Well-Meaning American Jews Are Unknowingly Financing Israel Radical Left

By Barry Rubin

A newly leaked U.S. Embassy cable provides a startling revelation not so much of extremist anti-Israel views of one high-ranking New Israel Fund official but how money supposedly raised for good deeds pays for full-time radical activists and finances the Israeli political far-left.

And this introduced the complex story of an Israeli social protest movement torn between trying to solve real problems by very specific reforms and seeking to bring down the government and transform Israel into a version of an economically faltering European welfare state.

As a result of the Palestinian leadership’s refusal to make peace, the 1990s’ peace process’s failure, and the violent 2000-2005 intifada, the Israeli left largely disintegrated or moved toward the center. Suddenly, however, the left has revived in recent months by shifting from failed proposals for massive concessions to the Palestinians to protests about Israeli housing and other prices. In this context, Israel’s social protest movement has nothing to do with the “Arab Spring” and everything to do with trends in Europe and North America.

Of course, many Israelis face real problems with the gap between wages and living costs. Almost everyone I meet–including those on the right—sympathize with the protest even if they have doubts about its leaders and demand. They also all know a long list of factors making Israel different from Europe or North America. Most understand that Israel has prospered because of jettisoning once-useful but now burdensome socialist features. A few years ago finance minister Benjamin Netanyahu became a hero even to many on the left for successful privatization reforms. More recently, the very economic decisions tending to make prices higher and keep wages lower also kept down unemployment, debt, and inflation.

Today’s problems that have motivated protests are a combination of remaining socialist practices, peculiarities of Israel’s social structure, and the country’s security situation. They have nothing much to do with capitalism or class conflict. And they could be reduced by some relatively simple measures.

The most criticized institutions are socialist-based like the dairy monopoly and the idea that the state should control land. The religious sector, rather than favoring Tea Parties and government spending cuts, tends to be the biggest per capita welfare recipients. Supermarket prices are high due to the country’s small market, protectionism, and kashrut standards. Israel’s health system, which some call “socialized medicine” functions pretty well. There are no big landlords; trade unions aren’t important factors.

Taxes are high and security issues–most recently the need to rebuild defenses on the border with Egypt–eat up money that might otherwise be used for social welfare. Despite all these things, living standards have risen steadily over the years but maintaining them is stressful for people who often depend on a revolving line of credit from their banks (the overdraft) which they pay off with every month’s pay check.

To demand the dairy monopoly is broken up to allow competition or that new land beyond the suburbs be opened up for building low-cost housing can succeed. To demand that capitalism be overthrown (in a country that isn’t wildly capitalistic to begin with), that banks provide loans to people who can’t pay them back to buy apartments in expensive urban areas, or that the government go into debt to expand entitlements won’t.

Now let’s consider how a recently revealed February 2010 cable from the U.S. embassy of a conversation with Hedva Radovanitz, then associate director of the New Israel Fund (NIF) in Israel, fits into this picture.

A media furor arose from Radovanitz telling the American diplomat “that she believed that in 100 years Israel would be majority Arab and that the disappearance of a Jewish state would not be the tragedy that Israelis fear since it would become more democratic.” In other words, the “New Israel” would be a dead Israel.

The NIF has issued a statement that Radovanitz was speaking for herself, left NIF a year ago, and that the organization disagrees with her statement. Radovanitz’s own statement seems designed to make the NIF look good. Mention of her past association is suspiciously absent from NIF sites. Her far-left background makes it seem as if the NIF knew her views when she was hired and wasn’t bothered by them.

Yet all of this is relatively unimportant compared to the rest of the leaked cable. The NIF solicits contributions in the United States by presenting itself as a pro-Israel liberal group promoting social justice in Israel including assisting the poor, helping the handicapped, promoting equality for Arabs, and other good causes. In reality, much of its funds go to support left-wing full-time “community organizers” and to subsidize political movements. In a sense, the NIF might be Israel’s equivalent of George Soros. The difference is that Soros knows the political goals his money being used for; the NIF’s contributors don’t.

So Radovanitz tells the American diplomat that the big problem is the “disappearance of the political left wing,” giving as an example one such NGO had shrunk from 5,000 members to less than 800. The left wing, she continued, only hold demonstrations by using NGO staff members, presumably paid with NIF grants, to pretend they were regular concerned citizens.

