Beullogeo's

Bachmann: America ‘cursed’ by God ‘if we reject Israel’ | Minnesota Independent: News. Politics. Media., 8 February 2010:

I am convinced in my heart and in my mind that if the United States fails to stand with Israel, that is the end of the United States . . . [W]e have to show that we are inextricably entwined, that as a nation we have been blessed because of our relationship with Israel, and if we reject Israel, then there is a curse that comes into play. And my husband and I are both Christians, and we believe very strongly the verse from Genesis [Genesis 12:3], we believe very strongly that nations also receive blessings as they bless Israel. It is a strong and beautiful principle.

Bachmann: Obama ‘Has Failed the African American Community’ and Hispanic Community | CNSnews.com, 20 June 2011:

“Mr. President, the status quo is not working for Americans,” said Bachmann. “The status quo certainly isn't working for the African-American community, with 16 percent unemployment, or the Hispanic community, with nearly 12 percent unemployment. It's even worse for the youth: For Hispanic youth right now, 26 percent unemployment; for African-American youth, 40 percent unemployment.

“This president has failed the Hispanic community,” said Bachmann. “He has failed the African-American community. He has failed us all when it comes to jobs.

“As president of the United States, my goal will be job creation in the Hispanic community, job creation in the African-American community, job creation for all Americans, and turning this economy around,” said Bachmann. “And we will.”

Nothing to see here says our special jewish fifth columnist "friend" Lawrence Auster, Is Bachmann making a special appeal to minorities?:

As can be seen from the full context of the statement, Bachmann was not making any particular appeal to blacks and Hispanics.

Says the guy who lives on planet Israel. Here's pro-Israel, pro-non-White Bachmann, in full context, in her own words: Michele Bachmann Explains President Obama's Jobless Report Quote.

Bachmann supports everybody except the people who actually make up the Tea Party.

Image care of Russian jews who hate Bachmann more than Whites ever could.

It began with the usual judeo-liberal media attempts to ignore or at least downplay the scandal as it was first starting to swirl around one of their rising stars. When it was clear the controversy could not be snuffed out with silence Weiner himself went on the attack, calling an interviewer's implication that he had done anything inappropriate outrageous. As we know now Weiner was bluffing, but at the time he seemed to think customary jewish tactics of argument - playing the victim with bombastic bluster while he berates his interlocutor - could serve more broadly as a long-term strategy.

Of course the fact that Anthony Weiner is a jew, or as Debbie Wasserman Schultz might put it, a proud pro-Israel jewish member of Congress, has gone mostly unremarked upon in mainstream coverage. As with the DSK affair, a powerful political figure can be a proud jew, a representative of their very distinct community, right up until they do something embarassing or criminal, at which point, oh yeah, they just happen to be jewish, no different than anybody else, and anyway, so what?

A fleeting glimpse of the significance of Weiner's jewishness came to light in a Radar Online article titled Weiner Used Jewish Sexual Stereotype To Facebook Sexting Partner, by Dylan Howard, 6 June 2011. Oh my. Howard says Weiner's "reference to a stereotype of Jewish women’s aversion to the sex act is sure to create more heat under a scandal that is already red hot." Actually, it was the opposite of aversion:

“You give good head?” the embattled and married New York congressman asked the woman on March 16, this year.

She responded: “I’ve been told really good...and i love doing it.”

At that point, 46-year-old Weiner declared: “wow a jewish girl who sucks (bleep)! this thing is ready to do damage.”

So the problem, according to Howard, isn't Weiner's lying, or infidelity, or obsession with sex. The problem is that Weiner thinks negative thoughts about jewish women. In private.

This is an absurd excuse for a more direct and plausible understanding of the exchange, which is that Weiner is not only happy to have found an eager virtual sex partner, but that he is delighted that she is jewish - that he finds her jewishness especially exciting. Such an understanding is bound to create cognitive dissonance in the minds of deracinated Whites, lectured relentlessly for decades now, most especially by jews, that any preference for our own kind is peculiar and wrong. So better to invert reality and pretend that Weiner holds a dim view of jewish women.

There's more on this stereotyping excuse below, but first let's take a brief detour. The Radar Online article contained a link to a May/June 2011 Moment Magazine article which provides some background on Weiner and specifically his jewish bona fides. Live from New York, It's Anthony Weiner, by Daphna Berman:

A Master Of Political Theater, Congressman Anthony Weiner Has Leveraged His Strong Liberal Opinions, New York Attitude And Willingness To Go Head-To-Head With Republicans On Cable TV To Fill A Void In The Democratic Party.

Weiner, whose ninth district includes parts of Queens and Brooklyn, represents what is arguably the most Jewish congressional district in the U.S. Raised in Park Slope, Brooklyn, in a middle-class Jewish family, he now lives in Forest Hills, Queens, and is—as he likes to remind people—a true New Yorker. His parents are divorced: His father, Morton, is a lawyer, and his mother, Frances, a retired public school teacher. He had two brothers, Jason and Seth (who was killed in a 2000 hit-and-run accident). Weiner and his mother are close, and she has accompanied him on campaigns—though he refused to have his mother answer questions directly. “She’s completely out of control,” he tells me. “You have no idea what she’s going to say.”

Weiner attended New York public schools, from Brooklyn Technical High School to SUNY Plattsburgh, where he graduated in 1985 with a degree in political science. He went to work for then-Congressman Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and became something of a protégé; he reportedly said to his boss, “I’m going to take your job some day.” He learned quite a bit from his mentor—also Jewish, and now the senior senator from New York—and, most notably, has absorbed much of the media acumen for which Schumer is known. “As a staff member to Schumer, he learned how to take advantage of the electronic media and how to get on television,” says Mitchell Moss, a professor of urban policy and planning at New York University’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. Former Republican Senator Bob Dole once said the most dangerous place in Washington was the space between Schumer and a camera, and critics could say the same of Weiner.

[Congressman Jason] Chaffetz [(R-Utah)], who has worked with Weiner on other bipartisan issues, concedes that Weiner can be “over-the-top,” adding that “his style offends a lot of people and he sometimes makes issues a little too personal. He’s aggressive, which works for some people. When we’re on the same side, it can be helpful.”

Jousting with conservatives can sometimes come across as a sport for Weiner, although he insists otherwise. “It’s a necessary thing to do,” he says. “I have a choice: I can shout at my television or shout at the host directly. I’m not afraid of having a debate about these issues. And some of these programs are so deep in lies and demagoguery that someone needs to be there to correct the record.” Then, with a smile, he adds: “It allows me to burn off bile.”

One of his colleagues is Florida Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the new chair of the Democratic National Committee, who serves with him on the Judiciary Committee and is a personal friend. “Anthony is one of the most quick-witted legislators there is, and once he gets hold of an issue, there’s no letting go,” she says. “He’s very well-spoken and knows how to get a point across succinctly and effectively. He’s an excellent debater, and when a back and forth is necessary, he’s someone you can call on to be the standard-bearer.”

Weiner has always been assertive about his Jewishness. In his own words, he’s spent “more time at melaveh malkahs [post-Shabbat gatherings], a lot more time at shul, at sisterhood breakfasts, and at bond breakfasts than probably just about anybody else.” He doesn’t belong to a synagogue or consider himself close to a single rabbi—except to say, consummate politician that he is, “all the shuls in my district are my home shuls.” Says Warren Hecht, president of the Queens Jewish Community Council: “He’s a Jewish official who hasn’t forgotten” his roots or his district.

Weiner, whose middle name is David, had his bar mitzvah at Union Temple in Park Slope, Brooklyn. As part of a promise to his Twitter followers, he recently released a photo of himself on his big day as an awkward-looking 13-year-old boy, complete with a self-described 1970s Jewfro. “We weren’t a very religious household, but we had a very strong sense of our Judaism,” Weiner says of his upbringing.

He came by his solid Zionist inclinations early on. “Support for Israel was always a very big focus in my household growing up,” says Weiner, who has been to the Jewish state more than a half-dozen times. He remembers wearing a homemade pin to Sunday school that read, “I am a Zionist.”

As a congressman, he has consistently pushed pro-Israel legislation, and Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), counts him among the “top 10 congressmen” in terms of Israel issues.

From the outside, Weiner’s hawkish Israel views appear to have collided with his personal life. His wife, Huma Abedin, was born in Michigan to a Pakistani mother and an Indian father, and raised in Saudi Arabia. Her late father, an Islamic scholar, established an institute there that aimed to deepen religious tolerance, while her mother, who is a sociology professor in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, helped create one of the first women’s colleges in the country.

