This is a disgracefully doctored quote. Greenwald did not say Jewish donor groups “ARE THE ONES” pressing for war against Iran, he said “THERE ARE Jewish donor groups” pressing for war against Iran. Levick alters Greenwald’s words to make it appear — falsely — that Greenwald is attributing the war agitation solely to Jews. Greenwald’s actual words were a plain statement of fact; Levick has to lie about what Greenwald said in order to make it appear he is indulging in paranoid anti-Semitism about the power of the Jews.

why apologists? Why not supporters. AIPAC is a legal lobbying organization, not, say a sect whose clerics rape children.

“These groups have a strong pro-Israel bias,”

AIPAC doesn’t have a strong pro-Israel bias, its raison d’etre is supporting Israel. Just like other lobby groups, for example, this one.

http://www.irishnationalcaucus.org/

“But if you insist on calling those that see AIPAC as a dangerous influence on American foreign policy as anti-Semitic, at some point there will be a major backlash.”

So it’s a priori impossible that any of the people who criticse the influence of AIPAC are antisemitic?

“Large and extremely influential Jewish donor groups are the ones agitating for a U.S. war against Iran, and that is the case because those groups are devoted to promoting Israel’s interests.”

Your question is a canard. It is the perfect example of the policing of thought. Instead of confronting Greenwald’s arguments as to whether it is true that AIPAC and its apologists are urging for a war in Iran for the benefit of Israel, you avoid the real question, and go immediately to labeling him an anti-Semite. Why not discuss whether AIPAC and its neoconservative apologists are detrimental or not to the United States?

The problem, and Richard Sagor above identifies it clearly, is that if every time someone makes a very logical observation about how we got into the war in Iraq they are labeled and anti-Semite eventually a tipping point will be reached, and than all hell breaks loose. It is very reasonable to conclude that AIPAC and PNAC and many Neocons pushed for the war in Iraq primarily for the benefit of Israel. To make that statement is not anti-Semitic.

These groups have a strong pro-Israel bias, and they pushed for regime change long before 9/11, and used 9/11 as the excuse to carry out a war which has dubious strategic benefit for the US and clear benefit (in their minds) for Israel. Many may disagree with this analysis, and may have some good arguments against it. But if you insist on calling those that see AIPAC as a dangerous influence on American foreign policy as anti-Semitic, at some point there will be a major backlash.

Anti-Semitism is horrid, and is justifiably taboo. However, I think it is also reasonable to at least speculate that many people who adamantly support Israel, also use the anti-Semite taboo as a defense of last resort against very powerful arguments against AIPAC, US support for Israel and the manipulation of American foreign policy by Israel visa vi AIPAC, PNAC, the JDL, the Anti-Defamation League, The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, CAMERA etc.

The Mearsheimer and Walt episode was a low point in American intellectual discourse, it reeked of McCarthyism. Instead of an open, adult, discussion of a very serous topic, it became a vitriolic attack on their persons, not on their ideas. Beware of what people whisper about, it is much more dangerous than what they say in public. If these topics are not spoken about openly, that only reinforces the unspoken feeling many harbor that there is a strong pro-Israel bias in US media and academia.

Richard is right, these are scary times, and imagine, it is not to difficult to do so, that this current ‘recovery’ collapses into a major social and economic upheaval. Scapegoats will be sought by demagogues who know all to well what people whisper about.

Good, logical, thinking must never be ‘taboo’. If the obvious can’t be spoken, then one day it will be used as ammunition for hatred.

“Large and extremely influential Jewish donor groups are the ones agitating for a U.S. war against Iran, and that is the case because those groups are devoted to promoting Israel’s interests.”

This passage represents the perfect storm of antisemitic rhetoric, as it combines the historical narrative warning of excessive Jewish power with the dual loyalty charge in one full swoop.

So, Jeffrey, Joseph, Ray, and company: Are you guys ready to defend this?

1.
You yourself say that Greenwald being a Jew says nothing about whether he is antisemitic, the “come on” comment doesn’t change that.

