What is it with J Street and anti-Semites?

One would think that J Street, an avowed pro-Israel organization would distance itself from anti-Semites. Yet, it just can't seem to stay away.

I don’t pretend to know what goes on inside the heads of Jews so committed to bullying Israel that they will honor and even defend individuals who have made anti-Semitic remarks, as long as those individuals further the cause of undermining Israel.

This is my latest column from JNS.ORG.

Why does J Street keep honoring and defending individuals who have made anti-Semitic remarks?

 The latest is former President Jimmy Carter, who will receive an award from J Street at its upcoming convention on April 18. I’m not saying that Carter’s numerous attacks on Israel—as ugly and unfair as they were—constituted anti-Semitism. Not even his accusation that Israel’s treatment of Palestinian Arabs is worse than the Rwandan genocide in which 800,000 people were massacred.

No, I am referring to what Professor Deborah Lipstadt wrote in her essay, “Jimmy Carter’s Jewish Problem,” in The Washington Post, on Jan. 20, 2007. She wrote that in his responses to criticism of his anti-Israel book, Carter “has relied on anti-Semitic stereotypes in defense.”

 Lipstadt continued: “Carter has repeatedly fallen back—possibly unconsciously—on traditional anti-Semitic canards. … Carter reflexively fell back on this kind of innuendo about Jewish control of the media and government. Even if unconscious, such stereotyping from a man of his stature is noteworthy. When David Duke spouts it, I yawn. When Jimmy Carter does, I shudder.”

 Lipstadt was referring to the media appearances by Carter in 2006 in which he repeatedly suggested that all criticism of his book emanated from attempts by Jews to control the media and silence him. On “Larry King Live” on Nov. 26, 2006, Carter claimed that he had “witnessed and experienced the severe restraints on any free and balanced discussion of the facts.” On “Meet the Press” on Dec. 3, 2006, Carter specifically singled out what he called “the Jewish lobby” as “part” of the alleged conspiracy to silence him.

 Before Carter, J Street’s favorite ex-politician was James Baker.

 The former Secretary of State was the keynote speaker at J Street’s 2015 convention. At first, it must have seemed odd that the overwhelmingly liberal and Democratic members of J Street would be honoring and applauding a lifelong conservative Republican. But apparently, Baker’s views on abortion and taxes were forgiven and forgotten in J Street’s enthusiasm for Baker’s harsh anti-Israel policies.

 Evidently, J Street was not bothered by the fact that Baker’s hostility to Israel sometimes crossed over into hostility to Jews.

 There was, of course, Baker’s infamous 1992 outburst, “F*** the Jews. They don’t vote for us anyway.” (The quotation came from unimpeachable sources. It was first revealed by former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, who later said his source was then-Secretary of Housing Jack Kemp, who heard Baker say it firsthand.)

 But that wasn’t all. Baker was also reliably reported to have said: “Jews remember the Holocaust, but they forget insults as soon as they smell cash.” (The source was David Bar-Ilan, then one of the editors of The Jerusalem Post, quoted in Ma’ariv March 5, 1992.)

 And according to The Los Angeles Times (March 7, 1992), Baker also referred to pro-Israel members of Congress as “the little Knesset.”

 We need to add Linda Sarsour to the list of prominent individuals whose anti-Semitism has not deterred J Street from embracing them.

 Sarsour’s hostile statements about Israel and Zionism have been as vicious as they come. She actively promotes the anti-Semitic BDS movement. She tweeted (in 2012): “Nothing is creepier than Zionism.” She told The Nation that “There can’t be … room [in the feminist movement] for people who support the State of Israel.” She calls for the replacement of Israel with a “State of Palestine.” Sarsour shared a stage with Rasmea Odeh, the convicted murderer of two Hebrew University students, and declared that she was “honored to be on this stage with Rasmea.”

 Does this record constitute anti-Semitism? ADL national director and CEO Jonathan Greenblatt has said that Sarsour’s BDS advocacy “encourages and spreads anti-Semitism.” Greenblatt’s predecessor, Abraham Foxman, has called Sarsour “bigoted.”

