Team Shalom is Team Peace. We are a group of Kossacks supporting a fair, pragmatic, and realistic resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the two-state solution. We support Israel's continued existence as a Jewish and democratic state, with it existing alongside Palestine, a Palestinian and democratic state, as friends and neighbors. We believe this is the only way forward and the only way to achieve an enduring peace. This is the view endorsed by the overwhelming majority of the world's nations, including the Quartet, which consists of the United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations.
For some time now, various participants in the debate regarding Israel and the Palestinians have been deeply divided over the acceptability of Mondoweiss as a source on the conflict. Depending on how you look at it, Mondoweiss is either pro-P or anti-I, or some combination therein. Run by Philip Weiss and Adam Horowitz, the Jewish roots of the founders have--fairly or unfairly--led to a sort of inoculation against any kind of accusations anti-Semitism. While there is nothing inherently anti-Semitic about pro-Palestinian advocacy, there is also nothing preventing one from either engaging in anti-Semitism as part of their advocacy, or using advocacy to hide their true and more nefarious motives. Unfortunately, Mondoweiss has removed all doubt about their tolerance for bigotry.
Below the jump is an examination of the anti-Semitic memes indulged in by Mondoweiss, and the issue of blog posts vs. blog comments.
On any well-read and well-commented on blog (Mondo is both), there will be a wide swath of visitors representing a wide variety of opinions. Unfortunately, some of those opinions are noxious, and as any trip through hidden comments here will demonstrate, not the kind of comments you want as representative of your site. The comments section on Mondo has been riddled with foul anti-Semitism as even the site's defenders would likely concede. One example:
Good gravy. Do you know how many jews are in position of power in this country's government and large companies? Hate to say it folks, but putting forth our dismay or anger in blogs ain't gonna get us anywhere….but further under their thumb. My sense is we are fuched! They have such control over the necessary resources to live that we will succumb, unless you choose to resist.
While I regret to be so pessimistic in light of my own family, the writing is on the wall. Nothing will change, contrary to Obama's message to tear-filled hollow supporters. These people are the robots that will drive the dreaded change upon us. We either educate them, or leave'm behind.
Tell me what ISN'T under jewish control?? I can tell you what is…the media, the banks, the government, the military, the military-industrial complex, think tanks…my god…there everywhere. LOLOLOL….
I'll hate whomever I choose. Government, stay the fuch out of my life, and my mind. I will also think whatever I want.
Presumably to combat the impression left on readers when encountering this kind of comment, Mondo implemented a comments policy that, among other things, says:
No racist or sexist comments. This includes anti-Arab, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic comments (and yes, Christian-bashing too). This includes comments that disparage, intimidate or attack a person based on perceived ethnicity or gender.
[...]
If we judge that you have broken one of these rules you will be banned. We will ban the IP address you are posting from and if you try to post from another IP address we will ban that as well.
Apparently, they either weren't serious about this requirement, lack either the technology or manpower to enforce it, or they have different definitions of what constitutes "anti-Semitic comments" than I do, because this kind of comment appears frequently on their site. Still, there will always be issues with any kind of website that allows anyone to comment on their stories, especially when allowing it to be done anonymously. There have been a few doozies here that escaped hidden comments in the past, so no one is immune from this problem.
If it were only the comments, the case against Mondo would be limited to that, and the site and/or its defenders could plausibly argue that the problem is simply one of enforcement and devoting adequate resources to moderation. Unfortunately, it's not just the comments.
Jew Counting
So deep was Richard Nixon's paranoia, that in the wake of Daniel Ellsburg's historic leak, President Nixon had the odious Fred Malek determine how many Jews were employed at the Bureau of Labor Statistics so that they may be reassigned. This was part of an already existing process of Jew counting by the Nixon administration that included this charming dialogue between Nixon and his chief of staff, Bob Haldeman:
Nixon: Now, point: [Fred] Malek is not Jewish.
Haldeman: No.
Nixon: All right, I want a look at any sensitive areas around where Jews are involved, Bob. See, the Jews are all through the government, and we have got to get in those areas. We've got to get a man in charge who is not Jewish to control the Jewish … do you understand?
Haldeman: I sure do.
Nixon: The government is full of Jews. Second, most Jews are disloyal. You know what I mean? You have a [White House Counsel Leonard] Garment and a [National Security Adviser Henry] Kissinger and, frankly, a [White House speechwriter William] Safire, and, by God, they're exceptions. But Bob, generally speaking, you can't trust the bastards. They turn on you. Am I wrong or right?
Haldeman: Their whole orientation is against you. In this administration, anyway. And they are smart. They have the ability to do what they want to do—which—is to hurt us.
(Source: Slate)
Now, Nixon wound up exactly where he belonged in the historical books, but the practice of Jew counting is alive and well at Mondofront. In the very article where the example comment I cited above, site founder Philip Weiss bemoans the fact that Jane Harman had not been publicly identified as a Jew after NSA wiretaps caught her agreeing to seek lenient treatment from the Bush administration for two pro-Israel lobbyists who were under investigation for espionage. Weiss writes:
The front-page story in the Times yesterday on the Jane Harman allegations didn't say that she's Jewish. Neither does CQ, which broke the story. Chris Matthews didn't say she's Jewish in his report last night–though he's always talking about the Irish Catholics–and neither did Robert Siegel on NPR. I bet Andrea Mitchell didn't either.
Jane Harman's Jewish. There, I just said it. That's why we have the blogosphere. Any intelligent person discussing this story at dinner is going to mention that she's Jewish. That's because Alan Dershowitz said that supporting Israel is the "secular religion" of American Jews. And because Walt and Mearsheimer point out that Jewish-Americans play a prominent part in the Israel lobby.
