Caroline Glick: Sarah Palin is a revolutionary leader

"By calling the Left out for its behavior, Palin exposed its agenda"
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In her latest column in The Jewish Press, senior contributing editor Caroline Glick finds something "disturbingly familiar" for Israelis in the American Left's assault on Sarah Palin and conservatives following the Tuscon murders:

Just as the American leftist media and political leadership immediately sought to blame Palin, the Tea Party and conservative media personalities for Loughner's actions, so in 1995 their Israeli counterparts accused the Right - from then-opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu to various rabbis to the two million Israelis who protested against the so-called peace process with the PLO - of being responsible for Yitzhak Rabin's assassination.

Just as Palin and her fellow conservatives are accused of inciting the schizophrenic shooter to pull the trigger, so Netanyahu and his fellow rightists were accused of inciting the sociopathic Yigal Amir to plot and carry out his crime.

And just as it doesn't matter to the American media elites that Americans conservatives engaged in no such incitement, and that Loughner himself seemed motivated to act by a mad obsession with grammar, it didn't matter to their Israeli counterparts that Amir's closest associate and the man responsible for the most incendiary anti-Rabin propaganda was Avishai Raviv - a government agent.

Palin's characterization of the Left's appalling assault on her and her fellow conservatives as a "blood libel" was entirely accurate.

[...]

In certain ways, Palin is a revolutionary leader and the Tea Party movement is a revolutionary movement. For nearly a hundred years, the Left in its various permutations has captured Western policy by controlling the elite discourse from New York and Los Angeles to London to Paris to Tel Aviv. By making it "politically incorrect" to assert claims of Western, Judeo-Christian morality or advocate robust political, economic and military policies, the Left has made it socially and professionally costly for people to think freely and believe in their countries.

What distinguishes Palin from other conservative leaders in the U.S. and makes her an important figure worldwide is her indifference to the views of the Left's opinion makers. Her capacity to steer debate in a way no other conservative politician can owes entirely to the fact that she does not seek to win over leftist elites. She seeks to unseat them.

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- JP

The Forward: Was Sarah Palin Actually Blood Libeled?

If anyone should apologize, it’s Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Jeremy Ben-Ami
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According to an opinion piece in The Jewish Daily Forward, a left of center New York weekly news magazine published in separate Yiddish and English editions, Gov. Palin was not insensitive to Jewish feeling in her use of the term "blood libel":

Did Sarah Palin have justification for calling the accusations that she was responsible, by dint of her rhetoric, for the attempted murder of Gabrielle Giffords and for the deaths of six other people a “blood libel”?

Not, of course, if you think Palin can’t say anything right. Nor, it would seem, if you are defending Jewish sensibilities. “Palin’s comments show either a complete ignorance of history, or blatant anti-Semitism,” Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz declared through a spokesman. “Either way, it shows an appalling lack of sensitivity given Representative Giffords’s faith.” Palin, said Jeremy Ben-Ami, head of the political organization J Street, will surely “retract her comment [and] apologize,” once she “learns that many Jews are pained by and take offense at the use of the term.” Even the Anti-Defamation League’s national director, Abraham Foxman, who supported Palin’s right to defend herself, wished that Palin had not called the attacks on her a blood libel— words that, he stated, are “fraught with pain in Jewish history.”

And yet the history of “blood libel” tells us something different.

[...]

Although it may be impossible to prove that, even if Palin herself was unaware of it, her use of the term “blood libel” ultimately derives from Israeli discourse, I would suspect that it does. Whether it does or doesn’t, however, it certainly isn’t fair to accuse Palin of insensitivity to Jewish feelings for using an expression that Israeli Jews have been resorting to for decades in the exact same sense. If anyone should apologize, it’s Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Jeremy Ben-Ami.

