Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > Why Are Dianne Feinstein and Janet Napolitano Backing a McCarthyite
Push Against Palestine Activists?
________________________________________
Why Are Dianne Feinstein and Janet Napolitano Backing a McCarthyite Push
Against Palestine Activists?
By Max Blumenthal [1], Julia Carmel [2] / AlterNet [3]
October 6, 2015
Part three of an ongoing investigation for AlterNet. Read parts one [4] and
two [5].
With a majority of schools in the University of California (UC) system and
the UC Student Association [6] voting to divest from companies profiting
from Israel's occupation, the pro-Israel lobby is pushing for a clampdown on
Palestine solidarity activity at UC schools. Not only do they want to forbid
demonstrations against Israeli policy on campus, they want to effectively
ban the BDS movement, which advocates boycotts, divestments and sanctions
against Israel to pressure the country into respecting the human rights of
Palestinians.
Shockingly, the extreme demand that the UC system adopt a definition of
anti-Semitism that would effectively classify [7] most forms of Palestine
solidarity activism as hate speech, and punish them as such, has won support
from some of California's most influential Democrats. They include Janet
Napolitano, the President of the University of California and former
Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Also backing the campaign
is Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein and her husband, the UC Regent and
scandal-stained [8] arms profiteer [9] Dick Blum. According to lawyer Ken
White, the Democratic power couple has threatened [10] to "make trouble if
the [university administration] didn't commit to punish people for
prohibited speech." Blum has vowed that anyone who violated the new speech
code be punished or expelled.
Behind this lobbying push is a little-known professor of Hebrew studies at
UC Santa-Cruz named Tammi Rossman-Benjamin. A hardcore supporter of Israel's
right-wing government, Rossman-Benjamin has helped pioneer the use of speech
codes and manipulating the law to undermine Palestine solidarity campaigns
-- a tactic that pro-Israel advocates refer to as "lawfare." Through the
AMCHA Initiative [11], a right-wing non-profit group that functions as
Rossman-Benjamin's personal political vehicle, she helped devise [12] the
radical crackdown on free speech at UC schools.
In the past, Rossman-Benjamin unsuccessfully crusaded [13] to force
California's Attorney General to prosecute a professor at California
State-Northridge, David Klein, for his support for the BDS campaign. She has
repeatedly attempted [14] to compel the federal government to define public
criticism of Israel as a violation of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act,
insisting that activities that offend the sensibilities of pro-Israel Jewish
students constitute a violation of those students' civil rights.
Rossman-Benjamin makes no secret of her contempt for Arab and Muslim
students. In a disturbingly vitriolic address [15] to a Jewish congregation
in 2012, Rossman-Benjamin claimed that campuses had been "poisoned" by the
infiltration of "foreign students who come from countries and cultures where
anti-Semitism is how they think about the world."
"These are not your ordinary student groups like College Republicans or
Young Democrats," she warned. "These are students who come with a serious
agenda, who have ties to terrorist organizations."
Rossman-Benjamin also maintains strong reserves of resentment for left-wing
African-American academics and activists, accusing them of spreading
anti-Semitism across American campuses. In a lengthy paper [16] lamenting
the successful push for an ethnic studies department at San Francisco State
University in the 1960's, Rossman-Benjamin concluded, "programs whose core
mission includes the promotion of group identity and the pursuit of social
justice may be linked to expressions of political animosities in general and
antisemitism in particular." (Her paper was edited by Alvin Rosenfeld, the
author of an essay [17] blaming "progressive Jewish thought" for the rise of
a "New Anti-Semitism.")
Rossman-Benjamin's attempts to suppress BDS activity on campus have led over
the line of legitimate activism into the realm of covert surveillance. In
2012, Rossman-Benjamin dispatched a student, Prescott Watson, to spy on [18]
a conflict analysis project of the University of California called the Olive
Tree Initiative. With the information illicitly gathered by Watson, she
produced a report based on private conversations and the personal
information of Berkeley students to paint Olive Tree as a vehicle for
promoting anti-Semitism. Documents leaked to journalists Asa Winstanley and
Nora Barrows-Friedman found that Rossman-Benjamin had become obsessed with
monitoring students well beyond this single initiative; she had spent years
filing away their personal information into a database.