The NIF’s plan, said Radovanitz, was to create “a movement rather than just a lot of NGOs.” This strategy worked. Eighteen months later, the NIF was main funder of a large “social protest” movement.

A new NGO Monitor report details how NIF funding has gone to left-wing groups more involved in political propaganda and organizing than in charity or social welfare work. The money is used for challenging Israeli policies, helping its enemies, and rebuilding the Israeli left.

In other words, the NIF really doesn’t agree with Radovanitz that the New Israel should be a dead Israel. Rather, it wants the New Israel to be an Israel in debt with high unemployment, inflation, a sick economy, a strangling government bureaucracy, and even more onerous taxes.

Again, the social protest movement is contending with real problems. The demonstrators don’t want an anti-capitalist revolution but reasonable adjustments to make their lives easier.

But will the movement focus on solving shortcomings in a realistic manner—reducing government bureaucracy to increase construction; limited, focused help to those needing housing; and better competition to cut prices–or attacking capitalism and advocating massive government subsidies like those playing havoc with Western economies?

Uniquely Israeli factors may determine events. Possibly violent Palestinian demonstrations in late September; end of the fun-to-demonstrate summer period; growing Egyptian radicalism; and big UN mess over unilateral Palestinian independence may push Israeli conversation back toward the usual stuff. A new party based on the social protest movement might actually sabotage the existing left. Former general Shaul Mofaz might become leader of Kadima, the main opposition party, a development equivalent to Senator Joe Lieberman becoming head of the Democratic Party.

Finally, those far-left (rather than moderate left of center) tendencies in the movement are likely to turn off most Israelis. When a half-dozen kids recruiting for the scout movement at my son’s elementary school show up wearing red shirts with a picture of Che Guevara (who supported anti-Israel terrorists) and the slogan “Change,” it sets off alarm bells. Unlike many in Europe and North America, building fantasy utopias and ignoring reality are things whose high price will discourage Israelis even more than the cost of apartments and cottage cheese.


Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and Middle East editor and featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). GLORIA Center site is http://www.gloria-center.org.His articles published originally outside of PajamasMedia are at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com>  ed

Some "Big" Sons of Bitches Visit Media Matters' DC Office

Note: there are two videos at the bottom of this post, if you cannot see them please click here.

 Earlier today, two of my favorite Editors Big Journalism editor Dana Loesch, and Big Government editor Mike Flynn joined their boss Andrew Breitbart (collectively described as the "Big" Sons of Bitches by Jimmy Hoffa Jr.) on a little road trip.

They decided to pay a visit to the DC home of Media Matters, that progressive media watchdog funded by spooky dude George Soros and frequented by little Eric Boehlert the man who calls me a Jew-basher.  Their quest was to find the holy grail (sorry wrong movie), their quest was to get a copy of  Media Matters‘ IRS 990 disclosure form, which by law needs to be provided to anyone who requests one.

Unlike other tax-free organizations Media Matters has not made their form 990 easily accessible. There are a few sites that collect them and distribute the forms to anybody who wants them.  You may remember that's how I discovered that George Soros had actually given money to J-Street despite their denials, by looking up their form 990.

The Issue with the folks at Media Matters is different, as a tax-exempt organization they are not supposed to be involved in politics, a rule they obviously break.  The "Bigs" have been trying to collect evidence to prove Media Matters' violations to the IRS, their tax form 990 is just part of the data collection.  The last thing the media matters people would expect is the "Big" Sons of Bitches visiting their offices, but they did, and what ensued was pure chaos. Below are two videos of the visit, one taken by Media Matters and shows our three heroes getting the copy of the 990 from  Media Matters Executive Vice President Ari Rabin-Havt.




And the better more "dramatically produced" version from my friends at Breitbart.

If you would like to read the account from the "Big" participants, please click here

 

If   

Media Matters Eric Boehlert; Propaganda Minister For a Jew-Bashing Machine

A funny thing happened while I was taking my Shabbos nap the other day, Mr. Media Matters himself, Eric Boehlert read one of my posts. Exciting right? I mean it's not as cool as when Andrew Breitbart takes one of my posts from one of the "Bigs"  and puts it on his refrigerator, but it’s still pretty cool.

I was a bit surprised though when he said I wrote a"Jew-bashing"post. Particularly when one realizes my nickname "Yid With Lid" is slang for Jew wearing a yarmulke. The nickname stems from the fact that I am relatively observant of Jewish customs and religious ritual.

