Scheuer: Emanuel is a Treasonous Israel-Firster

The viscerally anti-Jewish Michael Scheuer is for some reason now posting his bile on the illustrious sister site of this magazine. As part of a panel of "expert bloggers," he recently answered this question, posed in the wake of the Chas Freeman controversy: "What are the specific steps President Obama, leaders of Congress, the State Department and yes, those of us on this blog, can take to ensure that a rational discussion, and a possible consensus, can be reached on U.S. policy toward Israel and Palestine?"

The entire question is of course predicated on the belief that the discussion in Washington about Israel and Palestine is irrational. Here is the way the question is introduced: "Defenders of Freeman -- a man that many members of the foreign policy community and the press know and respect -- say he was unfairly maligned; some of his defenders, and Freeman himself, have said he became a target for the so-called "Israel Lobby," an amorphous collection of groups and individuals whose views on Israel tend to align with those of Israel's harder-line political parties. Other defenders have said he was targeted by a mob."

None of the substantive criticism from this alleged "mob" is quoted. I don't know why. Perhaps because the reader might then understand the actual charges?

In any case, Scheuer responds to the question first by asking the other participating bloggers  "what they think about Rahm Emanuel -- a man who chose the IDF over the U.S, military in wartime -- serving as President Obama's chief of staff and being privy to the nation's most sensitive information?" And then he goes on to accuse all Americans who support Israel, and not merely the White House chief of staff, of treason:

This is a good question, but the discussion will be feckless if it avoids what the moderator refers to as intimations that may be "ugly." Well, friends, ugly is here and it has been here for decades. There is indeed an identifiable fifth column of pro-Israel U.S. citizens -- I have described them here and elsewhere as Israel-Firsters -- who have consciously made Israel's survival and protection their first priority, and 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. These are disloyal citizens in much the same sense that the Civil War's disloyal northern "Copperheads" sought to help the Confederates destroy the Union. The Israel-Firsters help Israel suborn U.S. citizens to spy for Israel; they use their fortunes and political action organizations to buy U.S. politicians with campaign donations; and most of all they use their ready access to the media to disguise their own disloyalty by denigrating as anti-Semites or appeasers fellow citizens who dare to challenge them. The Israel-Firsters are unquestionably enemies of America's republican experiment and will have to be destroyed as the Copperheads were destroyed -- by the people, after a full public deabte (sic), at the ballot box."

There you have it: a cluster of anti-Semitic tropes in a single long paragraph. American Jews (pardon me, "Israel-firsters") hate America; they spy on America; they buy politicians with their vast (Jewish) wealth; they control the media; and they accuse people like Michael Scheuer of anti-Semitism when all he wants to do is "destroy" them. Scheuer is not the equivalent of Chas Freeman, not by a mile. Chas Freeman is a Likudnik by comparison. Scheuer is the modern-day incarnation of Father Coughlin, a man who believes that Jews are the eternal enemy. Scheuer is the man who once told an appropriately-shocked gathering at the Council on Foreign Relations that the Holocaust Museum is part of a clandestine Jewish operation to control American foreign policy: "Well, the clandestine aspect is that, clearly, the ability to influence the Congress--that's a clandestine activity, a covert activity. You know to some extent, the idea that the Holocaust Museum here in our country is another great ability to somehow make people feel guilty about being the people who did the most to try to end the Holocaust. I find--I just find the whole debate in the United States unbearably restricted with the inability to factually discuss what goes on between our two countries."

The man is simply a hater.