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- JP

Dershowitz: Why J Street Attacked Sarah Palin

J Street's real clients are the Democrat Party, the Obama Administration and the left
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In an opinion piece for David Horowitz's FrontPageMagazine, liberal attorney Alan Dershowitz argues that J Street is not so much a pro-Israel lobby group as it is pro-Democrat Party, anti-GOP and most assuredly anti-Palin:

Shortly after Sarah Palin provoked a barrage of criticism for her use of the term “blood libel,” a Democratic Congressman named Steve Cohen compared Republican statements about the Obama health care reform to “the big lie” told by Joseph Goebbels, saying it’s “like [a] blood libel. The same kind of thing.” Cohen further posited, “the Germans said enough about the Jews and the people believed it and you had the Holocaust.” For the most part the left excoriated Palin for being insensitive to Jewish suffering, while the right has either defended her use of that historical term or has given her a pass on it. I am one of the few liberal Democrats who, while criticizing her use of crosshairs in indentifying contested congressional seats, found nothing objectionable in her use of “blood libel” as a metaphor to describe what she regarded as a false accusation of complicity in the bloodletting in Tucson. I have heard little from the left regarding Congressman Cohen’s more extreme statements.

The irony, of course, is that many of the same people on the left who criticized Palin for insensitively to Jewish suffering, have themselves contributed to Jewish suffering by unfairly demonizing the Jewish state and trivializing the increase in global anti-Semitism. They have also given a pass to those on the hard left who have used Holocaust and Nazi references in mischaracterizing Israeli self defense actions.

Consider the case of Norman Finkelstein, a hero of the hard left. Finkelstein regularly uses Nazi references in his attacks on Israel.

[...]

Why J Street felt it necessary to enter the kerfuffle about the use of blood libel may not be obvious to those who actually believe that J Street is a “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobby that limits its activities to issues surrounding the Israeli Arab conflict. After all, J Street does not claim to be in the business of defending the Jewish people against defamation as does the ADL. Nor is it a protector of Jewish sensitivities as is the Wiesenthal Center. But to those of us who understand what J Street really is, its attack on Palin makes perfect sense. J Street is a lobby for the Democratic Party in general and for the Obama Administration in particular. That’s why it doesn’t deviate from the Obama line, doesn’t criticize the Obama Administration, and doesn’t miss an opportunity to dump on Republicans, even those who support Israel.

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- JP

Benyamin Korn: Why Sarah Palin was right to call it a 'Blood Libel'

She has a special affection for Israel and the Jewish people
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In an op-ed for the Philadelphia Jewish Voice, Benyamin Korn, co-founder of Jewish Americans for Sarah Palin, has an account of how Gov. Palin choose to use the term "blood libel" in her remarks several days after the Tucson shootings:

Now I am in no way a spokesman for, or employee of, Gov. Palin, nor is my organization, Jewish Americans for Sarah Palin, connected to her organization in any way. But as the leader of a grassroots organization of American Jews who support Gov. Palin and her policies, I am acquainted with enough individuals close to her advisers, to have learned this story through what I regard as reliable sources.

First, we can discard the myths that have come to surround her choice of the phrase.

It certainly was not because she "does not know what a blood libel is, or does not know of their horrific history," as David Harris of the National Jewish Democratic Council has claimed. Gov. Palin is, in fact, surprisingly well-informed about Jewish history. Consider, for example, the thoughtful Facebook message she distributed last month, on the occasion of Hannukah...

[...]

Nor was it because she is insensitive to Jewish feelings, as some snarky bloggers have intimated. On the contrary, from her statements and actions, Gov. Palin has demonstrated time and again that she feels closer to Israel and the Jewish people than any American political figure in recent memory.

Anyone who saw the little Israeli flag perched behind her desk well before the 2008 election, or has noticed the pin of American and Israeli flags that almost constantly adorns her left lapel, despite the negligible number of Jewish voters in Alaska, knows of her special affection for the Jewish State and people. No one who has heard her speak with conviction of America as a Judeo-Christian nation, and of our Constitution as founded in Judeo-Christian principles, can doubt that.

So here is what happened....

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- JP

Alan Dershowitz: Is Sarah Palin the victim of a blood libel?

"No group owns the vocabulary of political discourse"
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In a brief statement published by Big Government Wednesday, high-profile liberal Alan Dershowitz defended Gov. Palin's use of the term "blood libel." In a Friday opinion piece for the Jerusalem Post, the Harvard Law professor expands on his previous remarks:

The term blood libel has taken on a broad metaphorical meaning in public discourse. Although its historical origins are rooted in theologically based false accusations against the Jewish people and individual Jews, its current usage is far broader. I myself have used it to describe what I believe to be false accusations against the state of Israel by the Goldstone report. The fact that two of the victims are Jewish is irrelevant to the propriety of using this widely referenced term.

