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Friday, January 17, 2014
Three Nasty Memes About Jews and Israel

Three Nasty Memes About Jews and Israel

The relentless insistence on keeping Jonathan Pollard in prison as the
consummate symbol of Jewish disloyalty sheds light on an op-ed riddled with
lies and half-truths which recently appeared in the New York Times

By Ben Cohen - JNS.org - January 16, 2014

http://www.jns.org/latest-articles/2014/1/16/three-nasty-memes-about-jews-and-israel



Here are three disturbing memes about Jews and Israel that I’ve noticed in
three separate-but-related news stories recently.

Meme Number One: “You’re Ungrateful”

Here’s State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf responding to reported
remarks by the Israeli Defense Minister, Moshe Ya’alon, attacking Secretary
of State John Kerry. “We find the remarks of the defense minister to be
offensive and inappropriate, especially given all that the United States has
done to support Israel’s security needs and will continue to do,” said Harf.

Now, one can certainly argue that Ya’alon’s description of Kerry as
“obsessive” and “messianic” was injudicious—after all, he’s a government
minister, not a newspaper columnist. Rightly, Ya’alon apologized. But what’s
striking about Harf’s response is that she doesn’t defend Kerry’s approach
to the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, which was what sparked Ya’alon’s
overly candid criticism. Instead, she effectively accuses the Israelis of
biting the hand that feeds them, a theme beloved of the extremists on left
and right who argue that Israel is an unconscionable drain upon the U.S.
Treasury.

As Israelis know well, the principal and most valued defender of Israel is
not the United States, but the Israel Defense Forces. Additionally, the
vital strategic relationship between Israel and the U.S. is much more
balanced than Harf’s comments suggest. The United States doesn’t have to
risk its troops by stationing them on Israeli soil, in marked contrast to
other Middle Eastern countries. Meanwhile, Israel enhances American security
by, among other things, exporting more than $1 billion worth of military
technology to the U.S. every year.

Meme Number Two: “You’re Warmongers”

The Obama Administration’s trashing of anyone expressing doubts about the
deal struck last November with the Iranian regime over its nuclear program
contains, of course, an Israeli dimension. Objecting to the new Iran
sanctions bill co-authored by Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Mark Kirk
(R-IL), veteran California Senator Dianne Feinstein opined that the proposed
legislation was bolstering a “march to war.” And who is directing this
heinous agenda? Feinstein once more: “We cannot let Israel determine when
and where the United States goes to war.”

What Feinstein’s statement insinuates is that Israel has, in the past, done
just that. Those who supported the survival of Saddam Hussein’s barbaric
regime in Iraq consistently argued that Israeli pressure was a key reason
why the U.S. went to war there in 2003; hence the need to prevent a repeat
of that pattern more than a decade later in the case of Iran. In one stroke,
all the complexity of the Iran situation—the disquiet among Arab countries
over Obama’s Iran policy, the strengthening of Iran as a regional power with
dire consequences for Syria and Lebanon, the summary dismissal of successive
U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding that Iran end its uranium
enrichment activities— simply disappears. All we are left with is the
impression that the Israelis are pushing us into another unwanted war, aided
by their dupes on Capitol Hill.

Meme Number Three: “You’re Israel-Firsters”

I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve encountered, over the last
few years, the slanderous notion that pro-Israel American Jews (the vast
majority) are more loyal to Israel than to the U.S. So frequently has this
accusation been voiced that it’s added a new term—“Israel-Firster”—to the
political lexicon.

So do we come to the recent New York Times op-ed by former FBI official M.E.
Bowman urging that Jonathan Pollard, who has spent almost 30 years in an
American jail after being convicted of spying for Israel, remain
incarcerated. Much of the evidence that Bowman cited against Pollard is, at
best, tenuous. Nor did he explain why Pollard should not be entitled to
clemency, given that he didn’t kill or harm anyone, and that the Cold War is
long over (compare that with Israel’s decision to release nuclear
whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu after he served an 18 year sentence).

It’s therefore difficult to disagree with Tablet magazine’s courageous
assertion that “in order to cover their own incredibly damaging mistakes and
failures, the national security establishment is keeping Pollard in prison
on the apparent grounds that Jews are especially prone to disloyalty.” As
the magazine goes on to point out, what’s involved here is “a real injustice
whose perpetuation is clearly intended to suggest that all American Jews
are, inherently, potential traitors to their country.”

Separately, all these three examples are alarming enough. Taken together,
they demonstrate that American public discourse about the Middle East is
much more receptive to ideas that we thought had been discredited by
history. That’s why, when the next instance of Iranian nuclear duplicity
surfaces, get ready for the chorus proclaiming that it’s all the fault of
Israel and its supporters.




Ben Cohen is the Shillman Analyst for JNS.org. His writings on Jewish
affairs and Middle Eastern politics have been published in Commentary, the
New York Post, Ha’aretz, Jewish Ideas Daily and many other publications.


See Also:

Tablet Magazine: Time to put the Pollard case to rest -- by demanding he be
set free
http://www.jonathanpollard.org/2014/011614.htm



JUSTICE FOR JONATHAN POLLARD
Website: http://www.JonathanPollard.org
Follow J4JP on Twitter:http://twitter.com/J4JPollard
Follow J4JP on Facebook:http://www.facebook.com/justice4jp

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