Abe Foxman’s Retirement: A TOO Retrospective, Part 2

Part 1.

The Canard Strategy. Foxman loves to silence his opponents by simply saying that they are resorting to canards. Andrew Joyce began his article “Justice Denied: Thoughts on Truth, “canards,” and the Marc Rich Case” by noting:

One of the most intriguing features of the posturing of the Anti-Defamation League, and other Jewish ethnic activist organizations, is their frequent discussion of what they call ‘canards.’ There are, I am informed, many ‘canards’ ranging from allegations that ‘the Jews’ killed God and mutilated communion wafers, to allegations that Jews control the media and have inordinate influence in the areas of culture and politics. … It was apparent to me that the question of whether Jews were supernatural ‘demons,’ and the question of Jewish over-representation in the media or at elite universities, were clearly worlds apart — the former simply ridiculous and the latter capable of being empirically examined and, at least in theory, logically and rationally discussed. …

Over time, organizations such as the ADL have come to jealously guard this list [of canards], and ‘canard’ has in fact achieved the remarkable feat of acting like a magic word — capable on deployment of making even the most blatant Jewish misdemeanor disappear. Take for example American Jews, who are no more ‘loyal’ to Israel than a Chinaman — because to suggest otherwise would be to employ the ‘canard’ of ‘dual loyalty.’ Likewise, Jews have an unblemished record when it comes to matters financial — because to say otherwise would be to employ the ‘canard’ of the greedy or untrustworthy Jew. Palestinian children never fall victim to Israeli incendiary devices — because to say otherwise would be to employ the ‘canard’ of the ‘Blood Libel.’

A good example of Foxman using the canard strategy related to dual loyalty was his reaction to a Huffpo article that attributed Sen. Bob Menendez’s attempt to undermine the Obama administration’s Iran policy to AIPAC influence.  Now one might think that the matter of AIPAC influence would be obvious or at least a strong possibility for a senator who received $340,000 from AIPAC (more than any other candidate in the 2012 election cycle), but Foxman sees nothing but a canard:

Whether done intentionally or not, it is deeply troubling to see how easily even a well-respected mainstream media outlet like the Huffington Post can fail to see the ugly stereotype projected when the language of “sabotage” is combined with the image of an identifiably American Jewish organization known for its effectiveness in promoting U.S. political support for Israel. The charge of dual loyalty leveled against Jews has, for centuries, been a catalyst for scapegoating and vilifying Jews. It has no legitimate place in our society.

But it’s an effective strategy:

The result of this strategy is that legitimate discussions of Jewish influence and dual loyalty are off limits under pain of being charged with “anti-Semitism.” Foxman’s tactic, very familiar by now, is to argue that somehow the fact that Jews have been charged with dual loyalty and power over governments over the centuries logically implies that any current suggestion of dual loyalty and influence by Jews could not possibly have any empirical basis—that such charges are automatically nothing more than scapegoating. …

The common sense of it is just the opposite: If over the centuries Jewish groups in widely separated times and places have often been seen as influencing governments to pursue policies beneficial to Jews but not necessarily the rest of society and as more loyal to Jews in other societies than to the wider society they live in, the obvious suggestion is that these are real patterns, as indeed they are (see here, p. 38ff on Jews as an influential elite and p. 60ff for the pattern of dual loyalty; it’s interesting that the first examples of both of these “canards” may be found in the Book of Exodus). …

The charge of “age-old anti-Semitic canards” cuts off any rational, empirically based debate before it can start, which is exactly what the ADL wants. The charges themselves are portrayed as nothing but irrational anti-Semitism reflecting a medieval mindset. No need to discuss the evidence. (“The Canard Strategy in Service of War with Iran“)

The canard strategy was also on display in the wake of the financial meltdown:

It’s well known that when the financial meltdown first hit, the ADL was concerned about “a dramatic upsurge” in anti-Jewish messages on Internet discussion boards devoted to finance and the economy in reaction to the huge bailout of Wall Street. The ADL press release is predictable in its attempt to characterize such outbursts as irrational hatred against Jews: Abe Foxman complained darkly that in times of economic downturns, ”The age-old canards … about Jews and money are always just beneath the surface.” (“Jews Embarrassed by Jews: Slumlords — and Goldman Sachs“)

Argumentum ad David Duke. Another strategy is to argue that if David Duke (or Hitler) approves of something, it must be bad.

