Why Does Media Matters Hate The Jews And Israel?

The really sick part of it is, along with their campaign against the Jewish people and the Jewish State, MMFA falsely attacks conservatives on Jewish issues in an attempt to brand them as Jew haters. The year-long MMFA campaign trying to falsely label Glenn Beck as an Anti-Semite is well known and readers of The Lid have read of the MMFA trying to brand this blogger as a Jew basher (a charge I didn’t hear about until hours later because it was made on the Sabbath), but MMFA has written inflammatory headlines to imply that there is is a concerted effort by right-wingers to bash Jews. For example they wrote this about Jim Hoft, the Gateway Pundit.

Hoft The Latest Right-Wing Media Figure To Attack American Jews For Supporting Obama

What what the content of Jim’s horrible attack on American Jews? It was a comment on a recent Gallup poll, which said that Jews were sticking with Obama:

Sad.

The destruction of Israel is at hand and Jewish Americans still march blindly behind Obama.

That’s all! Beyond that reader’s of Jim’s blog (as I am) will report that Gateway Pundit is strongly pro-Israel and regularly “has the back” of American Jews.

The truth is if you really want to see attacks on Israel and American Jews become a regular reader of MMFA. Here are just a few examples:

• 6/14/10 Media Matter’s Senior Policy Fellow MJ Rosenberg created a piece for Huffington Post claiming that Helen Thomas’ was not being anti-Semitic when she told Israeli Jews to go back to Russia and Poland. I wonder what he thinks about Thomas’ claim
  

  “We are owned by propagandists against the Arabs. There’s no question about that. Congress, the White House, and Hollywood, Wall Street, are owned by the Zionists. No question in my opinion. They put their money where there mouth is…We’re being pushed into a wrong direction in every way. [my emphasis]

• 7/12/10 An article written by Lara Friedman, of Americans for Peace Now, and Isaac Luria from J Street (both groups regularly demonize Israel) we learned that the years of Hamas rocket attacks against civilian towns in the Negev were Israel’s fault (because the left Gaza), Israel should negotiate with HAMAS, and Israel doesn’t need to be recognized as the Jewish state (a key for peace).

• 8/16/10 Criticized Fox News for having Bill Kristol on the air. Kristol’s offense was forming a pro-Israel PAC. Funny thing is, you never heard them complain about MSNBC having Al Sharpton on as a regular. Sharpton incited two anti-Semitic pogroms in NY which lead to a total of nine deaths. If MMFA truly cared about conflict of interest, why wouldn’t they write about President Obama receiving foreign policy advice from Samantha Power who has called for a US invasion of Israel.

• 1/28/11 Promoted the anti-Semitic meme that Jews control foreign policy. Senior Fellow MJ Rosenberg demonstrated why he defended Helen Thomas as not being anti-Semitic…he echoed some of her claims. Using the term Israel Lobby (its more PC than “Those Dammed Jews) MMFA claimed it was that foreign policy controlling lobby that caused the Egyptian uprising.
  

  If one needs additional proof that the “pro-Israel” lobby and the policies it dictates to US policymakers are bad for both the U.S. and Israel, look no further than what is happening in Egypt.

  The regime that the Israeli government and its U.S. lobby have depended upon to enforce the status quo is going down. It is not clear when, but it’s going to be soon, much sooner than anyone ever anticipated. And you can be sure that any democratic government that takes Mubarak’s place is not going to play the role of America’s (let alone Israel’s) enforcer in the Middle East.

  And later in the same article the MMFA writer implies the Jews control the media:
  

  I am often accused of harping on the lobby’s baleful influence. I plead guilty. But it’s my obligation because (1) I know from personal experience — 15 years on Capitol Hill and four at AIPAC — how it operates, (2) I know how little it really cares about Israel, and (3) I am free to tell the truth about it. If I worked in the mainstream media or in the U.S. government, I wouldn’t be.

• 2/15/11 and 2/17/11 Promoted falsehood that the Muslim Brotherhood does not want to attack Israel. Forget for a moment that the terrorist organization Hamas was created by the Muslim Brotherhood, since the Egyptian uprisings started there has been many examples of different Muslim Brotherhood figures attacking Israel. For example On Russian television, one Brotherhood leader, Rashad al-Bayoumi, said that when they came to power they will abolish the treaty altogether. Another, former spokesman Doctor Kamel Helbaoui, explained how they might get out of it.

• 5/11/11 Senior Fellow MJ with anti-Israel propaganda again. He says it doesn’t matter if Hamas recognizes Israel as long as Hamas recognizes the 1949 Armistice lines. But why does it matter whether Hamas recognizes Israel or not, so long as it agrees to permanently end terror attacks against Israel? Who needs its recognition? Per his usual style of half truths, MJ omits the fact that Hamas continues to promise the destruction of the “Zionist entity.” In other words they are cool with a State called Israel, as long as it is a Muslim State Of Israel.

• 5/20/11 MMFA’s Rosenberg promotes the anti-Semitic meme of a “Dual Loyalty” of American Jews, calling critics of Obama’s May 2011 Middle-East Address “Israeli-Firsters.”
  

  But he failed. Arabs saw the speech as a bunch of empty words. And the Israeli firsters went ballistic. Why? Because of one paragraph.

  The president said:

  The United States believes that negotiations should result in two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine. We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states. The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their full potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state.

  
  
  

While I disagree with the official MMFA interpretation of Obama’s speech, they have every right to have their opinion. What is disgusting is their challenge to the patriotism of the Jews who disagree with Barack Obama’s Middle East policy.

MMFA is quick to bash anybody who uses a Hitler reference (except for George Soros), and I am not by any means saying they are a bunch of Nazis, but they do use a lot of the same themes. MMFA claims the Jews control the Media and American foreign policy, in Mein Kampf, Hitler introduced to Nazi ideology “the idea of the Jews as an evil race struggling for world domination.”

The MMFA charges that American Jews who criticize Obama are “Israeli-firsters.” Hitler said:

The struggle for world domination will be fought entirely between us, between Germans and Jews…..Even when we have driven the Jew out of Germany, he remains our world enemy (Rauschning,Hitler Speaks,p. 234)

Understand, there is no claim here that MMFA has any intention of promoting another Holocaust against the Jewish people. What the argument is that the progressive organization will do and say anything to protect President Obama. In many cases the lack of a factual argument forces their writers to rely on old stereo-types to sell their point.

It is easy for MMFA to claim that the statements provided above as evidence were not anti-Semitic, after all its Sugar Daddy George Soros is a Jewish Holocaust survivor and all of the MMFA writers mentioned are at least Jewish-born and I assume still Jewish. That of course is an easy out, “some of their best friends …”

One example maybe, but there’s lots more examples of MMFA use of anti-Semitic themes and the twisting of facts about Israel. I would not claim to know if the Soros-funded group is anti-Semitic, its impossible to look into their hearts, but the constant attacks on American Jews made in its name, it is clear that MMFA leadership must know about and endorse those attacks. They are just too numerous to ignore.