Nor does the term blood libel stand alone as a theologically rooted term that has taken on metaphorical status. The word crucifixion, central to Christian theology, has long been used politically. William Jennings Bryan famously ran for office on the slogan “Do not crucify mankind on a cross of gold.” Similarly, the word crusade, which has darker theological implications, has been used to signify any large scale military or ideological attack. Dwight Eisenhower used that term in the title of his memoir, and some Catholic athletic teams call themselves the Crusaders. (Though I personally disagree with glorifying the horrible crusades against Moslems and Jews, I recognize that the terms have lost its original meaning.) Inquisition, too, has become a generally accepted term describing an unfair investigation or interrogation.

[...]

The term blood libel is now used to characterize any false accusation that relates to the killing of human beings. Sarah Palin was accused of being responsible for the death and wounding of multiple human beings. She reasonably believes that accusation to be false in fact and politically inspired. She is entitled, in my view, to use the term blood libel in the context of an accusation of responsibility for bloodletting, without regard to the religion or ethnicity of the perpetrator, the victims, the accusers or the accused.

Language changes over time by usage. Whether Palin was or was not aware of the theological roots of the term she used, she selected a phrase that has become common place. Jews no longer own it, any more than Christians own theological terms rooted in their religion, or Moslems own words like Jihad, which have now assumed metaphorical status.

So let’s stop trying to stifle debate in the name of political correctness and let’s stop pretending to be offended when people we disagree with use words commonly employed, without criticism, by people we agree with. No group owns the vocabulary of political discourse.

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h/t: Benyamin Korn

- JP

Quote of the Day (January 15, 2011)

The hypocrisy is too nauseating to describe
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Ann Althouse:

"The effort to drag down Sarah Palin for using the term 'blood libel' has backfired... The result of the criticism is that now when someone searches the term 'blood libel,' they see Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin."

- JP

PJTV Trifecta: Blood Libel

So can we call the media totalitarian now?
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h/t: Sister Toldjah

- JP

David Harsanyi: Blood Libel? Oy Vey

After all, how dare she?
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Denver Post columnist and author of Nanny State David Harsanyi takes a relatively mild poke at J Street liberals in this Townhall opinion piece on Gov. Palin's use of the term "blood libel":

Jews, well, we can be offended like it's 1257.

If blood libel is really a distasteful parallel, it is only because we have intimately familiarized ourselves with the idea through a History channel documentary about the crusades. And if our institutional memories make us so thin-skinned, there are far more tangible reminders of genocide when we hop into our fancy German cars (which we do a lot, because we're in charge of everything). Or it is certainly as offensive as the heinous deeds of Sarah Palin, which include, among many other transgressions, talking.

And as Jim Geraghty of National Review helpfully noted, the term "blood libel" has been used many times by pundits and journalists from both sides of the ideological divide, including the esteemed Frank Rich of The New York Times, over the years.

[...]

Perhaps if self-proclaimed spokespeople for Jews everywhere like J Street focused on genuine anti-Semitism around the world, their little partisan cabaret would be more plausible.

Blood libel is the fiction-laden, anti-Israel Goldstone Report. Blood libel is the flotilla incident near Gaza. Blood libel is the Egyptian state media's peddling the idea that shark attacks were the handiwork of Jews and other state-run Arab media's blaming AIDS on Zionists.

There are plenty of genuine things to get offended about in the world if you're Jewish.

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- JP

More on blood libel from a prominent rabbi

Sarah Palin has every right to use the term
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In a commentary for WSJ Online, Shmuley Boteach, named for each of the past four years as one of the ten most influential rabbis in America, defends Gov. Palin's use of the term "blood libel":

Despite the strong association of the term with collective Jewish guilt and concomitant slaughter, Sarah Palin has every right to use it. The expression may be used whenever an amorphous mass is collectively accused of being murderers or accessories to murder.

The abominable element of the blood libel is not that it was used to accuse Jews, but that it was used to accuse innocent Jews—their innocence, rather than their Jewishness, being the operative point. Had the Jews been guilty of any of these heinous acts, the charge would not have been a libel.