Rebecca Pierce, a graduate of UC Santa Cruz and former student of
Rossman-Benjamin, told us that the professor would often be seen seated
towards the back of Palestine-related events on campus, jotting down notes
on BDS activists that she would later turn into files.
Links to shadowy Canary Mission, the Islamophobia industry
Canary Mission, the malicious Israeli government-linked website [4] that
seeks to deny employment opportunities to students who campaign for
Palestinian rights, has acknowledged its heavy reliance on the material
Rossman-Benjamin gathered on the activists she's tracked. [19]
As retribution for her public opposition to Rossman-Benjamin's activities on
campus, Pierce received a dossier at Canary Mission, and consequently became
the target of online harassment [4]that resulted from the malicious listing.
While Rossman-Benjamin has denied playing an operational role in Canary
Mission, much of Pierce's profile on the site specifically cited her
criticism of her former professor, as though Rossman-Benjamin had supplied
the material firsthand. Of over 140 students, activists, and academics
currently designated for blacklisting by Canary Mission, a disproportionate
number have been enrolled at the California campuses that Rossman-Benjamin
has obsessively monitored.
While some of the Canary Mission listings cite Rossman-Benjamin's AMCHA
Initiative as a source, others refer directly to material gathered by
Charles Jacobs' Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT) and his former
outfit, The David Project. In fact, many of the figures featured on Canary
Mission are longstanding targets of Jacobs, from Columbia University
professors Joseph Massad and Rashid Khalidi to Northeastern University
professor Dennis Sullivan and student Max Geller. To generate its dossier on
Geller, Canary Mission relied almost entirely on material first published
[20] in David Horowitz's FrontPageMag by the Research Director for Jacobs'
APT, Ilya Feoktistov. (Jacobs and Feoktistov have co-authored articles [21]
published in right-wing outlets, including Breitbart and the Daily Caller.)
Charles Jacobs is one of the country's leaders in McCarthy-style tactics
against Muslims and Palestine solidarity
So who is Jacobs? Like his ally, Rossman-Benjamin, he has spent much of his
career painting those who disagree with his hardline agenda, especially
liberal Jews, as anti-Semites and terrorist sympathizers. He has sometimes
inspired threats against his targets-and hailed those who have made
incitement their business. A tireless crusader against Muslim American
communal organizing, Jacobs has said [22] that Muslims "should be required
to attend sensitivity training about Judaism and about American values of
tolerance." He has even celebrated [23] Pamela Geller, who is possibly
America's most belligerent Islamophobe, as a "Jewish heroine."
In a recent article [24] for The American Thinker, a right-wing blog that
plays host to open and active white supremacists [25], Jacobs sought to
answer complaints by anonymous Christian friends about "Jewish political
ineptitude." Jacobs said he informed the Christians that "universalized
Jews" were infected with a "Jewish cognitive disease. He called it "Jupus,"
in reference to the autoimmune disease known as lupus. According to Jacobs'
diagnosis, this psychological virus had infected liberal Jews to the point
that they had become suicidal. "To the 'progressives,' ARAB LIVES MATTER --
but only if Jews kill them," he alleged.
While Jacobs refused to reply to our questions about what role, if any, he
has played in Canary Mission, some of his favorite academic and activist
targets have become the subjects of dossiers on the website.
In 1982, when Israel's first first Prime Minister from the Likud Party,
Menachem Begin, launched a catastrophic invasion of Lebanon, a new
generation of pro-Israel hardliners emerged to defend Israeli policies from
global criticism. These Likud loyalists formed CAMERA, a pressure group that
leveraged advances in digital data and ultimately, the Internet, to assail
media organizations and reporters who diverged from a right-wing Zionist
narrative. Charles Jacobs was one of the group's founders in Boston, where
CAMERA's headquarters has been located ever since. Today, CAMERA is funded
heavily by Seth Klarman, the Boston-based hedge funder whose digital
newspaper, The Times of Israel, has hosted Canary Mission's banner ads.
