African American political leaders and students on Aipac Israel junket

You’ve heard of pinkwashing, greenwashing–now “blackwashing” joins the cast of pro-Israel hasbara communities exploited in order to combat the major criticisms of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians.  Pinkwashing is the effort to promote Israel to the gay community in order to point out the homophobia of Arab culture and nations.  Greenwashing is the attempt by environmental groups like Jewish National Fund to point to Israel’s alleged sensitivity to environmental issues (excluding of course its heinous treatment of Negev Bedouins whose communities are being bulldozed by the Israeli government in collaboration with JNF).  Now blackwashing is the rage.

Israel lobby groups like Aipac have worked closely cultivating relationships on college campuses with African-American students.  They send these young leaders to Aipac conferences where they can be trotted out to the media as witnesses for the defense to combat the BDS campaign to label Israel as an apartheid state:

When Vincent Evans arrived as a bright-eyed first-year at Florida A&M, the country’s largest historically black university, he knew he wanted to get involved in politics. So when an older student leader approached him one afternoon after a student government meeting to ask if he wanted an all expenses paid trip to D.C., Evans jumped at the opportunity.

The trip, it turned out, was sponsored by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, the country’s most powerful pro-Israel lobbying outfit. Israel is under growing attack from Palestinian and international activists who call the country a racist apartheid state. In response, its staunchest U.S. lobby is recruiting black students as moral shields to make the case for Israeli impunity. At historically black colleges and universities (known as HBCU’s) around the country, AIPAC is finding and developing a cadre of black allies to declare there’s no way Israel can be racist.

In his four years in college, Evans traveled to D.C. at least 10 times on AIPAC’s dime. He and a small group of other student leaders from his school joined hundreds of others from around the country, including other HBCU students, for AIPAC’s semi-annual Saban Leadership Seminar.

“Within the program,” says Evans, “they make a concerted effort to reach out to HBCU and majority Hispanic schools.”

Does the Israel lobby care about African-American students?  Does it care about the issues close to their heart?  Is it about to reach out to Blacks to create political coalitions to advance causes of mutual interest to each community?  Are you kiddin’?  These kids are fodder in the PR war.  They don’t mean anything other than having a black face to show the world that Israel isn’t an apartheid nation.  But how much do these kids really know about Israel?

Before he went to D.C., Evans knew nothing about Israel and had no opinions on Middle East politics. “The program starts at a layman’s level and takes you through what the current Middle East peace talks are about,” he recalls.

AIPAC trained Evans and other students in lobbying and campaign work and provided a crash course in its staunchly Zionist version of Middle East history and politics. Participants are introduced to American and Israeli political leaders and spend afternoons walking Capitol Hill to lobby for Israel.

It seemed to Evans an opportunity of a lifetime.

“You’re talking about a lot of students who grew up in a socio-economic place that does not give them these opportunities,” said Evans. “We met amazing people. I met Netanyahu. In 2007 or 2008 I met all the Democratic candidates for president. My dad cried when I met Obama. [AIPAC] opens your eyes to things you’ve never seen.”

Pardon me, but this sounds more like a cult to me than a political campaign.  They take kids who know or care nothing about Israel and they indoctrinate them with a narrow set of principles and values they hammer home.  At the end, they’ve produced walking anti-apartheid emblems who will supposedly immunize Israel from these charges.  Not just that, these Black students also become cannon fodder in the war of ideas on college campuses:

Last year, AIPAC featured several HBCU students as speakers at its 5,000-person national policy conference in D.C. On stage, one student explained that she and a group of other AIPAC-trained HBCU students launched an attack on the Palestinian rights movement.

Specifically, they targeted Students For Justice in Palestine, a national student coalition with branches on a growing number of campuses. SJP frames its work as a struggle against Israeli apartheid…

On stage at last year’s AIPAC conference, an HBCU student waxed indignant.

“How dare they use a word that has historic meaning for me,” said the speaker, to the loud cheers of the audience. “A word that conjures up some of the worst injustices an individual can suffer.” As she spoke, positioning herself as an arbiter of what gets to be called racist, a slide of an apartheid-era South African sign reading “White Area” appeared behind her.

Do these children know anything about Israeli politics or the nature of Israeli society?  Do they know how non-Jewish Israelis are treated?  Do they know anything about the Occupation?  Do they know anything about the racial prejudice rampant in Israeli society?  No.  They only know what Aipac tells them.  The lies and half-truths Aipac feeds them.

I find it almost amazing that some strategists like Frank Luntz sit in a room or hold a focus group and discuss Israel’s vulnerabilities and how to exploit different ethnic and gender-based communities in order to buttress them.  It’s cold, exploitative and vulgar.  It’s buying support with trips, nice hotels, and meeting famous people.  Instead of earning support the old-fashioned way through discussion, study, debate and the battle of ideas, Aipac programs these impressionable young kids to spout the talking points.

Who does it fool?  Who does it persuade?  I rather think it helps the Aipac donors who fund this sort of charade more than it persuades anyone outside this narrow pro-Israel political niche.  One of them is Haim Saban, the wealthy Hollywood and media powerbroker who is one of Aipac’s most important donors.  He also is a major donor to the Democratic-leaning think tank, the Brookings Institution.  He also played a role in lobbying Rep. Jane Harman on behalf of accused Aipac spy Steve Rosen.  Saban also lobbied Nancy Pelosi on Harman’s behalf to appoint her intelligence committee chair, which the then Speaker refused to do.