The very first move that Jewish activists (including the ADL’s Abe Foxman) made in their campaign to discredit [John] Mearsheimer and [Stephen] Walt [The Israel Lobby] was to solicit Duke’s approval of their writing — and Duke’s approval was then dutifully published throughout the mainstream media, from the Washington Post to the New York Sun and the Wall Street Journal. (“The Kvetcher, the ADL, and David Duke“)

As with the canard strategy, the result is that there is no need to consider Mearsheimer and Walt’s arguments and the actual evidence, much less consider the truth of what David Duke has to say on the subject.

Taking Donations from Marc Rich. Although Foxman never fails to invoke the moral high ground in rationalizing Jewish interests, he was not above supporting financial criminal Marc Rich in the context of Rich’s $250,000 donation to the ADL. Andrew Joyce has great fun skewering Foxman’s pretensions of moral rectitude when he defended Rich by recounting how the money Rich obtained by defrauding the U.S. government was used to fund Jewish charities like Birthright Israel ($5 million).

In the petition [on behalf of Rich], signed by, among others, Abraham Foxman, it was stated: “Marc Rich has made amends. Over the past twenty years through his foundations he has donated over $100,000,000  to educational, cultural and social welfare programs. … His life has been committed to making the world a better place.”

A better place for who? For Jews. According to the authors of House Report No. 454 (p. 189), almost every cent that Rich donated went to Jewish causes, Jewish politicians, and Jewish organizations. The logic of the petition then is this: Rich defrauded United States taxpayers, 97% of whom are not Jewish, to the tune of over $100 million, and illegally funded a then enemy power [Iran], but because he funneled this illegal cash into the coffers of his own tiny ethnic group he should be free from punishment.

My, what a fine confluence of interests. I certainly love it when my tax dollars fund Birthright Israel! According to the authors of House Report No.454 (p. 167), Mr. Foxman’s letter was “one of the most prominently displayed in the petition,” something they attributed to the fact that “Rich has given the ADL a total of $250,000 since he fled the country in 1983.” There’s that confluence of interests again — you see, all that illegal cash can now support the ADL’s efforts to teach your children that they’re bigots. (“Justice Denied: Thoughts on Truth, ‘Canards’and the Marc Rich Case: Part Two“)

Hyperethnocentric activists like Foxman really can’t even imagine what it’s like to have interests that aren’t the same as Jewish interests.

Jews are not an elite. As noted, in Part 1, Venture capitalist Tom Perkins got in trouble with the ADL for calling attention to the elite status of Jews in pre-WWII Germany. But it’s a recurrent problem. The fallback position is to argue that the fact that Jews are an elite makes no difference. Edmund Connelly wrote that

the Jewish dominance of Hollywood is so obvious and undeniable that Los Angeles Times’ columnist Joel Stein recently announced it. What else can you say when all eight major film studios are run by Jews. And Abe Foxman seems to agree. So I guess it’s okay for us at TOO to say it.

But, according to Foxman, these Hollywood Jewish executives just “happen to be Jewish,” as if the Jewishness of Hollywood really doesn’t make any difference. But of course it does, and the War on Christmas is Exhibit A for that proposition.

