Jewish Fact Check #12: Obama, Brzezinski and Middle East peace plans (UPDATED and CLARIFICATION)

As a reporter in the Jewish press throughout the 2008 presidential campaign, there were many rumors about Barack Obama that I found myself writing about, and debunking -- but none may have been more persistent than the one about Zbigniew Brzezinski being one of his foreign policy advisers. If I was doing "Jewish Fact Checks" back then, it was the kind of thing I probably would have written about.

The charge had a grain of truth undergirding it -- Brzezinski had endorsed Obama and introduced him at a foreign policy speech Obama gave early in the primary campaign. But the Obama campaign, and even Obama himself, insisted that the former Carter national security adviser was no more than a prominent endorser of the candidate, and no role in the campaign or in formulating Obama's foreign policy views.

Which is why I was so surprised and disappointed when I read yesterday's David Ignatius column in the Washington Post suggesting that the administration was thinking about proposing an American peace plan for the Middle East. Whatever the wisdom of such a plan, I was struck by one of the "advisers" pushing such a policy...Zbigniew Brzezinski! As Ignatius writes:

Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser for presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, spoke up first, according to a senior administration official. He urged Obama to launch a peace initiative based on past areas of agreement; he was followed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser for Jimmy Carter, who described some of the strategic parameters of such a plan.

The New York Times even added that Obama had dropped in on the meeting -- which also included a number of other former national security advisers, although not Condi Rice or Stephen Hadley from the Bush II administration (Colin Powell, who was NSA during Bush I but Secretary of State during W.'s first term, was part of the meeting.)

This is really kind of stunning, when one looks back at the efforts the Obama campaign went to in order to make sure Jewish voters knew that they had nothing to do with Brzezinski and his ideas on the Middle East. And there was good reason for that: Brzezinski is not considered much of a friend of Israel by many pro-Israel voters. Last fall, he even suggested that if Israel sent jets to attack Iran's nuclear program, the U.S. should shoot them down.

Obama surrogates, and even Obama himself, insisted that they had virtually nothing to do with Brzezinski, constantly making this case to Jewish and pro-Israel voters for months. Take this comment from an appearance Obama made before Jewish voters in Ohio in February 2008:

There is a spectrum of views in terms of how the US and Israel should be interacting. It has evolved over time. It means that somebody like Brzezinski who, when he was national security advisor would be considered not outside of the mainstream in terms of his perspective on these issues, is now considered by many in the Jewish Community anathema. I know Brzezinski he's not one of my key advisors. I've had lunch with him once, I've exchanged emails with him maybe 3 times. He came to Iowa to introduce for a speech on Iraq. He and I agree that Iraq was an enormous strategic blunder and that input from him has been useful in assessing Iraq, as well as Pakistan, where actually, traditionally, if you will recall he was considered a hawk. The liberal wing of the Democratic Party was very suspicious of Brzezinski precisely because he was so tough on many of these issues. I do not share his views with respect to Israel. I have said so clearly and unequivocally.

Such a statement didn't stop either Hillary Clinton supporters or Republicans from continuing to spread the charge. In fact, it started to annoy me how much this apparently false information was being spread. Back in March 2008, not long after Clinton adviser Ann Lewis had been quoted saying that Brzezinski was an top Obama foreign policy adviser, I asked her at a panel during the UJC Young Leadership conference why she kept repeating that charge. She responded that she had read the information in the media -- after which Obama adviser Dan Kurtzer replied that Brzezinski wasn't even an adviser to the campaign -- something that seemed to genuinely surprise both Lewis and McCain rep Larry Eagleburger.

Then Republicans, most prominently the Republican Jewish Coalition in ads like this one, continued to parrot the charge all through the general election campaign. And the Jewish press tried to set the record straight, as my former colleague Ron Kampeas did here and here, noting that while Brzezinski did represent the campaign once on a call for Democrats Abroad, he played no role in the campaign.

The Brzezinski stuff even continued after the inauguration -- I noted that Florida Republican leader Adam Hasner had incorrectly repeated it in a March 2009 piece at the American Thinker.

Well, I don't know what was happening a year ago, but, now, after Ignatius' piece, it looks like Hasner has been proven right. No, Brzezinski's not an official member of the administration, but administration officials are openly soliciting and, apparently, taking, his advice -- and then touting it proudly in public. If the RJC wants to run those ads ripping Obama for having Brzezinski as an adviser this November or in 2012, they won't hear any commplaints from me -- because they're now supported by the facts. If one wants to argue that Brzezinski isn't as "anti-Israel" as groups like the RJC claim, that's fine -- but there's no argument that he's involved with the administration in a somewhat serious way.

Do I believe that the Obama campaign advisers -- who are now serving in the administration -- telling me and others that Brzezinski had no role in the campaign were lying or trying to mislead me? No, I don't -- I think they were either telling the truth as it was at the time or at least believed what the candidate was telling them. But do I feel like sort of a sucker for actually defending the campaign against those spreading the Brzezinski rumor when the administration turns around a little more than a year later and brags about getting advice from the guy? I sure do.

CLARIFICATION: I've had a couple complaints about this post, so let me clarify what I was saying. I never said that anyone was untruthful about the Brzezinski issue during the campaign. I never said Brzezinski worked for the administration or was a key adviser to the president. I don't even think there's necessarily anything wrong with the national security adviser bringing former NSA's in to get their points of view on occasion, as was apparently happening here. But if you are going to bring them in, and then have the president drop in, ask for advice and have Scowcroft and Brzezinski outline a Middle East peace plan -- and then leak to the newspapers in an apparent trial balloon that you're seriously considering taking their advice -- how is it wrong to conclude that Brzezinski is advising the president on Middle East issues? That's my point.

Meanwhile, a postscript: Kampeas wrote in one of the articles linked above that the Obama campaign insisted that Obama's views were close to Dennis Ross, not someone like Brzezinski. And while it's unclear how influential Ross is in the administration, it's interesting that while anonymous administration officials are talking positively about Brzezinski, at least one anonymous administration official late last month smeared Ross, telling Laura Rozen of Politico that Ross "seems to be far more sensitive to Netanyahu's coalition politics than to U.S. interests." Quite a change from the campaign, one might argue -- although to be fair, NSC chief of staff Denis McDonough did respond on the record that "such an assertion is as false as it is offensive."

Jewish Fact Check #11: Bill Kristol and Obama's Israel Policy

I was at my sister's this past weekend for Passover and hadn't spent much time on the Internet, until I turned on her computer Monday night and came across this headline at Atlantic.com: "Right blasts Obama with charges of Anti-Semitism." I thought, "Wow, what have I missed?" Actually, nothing--except another unfortunate instance of a writer misconstruing legitimate criticism of someone's views/policy on Israel (in this case, the president's) with anti-Semitism.

After a brief introduction noting the chilly meetings last week between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Atlantic writer Alex Eichler provides three examples of alleged anti-Semitism from the right under the subheadline "Obama Hates Jews." One is a link to a blog post by Pamela Geller which does call Obama an anti-Semite, compares American Jews of the 2000s to European Jews in the 1930s and argues that another Holocaust is on its way. Geller has every right to make this argument, but it's one that is on the fringe -- I think it's fair to say that opinion isn't widely shared either in the Jewish community or, to the best of my knowledge, on the political right wing.

Eichler also notes Instapundit Glenn Reynolds' blog post, in which he first speculates that it is "plausible" that Obama treated Netanyahu rudely because he "hates Israel and hates Jews." Actually, that's not particularly plausible. There's no evidence that Obama "hates" Jews or Israel, although I think reasonable people can disagree on how friendly Obama is or wants to be with Israel -- or, perhaps more accurately, how warm his feelings are toward the current government in the Jewish state. Reynolds, though, does go on to say, though, that he actually doesn't think that's the explanation and that he finds another idea more plausible -- that this is all about Iran, and that Obama is either trying to put distance between the U.S. and Israel because Israel is going to strike Iran -- or that this is all a big distraction so that no one will realize that the U.S. is really helping Israel strike Iran.

