In a typical piece he posted today on his site, Mondoweiss, curiously lauded hate-blogger Philip Weiss again engaged in his favorite activity: Jew-counting. For the uninitiated, I first explored this topic last week, in a chronicle of some of Weiss and his fellow writers' most choice offerings. Weiss uses the fact that he was at least born Jewish (I don't know whether he practices or not) to give himself the leeway to descend into anti-Semitic memes for the purpose of vilifying Israel and her supporters. Weiss' apologists then fall back on the predictable refrain of either his being Jewish precludes his using anti-Semitism, or that he's being unfairly labeled an anti-Semite for mere criticism of Israel and/or Zionism.
His preferred method is Jew-counting, which is the practice of identifying and singling-out Jews based on their Jewishness. Nixon famously did this with Fred Malek during the Pentagon Papers episode, and Weiss shamelessly repeats the practice, and does so unapologetically.
As you'll see in both the previous diary and his latest offerings, Weiss has removed any doubt about his willingness to use real anti-Semitism under the cloak of criticism.
To his credit, Weiss is open about his Jew-counting in a way that others might not be. Indeed, even some of his apologists here reject the idea that he engages in the practice, but in his opus titled, "There I Go Again, Counting Jews," Weiss makes no apologies for the practice:
Here is what a dubious character I am. Yesterday I was watching Charlie Rose when he talked with Jon Alter, Eric Foner, and Mark Halperin about historical ideas surrounding the Obama transition. Well I looked up Halperin on Wikipedia, and Foner, too, and they're Jewish. So is my old friend Alter, whose smart comments on that show about new media vs old media I will get to when I am not counting Jews. I wasn't going to talk about this, I was going to exhibit some discretion, as I don't go off on NPR's many Jewish commentators, were it not for the fact that right now a friend sent me an email, actually a smart Jewish friend saying, "Another Jew, head of OMB, Peter Orszag". (I don't know; he looks Jewish). And last week when I blogged about Jewish money at the Council on Foreign Relations, it was a high-status mole who sent me the report and who circled the names for my edification.
I'm only saying that I'm not the only one circling Jewish names. These facts obviously have some significance to smart people. Though yes, I admit: it's an uncomfortable exercise. It reminds me most strongly of sitting in Fenway Park in 1975 or when my team the Orioles came up to bat and a guy in front of me–we had a big inning–said, I seem to remember just when Tommie Davis was announced, That makes 5 in a row. Because we had a lot of blacks in the lineup (Bumbry, Blair, Rich Coggins, Earl Williams, then Davis, maybe), and Boston was Boston. It angered me then. Now I'm doing it. Why?
Because it is significant of a large sociological fact that goes unremarked, the importance of Jews in the new establishment, and because Zionism remains an uninterrogated belief system in much of Jewish life.
(emphasis added)
Weiss notes the racist act of counting the number of black ball-players by the Boston fans, and then openly admits to doing exactly what they were doing.
In my previous diary I demonstrated several examples of Weiss' Jew counting. Some agreed, some disagreed, some tried to change the topic, and still others thought that the examples were old enough that maybe Weiss had turned a new leaf. Lest anyone doubt Weiss' continued commitment to Jew counting, he has a pair of posts out today that should put any reader of his on notice that he's still a big fan of the practice.
Today's post about a Wall Street Journal article titled, "‘Jewish donors warn Obama on Israel’," Weiss opens with "In the Wall Street Journal. That's their headline. About time" (emphasis added). Clearly to Weiss, it's "about time" that people identify which donors are Jewish. He then goes on to a favorite topic of his, that there are just too many Jews in positions of influence compared to their percentage of the population:
Notice some of the unspoken narrative in the piece-- Jews are only 2 percent of the population, but a huge percent of the Democratic fundraising base, which is why Deborah Wasserman-Shultz is head of the Democratic National Committee
Wasserman-Schultz, in Weiss' estimation was chosen to be chairwoman of the DNC not because she's a prominent member of Congress, not because of any political acumen she might have, but to placate those Jews who deign to contribute to the Democratic Party. What's interesting is that Weiss could have made this point about there being a lot of Jewish donors to the Democratic Party (there are) without the 2% angle, but then he wouldn't have been able to slip in the undercurrent of over-representation. He goes full-on "Jewish control" with the bizarre, unsupported allegation that Wasserman-Schultz was chosen because she is Jewish.
Just prior to authoring his latest Jew count, Weiss took the NYT to task for publishing Danny Danon's loathsome op-ed piece about "[m]aking the land of Israel whole." He started off fine enough, but true-to-form, descended into his more familiar ground:
The New York Times has a piece today by Danny Danon, a Likudnik member of Knesset, threatening the Palestinians with further dispossession and hinting at ethnic cleansing if they declare statehood. We will no longer be responsible for Palestinians in the West Bank, they can't be citizens, he says. The implication: move to Jordan. And this is in the New York Times? "Making the land of Israel whole". What is wrong with American society? The New York Times feels a responsibility to run this kind of racist argument, to placate an important bloc in the American establishment, rich conservative Jews. And I am told it is not accepting comments on this piece.
Given what Weiss himself writes on his own blog and what he publishes from others, it is comically hypocritical of him to so exasperatedly ask, "And this is in the New York Times?" When he goes off on "rich conservative Jews," he's just demonstrating the kind of writer he is and the kind of blog he edits. In a well that has already been amply poisoned on both sides, Weiss is virtual cyanide.