There are a great many other examples besides the war on Christmas, including coverage of Israel and how cultural pluralism and anti-Semitism are portrayed. For example,

Perhaps the most important issue Jews and Jewish organizations have championed is cultural pluralism — the idea that the United States ought not to be ethnically and culturally homogeneous. As described in The Culture of Critique, Jewish organizations and Jewish intellectual movements have championed cultural pluralism in many ways, especially as powerful and effective advocates of an open immigration policy. The media have supported this perspective by portraying cultural pluralism almost exclusively in positive terms — that cultural pluralism is easily achieved and is morally superior to a homogeneous Christian culture made up mainly of white non-Jews. Characters who oppose cultural pluralism are portrayed as stupid and bigoted (Lichter et al. 1994, 251), the classic being the Archie Bunker character in Norman Lear’s All in the Family television series. Departures from racial and ethnic harmony are portrayed as entirely the result of white racism (Powers et al. 1996, 173). …

In general, television portrays Jewish issues ‘with respect, relative depth, affection and good intentions, and the Jewish characters who appear in these shows have, without any doubt, been Jewish — often depicted as deeply involved in their Judaism’ (Pearl & Pearl 1999, 5). …

Television presents images of Jewish issues that conform to the views of mainstream Jewish organizations. Television ‘invariably depicts anti-Semitism as an ugly, abhorrent trait that must be fought at every turn’ (p. 103). It is seen as metaphysical and beyond analysis. There is never any rational explanation for anti-Semitism; anti-Semitism is portrayed as an absolute, irrational evil. Positive, well-liked, non-Jewish characters, such as Mary Tyler Moore, often lead the fight against anti-Semitism. …

Regarding Israel, ‘on the whole, popular TV has conveyed the fact that Israel is the Jewish homeland with a strong emotional pull upon Diaspora Jews, that it lives in perpetual danger surrounded by foes, and that as a result of the constant and vital fight for its survival, it often takes extraordinary (sometimes rogue) measures in the fields of security and intelligence’ (Pearl & Pearl 1999, 173). Non-Jews are portrayed ashaving deep admiration and respect for Israel, its heroism and achievements. Israel is seen as a haven for Holocaust survivors, and Christians are sometimes portrayed as having an obligation to Israel because of the Holocaust. (see here, pp. 55–59)

In another article, Connelly touched on Foxman’s role in getting director Oliver Stone to apologize for stating the obvious:

The Wall Street Journal reported this past summer that Stone said that “public opinion was focused on the Holocaust because of ‘Jewish domination of the media.’” Stone also said that the Jews “stay on top of every comment, the most powerful lobby in Washington. Israel has f—– up United States foreign policy for years.” (“Rich Sanchez on Jewish Media Power“)

Stone got off relatively easy, perhaps, as Connelly suggests, because he is part Jewish. After Stone’s grovel (“Jews obviously do not control media or any other industry”), Foxman noted,  “I believe he now understands the issues and where he was wrong, and this puts an end to the matter.”

As noted in Part 1, Foxman expressed his displeasure with Pat Buchanan’s column “Are Liberals Anti-WASP?” where Buchanan had the temerity to call attention to Jewish overrepresentation on the U.S. Supreme Court by writing, “If Kagan is confirmed, Jews, who represent less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, will have 33 percent of the Supreme Court seats. Is this the Democrats’ idea of diversity?” As usual, the thrust of Foxman’s position is to remove any consideration of the actual evidence. In this context, I noted that

Liberals are fond of making arguments that ethnic and religious diversity affect people’s judgments and therefore we should do everything we can to promote diversity. For example, Sonia Sotomayor’s famous “Wise Latina” comment was doubtless a huge asset for her among her liberal supporters. But Foxman is implying that Kagan’s  Jewishness will have no influence at all on her judgments and anyone who says otherwise is a rabid anti-Semite.

