Thursday, June 02, 2011

Same dirty tricks, new target: Liberal-posing, diaspora Judeofascists sabotage Israel lobby debate on left by branding critics on left anti-Semites

From:
The Israel Lobby Debate Revisited

(lobelog) -- by Daniel Luban --

Jonathan Chait has a new piece (responding to M.J. Rosenberg) in which he attacks critics of the so-called “Israel lobby” for over-stating its power. The lobby has influence like any other, he suggests, but its unnamed “left-wing critics” claim that it “exerts not influence but total control over American foreign policy,” and “wields power…out of character with the power of other lobbies.”

As usual when Chait writes about this topic, he concedes the heart of the lobby critics’ argument in passing, while spending the vast majority of his piece attacking a strawman. I cannot speak for the lobby’s “left-wing critics” in general, but since their (our?) argument is so often caricatured — particularly by those (like Chait) who want to distance themselves from the critics while still maintaining their liberal bona fides — it may be helpful to spell out what the anti-lobby argument entails and what it doesn’t...

The lobby’s critics don’t need to show that its influence is unique or total, only that it is significant and pernicious. It may well be that, say, the AARP or NRA or financial lobby exert comparable influence in their designated areas of policy.

But it is equally true that someone pushing for, say, financial reform would have no problem saying publicly that the financial lobby has a significant and pernicious effect on policy. More than that, most proponents of financial reform would recognize that it is essential to publicly highlight the ways that Wall Street skews policy, both in order to build support for reform and to adequately understand the forces standing in its way.

But make a comparable critique of the Israel lobby, and you will find that people suddenly get very, very alarmed — and not just the Michael Goldfarbs and Jennifer Rubins of the world, but also liberals like Chait himself. Such liberals ostensibly share these basic criticisms of the lobby but for some reason feel that one should never, ever talk about them publicly. If you do talk about them publicly, and suggest that the Israel lobby has as significant and pernicious effect on U.S. foreign policy in the Levant as the Wall Street lobby has on financial regulatory policy, you will quickly find yourself compared to Hitler or bin Laden or Father Coughlin and your position caricatured beyond recognition.

To avoid further unproductive debates on this subject, let me venture a suggestion for Chait and other liberals who are, if not quite pro-lobby, at least anti-anti-lobby. My position, and that of most of the other lobby critics to whom he refers, is simply that the lobby’s influence is significant and pernicious, and that recognizing this fact is essential for any attempt to positively influence U.S. policy in the Middle East. If you want to argue that the lobby’s influence is not significant, or not pernicious, or that we should simply avoid talking about the subject at all, then do so. Otherwise, save yourself the time...MORE...LINK
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Chris Moore comments:

Imagine the biggest Wall Street banksters responding to critics of the financial lobby by claiming they'r engaged in an agenda of class-warfare extermination for pointing up the pernicious influence of the wealthy financial sector and its lobby in attaining taxpayer-plundering, Wall Street bank bailouts, and for criticising its job-exporting, labor arbitrage agenda; imagine these same, super-wealthy, pampered, money-sucking narcissists playing the "victim" card and demanding special consideration for being "singled out" and "targeted" -- and therein you get the flavor of the utterly self-serving chutzpah of the Judeofascists Israelis and their diaspora Fifth Column, forever hiding behind the accusation of "anti-Semitism" even as they openly extort, bribe, plunder and consume all of the money, power and politicians they can get their greasy little fingers on.

These Judeofascists are clearly playing the game of exploiting the anti-Semitism card to its highest, fullest, best and last use: Can we weild it against both the Left and the Right? How long can we exploit it? How much money and power can we exploit it for? How many wars can we get the West to fight on our behalf by playing it? How long will these gullible goyim let us get away with it? Can we ride the anti-Semitism card all the way to the top of world power? Let's find out!

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