By the way, the Lobby’s cultivation of Vincent Evans paid off.  He used the connections he made on his Aipac trips to DC to land a job working for Florida’s Democratic Party in Tallahassee.  As he works his way up the political ladder, Aipac will be able to call on him for ongoing support in its political battles, just as it does a number of members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who routinely sell out their values and principles to sup at the pro-Israel altar of Mammon.

That’s the way the game’s played.  It’s a dirty, nasty game.  But Aipac has mastered it to perfection.  Except that more and more see through it.  They don’t buy it.  The only people they’re fooling is themselves.  Yes, and members of Congress and a president it appears.  But so many of the rest of us know better.

H/t to my friend, Nan Rubin.

What do Howard Berman, Brad Sherman, Jane Harman, Gary Ackerman and all the other Congressional water-carriers for Aipac care about the impact of their vote for closing Iran’s oil spigot, even if it might force Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation and start a regional war?  This is precisely the danger foreseen by the Founding Fathers when they arrogated the conduct of foreign policy to the executive branch and not the legislature.  Members of Congress grandstand and posture for their constituents.  They pander for votes.  Of course, they will vote for everything Aipac tells them to and more, in return for unlimited cash from pro-Israel donors.  Who the hell cares if their actions bring the region closer to conflagration?  When the shit hits the fan, they’ll blame Obama and say it’s the president who conducts foreign policy, not them.

Iran today warned that if Obama signs into law the new sanctions regime approved by Congress, it will close the Straits.  If it does that it will throw a huge wrench into the flows of Middle East oil around the world and send the price of oil through the roof.  Obama claims he has a plan to counteract such an Iranian act.  What might that be?  He’s not saying.  But it’s highly likely that anything the U.S. might do to respond to such an Iranian closure would escalate tensions even further.  How much higher can they go before real hostilities break out?  And perhaps that’s precisely what the U.S. and Israel want–to ratchet up pressure gradually so that Iran finally breaks and does something that will be a cause for war.  If they do this incrementally, they believe the world won’t be as likely to blame THEM for starting the war.  But we know better, don’t we?

On a slightly different note, UPI is reporting the settlement of a lawsuit brought by the government against the defense contractor which provides the fuses for the bunker buster bombs Obama gave the Israelis for use in penetrating Iran’s underground nuclear facilities.  The lawsuit alleged that fuses for the weapons were defective.  This may have some impact on Israel’s plans for attacking Iran, unless they’ve already solved the problem.

Returning to the NY Times story, I found this passage in David Sanger’s report to be foolhardy:

…A White House spokesman said there would be no comment on the Iranian threat to close the strait. That seemed in keeping with what administration officials say has been an effort to lower the level of angry exchanges, partly to avoid giving the Iranian government the satisfaction of a response and partly to avoid spooking financial markets.

You mean passing a law to destroy Iran’s ability to feed its people wasn’t provocation enough?  And not responding to the Iranian threat will somehow assuage them?  And do Sanger and Obama think that the financial markets don’t read the NY Times and won’t understand the full import of the Iranian threat?

As I’ve written here, any attempt to stop Iran’s access to world oil markets is likely to blow up in our faces.  It will send the price of oil sky-high, it will not necessarily shut Iran out of the markets, and will benefit Iran which stands to gain a financial windfall from increased oil prices.   In fact, today world oil prices broke the $100/barrel  barrier.  Hey, the sky’s the limit.  Howard Kohr and the boys from Aipac are probably working up some new ploy which will send them even higher.  I can’t wait to find out what they have in store for us next.  And this couldn’t have happened at a more opportune moment economically when the 99% (which excludes Obama, Sherman, Harman, Berman, et al.) face a looming recession and nearly 10% unemployment.

Don’t ya just love the cool certainty of this Treasury Department wise man who assures us the administration knows precisely how to handle this situation so that it will cause maximum harm to Iran and minimum harm to the U.S.:

“We have flexibility here, and I think we have a pretty good opportunity to dial this in just the right way that it does end up putting significant pressure on Iran.”

Why didn’t you say so?  Now I know we’re in good hands and nothing bad can come of this nonsense.

So here’s the U.S. plan in all its brilliance:

…The administration’s aim is to reduce Iran’s oil revenue by diminishing the volume of sales and forcing Iran to give its customers a discount on the price of crude.

Got that?  Through some sort of magical hocus-pocus we’re going to cut Iran’s ability to sell oil to anyone.  That won’t send the price of oil for us through the roof by some sleight of hand.  Luckily, there are some sane analysts out there who take a dim view of the practicalities of this:

Some economists question whether reducing Iran’s oil exports without moving the price of oil is feasible, even if the market is given signals about alternative supplies. Already, analysts at investment banks are warning of the possibility of rising gasoline prices in 2012, due to the new sanctions by the United States as well as complementary sanctions under consideration by the European Union.

