Caitlin Johnstone — Why The Entire Political-Media Class Just Tried To End Ilhan Omar’s Career

This is indicative of a much larger problem than AIPAC. It's the basis of attacks grounded in sophistry that uses invalid logic.

The aim is to attack an opposing party or cohort "X." The logic used runs thus.

X is against Y. Y has a property. Therefore X is against everyone/everything having that property.

This is clearly wrong if Y is not identical to everyone/everything having that property, e.g, being Jewish, which in this instance is not the case. Y is represents only some of those having that property, not all, since the relevant property is holding a policy and acting on it. In fact, those having this characteristic may not all be Jewish. Some are not.

Here the political leadership of a country, Israel, and its supporters within and outside of the country, must be distinguished from the dominant group in the country, that is, people identifying a Jews or having Jewish heritage, especially when this group is not characterized entirely by being associated with the country's political leadership and policy.

It is simply invalid logically to charge that someone that criticizes a particular political faction of Israel under the rubric, "Israel" is biased against Jewishness, i.e., is antisemitic. In logic, this is called "nonsense."

While some people that criticize "Israel" and its supporters may be antisemitic, all are clearly are not, since many Jews also criticize and oppose "Israel" in the sense of Israeli leadership and policy. This would include those outside Israel that support regardless of whether they are Jewish. Some are and some are not.

Moreover, there is no connection with having the property of being Jewish and supporting the Israeli leadership and its policy. Many Jews in Israel and also outside of Israel also don't.

This is false argument mounted by those either ignorant of basic logic, or used intentionally to smear the opposition. In other words, morons or complicit.

Intentional or not, it is an effort to silence opposition based on false cause. It is to be condemned.

The situation of a boycott is somewhat different, but related. It is also similar to imposing sanctions. Both boycotts and sanctions may be imposed on an entire country, affecting all in the country and those connected with it, regardless of whether they support the country's leadership or policy that is being targeted. This penalizes all for the actions of a few. Is that just?

This is a larger issue, too, and affects all areas in which is there is bias and discrimination. These kinds of tactics are in wide use to smear opponents in an attempt to destroy them.

Caitlin Johnstone — Rogue Journalist
Why The Entire Political-Media Class Just Tried To End Ilhan Omar’s Career
Caitlin Johnstone

also

Mint Press News
Ilhan Omar is Right: AIPAC Influences Congress To the Tune of $4 Million Annually

Whitney Webb

See also

Blaming the Venezuelan leadership and "socialism" for a crisis exacerbated by economic sanctions. Adding insult to injury, those that imposed the sanction then disingenuously offer "aid" without revoking the sanctions unless the government capitulates. And the media amplifies the subterfuge rather than exposing it.

Again the "logic" here is nonsense.

FAIR
U.S. media ignore—and applaud—economic war on Venezuela

Gregory Shupak

Also at FAIR

Western Media Fall in Lockstep for Cheap Trump/Rubio Venezuela Aid PR Stunt

Adam Johnson

Facts Don’t Interfere With Propaganda Blitz Against Venezuela’s Elected President

Joe Emersberger

also

Popular Resistance
RED CROSS OF COLOMBIA: US ACTION TO VENEZUELA IS NOT ‘HUMANITARIAN AID'

Staff, Brasil247.com

As’ad AbuKhalil — Newly-Elected Progressives Confront AIPAC Test

Already backpedaling on campaign rhetoric. 

After they won their primaries, some young progressives curbed their pro-Palestine rhetoric. Now they are in Washington getting oriented. Next up: early test votes in the new year sponsored by the pro-Israel lobby, writes As`ad AbuKhalil.

Consortium News

Newly-Elected Progressives Confront AIPAC Test
As’ad AbuKhalil | Lebanese-American professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus

See also at Consortium News

Another case of failing up.

Clapper Admits Gross Intelligence Failure on Iraq WMDs But Still Escapes Justice

Ray McGovern

Harper — A Reminder Of The Obscene Power Of The Israel Lobby

Russiagate but not Israelgate. Hypocrisy about "foreign influence"?

Sic Semper Tyrannis

Harper: A Reminder Of The Obscene Power Of The Israel Lobby

See also

The UK is in as deeply as the US. After all, it was the Balfour Declaration in November 1917 that started the whole thing.

The scandal surrounding Priti Patel, who was forced to resign as Britain’s international aid minister last week after secret meetings with Israeli officials during a “family holiday”, offers a small, opaque window on the UK’s powerful Israel lobby.

Patel’s off-the-books meetings with 12 Israelis, including prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, were organised by a British lobbyist in violation of government rules requiring careful documentation of official meetings. That is to prevent conflicts of interest and illicit lobbying by foreign powers.