Former NPR ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin has estimated [26] that 90 percent of
the zealots confronting him about his network's Israel-Palestine coverage
were "calling [him] because CAMERA had told them to."
"As a consequence of its campaign against NPR, CAMERA acted as the enabler
for some seriously disturbed people," Dvorkin added, noting that he received
so many direct death threats he was forced to report them to the FBI.
In 2003, as the Second Intifada raged and the US invasion of Iraq began,
Jacobs gathered with a network of pro-Israel groups to discuss plans for
confronting the sudden rise in Palestine solidarity activism on campus. A
memo he commissioned [26] from McKinsey and Company called for a plan to
"take back the campus by influencing public opinion through lectures, the
Internet, and coalitions." The lobbying discussions generated support for
the David Project, a campus advocacy group that Jacobs founded to
http://www.thenation.com/article/mideast-comes-columbia/ [27] destroy the
careers of academic critics of Israel, particularly prominent Palestinian
professors such as Joseph Massad and Rashid Khalidi, both professors at
Columbia University. In Boston, in 2004, Jacobs led a divisive and
ultimately unsuccessful campaign to block the construction of an Islamic
community center, relying on nuisance lawsuits and bogus accusations [28]
that the center was a front for "the Wahhabi movement in Saudi Arabia or.
the Moslem Brotherhood."
Jacobs' divisive approach rankled the sensibilities of liberal Jews in
Boston and beyond. One of his critics, longtime Americans for Peace Now
leader Leonard Fein, accused [29] the David Project of "doing an ongoing
disservice to the Jewish community. Where bridges could be built," Fein
wrote, "it prefers confrontation; where sober analysis is called for, it
opts for polemic."
When Jacobs resigned as director of the David Project in 2008, the
organization underwent a substantial makeover. Under the leadership of David
Bernstein, the David Project began channeling its resources into
relationship building and repairing frayed ties with liberal Jewish groups,
largely abandoning the "name and shame" tactics that generated so much
friction under Jacobs' watch. Bernstein, a lobbyist formerly employed by the
center-right American Jewish Committee, worried [30] that "a pervasively
negative atmosphere will affect the long-term thinking of current college
students, negatively affecting strong bipartisan support for Israel."
The newly conciliatory approach infuriated Jacobs, who insisted, "Unless you
expose and humiliate and taunt and legally threaten and politically
challenge the use of the podium as propaganda...then you have a problem."
Through the ironically named Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT), the
organization Jacobs founded after leaving the David Project, Jacobs
redoubled his efforts with the help of a new breed of zealots. Jacobs helped
launch the career of Chloe Valdary, the Christian Zionist activist,
featuring [31] her in an APT-produced video in 2013 equating the global BDS
movement with Nazi Germany, and suggesting it could lead to a second
genocide of Jews.
That same year, Jacobs initiated a crusade to censor high school curricula
in the Newton, Massachusetts school district, alleging through a series of
newspaper ads that school textbooks demonized Israel and "glorified Islam."
But Jacobs admitted "we don't know exactly what students are being taught,"
and the local Anti-Defamation League issued its objection to his campaign.
In fact, not one parent of any student in the Newton schools publicly
supported Jacobs, including the parent who filed the initial complaint about
the textbook content.
When Newton's School Committee vice chairman Matt Hills formally rejected
Jacobs' charges, declaring, "there is not a single accusation that has
merit," Jacobs placed ads in local papers featuring Hills' home phone
number. According to the Boston Globe [32], Hills received more than 100
threatening phone calls as a result of Jacobs' campaign, "some in the middle
of the night and almost all from outside Newton." Hills, whose wife was the
president of the Temple Emanuel synagogue, required a police detail to
provide security at their home.
Back in California, where Rossman-Benjamin is lobbying to silence student
advocates of Palestinian rights, some students who have no role in the BDS
movement are finding their names on the malicious Canary Mission website.
Among those deceptively listed on Canary Mission as an "active supporter" of
BDS is a student named Emily Chen. Chen's only involvement in any
BDS-related campaign appears to have been voting in favor of a resolution to
divest from corporations active in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
while serving as a member of UC-Berkeley's Student Government Council. Nils
Gilbertson, another student government member who voted for the resolution,
but who has no record as an activist, is also blacklisted at Canary Mission.