The pair dated for two years before announcing their engagement, and Weiner was uncharacteristically tight-lipped about their courtship. In a meeting with the New York Daily News editorial board in 2008, Weiner dodged a number of personal questions but was adamant when asked if his relationship posed a potential risk to his political ambitions. “I’m certain that the relationship was not the product of a political calculation,” he said. Later, he also refused to answer what his Jewish mom thought of his girlfriend. “It’s not something I want to talk about.”

The July 2010 wedding was covered widely. The reports were gushing, accompanied by photos of the couple with the beautiful bride in a white Oscar de la Renta gown. Response in the Jewish community was tepid: “Christian President Marries Jewish Congressman to Moslem Political Aide on Shabbos,” read the headline on The Yeshiva World News after the Saturday nuptials.

The ZOA’s Klein is more direct: “People I’ve spoken to in his district said they wouldn’t support him because he intermarried.” In fact, before Weiner came to the ZOA dinner in December, Klein warned him that his marriage to a Muslim might elicit jeers from the crowd.

Whoops. More cognitive dissonance, this time for jews. How to reconcile Weiner's assertive jewish identity with his choice of a non-jewish spouse? Hmmm. As Moment is written by jews, for jews, at least the readers who are unhappy about "intermarriage" (wink, wink, it's about "religion") aren't subjected to any insinuations that they're ignorant xenophobic bigots.

The article also discusses Weiner's aspirations to become mayor of New York City:

It’s unclear what Weiner’s chances may be. At the 2011 Congressional Correspondents’ Dinner, noting the absence of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Weiner, one of the event’s headliners, said: “Who knew that what it takes to be mayor of a big city is to be a hot-tempered, arrogant, loud Jew with nine and a half fingers. Who knew? And in other news, I’ve taken a job as a meat cutter at Arby’s.”

But changing demographics, as well as a shifting political reality, may present something of a challenge to what until now has been a meteoric rise. Political strategist Hank Sheinkopf says, “New York is less white than ever and less Jewish than ever, and traditional social class lines don’t hold.” Weiner’s only chance, he says, “is to position himself as a non-billionaire from the outer boroughs. He can do it, but it will be difficult.”

The article's conclusion contains a bit of unintended prophesy:

“He’s passionate—people respect that and respond to that,” says Queens Jewish Community Council President Hecht. “If he was a phony, people would see right through him.

Tablet Magazine (by jews, for jews) expanded on Radar Online's quick bit of damage control. Understanding Weinergate, by Marc Tracy, 7 June 2011:

How social media felled a rising star, and how his Jewishness was involved

That about sums it up. Half of Tracy's article is spent floating the implausible notion that Weiner doesn't understand the internet. He's an idiot savant. No mention of the more plausible notion that Weiner's incredible arrogance and lust had something to do with his assertive self-image as a "rising star", an unassailable zionist soldier for judeo-liberal interests.

Expanding on the Radar Online article quoted above, the second half of Tracy's excuse-making consists of a deeper examination of jewish identity, group-pity, and navel-gazing about stereotypes:

There is one more thing to discuss, though if my mom wanted to stop reading this post now, I wouldn’t mind. A Nevada woman Weiner flirted with on Facebook told him that she understood herself to be good at giving oral sex and added, “i love doing it.” To which the congressman from Queens responded: “Wow a jewish girl who sucks []! this thing is ready to do damage.”

I’ll pause for your laughter. But this is also, believe it or not, yet another manifestation of a generation gap! Weiner is old enough to be of the generation that, brought up on Portnoy’s Complaint and its spawn, generalizes Jewish women as sexually cold, and specifically unwilling to perform blow jobs and inept at them when they can be reluctantly coaxed. But a younger generation has almost the exact opposite conception of Jewish women: They (again generalizing) see Jewish women as more willing than the average woman to give blow jobs and as especially skilled at the task. Contributing editor Rachel Shukert has written the definitive article about this (she discusses it here); the new stereotype became especially pronounced in the public consciousness, she argues, thanks to Monica Lewinsky. When that scandal broke, Weiner was almost 30.

Oh, and it’s worth mentioning that the single journalist most responsible for forcing this scandal into the open—who briefly hijacked Weiner’s press conference yesterday demanding an apology—is the conservative impresario Andrew Breitbart, who, yeah. Can you imagine if they had had Twitter in the shtetls?

When jewish stereotypes are discussed in scandal rags like Radar Online, intended for consumption by the hoi polloi, there is a pretense that jews are scandalized by such things. Amongst jews themselves such things inspire laughter. Listening in on their conversation what one actually finds is a seemingly inexhaustible capacity to argue about how they perceive themselves and how they are perceived by others, coupled with strong desires and active efforts to shape those perceptions.

If Weiner's private lewd flirtations make you queasy, you don't want to click the "here" link in the text above. It takes you to Interview with Rachel Shukert on Jewish girls and blowjobs at Best Sex Writing 2008. Here's the most relevant portion of this irrelevant sideshow:

Why do you think the stereotypes about Jewish women and sex are so pervasive? What do you make of the contrast between the older stereotype of the frigid Jewish woman vs. the newer one of the oversexed one?

Well, I think it’s important to stress that most of the factors in the culture that have made Jewish women seem unattractive–whether it’s being frigid, or physically unappealing, demanding, spoiled, etc.–have been created by Jewish men. Now, I love Jewish men. The men I love most in the world–my husband, my father, my grandfather–are Jewish men. But it’s not Gentiles who invented the “shikse goddess” or wrote all the JAP jokes. Who knows why? Frustration, mostly, I think. All that self-loathing and insecurity.

I’m going to speak in incredible generalizations here for a minute, so just bear with me. I think that Jewish men in the past 30 or 40 years have been extremely invested in making themselves sexy and attractive to the culture-at-large–and they are, they seem smart, sensitive, generous, etc. But with it comes this sense of fear, this kind of atavistic fear, I think, that at any moment they’ll be found out. And if anyone can call a Jewish man on his bullshit, it’s a Jewish woman. So they rationalize why they shouldn’t be involved with Jewish girls–all of these reasons. Jewish women are left open to constant criticism. And since Jews have been such an intrinsic part of popular culture, all this stuff disseminates and becomes conventional wisdom.

Now, I think this is changing, hugely. I think Jews have become more and more of an accepted part of mainstream culture, and this generation of Jewish men are more comfortable with themselves than ever before, and no longer feel like they’re straddling two worlds and trying to leave one of them behind. They can look on their Jewishness as something comforting instead of something constricting. But in the meantime, I think Jewish women have been like, “You know what? We’re sick of waiting for you,” and started on their own project of who they are, which is extremely interesting. And that’s what’s ascendant right now, I believe, which is very exciting for me. So that’s the split, I think, that the old Jewish stereotypes were disseminated by men, and the new ones by women. And the mainstream picking up on it.

Judeo-centric views like this were discussed in Jews Run Hollywood, Whites Get the Blame. I find it refreshing to read such criticisms of jewish media influence, cited approvingly by jews without the usual denials and personal attacks in response. It's refreshing because critiques from any point of view sympathetic to "shiksas" or their men is painted as "hate" and greeted with howls of real hate from jews.

The nonchalant "yeah" link in the Tablet article above tugs on another interesting jewish thread. You may have noticed how the judeo-liberal media makes judeo-conservative media mogul Andrew Breitbart out to be the devil incarnate. Breitbart broke the Weiner story and wouldn't let it die. Maybe you wonder why. Tablet relates the jewish view in Being Andrew Breitbart, by Allison Hoffman, 21 May 2010:

But who is Breitbart? The New Yorker sent Rebecca Mead to find out, and it turns out that Breitbart, who was adopted, is a Jewish boy from L.A.’s Westside, specifically in Brentwood. There he attended the exclusive Brentwood School, which is the kind of place that turns out the people who run Hollywood’s machinery—the Ari Golds and the producers and the lawyers and the managers. But Breitbart tells Mead he was, even as a high-schooler, turned off by “the industry” and instead fascinated by the theatrics of Washington, D.C. His politics, he reports, emerged from his exasperation with the “deconstructive semiotic bullshit” first introduced to the American cultural scene by emigré members of the Frankfurt School—radicals, almost all of them Jews, exiled by the Nazis in the 1930s.

The article Hoffman links provides more insight into Breitbart's background and motives. Rage Machine - Andrew Breitbart’s empire of bluster, by Rebecca Mead, 24 May 2010:

Breitbart is the founder of Breitbart.com, which, since 2005, has aggregated news from the Associated Press, Reuters, and other wire services. He is also the proprietor of several newer Web sites—Big Hollywood, Big Government, and Big Journalism—that provide right-leaning commentary and original reporting. Their content is largely supplied by unpaid bloggers, who are given a more prominent platform than they might otherwise attain. The Big sites are dedicated to countering what Breitbart believes is the leftist bias of American cultural and media institutions.

