3 nasty memes about Jews and Israel

Here are three disturbing memes about Jews and Israel that I’ve noticed in three separate-but-related news stories.

1. ‘You’re ungrateful.’ Here’s State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf responding to remarks by Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon regarding Secretary of State John Kerry: “We find the remarks of the defense minister to be offensive and inappropriate … given all that the United States has done to support Israel’s security needs and will continue to do.”

Ya’alon’s description of Kerry as “obsessive” and “messianic” may have been injudicious. But rather than defend Kerry’s approach to the negotiations, Harf simply accuses the Israelis of biting the hand that feeds them and of being a drain upon the US Treasury.

As Israelis know, the principal defender of Israel is not the US, but the Israel Defense Forces. And the strategic relationship between Israel and the US is more balanced than Harf’s comments suggest. The US doesn’t have to risk its troops by stationing them on Israeli soil, in marked contrast to other Middle Eastern countries; meanwhile, Israel enhances American security.

2. ‘You’re Warmongers.’ The Obama Administration’s trashing of anyone expressing doubts about the deal struck last November with the Iranian regime over its nuclear program contains, of course, an Israeli dimension. Objecting to the new Iran sanctions bill co-authored by Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Mark Kirk (R-IL), veteran California Senator Dianne Feinstein opined that the proposed legislation was bolstering a “march to war.” And who is directing this heinous agenda? Feinstein once more: “We cannot let Israel determine when and where the United States goes to war.”

What Feinstein’s statement insinuates is that Israel has, in the past, done just that. In one stroke, all the complexity of the Iran situation — the disquiet among Arab countries over Obama’s Iran policy, the strengthening of Iran as a regional power with dire consequences for Syria and Lebanon, the summary dismissal of successive UN Security Council resolutions — simply disappears.

3. ‘You’re Israel-Firsters.’ I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve encountered the slanderous notion that pro-Israel American Jews (the vast majority) are more loyal to Israel than to the US. So frequently has this accusation been voiced that it has added a new term, “Israel-Firster,” to the political lexicon.

Thus we come to last week’s New York Times op-ed by former FBI official M.E. Bowman urging that Jonathan Pollard, who has spent almost 30 years in an American jail after being convicted of spying for Israel, remain incarcerated. Much of the evidence that Bowman cited against Pollard is, at best, tenuous. Nor did he explain why Pollard should not be entitled to clemency, given that he didn’t kill or harm anyone, and that the Cold War is long over (compare that with Israel’s decision to release nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu after he served an 18 year sentence).

It’s therefore difficult to disagree with Tablet magazine’s courageous assertion that “in order to cover their own incredibly damaging mistakes and failures, the national security establishment is keeping Pollard in prison on the apparent grounds that Jews are especially prone to disloyalty.” As the magazine goes on to point out, what’s involved here is “a real injustice whose perpetuation is clearly intended to suggest that all American Jews are, inherently, potential traitors to their country.”

Separately, all these three examples are alarming enough. Taken together, they demonstrate that American public discourse about the Middle East is all too receptive to ideas that we thought had been discredited by history. That’s why, when the next instance of Iranian nuclear duplicity surfaces, get ready for the chorus proclaiming that it’s all the fault of Israel and its supporters.

Ben Cohen is Shillman Analyst for JNS.org.