With support from powerful Democrats like Napolitano and Feinstein, zealots
like Rossman-Benjamin and Jacobs seem unconcerned about the consequences of
their campaigning. Even as they leave a trail of polarization and rancor,
these activists are now on the verge of an unprecedented windfall in funding
from a new coalition of right-wing pro-Israel billionaires.
Max Blumenthal is a senior writer for AlterNet, and the award-winning author
of Goliath [33] and Republican Gomorrah [34]. Find him on Twitter at
@MaxBlumenthal [35].
Julia Carmel is a freelance writer. You can find her on Twitter at
@JuliaCarmel_ [36]
Share on Facebook Share
Share on Twitter Tweet
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [37]
[38]
________________________________________
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/why-are-dianne-feinstein-and-janet-n
apolitano-backing-organizers-mccarthyite-push
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/max-blumenthal
[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/julia-carmel
[3] http://alternet.org
[4]
http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/modern-day-mccarthyists-are-goin
g-extremes-slime-activists-fighting-israels
[5]
http://www.alternet.org/investigations/flush-cash-right-wing-extremists-trai
n-future-zealots-pro-israel-campus-activism
[6] http://mondoweiss.net/2015/02/association-divestment-palestinian
[7]
https://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-lobby-uses-discredited-anti-se
mitism-definition-muzzle-debate/11716
[8]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/12/dianne-feinstein-postal-service_n_4
423045.html
[9]
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Army-contract-for-Feinstein-s-husband-Blu
m-is-a-2621196.php
[10]
https://theintercept.com/2015/09/25/dianne-feinstein-husband-threaten-univ-c
alif-demanding-ban-excessive-israel-criticism/
[11] http://www.amchainitiative.org/
[12]
http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_28093065/tammi-rossman-benjamin-uc-mus
t-fight-back-against
[13]
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/zionist-group-ren
ews-attacks-california-professor
[14] http://forward.com/opinion/150968/why-i-filed-title-vi-complaint/
[15]
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/us-university-lec
turers-shocking-hate-speech-against-arab-muslim
[16]
http://www.amchainitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Chapter-18-manuscr
ipt.pdf
[17] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/07/opinion/07iht-edkulter.4504583.html
[18]
https://electronicintifada.net/content/documents-reveal-zionist-group-spied-
us-student-delegation-palestine/13130
[19] https://twitter.com/aptly_engineerd/status/600746732482207744
[20]
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/221247/northeastern-u-suspends-students-just
ice-palestine-ilya-feoktistov
[21] http://www.jewishpress.com/author/charles-jacobs-and-ilya-feoktistov/
[22] http://forward.com/opinion/152224/being-pro-israel-isnt-enough/
[23]
http://pamelageller.com/2013/05/charles-jacobs-pamela-geller-jewish-heroine.
html/
[24]
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/07/jewish_cognitive_infirmity.h
tml#ixzz3jZiCzbly
[25] https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/635177340537032708
[26] http://www.salon.com/2008/02/12/ombudsman/
[27] http://www.thenation.com/article/mideast-comes-columbia/
[28] http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0705/S00149.htm
[29]
http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/downloadPublication.cfm?PublicationID=15769
[30]
http://forward.com/news/israel/151479/hard-nosed-campus-group-softens-tactic
s/
[31] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3AR5gvoDXI
[32]
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/regionals/west/2013/11/07/content-affirms-n
ewton-school-curriculum-schools-protests-depiction-israel-state-defends-newt
on-schools-against-racist-semitism-charges-officials-reject-labels/4ehYp3Rg4
zRx9P27ozKROL/story.html
[33]
http://www.amazon.com/Goliath-Life-Loathing-Greater-Israel/dp/1568586345
[34] http://republicangomorrah.com/
[35] http://twitter.com/maxblumenthal
[36] http://twitter.com/JuliaCarmel_
[37] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Why Are Dianne
Feinstein and Janet Napolitano Backing a McCarthyite Push Against Palestine
Activists?