Breitbart, who is Jewish, grew up in Brentwood, an affluent part of Los Angeles. He seems a familiar bicoastal type until he starts explaining his conviction that President Barack Obama’s election was the culmination of a plot, set in place in the nineteen-thirties by émigré members of the Frankfurt School, to take over Hollywood, the media, the academy, and the government, with the aim of imposing socialism.

Breitbart is tall and burly, with eyes the color of Windex, silver hair that he sometimes forgets is no longer blond, and jowls that he wobbles for emphasis when he wishes to express outrage. He is fond of saying that he has two modes of discourse: righteous indignation and puerile jocularity. “I like to call someone a raving cunt every now and then, when it’s appropriate, for effect,” he informed me. “ ‘You cocksucker.’ I love that kind of language.”

Breitbart considers himself an accidental cultural warrior. “I am not as partisan as people think I am,” he told me, calling himself eighty-five per cent conservative and fifteen per cent libertarian. His conservatism fails him on issues such as the legalization of prostitution, and he sometimes tilts toward favoring gay marriage. “But, when the entire media is structured to attack conservatives and Republicans, there is a huge business model to come in and counterbalance that,” he said.

He does not pretend to be an expert in policy, or to be particularly interested in it. “Just because I am paying attention to politics and culture doesn’t mean that I should be talking about the health-care bill, talking about the minutiae,” he told me. Instead, Breitbart is obsessed with wresting control of the political narrative from the established media organizations. If the wire services that Breitbart aggregates, and the bloggers he recruits, serve as his content providers, then Breitbart might be called a malcontent provider—giving seething, sneering voice to what he characterizes as a silenced majority.

Breitbart frequently decries racism, and likes to point out that he was adopted, as was his younger sister, who is of Mexican descent. “I hold in great disregard the idea that somehow her blood and my blood separate us,” he told me. “I grew up resenting people who would look at us at the table and would go, ‘Why are those people together?’ ” He likes to say that he is “pro-miscegenation.” As a result, Breitbart says, he is outraged when charges of racism are cynically made. Last year, he appeared on “Real Time with Bill Maher” and sounded this theme: “There’s nothing in this country that is a worse accusation—in America, if you accuse somebody of racism, that person has to disprove that.”

"I just feel like I am one of these Idaho guys saying, ‘You’re not taking my land’—with a gun, on my porch,” Breitbart told me one evening. He was sitting in the bar of the Bowery Hotel, in Manhattan, drinking white wine from a glass that was being refilled by a slim waitress in a black wrap dress. His companions were similarly urbane.

Breitbart’s image of himself as a Western survivalist, he was explaining, referred to the sense of siege he felt in Los Angeles, which, he contends, has become egregiously radical since September 11, 2001. “There are people there that are aggressors,” he said. As the evening progressed, it emerged that the closest Breitbart had ever come to the real Idaho was on the Internet. He’d been looking online at properties in Coeur d’Alene, a resort town, while fantasizing about life elsewhere. “I saw the golf course there, and it had a really cool island,” Breitbart said.

Breitbart’s parents were quietly conservative. His father was a restaurateur and, later, a lobbyist for the food-service industry; his mother was a bank executive. But their son, who attended the prestigious Brentwood School, was reflexively liberal. “It was like the water I was in,” he told me. Gary Hewson, a classmate, who is now a real-estate developer, recalls Breitbart as “a bit of a class clown, a rabble-rouser.” Breitbart says, “That was my only discernible skill.”

For college, Breitbart went to Tulane University, in New Orleans, a period that he now regards with a mixture of shame and nostalgia. “It was four hideous years of debauchery of a level that was incomprehensible to me,” he told me. “I remember rationalizing my misbehavior. I remember giving my dad a book on the chemical structure of MDMA”—Ecstasy—“and I was, like, ‘Dad, what do you think of this?’ ”

“I was so excruciatingly bored after college—it was like going home to Pittsburgh to get into the steel industry, then realizing that you hate steel,” he says. “I hated Hollywood. I hated being at parties and hearing people say, ‘I work at “Mad About You,” I work in the clothing room.’ ”

Breitbart also began to reconsider the education that he had received in Tulane’s American Studies department, where, in his off-hours from partying, he had been exposed to critical theory. “I wanted to read Mark Twain and Emerson and Thoreau,” he says. “And I remember moments in class where I thought my head was going to explode, going, What the fuck are these people talking about? I don’t understand what this deconstructive semiotic bullshit is. Who the fuck is Michel Foucault?” He came across the work of Camille Paglia, and was captivated by her analysis of the takeover of academia by the left.

“A lot of these guys I was reading about in my American Studies class were German and Italian social scientists from the University of Frankfurt,” he says. “Once you see what their plan was, you realize that it was implemented. It was taking over the cultural institutions. The left is smart enough to understand that the way to change a political system is through its cultural systems. So you look at the conservative movement—working the levers of power, creating think tanks, and trying to get people elected in different places—while the left is taking over Hollywood, the music industry, the churches. They did it through academia; they did it with K-12. You look back at the last forty years, and people didn’t put up a fight.”

But of course many people put up a fight, and still do. The inconvient truth for judeo-conservatives like Breitbart is that most of those people are demonized as "racists" and "anti-semites" - shoved down the memory hole as if they never existed, never resisted. Judeo-conservatives join judeo-liberals in doing this. They are two faces of a jewish hegemony over politics, media and culture. Breitbart may feel some small measure of compassion for the Whites who never resisted, especially because he knows just how much judeo-liberals detest us anyway, but it's only relative. Judeo-conservatives find White conservatives (which is to say most Whites) useful, for the moment at least. For them the judeo-liberal takeover doesn't represent a tragedy, much less a crime. But it does present a "huge business model" selling a white-washed view of the ongoing jewish aggression and hegemony. Judeo-conservatives are just as fond of vulgarity and deviance as their judeo-liberal comrades. Sure, they disagree about some things, vehemently some times. What they agree on is that Whites must defend or at least defer to jewish interests, while the idea of Whites defending White interests fills them all - from Weiner to Breitbart - with fear and loathing.

The video above is part of a CNSNews article, DNC Chair: Republicans Believe Illegal Immigration 'Should be a Crime', 31 May 2011. It quotes Wasserman Schultz spouting the usual apologia in favor of genocidal levels of immigration into the US:

“We have 12 million undocumented immigrants in this country that are part of the backbone of our economy and this is not only a reality but a necessity," she said. "And that it would be harmful--the Republican solution that I’ve seen in the last three years is that we should just pack them all up and ship them back to their own countries and that in fact it should be a crime and we should arrested them all.”

12 million? The backbone of our economy? The Republican solution is arresting them all? Political views don't get much more detached from reality than this. And this is not some random US congresswoman. Wasserman Schultz leads one of the two major political parties.

The second half of the video starts with a question about a disagreement at a meeting which took place a few days earlier. Note that this question triggers a far more impassioned response:

Question: The Republican Jewish Coalition head was reported in the New York Times - Matt Brooks is saying that you were proposing a gag order on this subject.

Wasserman Schultz: Ha ha, yeah, well, uh, you know I take... one of the most tremendous sources of pride for me is that I am the first jewish woman to represent the state of Florida in Congress. And, ah, another tremendous source of pride for me is that I am a pro-Israel jewish member of Congress and I proudly support a president that is pro-Israel. Um. What I think is unfortunate and what I suggested, along with others, including members of the Republican Jewish Coalition that are not the executive director of that organization, um, is that we need to make sure, like AIPAC pushes for, like Jewish Federation pushes for, like ADL and every major jewish organization pushes for in this country, we need to make sure that Israel never becomes a partisan issue. And that's what we talked about in that meeting.

The meeting was a bipartisan jewish affair regarding jewish interests. Jewish GOP official blasts DWS, Politico, 24 May 2011:

The top official at a Republican Jewish group blasted Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz for an “unprecedented and inappropriate” effort to quell partisan debate over Israel in a private meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday at which both were present.

Republican Jewish Coalition Executive Director Matt Brooks clashed with Wasserman Schultz, as I reported yesterday, after Wasserman Schultz called for partisan unity on matters of Israel policy and Brooks – whose group had criticized her for speaking before the liberal group J Street – responded that he reserved the right to attack Democrats who stray from a hawkish pro-Israel line.

Another take on the interview and the disagreement - DNC chair argues Obama isn't losing support of Jewish voters, Los Angeles Times, 26 May 2011:

The South Florida Democrat laughed at charges leveled by the head of a Republican Jewish group that she wanted to squelch partisan criticism over Israel. Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, accused Wasserman Schultz of proposing a “gag order” on criticism about Israeli policy when they and others met privately with Netanyahu this week.

