Vol. 79/No. 32 September 14, 2015
“What should be a thoughtful debate has been turned into a vicious battle against Mr. Obama, involving not just the Republicans but Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu,” the New York Times editors wrote Aug. 1. Their editorial condemned the “unseemly spectacle of lawmakers siding with a foreign leader against their own commander in chief.”
For the Times editors, disagreeing with Obama’s Iran policies border on disloyalty.
Thinly veiled anti-Semitism is coupled with efforts to shut down discourse in the Aug. 8 edition of the Daily Kos, a liberal online blog, which ran a four-panel color cartoon in a series called “Animal Nuz,” depicting Schumer as a rodent with the Israeli flag behind him. A character calls Schumer a traitor.
In July Republican presidential contender Mike Huckabee said, “The Iran nuclear deal is marching the Israelis to the door of the oven,” referring to the Holocaust of European Jews carried out by the Nazis in Germany in the 1930s and ’40s.
The campaign targeting Jews for their views cuts both ways. Some Jewish opponents of the Iran deal have launched vitriolic attacks on Jewish Democrats who support the president. Dov Hikind, New York state assemblyman from Brooklyn, parked a double-decker bus adorned with a banner with a photo of Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei waving and thanking the U.S. for the deal in front of the Lower Manhattan office of Jerrold Nadler, U.S. representative for New York’s 10th Congressional District on Aug. 21. On Nadler’s Facebook page, someone called him a kapo, a Jew who collaborated with the Nazis.
Reps. Nita Lowey, Eliot Engel and Steve Israel, three New York Democrats who oppose the deal and who are Jewish, issued a joint statement Aug. 25 criticizing attacks on Nadler, Schumer and themselves.
“We remain concerned that individuals on both sides of the debate have resorted to ad hominem attacks and threats against those who don’t share their opinions. This is unacceptable. … No matter where you stand on the Iran deal, comparisons to the Holocaust, the darkest chapter in human history, questioning the credentials of long-standing advocates for Israel, and accusations of dual loyalty are inappropriate.” Lowey told the Times, “I’ve been accused of being treacherous, treasonous, even disloyal to the United States.”
The attempt to stifle political debate through charges of “disloyalty” or “dual loyalties” is a threat to the working class, beyond the thinly veiled anti-Semitism in many of these attacks. Such accusations have been and will be used against workers who begin to see their interests as different from the U.S. capitalist rulers and take an independent stance in opposition to imperialist wars and in solidarity with fellow toilers worldwide.
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