[38] http://www.alternet.org/
[39] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > Why Are Dianne Feinstein and Janet Napolitano Backing a McCarthyite
Push Against Palestine Activists?
Why Are Dianne Feinstein and Janet Napolitano Backing a McCarthyite Push
Against Palestine Activists?
By Max Blumenthal [1], Julia Carmel [2] / AlterNet [3]
October 6, 2015
Part three of an ongoing investigation for AlterNet. Read parts one [4] and
two [5].
With a majority of schools in the University of California (UC) system and
the UC Student Association [6] voting to divest from companies profiting
from Israel's occupation, the pro-Israel lobby is pushing for a clampdown on
Palestine solidarity activity at UC schools. Not only do they want to forbid
demonstrations against Israeli policy on campus, they want to effectively
ban the BDS movement, which advocates boycotts, divestments and sanctions
against Israel to pressure the country into respecting the human rights of
Palestinians.
Shockingly, the extreme demand that the UC system adopt a definition of
anti-Semitism that would effectively classify [7] most forms of Palestine
solidarity activism as hate speech, and punish them as such, has won support
from some of California's most influential Democrats. They include Janet
Napolitano, the President of the University of California and former
Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Also backing the campaign
is Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein and her husband, the UC Regent and
scandal-stained [8] arms profiteer [9] Dick Blum. According to lawyer Ken
White, the Democratic power couple has threatened [10] to "make trouble if
the [university administration] didn't commit to punish people for
prohibited speech." Blum has vowed that anyone who violated the new speech
code be punished or expelled.
Behind this lobbying push is a little-known professor of Hebrew studies at
UC Santa-Cruz named Tammi Rossman-Benjamin. A hardcore supporter of Israel's
right-wing government, Rossman-Benjamin has helped pioneer the use of speech
codes and manipulating the law to undermine Palestine solidarity campaigns
-- a tactic that pro-Israel advocates refer to as "lawfare." Through the
AMCHA Initiative [11], a right-wing non-profit group that functions as
Rossman-Benjamin's personal political vehicle, she helped devise [12] the
radical crackdown on free speech at UC schools.
In the past, Rossman-Benjamin unsuccessfully crusaded [13] to force
California's Attorney General to prosecute a professor at California
State-Northridge, David Klein, for his support for the BDS campaign. She has
repeatedly attempted [14] to compel the federal government to define public
criticism of Israel as a violation of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act,
insisting that activities that offend the sensibilities of pro-Israel Jewish
students constitute a violation of those students' civil rights.
Rossman-Benjamin makes no secret of her contempt for Arab and Muslim
students. In a disturbingly vitriolic address [15] to a Jewish congregation
in 2012, Rossman-Benjamin claimed that campuses had been "poisoned" by the
infiltration of "foreign students who come from countries and cultures where
anti-Semitism is how they think about the world."
"These are not your ordinary student groups like College Republicans or
Young Democrats," she warned. "These are students who come with a serious
agenda, who have ties to terrorist organizations."
Rossman-Benjamin also maintains strong reserves of resentment for left-wing
African-American academics and activists, accusing them of spreading
anti-Semitism across American campuses. In a lengthy paper [16] lamenting
the successful push for an ethnic studies department at San Francisco State
University in the 1960's, Rossman-Benjamin concluded, "programs whose core
mission includes the promotion of group identity and the pursuit of social
justice may be linked to expressions of political animosities in general and
antisemitism in particular." (Her paper was edited by Alvin Rosenfeld, the
author of an essay [17] blaming "progressive Jewish thought" for the rise of
a "New Anti-Semitism.")
Rossman-Benjamin's attempts to suppress BDS activity on campus have led over
the line of legitimate activism into the realm of covert surveillance. In
2012, Rossman-Benjamin dispatched a student, Prescott Watson, to spy on [18]
a conflict analysis project of the University of California called the Olive
Tree Initiative. With the information illicitly gathered by Watson, she
produced a report based on private conversations and the personal
information of Berkeley students to paint Olive Tree as a vehicle for
promoting anti-Semitism. Documents leaked to journalists Asa Winstanley and
Nora Barrows-Friedman found that Rossman-Benjamin had become obsessed with
monitoring students well beyond this single initiative; she had spent years
filing away their personal information into a database.
