The problem is that most of the money is not coming from civil libertarians who care about free speech, due process, the rights of the accused, and defending the unpopular. It is coming from radical leftists in Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and other areas not known for a deep commitment to civil liberties. To its everlasting disgrace, the ACLU is abandoning its mission to follow the money. It now spends millions of dollars on TV ads that are indistinguishable from those of left-wing organizations, such as MoveOn, the Democratic National Committee, and other partisan groups.
ACLU’s “reinvention in the Trump era” was reported on by the New Yorker:
In this midterm year … as progressive groups have mushroomed and grown more active, and as liberal billionaires such as Howard Schultz and Tom Steyer have begun to imagine themselves as political heroes and eye presidential runs, the ACLU, itself newly flush, has begun to take an active role in elections. The group has plans to spend more than $25 million on races and ballot initiatives by [midterm] Election Day in November.
Anthony Romero, the group’s executive director, told me, “It used to be that, when I had a referendum I really cared about, I could spend $50,000.”
This new strategy can be seen in many of the ACLU’s actions, which would have been inconceivable just a few years ago. The old ACLU would never have been silent when Michael Cohen’s office was raided by the FBI and his clients’ files seized; it would have yelled foul when students accused of sexual misconduct were tried by kangaroo courts; and it surely would have argued against a presumption of guilt regarding sexual allegations directed against a judicial nominee.
Everything the ACLU does today seems to be a function of its fund-raising. To be sure, it must occasionally defend a Nazi, a white supremacist, or even a mainstream conservative. But that is not its priority these days, either financially or emotionally. Its heart and soul are in its wallet and checkbook. It is getting rich while civil liberties are suffering.
There appears to be a direct correlation between the ACLU’s fund-raising and its priorities. When the ACLU’s national political director and former Democratic Party operative Faiz Shakir was asked why the ACLU got involved in the Kavanaugh confirmation fight, he freely admitted, “People have funded us and I think they expect a return.” Its funders applaud the result because many of these mega-donors couldn’t care less about genuine civil liberties or due process. What they care about are political results: more left-wing Democrats in Congress, fewer conservative justices on the Supreme Court, and more money in the ACLU coffers.
When I served both on the National and Massachusetts Boards of the American Civil Liberties Union, board members included conservative Republicans, old-line Brahmans, religious ministers, schoolteachers, labor union leaders, and a range of ordinary folks who cared deeply about core civil liberties. The discussions were never partisan. They always focused on the Bill of Rights. There were considerable disagreements about whether various amendments covered the conduct at issue.
But no one ever introduced the question of whether taking a position would help the Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives, Jews or Catholics, or any other identifiable group. We cared about applying the constitution fairly to everyone, without regard to the political consequences.
As the New Yorker described these more innocent times: the ACLU “… has been fastidiously nonpartisan, so prudish about any alliance with political power that its leadership, in the 1980s and 1990s, declined even to give awards to like-minded legislators for fear that it might give the wrong impression.”
Those days are now gone. Instead, we have a variant on the question my immigrant grandmother asked when I told her the Brooklyn Dodgers won the World Series in 1955: “Yeah, but vuz it good or bad for the Jews?” My grandmother was a strong advocate of identity politics: all she cared about was the Jews. That was sixty-three years ago.
The questions being asked today by ACLU board members are: Is it good or bad for the Left? Is it good or bad for Democrats? It is good or bad for women? Is it good or bad for people of color? Is it good or bad for gays?
These are reasonable questions to be asked by groups dedicated to the welfare of these groups but not by a group purportedly dedicated to civil liberties for all. A true civil libertarian group transcends identity politics and cares about the civil liberties of its political enemies, because it recognizes that this is the only way that civil liberties for everyone will be preserved.
But today too few people are asking, “Is it good or bad for civil liberties?”
The Shoe Test in the Media and Foreign Relations
Widespread failure of the shoe on the other foot test is not a phenomenon constrained to domestic politics and news; the same double standard is proliferating in our foreign relationships, finding its way through the extremist media to a receptive public. It manifests sharply in demonizers of Jews and the nation-state of Israel, who make demands not made on other peoples or nations and therein miserably fail the shoe test.
This deserves to be brought to light and criticized, regardless of the perpetrator. I do so in the following writings.
Biased Media Complicit as Hamas Sends Women, Children to Front Line32
If this were the first time that Hamas deliberately provoked Israel into self-defense actions that resulted in the unintended deaths of Gaza civilians, the media could be excused for playing into the hands of Hamas. The most recent Hamas provocations—having forty thousand Gazans try to tear down the border fence and enter Israel with Molotov cocktails and other improvised weapons—are part of a repeated Hamas tactic that I have called the “dead baby strategy.”
Hamas’s goal is to have Israel kill as many Gazans as possible so that the headlines always begin, and often end, with the body count. Hamas deliberately sends women and children to the front line, while their own fighters hide behind these human shields.
Hamas leaders have long acknowledged this tactic. Fathi Hammad, a Hamas Member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, stated as far back as 2008:
For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry, at which women excel, and so do all the people living on this land. The elderly excel at this, and so do the mujahideen and the children. This is why they have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly, and the mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine. It is as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: “we desire death like you desire life.”
