had managed to pass through IDF and settler blockades. Huffman said, “It’s a problem that several UNRWA [United Nations Relief and Works Agency] staffers in Gaza took part in the October 7^th massacre.”

Fact: There is no credible evidence that UNRWA staff participated in the massacres, but that unproven allegation is a common talking point pushed by IDF public relations arms and Jewish non-profit funding foundations lobbying against locally elected officials supporting a ceasefire in Gaza. Huffman’s main talking points in his interviews with Marin DSA and his public statements since October 7 echo the positions of Israeli state-supporting organizations, such as the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Bay Area, that strongly and loudly oppose elected officials even considering measures to endorse a humanitarian or any type of ceasefire in Gaza.

On bombing the Iranian consulate

Huffman attempted to excuse Israel’s April 1 bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus, which killed seven Iranian military officers, by suggesting, without producing a scintilla of evidence, that there may have been “some terror act afoot,” adding “Let me be clear, the IRGC are not good guys.” Huffman then proffered an incoherent analogy, “But the Saudis chopped up Jamal Khashoggi in an embassy, so I’m not here to say that just because you walk in the door of an embassy you can do anything you want, I just don’t know enough about it.”

Fact: The 1961 Vienna Convention of Diplomatic Relations states, “The premises of the embassy shall be inviolable.” Huffman appears to be suggesting that assassinating Khashoggi was (perhaps) not a violation of diplomatic immunity because it was committed by Saudi Arabia at its own consulate in Turkey and not at Turkey’s consulate in Saudi Arabia. By this hair-splitting cognitive convolution: since the Iranian consulate was located in the capital of Syria, and not inside the borders of Israel, it was not a violation of the strictures of diplomacy to bomb it and kill high ranking Iranian officials. Bombing an embassy or consulate is an obvious act of war, however, and Iran treated it as such.

An “imaginary” solution

Huffman opposes the very idea of creating a democratic one state model of Israel in which Jews and Palestinians have equal rights. “It is a euphemism for ending the state of Israel .. . there would not be a Jewish homeland of any kind.” In the same breath, Huffman said he opposes the long time Israeli occupation and illegal settlements of the West Bank and is willing to “pre-recognize a demilitarized Palestinian state [but] we’ve been waiting for decades for this kind of imaginary negotiated solution between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government. It’s just not working.”

Fact: Huffman admits to supporting a “two state” political model that he views as “imaginary” and unobtainable.

On genocide

Huffman told DSA, “I think we have to be careful when we use a term like ‘genocide’ because we don’t want to dimmish its impact when something that truly is a genocide happens.” Huffman apparently does not view Israel’s decades of invasions, assassinations, destruction of mosques, hospitals, and universities combined with torture, imprisonment without due process, and the concentration camping of Palestinians because of who they are as “truly” a genocide. In response to a DSA query, Huffman declined to state whether he will respect the decision of the International Court of Justice if it orders Israeli to cease committing genocide presently in Gaza. To reiterate, Huffman, a lawyer who is a sworn officer of the court, and who claims to speak with a little bit of authority, is apparently prepared to officially disregard a ruling by an international court if it does not accord with his personal opinion.

Disrupting support for genocide

Four of Huffman’s constituents paid $40 each to attend the Hootenanny. As Huffman played master of ceremonies, the undercover protestors rose one by one to defend the people of Gaza. Each disrupter was quickly surrounded by pistol holstered policer officers and summarily pushed outside to the parking lot. Cell phone videos show Huffman trying to maintain the flow of his fundraising spiel throughout the commotions, pausing briefly as one protester was forcibly expelled to say, “This is democracy, this is democracy, and we are going to get through this together.”

In interviews with Counter Punch, the expellees recalled their experiences as disrupters.

S: “I walked out in front of the band between songs and pulled out a printout of a Palestinian flag. I said ‘I hope everyone had a wonderful Mother’s Day yesterday, on behalf of all the mothers in Palestine, free Palestine, free Palestine.’”

Expelled by police.

Sé: “I said, ‘Jared Huffman you are a coward not a leader! Shame. Call for a permanent ceasefire. Why is your number one donor Honeywell Industries, which collaborates with Israel and has contracts for nuclear weapons production? Why do you have such a weak stance when it comes to ethnic cleansing, and genocide? Why are you still voting in favor of sending arms to Israel when they have shown over and over and over again that they don’t give a fuck about civilian lives? Palestine will be free! Permanent ceasefire now!’”

Expelled by police.

J: “Huffman mocked republicans for trying to defund the IRS and that got me to jump up and start with him defunding UNWRA and closing all humanitarian aid to Gaza. I spoke about the horrors of 50,000 dead and 30,000 women and children. Then as they almost had me out of the room I heard him mock republicans again. I said he was no different—

they are all empire.”

Expelled by police.

The buck stops where?

When Huffman served Marin and Sonoma districts prior to 2013 as a state assemblyman, he told Marin Magazine that his political hero is US President Harry Truman. (Truman ordered the atomic incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the first use of nuclear weapons in 1945.) Channeling his Missouri-born hero’s favorite campaign aphorism, Huffman, who was also born in Missouri, had likewise decorated his desktop with a placard reading, “The Buck Stops Here.” Charming.

Federal Elections Commission data and Open Secrets show that since Huffman first ran for congress in 2012, he has raised $5.4 million and spent $4.3 million for a net “profit” of more than $1million. Why the surplus? Who gives him the bucks? Where do the bucks stop? Let us see.

Huffman campaigns as a fervent environmentalist. But his bone fides are undercut by looking at who funds his campaigns. The current cycle is topped with $10,000 from the political action committee of Honeywell International, a global conglomerate which supplies the US and Israel with many weapons systems and engages in fossil fuel and metals extraction and nuclear weapons manufacturing. By itself, Honeywell is a world class source of carbon gases and pollution, but it has consistently funded “environmentalist” Huffman throughout his career. For that matter, Honeywell regularly donates tens of thousands of dollars to Donald J. Trump and Joe Biden. Honeywell is not stupid; it knows what it is buying: allegiance. Notably, Honeywell only saw fit to give $28 to Rep. Barbara Lee of Oakland, who is a dedicated environmentalist who voted against funding Israel’s war on Gaza in April.

In the prior election cycle, Huffman’s top contributor was J Street PAC ($13,500), a “liberal” Israeli lobby in Washington DC. By way of comparison, J Street PAC only gave $7 to the iconic New York City progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

This year, according to Open Secrets, retired people like Huffman to the tune of $90,963, and the casino/gambling industry skimmed him $43,500. Because Huffman serves on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, greenhouse gas generating rail and air corporations and transportation unions granted him in excess of $50,000.

In past cycles, Huffman’s major donors have included industrialized agribusiness and a portfolio of global climate heaters, such as Sierra Pacific Industries, PG&E, Goldman Sachs, Carnival Corporation, Bechtel Group and General Motors.

A quick tour through Huffman’s campaign expenditures this year is instructive. Someone likes to fundraise on the hoof, with a $2,811 tab at Charlie Parker Steakhouse on March 8. Last September 6, the campaign paid $11,850 for “lodging” at the Gold River Lodge and Historic Requa Inn in Klamath, California—resorts for sports fishing.

(Huffman did not reply to a query about why his campaign paid for staying at these fishing resorts. For that matter, Huffman did not respond to Counter Punch’s repeated requests for comment on all aspects of this story.)

Huffman gifted thousands of dollars to political cronies, including $4,000 to the Sonoma County Democratic Party; $2,500 to Democratic Central Committee of Marin County; $5,000 to Biden Victory Fund.

On March 13, Huffman gave $1,000 to the New Israel Fund, which supports civil rights activities inside Israel. And on March 16, Huffman donated $1,085.50 to the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) in Berkeley, California, which renders material aid to children suffering in Occupied Palestine and Gaza. Huffman did not respond to a query about what the contribution to MECA was for—but if it was to buy off a guilty conscience, he got more of a bargain than the children did.

At the end of the day, it is apparent that Huffman does not fear the voices of protestors, nor nightmare echoes of the cries of burning children in Gaza, as much as he fears the political power of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which is spending at least $100 million this year to destroy “progressive” members of congress who dare to criticize Israel. We all get it, Jared: You are afraid.

The post Who is Pro-Israel California Rep. Jared Huffman—Really? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Peter Byrne.

Demonstration at campaign fundraiser for Rep. Jared Huffman at Lagunitas Brewery in Petaluma, California. Photo: Peter Byrne

Protestors probe his political psyche and we follow the money

Northern California congressperson Jared Huffman, 60, held his annual “Hootenanny” campaign fundraiser at Lagunitas Brewery in Petaluma, California.

Press were denied entry to the private party, but the real story was outside, as CounterPunch discovered.

The fundraising event did not go karmically well for the occasionally progressive Democrat who has represented Marin, Sonoma, Mendocino and other North Coast counties since 2013. About 80 of Huffman’s constituents were motivated to attend his fundraiser—not to donate money, but to protest his political stance regarding what he labels a “justified war” on the people of Gaza. Huffman consistently votes to fund Israeli war machinery that targets Palestinian civilians, and he is opposes an unconditional ceasefire.

Confined inside a barricaded “free speech” zone patrolled by heavily armed Petaluma police officers, the youthful, keffiyeh wearing crowd waved Palestinian flags and brandished signs calling for a ceasefire and freeing Palestine from decades of Israeli occupation, ethnic cleansing, and genocidal warfare. The protest chants and songs could be heard inside the restaurant as Huffman worked a microphone, thanking about 150 attendees for donating money to his 2024 campaign.

ATM politics

Huffman’s campaign treasury is flush, holding more than $1 million in cash. Operating expenses for his 2022 campaign were $580,000, according to Federal Elections Commission datasets. But political coffers are always in need of lucre. That is because donations to Huffman are purchasing much more than streams of pan-handling email spam generated by his blue world marketing consultants. Cash is the arterial blood of influence and power in the purportedly democratic plutocracies of the West. Cash pays for newspaper, television, and social media advertising, gifting political allies, and more fundraising affairs. Without oodles of cash on hand to purchase media attention and generate popularity, a member of Congress is constantly at risk of becoming yesterday’s loser, a sudden nobody with only a phat pension left as the remainder of congressional power perks. As Bob Dylan’s immortal song about America’s propagandized culture observes, “Money doesn’t talk, it swears”. It also seduces; without buckets of cash to spill, there simply are no votes to be had, Ma. Hence, most politicians will kiss anyone who flashes a Benjamin while police are keeping constituents carrying protest signs at bay.

Down home with Jared

The loud and lively demonstration calling for Huffman to stop supporting killing the people of Gaza was organized by Sonoma County for Palestine and Marin County Democratic Socialists of America. At the request of U.S. Capital Police, the Petaluma Police Department assigned five officers to back up private security hired to deal with political disruption. Petaluma chief of police, Brian Murphy, confirmed that the Huffman campaign is not covering the cost of providing police protection at the private party. But why did Huffman order up the police in such force?

By comparison, in 2021, a Huffman town hall meeting in San Rafael was disrupted by a mob of hundreds of enraged anti-vaxxers who rushed the stage. One person attacked an elderly, masked man; the MAGA mood was rude and ugly. Huffman gamely tried to debate with the protestors, but they were rambunctious, uncontrollable. Pointedly, Huffman declined to call in the police, who were staged a few blocks away. Take a note: these were mostly middle aged, white home-owner types living in the heart of Marin—not Black Lives Matter or “pro-Palestinian” radicals or politically awakening Generation Zs.

Inside the police-protected Lagunitas party were two dozen elected officials hailing from Marin and Sonoma counties, including four members of the Marin Board of Supervisors, Mayor Kevin McDonnell of Petaluma, and three Petaluma City Council members. Since October, many of these gray-haired, aging officials have successfully agitated to keep ceasefire in Gaza resolutions off their meeting dockets.

Outside the party, the crowed was loud, but peaceful and polite. Norman Solomon of Roots Action—who ran against Huffman in his first race for Congress in 2012—coolly handed out “Ceasefire in Gaza” signs. Two MAGA-type scowling provocateurs faced passing cars wielding an American flag and “Fuck Huffman” placards; they did not share the other protestor’s agenda. The mostly white, middle aged and elderly Huffman doners were compelled by the presence of the demonstration to park hundreds of feet away and to walk in front of the protestors to gain entrance to the Hootenanny. Many strode by with their heads down, perhaps chagrined, perhaps angry, but some shot the protestors “V for Peace” finger signs, as if to indicate that they, too, oppose the slaughter in Gaza, really.

Inside the brewery hall, the guests were entertained by SoloRio, billed as “a rock gospel stone soup band.” According to a Hootenanny attendee, Huffman himself plucked a guitar, singing a hobo ballad, “Wagon Wheel.” Huffman’s media campaign portrays the bookish lawyer cum politician as a down home, folksy yet progressive kind of farm-lover who likes to sport fish, play volleyball, josh and hootenanny with the country guys and gals.

Outside, the protestors portrayed Huffman onomatopoeically as “Genocide Jared,” noting that he had broken with 33 members of the House Progressive Caucus in an April vote to give Israel $17 billion in bombs, weapons, and infrastructural support to wage its explosively industrialized war on starving, thirsty, environmentally decimated, wounded and grieving Gazans, who were definitely not invited to the Hootenanny.

Generation Z objects to Huffman’s support of Israeli war machine at Huffman fundraiser protest. Photo: Peter Byrne

The protestors were also upset with Huffman because he has long opposed calling for a ceasefire in Gaza unless the negotiated terms are greenlighted by the Netanyahu administration; permanently disarm Hamas, but not Israel; call for the release of hostages held by Hamas, but not Palestinians held by Israeli Defense Forces.

Huffman also voted for a controversial bill equating criticism of Israeli militarism and apartheid practices with antisemitism.

Cognitive dissonances

Leading up to Lagunitas demonstration, Huffman twice engaged in candid colloquies with members of the Marin Country DSA. The participants failed to find much in the way of political common ground with their representative regarding Israel and Palestine, but transcripts provided by the Marin County DSA reveal the process by which Huffman masticates facts as he ponders how to vote on politically controversial issues.

On Netanyahu

In a May 10 interview on Zoom with members of the Palestine Solidarity Committee of the Marin County DSA, Huffman said, “I really don’t like Netanyahu. I think he is a thug and a fascist.” He said this while doubling down on affirming his support for giving Netanyahu and his generals the means to continue their collocated wars on Gaza, the Occupied West Bank, Syria, Lebanon, and Iran. Huffman described himself as “heartbroken and concerned” about the annihilation of Palestinians at the same time that he is legislating their continued destruction as a people, which many genocide scholars argue is isomorphic to genocide, although Huffman does not agree with that analysis.

On geography

Huffman told the DSA interlocutors, “There are better ways to pressure Israel’s war plans than a full withholding of [military] aid and the reason is I want Israel to be able to defend itself … it’s a pretty delicate time for a country that is about the size of Marin County.”

Fact: Marin County population is 262,231; its land mass is 520 square miles. Israel’s internal population of Jews and Arabs is 10 million; its land mass is 8,019 square miles. Israel has 38 times the population of Marin County and 15 times the land mass.

On Biden

Huffman said he steadfastly supports the Biden administration’s actions regarding the war on Gaza, claiming that Biden “passionately wants to protect Palestinian lives … and try to get a ceasefire.”

Fact: The Biden administration has vetoed multiple calls for a ceasefire at the United Nations as it continues to arm Israel with bombs to explode Gazans. Biden and his Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken—whom Huffman referred to as “Tony” during the conversation—refuse to effectively condition supplying weapons to Isreal upon Netanyahu re-opening the sealed borders of Gaza to allow humanitarian aid to flow, preventing mass starvation and even more deaths from disease, wounds, hunger and despair.

On apartheid

Huffman insists that Israel is a democracy and not an apartheid or settler colonial state, but that the West Bank “looks a lot more like apartheid [and] the occupation is a disaster.”

Fact: Israel is a fundamentally theocratic government created through acts of terrorism and population removal and expanded by IDF-backed settlers violently seizing and colonizing Palestinian lands. According to the Council of Foreign Relations, Israel denies equal rights to Arabs living inside its borders under socially and economically segregated conditions. Inside its national borders and in Gaza and the West Bank, “Greater” Israel has erected a vast military, digital and architectural apparatus to separate populations based upon ethnicity. The Israeli state regularly “mows the lawn” in Gaza and the West Bank, which means blowing up and bulldozing residences and businesses of Palestinians and murdering, torturing, and incarcerating stone-throwing resisters, including thousands of teenagers and children. Huffman claims to oppose these current and historical depredations, even as he votes for funding them.

On antisemitism

Huffman strongly opposes the nonviolent Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, which he (incorrectly) labels as antisemitic. Huffman voted for a controversial congressional bill that equates criticism of Israel with antisemitism. In that regard, he told the DSA, “I’m a lawyer so I speak with a little bit of authority: the bill does not codify a definition of antisemitism. … It requires consideration of that definition … and I do want to show support for addressing antisemitism because it’s a thing, it’s real, and it’s raging right now.”

