Many liberal Jews are in deep pain as they watch leftists bash Israel

The 'firsters' furor

The real case of dual loyalty

By Charles Jacobs

March 8, 2012

A lan Dershowitz, defender of Israel, staunch liberal, and vocal supporter of President Barack Obama, issued a public warning to the president that if he does not distance himself from two ultra-liberal organizations - Media Matters and the Center for American Progress - he will lose Dershowitz's support. Dershowitz focused his ire on Media Matters' blogger M.J. Rosenberg, who accuses pro-Israel Jews of being "Israel-firsters" and of having "dual loyalty."

There's a growing concern among Israel's liberal Jewish supporters that the rabidly anti-Israel radical left has penetrated the liberal mainstream. The liberal Zionists want to stop it now. Dershowitz was drawing a line in the sand.

He told the press that Media Matters and the Center for American Progress, which are closely associated with the Democratic Party, are "so virulently anti-Israel that they've gone over the line from anti-Zionism to anti-Semitism." The dual loyalty charge, Dershowitz explained, has served for centuries as a justification for killing the Jews. Explaining his challenge to Obama, he said, "I will not be in a tent with ... anti-Semitic bigots." It will be interesting to see the president's response.

Dual loyalty is indeed a classic attack that has been most frequently directed at Jews. For many years, Catholics had been accused of being "Vaticanfirsters," but that charge ended with the election of JFK. American Muslims, on the other hand, are never charged with being "Muslim firsters," even after several American Muslim soldiers turned on their comrades in arms, and even after nearly half told pollsters that they considered themselves Muslims first, Americans second.

American Arabs who support Hezbollah, which has murdered scores of Americans and is promoting "Death to America," are not charged with being "Arab firsters." Other groups that are seen to have multiple loyalties are not necessarily judged negatively. African Americans, for example, who lobbied American administrations to be more active in defending blacks from slaughter by Arabs in Sudan, were admired for showing solidarity with their brothers and sisters, and were never called "Africa firsters."

The charge against Jews could be true if American Jews thought the interests of Israel and America diverged to such an extent that they would have to choose between them. But, thank heavens, the opposite is true: America and Israel have interests that, if not perfectly aligned on all issues, substantially converge. Defending a democratic culture from totalitarian enemies is without doubt in the US interest and may even be key to America maintaining respect in the world. Abandoning a longstanding ally, on the other hand, would surely weaken American power: What other nation would ever be able to trust us?

There are Jews today - very important Jews - who seem to be struggling over dual loyalties, agonizing over the growing conflict between two of their deep and abiding loves: liberalism - and Israel. Most American Jewish leaders are members of the Democratic Party, segments of which now drift away from supporting the Jewish state. One sees their pain.

Practically all my liberal friends are in deep distress over the abandonment of Israel by more and more of the left. They listen to their college children telling them about the "discourse" on campus. They see the "Occupy" crowd hold anti-Israel signs. My friends try as hard as they can to keep reconciling their identification with the left and their love for Israel. How many times have we heard them say - in distress - that they are "liberal on everything, except for Israel."

But it is Jews at the leadership level who have been most dramatically trapped by this problem. This is a long time coming, but it is made excruciatingly more difficult by the current administration. Liberal Jewish leaders could look aside when Obama was found to have attended a pro-Farrakhan church, and even when he dissed Bibi at the White House, and even when he pressed Israel publicly to withdraw to the '67 borders. But the conflicts only increase.

Now, they see a president who seems more concerned about a possible Israeli attack on Iran than about Iran's nuclear capabilities and stated intentions; and now they see an administration that has openly and publicly embraced the anti- Semitic Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East. Liberal Jewish leaders are being pulled even harder from both sides.

Take two cases in Boston. In the first, Sen. John Kerry (formerly our man in Damascus) has become Obama's point man on embracing the Jew-hating Brotherhood in Egypt. Will Jewish leaders in the Hub continue to be liberals and give him a pass, or will they be pro- Jewish and give him a good talking to? The bigger question: Will they make it a public issue?

Case No. 2: Boston's Combined Jewish Philanthropies got caught up in the Media Matters issue, having been named in a full-page New York Times ad as one of the biggest Jewish contributors to Media Matters. Actually that was untrue. As Barry Shrage pointed out, the substantial monies that go from Boston Jews to Media Matters do not come from Jewish communal funds, as the ad implied. The money comes from a list of private "donor-designated" funds from local Jewish philanthropists who use CJP as a pass-through, to save taxes and administrative costs, and perhaps to cover with Jewish cloth very leftist groups. Shrage rightly says that he cannot vet every fund. But in the past, when anti-Israel groups were pointed out to him, he removed them from the list. It will be interesting to see if he'll join the Dershowitz crusade to expunge leftist anti-Semites from the decent left.

The American liberal Jewish establishment, which controls Jewish institutional life, is facing a difficult dilemma this election year. It will be forced to choose between its fiduciary responsibility to the Jewish community and its political ideology. How will it deal with these "dual loyalties"? Will they be "Democratic Party firsters?" Or will they draw a line in the sand?

Stay tuned.