Jew love and Jew hate and the state of debate

“This is extremely low-IQ and evil,” tweeted historian Thomas E. Woods.

The “this” was a tweet by StopAntiSemitism.org (@stopantisemites) featuring a picture of a sneering Representative Thomas Massie (R-Ky) with “JEW HATER” festooned over it. The commentary attached says

Why is @RepThomasMassie our ‘Antisemite of the Week’? 

– Only R to vote against Iron Defense Dome funding

– Only R to vote against labeling BDS as antisemitic

– Voted AGAINST Holocaust education 

– Trivializes Holocaust with vile COVID comparisons

Tom Woods insists that “They know he isn’t an ‘anti-Semite.’ They just want to destroy him. . . .”

Why?

Because, to paraphrase Woods’ words, he won’t fund what they want him to fund.

Massie hasn’t proved himself fearful of the Israel lobby, which is indeed a powerful influence in Washington, and maybe, just maybe, he could have taken more care to explain past votes. But it’s hard not to see more innocent rationales for each offending vote.

Mostly, Massie is against 

  • excessive spending, 
  • subsidizing the rich (and Israel is rich), and 
  • against most federal education programs.
  • Etcetera.

He votes No, and often.

You could call him anti-almost-anything. But he is really, quite clearly, anti-big spending.

@RepThomasMassie, for his part, tweeted against a less odious attack — by AIPAC, which focused on Israel’s subsidized-in-the-USA “Iron Dome” defense system.

AIPAC stands for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Massie blundered here, big time, though: AIPAC is an American organization. In defending Massie, Glenn Greenwald put up a well-earned cringe emoji.

But being clumsy about issues that concern them is not just a Massie problem. Going to the StopAntisemism.org website, I see this oddity: “Startling results show Jewish employees are not included in diversity initiatives amongst corporate giants as a whole” — about as startling as seeing Germans as generals or Indians as moteliers.

While none of this is very consequential — congressional Democrats include more than one obvious anti-Semite (first to mind? Ilhan Omar), and they breeze right past the accusations — it is indicative of the sad state of political rhetoric.

twv