Rebecca Pierce, a graduate of UC Santa Cruz and former student of
Rossman-Benjamin, told us that the professor would often be seen seated
towards the back of Palestine-related events on campus, jotting down notes
on BDS activists that she would later turn into files.
Links to shadowy Canary Mission, the Islamophobia industry
Canary Mission, the malicious Israeli government-linked website [4] that
seeks to deny employment opportunities to students who campaign for
Palestinian rights, has acknowledged its heavy reliance on the material
Rossman-Benjamin gathered on the activists she's tracked. [19]
As retribution for her public opposition to Rossman-Benjamin's activities on
campus, Pierce received a dossier at Canary Mission, and consequently became
the target of online harassment [4]that resulted from the malicious listing.
While Rossman-Benjamin has denied playing an operational role in Canary
Mission, much of Pierce's profile on the site specifically cited her
criticism of her former professor, as though Rossman-Benjamin had supplied
the material firsthand. Of over 140 students, activists, and academics
currently designated for blacklisting by Canary Mission, a disproportionate
number have been enrolled at the California campuses that Rossman-Benjamin
has obsessively monitored.
While some of the Canary Mission listings cite Rossman-Benjamin's AMCHA
Initiative as a source, others refer directly to material gathered by
Charles Jacobs' Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT) and his former
outfit, The David Project. In fact, many of the figures featured on Canary
Mission are longstanding targets of Jacobs, from Columbia University
professors Joseph Massad and Rashid Khalidi to Northeastern University
professor Dennis Sullivan and student Max Geller. To generate its dossier on
Geller, Canary Mission relied almost entirely on material first published
[20] in David Horowitz's FrontPageMag by the Research Director for Jacobs'
APT, Ilya Feoktistov. (Jacobs and Feoktistov have co-authored articles [21]
published in right-wing outlets, including Breitbart and the Daily Caller.)
Charles Jacobs is one of the country's leaders in McCarthy-style tactics
against Muslims and Palestine solidarity
So who is Jacobs? Like his ally, Rossman-Benjamin, he has spent much of his
career painting those who disagree with his hardline agenda, especially
liberal Jews, as anti-Semites and terrorist sympathizers. He has sometimes
inspired threats against his targets-and hailed those who have made
incitement their business. A tireless crusader against Muslim American
communal organizing, Jacobs has said [22] that Muslims "should be required
to attend sensitivity training about Judaism and about American values of
tolerance." He has even celebrated [23] Pamela Geller, who is possibly
America's most belligerent Islamophobe, as a "Jewish heroine."
In a recent article [24] for The American Thinker, a right-wing blog that
plays host to open and active white supremacists [25], Jacobs sought to
answer complaints by anonymous Christian friends about "Jewish political
ineptitude." Jacobs said he informed the Christians that "universalized
Jews" were infected with a "Jewish cognitive disease. He called it "Jupus,"
in reference to the autoimmune disease known as lupus. According to Jacobs'
diagnosis, this psychological virus had infected liberal Jews to the point
that they had become suicidal. "To the 'progressives,' ARAB LIVES MATTER --
but only if Jews kill them," he alleged.
While Jacobs refused to reply to our questions about what role, if any, he
has played in Canary Mission, some of his favorite academic and activist
targets have become the subjects of dossiers on the website.
In 1982, when Israel's first first Prime Minister from the Likud Party,
Menachem Begin, launched a catastrophic invasion of Lebanon, a new
generation of pro-Israel hardliners emerged to defend Israeli policies from
global criticism. These Likud loyalists formed CAMERA, a pressure group that
leveraged advances in digital data and ultimately, the Internet, to assail
media organizations and reporters who diverged from a right-wing Zionist
narrative. Charles Jacobs was one of the group's founders in Boston, where
CAMERA's headquarters has been located ever since. Today, CAMERA is funded
heavily by Seth Klarman, the Boston-based hedge funder whose digital
newspaper, The Times of Israel, has hosted Canary Mission's banner ads.
