A Point of View: Here we go again: "The Israel Lobby made them do it!"

I have said it before and I must say it again - anti-Semitic conspiracy theories claiming American Jews control US foreign policy and are disloyal US citizens continue to be expounded through the Internet and permeate mainstream Web sites, blogs and commentaries.

The most recent case is the Charles Freeman affair - the designated Chairman of the National Intelligence Council who decided to withdraw his name from consideration after concerns were raised about the central role he might play in intelligence affairs, given his anti-Israel statements and connections to the Saudi government, as well as to the Chinese. The Freeman appointment was disturbing on its own terms without generalizing about where US-Israel relations were heading.

On US-Israel relations his views fall far from mainstream opinion in America and enter into demonization of Israel and its supporters in the US. Nothing better illustrates where Freeman is coming from than in his statement explaining his withdrawal.  He articulates, in the guise of a victim, the essential conspiracy view of the Israel-supporting community which made his appointment so troubling in the first place. He sees the exposure of his troubling attitudes toward Israel as proof  "that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired."

"The aim of this lobby," he says, "is control of the policy process… and the exclusion of any and all options for decisions."  And Freeman blames it all on "the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider any option for US policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling factor in Israel politics."

Freeman's assertions are absurd and patently false. Yet the discussion abounds, sometimes in the same ugly anti-Jewish conspiratorial rhetoric.

Case in point is Michael Scheuer. A former CIA official responding to a question on the National Journal's Expert Blogs on "How to Talk About Israel," he has taken the rising innuendo against Jewish-Americans, as reflected in the writing of professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, to a new level. There is no sugarcoating or euphemism here. Scheuer out-and-out refers to pro-Israel Jewish Americans as "an identifiable fifth column." His bluntness continues.  They are "disloyal citizens."  They "help Israel suborn US citizens to spy for Israel." They "use their ready access to the media to disguise their own disloyalty."  They are "unquestionably enemies of America's republican experiment and will have to be destroyed… after a full public debate, at the ballot box."

Scheuer must have just studied The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. His statements are as clear a manifestation of anti-Semitic themes as was ever put out by a mainstream American public figure.

The Jews are all-powerful, as seen in their "ready access to the media" and their ability to "suborn US citizens." The Jews are only loyal to an outside party. In the Soviet Union, Jews used to be attacked as "cosmopolitans" and "Zionists." Here the Jews are "Israel Firsters" who "see worth in America only to the extent that its resources and manpower can be exploited to protect and further the interests of Israel in its religious war-to-the-death with the Arabs."

The Jews work in cabal to serve their own narrow interests against the interests of their own country. Scheuer compares pro-Israel Jews to the Copperheads during the Civil War "who sought to help the Confederates destroy the Union."

What is so striking about this diatribe is the lack of shame in stating these hate-filled attitudes so openly and baldly. It shows the level of penetration of such ideas and the weakening of constraints in the last few years.  And, of course, it contains the usual preemptive defense mechanism: exposing his critics, who will call him anti-Semitic, as employing the usual tactic to stifle legitimate criticism.

Where will it end?  It's time to stand up now. It shouldn't be left to American Jews in 2009 to have to say the obvious: that we are loyal and true citizens; that we have every democratic right to stand up for Israel; that Israel is a great democracy and ally of the US; that the American people know this and stand with Israel; that there is no control of opinion and policy - that, in fact, all kinds of views on the Middle East are explored; that US policy is pro-Israel but not anti-Palestinian; that these kinds of attacks are not merely illegitimate attacks against Israel but anti-Semitism of the ugliest kind.
We shouldn't have to say this. Others should.