 Yet J Street founder and president Jeremy Ben-Ami signed a 2017 letter declaring that criticism of Sarsour is “dangerous, disingenuous and counterproductive,” charging that she has been “falsely maligned, harassed and smeared.” The letter’s only caveat was this tepid sentence: “We may not agree with Sarsour on all matters.”

 Ben-Ami “doesn’t agree” with anti-Semitism? Can anyone imagine him saying merely that he “doesn’t agree” with white supremacist David Duke or Holocaust-denier David Irving?

 So, what’s going on here? What is it with J Street and anti-Semites? I’m not a psychiatrist. I don’t pretend to know what goes on inside the heads of Jews who are so committed to bullying Israel that they will honor and even defend individuals who have made anti-Semitic remarks, as long as those individuals further the cause of undermining Israel. All I can say is that the decision by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and other umbrella groups to reject J Street’s applications for membership has been proven right time and again.

 (Stephen M. Flatow is a vice president of the Religious Zionists of America, an attorney in New Jersey and the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. He is the author of “A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror.”)

 Two news articles, seven big Palestinian lies

When you think the Palestinian media cannot sink any lower, it manages to do so

How many really big lies can fit into two articles in the official Palestinian Authority daily newspaper? At least seven, to judge by this year’s Balfour Day outburst from Ramallah.

Balfour Day, November 2, is the anniversary of England’s Balfour Declaration of 1917, which promised to help create a “Jewish national home” in Palestine. Palestinian Arabs consider it a day of mourning, and usually mark it by trying to stone Jews to death in Judea-Samaria and elsewhere.

A then-ailing Mahmoud  Abbas reading the newspaper,
Note the anti-Semitic cartoon

Now, if the Palestinian Arabs were truly moderate and peace seeking—as State Department Arabists and Jewish left-wingers are always claiming—they would have no problem with Balfour Day. After all, Balfour did not define the borders of the future Jewish state. The declaration said only that there would be a Jewish “national home” of some size, someday, somewhere in the country. But the existence of a Jewish state of any size is what enrages the Palestinian Arabs—hence the mourning and violence and hysteria.

By hysteria, I am referring to two foaming-at-the-mouth essays which appeared on November 3 in the Palestinian Arab newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida. (All translations courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch.)

Note that Al-Hayat Al-Jadida is not some fringe publication. It is the official newspaper of the Palestinian Authority. It is the authorized voice of the ruling regime of Mahmoud Abbas.

Also note that the articles in question were not written by some unknown, one-shot, un-vetted freelancers. They were written by two of the newspaper’s regular columnists, Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul and Muwaffaq Matar.  The number of insane fabrications that Al-Ghoul and Matar managed to cram into their articles is almost breathtaking.

First, let’s have a look at Al-Ghoul. He started by claiming that the “beginning” of the “theft of Palestine” was “the Campbell-Bannerman conference” of 1907. That conference of leaders of the United Kingdom and prime ministers of some British colonies discussed calling those territories “dominions” instead of “colonies” and debated self-rule in Ireland and India. It had nothing to do with Palestine, which would not come under British rule until more than a decade later.

Lie #2 from Al-Ghoul was his description of the Jewish community in pre-Israel Palestine as a “foreign colonialist body.” Jews, of course, have been living in the country continuously for more than 3,000 years, while the Arabs arrived from the Arabian Peninsula only in the 7th century CE. So, who, exactly, are the real foreigners?

Lie #3 was his claim that the British “planted” the Jewish state “in the land of the Palestinian people.” In other words, that the British created Israel. In reality, the British allowed modest Jewish immigration in the 1920s, and then severely restricted immigration and Jewish land purchases in the 1930s. Anybody remember the notorious White Paper of 1939?

All the while, the British authorities allowed unchecked illegal Arab immigration into Palestine. And in 1948, British officers led the Arab invasion of the newborn state of Israel and British weapons filled the Arab armies’ arsenals.

Al-Ghoul’s fourth big lie was the one which attracted the most attention last week, because it was so bizarre that it has not even appeared previously in the usual Arab propaganda outlets. The reason that the British “created” Israel, he wrote, was that Europeans wanted to “settle historical accounts with the Arabs and Muslims in response to the defeats of the Crusaders.”