Hamas used this tactic to provoke two wars with Israel in which their fighters fired rockets from civilian areas, including hospitals, schools, and mosques. When Israel responded, it tried its best to avoid civilian casualties, dropping warning leaflets, calling residents of potential targets, and dropping nonlethal noise bombs on the roofs of houses that were being used to launch rockets and store explosives. Inevitably, some civilians were killed, and the media blamed Israel for these deaths, despite the precautions it had taken.
The same was true when Hamas built terror tunnels used to kidnap Israeli civilians. The entrances to these tunnels were in civilian areas as well, including mosques and schools. Using their own civilians as human shields while targeting Israeli civilians, is a double war crime. Yet, the media generally focuses on Israel’s reaction to these war crimes rather than Hamas’ war crimes.
The cruel reality is that every time Israel accidentally kills a Gaza civilian, Israel loses. And every time Israel kills a Gaza civilian, Hamas wins. Israelis grieve every civilian death its army accidentally causes. Hamas benefits from every death Israel accidentally causes. That is why it encourages its women and children to become martyrs.
Calling this the “dead baby strategy” may seem cruel, because it is cruel. But don’t blame the messenger for accurately describing this tactic. Blame those who cynically use it. And blame the media for playing into the hands of those who use it by reporting only the body count and not the deliberate Hamas tactic that leads to one-sided body counts.
It is true that Gaza is
in a desperate situation and that it is wounded. But the wound itself is self-inflicted. When Israel ended its occupation of the Gaza—removing every single soldier and settler—Gaza could have become the Singapore on the Mediterranean. It is a beautiful area with a large seacoast. It received infusions of cash and other help from Europe. Israel left behind agricultural equipment and hothouses. But instead of using these resources to feed, house, and educate its citizens, Hamas built rockets, terror tunnels, and Molotov cocktails. It threw dissenters off the roof and murdered members of the Palestinian Authority who were willing to recognize Israel and negotiate with it.
Hamas rejects the two-state solution or any solution that leaves Israel intact. Its only solution is violence, and the events at the fence these past days are a manifestation of that violence. Would any country in the world allow forty thousand people, sworn to its destruction, knock down a border fence and attack its citizens living peacefully near the border? Of course not. Could Israel have done more to reduce casualties among those trying to breach the border fence? I don’t know, and neither do the legions of arm chair generals that are currently criticizing Israel for the steps it took to prevent a catastrophe among the residents of Kibbutzim and towns that are proximate to the border fence.
One thing is crystal clear: Hamas will continue to use the dead baby strategy as long as the media continues to report the deaths in the manner in which it has reported them in recent weeks. Many in the media are complicit in these deaths because their one-sided reporting encourages Hamas to send innocent women and children to the front line.
Perhaps Israel could do a better job in defending its civilians, but it is certain that the media can do a better job in accurately reporting the Hamas strategy that results in so many innocent deaths.
There is a marvelous cartoon that illustrates the difference between Hamas and Israel. It shows an Israeli soldier standing in front of a baby carriage with a baby in it, shielding the baby. Then it shows a Hamas terrorist standing behind a baby carriage with the baby in it, using the baby to shield him. This cartoon better illustrates the reality that is occurring at the Gaza fence than most of the “objective” reporting by the media.
NBC Demonizes John Bolton, Gatestone33
When I was growing up, organizations that expressed any views at all similar to those expressed by communist groups were called “communist fronts.” Anyone who defended on the grounds of civil liberties the right of communists to express their hateful ideology was labeled a “commie-symp.”
All decent people railed against this coerced, “politically correct” guilt-by-association because it endangered freedom of speech, freedom of association, basic fairness, and especially truth.
But today a similar tactic of defamatory character assassination against people with whom one disagrees, particularly conservatives, is being employed by elements of the left, including some in the mainstream media.
Consider the recent attack by Heidi Przybyla of NBC News against the recently appointed National Security Advisor, Ambassador John Bolton, and an organization whose board he chaired before that, Gatestone Institute. The headline of the hit piece is, “John Bolton Chaired Anti-Muslim Think Tank.” Nothing could be further from the truth.
Przybyla wrongly described Gatestone an “anti-Muslim think tank” presumably because it published some articles about Muslim “no-go zones” in parts of Europe. The existence of certain areas in Europe that are unsafe for non-Muslims is widely debated as “politically incorrect” in the European media. It is well established that visible Jews—wearing kippahs or other indicators of their religion—have been attacked. Two weeks ago, a non-Jew apparently trying to discredit such rumors by wearing a kippah was attacked on a Berlin street.
Others have been attacked as well. Even German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a vocal supporter of mass migration, has commented on this troubling situation. According to the Daily Express, Merkel warned that, “There cannot be any no-go areas … where people are afraid to go, but such places are a reality.”
For some Gatestone writers to have participated in this debate does not make Gatestone “anti-Muslim.” It makes them pertinent.