Note that the administration plans to offer “alternative supplies” to Iran’s trading partners so that they can wean themselves from that country’s oil.  We haven’t ever been able to get the Saudis to do anything we wanted regarding raising or lowering their oil production.  Now all of a sudden not only will the Saudis answer the call, but they’ll have enough to replace what the world supply will lose from Iran.  Libya, Iraq (with it’s Shiite majority largely sympathetic to Iran) and Angola will take up the slack.  Oh, and we’ve got to approve the Keystone pipeline too and approve all those new fracking wells that threaten to destroy the water supply for hundreds of thousands of Americans.  If you believe this fairy tale, I’ve got a rusting hulk of a NYC bridge to sell you.

Another alarming intended effect of the new sanctions is to wreck the Iranian economy, which is supposed to be in free-fall.  But this appears to be a game of chicken: who will such a collapse hurt more–the country’s rulers or the tens of millions of ordinary Iranians who will be bankrupted and starved by the destruction of their national economy?  I strongly doubt that the common folk will rise up to smite their rulers because of the impact of these sanctions.  In fact, it’s liable to have precisely the opposite effect.  While we’re playing this game of Russian roulette determining who will lose the most, thousands of Iranian babies will begin dying from lack of basic sustenance and available health care just as happened in Saddam’s Iraq.  Is this really a moral burden Barack Obama wants to shoulder?  Of course, George Bush was happy to do so.  And the Aipac crowd will be happy to do so as well.  But does Obama want to be called the killer of Iranian babies?

Note also how the alleged Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador has become real in this passage from Sanger’s report:

…A plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States…

Now here I always thought it was the responsibility of the government to prove its claims in a court of law.  How foolish of me.  I didn’t realize reporters could decide for themselves that a government allegation was actually a proven fact.

Is Josh Block still flacking for Aipac?

The Washington Post reports that two Beltway think tanks with which Josh Block is associated may cut ties with him after he singlehandedly initiated a witch hunt against a group of progressive foreign policy bloggers associated with Media Matters and Center for American Progress.  Block and his most recent previous employer, Aipac, are known for their attack-dog style of pro-Israel lobbying.  In this case, he was pursuing an ideological vendetta against Eric Alterman, Matt Duss, Eli Clifton and M.J. Rosenberg, known for their critical perspective on U.S. policy in the Israeli-Arab conflict.  Among other charges, Block accused M.J. Rosenberg of raising the dual loyalty canard through use of the term “Israel Firster.”  He also claimed some of the arguments were anti-Israel and “borderline anti-Semitic.”

Block, who is now a fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, a hawkish think tank with Democratic leanings, has caused some discomfort among the leadership there.  Probably, if Block hadn’t been “outed” by someone at the neocon journalist listserv at which he promoted this project, he might’ve gotten away with it.  He did get Ben Smith to pen a attack on the progressive bloggers, though Smith had enough sense to cloak it in semi-balanced journalistic terms.  But once Block’s actual posts to the group were published by Justin Elliot at Salon, the true venom and calculating nature of his plan was exposed.  Neither he nor his employer could walk anything back.

If he’d gone about this differently then he probably would’ve gotten away with, scored a few points in smearing the reputation of those I mentioned above, and notched another one is his belt of those he’s taken down a notch or two for the temerity of their criticism of Israeli policy.  I try not to engage in schadenfraude too much by feasting on the suffering of opponents.  But Josh has gotten everything he deserved.  He’s a pro-Israel hatchet man and what he tried to do to others is pretty much what’s being done to him now.  What goes around comes around.

It’s unfortunate that Block’s real master, Aipac, doesn’t get any shit on its shoes for all this.  I’m willing to bet that he’s still flacking for them and did this campaign on their dime.  Aipac’s current PR flack hasn’t answered a tweet I posted to him asking whether Block was a paid Aipac consultant.  Aipac usually is allergic to being publicly associated with such shenanigans.  They don’t like leaving fingerprints when they stick a shiv in someone.

Greg Sargent gets one major point in this report wrong and I fear he did so because he relied on a false claim in Commentary Magazine.  Ben Armbruster did not apologize for use of the term “Israel Firster” by himself or any CAP staff.  In fact, that’s a term used by M.J. Rosenberg of Media Matters.  Armbruster said only that he didn’t “endorse” the term.  That is not an apology since neither Armbruster nor anyone else at his think tank used it as far as I know.

Josh Block, United Jewish Community's Bill Daroff and Haaretz's Natasha Mozgovaya

I don’t know how many of you caught the echo of the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup (“To war, to war, Fredonia goes to war!”) in my post title.  But apparently, as Aipac joins in eager anticipation with the Israeli political élite for an attack on Iran, the progressive policy wonks at Media Matters and Center for American Progress have taken aim at this war fever.  And Aipac doesn’t like it one bit.  M.J. Rosenberg, Eli Clifton and Matt Duss have used their blogs to poke holes in the arguments behind the Israeli-neocon march to war.  They’ve been tweeting and posting furiously, doing what they can to make the case for diplomacy, pragmatism and moderation.  All of these qualities are anathema to Aipac and Israeli interests.

The first public shot across the bow came from Politico’s Ben Smith who attempts to stir up a hornet’s nest within the Democratic Party by claiming that CAP and Media Matters are little more than fronts for the Party:

Two of the Democratic Party’s core institutions are challenging a bipartisan consensus on Israel and Palestine that has dominated American foreign policy for more than a decade.

