Betrayal of Israel by liberal Jews Op-ed: Liberal US Jews chose economic comfort, upscale social life and Obama over Jewish state

A new American Jewish Committee poll conducted in September found that Israel came in a distant fourth among issues that registered Jewish voters listed as "most important" to them, with 61.5% listing the economy, 16.1% listing health care, 4.7% listing abortion, and 4.5% listing US-Israel relations. Just 1.3% named Iran’s nuclear program as most important.

It is shocking that for Jews in the US the right to an abortion, which is a 40 year old federally protected right ingrained in American society, is a more important issue than the Jewish state and the real existential threat Israel is facing from Iran and Muslim extremists.

While many Jews in Israel and the US still believe in the commitment of US Jewry to Israel, liberal Jews have already chosen Obama, the Democratic Party and their American identity over their Jewish identity. They have already chosen their economic comfort, upscale social life, and liberal agenda over the Jewish state.

Now it is understandable why the Democratic Party platform deleted the “Jerusalem as capital of Israel” statement and other reassurances made to Israel from previous presidents regarding the Palestinian refugees, Hamas, and borders.

Now it is clear why President Obama did not find the time to meet Netanyahu during his visit to the US for the UN General Assembly Meeting in September despite Israeli requests to discuss the Iranian threat, but instead found the time to meet Beyoncé, Jay Z, David Letterman and the women on The View. In an attempt to patronize those few gullible Jews left who still care, the White House took a picture of Obama talking to Netanyahu on the phone.


It seems that Obama and his advisors read the same polls knowing that he will not pay any political price for mistreating Netanyahu or Jerusalem. The same AJC poll found that 65% of Jews nationwide plan to vote for US President Barack Obama versus 24% for Mitt Romney, with another 10 percent undecided. According to the AJC's national survey, Reform Jews favored Obama over Romney 68% to 23% while similarly Conservative Jews favored Obama 64% to 23%. Orthodox Jews, by contrast, favored Romney 54% to 40%.

But much worse, liberal Jews such as US Senator Boxer, US Congressmen Henry Waxman and Barney Frank, and commentators like Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, and Roger Cohen of the NY Times have been jumping on the bandwagon as Obama henchmen to orchestrate a public campaign against the Israeli prime minister. They have publicly criticized and personally attacked Netanyahu and his request that Obama set red lines regarding the Iranian nuclear program, inadvertently raising the age old anti-Semitic libel that the Jews and their leaders are war mongers trying to push US to start a war on Israel’s behalf.

Such priorities and opinions by US Jews are sad and alarming. Of course, US Jews can think and vote as they wish, but it is quite astonishing for Jews to discard the Israeli issue in favor of their own personal welfare. It is quite naïve for Jews, who are so educated and knowledgeable about their own Jewish history of persecution, to feel so complacent about their security and safety, that they can so easily discard the existential threats to Israel.

Despite the fact that it is 2012, a weak Israel or no Israel is still not good to any Jew in the US. Before Israel was established, the conditions of the Jews in the US were full of discrimination and hatred. Even if the Jews feel safe in the US, it is amazing that they cannot empathize with Netanyahu who is trying to prevent a second Holocaust against the Jewish people in Israel.

During the Holocaust, the US Jewry and its leaders and organizations were silent and did not pressure the FDR administration to enter the war earlier and rescue millions of Jews. In World War II, the Jews claimed as their excuse an ignorance of the magnitude of the genocide and lack of political influence.

When the journalists become the story

Italian photographer Ruben Salvadori was covering the weekly 'Palestinian' riots in Jerusalem's Silwan neighborhood. But he discovered that he wasn't interested in the stone throwers and he wasn't interested in the soldiers trying to control them. He was interested in the role that the photojournalists play in the riots. And here's what he produced.

Journalists Accepting Bribes from Arab Dictators

More of these "intifadas" are needed -- but to rid the Arabs of corrupt reporters and editors whose only job is to defend Arab dictators and their family members and henchmen. A reporter who wants to priase his or her leader should find a job with the government's Ministry of Information and stop pretending to be a journalist.

The current popular uprisings sweeping through the Arab world have revealed the fact that many journalists have been receiving funds from Arab dictators.

Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and his sons are said to have bankrolled dozens of Arab journalists in return for turning a blind eye to what the Libyan regime was doing to its people. The list of beneficiaries included newspaper editors, reporters and columnists from Egypt, Syria, Jordan, the Gulf and the Palestinian territories.

Senior Arab journalists living in London and Paris also said to have been on the Libyan regime's payroll.

Gaddafi and his sons are not the only ones who have been bribing journalists in the Arab world. The regime of ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and several oil-rich Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia have for decades offered bribes to Arab journalists.

This explains why many Arab journalists have refrained from reporting anything that reflected negatively on their paymasters.

Instead of reporting on the grievances of Arabs living under dictatorships, these journalists often engaged in heaping praise on Arab regimes and criticizing only one country: Israel.

When was the last time a Syrian journalist living in Syria published an investigative report about massive abuse of human rights or financial corruption in his or her country? Or has anyone ever heard of a Saudi journalist living in Saudi Arabia who dared to criticize the monarch or a member of the royal family there?

One can almost understand why a journalist living under an Arab dictatorship would accept a bribe. Journalists who have dared to attack their leaders and governments or failed to toe the official line have often been targeted by the secret security services in their countries.

But what is not understandable is the fact that Arab journalists living in the West would agree to betray their profession by accepting money from corrupt tyrants. An Arab journalist living in New York, Paris or London cannot argue that he or she is afraid.

The uprisings in the Arab world could finally put an end to the phenomenon of bribing journalists. In an encouraging sign, a large number of Egyptian journalists have waged an "intifada" against editors and reporters who served as mouthpieces for Mubarak in return for money and other favors.

In Tunisia, the new government has already removed journalists who served as organs for deposed President Zine al-Abidin bin Ali from their jobs.

Yet the majority of Arab countries still have a long way to go before acknowledging the significance of true and objective journalism. Opposition newspapers are almost non-existent in most of the Arab countries; that is why many decent journalists have been forced to launch media outlets in Western capitals.

CAMERA: The New York Times and Itamar

The murders of the Fogel family, including three children stabbed to death in their beds, obviously posed a dilemma for the New York Times.  Fixated as it is on a story line in which Israel, and especially Israeli settlers, bear central responsibility for ongoing tensions with the Arabs, the Times covered the killings with the strained circumlocutions, omissions and colored language typical for the paper’s editors and reporters when addressing peril to Jews and the Jewish state.

 

The first major account of the carnage by reporter Isabel Kershner appeared on March 13 – on page 16 with no photo. A day later, updates on the story appeared closer to the front of the paper, on page 4, as the focus turned to Israel’s announcement of renewed construction in several settlements. Two photos ran that day of the Fogel funerals. A telling caption read: “About 20,000 attended the funerals for the Fogels, whose deaths outraged settlers.”

 

Did the Times think only “settlers” were outraged over slitting the throats of children in their beds? Israel’s leading columnist, Nahum Barnea, who’s not a settler, had written: “The murder in Itamar is so shocking, so horrible, that it makes the debate over settlements irrelevant. Against the murderer, who pulls out a knife and butchers in cold blood three children in their sleep, the difference between Tel Aviv and Itamar is erased.”

 

The Fogel horror had to be reported, of course. But what to call the killings and how much to communicate about their instigation rooted in relentless dehumanizing of Jews throughout Palestinian culture – in media, mosques, schools and political discourse – were the question.

 

Alterations in wording of the Times account on its Web site over the first hours after the event suggest editorial interventions to mute even minimal references to the Israeli Prime Minister’s strong language denouncing Palestinian demonizing of Israel and to the appalling terrorist attack.

 

A version posted at 23:02 GMT included Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement: “A society that permits such wild incitement is one that eventually brings about the murder of children.”

 

That charge, expressing the core of Israel’s belief about the consequences of the pervasive, bigoted assault on Jews by Palestinian leaders and their social, religious and political institutions, was excised. What remained was language that reverted to the paper’s characteristic distancing from the realities of anti-Jewish incitement. The final text read: “Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, pointed a finger at the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, blaming it for what he described as incitement in the schools, the mosques and the news media it controls.”