Eichler does correctly report this (although others like Glenn Greenwald seem to have obsessed over the hates Jews stuff and totally ignored the following sentence), but perhaps in his eagerness to get the all-important third example for his piece that would demonstrate a trend, he also throws the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol into the mix. And that's where he goes wrong.

Eichler's piece states that Kristol is arguing Obama is perhaps pretending to hate Jews:

At The Weekly Standard, Bill Kristol argues that Obama "aspires to be a leader of humanity, not merely a president of a single country. And there’s no better way to be a leader of humanity than to show disapproval of the Jewish state." Whatever his real feelings toward Jews may be, Kristol holds that Obama must find it expedient to show "anger at the stiff-necked Jewish state. It puts him in sync with the rest of the world.

Having skimmed through the Kristol piece a few days before I saw the Atlantic piece, I was surprised. Did Kristol actually debate what Obama's "real feelings toward Jews may be"? I didn't recall that. And indeed, Kristol didn't. Here's what he wrote:

Why the exploitation of a minor disagreement with the Israeli government to justify a turn against Israel? President Obama cares about being popular—in America, certainly, but in the world as well. And not just because popularity in the world can help the United States achieve its foreign policy aims. But because, as James Ceaser argued in these pages in January, Obama aspires to be a leader of humanity, not merely a president of a single country.

And there’s no better way to be a leader of humanity than to show disapproval of the Jewish state. Sure, Obama’s turn against Israel will make it less likely that Palestinians will negotiate seriously with her. Sure, it will embolden radical Arabs and Muslims against those who would like their nations to take a different, more responsible, course. Sure, it’s a distraction from the real challenge of Iran. But the turn against Israel is ultimately a key part of what Obamaism is all about. That’s why there’s been so little attempt by the administration to reassure friends of Israel that Obama has been acting more in sorrow than in anger. Obama’s proud of his anger at the stiff-necked Jewish state. It puts him in sync with the rest of the world.

As you can see, Kristol doesn't talk about Obama's feelings towards Jews at all, just about his policy toward the Jewish state. He's arguing that Obama is treating Israel badly because much of the rest of the world treats Israel badly -- and the president wants to ingratiate himself with the rest of the world in order to be a "leader of humanity." It's certainly a debatable assertion, but there's no accusation of anti-Semitism or "Obama hates the Jews" in that theory. In fact, Kristol's argument is really just a more negatively-spun version of something Obama has said himself -- that Obama believes there needs to be some "daylight" between the U.S. and Israel in order to make progress in the peace process.

(And for those who want to make an issue of Kristol's use of the term "Jewish state," please don't. Many writers and journalists, including me earlier in this post, use the term "Jewish state" interchangeably with Israel as sort of a synonym in order to vary the language in an article about Israel.)

A lot of people seem to not like Bill Kristol because they don't like his opinions or don't think he's a good columnist. That's fine. Personally, I find his affection for Sarah Palin puzzling, but the few times I've spoken to Kristol after Jewish community events at which he's spoken, he's been nothing but kind and generous with his time. But whatever one's feelings about Kristol, he should be quoted correctly. And he was making a critique of the president's Israel policy, not speculating about whether someone is an anti-Semite. As I've written about before, I wish people would stop confusing the two. There's a big difference.

Jewish Fact Check #10: Democratic support for Israel isn't down, GOP support is up

Something akin to the game of telphone seems to happen too much these days, especially in the Jewish community. Some sort of fact comes out, and then as it gets repeated, others, intentionally or sometimes unintentionally, distort it until the alleged fact that everyone is familiar with isn't the actual fact at all. (One example is the poll that found 6 percent of Israelis thought Obama is "pro-Israel," which incorrectly evolved into 6 percent approval for Obama among Israelis.) And it seems to be happening with this recent Gallup poll on support for Israel broken down by political party.

Earlier this week, both Shmuel Rosner in the Jerusalem Post and Jim Besser in The Jewish Week both correctly noted the growing partisan gap between Democrats and Republicans on support for Israel and speculated on the implications of that fact (a fascinating issue, but one I'm not concerned with in this post.) But then Marc Tracy in Tablet, in providing his own analysis of the findings, referred to "the Democratic turn from Israel," followed by the Republican Jewish Coalition's Noah Silverman writing that the poll showed Democratic support for Israel "eroded" and that there is a "shrinking proportion of Democrats who say they support Israel."

Problem is, while the poll does show that the partisan gap between Democrats and Republicans is widening, this is not due to any significant change over the last decade in Democratic support for the Jewish state. It's almost entirely due to a striking increase in Republican backing for Israel.

Yes, Democratic backing for Israel went from 54 percent in 2009 to 48 percent in 2010 -- hardly an enormous jump in a poll with a plus or minus four percent margin of error. But if one looks at the long-term trend, here is the Democratic number on this question from 2001-2009: 51, 48, 48, 46, 41, 50, 51, 48, 54, 48. So actually, the Democratic support for Israel is actually down three points from 2001, even with 2002 and 2003 and even with 2008 too. In fact, four of the ten years polled had 48 percent support for Israel among Democrats, one had 46 and two others had 50 and 51, with a couple outliers either way. In other words, as Gallup says in its report: "Support for Israel among Democrats has been relatively flat."

Contrast that to the Republican numbers, which increased remarkably from 60 to 85 percent from 2001 to 2010. The numbers took a big jump from 2001 to 2002, from 60 to 67 percent, and then another 10 percent jump the folllowing year before basically leveling off there. From 2006 to 2009, GOP backing for Israel (the actual question is where does one's "sympathies" lie, with Israel or the Palestinians) was 77, 76, 77 and 77 before jumping to 85 percent this year (It's not clear why, but it appears like a possible explanation for the big jump after four years of stability would be a reaction to Republican feelings of Obama's policies in the region.)

Anyway, that's remarkable -- this poll shows support for Israel among Republicans went from a significant majority to almost unanimous in ten years. Support among independents also has skyrocketed, from 42 percent to 60 in the decade. That's the story -- how did Israel become so popular among Republicans and why? Is it all because of 9/11 and the war on terror? Something else?

Democratic support for Israel certainly isn't increasing. But it's not decreasing, either. While there is no doubt that there are elements on the left that aren't sympathetic to Israel, and they do seem to be more vocal and noticeable than they may have been a few years ago, this poll shows that this segment of the left, or Democratic Party, doesn't appear to be growing. So when we discuss this poll, we can discuss why it is exactly that GOP sympathies for Israel are so sky high. We can discuss why Democratic support for Israel isn't rising in the same way. But don't say that Democratic support for Israel is eroding or slipping -- because that's not what the numbers say.

Jewish Fact Check #9: How Stephen Walt ignores the facts

Reading Stephen Walt's blog reminds me of that Simpsons episode where a cartoon version of Ed Begley, Jr. shows off his new environmentally friendly car, which he says is powered by his "own sense of self-satisfaction." Combine that with some kind of martyrdom complex, and you've got his Monday post, "On Grabbing the Third Rail."

The post is Walt's "Ten Tips for Handling a Smear Campaign," which he of course claims he has been subjected to because of his writings on the "Israel lobby. Simplifying his post to one sentence, it would be something like "If people are criticizing you, it must be because you're right -- and not because perhaps you don't know what you're talking about or actually made errors." (You should read the whole thing if you have a chance, but just be prepared to want to throw your computer out the window by the time you get about two-thirds of the way through.)