The Center for American Progress, the party’s key hub of ideas and strategy, and Media Matters, a central messaging organization, have emerged as vocal critics of their party’s staunchly pro-Israel congressional leadership and have been at odds, at times, with Barack Obama’s White House…

If Smith had said this about J Street he would be dead-on accurate, as that group is a liberal mouthpiece for the Party in the Jewish community.  But I’ve never heard this said, and it strikes me as ludicrous to make the claim about Media Matters.  Claiming that they or CAP are a “core institution” for the Party implies there is no way to be progressive unless you’re affiliated with the Dems.  In fact, I’d argue that if you’re too affiliated with Dems you can’t be progressive.  Anyone who takes one look at Obama’s foreign or national security policy can see that.

Having read the posts and social network messaging of many of the individuals under scrutiny, it’s false to say that their attack is on a Party.  Rather it’s on the views of individuals whether Republican or Democratic.  To say that they’re taking special aim at Democrats or that they have an underhanded plan to turn the Democrats against Israel is beyond ludicrous.  Does being against a disastrous war being cooked up by Bibi, Barak and Aipac mean you’re anti-Israel?  In which universe is that reasonable?

I think Smith’s stirring up a tempest in a teapot.  He may argue that the analysts above are critiquing the Party’s positions (though they’re tweaking a pro-war position shared by many in both parties), but they aren’t doing that from within its ranks.  Rather they are independent observers, and that’s as it should be.

Aipac though has set loose its attack dogs, including some who, like greyhounds, we’d thought were retired from the races.  Josh Block until a year or so was Aipac’s chief flack.  He’s the brain who decided The Guardian’s Chris McGreal should be rendered persona non grata at the Aipac conference two years ago, and be provided a security escort and frog marched out of the conference hotel.  Josh has now moved over to the Progressive Policy Institute (the Party’s hawkish rear guard).  Smith laughingly calls PPI “center-left.”  Which tells you a lot more about the reporter’s political views than it does about PPI.  Returning to Block and his former Aipac affiliation: his heart is still with daddy and his old buddies.

Justin Elliot reports in Salon that Block took advantage of a neocon journalist listserv, moderated by TNR’s Jamie Kirchick, to promulgate talking points to advance a media blitz against the groups and individuals I mentioned.  He reminds me a bit of the Manchurian Candidate, as whenever Aipac needs him, he can be activated by flashing a blue and white Star of David card in front of his face.  His master’s voice has told him to try to organize a widespread right-wing barrage.

Frankly, I don’t see how it can succeed.  First, the material he’s offered for this expose is just plain retarded.  For example, OMG, Matt Duss tweeted that Jennifer Rubin was a “douchebag.”  That’s Block’s idea of “evidence.”  Of what?  Of the fact that Duss uses Twitter as almost every other one of its members does?  Tweeting vigorously, even aggressively at times?  This is improper?  Gimme a break.

Oh and in case you didn’t know it already, Eric Alterman is an anti-Semite.  Alterman, the mildly liberal-Zionist columnist (who calls himself a “proud pro-Zionist Jew”) whose views on Israel are faintly to the left of Ethan Bronner and certainly in synch with Gershom Gorenberg.  THAT anti-Semite?

Poor Josh doesn’t much like M.J. calling his old friends “Israel Firsters.”  That’s because Aipac sees Israel’s interests as the same as America’s.  So they can’t possibly be disloyal to U.S. interests.  That’s why Block calls such views “anti-Semitic.”  But they’re not.  They are a reasonable political attack on views which have political, and not religious repercussions.  The important purpose of this attack on Aipac is to deny them the claim that America’s interests are the same as Israel’s.  This is a deluded notion that must be rebutted forcefully.  Saying America’s interests diverge from Israel’s is not anti-Semitic.  It’s realistic, pragmatic.  It’s the Aipac-ers who are extreme on this point.  And I should point out that I am not arguing that Israel’s interests aren’t legitimate (from their point of view).  They are.  But they are Israel’s interests, not ours.

What’s Aipac pissed about?  Not that they favor war with Iran, because they do.  Apparently what they’re pissed about is that their support for war is qualitatively different from that of others.  And they’re also allergic to the Walt-Mearsheimer-like claim that the Israel lobby is lobbying for war (which they are).  It strikes them as anti-Semitic to claim that Jews are leading the nation to war when lots of other people are too:

 …The suggestion that AIPAC is leading an Iraq-style drive for war with Iran also angered leading Jewish Democrats, many of whom are close to AIPAC.

…“There’s a great difference between the widespread concern for Iran within the Democratic and Jewish communities versus the far right. Some extreme right-wingers may be beating the drums for war, but the vast mainstream — certainly including AIPAC — is most definitely not, said David Harris, the CEO of the National Jewish Democratic Council, when asked about the AIPAC’s statements.