The Media Matters big-shot was talking specifically about a post called, Obama Forming an "I Really Love Israel" PR Squad To Try and Rescue Jewish Vote, an article where I criticized:

"…some low-level Jewish players have decided to seal their place in the progressive movement rather than act for the best interests of both the United States and its valuable Mid-East ally,  Israel."

After giving it some thought I realized that Eric Boehlert may be correct, maybe I am a Jew-basher.  I don't bash all Jews, only  ones who allow themselves to be used as tools of people who want to hurt other Jews (and some of the Jews on my wife's side but I don't write about them).  Interestingly most of the Jews I bash are associated with Eric Boehlert or his Jewish sugar-daddy George Soros.

Take for example, M.J. Rosenberg. Rosenberg employs anti-Semitic buzz words that seem to come right out of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. He writes about the "pro-Israel lobby," controlling government decisions, a nice way to say that the Jews control the government; he complains that you can’t write anti-Israel pieces in the media, a nice way to say the Jews control the media; and uses the word "neocon" as a nice way to say "those dammed Jews."

Who pays Rosenberg to spew his hate?  Eric Boehlert and Media Matters for America pay Mr. Rosenberg (with the help of George Soros and the U.S. Government).

Maybe I am a serial Jew basher, after all via my blog The Lid, I’ve been bashing Boehlert's sugar-daddy George Soros for years, ever since his anti-Israel article in the NY Review of Books in 2007. That’s  when he spewed the anti-Semitic meme that the powerful Israel Lobby, those damned Jooooze, were preventing peace in the Middle East.

 In fact years before Glenn Beck talked about it, this site was explaining about how Soros helped the Nazi's as a teenager and called it the best time of his life. At the same time we talked about how Soros was pushing the new Barak Obama to stay on his anti-Israel path.

Now that I think about it, there are times when my bashing was directed against big groups of Jews, like the George Soros funded J-Street.

Until the election of Barack Obama J-Street was generally ignored by mainstream Israel advocates because its views generally did not take into consideration the safety of Israel. Indeed many (including me) have called the group anti-Israel. Obama tried to raise the profile of J-Street because they shared his negative perception of the Jewish State.

During the conflict with Hamas at the end of 2008, which was a response to thousands of missiles sent into Israeli civilian areas, J Street called Israel's "escalation in Gaza counterproductive" saying it was "disproportionate." The Soros-funded group also made a moral equivalency argument between the policies of Israel and Hamas, stating they found difficulty in distinguishing "between who is right and who is wrong" and "picking a side." Of course, they were ignoring the years of Gaza terrorism and the fact that Israel left the territory years before.

The group has felt my wrath because they advocated that the US negotiate with the terrorist group intent on destroying Israel, Hamas.

I bashed the entire J-Street group as they advocated for Hamas and fought the Congressional move to place additional sanctions on Iran.

My Jew-bashing even was directed toward the George Soros funded, Jewish Funds For Justice when they made false charges of Antisemitism against Glenn Beck and then two weeks later when they rounded up 400 Left-Wing Rabbis and published an anti-Beck letter in the Wall Street Journal.

The Rabbinical letter broke the Jewish laws against loshen hora (evil speech). Using Jewish Law, something the 400 progressive Rabbis should have been practicing, I explained how before they could make charges against Beck as they did in the letter, the Rabbis had to   among other things, research the veracity of the accusations and examine the motivation of the accuser. Jews are taught that even if charges are true (which was not the case this time) in the vast majority of cases there is a command to keep   that kind of talk to themselves. Because of ignoring the rules they were supposed to be teaching, the 400 “teachers” brought shame upon themselves, their holy profession, the entire Jewish people, and even worse, have committed a Chillul Hashem (desecration of God's name).

Put it all together and you realize that Eric Boehlert is right (sort of). I am a Jew-basher.  I bash Jews who use their Jewishness as an excuse to abandon Jewish law, to slander the Jewish people with anti-Semitic memes, or to de-legitimize the Jewish State.

A day after his original charge Eric Boehlert asked a follow-up question

Boehlert is referring to this line the original post:

I am at a loss at how these how these modern day Kapos-in training will be able to convince people of the President is really a buddy of the Jewish State.