Of course, this is ridiculous. There are a whole lot of reasons to believe that Kagan’s Jewishness will indeed affect her judgments. The fact that Elena Kagan is the product of New York’s Jewish leftist sub-culture makes a huge difference in what we can expect from her — particularly given her views on the First Amendment and executive power that are in line with the mainstream Jewish community [i.e., opposed to free speech and in favor of strong executive power]. (“The New Elite Doesn’t Officially Exist“)

Foxman also expressed outrage at a rather pathetic attempt by Rush Limbaugh to get liberal Jews to oppose Obama. The ADL quoted Limbaugh as saying,

To some people, banker is a code word for Jewish; and guess who Obama is assaulting?  He’s assaulting bankers.  He’s assaulting money people.  And a lot of those people on Wall Street are Jewish. So I wonder if there’s – if there’s starting to be some buyer’s remorse there.

Without discussing actual Jewish power on Wall Street, Foxman resorted to the Canard Strategy:

While the age-old stereotype about Jews and money has a long and sordid history, it also remains one of the main pillars of anti-Semitism and is widely accepted by many Americans.  His [Limbaugh’s]  notion that Jews vote based on their religion, rather than on their interests as Americans, plays into the hands of anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists. (“What’s Gotten Into Rush Limbaugh?“)

Foxman’s philosophy is that mentioning Jewish identity is just fine if one is referring to Jonas Salk or Albert Einstein (although perhaps not mentioning Einstein’s attitudes bordering on racial Zionism [see here, p.3] to non-Jewish audiences). But Jewish identity should never be mentioned when it plays into negative stereotypes about Jewish behavior.

In December 2008 the astonishing news broke of Bernard Madoff’s immense Ponzi scheme — the biggest in history, apparently, with a notional value approaching $65 Billion.. This was very rapidly followed by loud complaints by prominent Jewish leaders such as the Anti-Defamation League’s Abe Foxman and the American Jewish Committee’s David Harris, to the effect that the media coverage of this scandal was facilitating anti-Semitism by repeatedly noting that Madoff is Jewish. (John Graham and Kevin MacDonald, “Is the Madoff Scandal Paradigmatic?“).

The same thing happened when slumlord Menachem Stark was murdered and newspapers highlighted his Jewish identity:

In a letter to the New York Post, the Anti-Defamation League called the Post’s headline “insensitive” and also took issue with the accompanying article for referring to Stark as a “millionaire Hasidic slumlord” in its lead sentence.” In the ADL’s ideal world, the story would be presented without any mention of him being a Jew and certainly without a photo clearly marking him as a Hasid. (“Two Ingroup Morality Items“)

The Cordon Sanitaire: Keeping Discussion of White Interests and Identity out of the Mainstream Media. Pat Buchanan’s appearance on James Edward’s radio show to promote his book, Suicide of a Superpower, received a great deal of media attention, as recounted in a TOO blog post by Edwards who notes “Pat’s unintimidated response to the interviewer’s point that ADL head Abe Foxman condemned the interview: ‘I think there’s an awful lot of smearing being done by the Anti-Defamation League frankly over the years of individuals who simply disagree with them maybe about U.S. policy toward Israel.’”

Among Buchanan’s many sins  was to appear on a show where White interests and White identity are taken for granted and seen as entirely legitimate—which of course results in the ADL saying that he “openly affiliated with white supremacists.” (Similarly, George Soros-funded Media Matters was quite upset when CNN quoted Peter Brimelow and James Edwards on immigration-related issues.)

People who have a sense of White identity and White interests must be kept out of the big media at all costs. Blacks and Latinos who identify with their race/ethnic group and seek to advance their interests by, for example, establishing organizations like La Raza and the NAACP are absolutely sane and normal, and the organized Jewish community has established strong connections to these organizations. Jews who fail to strongly identify as Jews and support the organized Jewish community are “self-hating Jews.” But for Foxman and the ADL, Whites who identify as Whites and advocate for White interests are “White supremacists,” while Whites who disavow their racial identity and interests are the epitome of moral rectitude. It’s really a war against White America.