The real truth of the matter is that just as Bibi and Barak want to go to war against Iran, Aipac does too.  Claiming otherwise is simply a smokescreen.  Sure, you can say we’re for sanctions, we’re for this, we’re for that.  But at the end of the day any sensible person, whether left or right, knows that sanctions can’t work.  And what will you be left with?  Since no U.S. president can apparently do the sensible thing and offer negotiations and compromise to engage Iran, the only choices you are left with is war or no war.  Everyone knows where Aipac comes down regarding this choice.  War.

It doesn’t matter to me whether you’re for war reluctantly or enthusiastically.  In the end, you’re for calling out the bombers, dropping the bunker busters, and sending the Iranian nuclear facilities back to the Stone Age, if not earlier.  And as a supporter of war, you share responsibility for the aftermath, which will be round after round of bloodshed as Iran exacts its own form of revenge.

Over the past few days, I’ve been thinking about the lies that J Street published about me in an official tweet which called my criticism of Jesse Jackson Jr’s Jerusalem Post op-ed “crazy, disgusting and racist.”  I thank Max Blumenthal, Phil Weiss, Gabriel Ash, and a number of others who’ve blogged, tweeted and posted to Facebook about this serious dispute.

Personally, as an alum of the Bill Clinton School of Triangulation, I think Jeremy Ben Ami’s strategy is to point out to his centrist donors how crazy those to his right and left are.  That, he thinks, will leave him smelling like a rose with the fat-cats showering J Street with all that now barely regulated campaign cash.  The only problem with this sort of triangulation is that J Street seeks to co-opt a bit of the rhetoric of the right and a bit of the rhetoric of the left and thinks that somehow that makes it the credible center, when instead it makes it a group full of internal contradictions.  Not to mention that when your group apes the views of an administration whose Israeli-Arab policy is a shambles, you’re consigning yourself to political irrelevance (which is what the current Obama policy is).

So I think Jeremy’s staff figured that smearing me was a good deal for them because making me out to be the crazy left would make them look good with all their liberal Zionist donors who run scared from the sort of ideas I espouse.

Again, the only problem with this is I’m not going to take it.  J Street is a mainstream Jewish organization which adopts the tropes, concerns and concepts of the Jewish community in its organizing and fundraising.  I too take my place as a Jew in the American Jewish community.  I will allow no one, especially not an ostensibly mainstream group like J Street. to lie about me and tarnish my good name in the Jewish community.  If Jeremy Ben Ami wants his staff to smear people like me he picked the wrong Jew.

I have written to Jeremy asking him to take down the tweet about me and apologize in J Street’s twitter feed for publishing it.  He has not replied.  I gather he does not intend to.  When two Jews are embroiled in a serious intractable conflict a good Jewish way to resolve it is by convening a beyt din.  Three rabbis come together, hear evidence and either mediate or judge the dispute.

Of course, I would prefer not taking as serious a measure as this.  There are ways to resolve this dispute short of a beyt din.  But I am thinking that this may be the best way to air the issues involved in this matter so that J Street, it’s supporters and the Jewish community can judge for themselves.

Finally, let me say that I have no problem with those who criticize or disagree with my views as long as they actually read what they’re criticizing and characterize it accurately, something J Street never did.  Also, I have been critical of J Street over the past two years and this is likely why the group piled on after Adam Holland, the pro-Israel blogger attacked me.  But in my criticism of J Street I have always quoted statements or positions with which I disagreed.  I have always characterized positions with which I disagreed as accurately as I could.  I never called J Street or Jeremy crazy, racist or disgusting.  Not even close.

So Jeremy, do we need a beyt din decide this matter?  I await your reply.

To those who support me in this campaign, would you consider loaning your blog, Twitter, Facebook or other social networking account on its behalf and advancing it among your friends?  Jeremy’s Twitter account is here.  Tweet him and ask him why he refuses to defend J Street’s accusations against me.  Why he made them in the first place?  Why he won’t take these lies down?

J Street and pro-Israel blogger apologist Adam Holland have savagely attacked me for my criticism of Jesse Jackson’s Jerusalem Post op-ed, in which he ignorantly claimed Palestinians refused to adopt non-violence in their campaign for statehood.  Jackson and five other members of the Congressional Black Caucus also joined an Aipac junket along with fully one-fifth of the House of Representatives.

If J Street and Holland were the only sources you read, and you hadn’t actually read what I wrote (as Jeremy Ben Ami certainly has not), you might agree that my criticism was “disgusting, racist and crazy.”

But along comes Israeli Palestinian MK and deputy Knessest speaker, Ahmed Tibi, writing in Salon, virtually echoing everything I’ve written.  I dare Jeremy Ben Ami to call Ahmed Tibi “disgusting, crazy and racist.”  I double dare him.  Here is what Tibi had to say about the perfidy of Jesse Jackson Jr. in abandoning the values of human rights held dear by his father and Martin Luther King:

 The Rev. Jesse Jackson, a leader in the anti-apartheid movement, certainly would not have taken a propaganda junket to legitimize whites-only neighborhoods.

Yet his son, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., has visited here, where ethnic-religious discrimination is written into law. I dare say, Jackson heard very little about the more than 35 laws that discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel. I doubt Israeli officials volunteered information about the new legislation passed by the Knesset that subjects anyone who calls for a boycott of companies colonizing the West Bank and East Jerusalem to financial damages.

As a member of Israel’s large Palestinian national minority, I find Jackson’s participation, along with five other members of the Black Caucus especially disappointing.