“We need to make sure that Israel never becomes a partisan issue, and that’s what we talked about in that meeting,” Wasserman Schultz said. She quoted Netanyahu as saying, at the end of the meeting, that when it comes to Israel, “we need to erase the aisle” between Democrats and Republicans.

“Everyone that calls themselves legitimately pro-Israel believes that we should not make Israel a partisan issue. Unfortunately, I think there are organizations that claim to be pro-Israel that are partisan first and pro-Israel second. And I think unfortunately the way the Republican Jewish Coalition has conducted itself is they put their Republicanism in front of their pro-Israel stance. And I think that’s unfortunate. And I think it’s why the Israeli Embassy said that Israel should not be a partisan issue.”

Here are a couple of previous media reports concerning Wasserman Schultz's background.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz picked as Democratic National Committee chair, POLITICO, 5 Apr 2011:

The congresswoman is beloved by the Democratic rank and file for her aggressive, outspoken advocacy for liberal points of view. She’s frequently deployed as a surrogate, particularly to groups of women and Jewish voters.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz Picked to Chair D.N.C., NYTimes, 5 Apr 2011:

Ms. Wasserman Schultz is known inside the party for her strong fund-raising abilities, and she represents South Florida, which will be a critical battleground in the 2012 presidential race.

Some background on Matthew Brooks:

Matthew Brooks serves as Executive Director of both the Republican Jewish Coalition, an organization dedicated to enhancing ties between the Jewish community and the Republican Party, and the Jewish Policy Center, a think-tank that examines public policy from a Jewish perspective.

Matt began his political career as State Chairman of the Massachusetts College Republicans while still an undergraduate at Brandeis University in Waltham, MA. Matt managed the Jack Kemp for President campaign in Massachusetts, as well as directed projects in New Hampshire and New England. Matt became the Political Director of the Republican Jewish Coalition in 1988. Taking a leave of absence from the RJC, Matt served as the National Field Director for Victory ‘88 Jewish Campaign Committee, designing and implementing campaign strategy on behalf of the Bush-Quayle ‘88 campaign. Matt was appointed Executive Director of the RJC in 1990.

Matt was twice selected (in 2006 and 2008) by the Jewish Forward as one of the 50 most influential Jews in America.

In addition to his duties leading the RJC, Matt also serves as the organization’s principal spokesman. In this role Matt has been a frequent guest on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and has been quoted extensively in publications such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and other major newspapers.

One of the many consequences of jewish influence in media and academia is that the perfectly descriptive term Zionist Occupation Government is painted as "an antisemitic conspiracy theory". Yet, the jewish conspiracy is right out in the open. Erase the aisle. Israel first, party second. This is the state of US politics today.

What we see here is a disagreement between hyper-ethnocentric jews who hold positions of great power and have strong influence over the US government. What they care about most is what's best for the jewish ethnostate of Israel. They all agree that in US politics the interests of Israel should always come first, across the board, for everyone, not just jews. The big question for them is whether to continue imposing this the usual stealthy judeo-liberal way, or the usual in-your-face judeo-conservative way.

France's National Front: Le Pen, mightier than the sword?, The Economist, 5 May 2011:

UP CLOSE, the most unnerving thing about Marine Le Pen is not her obsession with Islam, her populism or her divisive politics—but the way she oozes charm. With a ready laugh and unaffected manner, this steely politician deflects awkward questions with an easy grace that makes her a rarity in French politics. The newish leader of the far-right National Front is an intriguing study in how to make extremist politics marketable—and in doing so, perhaps to reshape French party politics.

In the short run, Ms Le Pen wants to decontaminate the National Front, stripping it of the skin-headed image it had under her father, Jean-Marie. At the party’s annual May 1st rally, she surrounded herself with fresh-faced young women in jeans and T-shirts. Her father, a former paratrooper, perfected a line in anti-Semitic and xenophobic outrage. She shares much of his programme, such as support for the death penalty and job preference for French nationals. But she has junked the anti-Semitism and neo-Nazi sidekicks in favour of a subtler tone. “When I talk about the immigration problem, I don’t talk out of hate, or xenophobia, or Islamophobia, or fear,” she insists, but pragmatism. “We cannot afford to let everybody in.”

Across Europe, traditional divisions between left and right have blurred, Ms Le Pen argues, giving way to a new fracture between those who believe in globalisation, international governance and open borders, and those who believe in the primacy of the nation. In her eyes President Nicolas Sarkozy and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the IMF and a likely Socialist candidate, are “interchangeable”: standard-bearers for a globalised world view. By contrast, she wants a return to national sovereignty, a withdrawal from the euro (“before it collapses”) and NATO (“submission to America”), the return of border controls and an unapologetic protectionist policy to “re-industrialise France”.

For under scrutiny, many of Ms Le Pen’s ideas, when not toxic, are deeply flawed. France cannot compete with China on cost, she says, so better to put up borders, go for a competitive devaluation and start building factories at home again. She dismisses worries about the colossal cost of protectionism or of debt-servicing with a devalued currency as scaremongering. For now, such details have yet to spoil the seductive simplicity of her message. And this will keep her a highly disruptive figure in the run-up to 2012 and beyond.

Unlike DSK, Marine Le Pen has never been accused of committing a crime, violent or otherwise. However, as made clear by the defamatory, accusatory opinion quoted above - fairly typical of the limited coverage Le Pen receives in English-language media - Le Pen is regarded with a poisonous cynicism, a combination of fear and loathing that would elicit outraged cries and condemnations of "hate" if it were directed at any representative of immigrants or jews. Le Pen, like all European nationalists, is treated to a different standard, worse than any accused rapist. She's undeniably popular with the native French, who for perfectly normal reasons would like to be led by someone, anyone who actually favors them over aliens. Naturally this frightens and disgusts anyone who loves aliens and hates the French.

The double standard was clearly visible amid the empassioned cacaphony following the arrest of DSK. The realization that the scandal would likely improve Le Pen's prospects frightened certain pundits so much that they couldn't help but couple their open-minded reminders that DSK is innocent until proven guilty with cognitive-dissonance-inducing paranoia and hang-wringing over Le Pen. The most egregious examples I've found are Doug Schoen and Anne Applebaum. I don't think it's any coincidence that while neither one is French, both are jews.

UPDATE 20 May 2011: Marine Le Pen becomes Front National leader: A pivotal moment for French politics? - Telegraph, by Anne-Elisabeth Moutet, 16 Jan 2011:

It's a measure of the inroads Marine Le Pen has already made in the French political debate that she now splits opinion among the rarefied world of Parisian intellectuals.

On the one hand, the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy still thinks she reeks of sulphur: according to him, the youngest daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, 82, the longstanding Front National leader, is "even more dangerous than her father".

Yet on the other Elisabeth Lévy, the shrewd editor of Causeur magazine, the French answer to The Spectator, considers not only that Marine Le Pen "says nothing scandalous or morally unacceptable", but also that she might well "be truly breaking away from the old French extreme-Right, to create something new."

It's a measure of just how un-French "French" political debate is that Moutet cites two jews as representative, even though they are members of a powerful, exclusive ethnic group who comprise less than 1% of the overall population.

[Marine's father, Jean-Marie] Le Pen, an orphaned Breton fisherman's son, tried to join the Résistance in 1944, and later fought in Algeria and in the Suez expedition.

But he made his indelible mark in French politics by obsessively picking at the scabs of the country's dark past. He boasted of using torture in Algeria to combat terrorism; called the gas chambers "a point of detail" of the Second World War; used time-and-motion calculations to dispute the number of Auschwitz victims; and described France's German occupiers as "very civilised".

He was several times condemned under French incitement laws - all of which he used to paint himself as a larger-than-life pariah in the too-tame, self-referential world of French politics.

Le Pen is being painted as a pariah here for having the audacity to try to represent his people. Let's be honest. Is there anyone who picks more obsessively at scabs from the past (like Auschwitz) than jews do? Argue with them, like Jean-Marie Le Pen, and you're painted as dangerous. Don't argue, like Marine Le Pen, and you're painted as worse.

At 42, a handsome, single working mother of three, she presents herself as the young, modern face of the Front National, in sharp contrast to her defeated opponent in the Party leadership contest, the 60-year-old academic Bruno Gollnisch, under whose banner the Party's residual hardliners had sought an increasingly exiguous shelter.

In the Gollnisch camp gather the "tradis", the traditionalist Catholics who are horrified by Marine's support of gay rights - short of gay marriage - and refusal to support abolition of the 1975 law permitting abortion. (She says she only wants all provisions of the law strictly applied, so that women are first offered "alternatives" such as pre-natal adoption.)

