I posted previously about accusations that groups such as Media Matters and the Center for American Progress (which runs the Think Progress blog) routinely used questionable terminology (such as “Israel-Firsters”) and were pushing an anti-Israel agenda under the guise of battling the “Israel Lobby.”
The story was brought to the forefront by Ben Smith of Politico (soon to be of BuzzFeed), and apparently someone named Josh Block who worked for a “progressive” foreign affairs think tank was the source of much of the information for Smith’s article.
There is a lot of inside Washington think tank baseball in this story, but here’s the short version of the outcome: Block was fired today.
As reported by Smith, Progressive group expels Block over CAP criticism:
A progressive group that is working to remake the Democratic Party’s approach to national security has drawn a line around the heated Israel policy debate, expelling a member who criticized the Center for American Progress for breaking with Clinton Democrats’ traditional staunch support for Israel.Truman National Security Project founder Rachel Kleinfeld emailed the critic, Josh Block, to inform him this morning, Block said.”I’m glad we all know where everyone stands, even if they’ve decided to do it on Christmas Eve so nobody would notice,” Block said. “Siding against people who raise concerns about this kind of speech clearly delineates where these progressive organizations are coming from.”
Block shed further light on what we all know; the “progressive” foreign policy community is seeking to co-opt the Democratic Party into its anti-Israel agenda.
Block was fired, according to the Smith story, for calling out progressives for using inflammatory terms like Israel-Firster which prey upon ages-old anti-Semitic stereotypes of Jews being stateless and disloyal. I have pointed out the origins and use of “Israel-Firster” term many times before with regard to Glenn Greenwald, who stands by the term.
It would be easy to dismiss this incident as meaningless Beltway cat fighting, except for the fact that the nasty cats are the ones who seek to alter the historic relationship between the U.S. and Israel.
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