Fact: President Biden and most members of Congress regularly equate criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

On campus protests

Huffman opined that some of the pro-Palestine protestors “want world peace and are wonderful non-violent ideologues … others are nihilists and haters and want to fight and destroy things … Some police forces have shown incredible restraint … in allowing protest … others have not.” Regarding the politically reactionary mob of white males that attacked the student encampment at UCLA, Huffman “deplored” their violent actions, and he also “deplored the assault reportedly on the one Jewish student that the counter protestors thought justified their violence.”

Fact: There is no evidence of any assault prior to the mobs’ violent attack and beating of protestors, in fact, it is the so called “counter protestors,” many identified as right wing provocateurs, who initiated the fighting and assaulted the peacefully protesting students as the LAPD watched and did nothing.

Fact: On November 6, Huffman issued an apology to “my friends in the Jewish Community” for voting against a bill proposed by Burgess Owens, a Trump supporting Republican representative from Utah that had condemned Students for Justice in Palestine and professors at major universities as Hamas supporters. The Owens resolution subsequently supported by Huffman falsely accused universities of “the glorification of violence and usage of antisemitic rhetoric [which] creates a hostile learning and working environment for Jewish students, faculty, and staff.” Huffman explained in the local press that he now regretted not voting for the MAGA bill because it “was seen by many in the Jewish Community as a test of where members of Congress stand on growing scourge of college antisemitism.” Perhaps a few campaign funders put Huffman to the test.

On self-defense

Huffman, self-described as a “lawyer with a little bit of authority” said he does not support the right of Palestinians to armed self-defense against attacks by Israel’s military forces or settler militias.

Fact: International law supports the legal right of occupied people to resist attacks by colonizers and oppressors.

On the Nakba

Huffman said, “The Nakba was a real thing … And I think there are interesting debates about the scale and the reasons for it. But … many of those folks were told to leave by the Arab countries. There are some people in other countries who said, uh, we will destroy Israel and you’ll be able to return when we do. [There are] nuanced counter narratives [and] I have heard them and I’ve found some credibility there.”

Fact: Huffman holds an ahistorical view of the Nakba which occurred in 1947-48. The catastrophic ethnic cleansing, forcible expulsion and murder of indigenous people by the Jewish colonialists is exhaustively documented.

On international law

Huffman participated in another interview with Marin DSA on February 29, the day of the Flour Massacre, when the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) shot and killed 188 Gazans and injured hundreds of civilians who were seeking food for their starving families from the trickle of humanitarian aid trucks that had managed to pass through IDF and settler blockades. Huffman said, “It’s a problem that several UNRWA [United Nations Relief and Works Agency] staffers in Gaza took part in the October 7^th massacre.”

Fact: There is no credible evidence that UNRWA staff participated in the massacres, but that unproven allegation is a common talking point pushed by IDF public relations arms and Jewish non-profit funding foundations lobbying against locally elected officials supporting a ceasefire in Gaza. Huffman’s main talking points in his interviews with Marin DSA and his public statements since October 7 echo the positions of Israeli state-supporting organizations, such as the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Bay Area, that strongly and loudly oppose elected officials even considering measures to endorse a humanitarian or any type of ceasefire in Gaza.

On bombing the Iranian consulate

Huffman attempted to excuse Israel’s April 1 bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus, which killed seven Iranian military officers, by suggesting, without producing a scintilla of evidence, that there may have been “some terror act afoot,” adding “Let me be clear, the IRGC are not good guys.” Huffman then proffered an incoherent analogy, “But the Saudis chopped up Jamal Khashoggi in an embassy, so I’m not here to say that just because you walk in the door of an embassy you can do anything you want, I just don’t know enough about it.”

Fact: The 1961 Vienna Convention of Diplomatic Relations states, “The premises of the embassy shall be inviolable.” Huffman appears to be suggesting that assassinating Khashoggi was (perhaps) not a violation of diplomatic immunity because it was committed by Saudi Arabia at its own consulate in Turkey and not at Turkey’s consulate in Saudi Arabia. By this hair-splitting cognitive convolution: since the Iranian consulate was located in the capital of Syria, and not inside the borders of Israel, it was not a violation of the strictures of diplomacy to bomb it and kill high ranking Iranian officials. Bombing an embassy or consulate is an obvious act of war, however, and Iran treated it as such.

An “imaginary” solution

Huffman opposes the very idea of creating a democratic one state model of Israel in which Jews and Palestinians have equal rights. “It is a euphemism for ending the state of Israel .. . there would not be a Jewish homeland of any kind.” In the same breath, Huffman said he opposes the long time Israeli occupation and illegal settlements of the West Bank and is willing to “pre-recognize a demilitarized Palestinian state [but] we’ve been waiting for decades for this kind of imaginary negotiated solution between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government. It’s just not working.”

Fact: Huffman admits to supporting a “two state” political model that he views as “imaginary” and unobtainable.

On genocide

Huffman told DSA, “I think we have to be careful when we use a term like ‘genocide’ because we don’t want to dimmish its impact when something that truly is a genocide happens.” Huffman apparently does not view Israel’s decades of invasions, assassinations, destruction of mosques, hospitals, and universities combined with torture, imprisonment without due process, and the concentration camping of Palestinians because of who they are as “truly” a genocide. In response to a DSA query, Huffman declined to state whether he will respect the decision of the International Court of Justice if it orders Israeli to cease committing genocide presently in Gaza. To reiterate, Huffman, a lawyer who is a sworn officer of the court, and who claims to speak with a little bit of authority, is apparently prepared to officially disregard a ruling by an international court if it does not accord with his personal opinion.

Disrupting support for genocide

Four of Huffman’s constituents paid $40 each to attend the Hootenanny. As Huffman played master of ceremonies, the undercover protestors rose one by one to defend the people of Gaza. Each disrupter was quickly surrounded by pistol holstered policer officers and summarily pushed outside to the parking lot. Cell phone videos show Huffman trying to maintain the flow of his fundraising spiel throughout the commotions, pausing briefly as one protester was forcibly expelled to say, “This is democracy, this is democracy, and we are going to get through this together.”

In interviews with Counter Punch, the expellees recalled their experiences as disrupters.

S: “I walked out in front of the band between songs and pulled out a printout of a Palestinian flag. I said ‘I hope everyone had a wonderful Mother’s Day yesterday, on behalf of all the mothers in Palestine, free Palestine, free Palestine.’”

Expelled by police.

Sé: “I said, ‘Jared Huffman you are a coward not a leader! Shame. Call for a permanent ceasefire. Why is your number one donor Honeywell Industries, which collaborates with Israel and has contracts for nuclear weapons production? Why do you have such a weak stance when it comes to ethnic cleansing, and genocide? Why are you still voting in favor of sending arms to Israel when they have shown over and over and over again that they don’t give a fuck about civilian lives? Palestine will be free! Permanent ceasefire now!’”

Expelled by police.

J: “Huffman mocked republicans for trying to defund the IRS and that got me to jump up and start with him defunding UNWRA and closing all humanitarian aid to Gaza. I spoke about the horrors of 50,000 dead and 30,000 women and children. Then as they almost had me out of the room I heard him mock republicans again. I said he was no different—

they are all empire.”

Expelled by police.

The buck stops where?

When Huffman served Marin and Sonoma districts prior to 2013 as a state assemblyman, he told Marin Magazine that his political hero is US President Harry Truman. (Truman ordered the atomic incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the first use of nuclear weapons in 1945.) Channeling his Missouri-born hero’s favorite campaign aphorism, Huffman, who was also born in Missouri, had likewise decorated his desktop with a placard reading, “The Buck Stops Here.” Charming.

Federal Elections Commission data and Open Secrets show that since Huffman first ran for congress in 2012, he has raised $5.4 million and spent $4.3 million for a net “profit” of more than $1million. Why the surplus? Who gives him the bucks? Where do the bucks stop? Let us see.

Huffman campaigns as a fervent environmentalist. But his bone fides are undercut by looking at who funds his campaigns. The current cycle is topped with $10,000 from the political action committee of Honeywell International, a global conglomerate which supplies the US and Israel with many weapons systems and engages in fossil fuel and metals extraction and nuclear weapons manufacturing. By itself, Honeywell is a world class source of carbon gases and pollution, but it has consistently funded “environmentalist” Huffman throughout his career. For that matter, Honeywell regularly donates tens of thousands of dollars to Donald J. Trump and Joe Biden. Honeywell is not stupid; it knows what it is buying: allegiance. Notably, Honeywell only saw fit to give $28 to Rep. Barbara Lee of Oakland, who is a dedicated environmentalist who voted against funding Israel’s war on Gaza in April.

In the prior election cycle, Huffman’s top contributor was J Street PAC ($13,500), a “liberal” Israeli lobby in Washington DC. By way of comparison, J Street PAC only gave $7 to the iconic New York City progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

This year, according to Open Secrets, retired people like Huffman to the tune of $90,963, and the casino/gambling industry skimmed him $43,500. Because Huffman serves on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, greenhouse gas generating rail and air corporations and transportation unions granted him in excess of $50,000.

In past cycles, Huffman’s major donors have included industrialized agribusiness and a portfolio of global climate heaters, such as Sierra Pacific Industries, PG&E, Goldman Sachs, Carnival Corporation, Bechtel Group and General Motors.

A quick tour through Huffman’s campaign expenditures this year is instructive. Someone likes to fundraise on the hoof, with a $2,811 tab at Charlie Parker Steakhouse on March 8. Last September 6, the campaign paid $11,850 for “lodging” at the Gold River Lodge and Historic Requa Inn in Klamath, California—resorts for sports fishing.

(Huffman did not reply to a query about why his campaign paid for staying at these fishing resorts. For that matter, Huffman did not respond to Counter Punch’s repeated requests for comment on all aspects of this story.)

Huffman gifted thousands of dollars to political cronies, including $4,000 to the Sonoma County Democratic Party; $2,500 to Democratic Central Committee of Marin County; $5,000 to Biden Victory Fund.

On March 13, Huffman gave $1,000 to the New Israel Fund, which supports civil rights activities inside Israel. And on March 16, Huffman donated $1,085.50 to the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) in Berkeley, California, which renders material aid to children suffering in Occupied Palestine and Gaza. Huffman did not respond to a query about what the contribution to MECA was for—but if it was to buy off a guilty conscience, he got more of a bargain than the children did.

At the end of the day, it is apparent that Huffman does not fear the voices of protestors, nor nightmare echoes of the cries of burning children in Gaza, as much as he fears the political power of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which is spending at least $100 million this year to destroy “progressive” members of congress who dare to criticize Israel. We all get it, Jared: You are afraid.

The post Who is Pro-Israel California Rep. Jared Huffman—Really? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Peter Byrne.

We get an update from the University of California, Los Angeles, where police in riot gear began dismantling a pro-Palestinian encampment early Thursday, using flashbang grenades, rubber bullets and tear gas, and arresting dozens of students. The raid came just over a day after pro-Israel counterprotesters armed with sticks, metal rods and fireworks attacked students at the encampment. The Real News Network reporter Mel Buer was on the scene during the attack. She describes seeing counterprotesters provoke students, yelling slurs and bludgeoning them with parts of the encampment’s barricade, and says the attack lasted several hours without police or security intervention. ”UCLA is complicit in violence inflicted upon protesters,” wrote the editorial board of UCLA’s campus newspaper, the Daily Bruin, the next day. Four of the paper’s student journalists were targeted and assaulted by counterprotesters while covering the protests. We speak with Shaanth Kodialam Nanguneri, one of the student journalists, who says one of their colleagues was hospitalized over the assault, while campus security officers “were nowhere to be found.” Meanwhile, UCLA’s chapter of Faculty for Justice in Palestine has called on faculty to refuse university labor Thursday in protest of the administration’s failure to protect students from what it termed “Zionist mobs.” Professor Gaye Theresa Johnson, a member of UCLA Faculty for Justice in Palestine, denounces the administration’s response to nonviolent protest and says she sees the events as part of a major sea change in the politicization of American youth. “This is a movement. It cannot be unseen. It cannot be put back in the box.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Last Monday the Montreal area municipality unanimously passed a motion demanding “the Council of Hampstead, hereby expresses its non-confidence in the Government of Canada for its distancing from the longstanding policy of support for Israel, which has resulted in a major spike in antisemitism across Canada; THAT the Town council calls upon the Government of Canada to reaffirm its commitment to supporting Israel and to take concrete actions to combat antisemitism in all its forms within our nation.”

Hampstead is fervently anti-Palestinian. An Israeli flag hangs outside City Hall and in November the municipality passed a law giving $1,000 tickets — with money raised sent to Israel — to anyone tearing down posters of the hostages Hamas took to Gaza on October 7. They’ve instigated multiple fundraising projects for Israel and in December Hampstead mayor Jeremy Levi told me he would continue supporting Israel even if they killed 100,000 Palestinian children since “good needs to prevail over evil”.

Despite promoting genocide, Hampstead claims egalitarian values and its statement calls for “solidarity with communities facing discrimination and persecution”. The first whereas in the recent motion claims “the Town of Hampstead, has historically upheld values of inclusivity, tolerance, and Support for communities facing discrimination.” But Hampstead is a wealthy, ethnically segregated, enclave. It traces its roots to Britain’s late-1800s Garden City movement, which was a move by London’s elite to move out of the city centre. Just west of Montréal, Hampstead was established by some of the wealthiest Canadians in 1914. The municipality doesn’t allow retail shops or industrial land in its boundaries and is one of the wealthiest municipalities in Québec. Until after the Second World War, it was almost entirely WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant). Today over three-quarters of Hampstead’s 7,500 residents are Jewish and it is one be the most ethnically homogeneous areas in greater Montreal. The median income of the 2,500 households was $150,000 per year in 2021 (almost twice the Montreal wide median). Over half of the homes have four bedrooms or more. The average home value in 2021 was $1,766,000 (three times the region’s average).

To live in the exclusive municipality, residents pay large sums in property taxes. With only residential properties covering the city’s costs, the average Hampstead house pays $15,393 annually in property tax.

To ensure a Zionist and Jewish centric outlook many residents put their kids in private Jewish schools and summer camps. The current ethnic segregation is stunning for a community that comprised seven per cent of Montreal’s population a century ago. (The larger adjacent municipality of Côte Saint-Luc is two-thirds Jewish.)

Hampstead is an exclusionary well-to-do community that promotes slaughtering and starving Palestinians because they aren’t Jewish. It is a bastion of Jewish supremacy that bemoans “antisemitism”.

It is beyond absurd for this wealthy, exclusionary, genocide promoting municipality to decry “discrimination” and “persecution”.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Yves Engler.

Last Monday the Montreal area municipality unanimously passed a motion demanding “the Council of Hampstead, hereby expresses its non-confidence in the Government of Canada for its distancing from the longstanding policy of support for Israel, which has resulted in a major spike in antisemitism across Canada; THAT the Town council calls upon the Government of Canada to reaffirm its commitment to supporting Israel and to take concrete actions to combat antisemitism in all its forms within our nation.”

Hampstead is fervently anti-Palestinian. An Israeli flag hangs outside City Hall and in November the municipality passed a law giving $1,000 tickets — with money raised sent to Israel — to anyone tearing down posters of the hostages Hamas took to Gaza on October 7. They’ve instigated multiple fundraising projects for Israel and in December Hampstead mayor Jeremy Levi told me he would continue supporting Israel even if they killed 100,000 Palestinian children since “good needs to prevail over evil”.

Despite promoting genocide, Hampstead claims egalitarian values and its statement calls for “solidarity with communities facing discrimination and persecution”. The first whereas in the recent motion claims “the Town of Hampstead, has historically upheld values of inclusivity, tolerance, and Support for communities facing discrimination.” But Hampstead is a wealthy, ethnically segregated, enclave. It traces its roots to Britain’s late-1800s Garden City movement, which was a move by London’s elite to move out of the city centre. Just west of Montréal, Hampstead was established by some of the wealthiest Canadians in 1914. The municipality doesn’t allow retail shops or industrial land in its boundaries and is one of the wealthiest municipalities in Québec. Until after the Second World War, it was almost entirely WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant). Today over three-quarters of Hampstead’s 7,500 residents are Jewish and it is one be the most ethnically homogeneous areas in greater Montreal. The median income of the 2,500 households was $150,000 per year in 2021 (almost twice the Montreal wide median). Over half of the homes have four bedrooms or more. The average home value in 2021 was $1,766,000 (three times the region’s average).

To live in the exclusive municipality, residents pay large sums in property taxes. With only residential properties covering the city’s costs, the average Hampstead house pays $15,393 annually in property tax.

To ensure a Zionist and Jewish centric outlook many residents put their kids in private Jewish schools and summer camps. The current ethnic segregation is stunning for a community that comprised seven per cent of Montreal’s population a century ago. (The larger adjacent municipality of Côte Saint-Luc is two-thirds Jewish.)