[...]

Murder is humanity's most severe sin, and it is trivialized when an innocent party is accused of the crime—especially when that party is a collective too numerous to be defended individually. If Jews have learned anything in their long history, it is that a false indictment of murder against any group threatens every group. As Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Indeed, the belief that the concept of blood libel applies only to Jews is itself a form of reverse discrimination that should be dismissed.

[...]

How unfortunate that some have chosen to compound a national tragedy by politicizing the murder of six innocent lives and the attempted assassination of a congresswoman.

To be sure, America should embrace civil political discourse for its own sake, and no political faction should engage in demonizing rhetoric. But promoting this high principle by simultaneously violating it and engaging in a blood libel against innocent parties is both irresponsible and immoral.

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- JP

Pamela Geller: A conspiracy...

Name one, one Republican president the media has given a fair shake
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Count Pamela Geller as another member of the tribe who has no problem with Gov. Palin's use of the term "blood libel":

Wednesday Sarah Palin responded to the vicious blood libel leveled against her and millions of right-thinking Americans by the army of destroyers. The ferocious, relentless attacks on Sarah Palin are a testament to her greatness, proof of how deathly afraid of her they are, like Dracula to the silver cross.

It’s envy. Ayn Rand said it: “Envy is regarded by most people as a petty, superficial emotion and, therefore, it serves as a semihuman cover for so inhuman an emotion that those who feel it seldom dare admit it even to themselves….That emotion is: hatred of the good for being the good.”

Here’s the thing. The mission, by objective, of the haters, the party of destruction, is to ruin the best, the brightest, the good. The left has, day after day, month after month, year after year, decade after decade, trafficked only in ruin and destruction, focusing on the most effective leaders on the right.

Name one, one, Republican president the voluntary-state-run media has liked. Forget liked, has given a fair shake? Name one Republican they supported. The only Republican the media can cotton to is a RINO (Republican In Name Only) or one who is sure to lose (i.e. old, middle of the road RINO McCain).

I refuse to accept that Palin is unelectable. Says who? Those who wish to destroy her.

[...]

I am going to back Sarah Palin for 2012 and John Bolton. I will not back soft, fickle Republicans like Gingrich or Pawlenty or anybody else who does not have the courage of his or her convictions.

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Being neither of Jewish ethnicity nor Jewish faith, this Anglican-turned-Catholic cannot speak with any special knowledge on the subject of blood libels. But purely from observation, the only Jews who seem to be outraged over Gov. Palin's use of the term seem to be liberals, while conservative Jews appear to be approving of, it or at least not offended. There may be some exceptions to the rule (Prof. Dershowitz being the most notable), but the implication is that whether one be Jew or Gentile, that person's opinion on the matter must have more to do with politics than anything else.

- JP

Sarah Palin Is Right About A Blood Libel (Updated)

Some people are just looking for something to pick at...
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As soon as Sarah Palin posted her "blood libel" Facebook Note and video, the left pounced on it like the rabid dogs they are. Just one of the hounds is the Associated Press, which cherry picked "experts" whom AP knew would criticize Gov. Palin's use of the blood libel term:

"But some experts on the history of blood libel took exception to Palin's use of the term."

But a number of others, knowing that the media would resort to this tactic, were ready.

Jonathan Mark, writing at Jewish Week, titled his op-ed "Sarah Palin Is Right -- We're Looking At A Blood Libel":

Yes, articles, such as Michael Daly's in the Daily News, are exactly a blood libel, with headlines charging "Giffords' Blood Is On Sarah Palin's Hands."

Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz also defended Sarah Palin’s use of the term “blood libel” from her detractors in a statement published by Big Government:

The term “blood libel” has taken on a broad metaphorical meaning in public discourse. Although its historical origins were in theologically based false accusations against the Jews and the Jewish People,its current usage is far broader. I myself have used it to describe false accusations against the State of Israel by the Goldstone Report. There is nothing improper and certainly nothing anti-Semitic in Sarah Palin using the term to characterize what she reasonably believes are false accusations that her words or images may have caused a mentally disturbed individual to kill and maim. The fact that two of the victims are Jewish is utterly irrelevant to the propriety of using this widely used term.