The answer is no, I am not embarrassed.  I do wonder if Boehlert is embarrassed by the fact that he needs some remedial reading and history classes.  My use of the word these means I was not talking about all of Obama's Jewish supporters, just the four mentioned in the piece. As far as the use of the word kapo, all not all concentration camp inmates were kapos. A kapo was a prisoner who worked inside German Nazi concentration camps in lower administrative positions.  The reason for the disparagement of the kapo is many of them were very brutal to their fellow camp inmates. So Boehlert's comparison of kapos to concentration camp victims is an insult to those victims.

What is an even bigger insult to the memory of the Holocaust is that Boehlert, who works for someone who spreads anti-Semitic stereotypes ,and employs someone who spreads anti-Semitic stereotypes has the nerve to even mention the Holocaust.

Boehlert has the nerve to imply that I am misusing the memory of the Holocaust when his puppet-master George Soros uses the term Nazi as often as he changes his shorts.

As he does here comparing George Bush to the Nazis




Or here as he says Fox News uses Nazi  propaganda tactics:



The truth is, Eric Boehlert is part of the propaganda arm of a Jew-bashing machine.  Most of these Jew-slandering, Israel-bashing Jews described above are connected to Media Matters and/or with their sugar-daddy  George Soros.  Others like the Jews involved with "David Axelrod's Jewish PR Squad" are connected to the most anti-Israel President in American history, who has almost singlehandedly destroyed the economy of the United States. Both the Soros connected Jewish pawns and the pawns of the Obama campaign are willing to put their status in the progressive world before the good of their people, Israel, and most importantly the needs of the United States.  And for that reason those Jews earned their bashing.

As a senior member of the Soros Jew-bashing machine, Eric Boehlert's disingenuous actions as some sort of Holocaust police is quite frankly disgusting, and it is he should be ashamed of himself. Sadly if his work with Media Matters for America has proven anything, Boehlert will never be ashamed of himself because Boehlert like most of the Soros-run hit squad,  has no shame.

George Soros Is Funding Effort To Remove Conservatives From Local Judgeships

For the past ten years there has been a well coordinated effort to reshape the composition of America's state courts by excluding conservative, rule-of-law judges from the bench.  The plan is to replace the publicly elected judiciary with what they ironically call "Merit Selection. Under “merit selection,” the power to select judges is transferred from the people to a small, unelected, unaccountable commission comprised primarily of legal elites, typically including representatives of powerful special interest groups, such as state trial lawyers associations.

"Who is behind this effort? The Spooky Dude himself, progressive sugar daddy George Soros who's  Open Society Institute (OSI) has invested at least $45.4 million into its campaign to reshape the judiciary. 

A report by the American Justice Partnership describes the effort as using the full bag of Soros' brand of campaign tactics through an organization his OSI funds called Justice at Sake (JAS) .

For example this was the Soros approach in Pennsylvania:

• Define the problem. In June 2010, Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts (PMC), a group that has been partially bankrolled by OSI since 2001, released the results of a public opinion poll that it spins as “proof ” that voters in the state prefer “merit selection” over democratic elections. On hand were officials from JAS and the Committee for Economic Development, organizations that also derive substantial funds from OSI. Not surprisingly, the fact that the poll showed 75 percent of Pennsylvanians believe “merit selection” will not remove politics from judicial selection and that nearly 70 percent believe “merit selection” gives “politicians and trial lawyers” the power to pick judges was never mentioned, nor were the poll's findings that 79 percent of Pennsylvanians believe democratically elected judges are “qualified” and 73 percent describe them as “fair.”

• Raise the issue's profile. As part of the spin campaign, PMC organized a press conference featuring political heavyweights, such as Governor Ed Rendell and former Governors Tom Ridge and Richard Thornburgh. Pennsylvania newspapers and editorial boards fell predictably into line, printing major stories about the poll's release but nothing about the poll's funding. PMC has also established a blog called JudgesOnMerit to continue the “merit selection” drum beat.

• Finance an artificial grassroots campaign. For nearly a decade, OSI has been financing an artificial grassroots campaign in Pennsylvania through PMC to “educate the public on the need to reform the state's judicial selection system.” Since 2004, the grants have been specifically in support of “merit selection.”

• Establish the desired policy outcome. PMC and the “merit selection” crowd promoted legislation that would take the power of choosing judges away from Pennsylvania's 8.7 million registered voters and hand it to a 14-member panel. The governor and legislators would pick a majority of eight panel members, most likely chosen from legal special interest groups, such as the trial lawyers association.