Hampstead is an exclusionary well-to-do community that promotes slaughtering and starving Palestinians because they aren’t Jewish. It is a bastion of Jewish supremacy that bemoans “antisemitism”.

It is beyond absurd for this wealthy, exclusionary, genocide promoting municipality to decry “discrimination” and “persecution”.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Yves Engler.

On Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., gave a speech that provoked anger from right-wing supporters of Israel, many who described it as a regime-change effort targeting Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu. The roughly 40-minute speech, delivered by Schumer on the floor of the Senate, attacked Hamas as well as critics of Israel, while vowing that the U.S. would defend and support Israel through any crises it faced. But Schumer also took direct aim at Netanyahu, describing his government as “an obstacle to peace” and saying that his coalition government “no longer fits the needs of Israel.”

Schumer went further in his remarks, calling for elections in Israel to bring a new government to power and saying that Netanyahu had “lost his way by allowing his political survival to take precedence over the best interests of Israel.”

Despite its otherwise pro-Israel tone, Schumer’s speech predictably triggered outrage among staunch pro-Israel Republicans, including many neoconservatives. Writing for the Council on Foreign Relations, Elliott Abrams, of Iran–Contra fame, hysterically accused Schumer of attempting to turn Israel into an “American colony” by intervening in its politics. “It’s a shameful and unprecedented way to treat an ally,” he wrote, “and an “unconscionable interference in the internal politics of another democracy.” His views were echoed by Israeli officials like former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who took to social media to denounce his comments as “external political intervention” in Israeli affairs.

These arguments could perhaps be respected were it not for the massive, regular, and institutionalized intervention in U.S. political life carried about by the Israeli government and its supporters, which has successfully turned the affairs of a small country on the eastern Mediterranean into one of the most important domestic political issues in America. Netanyahu himself has shown no embarrassment about his own intervention in American politics, delivering rapturous speeches lobbying the U.S. Congress to legislate in favor of Israel and essentially endorsing his favored political candidates for office during U.S. elections.

American foreign policy is today effectively handcuffed by the lobbying efforts of powerful special interest groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. These organizations are hellbent on ensuring that the U.S. provide Israel unstinting military, economic, and diplomatic support, even as its government rebuffs repeated U.S. requests to allow the creation of a Palestinian state in accordance with international law.

The complaints of people like Abrams and Bennett that the U.S. is intervening in Israeli affairs seem utterly myopic at best, given that extensive U.S. intervention is not just welcomed but also demanded by Israel and its supporters so long as it is in accordance with the security and political needs of the Israeli government.

Now More Than Ever

Schumer’s speech comes at a moment in which Israel has perhaps never been more isolated, or more dependent on U.S. support. The U.S. today has pivoted back to the Middle East against its own wishes, fighting the Houthis on behalf of Israel, providing arms for Israel’s campaign in Gaza, and deterring Hezbollah in Lebanon by parking its aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean. When three American military service members were killed in Jordan earlier this year, the assailants were clear that their motive was retaliating against U.S. support of Israel.

The U.S. has used its veto powers at the United Nations to shield Israel from an onslaught of global outrage over the scenes of mass killing and starvation in Gaza. As Israel has faced diplomatic assaults from Brazil, South Africa, China, and across the Muslim world, the U.S. has remained steadfast as its most important and often only defender in international fora.

All this support has come with very little reciprocation from Israel. In the wake of President Joe Biden’s comments expressing rhetorical support for an eventual two-state solution, Netanyahu publicly humiliated his most important patron by publicly vowing that no Palestinian state would ever be created. The right-wing prime minister even bragged about his own historic role in preventing one from coming into existence.

Netanyahu’s steadfast commitment to defying international law and overwhelming global opinion to pursue a project of continued colonization of the West Bank is only made possible thanks to his and his supporters’ tremendously successful campaign at bending U.S. politics in Israel’s favor. No country has been a greater beneficiary of U.S. support, nor has any country given less back for the tremendous black checks that the U.S. has written it for decades, up until the present day.

Schumer’s comments on the Senate floor, despite their opposition to Netanyahu and his extremist coalition government, were resoundingly supportive of Israel and hostile to its enemies. But in calling for a two-state solution to the conflict, he contradicted not just Netanyahu but also a majority of the Israeli public who today oppose such an outcome and prefer the status quo, which requires systematic disenfranchisement of Palestinians that human rights groups have classified as apartheid.

In this light, the Senate majority leader’s comments should not be taken as an effort to engineer a color revolution on the streets of Tel Aviv, but rather a last attempt to prevent Israel from descending to a level of ostracism from which even the U.S. would strain to rescue it. “Israel cannot hope to succeed as a pariah opposed by the rest of the world,” Schumer said.

Israel’s supporters who were incensed by his words would be better off taking them as wise counsel.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Murtaza Hussain.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Akela Lacy.

Rep. Bill Foster, an Illinois Democrat, agreed to three debates in his primary election race against Qasim Rashid, an insurgent progressive. Foster then dropped out of two of the debates, citing conflicting events. The first and only time he appeared alongside Rashid, the decadelong incumbent left halfway through the candidate forum, claiming he had another obligation.

Rashid said Foster is reluctant to defend his own record. Among other issues, the incumbent had criticized Israel’s war against Palestinians in Gaza but stopped short of calling for a ceasefire. Protesters were at the forum to express their displeasure with Foster and Rep. Sean Casten, a Democrat from a neighboring district, who also attended, for refusing to call for a ceasefire.

“Fundamentally, they realize that he wants them to vote for a record that even he isn’t willing to defend.”

“Voters are upset,” Rashid told The Intercept, said of Foster’s refusal to debate. “Fundamentally, they realize that he wants them to vote for a record that even he isn’t willing to defend.”

The March 19 Democratic primary in the suburbs and rural towns northwest of Chicago could become another congressional race where Israel plays an outsized role. Rashid is running on a broader progressive platform — hitting Foster for being out of touch with Democrats in the district and his acceptance of money from corporate PACs, fossil fuel companies, and the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries — but the ceasefire debate looms large.

Observers anticipate that Israel issues will attract outside money from lobbying groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that are preparing to spend record amounts to defend Democrats that toe their line. And Foster had already amassed support from pro-Israel donors: One of his top contributors this cycle is the private equality group Apollo Global Management, whose CEO Marc Rowan helped orchestrate the ousting of the president and board chair at the University of Pennsylvania over Israel’s war on Gaza. (Foster’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)

Pro-Israel groups have worked to oust other Democrats in Illinois who opposed unconditional U.S. military support for Israel, including Rep. Delia Ramirez and former Rep. Marie Newman. AIPAC joined conservative Democrats to defeat Newman’s 2018 congressional campaign. Newman won election in 2020 but become a target of pro-Israel groups again last cycle and lost her reelection campaign.

Newman, who is supporting Rashid’s campaign, told The Intercept that the threat of spending from groups like AIPAC and its ally,Democratic Majority for Israel, is scaring incumbents into submission and deepening schisms within the Democratic Party.

“In the last 3 months I’ve talked to several MOCs” — members of Congress — “who live in absolute fear of AIPAC and DMFI working against them or primarying them,” Newman said by text. “More than anything else I’m deeply concerned about how AIPAC, Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) and their 20 affiliate PACs are putting a huge wedge in the Democratic Party, particularly in the House.”

AIPAC Waiting in the Wings

For decades, AIPAC played an influential role in Middle Eastern policy by sending its legions to lobby members of Congress in their offices and only organizing campaign donations informally among members. In recent years, however, the group transformed its spending on congressional elections with the launch of a new super PAC in the last election cycle.

The direct influence on money in politics has exacerbated partisan rifts that have emerged around Israel and AIPAC. Democratic voters, for their part, are shifting away from AIPAC’s uncompromising positions on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict — especially as a majority of Americans came to support the ceasefire that AIPAC opposes.

Amid the current flare-up of violence, even some more centrist Democrats have found themselves unable to stay in lockstep with AIPAC, which frowns on virtually all criticism of Israel. In Illinois’s 11th Congressional District, for instance, Rashid acknowledged that Foster has also been a vocal critic of Israel. With the death toll in Gaza mounting, Foster has expressed concern about Benjamin Netanyahu’s military strategy and said there was a “special place in hell” for the prime minister, but stopped short of calling for a ceasefire.

Foster’s record, Rashid said, is more notable for the things he has not done. He voted for two measures expressing support for Israel, but neither of them mentioned Palestinians killed by Israeli forces. Foster is not a co-sponsor of the ceasefire resolution introduced in October nor a resolution introduced by another Illinois Democrat, Ramirez, that honored a 6-year-old boy, Wadee Alfayoumi, who was killed in Plainfield in an alleged hate crime during the first week of Israel’s war on Gaza.

Fostercriticizes Israel’s actions, Rashid said, but won’t take the steps necessary to end the bloodshed in Gaza — namely supporting a ceasefire.

“The big difference between he and I is not on a question of whether international law is being violated. We both agree with that,” Rashid said. “The difference is that I have the integrity to say it and demand action.”

Foster has long had support from J Street, a pro-Israel advocacy group that positions itself as a liberal alternative to AIPAC. Until this week, J Street had resisted pressure, both internal and external, to call for a ceasefire, even threatening to pull endorsements from members who did so. The group announced support for a “negotiated stop” to violence in Gaza on Monday.

J Street said in a statement to The Intercept that it’s proud to endorse Foster again this year. Foster has “been a champion for pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-democracy values on Capitol Hill since his election in 2008,” J Street spokesperson Tali DeGroot told The Intercept, pointing to his support for the now-defunct 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which was supported by J Street but opposed by AIPAC, the Israeli government, and a clutch of hawkish Democrats.

“We’ve seen the polling. Eighty percent of Democrats want a ceasefire.”

Rashid’s campaign has been careful to tread lightly on the Israel question while pushing unequivocally for a ceasefire. His approach has been to focus on ending the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip and tap into majority support for a ceasefire among Democratic voters. “We’ve seen the polling. Eighty percent of Democrats want a ceasefire,” Rashid said. “Even a majority of Republicans and Independents want a ceasefire. For us, this is basic integrity.”

Foster has been in office for a decade and faced few challengers in recent years. Foster’s last opponent in the 2020 Democratic primary, Rachel Ventura, received 41 percent of the vote.

Rashid works at a Chicago law firm and grew up in the area, which he recently returned to. In 2020, he ran as the Democratic candidate in the general election for Virginia’s 1st Congressional District and lost to Republican Rep. Robert Wittman.

Rashid raised $305,000 in the third quarter of 2023 — $10,000 more than Foster — and had $114,000 cash on hand. Foster has $1.3 million cash on hand and $1 million in debts, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission. Rashid said his campaign had received more than 10,000 individual contributions. In the Democratic primary, a large cash intervention by AIPAC or one of its allies could play a major part.

Rashid, for his part, said he was ready for the challenges: “I have immense confidence in voters that they’re sick and tired of the mudslinging and the negativity and these outside lobbyist organizations meddling in our races.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Akela Lacy.

Few U.S. colleges have generated more controversy for their response to Israel’s war on Gaza than the University of Pennsylvania. Penn’s president Liz Magill faced criticism for her answers about hypothetical scenarios of antisemitism posed during a congressional hearing by Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., who has herself faced criticism for embracing antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Stefanik’s line of questioning last month was part of a wider campaign in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel: demonizing pro-Palestine activism. Stefanik conflated calls for “intifada” — an Arabic word for “uprising” — with antisemitic attacks and asked Magill, along with other university presidents, if these purported calls for the genocide of Jews constituted harassment. Magill, by all accounts, stumbled through a non-answer.

Under pressure from billionaire donors and pro-Israel lobby groups, Magill and Penn board chair Scott Bok resigned four days after the hearing.

News of the resignations was framed as part of the university’s failure to handle antisemitism on campus in the wake of October 7. But the effort to oust Magill began months before the Hamas attack, according to public letters and people familiar with the fight over Israel and Palestine at Penn. As early as August, Magill had drawn the ire of pro-Israel lobbying groups, nonprofits, and university donors after rebuffing their efforts to cancel a literary festival on campus called Palestine Writes.

The story of what happened at Penn was distorted to obscure the earlier round of anti-Palestinian attacks against the literary festival, said Radhika Sainath, a senior staff attorney at Palestine Legal who works on speech and academic freedom. Palestine Legal advised the festival and urged Magill to resist censoring the event.

Sainath, who attended the festival to conduct research for a novel, said that media reports ran with unverified claims that Palestine Writes had stoked antisemitism, even suggesting that the festival was linked to the Hamas attack.

“You could really see how pretty much every newspaper was just adopting the framework of these Israel lobby groups as a given, as if the festival was antisemitic,” she said. “People were just really upset in part about a large number of Palestinians potentially coming to campus to talk about Palestinian literature.”

That coverage amplified the attacks that led to the congressional hearings, eventually precipitating Magill’s resignation. University officials squandered an opportunity to correct false claims that students had called for the genocide of Jewish people, Sainath said: “They kind of went along with it and fell into this trap.”

A banner for the University of Pennsylvania on campus in Philadelphia on Dec. 8, 2023.

Over the summer, wealthy donors, along with local and national Jewish groups, lined up to take issue with the university’s plans to host a festival in September celebrating Palestinian authors.

One of the leaders of the informal network of critics was Marc Rowan, CEO of the investment firm Apollo Global Management. Rowan serves as advisory board chair of the university’s Wharton School, which he attended, and was previously a member of Penn’s board of trustees. He also chairs the board of the UJA-Federation of New York, an influential Jewish group involved in pro-Israel advocacy.

Another major force against the festival was billionaire Republican donor Ronald Lauder, also a Wharton alum, who pushed Magill to cancel Palestine Writes in a meeting in Philadelphia and two subsequent phone calls.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia and the Anti-Defamation League of Philadelphia sent two letters to Magill in August complaining of “a high likelihood” that the festival would “promote inflammatory and antisemitic narratives about Israel.” They alleged that some of the speakers, including Marc Lamont Hill; Noura Erakat; Maysoon Zayid; Huwaida Arraf; Roger Waters; and the festival’s executive director, Susan Abulhawa, had a “history of antisemitism,” citing criticisms of Zionism and Israel’s human rights abuses. The groups said the university should issue a statement “questioning the judgment” of the departments working with the festival, which included Penn’s English, near Eastern languages and civilizations, and cinema and media studies departments.

Festival organizers pushed back. In a September 2 letter to Magill and other university leaders, Abulhawa described the complaints as part of “a campaign to discredit and denigrate” the literature festival. “We categorically reject this cynical, sinister, and ahistorical conflation of bigotry with the moral repudiation of a foreign state’s criminality, particularly as most of us are victims of that state,” she wrote. “Every instance of the examples listed in the original letter refers to Zionism, Zionists, or Israel. Situating those individual Palestinians and our allies in league with actual antisemites is wholly irresponsible and dangerous.”

Ten days later, Magill and other university leaders issued a statement distancing Penn from the festival, citing concerns raised about certain speakers “who have a documented and troubling history of engaging in antisemitism by speaking and acting in ways that denigrate Jewish people.” The university condemned antisemitism, the officials wrote, but supported the free exchange of ideas. “This includes the expression of views that are controversial and even those that are incompatible with our institutional values.”

When it became clear that Palestine Writes would go forward as planned, Rowan, Lauder, and other trustees organized an open letter to Magill reiterating concerns about the festival. The letter eventually gained more than 4,000 signatories, including prominent alumni.

The festival began on September 22 and went off mostly without a hitch, despite threats against organizers and at least two high-profile attendees who were kept from attending in person. Gary Younge, a sociology professor at the University of Manchester; Waters of Pink Floyd; and author Viet Thanh Nguyen were scheduled as plenary speakers. Nguyen was the only one of the three who could attend in person. Younge said his visa was inexplicably revoked prior to his trip to the U.S., and Waters said the university prohibited him from stepping on campus; he spoke to the festival online from the Philadelphia Airport. The university countered that Waters was originally set to attend virtually and a last-minute change would have required additional security. Festival organizers disputed the university’s account.

Attendees and festival board members who spoke to The Intercept described Palestine Writes as a multigenerational, multicultural event that welcomed everyone and fostered an important cultural space on campus, particularly for Palestinian students.

But in the weeks following October 7, media outlets and critics linked the festival to the Hamas attack and said it had fomented an unsafe campus environment for Jewish students. In a letter to the university newspaper published October 12, Rowan and other donors called on Magill and Bok to resign and urged alumni to “close the checkbooks” and halt donations. “It took less than two weeks to go from the Palestine Writes Literary Festival on UPenn’s campus to the barbaric slaughter and kidnapping of Israelis,” Rowan wrote.

Appearing on CNBC, Rowan said his appeal to alumni was a “difficult call for a place that I love for the last 40 years.” He insisted the issue wasn’t about free speech, which he supported — it was about university leaders saying they condemned antisemitism but allowing the literature festival to happen.

