It’s the kind of anti-Jewish hate speech you’d expect to find on a
neo Nazi website or in a Patrick Buchanan column: American Jews who
support current Israeli policies are accused of dual loyalty and called
“Israel Firsters” because they place their loyalty to Israel above their
loyalty to the United States.
AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) fares even worse:
“saying AIPAC is guilty of dual loyalty is giving it credit for one more loyalty that it holds.”
In other words, this widely respected American organization, and the
hundreds of thousands of Jews (and Christians) who support it, including
senators, congressmen and other elected officials, have absolutely no loyalty to our nation; their sole loyalty is to the foreign nation of Israel.
This false accusation of disloyalty to their own country finds its
roots in the Biblical villains Pharaoh and Hamen who accused the Jews of
Egypt and Persia of disloyalty. It was a central tenet of Nazism,
Stalinism and other anti-Semitic regimes that made the Jews pay lethal
consequences for their alleged dual loyalty.
Today, it is the mantra of
David Duke, Patrick Buchanan, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and Jew haters
of every race, religion, and national origin.
In fact I first came across some of these hateful quotes about
“Israel firsters” and “dual loyalty” on an actual neo-Nazi website
called Reporters Notebook, which features Holocaust denial claptrap and
anything that demonizes Israel and those who support the Jewish state.
Surprisingly, however, the quotes were attributed, not to the usual
suspects, but to a spokesman for Media Matters, a hard left Democratic
media attack and watchdog group, with close connections to the Obama
White House, that started out as an antidote to Fox News, but has now
turned much of its attention to Israel. The author of these hateful
quotes is MJ Rosenberg, who is the Senior Foreign Policy Fellow of Media
Matters and its official voice on issues relating to the Middle East
and Israel. Speaking at a symposium (with Stephen Walt, the author of
The Israel Lobby), Rosenberg explained why Media Matters hired him:
“Until I got there [Media Matters] had nothing on foreign policy.
They hired me specifically to be involved with this issue, with the
Palestinian issue, with [the issue of] stopping the war with Iran.”
And Rosenberg has become involved with a vengeance, using as his
primary weapon the poisonous charge of “Israel firsters” and dual
loyalty.
Let there be no doubt that Rosenberg’s accusation of dual or singular
loyalty to a foreign country is an anti-Semitic canard historically
reserved for Jews. Rosenberg doesn’t accuse Arab Americans who support
Hamas and Hezbollah—America’s sworn enemies– of being “Palestinian
Firsters”.
Nor did he accuse Irish Americans who supported the Sinn
Fein of being “Irish Firsters”.
And the bad old days when observant
Catholics were accused of dual loyalty with regard to the Vatican are,
thankfully, long past.
But Rosenberg defends his charges of disloyalty
to America against those who sincerely believe that it is in America’s
interest to support Israel against threats from Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah,
and other enemies of both nations. Indeed, he boasts of having
“popularized” the term “Israel Firsters.”
In addition to demonizing supporter’s of Israeli policies as Israel
Firsters, Rosenberg has espoused numerous hateful positions regarding
Israel that are in direct conflict with the way President Obama presents
himself and his administration to the pro-Israel community. He has
called Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, whose brother was killed by
terrorists, a “terrorist,” and Israel’s peace-loving President Shimon
Peres, an “uberhawk on Iran” who has “undermined” President Obama. He
has denied that Ahmadinejad has ever threatened to wipe Israel off the
map, suggesting it was a mistranslation, despite Iranian Revolutionary
Guard posters in English
demanding “Israel should be wiped out of the face of the world.” He
had criticized those who call for punishing sanctions against Iran and
has claimed that “if Iran gets the bomb, we are fully capable of
containing a nuclear Iran…”
Rosenberg has compared the violence of weapons wielding anti-Israel
activists on the Gaza flotilla with “civil rights demonstrators who sat
down at segregated lunch counters through the south” and the blockade of
Gaza with Jim Crow segregation. (I don’t recall any rockets being
fired at schools from Birmingham.)
And he defended Helen Thomas against charges of anti-Semitism for
saying the Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and criticized
President Obama for “diss[ing] her,” calling instead for her to be
“salute[d].”
It should come as no surprise therefore that Rosenberg’s hateful
remarks are featured on neo-Nazi hate sites, along with those of David
Duke and Patrick Buchanan.
Media Matters is currently associated with the White House, where it
has met with officials close to the president and with which it has
frequent strategy calls. It is well funded by many Democratic
contributors, including several prominent Jewish supporters of Israel,
who are apparently unaware of Rosenberg’s rants.