OK, maybe that's simplifying it a bit, but Walt, of course, ignores the real reason people keep criticizing him -- he continually distorts or just flat out ignores facts that he doesn't like or don't agree with his and Mearsheimer's thesis on the Isarel lobby. The best example of this comes from just last week.

Earlier in the month, Walt wrote a post entitled "I don't mean to say I told you so, but ... ", in which he proudly touted "a new piece of evidence" that had come to light strengthening his an Mearsheimer's case that the Israel lobby played a "key role" in the U.S. decision to invade Iraq. It's a quote from then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who said in testimony to the Iraq war commission in the UK about a meeting he had with President George W. Bush in Crawford, Texas in 2002: "As I recall that discussion, it was less to do with specifics about what we were going to do on Iraq or, indeed, the Middle East, because the Israel issue was a big, big issue at the time. I think, in fact, I remember, actually, there may have been conversations that we had even with Israelis, the two of us, whilst we were there. So that was a major part of all this." Walt then writes: "Notice that Blair is not saying that Israel dreamed up the idea of attacking Iraq or that Bush was bent on war solely to benefit Israel or even to appease the Israel lobby here at home. But Blair is acknowledging that concerns about Israel were part of the equation, and that the Israeli government was being actively consulted in the planning for the war.

The problem with that quote, as JTA's Ron Kampeas and The New Republic's John Judis point out, is that it doesn't prove in any way what Walt contends and has been totally ripped out of context. As Judis writes:

The real problem is that Walt does not seem to have taken the trouble to have read the transcript of Blair’s testimony. If he had, he would have realized that Blair was not talking about how invading Iraq might benefit Israel, but about the conflict then occurring between Israel and the Palestinians. The second intifada had reached a new height with the Passover and Haifa suicide bombings and the beginning of the siege at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and Blair was concerned that the Bush administration was not actively pursuing the peace process. Blair wanted the administration to put the Arab-Israeli issue on a par with the threat of Iraq.

Both Judis and Kampeas provide other examples -- from later in the testimony and from the press conference that followed the 2002 Crawford Blair-Bush meeting -- to show that the references to Israel had nothing to do with the Iraq situation but were about the situation in the West Bank at the time.

So I eagerly read Walt's post last week in which he said he was responding to Judis. And it was remarkable -- because, incredibly, he completely ignored the problem Judis and Kampeas identified with Walt's original post. Here's what he writes:

First, I made it clear in my post that Blair's comments were not a "smoking gun" that proved we were right, and I neither suggested nor implied that Blair's testimony demonstrated that Bush went to war at Israel's urging or to accommodate the Israel lobby. I merely noted that Blair had said that concerns about Israel were part of the discussion, and that Israeli officials were consulted as part of the conversation.

He then reproduces the quote from his original post that I mentioned above and states "In short, Judis is attacking me for claims I did not make."

OK, it's true that Walt didn't literally call the Blair remarks a "smoking gun" -- he just called his blog post "I don't mean to say I told you so, but...." and said "yet another piece of evidence surfaced that suggests we were right all along." Sure seems like Walt thought this was pretty important. If the gun wasn't smoking, that kind of trumpeting of this alleged "revelation" certainly leads one to think Walt was at the very least implying the gun was still warm. Walt at least believed the gun was still warm.

Then Walt says, "I neither suggested nor implied that Blair's testimony demonstrated that Bush went to war at Israel's urging or to accommodate the Israel lobby." Fine, he did explicitly deny he was saying that in his original post.

But then he states: "I merely noted that Blair had said that concerns about Israel were part of the discussion, and that Israeli officials were consulted as part of the conversation." But that's exactly what Judis is denying, with convincing evidence on his side. Judis and Kampeas specifically make the case that the discussion Blair was referring to had nothing specifically to do with the Iraq war, but with the completely separate issue of the second Intifada and Israel's operation at the time in the West Bank. And Israeli officials were consulted about this issue, not the Iraq war.

So when Walt claims that Judis is "attacking me for claims I did not make," the irony is that Walt is actually not even acknowledging the most persuasive claim Judis is making that he's wrong. It's the main thrust of Judis' article and Walt acts like it doesn't exist! That's why people get angry at you, Professor Walt -- you just ignore the facts, and it's infuriating.

For more evidence of Walt's dishonesty and willingness to smear his critics, check out this blog post I wrote last month.

Jewish Fact Check #8: Glenn Greenwald and "revolting provenance"

I don't necessarily want to keep harping on this issue of critics of Israel falsely claiming they can't talk about Israel without being accused of anti-Semitism, but if writers like Glenn Greenwald keep writing things that distort and misinterpret what others have written, I guess I have no choice.

Greenwald's Feb. 18 article in Salon is mostly a strange attack on Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.), but I'll get to that later. First, though, let's look at this passage in Greenwald's piece:

...you'd best keep in mind the stern warnings issued last week by Jonathan Chait and Jeffrey Goldberg: namely, the mere suggestion that some Americans favor U.S. aggression in the Muslim world due to concerns about Israel, rather than the U.S., has a "revolting provenance" that "should disgust all thinking people." Thus, while quasi-clearing Andrew Sullivan of anti-semitism charges, they warned all of us that one had better be extremely careful in how one discusses such matters (as Sullivan failed to do) lest one be justifiably (even if wrongly) accused of anti-Semitism

So Greenwald is saying that Chait and Goldberg (actually, Goldberg merely linked approvingly to Chait's piece) claim that even uttering the fact that concerns about Israel enter into some Americans' views of the Middle East is evidence of possible anti-Semitism. Greenwald would be right, that would be ridiculous -- except The New Republic's Chait never wrote anything of the sort. Here's what Chait did write:

Leon notes, correctly, that Andrew has begun repeating tropes that happen to track classic anti-Semitic canards. His obsession with the singular power of the Israel lobby, writes Leon "has a provenance that should disgust all thinking people." Agreed. But just because an idea has a revolting provenance, it does not follow that everybody who subscribes to any version of it shares the same motive.

Chait didn't write that anyone who makes the "mere suggestion that some Americans favor U.S. aggression in the Muslim world due to concerns about Israel" is guilty of holding an idea with a "revolting provenance," he said that an obsession with the "singular power of the Israeli lobby" has an "revolting provenance." Being obsessed with the "singular power of the Israeli lobby"--that means thinking the Israel lobby is the most powerful lobby in the U.S., bar none. That means believing that the Israeli lobby is much more powerful than the farm lobby or the gun lobby or anything else, that it alone drives the decisionmaking of the United States in the Middle East. Yeah, some people may believe this, but it's simply not true. And that view does have a "revolting provenance"--it's an obvious echo of the anti-Semitic trope that Jews are pulling the strings, controlling the world. And yet Greenwald somehow equates having an obsession with the "singular power of the Israeli lobby" with "the mere suggestion that some Americans favor U.S. aggression in the Muslim world due to concerns about Israel." It's hard to believe a guy like Greenwald, who makes his living writing and using words, could so obviously misconstrue someone else's article--unless he was just trying to make a political point.

The main thrust of Greenwald's piece, though, is his thoughts on a nine and a half-minute speech Rep. Gary Ackerman gave to Jewish groups in New York. He writes that after listening to the speech: "It's simply impossible to deny that this highly influential American Congressman, devoted to pushing the U.S. to war with Iran, is driven, at least in substantial part, by his fervent devotion to Israel. There's nothing wrong with that per se, but there is much wrong with trying to force people to pretend it's not true."

