Z STREET BLUES: THE ADMINISTRATION SEEMS HELL BENT ON ALIENTING AMERICA’S JEWS
http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/08/26/z-street-blues/
Z Street Blues Posted By Michael Lumish
It never ceases to amaze me the degree to which our current federal government, not to mention our current President, seems just hell-bent on alienating American Jews. Do they think that somehow smacking around pro-Israel and pro-Jewish organizations will serve their purposes? Do they suppose that Arabs states, or Muslim states, will like the United States better if the US is nasty to the Jews? (If so, they might consider giving Lee Smith’s The Strong Horse a close read.) Do they think that diaspora Jews have such a case of Stockholm Syndrome that we do not mind being kicked around?
These are a few of the questions that I would like to ask the IRS, but for some reason I do not expect that I would get very honest answers.
A new pro-Israel organization, Z Street, has filed suit in federal court charging that the IRS is violating their First Amendment rights.
The suit was filed after Z STREET was told by an IRS official that its application for tax-exempt status has been delayed because an IRS policy requires consideration of whether a group’s views on Israel differ from those of the current Administration.
What?
Look, I am not a lawyer and therefore am in no position to argue if Z Street is eligible for tax exempt status or not. Thankfully, however, the president of Z Street, Lori Lowenthal Marcus, is a lawyer. In fact, she’s a lawyer who specialized in the First Amendment. This is what she has to say about the matter:
This situation is the same as if the government denied a driver’s license to people because they were Republicans or Democrats. It goes against everything for which our country stands.
Could this possibly be any more troubling? If what Ms. Marcus says is true, it means that the federal government is actively persecuting pro-Israel organizations which can only mean, given American Jewish support for Israel, that it is actively persecuting American Jews for the hideous crime of supporting the Jewish state.
Z Street was formed around opposition to the anti-Israel / anti-Jewish J Street organization. When J Street recently emerged I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. As hard as it might be to imagine there is such a thing as a progressive supporter of Israel and I, initially, had no reason to doubt that Jeremy Ben Ami and J Street were, in fact, genuinely supportive of Israel.
Boy, was I wrong. J Street supports “tough love†for Israel, which is another way of saying that it supports beating the holy hell out of the Jewish state in order to make it comply with the American Leftist agenda for that country – for its own good, naturally.
J Street refused to acknowledge that the anti-Semitic play, 7 Jewish Children, which depicts Jews as blood-thirsty monsters who impart their rapacious evil onto their children, is an anti-Semitic play. J Street purports to be “pro-Israel / pro-peace†yet was willing to drop the pro-Israel part on certain American campuses in order to bolster its support among youthful anti-Zionists and Israel Haters. And J Street does not really seem to mind if the crazed Jihadis in Tehran get nuclear weapons with which to threaten – well? – pretty much everyone. They claim to be opposed to Iranian nukes, it’s just that they really cannot find it within themselves to actually oppose Iranian nukes.
So, naturally, Z Street was formed in response. It stands for the following:
The right of the Jewish people to a state, and the right of Jews to live freely anywhere, including inhaling oxygen in areas the world insists are reserved for Arab Palestinians.
This, of course, is unacceptable because as everyone knows – and certainly Barack Obama knows – Jews should be allowed to live here, but not there. Jews who wish to live where Jews originally came from, what they call Judea and Samaria, are an impediment to the “peace process†because Mahmoud Abbas insists that any future Palestinian state must be Judenrein and, apparently, Barack Obama agrees. The presence of Jews in, ahhh, Judea is unacceptable.
Relishing the terms “Jewish State†and “Zionism†– ones currently derided as shameful instead of sources of pride.
Within much of the hard Left, the word “Zionism†has become code for an allegedly racist, imperialist, colonialist, militarist, and really, really not nice political movement among those hideous Jews who simply refuse to maintain their necessary dhimmi status. A “Zionist†is a bad person to be opposed.
Circulation of facts — not deceptive “Palestinian†narratives — about the Middle East, Israel and terrorism.
This is a reference to the sad truth that within Left intellectual and activist circles, influenced by Post Structural and Post Colonial political theories, truth is no longer about truth, but about politics. Thus what counts is spreading the “narrative.†(The late Edward Said gets much of the credit and/or blame. For those interested in a powerful scholarly response to Professor Said, Ibn Warraq’s Defending the West is a must-read.)
Condemnation of those who revile Israel for actions they ignore when taken by Israel’s enemies and virtually all states throughout history.
This has been one of my themes, of late, as well. Human rights activists are not human rights activists if the only human rights that they care about are the human rights of those who happen to live in Ramallah or Gaza City. If one constantly demonizes and dehumanizes the Jewish state over human rights issues, while not breathing a word about the far, far worse human rights abuses in Darfur or the Congo, than there must be something motivating these people beyond an honest concern for human rights. That much is obvious.
Categorical rejection of agreements with, or concessions to, terrorists (or their supporters) who are dedicated to Israel’s destruction.
In other words, they’re not a big fan of the Left-Jihadi Alliance as outlined by people such as David Horowitz, Andrew McCarthy, and Jamie Glazov, among others.
An IRS agent told Z STREET’s lawyers that the application was delayed because of a Special Israel Policy that requires more intense scrutiny of organizations which have to do with Israel, in part to determine whether they espouse positions on Israel contrary to those of the current Administration.
If this is true, than there is something very, very wrong afoot and people need to speak up. If this is true, then the federal government is targeting people who support the Jewish state merely for supporting the Jewish state in ways that they do not like.
More importantly, it means that our federal government, headed by a guy who used to teach Constitutional Law, is using the IRS as a cudgel to promote ideological conformity.
And that won’t stand no matter what anyone thinks about Israel.
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