“There has been a gathering storm around these issues,” Rowan said. “Microaggressions are condemned with extreme moral outrage, and yet violence — particularly violence against Jews, antisemitism — seems to have found a place of tolerance on the campus, protected by free speech.” Magill was “not capable of exercising moral leadership,” he said, “because she feels academic pressure and peer pressure.”

Lauder threatened to cut additional funding in a letter to Magill on October 17, saying that she was forcing him to reexamine his financial support “absent unsatisfactory measures to address antisemitism at the university.” The letter brought him great sorrow, Lauder wrote. “I am so sorry you did not cancel the event.”

That university administrators, media outlets, and politicians accepted that narrative uncritically underscored the hysteria of the moment, said Bill Mullen, a board member of Palestine Writes. “It’s amazing to me that people can get away with this without being fact-checked,” he said. “You just have to say antisemitism and you terrify people into not asking questions.”

“The attack on Palestine Writes was a very targeted attack on Palestinian writers and intellectuals. And since October 7, we have literally seen Israel murdering Palestinian poets and writers and journalists,” Mullen added. “They wanted to silence these voices.”

After Magill and Bok resigned, Julie Platt, vice chair of the university board, was named interim board chair. Platt also serves as board chair of the Jewish Federations of North America. Penn named J. Larry Jameson, the dean of its medical school, as interim president.

Since the resignations, the university has further aligned itself with pro-Israel lobbying groups and donors. Last week, a delegation of faculty took a three-day “solidarity tour” of Israel that included meetings with Israeli government officials and a visit to the Gaza envelope.

Rowan, meanwhile, has sought to guide a transformation at Penn. Days after Magill’s resignation, he sent a letter to trustees raising concerns about the university’s culture and “political orientation,” warning that it had “allowed for preferred versus free speech” and asking how the university considered “viewpoint diversity” in hiring.

An anonymous petition circulated that called on the university to fire three faculty members who had protested in support of Gaza on campus, including festival organizer Huda Fakhreddine, an associate professor of Arabic literature; her husband, a poet and professor of creative writing; and another professor of Persian literature. Fakhreddine, one of several Penn faculty named in the congressional hearing, said that she has since been doxxed and received death threats.

At its annual convention last week in Philadelphia, the Modern Language Association’s Delegate Assembly passed an emergency motion defending speech on Palestine and supporting Fakhreddine and others at Penn facing retaliation for criticizing Israel’s war on Gaza.

University faculty have pushed back against interference by donors and trustees. The executive committee of Penn’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors called on the university to address harassment, intimidation, and threats against faculty and warned of “the chilling effects of statements by trustees, donors, and university administrators on teaching, learning, and scholarship.”

Palestine Writes is now battling a court order that it remove from its website a logo for the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, which had awarded a grant to the organization. After the dustup over the festival reached the mainstream, the council sent a cease-and-desist letter, which was immediately published by the Anti-Defamation League with unredacted contact information for Abulhawa. In November, a judge on the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas ordered the logo removed, saying she understood why the council would not want to be affiliated with the festival in the current political climate.

The issue reached the office of Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who publicly denounced Magill and the university after the congressional hearing. The governor’s office represented the arts council in court proceedings against the festival.

“It was just so eye-opening to me that something as simple as a literature festival could be so threatening to pro-Israel supporters,” said Marie Kelly, a board member for Palestine Writes. The festival was a historic celebration and affirmation of Palestinian culture, Kelly said. “That’s not anything that any pro-Israel academic, millionaire, or politician can take away.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Akela Lacy.

As we begin a pivotal election year in the United States, we look at the powerful U.S. lobby group AIPAC, which is set to spend more than $100 million to defeat progressives who are critical of Israeli human rights violations in Palestine. That includes Michigan’s Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American member of Congress. AIPAC’s outsize influence in national campaigns comes with “an implicit threat,” says The Intercept's Ryan Grim, whose new book, The Squad: AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution, was published last month. “That money will still be spent, but it will be spent against you instead,” he says about politicians who dare to turn down the pro-Israel lobby's deep pockets. “That really, to a shocking degree, constrained what Democratic candidates were willing to say when it came to criticizing Israel.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

As the Israel/Gaza crisis continues unabated, eliciting massive protests around the world, US media offer a strikingly narrow debate. On the Sunday political news shows, which are both agenda-setting and reflect what corporate media view as the most important perspectives on the most important stories, the guests invited to speak on Gaza skew strongly toward US politicians—especially those with strong financial influence by the military industrial complex and pro-Israel advocates. The resulting conversations leave little room for dissent from a pro-war stance.

FAIR looked at four weeks of Sunday shows covering the current conflagration in Gaza, October 15 through November 5, during which time the topic occupied a significant portion of political talk show coverage.

We identified 57 guest appearances across ABC‘s This Week, CBS‘s Face the Nation, CNN‘s State of the Union, NBC‘s Meet the Press and Fox News Sunday, with 41 unique guests. (Some guests appeared more than once).

Of the 57 appearances, 48 were from the US. While representatives of the Israeli government or military appeared five times—and on every outlet except NBC—only once did a Palestinian guest appear: senior Fatah member Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian ambassador to the UK, on CBS (11/5/23).

Twenty-eight guests had partisan affiliations: 10 Democrats (making 18 appearances), 19 Republicans (making 25 appearances) and one Independent (Sen. Bernie Sanders, appearing once). The abundance of Republicans may have been related to the concurrent drama over the speaker of the House, which several guests were also asked about.

Three guests represented international humanitarian organizations: Philippe Lazzarini, UN Relief and Works Agency commissioner-general (CBS, 10/22/23); Robert Mardini, director-general of the International Committee of the Red Cross (CBS, 10/29/23); and Cindy McCain, director of the World Food Program (and widow of former Republican Sen. John McCain—ABC, 10/22/23). NBC, CNN and Fox featured no such organizations during the four weeks studied.

No scholars, activists or international law or human rights experts appeared, nor did any civil society leaders from either Israel or Palestine.

Under the influence

Eleven of the 34 US guests, accounting for 13 appearances, had significant ties to the military industrial complex. These include five former senior military officials, five current or former board members or advisors to a military industry company, and four members of Congress who count one or more “defense industries” as top-20 contributing industries to their 2024 campaigns, according to the OpenSecrets database. (Some guests had multiple ties; see chart.)

At least 19 more US guests have taken money from military industry political action committees (PACs) during their political careers; of the 23 elected officials for whom data was available, only Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D–Wash.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) and Rep. Jason Crow (D–Colo.) showed no military industry PAC funding during their political careers. (These three politicians generally reject corporate PAC money.)

Eighteen of the US guests, who were featured 23 times with repeat appearances, had significant direct ties to pro-Israel funding. (“Significant” we defined as “pro-Israel” being a top-20 contributing industry to their 2024 campaigns, according to OpenSecrets; or, for GOP presidential candidates, receiving prominent financial support from pro-Israel donors; see Ha’aretz, 8/16/23.)

The pro-Israel lobby includes influential groups like J Street, Democratic Majority for Israel and the Republican Jewish Coalition, but has been overwhelmingly dominated by the hard-line American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), particularly since its 2021 decision to launch its own PAC and super PAC. AIPAC’s current stated priority is “building and sustaining congressional support for Israel’s fight to permanently dismantle Hamas.”

Pro-Israel PACs and individuals poured more than $30 million into the 2022 election cycle, roughly two-thirds to Democrats and a third to Republicans.

Those numbers—and the numbers used to calculate top-20 industries—don’t include super PAC money, which is much harder to track. The AIPAC super PAC, called the United Democracy Project, dumped over $26 million into several 2022 Democratic primaries to defeat progressive candidates it deemed “anti-Israel” (Jewish Currents, 11/15/22), making it the highest-spending nonpartisan super PAC that election cycle. AIPAC has long wielded outsize influence in Washington, even prior to making direct campaign donations (see, e.g., Intercept, 2/11/19).

FAIR (10/17/23, 11/6/23) has pointed out that, despite media coverage suggesting otherwise, the Jewish response to the current war is not united in support of the Israeli government’s actions or goals. Even the pro-Israel lobby is not monolithic in its general approach nor in its current response. J Street—which has criticized AIPAC’s support for MAGA insurrectionists, and its attack ads associating progressive Democrats with terrorism—is a notable outlier against the official Israeli stance, as the liberal lobbying group has called for humanitarian pauses that Israel has fiercely resisted. But AIPAC has condemned calls for a ceasefire and pushed for congressional funding for further military assistance to Israel; similarly, the Republican Jewish Coalition sharply criticized Biden for “call[ing] for Israeli restraint” in Gaza.

AIPAC’s super PAC and Democratic Majority for Israel have already launched six-figure ad campaigns against Democratic and Republican lawmakers who voted against a pro-Israel House resolution (Jewish Insider, 11/5/23).

‘Bounce the rubble’

Sen. Tom Cotton (R–Ark.) on Fox News Sunday (10/15/23)

The guests on the Sunday shows leaned heavily towards full support of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. On Fox News Sunday (10/15/23), for instance, Sen. Tom Cotton (R–Ark.) announced:

As far as I’m concerned, Israel can bounce the rubble in Gaza. Anything that happens in Gaza is the responsibility of Hamas. Hamas killed women and children in Israel last weekend. If women and children die in Gaza, it will be because Hamas is using them as human shields, because they’re not currently allowing them to evacuate as Israel has asked them to do so. Gaza is the responsibility of Hamas.

Fox anchor Shannon Bream made no attempt to challenge Cotton’s shocking argument, which is not supported by international law. Cotton was the top beneficiary of a major shift in pro-Israel campaign contributions from Democratic to Republican candidates in 2014, launching his Senate career as one of the chamber’s staunchest Israel hawks (Mondoweiss, 3/12/15; New York Times, 4/4/15).

Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R–Wyo.) on CNN’s State of the Union (10/22/23)

Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R–Wyo.), who appeared on both CNN (10/22/23) and CBS (10/22/23), long received steadfast support from pro-Israel funders, and gave that support right back (CNN, 10/22/23):

I think that, No. 1, people need to recognize that what’s happening in terms of the conditions in Gaza is the responsibility of Hamas…. Israel must take whatever action they need to take to defend themselves. And the United States should not be in the business of telling them to stop, to slow down. They have got to defend themselves. And that means they have got to defeat Hamas.

At that point, more than 4,650 people had been killed in Gaza, including over 1,870 children.

Democrats were generally more restrained, but unwavering in their support for Israel and a military solution. Rep. Adam Smith (D–Wash.), with strong financial backing from both the military industry and pro-Israel funding, told Fox (10/22/23):

Israel has to win the broader fight against Hamas. It is a military campaign, anyone who says there’s no military solution to this, I think the military is a huge part of it.

Sen. Jack Reed (D–R.I.), who finds all three “defense industries” among his top 10 contributors, argued (Fox, 11/5/23) that “what Israel is doing, appropriately so, is targeting Hamas to degrade it and then destroy it.” He also urged that

what they have to do, not only for the complying with the rule of law, but also winning the battle of minds and hearts, is to do it in such a way as that they minimize the harm to civilians.

By November 5, the Gaza death toll was nearly 10,000, including at least 4,000 children, rendering absurd the claim that Israel was merely targeting Hamas. By comparison, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which is not known for its regard for civilian life, killed at least 500 children in 18 months of war (RFE/RL, 8/13/23).

Few calls for military restraint

These voices give a very narrow perspective on the conflict in Gaza, one that is not at all representative of the US public or international opinion. A Data for Progress poll (10/20/23) found that 66% of likely US voters agree that “the US should call for a ceasefire and a de-escalation of violence in Gaza.” International leaders and hundreds of human rights groups around the world have called for a ceasefire, yet US media give the idea little space for discussion (FAIR.org, 10/24/23).

Ambassador Husam Zomlot (CBS‘s Face the Nation, 11/5/23), the only Palestinian to appear on any Sunday show during the study period

Out of the 57 appearances, only two were with guests who both had publicly called for a ceasefire and voiced that in their interview (once prompted by an anchor question, once unprompted). Representative Jayapal was asked specifically about her call for a ceasefire, which she reaffirmed (NBC, 10/29/23). Palestinian ambassador Zomlot (CBS, 11/5/23) made an even more forceful call for a ceasefire, arguing that

this whole talk about humanitarian pauses is simply irresponsible. Pauses of crimes against humanity. So, you are going to pause for six hours killing our children, and then resume killing the children? I mean, this doesn’t stand even international law.

CBS host Margaret Brennan repeatedly pressed Zomlot to condemn the Hamas attacks; no outlet asked any of their Israeli guests to condemn the Israeli killings of Palestinian civilians.

Moreover, only five of the 57 guest appearances involved a question about a ceasefire (CBS, 10/22/23; NBC, 10/29/23; ABC, 11/5/23; CBS, 11/5/23; CNN, 11/5/23). Aside from Jayapal, none of the others asked supported a ceasefire. In his appearance, Bernie Sanders (CNN, 11/5/23) argued that “we have got to stop the bombing now,” and that in considering an emergency military assistance package for Israel, “it’s terribly important…to say to Israel, you want this money, you got to change your military strategy.” But when pressed about a ceasefire, he responded:

I don’t know how you can have a ceasefire, permanent ceasefire, with an organization like Hamas, which is dedicated to turmoil and chaos and destroying the state of Israel.

The three representatives of international organizations provided perspective on the civilian suffering in Gaza and the desperate need for humanitarian aid, and Lazzarini and Mardini appealed for the protection of civilian infrastructure like hospitals, though none mentioned a ceasefire.

None of the many human rights groups or other experts on international law who might have offered a perspective contrary to guests’ repeated assertions that Israel was not responsible for civilian deaths in Gaza were invited to speak.

The Sunday shows aim to set agendas, both across media and in Washington. By boosting politicians with serious conflicts of interest on both Israel and war, those networks stack the deck in favor of endless war.

Research assistance: Keating Zelenke

The post Sunday’s Gaza Guests Linked to Military Industry, Pro-Israel Funding appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Julie Hollar.

As the Israel/Gaza crisis continues unabated, eliciting massive protests around the world, US media offer a strikingly narrow debate. On the Sunday political news shows, which are both agenda-setting and reflect what corporate media view as the most important perspectives on the most important stories, the guests invited to speak on Gaza skew strongly toward US politicians—especially those with strong financial influence by the military industrial complex and pro-Israel advocates. The resulting conversations leave little room for dissent from a pro-war stance.

FAIR looked at four weeks of Sunday shows covering the current conflagration in Gaza, October 15 through November 5, during which time the topic occupied a significant portion of political talk show coverage.

We identified 57 guest appearances across ABC‘s This Week, CBS‘s Face the Nation, CNN‘s State of the Union, NBC‘s Meet the Press and Fox News Sunday, with 41 unique guests. (Some guests appeared more than once).

Of the 57 appearances, 48 were from the US. While representatives of the Israeli government or military appeared five times—and on every outlet except NBC—only once did a Palestinian guest appear: senior Fatah member Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian ambassador to the UK, on CBS (11/5/23).

Twenty-eight guests had partisan affiliations: 10 Democrats (making 18 appearances), 19 Republicans (making 25 appearances) and one Independent (Sen. Bernie Sanders, appearing once). The abundance of Republicans may have been related to the concurrent drama over the speaker of the House, which several guests were also asked about.

Three guests represented international humanitarian organizations: Philippe Lazzarini, UN Relief and Works Agency commissioner-general (CBS, 10/22/23); Robert Mardini, director-general of the International Committee of the Red Cross (CBS, 10/29/23); and Cindy McCain, director of the World Food Program (and widow of former Republican Sen. John McCain—ABC, 10/22/23). NBC, CNN and Fox featured no such organizations during the four weeks studied.

No scholars, activists or international law or human rights experts appeared, nor did any civil society leaders from either Israel or Palestine.

Under the influence

Eleven of the 34 US guests, accounting for 13 appearances, had significant ties to the military industrial complex. These include five former senior military officials, five current or former board members or advisors to a military industry company, and four members of Congress who count one or more “defense industries” as top-20 contributing industries to their 2024 campaigns, according to the OpenSecrets database. (Some guests had multiple ties; see chart.)

At least 19 more US guests have taken money from military industry political action committees (PACs) during their political careers; of the 23 elected officials for whom data was available, only Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D–Wash.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) and Rep. Jason Crow (D–Colo.) showed no military industry PAC funding during their political careers. (These three politicians generally reject corporate PAC money.)

Eighteen of the US guests, who were featured 23 times with repeat appearances, had significant direct ties to pro-Israel funding. (“Significant” we defined as “pro-Israel” being a top-20 contributing industry to their 2024 campaigns, according to OpenSecrets; or, for GOP presidential candidates, receiving prominent financial support from pro-Israel donors; see Ha’aretz, 8/16/23.)

The pro-Israel lobby includes influential groups like J Street, Democratic Majority for Israel and the Republican Jewish Coalition, but has been overwhelmingly dominated by the hard-line American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), particularly since its 2021 decision to launch its own PAC and super PAC. AIPAC’s current stated priority is “building and sustaining congressional support for Israel’s fight to permanently dismantle Hamas.”

