by Bill Levinson

It is past time for the American people to express the revulsion and disgust that are truly appropriate for the Left’s behavior. A MoveOn.org Action Forum statement that Jews “did something” to deserve the Holocaust is not the isolated act of an individual flake or bigot; it is but one piece of a systematic pattern of behavior that permeates the Left:

(1) MoveOn.org’s Action Forum overflowed with not only anti-Semitic hate speech, but also 9/11 denial and hate speech directed against Catholics, evangelical Christians, and even Black people.
(2) Ward Churchill called the victims of 9/11 “Little Eichmanns,” who somehow “deserved it.”
(3) Michael Moore calls the terrorists who are murdering our men and women in uniform “Minutemen.” …

(4) Tufts University professor and prominent Democratic leader Barbara Grossman allegedly orchestrated a kangaroo court trial, throughout which she allegedly made prejudicial statements, to punish a campus publication for criticizing militant “Islam.” One of Barbara Grossman’s fellow Committee on Student Life members said that “Labeling Islam violent is unacceptable in any way, shape, or form.” (Tell that to Theo van Gogh, Nick Berg, Margaret Hassan, and Daniel Pearl.)
(5) The National Jewish Democratic Council (double oxymoron, there is nothing Jewish or Democratic about it) portrays Christians in a “this is the enemy” context while posting anti-Semitic “Jew as Christian hater” propaganda.
(6) Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards all appeared at MoveOn.org, the National Jewish Democratic Council, and Al Sharpton’s racist and anti-Semitic National Action Network.

WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE?

Here is what MoveOn.org’s Action Forum had to say on why Jews deserved the Holocaust. (Original URL of the MoveOn.org posting; the Action Forum is still “on vacation to conserve technology bandwidth” for last November’s election. Our comments are in brackets.

The Jews have 9,000 prisoners the Arabs have 3. It’s the Jews that are trying to push the Arabs into the sea by occupying and annexing their land, bulldozing refugee camps and orchards.
The Jews are killing the Arabs on a ratio of 10 to 1. [A Jewish Voice for Peace’s Muzzlewatch found this objectionable; JVP apparently thinks the terrorists should be allowed to kill more Jews.]
The Palestinians live in a prison, no way in or out without passing through an abusive Jewish guard gate. [In other words, the same way Americans must pass through metal detectors and let TSA personnel inspect their carry-on luggage before we get on airplanes.]
The Jews demand that the Pals. disarm prior to any negotiating of what if anything they’ll get back. That is called begging not negotiating.
Nearly 3/4 of the entire Jewish population was exterminated. If you can’t tell us why, We are stuck with logic and commonsense.
I’m saying Jews instead of Israelis because I read the Israeli newspapers, the “Israeli Lobby” papers and have seen the House vote 410-8 in support Israel while the UN typically votes 191-4 against Israel. Also the billions in aid and military equipment are conspicuous. The world court unanimously voted against Israel.
By blaming Hitler you don’t have to face the truth.
I will stop condemning Jews when they become acclimated with all people.
Stop professing to know and start reading.

9 of 12 MoveOn.org Action Forum members voted to AGREE with this

This did not happen in a vacuum, or without the knowledge and approval of MoveOn.org’s leaders and moderators. It is a matter of proven record that MoveOn.org was exercising editorial control over the Action Forum. The moderators removed our negative comments about Al “Bloodsucking Jews” Sharpton, and other people’s pro-Israel comments, while letting the above statement and others like it stand. The Action Forum FAQ page says that the moderators read each post twice. Furthermore, official bulletins by MoveOn.org’s Noah T. Winer support and encourage positions that, if not quite as extreme as saying that Jews deserved the Holocaust, come close.

MoveOn Bulletin
Friday, June 20, 2003
Noah T. Winer, Editor
noah.winer “at” moveon.org

Subscribe online at:
http://www.moveon.org/moveonbulletin/

INTRODUCTION: WHERE DOES THE ROAD MAP LEAD?
In July, 2000 Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak broke off talks with Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat at the Camp David summit hosted by U.S. President Bill Clinton. That September, Ariel Sharon, chairman of the Likud party, made a provocative visit to the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Control over this holy site for both Muslims and Jews is contested by Palestinians and Israelis. The visit implied Israeli sovereignty over all Jerusalem, the eastern portion of which is considered occupied territory by the international community. So began the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising.

