Just over 3 months after I exposed the antisemitism of Newsweek Middle East Senior Deputy Editor Leila Hatoum comes yet another troubling example of a Newsweek reporter disseminating an antisemitic article.
The person in question this time is Nina Burleigh, the National Politics Correspondent for Newsweek, who tweeted this yesterday.
https://twitter.com/ninaburleigh/status/814928414033530881
It is a link to this article on Mondoweiss, which, while not as explicit in its antisemitism as, say, something written by David Duke, is nevertheless antisemitic. Unless you subscribe to the view that spreading the notion of a powerful Jewish lobby, while questioning the need for a Jewish state, is fine and dandy.
That is the great political puzzle that these last-minute gyrations compel us to try and understand. Obama has finally done what he wanted to do and taken on Benjamin Netanyahu and exposed his extremism. Why did he wait so long? The answer is simple: the Israel lobby was against any real action. Jewish Americans of my generation and older opposed any pressure on Israel. So there was no pressure (till now, and Trump).
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As Elise Labott said last night on CNN, Obama did not push the settlements/Palestinian state issue before the election out of deference to Hillary Clinton. Labott was saying, without saying it, that Clinton was so dependent on the Jewish establishment and large Jewish donors, that she could not “undermine [the] party’s fundraising capabilities” (as the National Journal says) by saying a word against Israel. Today on NPR Daoud Kuttab said very much the same thing: that presidents take these actions in their last months when they are freed of “domestic, political, lobbying” pressures. This is a central truth of our politics that ought to be explored.
Just as an NPR host two days ago allowed the Anti-Defamation League to label Keith Ellison’s statement about the Israel lobby a “bigoted” claim of a “Jewish conspiracy.” Just as Chris Hayes said last night on MSNBC that paleo-conservatives’ claims of the existence of a Zionist lobby smack of anti-Semitism. I suppose it is anti-semitic for me to point out that the executive vice president at Hayes’s company, Comcast, is a Jewish-American who has shown ardent support for Israel, raising money for Israel’s soldiers right along MSNBC favorite Ed Rendell. Or that an executive vice president at Time Warner, which owns the other liberal cable network, is a Jewish-American who wrote speeches for Benjamin Netanyahu.
This is not a conspiracy; it is a belief system about the need for a Jewish state that runs deep in a very empowered American community and is only now being interrogated as an affront to liberalism. Walt and Mearsheimer tried to talk about it ten years ago, and they were smeared.
Of course, this is typical of Mondoweiss, a site so full of hatred for Israel that it regularly lets down its guard and goes into full Jew-hate mode. For instance, a few months ago, they launched an antisemitic attack on Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic’s new editor-in-chief. They have also made the argument that saying Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish state is not antisemitic.
It is deeply troubling that Newsweek’s National Politics Correspondent would disseminate such an antisemitic article, and yet another example of agenda-driven journalism.
Update: Join me in voicing your disgust to Etienne Uzac, Chief Executive & Jim Impoco, Editor-in-Chief, Newsweek Global.
Update: Nina seems to enjoy the taste of her foot.
https://twitter.com/ninaburleigh/status/815267951314173952
Update: Yep.