Pro-Israel PACs and individuals poured more than $30 million into the 2022 election cycle, roughly two-thirds to Democrats and a third to Republicans.

Those numbers—and the numbers used to calculate top-20 industries—don’t include super PAC money, which is much harder to track. The AIPAC super PAC, called the United Democracy Project, dumped over $26 million into several 2022 Democratic primaries to defeat progressive candidates it deemed “anti-Israel” (Jewish Currents, 11/15/22), making it the highest-spending nonpartisan super PAC that election cycle. AIPAC has long wielded outsize influence in Washington, even prior to making direct campaign donations (see, e.g., Intercept, 2/11/19).

FAIR (10/17/23, 11/6/23) has pointed out that, despite media coverage suggesting otherwise, the Jewish response to the current war is not united in support of the Israeli government’s actions or goals. Even the pro-Israel lobby is not monolithic in its general approach nor in its current response. J Street—which has criticized AIPAC’s support for MAGA insurrectionists, and its attack ads associating progressive Democrats with terrorism—is a notable outlier against the official Israeli stance, as the liberal lobbying group has called for humanitarian pauses that Israel has fiercely resisted. But AIPAC has condemned calls for a ceasefire and pushed for congressional funding for further military assistance to Israel; similarly, the Republican Jewish Coalition sharply criticized Biden for “call[ing] for Israeli restraint” in Gaza.

AIPAC’s super PAC and Democratic Majority for Israel have already launched six-figure ad campaigns against Democratic and Republican lawmakers who voted against a pro-Israel House resolution (Jewish Insider, 11/5/23).

‘Bounce the rubble’

Sen. Tom Cotton (R–Ark.) on Fox News Sunday (10/15/23)

The guests on the Sunday shows leaned heavily towards full support of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. On Fox News Sunday (10/15/23), for instance, Sen. Tom Cotton (R–Ark.) announced:

As far as I’m concerned, Israel can bounce the rubble in Gaza. Anything that happens in Gaza is the responsibility of Hamas. Hamas killed women and children in Israel last weekend. If women and children die in Gaza, it will be because Hamas is using them as human shields, because they’re not currently allowing them to evacuate as Israel has asked them to do so. Gaza is the responsibility of Hamas.

Fox anchor Shannon Bream made no attempt to challenge Cotton’s shocking argument, which is not supported by international law. Cotton was the top beneficiary of a major shift in pro-Israel campaign contributions from Democratic to Republican candidates in 2014, launching his Senate career as one of the chamber’s staunchest Israel hawks (Mondoweiss, 3/12/15; New York Times, 4/4/15).

Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R–Wyo.) on CNN’s State of the Union (10/22/23)

Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R–Wyo.), who appeared on both CNN (10/22/23) and CBS (10/22/23), long received steadfast support from pro-Israel funders, and gave that support right back (CNN, 10/22/23):

I think that, No. 1, people need to recognize that what’s happening in terms of the conditions in Gaza is the responsibility of Hamas…. Israel must take whatever action they need to take to defend themselves. And the United States should not be in the business of telling them to stop, to slow down. They have got to defend themselves. And that means they have got to defeat Hamas.

At that point, more than 4,650 people had been killed in Gaza, including over 1,870 children.

Democrats were generally more restrained, but unwavering in their support for Israel and a military solution. Rep. Adam Smith (D–Wash.), with strong financial backing from both the military industry and pro-Israel funding, told Fox (10/22/23):

Israel has to win the broader fight against Hamas. It is a military campaign, anyone who says there’s no military solution to this, I think the military is a huge part of it.

Sen. Jack Reed (D–R.I.), who finds all three “defense industries” among his top 10 contributors, argued (Fox, 11/5/23) that “what Israel is doing, appropriately so, is targeting Hamas to degrade it and then destroy it.” He also urged that

what they have to do, not only for the complying with the rule of law, but also winning the battle of minds and hearts, is to do it in such a way as that they minimize the harm to civilians.

By November 5, the Gaza death toll was nearly 10,000, including at least 4,000 children, rendering absurd the claim that Israel was merely targeting Hamas. By comparison, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which is not known for its regard for civilian life, killed at least 500 children in 18 months of war (RFE/RL, 8/13/23).

Few calls for military restraint

These voices give a very narrow perspective on the conflict in Gaza, one that is not at all representative of the US public or international opinion. A Data for Progress poll (10/20/23) found that 66% of likely US voters agree that “the US should call for a ceasefire and a de-escalation of violence in Gaza.” International leaders and hundreds of human rights groups around the world have called for a ceasefire, yet US media give the idea little space for discussion (FAIR.org, 10/24/23).

Ambassador Husam Zomlot (CBS‘s Face the Nation, 11/5/23), the only Palestinian to appear on any Sunday show during the study period

Out of the 57 appearances, only two were with guests who both had publicly called for a ceasefire and voiced that in their interview (once prompted by an anchor question, once unprompted). Representative Jayapal was asked specifically about her call for a ceasefire, which she reaffirmed (NBC, 10/29/23). Palestinian ambassador Zomlot (CBS, 11/5/23) made an even more forceful call for a ceasefire, arguing that

this whole talk about humanitarian pauses is simply irresponsible. Pauses of crimes against humanity. So, you are going to pause for six hours killing our children, and then resume killing the children? I mean, this doesn’t stand even international law.

CBS host Margaret Brennan repeatedly pressed Zomlot to condemn the Hamas attacks; no outlet asked any of their Israeli guests to condemn the Israeli killings of Palestinian civilians.

Moreover, only five of the 57 guest appearances involved a question about a ceasefire (CBS, 10/22/23; NBC, 10/29/23; ABC, 11/5/23; CBS, 11/5/23; CNN, 11/5/23). Aside from Jayapal, none of the others asked supported a ceasefire. In his appearance, Bernie Sanders (CNN, 11/5/23) argued that “we have got to stop the bombing now,” and that in considering an emergency military assistance package for Israel, “it’s terribly important…to say to Israel, you want this money, you got to change your military strategy.” But when pressed about a ceasefire, he responded:

I don’t know how you can have a ceasefire, permanent ceasefire, with an organization like Hamas, which is dedicated to turmoil and chaos and destroying the state of Israel.

The three representatives of international organizations provided perspective on the civilian suffering in Gaza and the desperate need for humanitarian aid, and Lazzarini and Mardini appealed for the protection of civilian infrastructure like hospitals, though none mentioned a ceasefire.

None of the many human rights groups or other experts on international law who might have offered a perspective contrary to guests’ repeated assertions that Israel was not responsible for civilian deaths in Gaza were invited to speak.

The Sunday shows aim to set agendas, both across media and in Washington. By boosting politicians with serious conflicts of interest on both Israel and war, those networks stack the deck in favor of endless war.

Research assistance: Keating Zelenke

The post Sunday’s Gaza Guests Linked to Military Industry, Pro-Israel Funding appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Julie Hollar.

In a statement in which he repeatedly condemned Hamas and failed to explicitly call for a ceasefire, Trudeau told the press “we’re hearing the testimonies of doctors, family members, survivors, kids who’ve lost their parents. The world is witnessing this — the killing of women and children, of babies. This has to stop.”

In response to the prime minister’s comment former Liberal MP and current CEO of Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center Michael Levitt posted to X, “The scathing remarks also landed here at home, where Jews like me, reeling from weeks of surging antisemitism, got the message loud and clear, and will worry that they have the potential to further fan the flames of Jew-hatred that we are facing.” In an interview with CBC Levitt reiterated the point, claiming the prime minister’s comments “further fuel antisemitism and lashing out at Jews in Canada.”

In an article headlined “Trudeau’s Israel tirade hands Canada’s anti-Semites a propaganda victory” Toronto Sun columnist Laurie Goldstein echoed this line of reasoning. He argued that “Trudeau handed anti-Semites in Canada a new club to beat Jews over the head with by blaming Israel alone for the conduct of the war in Gaza — with theatrical pauses for effect — before he even mentioned Hamas.”

Former Conservative senator, United Jewish Appeal (UJA) Toronto Board Chair and now head of UJA’s Committee to combat Antisemitism, Linda Frum blamed Trudeau for a purported bomb threat at a private Jewish school (which holds “IDF days”). Above a statement noting “Toronto’s largest Jewish school TanenbaumCHAT was evacuated today due to threats made against the school”, Frum posted, “A few days ago PM Trudeau falsely accused Israel of deliberately killing babies. You can draw a straight line from there to here ….”

(In the real world, Trudeau has enabled Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Alongside dispatching Canadian special forces there and flying 30 Israeli reservists to the country, Trudeau’s government has called for “eliminating” Hamas, supported Israel’s “right to defend itself” and visited to encourage Israeli violence. At the same time Ottawa has refused to halt arms exports, prevent illegal recruitment for the IDF or stop Canadian charities from unlawfully assisting Israel’s military, as detailed in a recent notice of intention to prosecute the PM for aiding and abetting Israel’s war crimes.)

The argument that criticizing Israel for killing babies equates to attacking Canadian Jews is enabled by Zionist groups linking Canadian Jewry to Israel. Claiming to represent Montreal’s 90,000 Jews, Federation CJA recently launched a campaign to send cards to “our” Israeli soldiers. “Make cards for our brave IDF soldiers”, explains a section on their site that includes a financial appeal for Israel. Card writers are told to drop their messages of support for the IDF off at Beth Tikvah Synagogue and Federation CJA’s office. The Jewish federations in Toronto, Vancouver and elsewhere are also fundraising for Israel and promoting the IDF.

If told Israeli soldiers are “ours” then criticism of the IDF can easily appear like an attack on Montréal Jews. But the Israeli military is slaughtering children.

The advocacy agent of Canada’s Jewish Federations, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), was set up partly to further conflate Jews with Israel. A decade ago, the Tanenbaums, Schwartz/Reisman and other wealthy hard-line apartheid promoters created CIJA to replace the Canadian Jewish Congress and Canada Israel Committee. They removed Canada from the name but left Israel in it partly to further blur the distinction between Canadian Jewry and Israel.

If your principal concern is promoting Israel, perhaps it is politically sensible to minimize the distinction between Israel and Judaism. By doing so you increase the pressure on Canadian Jews to back Israel. Simultaneously, it frames opposition to Israeli violence and apartheid as anti-Jewish.

But destroying the meaning of “antisemitism” cannot possibly be good for the average Canadian Jew. When a former Canadian ambassador openly calls the prime minister an “antisemite” for opposing the killing of babies the pro-Israel-no-matter-what crowd really have lost their minds.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Yves Engler.

This Pew report (5/21/21) should not come as a surprise to US journalists.

As protests erupt worldwide against Israel’s ferocious bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza, which has claimed the lives of more than 10,000 Palestinians (Reuters, 11/6/23), US media ponder how all of this impacts Jewish people. Sadly, the way this is often framed completely mischaracterizes Jewish opinion and the pro-Israel movement, falsely acting as if Jewish opinion is unquestionably unified in support of Israeli military attacks and in opposition to Palestinian rights.

One might think corporate media might have learned better by now. The New York Times (10/27/23) reported on a massive “never again for anyone” protest at Grand Central Terminal headed by Jewish Voice for Peace. Descendants of Holocaust survivors were arrested for protesting military aid to Israel at Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s house (Business Insider, 10/14/23). More than 300 activists were arrested in Washington, DC, while calling for a ceasefire in a Capitol Hill protest organized by JVP and IfNotNow, another Jewish peace group (USA Today, 10/19/23).

CNN (10/23/23) reported, “Thousands more Jewish Americans continue to gather in protests across the United States, calling on President Joe Biden and other elected officials to rein in Israel.” Among those Jewish-led protests was one outside the Los Angeles home of Vice President Kamala Harris (LA Times, 10/19/23).

None of this should be surprising, as a Pew Research (5/21/21) survey “found that Jewish Americans—much like the US public overall—also hold widely differing views on Israel and its political leadership.” Younger Jews in particular are often sharply critical of Israel; a poll by the Jewish Electorate Institute (7/13/21) found that 38% of US Jews under 40 agreed that “Israel is an apartheid state,” and 33% believed it was committing genocide against Palestinians.

Binary framing

“Jewish writers reacted with horror to the guild’s refusal to condemn the attacks on Israel,” the New York Times reported (10/29/23)—although there were also Jewish writers on the board that made that decision.

Yet binary media framing persists. In the early days of the current Israel/Palestine violence, FAIR (10/17/23) criticized a New York Times article (10/13/23) that depicted Jewish New Yorkers as united in putting aside their political differences with the Israeli government in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack in southern Israel—ignoring the Jewish groups that were mobilizing against a military assault on Gaza.

More recently, the New York Times (10/29/23) reported on an internal spat within the Writers Guild of America over its initial reluctance to issue a statement about the Hamas attack.  The paper characterized the affair as “Jewish writers” rebelling against the union’s leadership, even though some of its board members, like Raphael Bob-Waksberg (Hey Alma, 3/16/20), Justin Halpern (Reddit, 2/25/20; Tablet, 5/28/13) and Molly Nussbaum (Substack, 5/27/23), also identify as Jewish.

The Times got sillier when it ran a story (11/3/23) by Jeremy Peters headlined “Jewish Viewers Find a Refuge in Fox News,” in which the paper explained that “Fox News has wrapped itself in the Israeli flag in the weeks since the Hamas attack.” Admitting that “there are no specific metrics available on the religious affiliation of Fox’s audience since” the Hamas attacks, the paper said that “ratings data from major metropolitan areas with large Jewish populations, including New York, Miami and Los Angeles, show a spike in viewership that outpaces its rivals.”

The paper also noted that Jewish patrons of Manhattan’s Second Avenue Deli warmly embraced a visit by the crew of the Fox News show Fox & Friends. With all due respect to the wonderful menu at the storied institution, its clientele is hardly the beginning and end of Jewish opinion.

And at the very end of the story, Peters acknowledges that Fox coverage of the recent violence in Israel is similar to the hardline support for the Bush administration the network exhibited after 9/11. So the takeaway isn’t that Fox is popular to Jews specifically, but popular among those who support US policy in the Middle East. But the Times chose to frame it around Jewish opinion, specifically.

An AP story (10/15/23) on recent college campus protests said, “Many Jewish students and their allies, some with family and friends in Israel, have demanded bold reckonings and strong condemnation” after the Hamas attacks. Meanwhile, “some Muslim students have joined with allies to call for a recognition of decades of suffering by Palestinians in Gaza, plus condemnation of the response by Israel.”

This paints a false dichotomy. The fact is, people of all faiths, and those without religion or any ancestral connection to the region, exist in all corners of the great Middle Eastern debate.

‘Open call for eradication’

“Jewish students hear ‘the river to the sea’ as an open call for the eradication of Israel,” the Washington Post (10/31/23) reported—not mentioning that Jewish anti-war protesters use this slogan as well (Common Dreams, 10/27/23).

A Washington Post report (10/31/23) on the Jewish response to pro-Palestinian protests on campuses stated, as a factual observation, that “Jewish students hear ‘the river to the sea’ as an open call for the eradication of Israel, a haunting proposition given the legacy of the Holocaust that led to Israel’s creation.”

There are a few problems here. One, it is hardly established that the American Jewish student body is monolithic on this issue. College groups that support Palestinian rights often include Jews; in fact, FAIR (5/22/23) reported how a Jewish staffer at the AP was forced out of her job because of her past pro-Palestinian advocacy in college. Two, the phrase “the river to the sea” is often mischaracterized, as it refers to a one-state solution, not anyone’s deportation.

However, to back up this assertion, the Post quotes Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League, saying that while “there’s nothing wrong with advocating for a Palestinian state,” there is also “nothing wrong with advocating for a two-state solution.” However, he says, “there’s something profoundly wrong with advocating for a final solution.”

The “final solution” is a reference to the Jewish Holocaust, or Shoah. But many Jews and non-Jews alike advocate for a one-state solution where all people have rights, regardless of their religion or ethnicity. It is intellectually dishonest for the Post to quote a pro-Israel partisan to assert that the choice for Jews is between a two-state solution and Auschwitz.

For example, in the post-Brexit economy, the idea of Irish reunification is becoming more and more real (Guardian, 10/6/22). Yet no one would seriously characterize the Republic of Ireland absorbing the North as a Protestant genocide. Nor were white residents of South Africa exterminated or forced to emigrate when their country turned to a democratic one-person-one-vote system.

‘Have you considered converting?’

Rep. Ritchie Torres framed the Israel/Palestine story as a conflict between “humanity” and “inhumanity” (Daily News, 10/9/23).

Media’s love affair with Democratic New York Rep. Ritchie Torres and his outspoken pro-Israel position is also telling. New York’s tabloids have given Torres’ attacks on critics of Israeli policy top coverage (Daily News, 10/9/23; New York Post, 10/11/23, 10/14/23, 10/15/23). But a recent interview with Torres in Politico (10/27/23), painting the non-Jewish Democrat as one of Israel’s biggest cheerleaders in Congress, truly exposes some key misunderstandings about Jewish politics and Israel.