No-one in France will admit to anti-Semitism, which is actionable by law, but campaign rumours from the Gollnisch camp included descriptions of Marine's entourage as "full of Jews, queers and Arabs".

Actionable by law is an innocuous way of saying that in France you can be persecuted for making elementary observations like the ones I just have. Meanwhile no special laws prevent jews living in France from saying whatever they wish about the French.

It is interesting that two personalities she quoted positively during a half-hour conversation were two Jews: Simone Veil, the former health minister and European Parliament president, who first introduced the abortion bill, and Elisabeth Badinter, the left-wing feminist author.

It is interesting how jews keep coming up in Moutet's piece. Is she jewish? At any rate, the impression Moutet creates is that what's most important about Le Pen is what jews think about her, not what she thinks about anything. And never mind what the French think either.

"Stick Together"

‘Mensch’ Dan Adler targets minorities with stereotype-laden ad, by Rachel Rose Hartman:

What's the best way to reach out to Asian voters? Tell them you're Jewish so you can relate. Right?

That's the route Democratic candidate Dan Adler took in his most recent ad for California's 36th District special election. In a heavily staged discussion among constituents at a set suggestive of a Korean-owned dry cleaner, the former Disney executive tells a woman behind the counter--who speaks with a heavy Asian accent--that he can relate to her concerns because "my wife is Korean."

"You're Jewish," she replies.

"My family is Jewish."

"We minorities should stick together," she replies. Adler laughs as a young Asian couple looks on--the man's shirt opens to reveal his Chinese script tattoos.

"Dan Adler. Send a mensch to Congress!" a multi-racial crowd shouts at the end, noting the Yiddish word for a person of high character. "What's a mensch?" the woman from the dry cleaner asks the camera.

Adler's faux pas here, according to Hartman, is the use of stereotypes in his explicitly pro-minority, implicitly anti-White campaign commercial. Something tells me this will not upset either Adler's jew or Asian funders and voters, and if any Whites complain they can look forward to being branded and brushed off as "racists".

Adler's message assumes it is right and good that:

1) "minorities" see themselves as natural allies against non-"minorities", ie. Whites.

2) jews identify as "minority", not White.

Your deracinated White friends will not appreciate the use of this video as a teachable moment, but rub their noses in it anyway.

Donald Trump's Political 'Pit Bull': Meet Michael Cohen:

The man behind Donald Trump's possible 2012 presidential campaign is a registered Democrat who voted for Barack Obama in 2008.

Not only that, but Michael Cohen, an executive at the Trump Organization who doubles as Trump's chief political adviser, once volunteered for 1988 presidential candidate Michael Dukakis and worked for a Democratic member of Congress.

A lawyer by training, Cohen is Trump's special counsel and a juggler of people and projects. One minute he's on the phone with a reporter, the next he's giving orders to an assistant, and a moment later he's finalizing a deal on another line -- and frequently, he's doing all three at once.

"I think the world of him," Cohen said of the billionaire real estate and reality television mogul who has said he will decide sometime before June whether to run for president. "I respect him as a businessman, and I respect him as a boss."

The two talk regularly -- "I speak to him even more than I did before," Cohen said -- and he has spearheaded a variety of projects for Trump, including sealing a business partnership in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, running a mixed martial arts promotion company called Affliction Entertainment and a firm that turns landfills into golf courses.

Cohen, whose position allows him to play at any of Trump's courses around the world, describes himself as a "decent" golfer and an avid tennis player. Much like Trump's, his circle of acquaintances include political leaders, actors and "super high net worth people," as Cohen calls them.

Cohen grew up on Long Island. His mother was a nurse and his father was a surgeon who escaped a Nazi concentration camp with his family during World War II.

In the wake of the Loughner/Giffords shooting, amidst all the vitriolic rhetoric guilt-tripping Whites for participating in politics, a number of jews were speaking out about what they perceived the deeper meaning to be. From the beginning jews injected their own specifically jewish concerns into the political discourse and busily set about transforming the narrative from "congresswoman shot", to "jewish congresswoman shot", to "jewish congresswoman shot because she's a jew".

By the time Sarah Palin's response came, days later, both the jewish and hypocritical nature of the most vitriolic rhetoric was increasingly obvious. Palin's speech, America's Enduring Strength, like most contemporary politcal speeches, consisted largely of non-partisan platitudes wrapped in pleasant sentiments, evoking images of an America which for the most part no longer exists. What set it apart was that in the middle Palin called out the scapegoaters in jewish terms:

If you don’t like a person’s vision for the country, you’re free to debate that vision. If you don’t like their ideas, you’re free to propose better ideas. But, especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.

And again, near the end, Palin made another pointed reference to the scapegoaters, their methods, and their purpose:

We need strength to not let the random acts of a criminal turn us against ourselves, or weaken our solid foundation, or provide a pretext to stifle debate.

America must be stronger than the evil we saw displayed last week. We are better than the mindless finger-pointing we endured in the wake of the tragedy.

As mild as this carefully worded reproach was, it hit very close to home. Hypocrisy is an accusation of serious substance to Whites, especially the kind who support Palin, but it isn't at all effective on the "journalists and pundits". The jews who responded weren't upset about being called hypocrites. What they were upset about was an uppity, ignorant non-jew using their proprietary, jews-only victim card. Several jews were so incensed that they wrote two responses, or wrote something and also appeared on television.

General Reports: Jewish Blood Boiling

Jewish Group Slams Palin for ‘Blood Libel’ Remark, The Daily Beast, 12 Jan 2011.

Palin slammed for using ‘blood libel’ term, Jewish Journal, 12 Jan 2011. "Sarah Palin’s use of the term “blood libel” to decry blaming conservatives for the Arizona shooting has raised the ire of the Jewish community."

U.S. Jewish leaders slam Sarah Palin's blood libel accusation, Haaretz, 12 Jan 2011.

Blood libel: Jewish leaders object to Palin's 'blood libel' charge, latimes.com, 12 Jan 2011. "Sarah Palin's charge of 'blood libel' spurs outcry from Jewish leaders".

Palin's blood libel charge ignites firestorm, 12 Jan 2011.

Sarah Palin's Blood Libel Controversial Reference Has Riled Emotions, 12 Jan 2011:

An aide close to Sarah Palin says death threats and security threats have increased to an unprecedented level since the shooting in Arizona, and the former Alaska governor's team has been talking to security professionals.

Authoritative Statements from Professional Jewish Bigots

J Street Responds to Palin’s “Blood Libel” Statement, J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami, 12 Jan 2011:

We hope that Governor Palin will recognize, when it is brought to her attention, that the term “blood libel” brings back painful echoes of a very dark time in our communal history when Jews were falsely accused of committing heinous deeds. When Governor Palin learns that many Jews are pained by and take offense at the use of the term, we are sure that she will choose to retract her comment, apologize and make a less inflammatory choice of words.

David A. Harris: Palin's Incendiary "Blood Libel" Reference: Wrong Time, Wrong Place, Wrong Always:

WASHINGTON, D.C. Jan. 12, 2011 - The National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) today condemned Sarah Palin's charged "blood libel" accusation, released early Wednesday by video. NJDC President and CEO David A. Harris said upon hearing Palin's statement:

Following this weekend's tragedy, we -- and many others -- simply did two things: we prayed for our friend Gabby while keeping all of the murdered and wounded in our thoughts and prayers, and we talked in broad terms about our increasingly charged level of political debate -- asserting that now is as good a time as any to look inward and assess how all of us need to dial back the level of vitriol and anger in our public square. Nobody can disagree with the need for both.

Instead of dialing down the rhetoric at this difficult moment, Sarah Palin chose to accuse others trying to sort out the meaning of this tragedy of somehow engaging in a "blood libel" against her and others. This is of course a particularly heinous term for American Jews, given that the repeated fiction of blood libels are directly responsible for the murder of so many Jews across centuries -- and given that blood libels are so directly intertwined with deeply ingrained anti-Semitism around the globe, even today.

Perhaps Sarah Palin honestly does not know what a blood libel is, or does not know of their horrific history; that is perhaps the most charitable explanation we can arrive at in explaining her rhetoric today.

All we had asked following this weekend's tragedy was for prayers for the dead and wounded, and for all of us to take a step back and look inward to see how we can improve the tenor of our coarsening public debate. Sarah Palin's invocation of a "blood libel" charge against her perceived enemies is hardly a step in the right direction.

The NJDC statement on the day of the shooting also expressed the desire to see their enemies "banished from our political discourse".