First, a couple of facts. Ackerman, of course, devotes about 30 seconds to Iran in the speech highlighted, and says nothing about war or military action. He simply says that Iran acquiring nuclear weapons is a "worry" and "concern." Does anyone seriously disagree with that? Ackerman has supported sanctions on the Iranian regime, but has not endorsed a military strike. In fact, earlier this month, he counseled "patience" in trying to figure out how to support the dissident movement in Iran while also hastening the demise of the regime. (Greenwald is likely thinking of a resolution Ackerman sponsored two years ago, which critics said was "an act of war" but which Ackerman said was no such thing, while also pointing out that it was a non-binding resolution merely advocated increased economic and political pressure on the regime.)

Second, in all of Greenwald's fury over Ackerman's defense of Israel in the speech over the Goldstone Report and other matters, the Salon writer ignores the most interesting part of Ackerman's speech: the passage in which he urges Israel to negotatiate a settlement with the Palestinians, something I'd think Greenwald would want to hear. The New York congressman talks about how Israel currently has a "qualitative edge" in military technology, but such an edge will get increasingly smaller. "Time is not friendly to you if you're winning the race," he said. "Cut your deal, get the best deal when you're ahead," he continues, adding that Israel
"has to figure out a way to get the Palestinians back to the table and talk peace."

But Greenswald's main point is this "It's simply impossible to deny that this highly influential American Congressman, devoted to pushing the U.S. to war with Iran, is driven, at least in substantial part, by his fervent devotion to Israel. There's nothing wrong with that per se, but there is much wrong with trying to force people to pretend it's not true."

Who exactly is trying to pretend that's not true? Everyone knows Gary Ackerman is Jewish and a supporter of Israel. No one is denying that. And no one can deny -- or is denying -- that the pro-Isarel community has been leading the call for sanctions on Iran. I sure won't. But why exactly is it so important to point this out? Yes, stopping Iran from acquiring nukes would be good for Israel. It's also an outcome that's desired by all the other nations in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia. And it's also a major concern o the United States--it has the potential of destabilizing the Middle East, where the U.S. gets a lot of its oil, and could allow Iran to fund terrorism throughout the world with impunity--knowing that it has a nuclear threat to prevent retaliation. So why are the alleged motivations of increased pressure on Iran so important. Greenwald, and those who agree with him, could argue that those things don't matter, or that such threats are exaggerated, or that it's no big deal if Iran gets nukes. Fine. But why is it so important to identify and make part of the argument the background of the other side? Is it because they can't respond to the other side's arguments?

Jewish Fact Check #7: Where Joe Klein proves my point from Jewish Fact Check #6

Wow. When I wrote my blog post earlier this week pointing out that critics of Israel seem to take pride in being called "anti-Semite," even to the point of exaggerating or making up accusations of anti-Semitism, I never dreamed that three days later I would read something that would make my point even better than any of the examples I used in the original post.

Not surprisingly, it comes from Joe Klein, who I also cited as an example in my original post. He wrote a column for Time Magazine which began by recounting Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's speech to the U.S.-Islamic Conference in Doha on Sunday, and her statement that a solution to the blockade of Gaza can only come with a comprehensive settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Klein writes that's the "wrong answer" and suggests that when he came into office, instead of trying for a comprehensive settlement, President Obama should have tried solving the Gaza crisis first. Klein then argues that the White Hosue needs to "engage" Hamas.

That brought a retort from Commentary's Jonathan Tobin, who calls that a bad idea and says that "what Klein fails to understand is that no matter who sits in the White House, it is not in America’s interest to rescue the killers of Hamas. Rather, it should be our policy to isolate and hopefully oust them from power." Tobin, while criticizing Obama's general foreign policy, even praises the president and Clinton for opposing any engagement with Hamas.

Tobin's post seemed like a fairly standard, relatively innocuous blogosphere post , but it brought an bizarre, almost unhinged response from Klein, in an "update" to an ealrier blog post linking to his column. It has to be read in full to be believed. It begins: "The neocon extremists over at Commentary have wasted no time responding to my column with their usual bile and bullying." He then goes to on identify a couple minor errors in Tobin's piece and claims something is an error that really isn't (he says that Tobin said he blamed Israel for the Gaza situation; in fact, Tobin says Klein blamed Israel for "Obama's acknowledged failure in the Middle East," which was obviously a reference to Klein's line "U.S. envoy George Mitchell's slow-moving effort to start talks tanked because of Israel's unwillingness to stop building illegal settlements on Palestinian land.") And he reiterates some of the points he made in the column

Then Klein writes this:

My suggestions--or their distorted burlesque of my suggestions--are, apparently, what passes for anti-Israel extremism over at Commentary. But anything that doesn't conform to their half-crazed macho crusaderism is seen as either anti-Israel or anti-Semitic. Their constant fury, their slightly-veiled calumnies against the President--and against the very notion of diplomacy--would be laughable if they weren't so dangerous and disgraceful.

Whoa! Anti-Israel? Anti-Semitic? Where'd you get that, Joe? Tobin's piece said your proposal to engage with Hamas was a bad one because it wasn't in America's interest to help out terrorists. Tobin may be right, he may be wrong, but he never said anything about you being "anti-Israel" or "anti-Semitic" anywhere in the piece. He didn't even imply it. He just didn't like your ideas, and didn't like your statement that Israel was at fault for the failure of George Mitchell's efforts. But in your attempt to make yourself out to be some courageous truth-teller, you claim you've been smeared -- when you're the one doing the smearing.

Klein lowers himself even further when he writes that "the barely concealed anti-Arab bigotry so frequently found on the Commentary blog, reveals itself in this sentence: That answer pleased neither the Arabs nor Klein," a sentence which referred to Clinton's answer when asked about Gaza. Klein accurately points out that he was attending a U.S.-Islamic forum in which Arabs were just about half of the delegates. I'm not sure how that mistake is clear and convincing evidence of "anti-Arab bigotry," but it would be a bad mistake on Tobin's part. Except that here's what Klein writes in his column: "Clinton's tough talk on Iran got most of the U.S. headlines, but her position on Gaza was far more important to the Islamic participants at Doha, especially the Arabs."

In other words, Klein specifically said that those at the U.S.-Islamic forum who were most interested, and thus obviously the most disappointed, by Clinton's remarks on Gaza were the Arab delegates. Should Tobin have said Muslims? It would have been better. But in using Arabs, he was only following Klein's lead.

I used to really like Joe Klein as a writer. And I was really impressed about a decade ago when I saw him speak at a local synagogue. It was around the time of the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, and in part of his talk he discussed his view that personal matters were getting way too much attention in politics and destroying Washington. I asked him how he could make this argument when a few years earlier he had written an really interesting article for Newsweek on Bill Clinton (I think it was titled "The Politics of Promiscuity") in which he argued that Bill Clinton as a president was like Bill Clinton in his private life--promiscuous and unable to stick to one woman or one idea. I gained a lot of respect for Klein when he answered, "I was wrong" and that he shouldn't have written that article. But after his most recent attack, I've lost most of that respect. Hopefully, he'll admit he's wrong this time, too.

Jewish Fact Check #6: Who's really using the term "anti-Semite"?

"There they go, flinging around baseless charges of anti-Semitism again." That was the general thrust of many responses to last week's piece by Leon Wieseltier on Andrew Sullivan, that supporters of Israel (or "neocons") were allegedly once again smearing critics of the Jewish state as anti-Semites rather than arguing their case fairly. I found this charge a little odd, considering that in his more than 4,000 word piece, Wieseltier only uses the term "anti-Semite" or "anti-Semitic" in reference to Sullivan once -- in reference to Sullivan's depiction of a "Goldfarb-Krauthammer wing" of the Jewish community, Wieseltier writes that the idea that "every thought that a Jew thinks is a Jewish thought is an anti-Semitic assumption, and a rather classical one." Yes, the insinuation of anti-Semitism by Sullivan runs through much of the piece, but the fact that Wieseltier doesn't actually use the term must mean something, doesn't it? Wouldn't one think that writers, who making their living through words, would at least find that noteworthy? But they didn't seem to notice.(Wieseltier, in a response to Sullivan's response to him, has since written, "I did not propose that he is an anti-Semite. I did propose that the scorn and the fury that characterizes his discussion of Israel and some of its Jewish supporters is wholly unwarranted by the requirements of a critical analysis of the settlements or the Gaza war, and that it may therefore be mistaken for bigotry.")