For example, the first question in the back-and-forth with writer Jeff Coltin acknowledged that Torres has Jews in his district. But that’s also true of the Democratic Socialists of America–backed Jamaal Bowman, who represents the neighboring district; he also boasts support from the Jewish community (Forward, 10/19/23), though he is a constant target of pro-Israel PACs (Jewish Insider, 8/9/23).

Then Coltin asks Torres, “Have you considered converting to Judaism,”  to which Torres answers no. But what kind of question is that? Zionism is just not synonymous with Judaism or Jewishness. In fact, Israel has increasingly looked for support from evangelical Christians for support (Brookings Institution, 5/26/21; Jerusalem Post, 9/3/23; New York Times, 10/15/23).

Coltin also takes Torres at face value when the Bronx lawmaker said that his “belief in Israel as a Jewish state is based not on religion, but history,” because “there’s a long and ugly history of antisemitism.” He never ponders if Torres’ fervor is at all related to his history of fundraising with AIPAC and other Israel supporters; the Open Secrets website lists “pro-Israel” as the third-largest source of funds for Torres’ 2022 campaign, behind only Securities & Investment and Real Estate.

FAIR (11/5/21) has previously reported that when Politico was acquired by the German media group Axel Springer, the new owner included support for Israel’s “right to exist” as one of the ideological principles employees must endorse.

Media organizations are well within their rights to portray debates about Israel’s assault on Gaza and the Hamas attack on southern Israel as having high emotional intensity, where passion often overtakes cold analysis. But they shouldn’t give us a muddled vision of Jewish politics—or anyone’s politics, for that matter.

Featured image: New York Times photo (10/27/23) of a Jewish Voice for Peace protest at New York City’s Grand Central Terminal (photo: Bing Guan).

The post Conflating Jewish and Pro-Israel Is Wrong and Misleading appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Ari Paul.

The German media giant Axel Springer, which has famously enshrined support for Israel in its mission statement, fired an employee who strayed from its staunchly pro-Israel editorial line, according to an interview with the employee and supporting internal documents. 

Kasem Raad, a 20-year-old apprentice at the company, was summarily fired last week after questioning the company’s Israel policy through internal channels and posting a video online disputing parts of the Israeli military’s narrative of the brutal Hamas attack on October 7.

“It is one of my rights to ask questions. I wanted to stay at Axel Springer,” said Raad, who was fired just a few weeks into a three-year position at the company. “Unfortunately, I was taken in for questioning by senior management, who told me, ‘We are Germans and we need to do this,’” he added, describing his manager’s explanation for the company’s Israel policy.

Raad’s account of being fired is supported by a termination letter and screenshots of his posts on the company’s internal message board that were reviewed by The Intercept. The letter makes no mention of the reason for his firing, but in an interview, he said his bosses were clear about why they were letting him go. “They explicitly stated that my questioning and video were the reasons for their decision, which had no connection to my performance,” Raad said.

Adib Sisani, Axel Springer’s head of corporate communications, declined to comment on Raad’s specific claims. “As a matter of principle, we never comment on individual personnel matters,” Sisani told The Intercept. “In general, allow me to refer you to German labor law, which has a probation period at the beginning of any work contract for the duration of six months. Within this time period, both the employee as well as the employer can terminate the contract without a reason.”

Even before the start of the most recent Israeli war in Gaza, Germany has long repressed voices critical of Israel, through both governmental and corporate policy. The repression has intensified in the last few weeks: The German government banned most gatherings protesting the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, and police attacked protesters who took to the streets nonetheless. Rights groups like Amnesty International have decried the crackdown in Germany, while organizations in the United States are calling attention to the professional consequences facing Americans who speak critically of Israel’s military campaign. American CEOs, law students, and even Starbucks employees have faced repercussions, including threats of termination, public smear campaigns, and letters of dismissal from their jobs. 

The human rights group Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reviewed a slate of firings of Arab and Palestinian journalists in German state-owned media in 2021 and issued a prescient warning: “We caution German media groups … from unfairly dismissing Palestinian and Arab journalists because of smear campaigns by pro-Israeli or far-right groups. This would set a dangerous precedent that would only encourage even more discriminatory targeting of public figures of Palestinian or Arab origins or who hold views sympathetic to Palestinian rights and freedom.”

Kasem Raad was fired by German media company Axel Springer after questioning its policy of supporting Israel.

For Raad, that warning hit home shortly after he joined Axel Springer, a private company that is based in Germany but has holdings across the globe, including Politico in the United States. As The Intercept previously reported, one Axel Springer subsidiary, the news aggregator Upday, instructed its employees to downplay Palestinian deaths in its coverage of the ongoing Israeli war against Gaza.

A Lebanese immigrant, Raad moved to Germany after completing the ninth grade in Lebanon. He became fluent in German and, after completing a required certificate course, landed a three-year multimedia apprenticeship at Axel Springer that started in early September at the company’s TV channel, Welt TV. 

He was still settling into his new role when Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel that killed more than 1,400 people. On October 7, Axel Springer’s editorial team posted an internal article titled “We stand with Israel.” Raad sought clarification on the company’s stance by sending a private message to an employee who runs the company’s internal message board on October 11 asking “why does Axel Springer support Israel?” Having received no reply, the next day, Raad posted the same question under the Israel article on the message board, according to screenshots viewed by The Intercept. “I posted a comment asking about why we have a company policy supporting this country,” he said in an interview. “Immediately my question got flooded with angry comments and I was called in for an interrogation.” 

Screenshots reviewed by The Intercept show other Axel Springer employees replying “what kind of question is that??!!!!,” asking whether Raad had read his contract before joining Axel Springer, and wondering how he could ask such a question given “the current, terrible atrocities.” 

The same day, Raad said, he was called into an office and reprimanded by his manager, who oversees the company’s training programs, before a second meeting on October 13 with Sisani, the company spokesperson, who cautioned him from pushing back against the company line. 

After meeting with Sisani, Raad once again posted on the message board, saying his discussion with the executive provided helpful answers to his questions which were “clearly different from the unsatisfactory answers I received from you.” He added: “I strongly believe in open dialogue and finding answers, especially at a time when many people lack knowledge about current social issues.” 

Five days later, Raad posted a video to his personal Youtube channel attempting to debunk a viral narrative that Hamas beheaded babies during its attack that even the Israel Defense Forces could not confirm. He said he heard nothing from company supervisors until two days later, October 20, when he was called into yet another meeting and received a letter informing him of his termination. 

As part of its charter, Axel Springer maintains five “essentials.” These include standing up for “freedom, the rule of law, democracy and a united Europe”; supporting “the Jewish people and the right of existence of the State of Israel”; advocating “the transatlantic alliance between the United States of America and Europe”; upholding “the principles of the market economy and its social responsibility”; and rejecting “political and religious extremism and all forms of racism and sexual discrimination.” 

Raad said that, in his experience, some of the essentials are prioritized above the rest: “I find the whole situation really ironic. One of the essentials of Axel Springer are the tenets of freedom and democracy. They should remove this fucking essential from their code of conduct and they should remove the rejection of political and religious extremism. In my case, they ignored all of their own essentials, and chose their support of Israel over everything else.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Daniel Boguslaw.

Freelance journalist Talia Ben-Ora, who also publishes under the name Talia Jane, was assaulted, harassed and her press credentials briefly stolen while reporting on a pro-Israel rally in New York, New York, on Oct. 8, 2023.

Ben-Ora told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker she was documenting two rallies in Manhattan. After filming and publishing excerpts from a pro-Palestinian rally, she said she headed to a rally in support of Israel rally that was scheduled for later in the day.

Within minutes of arriving at the demonstration, Ben-Ora said she was recognized by two men who began harassing her, calling her “bitch,” “cunt” and “terrorist.” One of the men also deliberately tripped her, she said.

While some individuals tried to stop the harassment, the men drew supporters by claiming that Ben-Ora supports Hamas, the extremist organization that had launched an attack on Israel on Oct. 7, citing her coverage of the pro-Palestine rally earlier that day. Ben-Ora called the assertions “heinous slander,” and a deliberate attempt to provoke the crowd to violence.

Ben-Ora said that New York Police Department officers intervened and ushered her toward the rally crowd, where she attempted to conduct interviews. The individuals harassing her followed, however, and officers told her that she needed to leave the area and escorted her up the block.

In footage Ben-Ora captured while walking away from the demonstrations, multiple individuals can be seen shouting at her to leave as officers attempted to keep them away from her.

“I didn’t feel like the NYPD that had responded was successfully keeping anybody away from me,” Ben-Ora said. “So I was walking backward to make sure that no one ran up and tried to do anything.”

Amid the chaos, a woman grabbed Ben-Ora’s press credentials out of her hand and walked away with them, but an officer was quickly able to retrieve them, she said. Ben-Ora continued to walk away from the demonstration, but shortly after she got on a nearby sidewalk, she was once again surrounded.

In her footage, the group can be seen shouting at and filming Ben-Ora and a woman appears to repeatedly smack her cellphone, attempting to rip a cord from it or knock it from Ben-Ora’s hands.

A portable charger and its attached cord fell out of her pocket, Ben-Ora said, and when she attempted to retrieve them the individuals stomped and stood on them. She told the Tracker she was able to eventually pick up the items and leave the area after police officers intervened. The items still work, she said, but sections of the protective coating of the cord were scrapped off.

“I was there to actually try and report on both sides of the story and I was prevented from doing that,” she said.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

Betselm describes how the Israeli government encourages the settlements

Most of the settlements in the West Bank are defined as national priority areas. Accordingly, the settlers and other Israeli citizens working or investing in the settlements are entitled to significant financial benefits. These benefits are provided by six government ministries: the Ministry of Construction and Housing (generous loans for the purchase of apartments, part of which is converted to a grant); the Israel Lands Administration (significant price reductions in leasing land); the Ministry of Education (incentives for teachers, exemption from tuition fees in kindergartens, and free transportation to school); the Ministry of Industry and Trade (grants for investors, infrastructure for industrial zones, etc.); the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs (incentives for social workers); and the Ministry of Finance (reductions in income tax for individuals and companies).

Benefits are an inducement and not an excuse to acquire stolen property and are no reason to harass neighbors in an extreme and violent manner. Criminally attacking innocent Palestinians in adjacent villages gives the settlers a feeling of being all-powerful, all-commanding, all-authoritative, and having the right to murder, rob, and torch anyone they want.

The world treats the settlers as ultra-nationalists, as people with overzealous prophecies who are eager to fulfill a commitment to their God. They run amok because their beliefs are amok. Their violence must be stopped and, hopefully, legal and moral forces will subdue them. The word, as usual, is naive.

These hilltop villains arrive with a twisted mission — to bring their select group back to a land they fanatically believe God has given to them. People are entitled to their myths and ahistorical stories as a central focus to hold their ethnicity together; they are not entitled to take fantasy, pose it as a reality, and use the subverted reality for diabolical purposes. The settlers’ existence depends upon denying existence to others. The settlers’ principal purpose in life is to disturb the lives of others. They have often operated as a murderous contingent, completely unattached to reality, and finding pleasure in dominating their victims.

The settlers play the role of shock troops for the government. Not wanting the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), a euphemism for the Israel Offensive Forces (IOF), to be identified with the intended genocide of the Palestinian people, the Israeli government has purposely selected and conveniently installed the Orthodox Jews to commit the mayhem and carry out the vicious deeds. The ever-alert and just-around-the-corner police and military forces always arrive too late to halt the crimes committed against Palestinian villagers. No matter how severe the crime, the criminals, are rarely apprehended, and if apprehended, never severely punished.

After decades of suffering under extreme oppression, with no end in sight, with oppressors who could live as well in other places, the destruction of the Palestinian people has unique qualities that defy rational thought. Particularly unique is the Western world’s assistance to the destruction, where, for the first time in history, external forces support and encourage mass violence against an established community, done in solicitation from Israel and in cooperation with foreign groups.

Examine the attacks from the promotions by the underwriters to the actions of the perpetrators and we learn that the attacks are a conspiracy of the unsettled and the deadly strikes on the Palestinians reverberate throughout the world; we are all menacingly affected and do not realize it.

Religious Right evangelists, multitudes of Jewish organizations, compromised political hacks, and the easily deluded, without compunction and without care of the damage they do to others, actively assist Israel in its deliberate repression of the Palestinians. The calamities that these partners in crime inflict upon the Palestinians are identifiable; their effect upon much of the rest of the world’s population is not understood. Political and policy subversion, financial corruption, moral degradation, harmful machinations against individuals that feature false charges of anti-Semitism, indoctrination, and unnecessary military actions are some of the calamities perpetrated against American citizens.

Military Actions

In the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. government fooled its population and Americans suffered casualties from the treachery. The “intelligence assessment” that Sadaam Hussein was prepared to finalize the development of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and visit them upon the United States proved false and the reasons for the invasion were a hoax. Not revealed was that the hoax was a hoax. The George W. Bush administration’s reason for the invasion was not due to its fear of Hussein acquiring advanced weapons of mass destruction, it was due to the Israel-friendly neoconservatives — Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, and Elliot Abrams — convincing the administration that a strong Iraq could become the central military power of the Middle East, be able to confront Israel, and should be defeated. How do we know this?

It is ridiculous to assume that a government and its intelligence agencies could believe that Sadaam Hussein was “secretly creating biological agents using mobile laboratories in “road-trailer units and rail cars.” Laboratories for biological agents are fixed in tightly controlled and specifically designed buildings to maintain clean air and prevent escape of the deadly agents. How was this “secret operation” discovered? It wasn’t; it came from a supposed interview by German intelligence with one person, an Iraqi dissident, Rafid Alwan, known as Curveball. CNN investigated Curveball.

Just days after Powell’s presentation, U.N. weapons inspectors presented evidence they said disproved those claims. But six weeks later, on March 20, 2003, the United States launched its invasion, toppling Hussein’s government in three weeks but locking itself in a war against an insurgency that has cost more than 4,000 American lives.

… No biological weapons, no germ labs, no weapons of mass destruction of any kind were found in Iraq after the invasion.

… Subsequent U.S. investigations into the intelligence failure around the claims found that German intelligence considered the defector “crazy” and “out of control,” while friends said he was a “liar.”

Did Saddam Hussein try to acquire uranium yellowcake or aluminum tubes for developing nuclear weapons? He did not, but even if he did, the Iraqi leader did not have the equipment for enriching the uranium. What did he need and how long would it take to enrich the yellowcake? Iran claimed to have converted a few tons of yellowcake in 2004 and they still do not have sufficient uranium for a nuclear weapon.

Why did the U.S. government and its expert intelligence agencies believe Hussein was manufacturing biological weapons and seeking material for making a nuclear weapon? They could not and they did not believe the ridiculous propositions; it was just a way to trick the populace into thinking evidence was available that proved Hussein sought weapons of mass destruction and to justify the invasion without disclosing the real reason.

The neocons were intimately involved with Israel and promoted Israel’s interests. They had already produced a 1996 policy paper titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” for Israeli PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the document recommended the removal of Saddam Hussein. Couple the fact that the United States had no reason to attack Iraq with the constant urgings by the influential neocons in the Bush administration to topple Hussein and we have the reason for the unreasonable invasion of Iraq.

International Terrorism

International terrorism has caused havoc to Americans. This violent phenomenon would exist apart from Israel, but Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians has strengthened the terrorist ranks. How has Israel contributed to international terrorism? Osama bin Laden clarified that conjecture

“Osama Bin Laden Warns America,” CBS News by Joel Arak, October 30, 2004:

He (bin-Laden) said he was first inspired to attack the United States by the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon in which towers and buildings in Beirut were destroyed in the siege of the capital.

“While I was looking at these destroyed towers in Lebanon, it sparked in my mind that the tyrant should be punished with the same and that we should destroy towers in America, so that it tastes what we taste and would be deterred from killing our children and women,” he said.

From Lawfare

Recently declassified information from the first-ever interrogation of someone presumed to be a senior al-Qaeda operative captured after 9/11 provides dramatic new insights into Osama bin Laden’s plans for a follow-up attack to Sept. 11. Specifically, bin Laden was plotting a major attack in Israel, a move consistent with his obsession with the Arab-Israeli conflict and U.S. support for Israel. The attack was thwarted at the last minute.

The Middle East Institute connects Israel to the rise of Jihadists

A number of jihadist groups have made Palestine a central tenet of their political goals. Over the years, Al Qaeda, one of the most powerful global jihadist outfits, has often mentioned Palestine in its various communications.

… Consequently, the [ISIS] narratives target the United States, as a key ally of Israel and a direct contributor to the plight of the Ummah. Several European nations, along with Australia and Canada are also criticized for their recent calls to boycott the United Nations conference on racism — aimed at demonstrating Israel’s apartheid on Palestinians.

Financial

The American public rebels at swollen government budgets, huge government deficit spending, and punishing government debt, all intended to help the American nation, and refrains from voicing anger at the unnecessary government contributions to the foreign nation of Israel and its people.