Weiss is emphatic about making sure everyone knows that it is a Jew who is under investigation. This is unfortunately a Mondofront pattern. In an article on changes made at the State Department, Weiss engages in Jew counting again:
The Arabists were described as a romantic and anti-Semitic and fuddy-duddy elite in the Robert Kaplan book that Angry Arab mentions below, The Arabists-- a book that treated Israel's creation as a great liberal advance. Many of them came out of the old WASP establishment; and it is impossible to talk about the vanishing of the Arabists without speaking of the rise of Jews into the Establishment and the Jewish mistrust of that blueblood ancient regime....Clinton's was the most philosemitic presidency in history. He appointed two Jews to the Supreme Court, and his Middle East negotiating team was almost all Jewish. These sociocultural factors are of course significant in policymaking; and though I believe younger Jews are far more worldly than their parents' generation, the change is taking place slowly.
(emphasis added)
Jew counting is something of a hobby for Weiss. He bemoans the number of Jews writing for Foreign Policy magazine in this missive...
On the other hand, look at the list of 8 names just below the word "Directory" at Foreign Policy (it's on a strip at the left hand side, halfway down the page). Eight men, five of them Jewish.
...and goes full bore ZOG in this one about the Jewish control of government and media in this delightful piece, titled "Liberals like to deceive themselves about Jewish power":
The problem is that Avishai is flat wrong. And until liberals wrestle with the real phenomenon of Jewish power, their analysis of foreign policy will be limited and their action ineffective.
Avishai’s claims that American hardliners want the settlement program to continue, and "One cannot just assume that the Congress will care what Jews want" are absurd. Over and over, American presidents have said they oppose the colonization program; over and over these instincts have been nullified politically because of the Jewish presence in the power structure. The Senate is dominated by Democrats, and 1/5 of them are Jews, even though Jews are just 2 percent of the population. The Washington Post has said that over half the money given to the Democratic Party comes from Jews. Obama’s top two political advisers are Jewish, Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod. The news lately has been dominated by Obama aides Kenneth Feinberg and Larry Summers. And what does it mean that the Treasury Sec’y gets off the phone with Obama to confer immediately with Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman and Jamie Dimon of Morgan (Dimon’s Jewish; Blankfein would seem to be)? As I have frequently said, the biggest money game in town on the Republican side is Sheldon Adelson, a Zionist Jew, who got engaged in 2000 with the specific aim of nullifying the "peace process." Today is Obama frustrated by "hardliners"? No: he’s frustrated by the likes of Chuck Schumer, who refuses to go to J Street.
More on Jews in the Establishment: In the last week or so I typically found myself counting Jewish names in media broadcasts. Everyone from Ezra Klein commenting on Charlie Rose about the Congress to Andrew Ross Sorkin on Terry Gross yesterday, talking financial policy, to Brian Lehrer having on three different Jewish journalists today, and one of them, Nina Totenberg, kvelling about Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. Last week on Charlie Ross, the political theorist Michael Sandel, who I believe is Jewish, said that the chief criterion of a society’s view of justice is not how it deals with killers but how it confers honors and recognition. Well our society confers honors and recognition on Jews way out of proportion to other groups. I don’t see this imbalance as a political issue, except as it touches on questions of Jewish identity and support for Israel. Because support for Israel is today a tenet of American Jewish identity construction– Ezra Klein’s criticism of the Gaza war being a heretical one inside Jewish life, Daniel Schorr’s Zionism being far more representative. And to think that that the Jewish presence in the media is not also a factor in the disastrous American foreign policy re the Middle East is not to think at all. Avishai’s analysis evades this issue.
(emphasis added)
Jewish Control
One of the more common anti-Semitic tropes is the caricature of the Jew as some shadowy international financier and/or government puppeteer, controlling everyone's money and lives. So it seems fitting that Mondofront would give front page space to Jeffrey Blankfort--a man who blames the Holocaust on Zionism--so that he could indulge in this hateful myth:
Now in order for Obama to get the Jewish funding he had in the last election he has to make a trip to Israel. What’s curious is that up till now he has not only not made a trip there but he hasn’t been publicly invited-- and probably for the reason that Obama is so unpopular in Israel that he cannot go there and feel assured that he will come back alive. And the Netanyahu government quite likely feels the same way, because many of their elite army units which used to be secular are now ultra orthodox. Because if Obama's going to go, he has to go in a very public way, not like sneaking into Baghdad or Kabul.
(emphasis added)
Lest you fear that Weiss himself is above this kind of characterization, in a piece he authored on Hilary Clinton's cash hemorrhage in her primary campaign, Weiss kvetches about Jewish consultants to the Clinton campaign, Mark Penn, Mandy Grunwald, and Howard Wolfson. He needs you to know they're Jewish and powerful:
When I was a kid we used to feel Jewish shame when three Jewish names showed up in the news in this sort of light. Now there’s no shame at all, because of course the entire culture is monetized and corrupted; but my marvel is at the new Jewish establishment. How much of blue-state wealth-generation and power is in my people’s hands? Yes, Clinton represents the old guard; my meritocratic generation of Jews came inside with the Clintons 15 years ago, and now we are long in the tooth. But aren’t we empowered?
The Blankfort piece was diaried last night and received much in the way of criticism for its repetition of old anti-Semitic memes. The diarist, however, was nonplussed and saw nothing wrong with it. Moreover, (s)he asserted that Meteor Blades had approved of Mondofront as a source to be used here. I think the body of work from Mondo demonstrates that it has no place in a serious discussion of I/P.
