Abe Foxman: Petraeus is "blaming Jews for everything."

There can't have been anyone who didn't see this coming down the track:

Israel should immediately battle a charge emerging in the US that its actions are endangering the lives of US soldiers, because it is a particularly “pernicious” argument that “smacks of blaming the Jews for everything,” Anti-Defamation League National Chairman Abe Foxman said on Monday.

Foxman, in an interview with The Jerusalem Post, was replying to an emerging theme that has run through the public discussion in the US of the Interior Ministry’s announcement of plans to build 1,600 housing units in northeast Jerusalem’s Ramat Shlomo neighborhood: that Israel’s actions could cost the lives of American soldiers.

I wondered how long it would be before someone called Petraeus an anti-Semite. So, if one finds any linkage between any Israeli action and any other deed, and make the case that the two might be related, that's border line anti-Semitism and "smacks of blaming the Jews for everything".

But then anti-Semitism is literally everywhere.

Now we find out that Obama is an anti-Semite as well.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's brother-in-law Dr. Hagai Ben-Artzi on Wednesday called U.S. President Barack Obama an anti-Semite in an interview with Army Radio.

"It's not that Obama doesn't like Bibi," he referring to Netanyahu using his nickname. "He doesn't like the nation of Israel."

They have actually taken all of the bite out of that accusation through sheer overuse. There was a day that such a charge would have been career ending, but now even people like Andrew Sullivan are having it made against them.

What's most striking about this attack is how inconsequential it is. It was once the case, not all that long ago, that an accusation of "anti-semitism" was the nuclear weapon of political debates, rendering most politicians and pundits (especially non-Jewish ones) petrified of being so accused. A 4,300-word prosecution brief published by The New Republic, accusing a major political writer of being a Jew-hater, would have been taken quite seriously, generated all sorts of drama, introspection and debate, and seriously tarnished the reputation of the accused.

No longer. Neoconservatives have so abused and cynically exploited the "anti-semitism" charge for rank political gain -- to bully those who would dare criticize Israeli actions or question U.S. policy towards Israel -- that it has lost its impact. Ironically, nobody has done more to trivialize and cheapen anti-semitism accusations than those who anointed themselves its guardians and arbiters.

That's the saddest thing about all of this. There is still anti-Semitism out there, but by throwing the term around at anyone who criticises Israel, they have lessened the impact such an accusation would carry when it is actually needed to be levelled against a true anti-Semite.

UPDATE:

News just in. Joe Biden is also an anti-Semite; although, he's a soft one, whatever the f#ck that means. Benjamin Shapiro explains all in an article entitled, "Joe Biden's Soft Anti-Semitism".

Tags: Abe Fox, Petraeus, Israel, Palestine