Since October 7, The Israel Lobby has mobilized all its enormous resources to launch a massive attack on anyone who criticizes Israel’s genocide against Palestinians. That includes mobilizing The Lobby’s creatures in Congress and in State governments and Law Enforcement to suppress protests, especially on college campuses. The federal response has been largely kept under wraps, but the FBI detaining and questioning of the prominent Israeli historian of the Nakba, Ilan Pappé, is a clear signal that the federal government is all over this effort, as well. The FBI copied Pappé’s phone and asked for the names of his Arab and Muslim contacts in the US—undoubtedly for future investigative purposes. That should tell you exactly how wide a net is being cast. What it doesn’t tell you, but what you can surmise, is whether the FBI is sharing that information about USPersons with foreign powers.
The “conservative” narrative in all this is that all true blue, er, red blooded Americans will opt to crush free speech if free speech offends Zionist sensibilities. Red blooded Americans will unquestionably equate criticism of Zionist inspired genocide with anti-Semitism and will support laws and regulatory measures to suppress such criticism and punish the persons involved. Sound like a tough sell to people who claim to support the Constitution?
A good example—and this is actually a repeat example, one that I’ve seen elsewhere over a matter of weeks—appears at Real Clear Politics:
The author is Susan Crabtree:
Susan Crabtree is a political correspondent for RealClearPolitics. She previously served as a senior writer for the WashingtonFree Beacon, and spent five years as a White House Correspondent for the Washington Examiner.
Do we have here a case of dueling headlines? Is “Billionaires” a deliberate contrast to the WaPo’s recent headline: Business titans privately urged NYC mayor to use police on Columbia protesters, chats show? Are “billionaires” and “business titans” pretty much part of the same demographic—the super wealthy? One way or another, it turns out that the billionaires and business titans in question turn out to be almost exclusively Jewish.
Anyway …
The tactic that Crabtree and others employ is to frame everything in black and white terms, so to speak: Pro-Palestinian/Anti-Semitic, Pro-Palestinian/Anti-Israel, Pro-Palestinian/Anti-Jewish, Anti-Zionist/Anti-Semitic, Anti-Genocide/Anti-Semtic, Pro-Peace/Anti-Israel, Anti-Semitic, Nakba research/Anti-Semtics, Holocaust Denial, Pro-Peace/Anti-Semitic. The list of antinomies can go on indefinitely, limited only by the fever of one’s imagination. The common factor is that any oppostion to Zionism is by definition—the definition insisted upon by Zionists and their Lobby—anti-Semitic. The more you deny that you’re anti-Semitic while holding skeptical or critical or reasonable views, the worse you are—you’re a deceiver.
The narrative is this: George Soros funds the Tides Foundation (follow the link to see how the mechanics of this work), which funds groups like Jewish Voices For Peace, and the Tides Foundation contributes to “anti-Israel” groups that have protested against Israeli genocide—which, by definition, makes them anti-Semitic. Therefore, Red blooded Americans should favor suppressing free speech if it is critical of Israel, because George Soros.
Of course the truth is more complicated. The Tides Foundation is a huge Prog clearinghouse for contributions to Prog causes. Some of the Prog groups that receive money from Tides and have participated in anti-genocide protests are focused solely on Palestine, but many others have more broad ranging agendas. Soros’ money—and the money of other big donors to Tides, such as the Rockefellers and Pritzkers—goes to a wide range of Prog causes. It is not an anti-Semitic clearinghouse as such, nor would it simply go away without Soros’ big bucks.
For example, from the Tides Foundation Wikipedia page:
Tides has received at least $3.5 million from liberal financier and political activist George Soros.
…
In 2023, the Washington Examiner, a U.S. conservative news outlet, reported that the Tides Foundation and its affiliate, the Tides Center, had donated over $1 million to anti-Israel groups behind demonstrations pushing for an Israel-Gaza conflict ceasefire and downplaying Palestinian terror in the Middle East.
Note two things.
First, by far not all of Soros’ money went to “anti-Israel” groups. In fact, it’s entirely possible that only a relatively small amount of the $1 million that went to “anti-Israel” groups actually came from Soros. That’s because money from other big donors—Rockefellers and Pritzkers—also went into that $1 million. As well as money from smaller (but still large) donors.