 

Omitted is the strong connective tie between anti-Jewish propaganda and killing children and inserted is the reference to the Palestinian Authority as “Western-backed.” The message shifts; a finger-wagging leader of Israel, seemingly out of step with the West, is “blaming” the PA leadership – not for demonstrably instilling Jew-hatred, which is a moral outrage – but only for what the Israeli leader “described as incitement.”

 

On March 15, the Times was seemingly compelled to touch fleetingly on the issue, as Israeli leaders pressed their denunciations of the Palestinian Authority’s incitement to violence and muted condemnations of the murders. Once again, though, the information was minimal and colorless, subsumed in a story strenuously emphasizing and repeating that PA leaders condemned the Fogel atrocity.

 

Moreover, the reporter hastened to interject what is likely a partial underpinning of the Times agenda in whitewashing Palestinian incitement: “The new focus on incitement against Israel, together with Israeli dissatisfaction over the Palestinian response to the brutal attack, seemed to pose a question about the Israeli government’s readiness to deal with Mr. Abbas as a serious peace partner – even though Mr. Abbas and Mr. Fayyad are widely considered moderates who have repeatedly said they would never resort to violence.”

 

That is, if Israel insists on drawing attention to the demonization of its people by its peace partner, what might this portend for their “readiness to deal with Mr. Abbas,” who is, after all, “moderate” and “would never resort to violence”?

 

For Times writers, “resort to violence” seemingly does not include raising generations imbued in the belief they’re honor-bound to destroy Israel and in which even babies like the Fogel’s three month old Hadas are deemed targets.

 

In the category of what’s newsworthy and what’s not, the naming of summer camps, sports events, streets and public squares in honor of terrorists such as Dalal Mughrabi, Wafa Idris and Yeyhe Ayyash prompts no serious, focused attention on the part of the Times. As it happens, Mughrabi’s murderous rampage along the Tel Aviv coastal road in 1978 included the killing of at least ten toddlers and children, ages 2-14. Is it surprising that her elevation to icon status for killing demonized Jews would encourage others to seek similar fame by a similar route?

 

But any formulation that casts deep onus on the Palestinians is essentially foreign to the paper’s story line, centered, as it is, on faulting Israel.

 

Kershner’s original account of the Fogel murders included another editorial modification of note. A quote by Israeli military officials about their determination to apprehend the killers originally included the following: “The military called the killings a terrorist attack, indicating that it held Palestinians responsible.”

 

A few hours later all mention of the “t” word was deleted – even as an indirect quote from the Israeli military. Nowhere in the coverage were the killings of the parents and three children characterized as a terrorist attack or even an apparent terrorist attack.

 

To put this in the context of other use of the term “terrorist” by the Times, just four days earlier on March 9, a story about Arid Uka, who shot two American military men in Germany, referred to the event as a “terrorist attack.”

 

On March 4, a story about the arrest of New Jersey men seeking to join a radical Somali group referred to “terrorists born or raised in the United States.”

 

 A February 21 story about an attack on an Islamabad bank referred to a perpetrator as part of a “terrorist group.”

 

 A February 18 story referred to “Somali terrorists” who had bombed crowds in Kampala.

 

On February 11, a story referred to “terrorist groups that threaten India.”

 

On January 29 and 25, multiple references were made to “terrorist” acts in describing a bombing at a Moscow airport.

 

A January 24 story about an attack on an Alexandria, Egypt, church referred to “the terrorist strike.”

 

And so it goes.

 

“Terrorists” kill people across the globe, civilians and military, and are rightly called what they are by the Times. But those who entered the Fogel house and stabbed to death sleeping children were termed “intruders” in the bizarre logic and language of the Times.

 

A follow-up story on March 16 returned to Itamar, focusing on the fervent religious attachment of the residents to the area and noting the communities are deemed a violation of international law by “most of the world” – but not mentioning the traditional counter-view of the United States that they are legal. And, of course, rather than finally probe the malevolent forces in Palestinian culture that nurture and drive actions such as the stabbing of babies, and inspire Gazans to distribute candy and rejoice on hearing of the killing, that whole subject was left untouched.

 

Again.

 

This article was first published in The American Thinker.

