As my readers know, I am not bothering to correct the lie that I was fired for criticizing Israel. Why bother? Besides, what difference does it make why I left. The issue is that the Israel lobby not only demanded that I be fired but is now celebrating that I was. That proves my (and Walt-Mearsheimer’s point) better than anything I have written or said up to now.
The latest from the lobby’s #1 enforcer, OJ Simpson lawyer Alan Dershowitz, is that my “firing” isn’t enough. Yes, I understand the man is a joke who causes Jews to recoil in embarrassment every time his mug shows up on television. (Has there ever been a Harvard professor who exudes low-class more than Dershowitz? My grandparents, who were immigrants, were Connecticut Yankees compared to this guy).
Dersh today is saying that my leaving Media Matters is not enough. Read it. He is now demanding an apology from MMFA because of my use of the term Israel Firster to describe people like Alan Dershowitz who I now call America Seconders. He also insists on veto power on any successor MMFA may hire.
I’m not going into details.
But every American needs to understand that there is only one lobby in this country that operates like this. One can write or speak freely on any issue but one: Israel. You can call President Obama a foreigner and a terrorist. You can call President Bush a war criminal who belongs in jail. You can denounce all gun owners as criminals or, for that matter, call anyone who opposes “gun rights” a Communist subversive.
There is absolutely nothing that one cannot say or write except about this one issue — because of the power of the lobby Dershowitz is a key part of. Because, if you do, the lobby will go after your job.
Permit me to repeat the irony of Dersh objecting to the term Israel Firster from a previous column of mine.
Here is what the famous OJ Simpson lawyer had to say about me leaving Media Matters in the Daily Caller:
“Rosenberg was an extremist,” Dershowitz told the Daily Caller. “He didn’t engage in careful, nuanced critiques of Israel, which is fine. He engaged in hyperbole, name-calling. He just hated, hated, hated, with a passion, almost an eroticized passion of anything associated with Israel. He was like a spurned lover — irrational.”
“So it’s an enormous improvement for Media Matters,” he said.
Dershowitz, you may recall, was so upset about my use of the term that he denounced me in a full page ad that a bunch of GOP operatives, led by William Kristol, took out in the New York Times. That must have cost a hundred thousand dollars or so, demonstrating the importance the right attaches to going after critics of Netanyahu and those who suggest that American Likudniks are not primarily motivated by devotion to America.
In an interview at the time the ad was published, Dershowitz said that he was both a liberal and a Democrat but that unless Media Matters fired me, he would spread the word against … President Obama (on the grounds that Media Matters is close to the president).
His logic:
“I don’t know whether President Obama has any idea that Media Matters has turned the corner against Israel in this way,” Dershowitz said. “I can tell you this: he will know very shortly because I am beginning a serious campaign on this issue and I will not let it drop until and unless Rosenberg is fired from Media Matters, or Media Matters changes its policy or the White House disassociates itself from Media Matters.”
He continued:
“I will speak to every Jewish group that invites me, and I think it’s fair to say I speak to more Jewish groups than probably any other person in the world. I spoke to over a million Jews over the years. You know, just last Thursday spoke to 1200, just in the next weeks alone I’ll be speaking and in the past weeks to thousands of American Jews. And believe me, I will not let them ignore this issue.”
Think about it. Dershowitz says he is a liberal and a Democrat but would campaign to defeat a Democratic president (with whom he agrees on domestic American issues) because that president may be close to an organization that employed a staffer who opposes policies of the Israeli government.
In other words, the well-being of every American matters less to Dershowitz than getting one critic of Israeli policies fired. Some American!
No wonder, he was so upset by the term Israel Firster.
Dershowitz says he is not done with me yet, even though, according to him, I was fired and, for all he knows, am living in poverty. What happens when he finds out how much my readership has increased during the past two weeks and that I will be using every opportunity I have to explain how the lobby operates?
Will Dershowitz get my house repossessed by the bank? Can he go after my savings? My pensions? Other property?
Does he know that 97% of my readership comes by way of Huffington Post? Will he threaten Arianna Huffington next?
At what point does his lobby stop?
I don’t know. But I thank Alan Dershowitz for making it so easy for me and my allies to prove that everything we say about the Israel lobby is true. The lobby is dangerous. And there is no force in America like it and there never has been before.
Note: there are six million Jews in America. The lobby represents a tiny percentage of them. Always remember that. But also remember that the few hundred lobby people I am talking about have more power than all the rest of us combined. And they use it, but not for this country.
