National Journal (an Atlantic Media production) featured a panel of experts on national security entitled "How to Talk about Israel." (See at National Journal; launched Monday, March 16, 2009; visited 4/7/09). A brief citation from the following piece was quoted in "Anti-Semitism and the Economic Crisis" by Ira Stoll on the Opinion page of the Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, 4/7/09.
The emphases are mine. For the post itself, see here:
Michael F. Scheuer, Adjunct Professor of Security Studies, Georgetown University
This is a good question, but the discussion will be feckless if it avoids what the moderator refers to as intimations that may be "ugly." Well, friends, ugly is here and it has been here for decades. There is indeed an identifiable fifth column of pro-Israel U.S. citizens -- I have described them here and elsewhere as Israel-Firsters -- who have consciously made Israel's survival and protection their first priority, and who see worth in America only to the extent that its resources and manpower can be exploited to protect and further the interests of Israel in its religious war-to-the-death with the Arabs. These are disloyal citizens in much the same sense that the Civil War's disloyal northern "Copperheads" sought to help the Confederates destroy the Union. The Israel-Firsters help Israel suborn U.S. citizens to spy for Israel; they use their fortunes and political action organizations to buy U.S. politicians with campaign donations; and most of all they use their ready access to the media to disguise their own disloyalty by denigrating as anti-Semites or appeasers fellow citizens who dare to challenge them. The Israel-Firsters are unquestionably enemies of America’s republican experiment and will have to be destroyed as the Copperheads were destroyed -- by the people, after a full public deabte [sic], at the ballot box.
This is a good question, but the discussion will be feckless if it avoids what the moderator refers to as intimations that may be "ugly." Well, friends, ugly is here and it has been here for decades. There is indeed an identifiable fifth column of pro-Israel U.S. citizens -- I have described them here and elsewhere as Israel-Firsters -- who have consciously made Israel's survival and protection their first priority, and who see worth in America only to the extent that its resources and manpower can be exploited to protect and further the interests of Israel in its religious war-to-the-death with the Arabs. These are disloyal citizens in much the same sense that the Civil War's disloyal northern "Copperheads" sought to help the Confederates destroy the Union. The Israel-Firsters help Israel suborn U.S. citizens to spy for Israel; they use their fortunes and political action organizations to buy U.S. politicians with campaign donations; and most of all they use their ready access to the media to disguise their own disloyalty by denigrating as anti-Semites or appeasers fellow citizens who dare to challenge them. The Israel-Firsters are unquestionably enemies of America’s republican experiment and will have to be destroyed as the Copperheads were destroyed -- by the people, after a full public deabte [sic], at the ballot box.
What does Michael Scheuer mean? According to him:
- Supporting Israel makes an American a traitor to one's country, "disloyal" and "enemies" and by definition opposed to the "republican experiment"?
- That Israel is undergoing a religious war-to-the-death with the Arabs?
- That Jewish sovereignty in Israel is by definition religious?
- That Israel's existence (?) is akin to the Confederate States of America? That only one side, the Palestinian, can don the mantle of justice implied by the Union side in the Civil War?
- That supporter of Israel must be "destroyed"--don't worry, he only means "at the ballot box"?
I am very concerned at the mellifluity of the deep aversion to the Jewish people implicit in this short piece.
-- H. A. Massig