Second, note the tendentious characterizations pushed by the Washington Examiner—Crabtree’s former empoyer and a media outlet dominated by The Lobby. Do you favor a ceasefire in Gaza? You’re “anti-Israel”—and that means, you freak, that you’re an anti-Semite! Or how about this. What does it mean to “downplay Palestinian terror”? Larry Johnson recently demonstrated that in conflicts within Palestine between Jews and Arabs, Palestinian deaths are exponentially higher than Jewish deaths. Was Johnson “downplaying Palestinian terror?” That depends, doesn’t it? On your perspective. But from the perspective of Crabtree and The Lobby, the answer is clear: You betcher ass he’s downplaying Palestinian terrorism and he’s an anti-Semite, just like anyone who navigated to his article on the internet! And the FBI knows who you are! Oh, wait, I shouldn’t have said that.
Compare that to this passage from Crabtree’s article. Pay close attention to the deeply tendentious characterizations, which are too frequent to all be listed:
Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow are two additional organizations deeply involved in the student protests and backed by the Tides Foundations, which is Soros-funded. Jewish Voice for Peace, which openly describes itself as anti-Zionist, has also received $500,000 in funds from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund over the last five years. David Rockefeller Jr. sits on the Rockefeller Brothers’ board. The group has separately provided grants to both the Tides Foundation and the Tides Center, as Politico reported in early May.
So, 1) Tides is not simply “Soros-funded”. It gets money, and lots of it, from wealthy progs. 2) Jewish Voice for Peace is characterized as “openly” “anti-Zionist”, which translates into “openly anti-Semitic” in Zionist speak.
The Pritzkers founded the Libra Foundation, which seeds smaller nonprofits, many of which have participated in pro-Palestinian marches, according to the same Politico report. One of them is the Climate Justice Alliance, which has labeled President Biden “Genocide Joe” for his handling of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
OK, how many is “many”. More than half? More than a third? How many is many? What does it mean to be “pro-Palestinian”? Is that a bad thing? What would it mean to be “anti-Palestinian”—or is that even a concept that is recognized, much less verbalized, in Zionist speak? After all, there is no lack of totally wacked Zionists on the internet to tell you that “Palestinians” don’t even exist. So, in Zionist speak “pro-Palestinian” equates to something like “anti-Jewish”—no questions asked. Crabtree smears by implication, which is a lot easier than providing a fact based argument.
Next we learn that the very wealthy Pritzkers—major funders for Tides—are funding, among many other Prog causes, Black activist groups that, coincidentally, have “promoted” “anti-Israel protests.”
Others benefitting from Pritzker largesse include Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity, which has helped promote anti-Israel protests, and the Immigrant Defense Project, which participated in a protest in D.C. earlier this year in which police arrested a number of participants. The Pritzkers also help financially support the Tides Foundation, which funds other small left-wing groups, including Adalah Justice Project, a prominent participant in the Columbia University protests and encampment, which police disbanded in early May.
House Republicans have launched multiple investigations into the funding of the campus protests and encampments.
Need I add? I abominate Tides and all its works—to the extent that I have knowledge of them. But Crabtree is presenting this as a reason for conservatives to support the outrageous efforts to suppress free speech in the name of “standing with” Israel—no questions asked. If you ask questions you’re part of the problem, as far as Zionists are concerned.
In a bigger sense, this all reflects what I have called The War Among The Jews. On the one hand you have wealthy Prog Jews like Soros, the Pritzkers, and others who are major donors to Tides, and through Tides to organizations some of which may support justice for Palestinians and an end to Israeli genocide.
On the other hand, you have wealthy Jews—most of whom normally donate to wacked liberal Dems—who happen to also be wacked Zionists and/or Jewish Supremacists. These are the “business titans” described by the WaPo in the article linked above as well as in my post Judge Nap: Jewish Lobby Or Israel Lobby?.
Make of it what you will. The great virtue of Crabtree’s article is that it reveals a fair amount of detail regarding the depths to which the The Lobby’s operatives have penetrated and populated the federal bureaucracy and the lengths to which they have gone to marginalize pro-Palestinian advocacy and to smear it as pro-terror and anti-Semitic. This has been going on for many years, and one can sense the frustration of The Lobby feels as the Palestinian advocacy groups slowly gain traction in mainstream America. Crabtree draws on here enormous experience, many years of “journalism” on behalf of The Lobby and whatever its needs are at any given time, to present this useful information.
My point is a simple one. Conservatives should not confuse opposition to Progs with support for those who would suppress the free flow of information and free speech. That is where the gaslighting of the controlled conservative media is trying to lead Americans.
Do you have a problem with Israeli genocide? You just might be a Chicom! So says Janet Levy at Amthinker today.
Hard to make this stuff up, but they keep trying.
Wow, Mark you should be more careful about what you notice, and then publish. Noticing things about certain favored groups results in considerable undue scrutiny from our bribed, out of bounds fedgov. Watch your six !!!