Palin: Stop Fanning Flames, Jewish Funds for Justice, 12 Jan 2011:

JFSJ to Sarah Palin: Stop Fanning the Flames of Division

NEW YORK – Simon Greer, president of Jewish Funds for Justice, released the following statement in response to Sarah Palin “blood libel” comment:

We are deeply disturbed by Fox News commentator Sarah Palin’s decision to characterize as a “blood libel” the criticism directed at her following the terrorist attack in Tucson. The term “blood libel” is not a synonym for “false accusation.” It refers to a specific falsehood perpetuated by Christians about Jews for centuries, a falsehood that motivated a good deal of anti-Jewish violence and discrimination. Unless someone has been accusing Ms. Palin of killing Christian babies and making matzoh from their blood, her use of the term is totally out-of-line.

In the past two months, Ms. Palin and Glenn Beck, the most well-known media personalities on Fox News, have abused two of the most tragic episode in the history of the Jewish people: the Holocaust and the blood libel. In addition, Roger Ailes, the head of the Fox News channel, referred to the executives at NPR as “Nazis.” Perhaps the popular news channel has such an ingrained victim mentality that it identifies with one of the most persecuted minorities in human history. But the Jewish community does not appreciate their identification, which only serves to denigrate the very real pain so many Jews have suffered because of anti-Semitic violence. It is clear that Fox News has a Jewish problem.

Sarah Palin did not shoot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Only the perpetrator can be found guilty for this act of terrorism. But it is worth pointing out that it was Rep. Giffords herself who first objected to Ms. Palin’s map showing her district in the crosshairs. “We’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list, but the thing is, the way she has it depicted, it has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that they have to realize that there are consequences to that action.” According to Ms. Palin’s logic, Rep. Giffords statement was a blood libel against the Fox News host. The fact that Rep. Giffords is Jewish and Ms. Palin is Christian makes the accusation even more grotesque.

Ms. Palin clearly took some time to reflect before putting out her statement today. Despite that time, her primary conclusion was that she is the victim and Rep. Giffords is the perpetrator. As a powerful rhetorical advocate for personal responsibility, Ms. Palin has failed to live up to her own standards with this statement.

Simon Greer also appeared on MSNBC with Keith Olbermann, accompanied by a Sarah Palin avatar labeled "INFLAMMATORY RHETORIC". Countdown: Palin angers Jewish community with speech, 12 Jan 2011:

Olbermann: Sarah Palin, knowingly or not, is comparing herself to the persecuted jews of the middle ages as a jewish congresswoman lies in critical condition in an Arizona hospital after being shot in the head.

Greer: Sarah Palin is trying to confuse us and make us think there is a victim in Alaska, which clearly there isn't, and to do it adding insult to injury, she invokes a phrase that has cost countless lives of jews across the centuries and she uses it to launch a complaint about the media. On the face of it it's a grotesque comparison.

Olbermann: Usually when somebody invokes it it's related to actual persecution of another group. Is part of the problem here that the person who claims the blood libel is being used is also the person who claims it's being used against them?

Greer: Yeah, you have a situation where a jewish congresswoman is fighting for her life and a Christian is claiming that she's the one that's the victim of a blood libel. It does make me think the leaders like Sarah Palin and other Tea Party leaders like Glenn Beck have a jewish problem. They continue to invoke holocaust, Hitler, nazi, blood libel - as if they're trying to paint a picture of themselves as victims in an almost Orwellian turn of phrase. It's a bit hard to fathom.

Greer: If she does offer an explanation I for one would love to hear what were the circle of jewish advisors around her, what were they thinking. Were they thinking, "we know what the blood libel is and we're going to use it to great effect" or, "oops we didn't really know what it meant, we deliberated for four days about what to say and then we slipped in the blood libel". I would love to hear her explanation.

Marvin Hier to Sarah Palin: You’re “Over the Top”, Jewish Journal, 13 Jan 2011:

That provoked Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, to call an out-of-bounds.

“It is simply inappropriate to compare current American politics with term that was used by Christians to persecute Jews,” said Hier. “She has every right to criticize journalists without going over the top.”

But as Palin may someday learn, and Hier and other Jewish leaders know wel, words really do matter. Equating even harsh criticism with “blood libel” is like going to the ER for a boo boo. It grossly demeans the historic reality of the blood libel and the victims who suffered brutally and needlessly because of it.

Other recent SWC trips to the ER: SWC Denounces 'New Blood Libel' at UC Campuses, 22 May 2007; Swedish Government’s Response “Inadequate” to New “Blood-Libel”, 19 Aug 2009.

Sarah Palin Charge of 'Blood Libel' Provokes Rhetorical Controversy, Andrea Stone, 12 Jan 2011:

To critics, Palin was reckless in her choice of words because "blood libel" is fraught with historic connotations.

"The term has a very specific meaning" connected to the charge that Jews used the blood of Christian boys in preparing matzah for the Passover Seder, said Deborah Lipstadt, a professor of modern Jewish history and Holocaust studies. "Governor Palin could have found a better term, especially given the fact that Representative Giffords is Jewish."

Palin's use of the term is "glaringly inappropriate and displays a profound lack of historical sensitivity," said Jenna Weissman Joselit, a professor of history and Judaic studies at George Washington University.

"I would have advised against using it -- the term is historically unique and refers specifically to false charges of ritual murder," said Noam Neusner, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush and the son of a famed Talmudic scholar. "While Ms. Palin has a legitimate gripe against her liberal critics, who were wrong to associate the Tucson shooter with her politics, she is using a term that simply does not apply. She could have simply used the word 'libel' and she would have been fine."

Palin has been a strong supporter of Israel, and even her staunchest critics don't suggest that anti-Semitism is behind the faux pas.

But Robert Lehrman, a former speechwriter for Vice President Al Gore, said Palin's choice of words was likely not accidental.

"Only Jews know about" the visceral meaning of the term, he said. "And because the right and some tea party people -- like Tony Katz -- talk about the Jewish-dominated media, the unspoken implication is this: 'Most people won't get this, but you Jewish reporters know what I'm saying.'"

Brad Hirschfield: Palin's Charge of Blood Libel Plays the Jewish Card, Brad Hirschfield, self-described "Rabbi, Author and Expert on Religion and Public Life", 12 Jan 2011:

First, let's be clear about what a blood libel is. In the briefest terms, it is the charge that Jews use the blood of non-Jews, typically that of children, for ritual purposes, especially the making of Passover matzah.

The charge, which originated among medieval Catholics, has also been used by Protestants and more recently by Muslims too, to provoke rage at Jews -- rage which on many occasions resulted in violence against Jews, and even their murders. That's what makes Palin's use of the term so interesting -- for the analogy to work, she must be the Jew!

I have no particular problem with people, including gentiles, analogizing their own woes to that of Jews, but does Ms. Palin actually believe that her life is in danger because of the journalists and political talking heads who accuse her of complicity in the tragedy in Tucson?

If she does, then not only does she seem eager to play the Jew, she seems to agree with her detractors about the power of words to inspire violence. It's amazing how the two sides, each so eager to cast blame upon the other, are so very much alike. Because her analogy, however unintentionally, drives home that point, I think it may be quite apt.

Ms. Palin's choice of analogies is also a good one because it points to a situation in which people need to cast blame upon others to deflect from their own sins. In the case of the blood libel, it was used not only to create anti-Jewish sentiment, but to justify it.

Jews, it was charged, deserved to be tortured and killed because of their evil deeds. So Jew haters created a reason for the hate, one which not only inspired increased hate but justified, in their own minds, the hate they already had for Jews.

When Journalists and Pundits Attack

Sarah Palin Says Media Guilty of ‘Blood Libel’: Why Her Speech Was Wrong, Howard Kurtz, 12 Jan 2011:

Blood libel, for those who are not familiar, describes a false accusation that minorities—usually Jews—murder children to use their blood in religious rituals, and has been a historical theme in the persecution of the Jewish people.

Had Palin scoured a thesaurus, she could not have come up with a more inflammatory phrase.

As someone who has argued that linking her rhetoric to the hateful violence of Jared Loughlin is unfair, I can imagine that the former governor was angry about how liberal detractors dragged her into this story. But after days of silence, she had a chance to speak to the country in a calmer, more inclusive way. She could have said that all of us, including her, needed to avoid excessively harsh or military-style language, without retreating one inch from her strongly held beliefs.

Instead she went the blood libel route.

The same day Howard Kurtz Tweeted:

There was some sympathy for Palin over being tied to shooting, + she chose to go inflammatory. Blood libel has special resonance for Jews.

Hardball - Chris Matthews, Chuck Todd, Howard Fineman, 12 Jan 2011:

Matthews: Why would she use a phrase like that?