For the record, those Muslim defeats of the Crusaders took place in late 1200s and early 1300s. In other words, about 700 years before the establishment of Israel.  After seven centuries, how many Englishmen do you suppose could even name the leaders, years, or locations of the Crusades, much less care enough about them to want to avenge them?

Now we turn to Matar, for Lie #5: To find the truth about the historical background to the conflict, he declares, one needs to read Mahmoud Abbas’s book on “The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism.” That’s where Abbas claims that the Zionist movement collaborated with the Nazis to kill Jews, so that it could gain sympathy after the war.

Lie #6 reeks of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. According to Matar, “Zionism has control over tools of leadership, money, communications, security, and intelligence in large states and world powers.”

And, finally, we have Lie #7, which both Al-Ghoul and Matar trotted out: the weird claim that “the believers of the Jewish religion” are peace-loving anti-Zionists who have been “exploited” as “pawns” by the evil Zionist movement. We all recall, with horror, how Yasir Arafat used to promote this argument by holding meetings with the leader of the tiny fanatical anti-Zionist “Neturei Karta” sect. Arafat would declare that Neturei Karta was the real representative of Judaism. He couldn’t understand why the world refused to take his insane claim seriously.

Reasonable, rational people don’t take any of these seven big lies seriously. Yet even while everyone acknowledges that these are all insane fantasies and fabrications, the international community continues to demand that Israel agree to the establishment, in its back yard, of a sovereign Palestinian state headed by these delusional hate-mongers. That is the real problem.

(Stephen M. Flatow is a vice president of the Religious Zionists of America, an attorney in New Jersey and the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. He is the author of “A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror.”)

Seven Jewish Children, a play for Gaza

For those who have asked, my op-ed in the New Jersey Jewish News of April 2, 2009 can be read by going to "From new anti-Zionism to theater of the absurd."

There is no denying that anti-Semitism has been making a comeback in the past few years. But it’s not the old fashioned anti-Semitism of the Ku Klux Klan or the “dirty Jew” or Christ-killer epithet that I had thrown at me in the 1950s. The new anti-Semitism is subtle. It is masked as criticism of Israel, its army, and its politicians. Its proponents claim to be anti-Zionist. They purport to be concerned about Jews, but they stress that Israel is a brutal, belligerent country that dispossessed native inhabitants, keeps others living as second-class people, and has a total disregard for the rule of law.

I welcome your comments.

Shame on Hampshire College

Hampshire College, located in Amherst, Massachusetts, has fallen victim to the latest round of Israel bashing by a small group of pro-Palestinian anti-Semites who succeeded in having the college divest from companies doing business with Israel.

The college’s decision was made following a petition drive by the virulently anti-Zionist (read anti-Semitic) college group Students for Justice in Palestine. They are proud supporters of Hamas and critical of the Oslo Accords and the Palestinian Authority. In my book, they are not nice kids.

Opposition by American colleges and universities to divestment campaigns that single out one country is widespread. Most have seen through the fog of divestment campaigns and realize that there are other countries with human rights abuses far worse than those alleged against Israel but that Israel is singled-out for attention. Thus, the success of the SJP at Hampshire College has taken many by surprise.

Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz addressed the issue in his blog Double Standard Watch at jpost.com on February 15, 2009. He noted,

“Several months ago, a rabidly anti-Israel group on the Hampshire College campus began a campaign to try to get the college to divest from six companies that they claim helped ‘"the Israeli occupation of Palestine."’ Those who came up with this formulation regard all of Israel, including Tel Aviv, Haifa and Ben Gurion Airport, as ‘"occupied Palestine."’ In other words, their goal is to end the existence of Israel. This divestment effort is part of an international campaign against Israel.”

Despite college denials to the contrary, Dershowitz writes, “the student group, supported by many faculty members, claimed total victory, issuing a press release that boasted that Hampshire has become the first college in the United States to divest from Israel.”

Should we write this off to over-exuberant college students? I think not. Experience with anti-Israel campaigns by other pro-Palestinian groups at colleges around the country shows that the anti-Palestinian college crowd is well placed with backing from the anti-Israel camp. There is no interest there for Israelis to live side by side in peace with a Palestinian state. Their goal is to destroy Israel and the Jews who live there.