I…expect Jackson and the other members of the caucus (other than Rep. Allen West, advocate of torturing Arabs) to reject colonization and racial discrimination. Their complacency in the face of modern-day colonization and their adoption of hard-line AIPAC positions stand in stark contrast to the beliefs of many Americans I have met who believe wholeheartedly that it is wrong for Israel to discriminate against Palestinians.

I pointedly asked in my earlier post, how many Israeli Palestinians Jackson and the other members of the Aipac delegation would be meeting.  Tibi read my mind:

The visitors will be meeting with opposition parties in the Jewish state, but none of them — not a single one — is scheduled to meet with Palestinian members of the Knesset even though our existence is often highlighted when Israel’s defenders seek to refute charges that Israel is an apartheid state.

Gee, why would Aipac not want U.S. Congress members, including members of the CBC, to meet with their Israeli Palestinian counterparts?  And why wouldn’t Jackson and his fellow CBC members have asked for such a meeting?

This is what Ahmed Tibi humbly asks of future visiting delegations, words that almost could’ve come right out of the post I wrote, so savagely attacked by those liberal champions of civil rights at J Street:

…At this point all I ask [is] if congressional representatives are going to visit my country they should strive to get a full view and not simply disregard the rampant discrimination Israel practices against its Palestinian minority and against the Palestinians of the occupied territories. They should visit Jerusalem on those days when Palestinian men under 50 are prohibited from praying at the al-Aqsa mosque. I could take them personally to my hometown and the neighboring Jewish community where they will see the discriminatory infrastructure gap that saddles Palestinian children with disadvantages that nearby Jewish children never face.

What we need from the members of Congress, and especially the members of the Congressional Black Caucus, are public statements from our American visitors expressing grave reservations about Israel’s oppressive treatment of Palestinians in the territories and Israel.

I’ve been advised such words would be political suicide. If true, if speaking for equality and non-discrimination is now political suicide, then America’s problems are even bigger than the recent debt debacle fomented by many of the Republican representatives now visiting Israel.

In fact, I’d like to know if J Street junkets (yes, the lib Zionsts have their own junkets which may be why they didn’t like me criticizing Aipac’s) visit with MK Tibi or any of the other Israeli Palestinian MKs.

Oh and by the way, I wrote an e mail directly to Jeremy last night demanding to know how such schlock could appear on J Street’s twitter feed.  No answer.  Funny thing is that a local J Street organizer swore to me that if a J Street staffer published that tweet they should be “disciplined.”  Guess who’s not being disciplined?  How does that local J Street organizer justify involvement with such an organization?

By the way, J Street has its own lib fat cats supporting its waffling, pro-Israel agenda to the tune of millions of dollars.  It would be nice if my readers would do the same to support the stands I take on behalf of reason, sanity and justice.  Hit that Paypal button, please.

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• CODEPINK calls for investigation into ‘AIPAC loophole’ for Israel junkets (mondoweiss.net)

UPDATE: MJ Rosenberg today apologized on his Twitter feed for his criticism of me.  He’s also levelled severe criticism against Adam Holland after becoming more familiar with his actual views about me, Israel and related matters.  It takes a big person and heart to do what MJ did and I appreciate it.  Please read what follows in this light.

At one time, I considered myself a friend and political ally of Media Matters columnist MJ Rosenberg.  But then, Norman Finkelstein was arrested by Israel after landing at Ben Gurion Airport on his way to visit a Palestinian friend who worked for B’Tselem.  Israel’s claims against Finkelstein were preposterous (even later, Israel barred Noam Chomsky from entering Israel to speak at a conference).  I wrote to a group of bloggers and human rights activists I knew to try to drum up opposition to his arrest.

Two of those I wrote to were exceedingly hostile to Finkelstein. One of them was MJ Rosenberg.  It shocked me at the time since I thought it was a betrayal of the values I thought progressives would adopt around this issue.  Many, including myself, disagree with Finkelstein’s views on some issues.  But that’s not the point.  The point is whether or not a democracy, whether it be the U.S. or Israel, should entertain unpopular ideas and those who espouse them.  Why should a true democracy need to shield itself from ideas it doesn’t like?  And if one democracy does this for one set of ideas, why shouldn’t another democracy suppress ideas your country holds dear?  And pretty soon you have a world that is deaf, dumb and blind to anything but what they wish to see, hear and say.

I don’t have a problem with banning a person who has violated the criminal laws of your country, but banning someone merely for their ideas is reprehensible.  We did this here to Tariq Ramadan during the Bush administration and Britain tried to do it to Sheikh Raed Salah recently in an incident that was largely provoked by anti-Muslim blogger, Michael Weiss.

Most people see Rosenberg as a progressive on the Israeli-Arab conflict.  But as you can see, he has his blind spots.  Similarly, he’s jumped into bed with pro-Israel blogger Adam Holland and J Street in their smear campaign against me for criticizing Jesse Jackson’s Jerusalem Post op-ed, in which he falsely accused the Palestinians of betraying the cause of non-violence in their campaign for statehood.  In this tweet, he called my attack on Jackson “bizarre,” without offering a shred of evidence to support the claim.  In fact, I doubt he read my post nor my post criticizing the Aipac junket which brought 81 Congressmembers to Israel, including Jesse Jackson.