Todd: I don't know. I think, ahh, I, uhh, it's uhh, it, to me, she needs to answer that, I don't understand...

Fineman: She has only one gear and that is forward and she only one mode and that is attack. I don't think she fully understood the history because if she did understand the history she would realize that she was comparing herself, in this situation, to a jewish martyr during the middle ages, or the cossacks in russia or whatever, and all of her critics as people who engaged in that kind of behavior. That's not just over the top, that's the other side of the moon.

With 'Blood Libel,' The 2012 Campaign Has Begun, Howard Fineman, 12 Jan 2011:

After a litany of other Republicans, from Roger Ailes to Ari Fleischer, suggested that calmer rhetoric is warranted in the aftermath of Tucson, Palin -- after remaining essentially silent for three days -- amped up the rhetoric in a pointed counterattack, accusing "journalists and pundits" of manufacturing a "blood libel" against her by suggesting that she somehow is to blame for the toxic political atmosphere in Arizona.

There are few more freighted phrases in the history of hate than "blood libel," which is the ancient and false accusation that Jews secretly murder Christian children as part of their religious rituals. This anti-Semitic attack has resulted in countless pogroms and massacres through the ages.

Saint Sarah, it seems, is now comparing herself to one of those martyrs.

Notably absent was any second-guessing of a single word or action of her own over the last two years. To do so, apparently, would mean to somehow accept the premise that the "lamestream media" is worthy of attention. As far as she is concerned, they don't exist -- except for the sake of being likened to pillaging Cossacks. (The comparison is not only over-the-top, it's also insensitive, given that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is Jewish.)

Blood Libel, Adam Serwer, 12 Jan 2011:

Over at Greg's place, I explain why Sarah Palin's use of blood libel in the context of people accusing her of being responsible for the incident in Tucson is wrong, even if the accusations are unfair

This links The foolishness of the 'blood libel' charge:

Blood libel is a term that usually refers to an ancient falsehood that Jews use the blood of Christian children in religious rituals. For hundreds of years, particularly during the Middle Ages, it was used to justify the slaughter of Jews in the street and their expulsion from entire countries. "Blood libel" is not wrongfully assigning guilt to an individual for murder, but rather assigning guilt collectively to an entire group of people and then using it to justify violence against them.

This is a new low for Palin, but outsize comparisons of partisan political conflict to instances of terrible historical oppression is a fairly frequent rhetorical device among conservative media figures.

Now, mere days after the incident, with six people dead and Giffords still recovering, Palin is making herself the center of attention. It might please the audience for conservative talk radio or Fox News, but most people will be disgusted. As well they should be.

Sarah Palin charges critics with 'blood libel', Jennifer Epstein, 12 Jan 2011:

Palin’s use of the charged phrase “blood libel” — which refers to the anti-Semitic accusation from the Middle Ages that Jews killed Christian children to use their blood to make matzo for Passover — touched off an immediate backlash.

“The blood libel is something anti-Semites have historically used in Europe as an excuse to murder Jews — the comparison is stupid. Jews and rational people will find it objectionable,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a New York-based Democratic political consultant and devout Jew. “This will forever link her to the events in Tucson. It deepens the hole she’s already dug for herself. … It’s absolutely inappropriate.”

But in her first extended response to the shooting - and just hours before President Barack Obama planned to speak at a memorial service in Tucson - Palin created a frenzy.

It was chiefly because of her use of “blood libel,” but also because she used the video largely to make an unapologetic case for her brand of confrontational politics.

RealClearPolitics - Video - NBC's Andrea Mitchell: Palin "Ignorant" For Using Term "Blood Libel", 12 Jan 2011.


Yglesias » Blood Libel, Matt Yglesias, 12 Jan 2011:

Indeed, Jews throughout America can join me in remembering when our ancestors fled Eastern Europe in order to live in a land where nobody would ever criticize us on television.

Analysis: Palin Plays the Victim Card, Dan Farber, 12 Jan 2011:

Palin appears to be appropriating the term to indicate that she is a victim, as a result of some groups and individuals claiming that her political rhetoric contributed to the actions of the deranged, lone gunman.

But the real victims are Rep. Giffords and the others who were wounded or killed, not Palin, who appears to be tone deaf to Giffords statement that there are consequences to actions. The consequences of Palin's crosshairs may not be directly related to the shooting rampage in Tucson and assassination attempt, but they are related to the level of divisiveness in the country.

"Community leaders, not just political leaders, need to stand back when things get too fired up," Giffords said during her MSNBC appearance in March 2010.

The likely presidential aspirant doesn't seem to take any responsibility for ratcheting up the political dialog or believe that there is any need to moderate the tone of political discourse in America.

What ‘blood libel’ really means, Jonathan Zimmerman, 13 Jan 2011:

Palin should apologize, too. And not just to Jews, including Giffords.

No, Palin should apologize to all of us. In a speech condemning the irresponsibility of her critics, who have played fast and loose with the facts, Palin did something even worse: She trivialized one of the great crimes of human history.

The Libel of "Blood Libel", Noah Baron, 13 Jan 2011:

I cannot believe that Palin was ignorant of the history of the term "blood libel," which was long used as an excuse by anti-Semites to persecute Jews. More likely, she chose it on purpose.

Palin's statement is but one in a long line of manifestations of a paranoia and persecution complex that now characterizes the American conservative movement.

Why Sarah Palin's Use of 'Blood Libel' Is a Great Thing, Jeffrey Goldberg, 12 Jan 2011:

Sarah Palin has called the post-Tucson campaign of vilification against her and her fellow travelers a "blood libel." On the one hand, this is unfortunate, as Jonah Goldberg points out, because it threatens to redefine the phrase, plus, what is happening to her is not precisely the byproduct of a blood libel.

On the other hand, Sarah Palin is such an important political and cultural figure that her use of the term "blood libel" should introduce this very important historical phenomenon to a wide audience, and the ensuing discussion -- about how Fox News is not actually Mendel Beilis -- will serve to enlighten and inform. It is a moral necessity, I think, for Christians to understand the blood libel (Muslims, too -- see the Damascus Blood Libel of 1840), not only because it is part of their history, but because the blood libel still has modern ramifications -- Israel, after all, was founded as a reaction to Christian hatred, of which the blood libel was an obvious and murderous manifestation.

I mean it sincerely when I say I hope Sarah Palin, who regularly expresses love for Jews and Israel, takes the time to learn about the history of the blood libel, and shares what she has learned with her many admirers.

Sarah Palin, Jewish Educator - The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, 12 Jan 2011:

My theory that Sarah Palin's otherwise gross use of the term "blood libel" to describe criticism leveled against her has an upside -- the potential to educate people about the actual meaning and history of the "blood libel" and its frightening relevance today -- is being borne out in the in-box. Two such e-mails:

i had no idea 'blood libel' had a jewish origin, i doubt sarah palin does either, she picked up on it because it sounded sexy, and voila, more headlines.

I think it's true that Sarah Palin had no idea of the meaning; I don't actually believe she was Jew-baiting, or consciously trying to denigrate the experience of Jewish communities at the hands of their Christian neighbors.

And this:

What do you think the actual chances are that Sarah Palin will actually come out and apologize and learn something about the blood libel and try to raise consciousness about this? I don't think it's very high.

Keep hope alive, I say. This is a great moment for Sarah Palin to demonstrate some sensitivity, and to show that she's capable of absorbing and assimilating new knowledge, and sharing that knowledge with others. I hope she doesn't miss the chance.

Backstory

Intermittent respites from the unhinged jewish firestorm.

Ben Smith on Twitter, 12 Jan 2011:

A quick 'blood libel' thought. Palin's aides, including @thegoldfarb [Michael Goldfarb], get the context -- so this is a pot being stirred, not an accident...

Palin: 'Blood libel', Ben Smith, 12 Jan 2011:

The phrase "blood libel" was introduced into the debate this week by Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds, and raised some eyebrows because it typically refers historically to the alleged murder of Christian babies by Jews, and has been used more recently by Israeli's supporters to refer to accusations against the country. It's a powerful metaphor, and one that carries the sense of an oppressed minority.

The Arizona Tragedy and the Politics of Blood Libel, Glenn Reynolds, 10 Jan 2011.

The Term ‘Blood Libel’: More Common Than You Might Think, Jim Geraghty, 12 Jan 2011.

Team Sarah Points to Even More Recent Uses of ‘Blood Libel’, Jim Geraghty, 13 Jan 2011.

With Friends Like These

“Blood Libel” - By Jonah Goldberg - The Corner - National Review Online, 12 Jan 2011:

I should have said this a few days ago, when my friend Glenn Reynolds introduced the term to this debate. But I think that the use of this particular term in this context isn’t ideal.