In fact, the whole Wieseltier-Sullivan episode has served to illustrate an emerging trend among critics of Israel: Their eagerness to allege that they've been accused of being an anti-Semite. I do agree that some of Israel's defenders are too quick to throw out charges of anti-Semitism or "self-hating Jew," and that's lamentable and a problem. But it seems that among many of Israel's critics, claiming that you've been accused of being an anti-Semite has become some sort of bizarre badge of honor. And quite a few of those that have allegedly been accused of being an anti-Semite, according to Wieseltier's critics, either were never smeared with such a term or were only accused of making a specific problematic remark and not tarred with some broad brush of disliking Jews, as they claim.

The best example of this overheated "He called me an anti-Semite" charge is a column by Glenn Greenwald last week. Early in the article, he writes: "As Charles Freeman can attest, frivolous anti-semitism accusations can still damage those seeking high-level political positions, but those accusations no longer pack any real punch in virtually any other realm" and later gives us this paragraph:

If The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan, and Time's Joe Klein, and Foreign Policy's Stephen Walt, and the University of Chicago's John Mearsheimer, and Gen. Wes Clark (a TNR target), and Howard Dean, and former President Jimmy Carter, and a whole slew of others like them are "anti-semites," then how terrible of an insult is it?

So let's examine a few of Greenwal'd alleged victims. First we have the oddest name on this list, Howard Dean. Yes, when running for president in 2003-04, Howard Dean was criticized for some remarks he made about the Israeli-Palestinian issue. But I couldn't remember any point where he was referred to as an anti-Semite. Well, in fact, the Salon article that Greenwald links to in order to apparently make his case on Dean doesn't even include the words "anti-Semite" or "anti-Semitism" anywhere in its more than 2,000 words. Yes, the article includes people, inside and outside the Jewish community, criticizing Dean as insufficiently supportive of Israel. That criticism may have been overheated or somewhat unfair -- but no one ever said Dean was anti-Semitic. In fact, the article makes the point that the most vocal critic of Dean was John Kerry, who last time I checked isn't a neocon and isn't Jewish (and for you smart alecks, yes, his paternal grandfather was Jewish, but Kerry isn't.) Dean was being criticized for his position on Israel by another candidate in the heat of a presidential primary contest. It happens all the time on many issues -- and it's called politics.

How about Charles Freeman? There were a lot of words written about Freeman's eventually aborted nomination to the National Intelligence Council, from the Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb, former AIPACer Steve Rosen, and The New Republic's Jonathan Chait, among others. Some of these pieces criticized Freeman's "realist" approach to foreign policy, some his opinions and feelings about Israel. Did some of the things written about Freeman unfairly distort his past writings? Sure, and that's not good, but that happens on issues in Washington every day. Was there a legitimate argument to be made that too much focus was being put on Freeman's opinions on the Middle East, and that it shouldn't matter for his appoitment to this intelligence post? Sure. But the only -- and please, we're not counting someone's anonymous comment left at the bottom of a Politico article or something -- mainstream figure to ever make any kind of argument that Freeman had any hostility to Jews was Marty Peretz, who wrote that the former ambassador had a "hostility to Jews generally." That line is unfortunate -- and also completely unrepresentative of the vast majority of criticism of Freeman, but was seized upon by his defenders as the only statement that really mattered about Freeman. (Accusations of anti-Semitism later were made about Freeman, but only after his bizarre screed blaming the "Israel lobby" for his withdrawal.)

Let's move on to Joe Klein, who claims he was called an anti-Semite by the ADL's Abe Foxman. Actually, he wasn't. Here's what Joe Klein originally wrote that raised the ire of Foxman:

The notion that we could just waltz in and inject democracy into an extremely complicated, devout and ancient culture smacked--still smacks--of neocolonialist legerdemain. The fact that a great many Jewish neoconservatives--people like Joe Lieberman and the crowd over at Commentary--plumped for this war, and now for an even more foolish assault on Iran, raised the question of divided loyalties: using U.S. military power, U.S. lives and money, to make the world safe for Israel.

Foxman objected to Klein's reference to "Jewish" neoconservatives and his use of the term "divided loyalties" and wrote this: "The notion that Jews with 'divided loyalties' were behind the decision to go to war is reminiscent of age-old anti-Semitic canards about a Jewish conspiracy to control and manipulate government..." That's the only time Foxman uses the term "anti-Semitic" in his letter, and it's hard to argue that he's using it incorrectly. Klein says, pretty clearly, that some American Jews supported the war in Iraq, and are supporting another with Iran, because of "dual loyalties," and accusing Jews of dual loyalties is, as Foxman writes, an "age-old anti-Semitic canard."

Klein's response is essentially to say he was telling the truth--and then rip Foxman for calling him an "anti-Semite"--but he never actually proves that what he says is the truth. His examples are "people like Joe Lieberman and the crowd at Commentary" but he offers no links or quotes to substantiate that claim. (As far as I'm aware, Joe Lieberman never said the U.S. needed to go to war to "make the world safe for Israel," and I'm not sure who he means by the Commentary crowd--those who wrote there in 2003, before the war? Those who were there in 2008, when he wrote the blog item at issue? Klein and his defenders would likely respond that he's referring to American Jews who are strong supporters of Israeli security that also strongly backed the war. OK, fine--but while the (now discredited) neoconservative theory which apparently animated the war would have no doubt made Israel's neighborhood safer if it had worked, the idea was that it would spur the rest of the Middle East to go democratic, which would benefit the U.S. in innumerable ways (from cheaper oil to not having to be militarily involved there anymore--after all, it's not like the U.S. was new to the region, we'd fought a war in Iraq already 12 years earlier!) Klein's contention that it was simply to benefit Israel is something he just asserts with no proof--and therefore is, as Foxman argues, reminiscent of an age-old canard. That doesn't mean he's an anti-Semite, just that he used inappropriate language. It's similar to what happened with Bill Clinton in South Carolina in 2008. He was accused of making a racially-charged remark, but no one seriously believes Bill Clinton is a racist. (Oh, by the way, here's Joe Klein calling Clinton's remarks a "racial jab." So is Joe Klein saying Bill Clinton is a racist? And here's TNR's Chait saying Commentary's Jennifer Rubin used a "classic anti-Semitic trope" in describing why Jews don't like Sarah Palin. He wasn't saying that the Jewish Rubin is an anti-Semite, just that she was using that language--and no one seemed to complain.)

Finally, Sullivan himself -- unintentionally -- best illustrates this point with a Monday blog post about Johann Hari entitled "What Often Happents to Israel's Critics, Part 1." He finds a 2008 column by British journalist Hari, who had written a column charging that sewage from Israeli settlements was poisoning the water of Palestinian reservoirs and was outraged by the reaction. He claims that "there was little attempt to dispute the facts I offered. Instead, some of the most high profile 'pro-Israel' writers and media monitoring groups – including Honest Reporting and Camera – said I an anti-Jewish bigot akin to Joseph Goebbels and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad."

