HuffPo: Jews are single issue voters

The Huffington Post recently published part one of a five part series called “The Jewish Problem with Obama,” authored by Ed Klein and Rick Chesnoff, and it is a ginormous piece of unfactual shit that seeks to portray Jews as single issue voters who will go turncoat at the slightest offense to Israel. I didn’t take that tone in my rather mundane comments, which were nonetheless inexplicably censored by the Huffington Post’s moderators. Rather, all I said was that upholding statements from four of the most racist, right-wing Zionist blowhards in the Jewish community as representative of the leanings of the wider Jewish community was a disservice to American Jews. The Conference of Presidents’ Malcolm Hoenlein, for example, vocally opposed Obama’s Presidential candidacy from the outset and has made various controversial statements in opposition to Obama’s Mid East policies, even against the will of the Conference’s member organizations. The New Republic’s Marty Peretz — a neoconservative shill of the highest order — recently caused a stir when he wrote with regards to the Park 51 controversy, “I wonder whether I need honor [Muslim Americans] and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment.”  Ed Koch has been on a tear against Obama ever since Biden was greeted on his first Vice Presidential visit to Israel with an announcement of new settlement construction in occupied East Jerusalem. For daring take umbrage with this blatant effort to scuttle the talks for which Biden had arrived, Koch made the bombastic claim that Obama “wants to make Israel a pariah state.” As if they needed any help! Haim Saban, beyond reinforcing age old antisemitic stereotypes by announcing his intent to the New Yorker to “control the media” in order to favor Israel, has made various controversial remarks asserting his right-wing bona fides, including: “When there is a terrorist attack, I am [Avigdor] Lieberman.” Lieberman, of course, is Israel’s proto-fascist Foreign Minister who advocates ethnically cleansing Israel of its Arab citizenry by means of unilateral population transfer. These radical, incendiary voices reflect the attitudes of mainstream Jewish Democratic voters? I think not, lest every Jew is the Incredible Hulk.

I also expressed displeasure, in my comments, with the authors’ characterization of “the president’s roughhouse treatment of Israel.” If receiving a 10-year $30 billion aid commitment during an economic catastrophe is Klein and Chesnoff’s idea of “roughhousing,” I’d gladly be “roughhoused” by the Obama administration any day. Frankly, enforcing long-standing U.S. policy against settlements is not “roughhousing.” Obama has made no statements nor taken any actions that could be construed as any more radical than those of Bush administration, which itself deemed settlements “an impediment to peace.” And American Jewish voters, polled time and time again, come down far more harshly against the settlements than Obama ever has. In that regard, Obama has likely far more to fear from the Jewish progressives he has alienated by being self-defeatingly bi-partisan than he does from the right-wing Zionist demagogues misleadingly portrayed in this article as voices of the Jewish liberal mainstream. Sure, his approval ratings have slipped to 61% among Jewish voters. But none of those polls seem to ask why. It could just as easily be that they’re pissed off about Bam’s failure to close Gitmo, withdraw from Iraq, end DADT, or pass a health care bill that was worth a shit, than it was his failure to make Israel’s hardline right-wing Prime Minister feel all gooey inside. Therefore, while Klein and Chesnoff make much ballyhoo about Jewish Democratic donors sitting out this election, it’s no surprise that the Dems still raked in a record $16 million last month alone from online donors. More than a fair share of that money is sure to have come from Jewish Democrats. Perhaps just not the racist millionaires. Yet somehow, for crying bullshit — without so much as invoking an expletive — my comments were deleted from Huffington Post for alleged violations of their terms of service. I still do not fully understand why. Apparently, it’s okay to slander the entire Jewish community as Israel-firsters who turn their backs on their party and their country at the drop of a hat. If you take a stand and say, “Well, actually, no, that’s a false and even antisemitic narrative,” according to HuffPo’s moderators, you’re the one in the wrong.