2.
Who’s pretending that AIPAC doesn’t exist or that it isn’t powerful?

3.
How come Italian Americans are never asked to condemn the shameful and increasingly fascist government of Italy and accused of disloyalty if they don’t? How come Catholic Americans aren’t being asked to condemn and dissociate themselves from the Vatican ( a foreign and independent state which holds its laws and customs to be superior to those of the United States and all other countries where Catholics are present ) for the systematic rape and torture of children it has fomented and protected? How come Irish Americans were never asked to condemn the Provisional Republican movement for its campaign of sectarian terror against one of Britain’s closest allies ? How come the active support of some of them for that terrorism was seen in many quarters as praiseworthy and indeed as enhancing their status as real Americans?

How come only Jews have to prove that that their loyalties are first and foremost to the US?

If you think the US and Israel are separate entities and your loyalty is to the US, then why do you defend Israel’s actions, when they embarrass and shame the United States?

I have read your post here and your JCPA essay on Greenwald.

You are so wrong it’s not even funny. Greenwald is particular to avoid any slander or insult of the Jewish people as a whole. He specifically directs his invective towards some people (not all Jewish people, note) in favor of Israel’s violent, racist policies.

You, on the other hand, seem to conclude that if someone says, “AIPAC, ADL and associated lobbying groups in favor of Israel accuse people who disagree with them of being anti-semitic” they have made an anti-semitic statement. And not only do you conclude it’s anti-semitic to say, you slyly indicate that by taking that position Greenwald is being a Nazi when you write how he discounts “the lethal history of this facile narrative about Jewish power.”

Now, first off, this is clearly rubbish because Greenwald is basically a pacifist.

Moreover, in America, people declare all the time that lobbies for particular groups have too much power, whether they’re talking about the lobbies of health insurers, petroleum companies, farm companies, Wall Street firms, military contractors, or various racial, religious and ethnic minorities, including the pro-Israel lobby. That does not mean they think the communities that employ such lobbies deserve to be wiped out. If I decry the influence big pharma has on health care reform, or the influence AIPAC has on our foreign policy, I am not saying in either case that their constituencies deserve to be discriminated against, but that is how you take Greenwald’s comments.

The amusing thing is that I, and many people like me (including Greenwald) are really for Israel, not against it. It’s just that we believe that it is acting against itself when, for example, it responds to the death of a few dozen citizens by killing hundreds of innocent Gazans. Or when it refuses to let just about anything into Gaza and thus forces those who live there to live in grinding poverty. Proponents of such policies argue that Hamas and Hizbollah deserve harsh treatment, but kids born in Gaza don’t choose to be born there, and are innocent of the rocket-firing crimes of their elders. Yet they suffer for them all the same, and they suffer much more than Israel does from the provocations that supposedly lead to its warmaking and infliction of suffering. And this kind of action destroys Israel’s legitimacy. When once everyone would have agreed that the Jewish refugees deserved a state post WWII, now people only see that Israelis forced themselves into an already occupied land, that they have done and continue to do violence to those they displaced, and that they corrode their moral legitimacy with each such action.

The fact is that it is not anti-semitic to state that Israel acts incorrectly: Israel is a country, not its people, and disliking Israel the country under Netanyahu is no different then disliking America under Bush - it doesn’t mean you hate the citizens therein. If there is to be a state in the area now known as Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank, it needs to be a single, pluralistic state that does not privilege any religion or ethnicity. If the Jewish people insist on living in a “Jewish” state, then they need to find land that is not already occupied and move there, as their occupation of Israel already is in violation of numerous UN orders. Perhaps they can purchase some unoccupied land from Argentina, or Russia, or Canada. It won’t be their historical homeland, but it would be a land where they could live without repressing others. Don’t you think that would make for a better society than one where the leadership must justify cruel war-making on basically unarmed, innocent opposition?

Sincerely,

So criticizing the politics of a person who is Jewish is an act of anti-semitism.

Well done!