• Demonize the opposition. When Pennsylvania House Judiciary Chair Tom Caltagirone, a Democrat, blocked the “merit selection” bill, he was pilloried in the media. Rep. Caltagirone's sin: “I would rather let the people decide.”

The battle is still on-going, but various aspects of the above have been used in other states
such as Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nevada and other states “merit selection” supporters have targeted.

Justice at Stake's efforts are driven by the claim that judges who accept campaign contributions cannot be impartial (they offer no evidence to that effect).

In August 2007, three law professors from three prestigious law schools, Stephen J. Choi (NYU Law School), G. Mitu Gulati (Duke Law School) and Eric A. Posner (University
of Chicago Law School) published a study through the University of Chicago Law School that addressed the question of whether appointed judges are superior to elected judges. They examined three years of decisions by every high court judge in every state – a total of 408
judges and nearly 30,000 opinions. They evaluated judges based on three criteria: judicial effort, skill and independence. As they put it in their conclusion:

“We began this project with the assumption that the data would demonstrate that appointed judges are better than elected judges. Our results persuade us that the story is more complicated. It may be that elected judges are, indeed, superior to appointed judges. At a minimum, the conventional wisdom needs to be reexamined.” (pp. 42-43)

Not only did the authors find that appointed judges are not superior, they also concluded, based on the data, that elected judges have the highest independence.

“… the data does not support the received wisdom that appointed judges are more
independent than electoral judges.” (p. 20) In fact: “Judges subject to partisan election have the highest independence.” (p. 19)

The three legal scholars pointed out that appointed Judges have built in prejudices:

“In a system that uses judicial appointments, nothing forces the appointing official to select judges on the basis of their legal ability; cronyism is very common.” (p. 1)

And that voting may indeed "weed out" the lack of independence: 

“… when many people participate in a decision making process, aggregation of information occurs, which can produce more accurate results than when the decision is made by only one person.” (p. 1).

In practice, however, these commissions are typically controlled by legal elites (often trial lawyers) that have no accountability to the public whatsoever.

• In Kansas, by law, five of the nine members of the Supreme Court Nominating Commission must be lawyers.

• In Missouri, three of the seven members of the Appellate Judicial Commission have ties to the Missouri Association of Trial Lawyers.

• In Tennessee, lawyers held 14 of the 17 seats on the state's Judicial Selection Commission until 2009 when the legislature cut the number to 10 lawyer seats to reduce  special interest influence. However, though the new Judicial Nominating Commission need not have more than 10 lawyers, it ended up with 15 of 17 lawyers.

• In Maryland, lawyers control 16 of the 17 seats on the commission responsible for choosing appellate court judges.

Why should this be important to you.  The state  bar associations and legal groups who dominate these selection commissions are  dominated by trial lawyers. According tot Opensecrets.com which tracks donations for federal candidates;

Contributions to federal candidates and political committees by lawyers have increased during the past 10 years, and collectively, they are consistently larger during presidential election years. Each cycle, the contributions significantly favor Democrats. In the 2008 election cycle, the industry contributed a massive $234 million to federal political candidates and interests , 76 percent of which went to Democratic candidates and committees.

The judicial system should maintain a necessary degree of impartiality, but our founding fathers did not intend for judges to be separated from the will of the people. They also did not intend for judge selection to be placed in the hands of one interest group who pushes the contra-constitutional progressive philosophy. 

About 95 percent of America's civil disputes end up in state courts. That's an enormous amount of power, which needs checks and balances which are provided by the will of the people. That is why Soros is spending so much money to disenfranchise the people and put judge selection in the hands of lawyers who are more likely to vote the way he does.

Just before it was defeated by Nevada voters, in an essay entitled “Soros Bets on Nevada,” the Wall Street Journal editorialized that the Nevada merit selection campaign was the “test drive” for the Soros effort to bring merit selection to the 20 states that do not yet have it. 

“States using this so-called merit selection method have had their judicial selections manipulated by lawyers and bar associations that nominate guild favorites. In most cases this has pushed courts to the activist left,” wrote the Journal. “That's a nifty outcome for liberal groups who see the state courts as the next frontier for moving political agendas.”

There is much more to this story, I recommend you go to the American Justice Partnership site and learn how you can protect your rights!