As part of an agreement, signed by former president Barack Obama in 2016, the U.S. taxpayers pledged to give the Israel war machine $3.8 billion annually until 2029. The agreement releases Israel from budgeting funds for its military and diverts those funds to build settlements. In effect, Obama told Netanyahu, “You build the settlements and we’ll supply the weapons for militarizing them.”

As of Mar 1, 2023, the Congressional Research Service documents that the “United States has provided Israel $158 billion in bilateral assistance and missile defense funding.” The Jewish Virtual Library has a similar figure of $152 billion until the year 2022.

Unknown to most of the American public is how it subsidizes the settlements. The Washington Post had  a revealing opinion story on the subject

From 2009 to 2013, more than $220 million was sent across the ocean and into schools, synagogues and playgrounds dotting the hills of Judea and Samaria. Millions of tax-subsidized dollars have gone to Jewish settlements in Hebron, helping to sustain a grim reality in the segregated part of the city, where Palestinian movement is sharply restricted and their economic life has been suffocated.

Political System

In 2020, 28% of voters referred to themselves as white evangelicals. Overwhelmingly, they cast their votes for Republican candidates. The two most important issues for these churchgoers are Right to Life and support for Israel. The former is more talk than walk; candidates who run on a platform that includes women’s rights to abortion have done well. The later issue, which is losing adherents in a younger bloc of the “saved,” serves Israel well; many politicos have lost the evangelical vote and elections because they lacked unwavering support for Israel. Trump would be in Nowheresville if he defied the evangelicals and criticized Israel.

Led by Pastor John Hagee, founder and chairperson of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), dozens of spokespersons for the evangelical community spend prime time praising Israel to the faithful. In 2013, a Pew poll showed that 82 percent of white evangelicals agreed with the statement, “Israel was given by God to the Jews.”

Former Israel Prime Minister, Menachem Begin courted the American evangelicals and Benjamin Netanyahu solidified the courtship after meetings with the most popular evangelical personalities, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. Each July, thousands of conservative evangelicals gather in Washington, DC for an annual summit of CUFI. Besides voting massively for candidates who support Israel, estimates have the conservative evangelical community contributing between $175 and $200 million annually to apartheid Israel.

The evangelist community votes are insufficient to assure Israel gets its chosen candidates into office. Individual Political Action Committees (PAC) operating under the umbrella of The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), pro-Israel groups, such as United Democracy Project (UDP), Democratic Majority for Israel, Republican Jewish Coalition, and Pro-Israel America, and wealthy Jewish individuals supply campaign contributions in big numbers. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, gambling casino operator, “Sheldon Adelson, and his wife, Miriam, spent $123 million on the 2018 midterm elections, all of it benefiting Republicans.”

PACs allied with AIPAC “poured more than $24m into defeating Democratic primary candidates critical of Israel. Last month it celebrated defeating former congresswoman Donna Edwards, who was the favorite to win a Maryland seat until the UDP spent $7m to unleash an advertising blitz against her.” The UDP also spent more than $4m to defeat Andy Levin, an Israel supporter who “dissented from AIPAC’s support for hardline Israeli policies,” in the 2022 Democratic primary for a congressional seat in northwestern Detroit.

No argument with individuals and PACs legally contributing to the campaigns of candidates they favor and feel will propose policies benefitting the American people. AIPAC and its allied Jewish organizations and individuals contribute to the campaigns of candidates that favor the policies that benefit a foreign government, Israel, and, often, purposely steer elections for one narrow reason — to defeat candidates who may be rewarding to the American electorate but criticize Israel.

Reshaping U.S. policies

In 2010, the FBI uncovered 10 unregistered Russian agents living in the U.S. as ordinary citizens, engaged in harmless activities, such as meeting people in high places in order to influence their attitudes and reporting American views on foreign and domestic affairs to Moscow. Multiply the number of discovered Russian agents by thousands and you will have the number of Israeli expatriates in the U.S. who do the same for Israel and more; by becoming U.S. citizens they vote for Israel-friendly candidates.

In 2014, the Israeli government ministries and the Los Angeles-based Israeli American Council, which represents Israelis across the United States and promotes their interests, estimated between 500,000 and 800,000 Israelis lived in the U.S., about 150,000 living in the New York area, 120,000 in Los Angeles, and 80,000 in Miami. What are the more important voting areas in the United States? New York, California, and Florida are significant. Enough dual-citizen American-Israelis can shape the ballot in those regions and may have done that in Florida during the disputed 2000 presidential election.

Has Israel purposely selected citizens to emigrate to the United States and influence voters? I have known Israelis living and working in the United States. They have invited people into their homes and propagandized for Israel, persuaded synagogues to display the Israeli flag, and collected statistical information for Israel. Others went to Israel, became allied with a known Israeli institute, returned with a grant from a Jewish institution, and, due to previous ties with a recognized Israeli institute, became scholars at recognized think tanks.

Aside from its allied PACS efforts to steer American elections, AIPAC’s function is to lobby Congress. Funding annual trips to Israel for senators and representatives is an essential part of the “wooing” of Congress. According to Legistorm, “AIPAC’s charity arm has spent $15.7 million on congressional visits to Israel since 2000. On gift travel disclosures, AIPAC says the purpose of these trips is ‘educating policymakers about the U.S.-Israel relationship.’”

At its annual convention in Washington, which important congressional leaders attend, AIPAC displays its influence in shaping the federal government and its policies. During the Covid epidemic in 2020, AIPAC convention speakers included Vice President Mike Pence, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, former Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer and Cory Booker, Democratic Rep. Nita Lowey, and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. These influential political figures must have a reason (getting elected?) for paying homage to the Lobby for Israel group.

Harmful machinations against individuals

Unable to respond to the obvious reality of an Israel built upon the theft of Palestinian lands and oppression of the Palestinian people, Israel’s supporters resort to slander and vicious attacks on Americans to deter the population from understanding the Middle East crisis.

Canary Mission, AMCHA Initiative, anti-Defamation League, and other Jewish organizations ferret out groups and persons that support the Palestinians and harass and defame them with the usual charge of anti-Semitism. The attacks lead to the proposition that Anti-Zionism equals Anti-Semitism, an identity that has become the final resting place of the word “anti-Semitism.”

Stealing another community’s lands, ethnically cleansing a population, and instituting a severe repression that terrorizes the communities, makes them immobile, purposely denies agriculture, water rights, and fishing rights, willfully ruins cherished olive and orange groves, interferes in acquiring livelihood and employment, and reduces ontological security, which defines the Zionist intrusion into the land of Palestine, is a Goddamn awful way to behave.  Being against Zionism is a positive and meritorious action. No sound person can argue with that recommendation.

If anti-Zionism is a positive and meritorious action, then the equation anti-Zionism = anti-Semitism indicates that anti-Semitism is a positive and meritorious action. Can that be? No, it cannot be, and Israel’s supporters are guilty of defaming Jews and should be taken to task for their insistence that anti-Zionism = anti-Semitism. Or, maybe this shows the unworthiness of the word anti-Semitism, that it is not a word to describe hate; it is a hateful word used to prevent debate and harm people.

Moral degradation

Pro-Israel organizations have used nefarious methods to skew voting patterns, manipulate the American mindset, and prevent legitimate debate. They have made a mockery of American democracy and allied Americans as partners in an intended genocide of the Palestinian people. Instead of focusing on China and Xinjiang, the U.S. authorities should focus on Israel and the Palestinian Occupied Territories. Or, maybe the government and media purposely shift the focus to China in order to divert attention from Israel?

Conclusion

The manner in which the Israeli settlers have inflicted their deadly operations on the Palestinians characterizes the happenings in an insane world. Imagine someone running through the streets, injuring innocent pedestrians and onlookers saying, “That’s not nice, you shouldn’t be doing that and others saying, “How can I help? And, when you’re finished, come over for a cup of coffee.”

Everything should be done to stop this madness; too little has been done and that little has been ineffective. The reason for this deficiency is obvious, a thought exists that bringing Israel to the Court of Justice harms the Jewish people and Americans have been brainwashed into thinking that preventing harm to the Jewish people is a priority. Just as anti-Zionism equates to anti-Semitism is an oxymoron, “bringing Israel to the Court of Justice harms the Jewish people” is also a contradiction. The Jewish people have already harmed themselves and should stop harming others. Helping other people is a high priority in a moral world. Helping the Palestinians to escape destruction is one of the high priorities. Accomplishing that task will not harm the Jewish people; it will prevent an eventual moral and physical destruction of the people of the book, a win-win proposition for all participants in the crisis.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

A nonprofit think tank that serves as a fiscal sponsor for hundreds of progressive causes around the world was recently severed from access to vital financial services due to its support of a French NGO working on Palestinian issues.

In February, the Alliance for Global Justice, or AFGJ, issued a statement announcing that the company that handled its credit card transactions had blocked its ability to process donations. The move came after a “pro-Israel” group accused one of the organizations sponsored by AFGIJ, the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, of serving as something of a front for a leftist Palestinian militant group that is designated by the State Department as a terrorist organization.

“Groups like Alliance for Global Justice provide terror groups with the funding that is critical to their operations and the fact that they do so with U.S. taxpayer subsidies,” an attorney for Zachor Legal Institute told the Washington Examiner. The article also noted that Zachor Legal Institute had filed a complaint asking the IRS to investigate AFGJ’s nonprofit status and accusing the organization of supporting terrorism.

The Alliance for Global Justice provides fiscal sponsorship for roughly 150 grassroots nonprofit organizations around the world, mostly in Latin America. The abrupt severance of a critical financial lifeline came as a shock to the organization, which survives on individual donor support.

“They cut off our ability to accept credit card donations without warning or cause, which absolutely affected our ability to fundraise and support sponsor organizations — many of which need this money to literally pay rent and keep their lights on,” said Camille Landry, outreach coordinator for AFGJ, adding that AFGJ’s own operations had come to “a screeching halt” as a result of the shutdown.

Related

▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Murtaza Hussain.

The Canadian bank that holds the largest foreign share of an Israeli weapons manufacturer is coming under scrutiny from human rights groups over its stake in the company.

Last fall, Scotiabank, one of Canada’s largest banks, was reported by Bloomberg to have become a major shareholder in Elbit Systems, Israel’s premier defense contractor. On Tuesday, at a shareholder meeting, a representative of the ethical investing activist group Ek? delivered a petition on behalf of 12,000 signatories calling on Scotiabank to divest from the firm.

“Since the petition started in October, we have asked Scotiabank to divest from Elbit Systems. This is a company whose weapons have caused countless civilian deaths,” said Angus Wong, the senior campaign manager from Ek?, the group formerly known as SumOfUs. “The question is not why they own shares — it is why they are the biggest foreign shareholder in Elbit. We demand to know why Scotiabank is investing hundreds of millions of dollars of funds from middle-class families in this company.”

Related

▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Murtaza Hussain.

A Ukrainian student group sought to cancel my talk at Kings College in London, Ontario, on Thursday. In “Western Ukrainian Students’ Association Statement on The King’s University College Yves Engler Event”, they called me an “apologist to a bloodthirsty regime … who spreads disinformation and uses Russian propaganda talking points.” They also argued that I “endanger victims of colonialism everywhere” and my speaking “may also incite violence on campus.” The statement boldly concluded, “we cannot allow a proponent of hateful disinformation and Russian propaganda on our campuses in any capacity.”

I have referred to the Russian invasion as “illegal” and “brutal” in dozens of articles and interviews. But I’ve also challenged Canada’s role in provoking and escalating the conflict. In a sign of their fanaticism, the event at Western wasn’t even about Ukraine but rather Canada’s contribution to Palestinian dispossession.

A few days before the Western Ukrainian Students’ Association released their statement a master’s student at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs published a similar attack on a January event I did with Tamara Lorincz and Miguel Figueroa. The Chair of the Carleton University Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council and Model NATO, Matthew Selinger, labelled me a “master of historical revisionism that runs in line with Russian propaganda.” The former Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) intern concluded with a call to defund Carleton’s Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG) for simply having booked the room used for the Ottawa Peace Council event titled “The War in Ukraine: What is the Path to Peace?”

In the Charlatan student paper Selinger wrote that OPIRG needed to be held “accountable for exploiting its campus status for malignant purposes. Should OPIRG refuse to condemn the speakers’ messages and halt sponsorship of future events that trot out Kremlin disinformation as a rational perspective, then defunding must be pursued. This panel should’ve never taken place on campus. Carleton’s deafening silence on the hateful and vilifying rhetoric towards Ukrainian students can be corrected, among other recommendations, by drafting an official policy on combating disinformation in non-departmental events.”

Immediately after the event the Charlatan published “Carleton student groups address anti-Ukrainian hate on campus” about the Carleton Ukrainian Students’ Club bid to have our event canceled.

An even more intense campaign of vilifying antiwar voices as “hate” has taken place in recent months at the University of Victoria.

On March 14 the parent organization of the campus groups demanded the federal government take action against “anti-Ukrainian hate”. In “UCC calls on Government of Canada to address rising tide of anti-Ukrainian hate”, the right-wing lobby group demanded Ottawa “issue a public statement unequivocally condemning the rising pattern of hate-motivated attacks against the Ukrainian Canadian community and supporters of Ukraine; Develop and deliver programs to educate the public and counter disinformation that incites hatred against Ukrainians.” (Notwithstanding the claims, there’s likely never been greater sympathy for Ukrainian Canadians, a community that’s faced its share of discrimination, including large-scale internment during and after World War I.)

Where have you heard this type of rhetoric before? The UCC and its campus affiliates are taking a page from the Zionist playbook. (In fact, a day after the Western Ukrainian Students’ Association denounced me, three anti-Palestinian Jewish groups released a statement that demanded “King’s University College should not provide a podium for Engler to use to spread his hateful views.”)

Well-resourced, US empire aligned, Israel lobby groups constantly smear activists and demand events be shut down or individuals be cancelled. The recent attacks against Hamilton Centre NDP candidate (now Ontario MPP) Sarah Jama are an egregious example. They smeared the 29-year-old wheelchair bound Black female activist as anti-Jewish for having stood against apartheid. From smearing individuals to promoting an anti-Palestinian definition of antisemitism, the Israel lobby promotes an identity politics infused cancel culture.

Ironically, right-wingers who normally bash cancel culture and identity politics stay mum about the Zionist or NATO proxy warriors’ tactics.

Groups aligned with powerful forces who seek to suppress discussion of important international issues on the grounds of their “hurt feelings” deserve criticism and contempt. Just don’t expect it to come from the usual sources in the mainstream media. They’re too busy promoting war and defending an apartheid state.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Yves Engler.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Jenna Corderoy, Martin Williams.

Twenty years ago when Congress passed the bipartisan McCain-Feingold bill on campaign finance reform, many celebrated what they hoped would be a new era in US politics. There were limits set for individual contributions and those of political action committees. All contributions in federal elections were to be reported to the Federal Election Commission and made available for public scrutiny. There was also a taxpayer fund established that would allow presidential candidates, if they wished, to secure matching funds for lower-level contributions to their campaigns, if they accepted a limit on their overall spending.

Thus far, in 2022, the pro-Israel "dark money" groups and PACs have spent in excess of $30 million with a mixed record of wins and losses.

What we feared was that big money would ultimately find a way to subvert McCain-Feingold and once again insert itself into the electoral process. After the Supreme Court's ruling in the Citizens United case found that money was a form of free speech and therefore its use in politics could not be limited, the floodgates were again opened to financial abuse of the electoral process. What followed were massive "independent expenditures" from both the left and right, by corporations and interest groups supporting or opposing campaigns. Groups representing banks, big pharma, women's rights, the gun lobby and others spent millions to advance their interests. The funds they poured into campaigns—"dark money expenditures"— were considered private and therefore not subject to FEC reporting or public disclosure.

Supporters of Israel have a long history of bundling large contributions to support or oppose candidates. Before and after McCain-Feingold there were scores of pro-Israel PACs that would routinely bundle donations from PACs and individual donors, raising millions of dollars in each election cycle. As intimidating as their tactics may have been, the funds they raised were duly reported to the FEC and were available to the public.

This year is different. Fearful that Israel is losing support among Democrats, especially progressive Democrats, elements of the pro-Israel community have developed a number of "dark money" entities with the express purpose of defeating "progressive Democrats" even if those progressives haven't yet been outspoken critics of Israel or Israeli policies. Interestingly, much of their expenditures haven't been in support of candidates, but against those whom they oppose. And the massive costly advertising campaigns they have waged haven't focused on Israel. They have been devoted to tearing down the reputations of the progressive candidates they want to see defeated.

This year, millions of dollars have been spent in efforts to smear and defeat candidates in Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Texas, Maryland, and now Michigan and Missouri. Despite the obscene amounts spent, this effort operated without much notice until a few weeks ago, when a former Maryland congresswoman running to regain her seat was subjected to a $6,000,000 negative advertising blitz that sought to discredit her years of public service. As has been the case in a number of these races, the amount of funds expended by these pro-Israel groups exceeded the amounts raised by the campaigns they were opposing and/or supporting.