Nor can Rosenberg find objectionable my views that Representatives who accept an Aipac junket are whoring and schnorring at the public trough since I’ve heard him say as much myself.  So what is it that J Street and Rosenberg find objectionable?  No one knows because they’re sloganeering via tweets rather than rational discourse.

In fact, I’ve dared Rosenberg to find a single idea in Jackson’s op-ed with which he agrees.  Similarly, I’ve dared Rosenberg to find a single idea in Holland’s blog with which he agrees.  Does MJ have a clue about who he’s jumped into bed with?  I doubt it just as I doubt J Street did when they wrote that my criticism of Jackson was “crazy, disgusting and racist.”  Do either of them realize that Adam Holland detests virtually everything they stand for?  Do they even know what he stands for?

When it comes right down to it I love them attacking me while they defend Jesse Jackson Jr. for joining Aipac’s Israel junket.  That’s a position I’ll gladly defend any day.

My sneaking suspicion is that this is somehow payback for the incredulity I expressed to Rosenberg when he so harshly attacked Norman Finkelstein.  If anything, this incident has taught me who my friends are and aren’t, and it’s confirmed that those you thought of as close to you politically can drift very far from those shores over time.

I’ve been keepin’ a list and checkin’ it twice to find out whose been especially naughty in joining the Aipac junket to Israel.  81 Congress members participated, marking the participation of an unprecedented 20% of the entire body in a single month’s worth of trips to the Holyland.

With the help of readers and other activists I’ve now identified 52 junket-goers with another 29 left to go.  If you know of any new names please add them in the thread below.

Tonight, I especially wanted to focus on participation of the Congressional Black Caucus in the trip.  At least six members went including Jesse Jackson Jr.  One of them, Hank Johnson, ran against and defeated one of Aipac’s nemeses, Cynthia McKinney, largely with the help of funds from pro-Israel Jewish donors.  You can be damn sure the only reason these people are on this trip is because they lust for the campaign cash that will be coming their way from donors affiliated with Aipac.

Jesse Jackson Jr. is richly repaying the $8,000 Aipac invested in his trip with this fawning pro-Israel op-ed published in today’s Jerusalem Post.  It’s so fulsome in its praise of the Jewish state that one even questions whether it could’ve been drafted for him by an Aipac staffer.  I note that Jackson eschews terms like “junket” to describe his Israel visit.  It was, instead, a “fact-finding trip.”  I can tell him a few facts he missed: he never visited Gaza or spoke with anyone from Hamas.  I seriously doubt he met with any Israeli-Palestinians either; or any leaders of the J14 social justice movement which has swept Israeli society of late.  Can you imagine the son of one of America’s greatest civil rights leaders visits Israel and misses out on that country’s foremost social justice movement?  How could Jackson let that happen?

The gist of the JPost piece is that the only way for the Palestinians to gain true success in their quest for justice is to swear off violence and embrace non-violence.  Which is all well and good if you’re fighting for civil rights in Alabama in 1967, since the only weapons used against you were German shepherds and fire hoses (with the rare assassination thrown in for purposes of intimidation).  Martin Luther King and Jesse Jackson’s dad never had to face F-16 jets and Apache attack helicopters in their day.  If they had, I’d guess they’d have had to adopt a different set of tactics to gain their freedom.

Jackson Jr. argues that the Palestinian aim of bringing its call for statehood to the United Nations will not only fail due to a U.S. veto (a particularly wrong-headed conclusion on his part), it will lead to violence, which can only harm the Palestinian cause.  A funny thing though–I never heard Jesse Jackson offer any help, support or advice to the Palestinians before he took this little junket on Aipac’s dime.

Astonishingly, Jackson levels his gunsite at one of Fatah’s most significant leaders, Marwan Barghouti, singling him out for criticism because he has warned the U.S. it will be making a big mistake if it rejects Palestinian statehood (and we should keep in mind that a two-state solution is a centerpiece of U.S. policy).  Further, Barghouti has the ultimate chutzpah of co-opting the rhetoric of the U.S. civil rights movement in calling for a “million man march” by Palestinians and their supporters against Israel after statehood is rejected.

Here is Jackson maligning the Fatah leader’s credibility in particularly hollow terms:

Does a convicted terrorist who has used violence in the past, and has not ruled out its use in the future, really have the moral authority and credibility to advocate a nonviolent march and be believable?

Jesse Jackson Jr. is certainly not an ironist.  Were he, he’d notice that Marwan Barghouti is in a prison cell much like the one Martin Luther King sat in in Birmingham in 1962.  And just as MLK and Jackson’s father faced persecution by the FBI and other bastions of white power in the south, so Palestinian leaders like Barghouti suffer fates even harsher.  Besides, what does a Black politician from Chicago know about Palestine or Palestinians?  The answer: he knows what he’s told to know.  And you know who tells him what he knows?  His rich pro-Israel Jewish friends in Chicago who are filling his campaign coffers.

An even deeper irony is this passage from the Black Congressmember’s op-ed, quoting one of Israel’s true heroes of the civil rights struggle:

…According to Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, the PA is preparing for unprecedented “bloodshed on a scale we haven’t yet seen.”