Former NPR ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin has estimated [26] that 90 percent of
the zealots confronting him about his network's Israel-Palestine coverage
were "calling [him] because CAMERA had told them to."
"As a consequence of its campaign against NPR, CAMERA acted as the enabler
for some seriously disturbed people," Dvorkin added, noting that he received
so many direct death threats he was forced to report them to the FBI.
In 2003, as the Second Intifada raged and the US invasion of Iraq began,
Jacobs gathered with a network of pro-Israel groups to discuss plans for
confronting the sudden rise in Palestine solidarity activism on campus. A
memo he commissioned [26] from McKinsey and Company called for a plan to
"take back the campus by influencing public opinion through lectures, the
Internet, and coalitions." The lobbying discussions generated support for
the David Project, a campus advocacy group that Jacobs founded to
http://www.thenation.com/article/mideast-comes-columbia/ [27] destroy the
careers of academic critics of Israel, particularly prominent Palestinian
professors such as Joseph Massad and Rashid Khalidi, both professors at
Columbia University. In Boston, in 2004, Jacobs led a divisive and
ultimately unsuccessful campaign to block the construction of an Islamic
community center, relying on nuisance lawsuits and bogus accusations [28]
that the center was a front for "the Wahhabi movement in Saudi Arabia or.
the Moslem Brotherhood."
Jacobs' divisive approach rankled the sensibilities of liberal Jews in
Boston and beyond. One of his critics, longtime Americans for Peace Now
leader Leonard Fein, accused [29] the David Project of "doing an ongoing
disservice to the Jewish community. Where bridges could be built," Fein
wrote, "it prefers confrontation; where sober analysis is called for, it
opts for polemic."
When Jacobs resigned as director of the David Project in 2008, the
organization underwent a substantial makeover. Under the leadership of David
Bernstein, the David Project began channeling its resources into
relationship building and repairing frayed ties with liberal Jewish groups,
largely abandoning the "name and shame" tactics that generated so much
friction under Jacobs' watch. Bernstein, a lobbyist formerly employed by the
center-right American Jewish Committee, worried [30] that "a pervasively
negative atmosphere will affect the long-term thinking of current college
students, negatively affecting strong bipartisan support for Israel."
The newly conciliatory approach infuriated Jacobs, who insisted, "Unless you
expose and humiliate and taunt and legally threaten and politically
challenge the use of the podium as propaganda...then you have a problem."
Through the ironically named Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT), the
organization Jacobs founded after leaving the David Project, Jacobs
redoubled his efforts with the help of a new breed of zealots. Jacobs helped
launch the career of Chloe Valdary, the Christian Zionist activist,
featuring [31] her in an APT-produced video in 2013 equating the global BDS
movement with Nazi Germany, and suggesting it could lead to a second
genocide of Jews.
That same year, Jacobs initiated a crusade to censor high school curricula
in the Newton, Massachusetts school district, alleging through a series of
newspaper ads that school textbooks demonized Israel and "glorified Islam."
But Jacobs admitted "we don't know exactly what students are being taught,"
and the local Anti-Defamation League issued its objection to his campaign.
In fact, not one parent of any student in the Newton schools publicly
supported Jacobs, including the parent who filed the initial complaint about
the textbook content.
When Newton's School Committee vice chairman Matt Hills formally rejected
Jacobs' charges, declaring, "there is not a single accusation that has
merit," Jacobs placed ads in local papers featuring Hills' home phone
number. According to the Boston Globe [32], Hills received more than 100
threatening phone calls as a result of Jacobs' campaign, "some in the middle
of the night and almost all from outside Newton." Hills, whose wife was the
president of the Temple Emanuel synagogue, required a police detail to
provide security at their home.
Back in California, where Rossman-Benjamin is lobbying to silence student
advocates of Palestinian rights, some students who have no role in the BDS
movement are finding their names on the malicious Canary Mission website.
Among those deceptively listed on Canary Mission as an "active supporter" of
BDS is a student named Emily Chen. Chen's only involvement in any
BDS-related campaign appears to have been voting in favor of a resolution to
divest from corporations active in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
while serving as a member of UC-Berkeley's Student Government Council. Nils
Gilbertson, another student government member who voted for the resolution,
but who has no record as an activist, is also blacklisted at Canary Mission.