Engaging in Aggressive, Hostile Behavior against National Cultures Despite Possible Blowback. Foxman’s name came up in a discussion of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s quotation of a passage from a Jewish observer that Jewish participation and broad sympathy for the Bolsheviks during and after the Revolution “had astonishingly suicidal overtones.” (Incidentally, the issue of Jewish involvement and support for the Bolsheviks resurfaced in Russia recently when a politician from Vladimir Putin’s party claimed of Jews that “You destroyed our country in 1917 and you destroyed our country in 1991.”)

Foxman has at times seemed aware that advocating massive non-White immigration is dangerous for Jews:

Most famously, Stephen Steinlight has called attention to the danger to Jews of Muslim immigration, and Abe Foxman has agonized about the fact that Latinos are unlikely to be deeply attached to Jewish issues, such as the Holocaust and Israel. Moreover, if the Western media was more attuned to White interests, knowledge of Jewish promotion of non-White immigration would doubtless lead to anti-Jewish attitudes.

Thus, despite the relatively mild, politically weak anti-Jewish attitudes that have occurred in the U.S. historically (and no violence to speak of), Foxman and the rest of the organized Jewish community continue to push ahead with the project of dispossessing the historical American nation. Indeed, Foxman is (correctly) implying that White Christians are relatively “user friendly” to Jews because of their proneness to guilt over issues such as the holocaust and to Israel (e.g., Christian Zionists).

Similarly in Europe, anti-Jewish attitudes and behavior stem overwhelmingly from the Muslim community, but this has not dampened the enthusiasm of the organized Jewish community for multiculturalism and continued displacement-level immigration by Muslims (see Geert Wilders’ Unrequited Love“). Another TOO article noted that the ADL and liberal American Jews “are as one when it comes to supporting Muslims as part of the non-White coalition. Here’s Abe Foxman cataloging all the ways that the ADL supports the political and cultural aims of Muslims in America. The only difference between liberal Jews and the ADL is that the ADL can’t find any fault with Israel” (“Jewish liberals and Israel: Managing the enemy“).

Foxman’s solution is to support non-White minorities and hope to make alliances with them. Foxman:

In general today, one of the long-term challenges for the American Jewish community is evident in demographic forecasts that predict that in two or three decades, certain minority groups are expected to become a majority in the United States. A recent ADL poll showed that 12 percent of Americans hold anti-Semitic views — but among African-Americans, the figure is 28 percent, and among foreign-born Hispanics it is 35 percent.

“If 20 years from now the largest caucus in Congress is Hispanic, they will have a great deal to say about where foreign aid goes,” says [ADL head Abraham] Foxman. “On church-state issues and all kinds of social issues — some of which impact directly on the Jewish community and some indirectly — they will have a great influence. We are working on it now, so as they become the majority force, there is a sensitivity, a relationship. It’s a major challenge.”

Is this a rational strategy?

The fact that Jews are doomed to follow their gut hostility about Europeans and their culture doesn’t mean that they aren’t making rational calculations about the future. Foxman’s comments indicate what is doubtless the mainstream Jewish attitude about a non-White future: It presents problems, but the problems are manageable if the organized Jewish community makes alliances with the looming non-White majority. (“The ADL: Managing White Rage“)

This looming non-White majority is coalescing in the Democratic Party which is also the party of around 70–80% of Jewish voters — an aspect of the racialization of American politics given that landslide percentages of Whites are voting Republican, often against their economic interests (e.g., working class Whites) and their ethnic interests given the Republicans pathetic record on immigration.

America Hates Jews. A recent letter by Foxman on the continued incarceration of Jonathan Pollard after 28 years illustrates his mindset that America sees Jews as disloyal:

In effect, the continuing imprisonment of this person long after he should have been paroled on humanitarian grounds can only be read as an effort to intimidate American Jews. And, it is an intimidation that can only be based on an anti-Semitic stereotype about the Jewish community, one that we have seen confirmed in our public opinion polls over the years, the belief that American Jews are more loyal to Israel than to their own country, the United States.