Armchair barbarism by Melanie Phillips

Today the massacred Fogel family was buried in Jerusalem. And as anticipated, the moral depravity of the Arabs is finding a grotesque echo in the moral bankruptcy and worse of the British and American ‘liberal’ media – a sickening form of armchair barbarism which is also in evidence, it has to be said, on the comment thread beneath my post below.

Overwhelmingly, the media have either ignored or downplayed the atrocity – or worse, effectively blamed the victims for bringing it on themselves, describing them as ‘hard-line settlers’ or extremists. Given that three of the victims were children, one a baby of three months whose throat was cut, such a response is utterly degraded.

The New York Times blamed Israeli ‘defiance’ over renewed ‘settlement’ building in the wake of the massacre for throwing

already shaky peace efforts into a new tailspin.

So to the New York Times, it’s not the Arab massacre of a Jewish family which has jeopardised ‘peace prospects’ -- because the Israelis will quite rightly never trust any agreement with such savages -- but instead Israeli policy on building more homes, on land to which it is legally and morally entitled, which is responsible instead for making peace elusive. Twisted, and sick.

Both CNN and the BBC, meanwhile, along with Harriet Sherwood in the Guardian, gave the impression that this was not a terrorist attack but the actions of an ‘intruder’ -- for all the world as if this was a burglary that got out of hand. CNN said:

Five members of an Israeli family were killed in the West Bank early Saturday morning in what the Israeli military is calling a ‘terror attack’...According to a military spokeswoman, an intruder entered the Israeli settlement of Itamar near the northern West Bank city of Nablus around 1 am, made his way into a family home and killed two parents and their three children.

The BBC similarly reported:

The family - including three children -- were stabbed to death by an intruder who broke into their home, Israeli media reported...

Honest Reporting finds the BBC treatment of this massacre, all but burying the details of the attack on the Fogel family beneath a story about those wicked settlements, the most shocking and callous of all this dreadful coverage.

For those who don’t appreciate the role played by the ‘moderate’ PA in glorifying terrorism and inciting the mass murder of Israelis, Palestinian Media Watch has assembled some recent examples here – including the award by Abbas of $2000 to the family of a terrorist who attacked and tried to kill Israeli soldiers two months ago.

(Graphic pictures of the bodies of the slain Fogel family are circulating on the net and on YouTube. The relatives of the massacre victims have made them publicly available in order to show the world the full horror of the Arab barbarism in Itamar.  However, I have decided not to link to these pictures. The reported wishes of a distraught family cannot in my view justify what is inescapably a gratuitous invasion of the privacy and dignity of the dead. But read this, and weep.)

What is being deliberately ignored through this travesty of reporting is not just the human tragedy of this terrible massacre. It is the politically crucial fact that it was apparently carried out not by Hamas but by the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, the terrorist wing of Fatah. Fatah is the party of Mahmoud Abbas, the Holocaust denier who is the allegedly ‘moderate’ Chairman of the PA – and who not surprisingly couldn’t even bring himself to express unequivocal horror at the atrocity.

This diabolical deed therefore gives the lie to all those who have been supporting, promoting and funding the PA as ‘moderates’ who deserve a state of their own. The fact is that America, Britain and the EU have been not only promoting this bunch of neo-Nazi fanatics and baby murderers. They have also been forcing their putative victim, Israel, to offer them its own throat to be cut, along with that of Jewish babies. And these craven governments in turn are being egged on by the bigots, useful idiots and worse of the British, European and -- it has to be said loud and clear -- Israeli ‘liberal’ intelligentsia.

Truly, this is beyond desolation.

SERAPHIC SECRET: The Moral Depravity of the Liberal Media

The Moral Depravity of the Liberal Media

On Sunday, approximately 20,000 mourners attended the funerals at Givat Shaul cemetery in Jerusalem for five members of the Fogel family murdered on Friday night by Arab Muslim terrorists. Responsibility for the slaughter was claimed not by Hamas or Hizbullah, but by the Al Aqsa Murder Brigade, an arm of the Palestinian Authority. In short, the slaughter of the Fogel family was an official act committed by Israel's peace partners.

The murder of Jews, especially Jewish children and infants, is, according to the liberal Western media, a “natural response to Israeli aggression.”

