Obama Is NOT Anti-Semitic for Calling Out the Israel Lobby's Warmongering

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This is rich. In a Weekly Standard op-ed written by Elliot Abrams and trumpeted by Karl Rove and Bill Kristol, President Obama has been accused of promoting anti-Semitism for calling out the Israel Lobby’s influence and warmongering.
The logic behind this ugly, slanderous charge goes as follows:

  • 1) President Obama called out AIPAC and the Israel lobby as being a powerful force, backed by millions of dollars, hoping to topple the Iran deal.
  • 2) President Obama then identified this force, which was also behind the Iraq war, as advocating for a war which is against the United States’ best interest, arguing that he, as President, must do what’s right for the U.S., not Israel.
  • 3) Thus, President Obama has accused American Jews of placing Israel’s interests over America’s, which is to accuse American Jews of “dual loyalty,” the most nefarious and dangerous of anti-Semitic tropes.

Here is Abrams concluding this anti-Semitism charge in his own words:

Why would these people opposing the deal be [advocating for war]? It’s their “affinity for our friend and ally Israel.” But we have to resist their arguments: “as president of the United States it would be an abrogation of my constitutional duty to act against my best judgment simply because it causes temporary friction with a dear friend and ally.” It is implicit, and very close to explicit, here that the other side wants the U.S. president to act not on our own country’s behalf but on Israel’s. This is an echo of the old “dual loyalty” charge that has been lodged against American Jews since the day the State of Israel was established.
The president is not ignorant (the accusation he lays against his opponents) and must know he is here feeding a deep line of anti-Semitism that accuses of American Jews of getting America into wars.

What chutzpah! No, I’m not talking about Abrams’ history with the Iran-Contra affair, which is a different matter all together. What’s incredible and maddening is that Abrams has, in accusing Obama of anti-Semitism, actually employed a REAL anti-Semitic trope in his accusation. For Abrams has conflated AIPAC and all Jews together, as if they are one and the same, something only the ugliest anti-Semite would dream of doing.

Allow me to explain: Abrams has smeared Obama as anti-Semitic for accusing AIPAC of warmongering. According to Abrams, by targeting AIPAC, Obama is accusing American Jews of warmongering, casting them as having “dual loyalty.”
However, unlike Abrams, President Obama distinguishes between American Jews, who overwhelmingly support the Iran deal, and the Israel Lobby, which does not represent the Jewish community. Rather than being anti-Semitic, Obama is explicitly distinguishing between American Jews and the Israel lobby as a way to combat anti-Semitic notions.
And why must he do this? Because Israel’s Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has repeatedly claimed to represent “the entire Jewish people” in his opposition to the Iran deal. This conflation between Israel and all Jews which Netanyahu and many Jewish leaders employ is used to shield Israel and its policies from critique, including (now) opposition to the Iran deal. In reality, this conflation is an anti-Semitic trope which the most vile bigots use to justify attacking innocent Jews for the actions of Israel.
Abrams has gone one step further than Netanyahu, though: he has conflated the Israel LOBBY and all Jews together, casting Obama’s critique of AIPAC’s warmongering as an anti-Semitic volley being lobbed against all Jews.
Note to Abrams: here is President Obama, Mr. Anti-Semitism, during his watershed speech in Cairo:

Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust. Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed — more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, it is ignorant, and it is hateful. Threatening Israel with destruction — or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews — is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.

No, Obama is not the anti-Semite here, nor the one pushing any anti-Semitic ideas about American Jews.
That would be Abrams himself, and those ‘pro-Israel’ hawks who similarly conflate the Israel Lobby and the Jewish community.
Shame on them.

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What Do You Buy For the Children
David Harris-Gershon is author of the memoir What Do You Buy the Children of the Terrorist Who Tried to Kill Your Wife?, published recently by Oneworld Publications.
Follow him on Twitter @David_EHG.

6 thoughts on “Obama Is NOT Anti-Semitic for Calling Out the Israel Lobby's Warmongering

  1. How cute. You call out Abrams & Co. for their accusations of antisemitism, and you consistently accuse your political opponents of invoking antisemitic trope.
    The Abrams accusation is laughable, as are your cheap shots against your political opponents.
    Shame on both of you.

  2. Once again, as the writer of the Argentum Post, and a direct descendant of parents who were survivors of the Nazi genocide against Jews – and others, I highly commend Davis Harris-Gershon on this scholarly and rational and principled analysis.
    The American Council for Judaism has issued a Special Interest Report in its August 2015 edition titled “Michael Oren is Challenged for Attack on President Obama and American Jewish Critics of Israel” which further elaborates on the insidious ad hominem attacks on President Obama for having he courage to speak out and express what previous Presidents could have and should have expressed.
    See http://www.acjna.org/acjna/articles_detail.aspx?id=652
    In addition to Israel getting away with the worst and most egregious human rights violations, violations of international laws, and crimes against humanity, the United States power structure, due to its internal contradictions which are highly inflamed by mostly Republican right-wing ideological fanaticism coupled to utter corruption, arrogance, and ignorance, now our President has become the object of the most derisive, grotesque, dishonest, vilification by the revisionist Zionist AIPAC lobby and by its politically corrupted neocons and neoliberal supporters, at a time when our President must be given the due credit he does deserve for having ended torture in the U.S. occupied Cuban territory concentration camp of Guantanamo, and for having initiated the winding down of war on Afghanistan and Iraq which has been for more than a decade a colossally catastrophic tragic failure which has wasted thousands of American lives and hundred thousands of Iraqi and Afghani lives, not to mention the trillions of dollars, and were wars initiated on false premises.
    At this point when our President has succeeded in conjunction with all other major powers of the world in reaching peacefully an accord with Iran on the nuclear issue, the would be saboteurs of this accord are now stooping to character assassination and thereby expose their intellectual, ethical, and political bankruptcy.

    • Afred:
      “In addition to Israel getting away with the worst and most egregious human rights violations, violations of international laws, and crimes against humanity”
      You might want to take a look around te Middle East before writing this. While Israel is harldy white as the driven snow. its conduct pales in comparison to its neghbors.,. You might want top take a close look at events in Egypt. Beyond the ME, you might want to look at the gross conduct of the Taliban want they were in power. I suggest you place things in their correct context.
      My name is Fred, not Alfred

  3. When one considers the Iranian money that Obama, Kerry and Biden have received in the past and the Iranian money that left wing “Jewish” organizations such as J street have been receiving, it becomes clear who the most powerful lobby is and that’s the Iranian Lobby.

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