In other words, the underlying concept which fuels the ongoing Pollard incarceration is the notion that he is only the tip of the iceberg in the community. So Pollard stays in prison as a message to American Jews: don’t even think about doing what he did.

Foxman doesn’t provide any evidence for this conjecture, and of course he leaves out the fact that a great many Jews have in fact been investigated for espionage on behalf of Israel, with precious few convictions. Pollard is definitely an anomaly.

We should not, therefore, be surprised that at least some American Jews may be more loyal to Israel than  to the United States. Unlike the German-Americans who assimilated to America, Israel remains a powerful source of identity for the great majority of American Jews. Chi Mak, the Chinese spy who was sentenced to 24 years in prison for sending information on military technology to the Chinese, has as his counterparts Jonathan Pollard and Ben-Ami Kadish, convicted of spying on behalf of Israel.

Besides Pollard and Kadish, there is a bumper crop of neoconservatives who have been credibly accused of spying for Israel: Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Stephen Bryen, Douglas Feith, and Michael Ledeen.

None of the neocons were convicted, and now we have the AIPAC espionage trial in which former AIPAC employees Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman have been accused of providing information to Israeli Embassy employees. Jewish Congresswoman Jane Harman has allegedly been caught agreeing to “waddle in” to help get the charges against Rosen and Weissman reduced.

As part of her defense in the media, Harman pointedly noted that “anyone I might have talked to was an American citizen, and these were conversations that took place in the United States.”

This is the multicultural defense par excellence. Harman was talking to an American about the business of AIPAC, an American organization that has not been required to register as an agent of a foreign government. What could possibly be wrong with that?

One problem with that is that the American citizen that Harman may well have been talking to was Haim Saban who is not only an American citizen but also a citizen of Israel. Saban’s commitment to Israel seems almost a caricature of a nut case Zionist — someone who makes Alan Dershowitz and  Martin Peretz seem lukewarm by comparison. (“Jane Harman, Haim Saban, and AIPAC: The Disloyalty Issue in Multicultural America“)

Pollard may indeed be rotting in prison because of resentment by the American intelligence community. But quite clearly, there are a lot more American Jews who should have been prosecuted for espionage than actually have been. Foxman should be happy about that.

Conclusion

We shouldn’t expect that an activist organization like the ADL, any more than the SPLC, would be even-handed and prone to rigorous attempts to uncover the truth. Avoiding the facts and spinning the truth are what they do.

Still, the ability of Foxman and his ilk to shut down debate by tactics such as the Canard Strategy and by always claiming the moral high ground on issues such as Israel despite glaring hypocrisy is breathtaking and a good indication of Jewish power. In general, these tactics have been successful. Everyone in politics or the media understands this reality or, like Rick Sanchez, they find themselves out of a job. As Joe Sobran noted some time ago, “survival in public life requires that you know all about it, but never refer to it. A hypocritical etiquette forces us to pretend that the Jews are powerless victims; and if you don’t respect their victimhood, they’ll destroy you. It’s a phenomenal display not of wickedness, really, but of fierce ethnocentrism, a sort of furtive racial superpatriotism.”

I rather doubt that whoever replaces Foxman will be any different. These tactics will continue at least until they are ineffective. And that could happen. Right now we are seeing that Jewish power is increasingly unable to spin the image of Israel as a democratic country dedicated to human rights, and this is forcing real changes. AIPAC has a new position for outreach to progressive Jews, and a letter pressuring Netanyahu to agree to a two-state solution was signed by a wide range of American Jews, including “Israel right-or-wrong” Alan Dershowitz (Philip Weiss, “Liberal Zionists and rightwingers shed differences in effort to save the Jewish state“).

These changes are ultimately a response to the real power of their opponents such as the BDS movement. The lesson is that until White America starts to push back against its dispossession, we will continue to be victimized by the ADL and similar organizations such as the SPLC.