So I eagerly googled Honest Reporting's piece attacking Hari and found hardly anything to substantiate Hari's claim. Midway trough an 888-word blog post, the phrase "modern day 'poisoning the wells' libel" is used. Some hyperbole that would have been better left out? Yes. But the other 882 words in the post are indeed a lengthy attempt to "dispute the facts" that Hari offered. There's a charge that Hari used a fabricated quote from David Ben-Gurion, that he gets the history of Israel wrong, and that the Palestinians are equally to blame for polluting the West Bank. I don't know who's correct on these issues, but for Hari to claim that the Honest Reporting piece compared him to Goebbels and didn't address his arguments is simply not true. (And the CAMERA piece is much the same.)

None of this excuses the responsibility of some of Israel's defenders to be less eager to throw out the anti-Semitism charge. But here we have examples of four different public figures who were supposedly victims of the charge of anti-Semitism -- except that the charges are either false or wildly exaggerated. Which leaves the question: Why exactly has claiming you've been called an anti-Semite become so cool lately? Could it be that those claiming they've been called anti-Semites find it easier to do that that actually defend their positions with facts?

More on this issue later in the week.

Jewish Fact Check #5: Obama, Israel and Haiti relief

Despite that old saying, "But is it good for the Jews," sometimes we need to remember that's it's not all about us. That's certainly the case when we talk about aid to post-earthquake Haiti.

I saw this blog post by The New Republic's Marty Peretz entitled "Maybe I'm Getting Paranoid .... About Obama" and thought, "Yes, Marty is getting paranoid about Obama." Basically, Peretz posits that the president was snubbing Israel because the Jewish state was not one of the six countries Obama mentioned in a list of those supplying aid to Haiti in a Jan. 15 speech:

At the airport, help continues to flow in, not just from the United States but from Brazil, Mexico, Canada, France, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic, among others.

Peretz notes that "next to our country, Israel sent the largest contingent of trained rescue workers, doctors, and other medical personnel," and adds that "the Israeli field hospital was the only one on the ground that could perform real surgery," and then argues that the reason Obama didn't mention Israel is because Arab states hadn't made a contribution equivalent to Israel's.

But I decided to not ignore it any longer after the Zionist Organization of America repeated Peretz's claims in a press release Monday entitled "ZOA Critical Of President Obama's Omission Of Israel From Among Countries Helping Haiti." (It's not up on the group's Web site yet--I will link when it appears.) The release also reiterates Peretz's questionable supposition that the omission of Israel somehow had to do with Obama's unwillingness to offend the Arab side in the Middle East peace process.

Let's leave aside the accuracy of that comparison (while maybe not as much as Israel, a bunch of Arab states did in fact send aid, as catalogued here, although apparently the Saudis had to be shamed to contribute $50 million), and just look at a couple important facts here.

First, as this Associated Press article from Jan. 13 notes, by the day after the earthquake, 16 countries had already pledged aid. So realistically, the president couldn't name every country, or it would have been a very boring speech (and by Jan. 15, when Obama gave the speech, the number had surely risen from 16). He did say "among others," after all--it's not like he ever implied that the countries he named were only the ones giving aid. And let's look at who he did name. All except one are immediate neighbors of Haiti, located in either North or South America (Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia and, of course, the Dominican Republic, which is located on the same island). The only other country he names is France, which, of course, has a long history with Haiti. He didn't name the Netherlands, who sent $3 million and a 60 person rescue team, for instance -- or Great Britain or Spain or, for obvious reasons, Cuba.

But the main reason why the suspicion about Obama's motives is unwarranted is this glaring fact: According to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, the Israeli aid team landed in Haiti on the evening of Jan. 15. That's right, around the same time -- or perhaps a couple hours after -- Obama actually gave the speech. So that means that all the truly great work that Israelis did in Haiti -- the work in the field hospital, the rescuse of someone trapped in the rubble more than a week after the quake -- all occurred AFTER the Obama speech which Peretz cites. Sure, Israel had announced that they were sending a field hospital and rescue personnel, but they hadn't actually done anything yet. So citing the great accomplishments of Israel in Haiti and then wondering how Obama overlooked them -- when the only way he could have mentioned them in that Jan. 15 speech is if he had time-traveled to the end of January -- is ridiculous.

In their press release, ZOA unwittingly proves this point by contrasting Obama's remarks with former President Bill Clinton, who was quoted in a Haaretz piece telling Israeli President Shimon Peres, "I don't know what we would have done without the Israeli hospital at Haiti." Of course, the article is from January 29, and Clinton made the remarks the previous day at the Davos economic forum.

So if you want to be upset at Obama, you can criticize him for leading with a settlement freeze in the Middle East and then, when it seemed to backfire, apparently not having a Plan B. You can criticize him for botching health care reform, by spending way too much time talking about how health reform will magically lead to fewer tests and fewer pills, when he should have been talking about real people, and how health reform would mean you won't lose your health insurance when you lose your job and you'll be able to actually get coverage even if you have a pre-existing condition. But don't get mad at him for somehow snubbing Israel in his list of countries that helped Haiti--because it just didn't happen.

Jewish Fact Check #4: Rush Limbaugh and the Jews

With the advent of Media Matters, there seems to be far too much attention paid to every utterance by Rush Limbaugh and other conservative talk-show hosts. Yes, Limbaugh is an extraordinarily influential political commentator, but he's just that--a commentator who hosts a talk show and whose first responsibility is to entertain his audience for three hours a day. He's not an elected official, or running for office, and I'm not sure why every time he says something controversial, Republican officeholders are urged to condemn it. (Do Democratic officeholders get asked to denounce every wacky thing Keith Olbermann says, or that appears on the Daily Kos Web site? Of course not, and they shouldn't be.)

But people keep talking about it--the latest is a group of Jewish organizations, generally on the right of the spectrum, who have come to Rush's defense--so I thought it would be worthwhile to at least look at what exactly Rush said. Was it "borderline anti-Semitic"? In my opinion, that's pushing it. But was it foolish and somewhat offensive? Yes.

I don't know Rush Limbaugh, and I have no reason to believe he holds any animus towards Jews. And while I've never heard him discuss Israel, I believe what his defenders have said, that he's been a supporter of the Jewish state. But it appears that what was a clumsy attempt to reprhase the old joke that "Jews earn like Episcopalians but vote like Puerto Ricans" resulted in him actually reiterating a old anti-Semitic trope.

First, though, the kookiest thing Rush said was here:

Scott Brown had a lot of success with independents, and that’s -- that’s what Jewish liberals like to call themselves when they’re asked. They call themselves independents before they’ll refer to themselves as -- as liberals. So if Jewish people who voted 78 percent for Obama -- which is far higher than any other group except African-Americans -- if Jewish people gave Obama 78 percent of their vote, what if they’re experiencing buyer’s remorse like all these people in Massachusetts did? Do you realize how important this could be? …

Jewish liberals like to call themselves independents? Where does this happen? Has Rush actually talked to a Jewish liberal who called himself an independent, because I haven't. In fact, I've heard a couple Jewish conservatives call themselves independents because they might not want to be known as conservatives in the overwhelmingly liberal Jewish community, but not liberals. I have heard some Jewish liberals with liberal domestic policy views but more conservative foreign policy opinions call themselves "Scoop Jackson Democrats"--but that's hardly calling oneself independent. Who does Rush talk to in Palm Beach that fed him this silliness?

Perhaps Rush realizes he doesn't know what he's talking about, because he then tries a different tack to make the Jews have "buyer's remorse" about Obama point -- while also starting a pitch (which he doesn't fully complete until afterwards) to read Norman Podhoretz's book "Why are Jews Liberals?"

If you have often wondered just out of, you know, a legitimately curious political sense -- if you have asked yourself why are so many Jewish people, liberal, what when it seemed so much of what liberals do would be anathema to Jewish people, particularly abortion, but any number of things -- taxes, tax increase. Look it -- you know something, folks?

