(JEWISH GROUP) The other problem with Valerie Plames horrible anti-Semitic tweet
THIS IS THE JEWISH GROUP!! RESPECT!
Happy New Year! Or not.
On the first full day of Rosh Hashanah, unmasked CIA officer Valerie Plame tweeted out an article entitled, Americas Jews are driving Americas wars. As if the headline werent bad enough, the essay appeared on a website featuring such pieces as Its time to re-think David Duke. Its argument mirrored a classic anti-Semitic conspiracy theory: Jews run everything in America, and because of their irrational love for Israel theyre running us into foreign conflicts, too.
It is nigh impossible to argue that the article was anything but vile. It called for identifying Jewish Americans as such when they appear on television (much as, it said, one might affix a warning label to a bottle of rat poison). That didnt stop Plame from trying, at first protesting that many neocon hawks ARE Jewish. Finally, she progressed to the last of the all-too-predictable stages of post-Twitter meltdown grief and issued a full-throated mea culpa. She has since deleted her initial tweet.
Its also pretty clear that Plames apology was insufficient. Perhaps, as she said, she simply skimmed the piece before posting it. But did she make the same mistake with the other anti-Semitic musings she has shared over the past few months? I never heard this story about 9/11: The Dancing Israelis, reads one.
More interesting than the painfully obvious, though, is how the second Plame affair played into a broader debate about anti-Semitism in the United States. Conservatives crowed over Plames fall from grace because her unmasking in the 2000s and her antiwar advocacy in the years since have made her a hero in the eyes of many liberals. In their eyes, the lefts favorite member of the CIA had outed herself this time as a bigot.
And that proved a point theyve long been harping on: When it comes to Jews, liberals are just as racist as their neo-Nazi brethren. It didnt matter that the piece Plame shared was written by a right-winger. What mattered was that she shared it. And by sharing it, she fit neatly into the narrative of the intolerant left.
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