Jewish Americans for Sarah Palin also issued a statement on the matter:

Sarah Palin got it right.

Falsely accusing someone of shedding blood is the definition of a blood libel...

[...]

Beyond the Jewish community, the term “blood libel” is periodically used by political partisans of all stripes. During the 2000 Florida vote recount, for example, Congressman Peter Deutsch said that some Republican accusations against Democratic nominee Al Gore were “almost a blood libel.”* Newsday editor Les Payne said in 2008 that criticism of African-American journalists’ coverage of the Obama candidacy were a “blood libel.”** Former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Jed Babbin said that John Kerry’s 1971 testimony about alleged war crimes committed by U.S. soldiers in Vietnam was “a blood libel.”*** Alex Beam of the Boston Globe said that anonymous Globe staffers who accused former colleagues of privately making racial slurs were “making charges that amounted to ‘blood libel.’”****

“Blood libel” does not refer exclusively to accusations against Jews. It does not refer only to medieval episodes that resulted in pogroms. It is a term that has been, and continues to be, legitimately used in contemporary American political discourse by all sides. Governor Palin’s use of the term is accurate, reasonable, and squarely within the bounds of accepted political discourse. It is her opponents’ attempts to falsely connect her to the Tucson massacre which is inaccurate, and unreasonable, and beyond the pale of civilized discourse.

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At Big Jounalism, Jeff Dunetz weighed in:

When it comes to Governor Palin’s use of the term blood libel, it was totally justified. The progressive media created a lie about Palin causing the death of a child, Christina Taylor Greene. Their charge was blood libel just the same way as the media spreading the al Durah myth, or the way the media spread bogus charges of Israeli massacres during the recent war with Hamas in Gaza (or in the case of Reuters falsified pictures).

Allow me to suggest that the media should not try to push their progressive bias by assuming the role of policing the worldwide use of the term blood libel. They would be much better served trying to ensure that they do not become the conduits for the spread of blood libels, either be it directed toward Israeli soldiers, or conservatives in the United States.

A heartless murderer shot and killed innocent victims. Governor Palin, who is hated just because she exists, was blamed, and that was followed by a flood of calls for her death on Twitter and Facebook. If this isn’t a blood libel than nothing is.

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Sheya, a self-described observant Jew, posted on his blog:

Based on what we know and were taught about blood libels, this is exactly what this was: a blood libel.

The term blood libel wasn’t invented to define what happened to the Jews; it’s just that what happened to Jews were blood libels, and this term fits perfectly to what happened to Governor Palin.

The left and the media attacking Governor Palin are outraged at her for her using the term. Of course, why wouldn’t they be? The chain of events is following the direction blood libels always follow, and they are just mad that they are being called out.

Make no mistake: had Governor Palin not used the term they would have found something else to complain about. As far as they are concerned Governor Palin can do nothing right. This time they picked the wrong thing to nitpick, and the outcries will be an epic fail.

To all my Jewish counterparts in the media: Being Jewish doesn’t automatically qualify you to speak on behalf of all the Jews unless you actually observe at least part of the Torah’s Mitzvot.

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Finally Adam Brickley, in a posting at C4P, wrote:

We are talking about whether it is appropriate for Sarah Palin to use the term “blood libel” to describe the fashion in which she was personally blamed, despite irrefutable evidence to the contrary, for a savage and demented mass murder. In my mind, there is no question. This was blood libel of the most savage kind. There is absolutely no difference between what I feel now, as a member of a movement falsely accused of gunning down a Congresswoman, and what I felt when my family’s Judaism was used as supporting evidence in a campaign to falsely accuse us of psychotic threats of violence. I can’t imagine how Gov. Palin herself must feel after having been personally accused, considering that I was moved almost to tears simply as an anonymous member of the broader “tea party”.

“Blood libel” was coined as a term to describe false accusations of ritual murder against the Jewish people – but it’s an action verb, and it’s an act that can be committed in the future against anyone. We cannot and should not deny people the right to call this despicable act what it is. If we do so, we allow the perpetrators to continue using one of the most painful and traumatizing propaganda tactics ever invented.

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Update: Jim Geraghty has more on use of the 'blood libel" term here.

- JP