There are a lot of people, when you say banker, people think Jewish. People who have prejudice, people who have, you know -- what's the best way to say -- a little prejudice about them. To some people, bankers -- code word for Jewish -- and guess who Obama's 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 starting to be some buyer's remorse there.

OK, I'm going to skip over opening the abortion can of worms (trying to keep this relatively short) and just go to the tax reference. Rush here in the first paragraph, in saying that he thinks Jews would oppose tax increases,is making that basic argument I referred to earlier: Jews on average have a high income, and those with higher incomes tend to oppose tax increases, so one would think that Jews would oppose those who support higher taxes (generally liberals)--but they don't. Fine, it's a point that's been made before and nothing is particularly controversial about it as an academic matter.

But then he gets into trouble. He says people who are bigoted often associate banking with Jews. True. He then says this: "To some people, bankers -- code word for Jewish -- and guess who Obama's assaulting? He's assaulting bankers. He's assaulting money people."

So what is Rush saying here? He appears to be charging Obama with playing to anti-Semites by attacking bankers, or, less charitably, just charging Obama with anti-Semitism for going after banks. This is ridiculous. Banks were a big reason for the recession, and people are legitimately mad because the banks are now making lots of money again. One can disagree with the policy of urging a tax on banks, but I haven't seen any evidence of this being promoted with any kind of targeting of Jews. If the president were going around talking about the bank tax while reciting the name Goldman Sachs and a list of names of other Jewish sounding bankers, then there would be a reason to worry. But that's not what's happening.

Then Rush went even further to try to find support for his Jews have "buyer's remorse" argument by restating the line he just attributed to those with prejudice as fact: "And a lot of those people on Wall Street are Jewish. So I wonder if there's starting to be some buyer's remorse there."

Factually, I suppose Rush is correct that there are a lot of Jews employed on Wall Street. But what exactly does that have to do with how Jews feel about Obama? Nothing--except Rush seems to think it's a key factor.

What he has done is kind of remarkable. He's essentially said, "People who think Jews control the banks are prejudiced, but, remember, there do happen to be a lot of Jews who work at banks--and they're probably mad at Obama because they're concerned about money and he'd be cutting into their profits." So he's just proceeded to renounce an anti-Semitic stereotype, and then three seconds later turn around and essentially testify to its truth.

Rush has said his remarks were taken out of context. That's not true. Did he misspeak? Perhaps. What he did do is casually reiterate the stereotype that Jews are bankers only concerned about money--in the service of making a political argument. That's not cool, and something that's worthy of some criticism.

Norman Podhoretz, in his defense of Rush, makes the point that anti-Semitism is a much more serious problem on the left these days than the right. It's a point worthy of argument, but I don't necessarily disagree with him. In my 13 years in Jewish journalism, the most scared I've ever been as a Jew was at the anti-globalization rally outside the AIPAC conference a few years back. As the crowd started to chant "Shut it down" in reference to AIPAC, I, in the mood to be a smartass, asked loudly and somewhat rhetorically to the crowd around me, "Why 'Shut it down?' What did they do?" One woman started yelling at me, "You're probably one of them!" and I started to get some nasty looks. As it turned out, nothing happened, although I was pretty creeped out by the whole thing.. But just because there's anti-Semitism on the left, though, doesn't mean that everyone on the right gets a pass if they say something inappropriate. Rush Limbaugh may be a supporter of Jews and Israel, but he could use a little bit of education in this instance.

Jewish Fact Check #3: Jennifer Rubin, J Street and the Univ. of Penn. Hillel

Jennifer Rubin at Commentary only wrote three sentences this morning about J Street, and yet she got enough wrong that it's worthy of a fact check. Here's the item, the first in her daily "Flotsam and Jetsam" post on the Contentions blog:

University of Pennsylvania’s Hillel is hosting J Street’s Jeremy Ben-Ami. Does Hillel not know that J Street doesn’t like to be known as a “pro-Israel” organization? One wonders what those who support Hillel must be thinking.

Rubin links to this page at the J Street Web site, which has information on the launch of "J Street Philadelphia," part of a national rollout of local J Street chapters planned for next month, and says that Penn's Hillel is "hosting" J Street and its executive director, Jeremy Ben-Ami. The event is being held at Steinhardt Hall at the University of Pennsylvania campus, which, via a Google search, I discovered is the UPenn Hillel building. But the J Street announcement doesn't mention Hillel at all, just the building, and it's not like it's uncommon for Hillels (or any building for that matter) to rent space to an organization without actually endorsing it. (When I was a student at Duke University--and there wasn't a Duke Jewish center built yet--my fraternity used to rent the UNC Hillel House for our January semi-formal every year. I don't think anyone would have said UNC Hillel was "hosting" us or sponsoring us--we were just renting the space. And yes, I know this isn't a perfect analogy since the formal was closed to the public and the J Street event isn't, but I thought it sort of made my point anyway.)

But all the evidence above is speculative, so I sent an email to a J Street spokesperson, who responded that yes, the organization is renting the space from Hillel. Why didn't Rubin make that call or send that email to J Street? Don't know--could be laziness, or that she just wanted to stir up trouble among critics of J Street and knew that actually getting the correct information might stop her from doing that.

Rubin also isn't quite accurate on something else she writes in those brief three sentences. She says that J Street "doesn't like to be known as a 'pro-Israel' organization." But that's just not the case. Although some question whether they should be using the slogan, J Street clearly has always called itself a "pro-Israel, pro-peace" organization. Rubin is conflating J Street with its campus arm, J Street U. The Jerusalem Post reported back in October that J Street U has decided that individual chapters did not have to use "pro-Israel" in its slogan, J Street U denied it, and there was a lot of confusion and back and forth over the issue--and I'm still not really sure what the deal is. Suffice it to say that J Street U's Web site does not use the term "pro-Israel" to describe itself in its mission statement and decries polarizing voices using the terms "pro-Israel" and "pro-Palestinian"--but also states clearly that "as supporters of Israel, we are firmly committed to protecting the future of the State of Israel as a Jewish democratic homeland."

As for those of you reading this and asking, "What would be wrong if UPenn Hillel was hosting a speech from Jeremy Ben-Ami?" that's a legitimate question that is worthy of debate, but has nothing to do with fact-checking--and thus I'm not going to get into it. But you're welcome to hash that out in the comments.

Jewish Fact Check #2: Stephen Walt's Smears

It's time for another "Jewish fact check," although my choice of targets, Steve Walt's blog post yesterday at Foreign Policy, is probably too easy because there's just so much wrong with it.

My former colleague at JTA, Ron Kampeas, has already done a masterful job explaining why Walt's argument doesn't make much sense, and is, as he put it, "simultaneously meaningless and contradictory." So I'll just break down how a few of the inaccuracies, distortions and false insinuations Walt throws out in service of that argument.

First of all, Walt states that the workshop he's talking about, teaching Jewish community members how to advocate on the issue of Iran, is sponsored by The Israel Project. It's true that The Israel Project is a sponsor of this Jan. 17 event, but in fact, they're just one of close to two dozen sponsors -- and not even the chief organizer of the event. That would be the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington.