Even a cursory look at Gatestone’s website shows that its writers and scholars include numerous Muslims, such as the prominent journalists Amir Taheri; Khaled Abu Toameh; President of the American Islamic Forum M. Zuhdi Jasser; Salim Mansur, and Raheel Raza—among others.
Many of Gatestone’s articles are, in fact, pro-Muslim—advocating human rights and civil liberties for all Muslims—including Palestinians and Iranians.
Przybyla also claims that Gatestone is somehow in the pocket of Putin’s Russia based on the following “fact,” “NBC news found at least four instances of known Russian trolls directly retweeting from the Gatestone account.”
The fact that Russian trolls may have retweeted a handful of Gatestone articles means nothing, especially as Dan Abrams’s Law and Crime website independently confirmed 267 retweets of MSNBC’s Joy Reid. As the noted journalist Daniel Greenfield wrote, “Four times vs. 267 times. If getting retweeted 4 times makes you a Russian spy, NBC must be the Kremlin.” Everything on the Internet is public information; anyone is free to read or tweet about it. One cannot post material labeled, “except for Russians.”
If Przybyla’s accusations sound familiar to those of us who lived through the thought police of the McCarthy era, it is because they are so similar. Blaming an organization for those who read or circulate its material is McCarthyesque defamation. Attributing to an organization all the views of those who are invited to debate controversial issues is McCarthyesque demonization.
Let John Bolton be judged by his own statements and actions, for which he needs no defense from me. But let not the media indulge in the discredited tactics of guilt-by-association, distortion, and outright deceit based on ideological or political differences.
I am a frequent op-ed contributor to Gatestone and often speak at its events. I also proudly serve on its board. I find Gatestone to be refreshingly centrist. Gatestone encourages dialogue between the center left, represented by people such as former Sen. Joe Lieberman and myself, and people from the center right represented by speakers such as John Bolton and the eminent historian Victor Davis Hanson.
I am scheduled to speak at an event with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who, based on her own personal experiences of female genital mutilation and forced marriage, has expressed views about abuses committed by some Muslims against other Muslims in the name of Islam.
These discussions are always informative and serious. I disagree with some of what I hear and read at Gatestone events and in its publications, but that is true of every organization of which I am aware. Przybyla wrenches out of context a few points of view that to her seem controversial, and not only attributes them to the organization but makes it appear as if these views are the only ones the organization represents.
The answer to deception and falsehoods has always been truth. I urge everyone who has read Przybyla’s misrepresentation to go to the Gatestone website and read a wide array of its extensively substantiated articles. Then everyone can judge for themselves. Is Gatestone an “anti-Muslim think tank?”
Or, is it an open-minded institute that encourages diverse views on a wide range of pressing subjects? Then you can answer Groucho Marx’s famous rhetorical question, “Who are you going to believe—me or your lying eyes?”
Chomsky Calls Russian Interference a Joke—and Guess Who He Blames?34
Noam Chomsky has gone off the deep end once again. This time he claims that in “most of the world” the issue of Russian interference in US elections is “almost a joke.” The real villain, according to him, is, of course, Israel—as it almost always is with Chomsky. According to the world’s “top public intellectual,” Israeli intervention in US elections “vastly overwhelms anything the Russians may have done.” His proof of this absurd and false charge is that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a speech in front of Co
ngress “with overwhelming applause.” Only on Planet Chomsky would it be worse for the Prime Minister of an American ally openly to accept an invitation from the Speaker of the House to address Congress about an issue of mutual concern, than for Russian agents surreptitiously to try to manipulate voters by false social media campaigns, hacking emails, and other illegal actions.
Chomsky simply fails to understand how democracy is supposed to work. Transparency and public accountability are the cornerstones of democracy. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s very public opposition to Obama’s Iran Deal—a deal opposed by most members of Congress and most Americans—was just as consistent with democracy as Winston Churchill’s public demands for the United States to help Great Britain fight the Nazis.
American presidents, as well as Israeli prime ministers, seek to influence the policies and electoral choices made by their allies. That, too, is part of democracy. The United States has pressured Israel to stop building settlements; Israel has pressured the United States to be more aggressive in preventing Iran from developing a nuclear arsenal. This, too, is part of democracy.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is an American organization that lobbies on behalf of American support for Israel. Lobbying is as American as apple pie.
What is un-American, and what is undemocratic, is for secret agents working surreptitiously on behalf of Vladimir Putin’s Russia to commit numerous crimes, for which several of its agents have been indicted, in an effort to influence American elections without transparency or public accountability.
Chomsky is smart enough to understand this, but his willful blindness toward anything involving Israel leads him to make the kind of false comparative statement that no intellectual should ever make. Again, only on Planet Chomsky would Russia’s continuous efforts improperly to intervene in American elections would be characterized as “almost a joke.” Only on Planet Chomsky Israel’s open, transparent, and democratic efforts to have America support its security be deemed worse than Russia’s crimes. But such blindness is to be expected from Chomsky when it comes to anything regarding Israel, Jews, or anti-Semitism.
The Case Against the Democratic House Impeaching Trump Page 27