As in the first intifada in the late 1980s, the demand is for an end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem — which has persisted since 1967 — and acknowledgment of the Palestinian refugees right to return to the villages from which they were forced to leave during the 1948 war that established the State of Israel. In the 33 months since, human death has saturated the region: 816 Israelis and 2,384 Palestinians have been killed. [That’s less than three Palestinians for every Israeli; that must make MoveOn.org and A Jewish Voice for Peace happy!]

…From The Nation:
“For in failing to focus on the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, about to enter its 37th year, and on Israeli settlements, which underpin that occupation, the Road Map misses an opportunity to end this conflict. Instead, it concentrates on Palestinian violence and how to combat it — as if it came out of nowhere, and as if, were it to be halted, the situation of occupation and settlement would be normal.”
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030609&s=khalidi

FACTS ON THE GROUND: THE SEPARATION WALL
Gush Shalom reports that the separation wall Israel is constructing in the West Bank is not at all along the internationally recognized 1967 “green line” border. The wall, officially being built for security, annexes illegal settlements into Israel.
http://www.gush-shalom.org/thewall/

A troubling report on the 25-foot tall separation wall from Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot describes how the system of barbed concrete walls and armed watchtowers will imprison hundreds of thousands of Palestinians without access to their agricultural lands.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1546.shtml

The Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment on legal efforts to block the wall.
http://www.lawsociety.org/Press/Preleases/2002/oct/oct15e.html

This “divided loyalties” slur, which was repeated frequently in the Action Forum, came directly from Noah Winer.

MoveOn Bulletin
Friday, May 9, 2003
Noah T. Winer, Editor

PAX ISRAELICA?
Nearly all PNAC participants, whether Jewish or Christian, are right-wing Zionists who support Ariel Sharon’s Likud Party. In 1996, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and others drafted a paper for incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urging him to make “a clean break” from the Oslo peace process preferring “peace through strength,” including the ouster of Saddam Hussein.
http://www.israeleconomy.org/strat1.htm

This essay describes many of the familiar neo-conservatives as having “dual loyalties,” making policy decisions in the interests of the State of Israel as much as the United States.
http://www.counterpunch.org/christison1213.html

The Counterpunch article is even worse. This is the kind of reference that MoveOn uses for its official publications.

“The link between active promoters of Israeli interests and policymaking circles is stronger by several orders of magnitude in the Bush administration, which is peppered with people who have long records of activism on behalf of Israel in the United States, of policy advocacy in Israel, and of promoting an agenda for Israel often at odds with existing U.S. policy. These people, who can fairly be called Israeli loyalists, are now at all levels of government, from desk officers at the Defense Department to the deputy secretary level at both State and Defense, as well as on the National Security Council staff and in the vice president’s office.”

So there we have it. MoveOn.org says Israel does not have a right to exist, that an undivided Jerusalem is not the capital of Israel, and that Jews “did something” to deserve the Holocaust. Ward Churchill says that the victims of 9/11 somehow deserved it too:

Finally, I have never characterized all the September 11 victims as “Nazis.” What I said was that the “technocrats of empire” working in the World Trade Center were the equivalent of “little Eichmanns.” Adolf Eichmann was not charged with direct killing but with ensuring the smooth running of the infrastructure that enabled the Nazi genocide. Similarly, German industrialists were legitimately targeted by the Allies.

…It is not disputed that the Pentagon was a military target, or that a CIA office was situated in the World Trade Center. Following the logic by which U.S. Defense Department spokespersons have consistently sought to justify target selection in places like Baghdad, this placement of an element of the American “command and control infrastructure” in an ostensibly civilian facility converted the Trade Center itself into a “legitimate” target.

Res ipsa loquitur, the thing speaks for itself. When are we going to simply declare that MoveOn.org, Al Sharpton, Ward Churchill, and Tufts University’s Committee on Student Life are so far beyond the pale of civilized political discourse that they, and anyone who associates with them, should be written off completely?

---

---

Related: Anti-Semitism, Pure Politics

---