I suppose I could give Walt a little bit of a break on getting this wrong, since the email he received (which I received also) has a big Israel Project banner across it with a link to the group's Web site, obviously leading one initially to believe this was an Israel Project-led event. Except at the bottom of the e-mail there's a prominent link to the JCRC's Web site where it says more information can be found. And clicking that link clarly brings one to the JCRC Web site, which denotes that the program is the "JCRC's community-wide grass-roots advocacy training program" and lists the co-sponsors at the bottom of the page:

Anti-Defamation League DC Chapter, American Jewish Committee, Baltimore Zionist District, Birthright Israel NEXT DC, DC Council BBYO, DC JCC, Hadassah Greater Washington Area Chapter, JCCGW, JCRC of Greater Washington, Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Jewish National Fund, National Jewish Democratic Council, Orthodox Union, Republican Jewish Coalition, StandWithUs, The Embassy of Israel, The Israel Project, The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, and The Melvin J. Berman Hebrew Academy

So how does Walt get this wrong? Is he just lazy and didn't click on the link? That seems the most likely explanation, although I can't imagine how one could write a blog post slamming an event and not even do the minimal amount of research -- such as clicking on a link -- before writing. After all, Walt fancies himself an "expert" on the "Israel lobby." He wrote a whole book about it with his buddy John Mearsheimer. You'd think such a an expert on the Jewish community would know the difference between a local JCRC and The Israel Project, wouldn't you?

There's also the possibility that Walt used The Israel Project because he wants to tar this event as supported only by certain individual organizations in the Jewish community and suggest that many other Jews don't back a strong stance against the possibility of Iranian nuclear weapons. But in fact, the JCRC is an organization which represents the public policy views of more than 200 D.C.-area Jewish organizations. Combine that with the federation, groups representing Democrats and Republicans and a bunch of other well-known organizations and it's clear the "Stop Iran" movement is pretty broad-based in the Jewish community. (That doesn't mean there aren't Jews around the country who oppose sanctions on Iran, just that they're well outnumbered among Jews active in the Jewish communal world.)

But what really bothered me about Walt's piece was this paragraph:

But notice that this event advertises an AIPAC representative, an Israeli diplomat and apparently several unnamed congressional legislative assistants. The latter are supposed to be public servants; we understand that they will be the objects of a lobbying groups efforts but here they seem to be actively helping one. Given the prominent role given to an official representative of a foreign government and the participation of several congressional aides, this event does seem to blur the line between being a purely domestic lobbying group and being something else. Isn't it a bit over-the-line to have an officially accredited diplomat give the plenary address to a workshop whose declared purpose is to teach Americans how to advocate on behalf of that same diplomat's country?

I once wrote that listening to Walt and Mearsheimer talk about the "Israel Lobby" reminded me of the classic Seinfeld episode where everyone thinks Jerry and George are gay, and they keep having to tell everyone, "We're not gay, not that there's anything wrong with that." Actually, that wasn't really right--in fact, it would be as if Jerry and George had added after "not that there's anything wrong with that" something like "but, just to be clear, we think being gay is really bad and that gays are destroying the country."

Walt says there's nothing wrong with the meeting he's writing about,and then makes ridiculous insinuations about how sinister and improper everything scheduled to happen at the meeting is.

Take his comment that it's somehow "over the line" to have an Israeli diplomat give the plenary address "to a workshop whose declared purpose is to teach Americans how to advocate on behalf of that same diplomat's country?"

What Walt is saying here is what's "over the line." He's apparently arguing that when he and Mearsheimer advocate in their book that the United States should have a less close relationship with Israel and that the U.S. should use its leverage to force an Israeli-Palestinian settlement -- a perfectly legitimate position -- that he's advocating in the best interests of the United States. But when other Americans advocate that it's in the best interests of the United States that Iran not have nuclear weapons, that's advocating not for the best interests of the United States but only on behalf of a foreign country? (Walt apparently forgot about all those Arab countries that are scared to death about Iran getting nukes, just to begin...)

Even more ridiculous is Walt's bizarre conspiracy-minded musings about the participation of unnamed "congressional legislative assistants" in the Jan. 17 conference -- he states that they are "supposed to be public servants; we understand that they will be the objects of a lobbying groups efforts but here they seem to be actively helping one."

This is baffling -- he's accusing congressional aides of engaging in .... politics! Imagine that! Having the staff of members of Congress speak to a group which supports their position on the Iran issue is no different than what happens every day in Washington -- members of Congress speaking to groups which agree with them on a particular issue and encouraging them to speak out and work to make their positions the position of the government. (Considering Walt has a Ph.D in political science and teaches at the Kennedy School of Government, it's pretty odd he doesn't know this.)

Let's take J Street, a group Walt likes -- although they don't like him much. They had a conference in October which culminated in the group lobbying on Capitol Hill. And guess what? They had five members of Congress speak at a conference plenary session, telling them how much they appreciated their efforts and telling them how important their work was. Wow, pretty controversial.

Oh, and then there was that rally for universal health care I went to last summer. You're not going to believe this, Professor Walt, but actual "public servants," otherwise known as staffers at the White House, were there and spoke to the crowd. They told them how important their help was to get health reform passed. "Over the line"? Um, no, just how things work in Washington.

So what's the difference between this and congressional staffers speaking to like-minded Americans about how best they can influence the debate on Iran? Pretty much nothing. I thought members of Congress were supposed to try to do all they can to convince their colleagues to vote their way. One of those things is educating voters on how best to get their message across to their own congresspeople. I thought this was how politics works. Why does Steven Walt only think it is nefarious when American Jews do it?

Jewish Fact Check: The alleged opposition to the anti-Semitism czar

Over the last couple years as a journalist covering the Jewish community, I've noticed that there seems to be an increasing number of rumors, untruths and distortions in the Jewish political world that get repeated enough that they're unfortunately treated as fact. So now, as an unemployed Jewish journalist, I figured I'd spend some time trying to refute these misstatements before they spread. Why? Because it makes me mad when people make up their own facts.

Today's edition: This Haaretz article interviewing the new head of the Obama administration's Office to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, Hannah Rosenthal.

For now, let's put aside the headline of the article, Rosenthal's criticism of Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren for his criticism of J Street, and check out this paragraph of Barak Ravid's piece:

She said criticism of her appointment in the Obama administration, from the leaders of some American Jewish organizations, was "from a very few people who blog a lot."

The problem with this paragraph is that no leaders of American Jewish organizations ever criticized Rosenthal's appointment. The only people to criticize the pick of Rosenthal were, as she correctly states, "a very few people who blog a lot." The American Thinker's Ed Lasky,The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb, and WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein all did criticize Rosenthal's appointment, and they all blog a lot--but they don't lead American Jewish organizations.

Why the mix-up? Perhaps the writer was thinking about something the writers mentioned above had written about--that the ADL's Abe Foxman had criticized Rosenthal in a piece in The Jewish Week. But that criticism came more than 18 months ago and was in response to a piece that Rosenthal wrote criticizing some in the pro-Israel community. But Foxman and the ADL didn't criticize Rosenthal's appointment--in fact, he praised it, and said he looked forward to working with Rosenthal.

Unfortunately, this is the second time a well-read website has reported erroneously that Rosenthal's appointment was opposed by American Jewish organizations. The first was earlier this month in Foriegn Policy, when Stephen Walt got it wrong (what else is new) in his blog, stating "the Zionist Organization of America and other rightwing Jewish groups are complaining about the appointment of Hannah Rosenthal to direct the Office to Combat and Monitor Anti-Semitism." That was wrong and a complete misreading of the article he links to, Natasha Mozgovaya's Haaretz piece -- which notes ZOA and other organizations' criticism of the appointments of Chuck Hagel and Chas Freeman, but specifically says that "conservative web sites" are the ones upset over Rosenthal.

So, let's stop repeating this false statement. Hannah Rosenthal's appointment to head the Obama administration's office to monitor anti-Semitism was not criticized by any major Jewish organization. Now should Rosenthal, in her new position, be giving interviews in which she's criticizing the Israeli ambassador for his position on J Street? That's a very interesting and worthy question for debate--but for now, I'll just stick to the fact checking.