Jewish Republicans muted on Palin's 'blood libel' comment, Jordan Fabian, 12 Jan 2011:

Former Bush White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, a member of the Republican Jewish Coalition's board of directors, did not address Palin's use of the phrase "blood libel" but said she would have been better served by focusing on a more positive message.

Exclusive: Alan Dershowitz Defends Sarah Palin’s Use of Term ‘Blood Libel’, 12 Jan 2011:

The term “blood libel” has taken on a broad metaphorical meaning in public discourse. Although its historical origins were in theologically based false accusations against the Jews and the Jewish People,its current usage is far broader. I myself have used it to describe false accusations against the State of Israel by the Goldstone Report. There is nothing improper and certainly nothing anti-Semitic in Sarah Palin using the term to characterize what she reasonably believes are false accusations that her words or images may have caused a mentally disturbed individual to kill and maim. The fact that two of the victims are Jewish is utterly irrelevant to the propriety of using this widely used term.

Charles Krauthammer on debating Palin’s use of ‘blood libel’: ‘Have we completely lost our minds?’, 13 Jan 2011:

“[T]he fact is that even the ADL, the Anti-Defamation League in expressing a mild rebuke to Palin for using this admitted itself in its statement that the term ‘blood libel’ has become part of English parlance to refer to someone falsely accused,” Krauthammer said. “Let’s step back for a second. Here we have a brilliant, intelligent, articulate, beautiful, wife, mother and congresswoman fighting for her life, in a hospital in Tucson, and we’re having a national debate over whether the term ‘blood libel’ can be used appropriately in a non-Jewish context? Have we completely lost our minds?”

Jewish Pols Appalled, Condemn Palin, Others Feign Ignorance

Palin Calls Criticism 'Blood Libel', Michael D. Shear, 12 Jan 2011:

Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democrat of Florida, who is a close friend of Ms. Giffords, issued a statement condemning her use of the phrase “blood libel.”

“Palin’s comments either show a complete ignorance of history, or blatant anti-Semitism,” said Jonathan Beeton, Ms. Wasserman Shultz’s spokesman. “Either way, it shows an appalling lack of sensitivity given Representative Giffords’s faith and the events of the past week.”

Palin starts storm over media ‘blood libel’ - TheHill.com, Michael O’Brien and Jordan Fabian, 12 Jan 2011:

“When I heard it, I said, ‘What? This is ridiculous!’ ” Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), who is Jewish, told The Hill. “It’s appalling. It’s an insensitive choice of words.”

Lawmakers on Wednesday indicated they were baffled by Palin’s “blood libel” characterization.

“Blood what?” Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (N.J.) responded when asked for his response to the characterization.

Pallone’s confusion was shared by Reps. Ted Poe (R-Texas), James McGovern (D-Mass.), Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.), Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.), Kevin Brady (R-Texas) and Louie Gohmert (R-Texas).

Gohmert said that he had not read or heard Palin’s self-defense, stating, “There are some words that you know incite people, just inflame their passions, and those are things that are helpful to stay away from.”

Other House Republicans simply shook their heads and opted not to comment on Palin’s message.

McGovern didn’t know what “blood libel” meant, saying he thought initially “it must be some sort of Alaska thing.”

Jewish Influence and Coded Language

Sarah Palin: Critics Blaming Political Right for Shootings Commit 'Blood Libel', Tom Diemer, 12 Jan 2011:

Palin, like many conservative Christians, is a strong supporter of Israel, and she has been particularly supportive of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's hard-line stands versus the Palestinians. In an open letter to incoming Republican freshmen last November she implicitly rebuked President Obama when she wrote that "Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, not a settlement," and in June she slammed Obama over what she said was his weak-kneed support of Israel following the Israeli commando attack on a Gaza-bound flotilla that left nine activists dead.

But Christian conservatives like Palin are also growing increasingly fond of Jewish religious traditions and motifs, sometimes celebrating Passover Seders and appropriating Old Testament references like the Israelites in exile to describe their own experience in modern America. Palin, for example, likes to compare herself to Queen Esther, the Jewish beauty from the Book of Esther who saves her people from destruction.

Such religious borrowing can be problematic for Jews, and Palin's "blood libel" reference evoking such a devastating history at the hands of Christians could be especially explosive. The Anti-Defamation League said it was "inappropriate to blame Palin and others for causing this tragedy." Still, the ADL said, "we wish Palin had not invoked the phrase 'blood libel'" -- words that have become part of English parlance, but ones "so fraught with pain in Jewish history."

Palin Knew What She Was Saying, Matthew Cooper, 12 Jan 2011:

But, as is often the case, Palin is likely being underestimated and, perhaps, misunderstood. It's highly unlikely that she threw an incendiary term out there without knowing what it means, and it's even less likely she did so in an effort to promote anti-Semitism.

Here' s another theory of the case: The former Alaska governor was likely trying to send a signal to her evangelical Christian supporters who are, in fact, deeply pro-Israel (although many Jews are wary of their support for the Zionist state, seeing them as more interested in the Rapture than a healthy Jewish nation).

Palin was likely aligning herself with pro-Israel evangelicals by identifying with Jews, not by insulting them, although that was surely the effect given the widespread bristling at her remarks.

After all, it's not the first time Palin has aligned herself subtly with Jews. She has noted that after her election as governor in 2006, her childhood pastor suggested that she take the Bible's Queen Esther as a role model. Esther was a beauty queen who became a fierce protector of the Jewish people. Palin is comfortable in the role of Esther, and many of her evangelical supporters see her in that guise, describing her as Esther-like. The multi-faith website Beliefnet called this phenomenon "Esther-mania."

By adopting the blood libel language, Palin was most likely trying to pull another Esther -- aligning herself with Jews, not denouncing them. It appears to have been a badly miscalculated effort, but it's unlikely that it was her intention to offend.

"It was a dog whistle," said one Jewish Republican who worked in the George H.W. Bush administration and declined to be named to avoid becoming enmeshed in the intraparty debate over Palin. The reference was to a device that's silent to some ears but calls to others. "The media didn't get it, but Christian activists did," this source added.

Was Sarah Palin's 'Blood Libel' Comment a 'Dog Whistle' -- or Just Inadvertent?, Matt Lewis, 12 Jan 2011:

As Tom Diemer and David Gibson noted, the term " 'Blood libel' is an extraordinarily loaded phrase because it recalls the false accusation by Christians against Jews that was used for centuries as an excuse for anti-Semitic persecution. The libel generally refers to the charge that Jews required human blood, and in particular the blood of Christian children, to bake matzoh bread.

While many believe this to be an example of "dog whistle" politics, I'm not so sure. A cipher works when the only people who hear the "dog whistle" are your complicit allies. That is clearly not the case in this instance. And so if others can immediately decode it, is it a dog whistle?

My guess is that this is simply a case of ignorance on the part of Palin and the speechwriter -- and I don't mean that in a derogatory way. Simply put, a lot of people don't realize that these loaded terms have deeper and more sinister meanings.

Postscript, Business as Usual

Democrat invokes Nazis to slam GOP on health care - On Politics: Covering the US Congress, Governors, and the 2012 Election, 19 Jan 2011. US Representative Steve Cohen, speaking on the record in the House of Representatives:

They say it's a government takeover of health care. A big lie just like (Joseph) Goebbels. You say it enough and you repeat the lie, repeat the lie, repeat the lie and eventually people believe it. Like blood libel. That's the same kind of thing. The Germans said enough about the jews, and the people believed it, and you had the holocaust. You tell a lie over and over again.

Over the Top and Beyond the Moon

Regardless of who chose the term blood libel or whether the intent was to provoke an overreaction from jews, that's exactly what it produced. What happened is that an army of influential jewish journalists, pundits, and professional bigots instantly swarmed forth to self-righteously lecture the unwashed hoi polloi about jewish sensitivities and sensibilities, instructing Palin and the rest of us what we may or may not say.

That two words could produce such an enormous, immediate, angry jewish reaction is an indication of just how sensitive and defensive jews are about even an indirect reference to their influence. It also serves as a measure of that influence.

Jews focused on attacking Palin specifically because they didn't want to address her point. As Fineman projected, jews have only one mode: attack. What agitated them so was being called out in jewish terms. They certainly were not put out about being called hyprocrites. Hypocrisy is something only Whites get upset about.

After seeing blood libel defined over and over and over again it's impossible to believe that the term causes jews any pain whatsoever. What most obviously gets them exercised is seeing anyone but jews as victims. And my how cruel, merciless and paranoid they can be when they think someone is trying to use their own tricks against them.