With support from powerful Democrats like Napolitano and Feinstein, zealots
like Rossman-Benjamin and Jacobs seem unconcerned about the consequences of
their campaigning. Even as they leave a trail of polarization and rancor,
these activists are now on the verge of an unprecedented windfall in funding
from a new coalition of right-wing pro-Israel billionaires.
Max Blumenthal is a senior writer for AlterNet, and the award-winning author
of Goliath [33] and Republican Gomorrah [34]. Find him on Twitter at
@MaxBlumenthal [35].
Julia Carmel is a freelance writer. You can find her on Twitter at
@JuliaCarmel_ [36]
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [37]
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[38]
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/why-are-dianne-feinstein-and-janet-n
apolitano-backing-organizers-mccarthyite-push
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/max-blumenthal
[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/julia-carmel
[3] http://alternet.org
[4]
http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/modern-day-mccarthyists-are-goin
g-extremes-slime-activists-fighting-israels
[5]
http://www.alternet.org/investigations/flush-cash-right-wing-extremists-trai
n-future-zealots-pro-israel-campus-activism
[6] http://mondoweiss.net/2015/02/association-divestment-palestinian
[7]
https://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-lobby-uses-discredited-anti-se
mitism-definition-muzzle-debate/11716
[8]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/12/dianne-feinstein-postal-service_n_4
423045.html
[9]
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Army-contract-for-Feinstein-s-husband-Blu
m-is-a-2621196.php
[10]
https://theintercept.com/2015/09/25/dianne-feinstein-husband-threaten-univ-c
alif-demanding-ban-excessive-israel-criticism/
[11] http://www.amchainitiative.org/
[12]
http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_28093065/tammi-rossman-benjamin-uc-mus
t-fight-back-against
[13]
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/zionist-group-ren
ews-attacks-california-professor
[14] http://forward.com/opinion/150968/why-i-filed-title-vi-complaint/
[15]
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/us-university-lec
turers-shocking-hate-speech-against-arab-muslim
[16]
http://www.amchainitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Chapter-18-manuscr
ipt.pdf
[17] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/07/opinion/07iht-edkulter.4504583.html
[18]
https://electronicintifada.net/content/documents-reveal-zionist-group-spied-
us-student-delegation-palestine/13130
[19] https://twitter.com/aptly_engineerd/status/600746732482207744
[20]
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/221247/northeastern-u-suspends-students-just
ice-palestine-ilya-feoktistov
[21] http://www.jewishpress.com/author/charles-jacobs-and-ilya-feoktistov/
[22] http://forward.com/opinion/152224/being-pro-israel-isnt-enough/
[23]
http://pamelageller.com/2013/05/charles-jacobs-pamela-geller-jewish-heroine.
html/
[24]
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/07/jewish_cognitive_infirmity.h
tml#ixzz3jZiCzbly
[25] https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/635177340537032708
[26] http://www.salon.com/2008/02/12/ombudsman/
[27] http://www.thenation.com/article/mideast-comes-columbia/
[28] http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0705/S00149.htm
[29]
http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/downloadPublication.cfm?PublicationID=15769
[30]
http://forward.com/news/israel/151479/hard-nosed-campus-group-softens-tactic
s/
[31] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3AR5gvoDXI
[32]
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/regionals/west/2013/11/07/content-affirms-n
ewton-school-curriculum-schools-protests-depiction-israel-state-defends-newt
on-schools-against-racist-semitism-charges-officials-reject-labels/4ehYp3Rg4
zRx9P27ozKROL/story.html
[33]
http://www.amazon.com/Goliath-Life-Loathing-Greater-Israel/dp/1568586345
[34] http://republicangomorrah.com/
[35] http://twitter.com/maxblumenthal
[36] http://twitter.com/JuliaCarmel_
[37] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Why Are Dianne
Feinstein and Janet Napolitano Backing a McCarthyite Push Against Palestine
Activists?
[38] http://www.alternet.org/
[39] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B