Government protocol was flouted again when Patel headed to the Golan Heights, occupied Syrian territory, escorted by the Israeli army. There she was shown an Israeli military field hospital that patches up Syrians, including Al Qaeda-affiliated fighters, wounded in Syria’s civil war.

Afterwards, Patel pressed for the Israeli army, one of the most powerful in the world, to receive a chunk of Britain’s overseas aid. Meanwhile, she has sought to cut aid to the Palestinians, including to vital projects in Gaza. A clue as to how she reached such absurd “humanitarian” priorities is provided in the figure of Stuart Polak, mentor on her Israel “holiday”....

Defend Democracy
Israel Lobby is Slowly Being Dragged Into the Light

Jonathan Cook

Jessica Schulberg — Trump Says Israel Should ‘Keep Moving Forward’ Building Illegal Settlements

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump reversed on his earlier pledge to be a neutral arbiter in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and offered support for Israel expanding illegal settlement construction in the occupied West Bank.

“I don’t think there should be a pause,” Trump told The Daily Mail on Monday, when asked if he would pressure Israel to pause settlement construction as part of an effort to renew peace talks with the Palestinians. “I think Israel really have to keep going. They have to keep moving forward.”

It’s unclear what prompted Trump to take an overtly pro-settlements stance. The reason he offered to the Daily Mail was, “Look, missiles were launched into Israel, and Israel, I think, was never properly treated by our country.”

If Trump follows through with this policy — which is a big if, given his stated preference to be “unpredictable” — it would reverse decades of bipartisan opposition to Israeli settlement building in the Palestinian territories, which violates international law.

Even hawkish pro-Israel lawmakers who back legislation that has the practical effect of legitimizing and protecting Israeli settlements rarely go so far as to publicly encourage the Israeli government to continue building in the disputed territories.

Trump’s remarks on Monday marked the latest in a long list of policy flip flops and contradictions from the casino mogul.

Huffington Post
Trump Says Israel Should ‘Keep Moving Forward’ Building Illegal Settlements – So much for being the “neutral guy.”

Jessica Schulberg

Russ Wellen — When Hillary Clinton Out-Neoconned a Neocon

In the running for moron-in-chief.

Along with her chumminess with Wall Street and inclination to warfare in the Middle East, Hillary Clinton’s insensitivity to state security and lack of knowledge about technology are signs of how out of touch she is with the emerging Democratic zeitgeist, which is opposed to U.S. military intervention in the Middle East, Israel’s authoritarianism, and close relations on the part of a president with Wall Street. Much of that same constituency also knows that a secretary of state shouldn’t run her email off a server in her basement with a tech administrator to whom she paid a but a nominal fee* according to a comprehensive article in the Washington Post on March 27.

Maybe the FBI will save us.

Foreign Policy In Focus
When Hillary Clinton Out-Neoconned a Neocon
Russ Wellen

Pat Lang — The Pander Bears

Pandering (brown nosing) at AIPAC.

Sic Semper Tyrannis
The Pander Bears
Col. W. Patrick Lang, US Army (ret.), former military intelligence officer at the US Defense Intelligence Agency

Gareth Porter — The real story behind the Republicans’ Iran letter

No, it probably wasn't Tom Cotton idea.

Those members of Congress don’t arrive at their positions on issues related to Iran through discussion and debate among themselves. They are given their marching orders by AIPAC lobbyists, and time after time, they sign the letters and vote for legislation or resolution that they are given, as former AIPAC lobbyist MJ Rosenberg has recalled. This Israeli exercise of control over Congress on Iran and issues of concern to Israel resembles the Soviet direction of its satellite regimes and loyal Communist parties more than any democratic process, but with campaign contributions replacing the inducements that kept its bloc allies in line. 

Rosenberg has reasoned that AIPAC must have drafted the letter and handed it to Senator Cotton. “Nothing happens on Capitol Hill related to Israel,” he tweets, “unless and until Howard Kohr (AIPAC chief) wants it to happen. Nothing.” AIPAC apparently supported the letter, but there may be more to the story. Senator Cotton just happens to be a protégé of neoconservative political kingpin Bill Kristol, whose Emergency Committee on Israel gave him nearly a million dollars late in his 2014 Senate campaign and guaranteed that Cotton would have the support of the four biggest funders of major anti-Iran organisations.

Let's the GOP leadership in the House invites Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress without informing the White House, and a freshman senator writes a letter that GOP senators sign onto throwing a spanner in White House negotiations with Iran. Just before the Israeli election, in which Netanyahu is hard pressed. Coincidence, right?
 
Middle East Eye
The real story behind the Republicans’ Iran letter
Gareth Porter'
h/t Bill Moyers & Co.