A few investigative reporters have succeeded in uncovering the sources of some of the funds, much of them coming from a handful of billionaires—from energy companies, investment firms, and high-tech industries. Many of the donors are Republicans who have found a way to advance a pro-Israel agenda by helping to defeat progressive Democrats.

This past week's primaries featured four of these contests, three in Michigan and one in Missouri. In Michigan, a Palestinian American incumbent was targeted by more than $2,000,000; a Jewish American incumbent faced a barrage of negative advertising funded by in excess of $4,300,000—though he is pro-Israel, apparently he wasn't pro-Israel enough; and an Indian American running for an open seat was confronted by an expenditure in excess of $4,200,000. In Missouri, an African American congresswoman, who rose to national prominence during the racial justice protests in Ferguson, Missouri, and in 2020 was able to unseat a long-standing pro-Israel member of Congress, was confronted with millions of dollars in negative advertising that sought to discredit her service to her district.

When the results were tabulated, "dark money" was defeated in three of these contests. They were only successful in defeating the Jewish American incumbent in Michigan. That's what "dark money" can do.

Thus far, in 2022, the pro-Israel "dark money" groups and PACs have spent in excess of $30 million with a mixed record of wins and losses. But the real losers go beyond the candidates themselves—both those who've lost and the winners whose reputations have been tarnished. What's at stake is the integrity and openness of our elections and the political process that can be so distorted by excessive amounts of "dark money." The outcome of an election in a democracy shouldn't go to the highest bidders, free to spend unlimited amounts to destroy someone deemed an opponent. Also at risk, and of equal importance, is the ability of candidates to freely debate a critical issue of importance without fear of having their political careers ended by a handful of big money donors willing to ruin their reputations if they dare to speak out.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by James Zogby.

At United Jewish Appeal Toronto’s May 29 Walk with Israel a group of Israel flag-waving individuals crossed the street to berate a half dozen Hasidic Jews holding a Palestinian flag. One woman waves a small Israeli flag at them yelling “shame on you” and “you’re a shame on Jewish people”. Another Zionist says, “Hitler made a big mistake, you should have been in the gas chambers. Too bad. We’re here and you’re gonna go to hell.” She states repeatedly, “Hitler made a big mistake, you should have been in the gas chambers.”

The non-Zionists remain calm in the face of the harassment and eventually the police push the Israel supporters away.

Imagine the uproar if video emerged of identifiably Jewish individuals harassed in a similar way at a Palestine solidarity rally. Making the silence more noteworthy, the rally was attended by Liberal cabinet minister Marco Mendicino, Conservative party leadership front runner Pierre Poilievre, Toronto Mayor John Tory and other politicians.

If NDP or Green MPs tweeted about attending a pro-Palestinian rally in which video subsequently emerged of Jews being repeatedly told “Hitler made a big mistake, you should have been in the gas chambers” the MP, party leader and others would be pressed to condemn the remarks.

I emailed Mendicino, Poilievre and Tory’s offices to ask for a comment on the incident. I also contacted B’nai B’rith, Canadian Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) about the incident and emailed B’nai B’rith’s anti hate hotline. None of them responded or publicly mentioned the harassment.

Soon after the Walk With Israel, Toronto activist Paul Salvatori tagged his MP, Ya’ara Saks, with video of the harassment at the rally. Saks, who attended the Walk With Israel, ignored Salvatori. While she was indifferent to the abuse hurled at the Hasidim, Saks posted a thread to Twitter two weeks later claiming she was the victim of “hate” when young people yelled “stop supporting killing of Palestinians”. A self-described “unapologetic Zionist”, Saks’ claim that she and other identifiably Jewish individuals were yelled at was re-tweeted by all the main Israel lobby groups and many prominent figures in the anti-Palestinian movement. It was also reported on by a number of Jewish media outlets. Even pro-Palestinian voices such as former Ontario MPP Rima Berns‑McGown and NDP MPs Matthew Green and Heather McPherson expressed their solidarity with Saks by quote tweeting her thinly veiled attack on Palestine solidarity. As I detailed here, Saks has repeatedly linked Canadian Jewry to Israel yet when a pro-Palestinian teenager crassly applies the same logic it becomes “hate”.

This is a common Zionist double standard. Conflate Canadian Jewry with Israel when it serves your purposes but complain bitterly if others do the same in a way you don’t like.

Contrasting the wide circulation of Saks’ (evidence free) claim with the general indifference to the harassment faced by non-Zionist Hasidim (caught on video) highlights the Israel lobby’s grip over popular outrage regarding antisemitism. When CIJA, B’nai B’rith and associates ignore incidents of antisemitism few become aware of them.

This is troubling since those the Israel lobby considers unworthy victims deserve solidarity. But there’s a broader question at play as well. The harassment transpired at an event organized by a group the Palestine solidarity movement should be actively seeking to discredit. Irrespective of the harassment targeting the Hasidic activists, the Walk With Israel was a racist affair organized by the leading funder of anti-Palestinian activism in the country. The woman who declared “you should have been in the gas chambers” offered a great opportunity to discredit United Jewish Appeal on their own (anti-Palestinian) terms.

Anyone who supports Palestinian rights should be working to undermine UJA Toronto. They raise significant funds for Israel, are CIJA’s patron and have promoted recruitment for the Israeli military. A month ago UJA chair Linda Frum claimed those who blamed Israel for the killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh engaged in a “blood libel” and “antisemitic double standard”. (The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Associated Press, Bellingcat, Al Haq, B’Tselem, Palestinian Authority and UN Human Rights Office have all conducted investigations concluding the IDF was responsible for Abu Akleh’s killing.)

Jewish progressives should lead the charge to discredit UJA. But with the notable exception of Rabbi David Mivisair, left-wing Jewish activists largely failed to raise the harassment at the Walk With Israel. Independent Jewish Voices, Winchevsky Centre, New Israel Fund of Canada, Canadians for Peace Now, JSpace (not to mention the Bernie Farber chaired Canadian Anti-Hate Network) have yet to mention the antisemitic incident on their twitter. Overwhelmingly those who retweeted and boosted the video of the harassment were Arab-Canadians.

The lack of reaction to the harassment faced by non-Zionist Hasidim highlights the extent to which the Israel lobby determines outrage at antisemitism. It also demonstrates how little interest there is in standing up to the Israel lobby.

While the Israel lobby is often ruthless, the Palestinian side is generally tepid. Israel lobby groups regularly attack Palestine solidarity for people saying far less than “you should have been in the gas chambers”.

When an individual at an Israel lobby event is caught on video telling pro-Palestinian Jews that Hitler should have killed them, we must denounce those responsible and embarrass the politicians who refuse to condemn the despicable act.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Yves Engler.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Austin Ahlman.

In the closing days of the 2020 general election, a PAC associated with Democratic Majority for Israel spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in ads warning Americans about the dangers of electing a wealthy, out-of-touch New Yorker. Those ads were not geared toward undecided voters in swing states who were considering a vote for Donald Trump. Instead, DMFI was trying to reach Democrats in a dark-blue district in California who were preparing to vote in a low-profile race between two Democratic congressional candidates.

Related

▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​

AIPAC, DMFI, and their affiliates appear poised to make every competitive Democratic primary this cycle into a multimillion-dollar affair.

Related

▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​

“The framing about Andy Levin being the liberal white Jewish cover for these other supposedly more dangerous elements is like full-on Stormfront stuff — full-on neo-Nazi.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Austin Ahlman.

The letter that follows was edited for clarity but closely follows the original text.

Hi All,

This statement  by the Brighton Stands Against Antisemitism (BSAA) organization condemning a group of Rochester Blacks and Palestinian-Americans for their expression of solidarity with the Palestinian cause was sent to me by a friend from Rochester.  The Jewish Federation of Rochester subsequently issued a statement supporting the BSAA position.

Brighton, a suburb of Rochester, NY is very, very Jewish and very well-heeled.

BSAA objected to opinions expressed by two Black and two Palestinian-American activists on a local Rochester radio program.  (Click on Load More Episodes, then see February 15, “Discussing the motivations bringing Black Americans to the Palestinian cause.”  I have not listened to the program since its contents are not directly relevant to what I have to say here.)  The main target of the BSAA statement is Robin Wilt, a Black member of the Brighton Town Council who apparently has previously raised the ire of members of the BSAA by criticizing the State of Israel. The BSAA is calling for remedial action in the form of a censure statement to be made against Ms. Wilt by the Brighton Town Superintendent.

The second paragraph of the BSAA missive presents its lead objection to Ms. Wilt and the others.

One of the deliberate lies told on Mr. Dawson’s show and enthusiastically embraced by the panel was that Israeli soldiers rip Palestinian children from their parents’ arms. This concept is based on the centuries old “blood-libel” that Jews intentionally and gleefully kill children in order to make ritual bread (or matzah) with the blood. This false and hate-filled concept, which has resulted in literally millions of innocent dead Jews since it was first uttered, is familiar enough to many listeners that it may be readily accepted as truth. The truth is that BSAA was stunned and dumbfounded – when this statement was made and affirmed by Brighton Town Council member Robin Wilt.

The BSAA statement condemns the completely reasonable utterance that “Israeli soldiers rip Palestinian children from their parents’ arms.” [In addition, it is an egregiously inaccurate quote as I learned after listening to the program, see below ig.]

I apologize for pointing out the obvious here. There are numerous videos showing Israeli occupation soldiers ripping children out of the arms of their parents. But more to the point: the Israel army has for decades had a policy of invading Palestinian homes in the middle of the night, mostly in order to detain children because they are suspected of throwing stones or other projectiles at the Israeli security forces, and additionally, in order to generally intimidate the captive Palestinian population. What parent would not want to take their child in their arms and protect them from being detained? And when a parent does hold their child to attempt to stop that child’s seizure, what do you think the soldiers do? Yes, rip that child from the arms of the parents. So the statement that Israeli occupation soldiers rip Palestinian children from the arms of their parents is actually more than just literally true, it is a figuratively accurate expression of the cruelty, mindlessness, and, yes, evil of the Israeli occupation and apartheid regime.

The BSAA statement then makes the erroneous claim that political expression directed against Israeli government policy increases both violence against Jews and hatred of Jews in general.

It is unacceptable when our public broadcasters produce shows that allow our elected government representatives to endorse these types of statements that perpetuate hatred of Jews. It is an understatement to say that we are troubled and afraid for our community. Jews feel threatened in America. One only has to look back to this past weekend to see why (NY, Texas, Kentucky) – Anti-Jewish violence and hate is rising.  By sharing or affirming Jew hating blood libels, like those given airtime on “Connections”, immeasurable harm is done and the risk of violence against Jews tangibly increases. Fact-checking and follow up doesn’t remove these stereotypes or ideas from people’s minds and hearts. Retractions and complicated truths never make the same splash that gory headlines do.

The reasoning behind the false conjecture here is nonexistent to say the least, but it is a type of deceptive and inflammatory statement which is typical of many Jewish groups who have the goal of deflecting criticism away from Israel, or from their own inappropriate use of political and economic pressure in support of the Zionist state. They are also hiding their libeling of pro-Palestinian activists by conflating criticism of Israel with the expression of antisemitism. One example of this that all of you are familiar with are the letters from the Jewish Federation of Central New York (JFCNY) condemning a Justice for Palestine Committee (J4P) event, and more recently condemning the DeWitt Gaza Street Heat action.  (See “Gaza DeWitt Street Heat: Palestinian solidarity amid false charges of antisemitism, Mondoweiss.net.)

The JFCNY letters are not as outrageous as the BSAA statement. They do not single any individual out for punishment; they do not publicly call on a local politician to take action against another politician they condemn.

But despite the JFCNY letters being less offensive than the BSAA statement, both share a number of claims in common. Both groups’ arguments conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism. Both pro-Israel Jewish groups dwell upon the pain and suffering that opposition to Israel and Zionism cause the Jewish community, but dismiss the pain and suffering visited by the Israelis upon the Palestinian people. The Jewish groups are also, not surprisingly, oblivious to the considerable pain and suffering their own tactics cause the innocent targets of their anger. And finally, both groups falsely and ludicrously ascribe what they believe to be an increase in violence against Jews to political campaigns against Israel such as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). For me, the most personally offensive attack voiced by the Central New York Federation is when they claimed that the sight of the Street Heat demonstrators, and I have sporadically participated in this action, caused a group of young Jewish students who were passing by in a school bus untold psychological trauma.

Dear Allies (to quote from a coinage of our friend Eduardo): Is the BSAA statement and/or the letters sent by the JFCNY what many of you had in mind when you personally told me that the Syracuse Peace Council and the DeWitt Gaza Street Heaters should pay more attention to the concerns and feelings of the Syracuse Jewish community?

My advice to my fellow Jews whether from the SPC, J4P or the JFCNY is to express their ethnic solidarity in a more creative, productive and less destructive manner than smearing Blacks who support the Palestinian cause. Or attacking Palestinian-Americans who voice their desire to free their families from Israeli apartheid rule. Or crying antisemitism at those who hold signs of solidarity with the Palestinian cause at busy public intersections in neighborhoods where Jews happen to live. One suggestion I offer you is to join me in becoming a fan of the English Premier League football team, the Tottenham Hotspur who appear regularly on the NBC television network.  Tottenham is the Brighton of London. Like Brighton, Tottenham is home to a large economically privileged Jewish population.  Because of this the football team is commonly known as “The Yids.”  This appellation surprisingly causes little offense among the Hotspur’s numerous Jewish followers.

Secondly, with the impending turnover in paid staff at the local umbrella peace organization to which many of you belong, now may be a good time to re-evaluate the organization’s relationship with the Jewish Federation and the various rabbis that have been given special access to your group. In other words, you may want to consider ceasing to be a Progressive Except for Palestine (PEP) organization.

La lucha continúa, la de ellos y la nuestra,

המאבק נמשך, שלהם ושלנו

Ira Glunts

Since writing this letter I have found time to listen to the Rochester radio program. (To listen click on Load More Episodes>Discussing the motivations that bringing Black Americans to the Palestinian cause.) It was a wonderful example of what local political programming can be. All the panelists were informed, well-spoken and their remarks were extremely compelling.  Special praise is due for the host, Evan Dawson, whose probing questions made the program good listening from start to finish. A Jewish caller (see 47’10” into the program) said she was “pretty appalled by many Jewish people in Rochester [for their views about Palestine]” and that she had left her synagogue because of disagreements about the issue of Palestine. For his trouble, hosting this groundbreaking program meant Dawson got to present a panel about the rise of antisemitism which was obviously an attempt to placate the local Jewish critics of the Black/Palestinian activist show. See “Discussing the rise of Antisemitism,” February 23.

The statement that was attributed to Robin Wilt about Israeli soldiers ripping Palestinian children from their parents’ arms was not said by her nor did she say anything even remotely close. Iman Abid-Thompson, a Palestinian-American and a Rochester native who is the National Director of Advocacy and Campaigns at the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights spoke about a recent specific incident that was widely covered in Israel, in the Arabic, Hebrew and English press, in which Israeli police retaliated against protesters by making random arrests, and some of those arrested were children “taken from their parents” in nighttime police raids. (See 38’ mark of the panel discussion.) Abid-Thompson never made the general statement that Israeli soldiers rip children from their parents’ arms. Contrary to the claims of the BSAA statement, no other panelist spoke about this incident or the policy of the Israeli Defense Forces of arresting children during nighttime raids.

The good news is that this radio conversation about Palestinian rights and identity happened at all, especially a discussion that involved Black activists explaining the intersection between the Black and Palestinian struggles for human rights. Also good news, five days later, an Associated Press article was picked up by the Utica OD, the daily newspaper of Utica, NY which is one hour’s drive east of Syracuse. The article, by Joseph Krauss, was titled, “New generation of Palestinian activists emerges.” It is available on the Internet with the title, “Jailed Egypt activist sees wider struggle for rights in Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” Krauss discusses the change in pro-Palestinian activism from one based on achieving a two-state solution, which is the default position of most progressive Jews and the Zionist left in Israel, to a rights-based approach, which calls for equality for all citizens of Palestine/Israel.

Unfortunately, the attack of the Rochester BSAA illustrates an ongoing obstacle for Rochester activists and pro-Palestinian activists everywhere. Organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Foundation in Defense of Democracies (FDD), American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) are just some of the pro-Israel organizations which attack Palestinians, Palestinian-Americans and their supporters. They are assisted by liberal Zionist organizations like Americans for Peace Now, the New Israel Fund and JStreet, who claim to work for justice in the region but usually remain silent in the face of BSAA type smear campaigns.

While we celebrate the accomplishments of pro-Palestinian activists and criticize the injustices perpetrated by the Zionist regime, we should also never forget to speak out against those that want to harm us. like BSAA and those that will help our adversaries with their silence while posing as allies.

*Hat tip to the friend and Rochester resident who brought this story to my attention and supplied many valuable leads.  He requested to remain anonymous because of his very real fears of retaliation from Jewish pro-Israel activists for his efforts.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Ira Glunts.