Since when does Jesse Jackson Jr. quote the Israeli equivalent of David Duke with a straight face?  Does anyone find this as repulsive as I do?  Not to mention, how the hell does Avigdor Lieberman know what will happen in September?  How does he know whether the Palestinians will storm the Qalandiya checkpoint as he foretells?

The writer heralds the courage of Bibi Netanyahu’s going to extra mile for peace in this ‘touching’ passage:

In our meeting with Netanyahu – and remembering the risk for peace that Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin took, that Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat took – I asked him what he was willing to risk for peace. He said it would make his security very uncomfortable, but that he was willing to go to Ramallah to talk with Abbas.

What was Bibi willing to risk for peace?  Return to 67 borders?  Sharing Jerusalem?  Right of Return?  Nah.  He was willing to take a ride to Ramallah to chew the fat with his good friend Mahmoud.  That’s it.  And Jackson believes this is–what?  Serious?  Apparently so, as he calls Bibi’s willingness to talk a “nonviolent step for peace.”

The sheer ignorance of the following passage will certainly drive Palestinian human rights activists around the bend:

…If the Palestinians abandoned violence, launched a nonviolent active resistance movement and established a demonstrated history of nonviolent struggle against their occupation, it would inevitability change the view of the Palestinian struggle in the court of world opinion, strengthen the cause of Palestinian statehood and speed up the day of its realization…

If they abandoned violence?  What does he think the average Palestinian is doing?  Sitting in his basement making IEDs?  Has Jackson ever heard of Bilin?  Why didn’t he take a trip to join their non-violent struggle against Israel’s Separation Wall?  Where is this champion of human rights and dignity when you need him?  Sitting in a fancy Tel Aviv conference room getting snowed by Bibi, that’s where.

When I read the phrase “speed up the day of its realization” it recalled the gradualists of the civil rights eras who urged Blacks to go slow, wait patiently for their betters to straighten things out on their behalf.  Did Jesse Jackson Sr. or MLK stand for such bulls(^t?  No, they rejected it out of hand.  Yet Jesse Jackson Jr. gives Palestinians precisely such advice, and with a straight face.

Can you tell me where in this statement is there any recognition of the furious onslaught of the Israeli military machine against Palestinians:

Clearly the historical and ongoing bad experiences of African Americans in the US, and the past experiences and continuing occupation of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza by Israel, are both wrong, but the path of hate, terrorism, rockets, missiles and even throwing rocks in hatred is not the path to a lasting peace or greater justice, or the path to statehood in the relatively near future.

Where is there any demand that the Israelis do anything for peace, let alone adopt non-violence?  Can Jackson point me to a single statement he made asking the IDF to forswear its weapons of violence and hate used every day against Palestinians, many of them civilians?

All I can say is:  Jesse Jackson Jr., you are an embarrassment to every principle held dear by your people for the past 60 years of struggle for human dignity.  You are an example of the barrenness and bankruptcy of the leaders like you who’ve abandoned the dream in return for Aipac lucre.  What do you stand for?  How can you be so abysmally ignorant of the Palestinian cause and write such Aipac-scripted junk?

The following is the most up to date list I have of those participating in Aipac’s Israel junket:

Mo Brooks R-5 AL
Eric Cantor R-7 VA
Russ Carnahan D-3 MO
Tim Scott R-1 SC
Gus Bilirakis R-9 FL
Dennis A. Ross R-12 FL
Steve Chabot R-1 OH (went last month)
David Cicilline D-1 RI
Jeff Duncan R-3 SC
Stephen Fincher R-8 TN
Erik Paulsen R-MN
J Randy Forbes R-VA
Yvette Clarke D-11 NY
Mark Critz D- 12 PA
Scott DesJarlais R- 4 TN
Chuck Fleischman R-3 TN
John Garamendi D-10 CA
Ron Kind D-3 WI
Kay Granger R-12 TX
Michael Grimm NY-13
Janice Hahn D-36 CA
Jaime Herrera Buetler R-3 WA
Mazie Hirono D- 2 HI (unconfirmed)
Steny Hoyer D-5 MD
Jesse Jackson Jr. D-2 IL
Patrick Meehan D-7 PA
Kevin McCarthy CA-22
Gwen Moore D-4 WI
Bill Owens D-23 NY
Steven Palazzo R-4 MS
Ed Perlmutter D-7 CO
Tom Price R-6 GA
Peter Roskam R-6 IL
Loretta Sanchez D-47 CA
David Schweikert R-5 AZ
Adam Smith D-9 WA
Steve Southerland R-2 FLA
Betty Sutton D-13 OH
Scott Tipton R-3 CO
Allen West R-22 FL
Frederica Wilson D-17 FL
Kevin Yoder R-3 KS
Kathy Castor D-11 FL
Terri Sewell D-7 AL (not confirmed)
Anne Marie Buerkle R-25 NY
Judy Chu D-32 CA
Hank Johnson D-4 GA
Bob Dold R-10 IL (unconfirmed)
Blake Farenthold R-27 TX
Mike Fitzpatrick R-8 PA
Tom Reed R-29 NY
Kevin McCarthy R-22 CA