Yup, slashing the throats of children, and infants is natural.

Well, yes, if you're an animal.

This justification for the annihilation of Jewish lives has become accepted wisdom among European and Western Liberals.

It's nothing new.

It's merely a variation of the medieval Blood Libel.

Mourners weep during the funeral of Ehud Fogel, 36, his wife Ruth, 35, and their children 11 year-old Yoav, 4 year-old Elad, and 3-month-old Hadas, stabbed to death in their beds by Arab Muslim terrorists.

The simple truth is that the Muslim war against the Jewish state has nothing to do with so-called settlements.

How long before Brooklyn, Los Angeles, London or Madrid are defined by Muslims as settlements?

In fact, the Arabs believe that the entire state of Israel is a settlement deserving annihilation.

The Muslim war against the Jewish state has nothing to do with land, national boundaries or refugees. It is a jihad, a pitiless religious war that Muslims have waged against the Jewish people since the 7th century.

Melanie Phillips correctly nails the liberal media as a lynch mob, barbarians who are “beyond desolation.”

...the moral depravity of the Arabs is finding a grotesque echo in the moral bankruptcy and worse of the British and American ‘liberal’ media – a sickening form of armchair barbarism which is also in evidence, it has to be said, on the comment thread beneath my post below.

Overwhelmingly, the media have either ignored or downplayed the atrocity – or worse, effectively blamed the victims for bringing it on themselves, describing them as ‘hard-line settlers’ or extremists. Given that three of the victims were children, one a baby of three months whose throat was cut, such a response is utterly degraded.

The New York Times blamed Israeli ‘defiance’ over renewed ‘settlement’ building in the wake of the massacre for throwing:

“...already shaky peace efforts into a new tailspin.”

So to the New York Times, it’s not the Arab massacre of a Jewish family which has jeopardised ‘peace prospects’ — because the Israelis will quite rightly never trust any agreement with such savages — but instead Israeli policy on building more homes, on land to which it is legally and morally entitled, which is responsible instead for making peace elusive. Twisted, and sick.

Full story here.

The father (center) and brothers of Ruth Fogel mourn during the joint funeral of their daughter and sister, her husband Ehud and their children, 11 year-old Yoav, 4 year-old Elad, and 3 month-old Hadas, in Jerusalem March 13, 2011. All photos REUTERS/Baz Ratner

Seraphic Secret believes, and has believed for a long time that:

1. All negotiations with the Arab Muslims should cease. Never have a people proven themselves less deserving of a national home. There is nothing to discuss with incipient genociders. Magical thinking about peace is a form of national Jewish suicide.

2. Israel should build thousands and thousands of housing units in Judea and Samaria. No plot of land should be off-limits.

3. And finally, the death penalty must be used by the Israeli judiciary. It exists on the books but has only been used for Nazi genocider Adolph Eichmann. The Arab Muslim terrorists are as depraved and evil as any Nazi and the death penalty must be in play, if only to avoid the vile, asymmetrical “prisoner exchanges” which have become a regular feature of the fractured moral landscape of the Muslim war against the Jews.

For too long, Israel has been in a defensive posture.

As we all know, when you try to defend everything, you end up defending nothing.

Israel must go on the offensive.

Her very survival depends upon such a strategy.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu comforts the Fogel family as they sit shiva.

Here's his response to their grief:

”They murder, we build.”

HY'D, May G-d avenge their blood.

And Glenn Beck ponders the horror of the Fogel family massacre.

In a recent issue of The Jewish Journal—we in the L.A. Orthodox community refer to this rag as the Not-So Jewish Journal—the editor, Rob Eshman, labeled Glenn Beck an anti-Semite. Eshman, over the years, with financing from radical Los Angeles leftists, has succeeded in creating one of the most grim, anti-Israel weeklies—which, naturally, bleeds red ink—to ever grace the American Jewish community. Glenn Beck's consistent elegance on behalf of Israel and the Jewish people has never but never found its equal in Eshman's editorials which are characterized by shameless shilling for Obama, ignorance of Israel's geo-political situation, and such a twisted view of Judaism that The Jewish Journal would, except for token Conservative columnists David Suissa and Dennis Prager, find an enthusiastic audience in Gaza.