The white face of Hasbara

So Henry Cuellar has been indicted for bribery, foreign influence and corruption. Henry Cuellar, the Islamophobic, homophobic, anti-abortion, anti-immigrant, anti-gun control “Democrat” who often voted with Trump.

Hm.

That’s wild af.

Too bad there’s not someone who was more honest and trustworthy who the DNC and the DCCC could have backed and promoted back when Cuellar was running for office.

That’s really too bad, especially since the margin for the Senate and the House will probably be sO damn close in 2024. Too bad there wasn’t a pro-gun control, pro-immigration, pro-LGBTQ candidate that Democrats could have rallied behind. Instead of funding a conservative, anti-abortion Republican who just called himself a Democrat.

Because if there really was a pro-choice, pro-immigration, pro-gun control candidate who Democrats could have backed, then a lot of people would probably be saying “I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO” right about now. Yeah, I would probably be a little bit pressed. Angry even.

But what do I know, right? I mean, it probably doesn’t matter that AIPAC poured millions and millions against…

Know what, never mind. I guess we’re all good doe, because there wasn’t anyone else who could have taken that seat, the seat that was in a safe Democratic district.

Maybe Democrats will learn and support an actual progressive next time?

It’s all too bad.

House Resolution 883 formally condemns the phrase, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free” as antisemitic hate speech—but in reality it is the preface for governmental censorship (sponsored by a foreign government via AIPAC) that unconstitutionally bans freedom of speech and freedom of expression.

As israel has already murdered more than 33,000 noncombatant civilians in Palestine and is currently committing war crimes like bombing hospitals, mosques, churches, schools and even children’s playgrounds, something tells me that there won’t be a similar condemnation of rampant Islamophobia.

A super PAC funded by conservative megadonor Jeff Yass has spent more than half a million dollars in recent weeks urging Pennsylvania Democrats to support a primary challenger running against progressive House Democrat Summer Lee.

The Moderate PAC, which was formed in 2021, is airing ads in Pennsylvania’s 12th District that attack Lee for what it calls her “extreme socialist agenda,” and calling on Democratic primary voters to choose Lee’s challenger Bhavini Patel. The ads go after Lee for criticizing President Biden and the Democratic Party, and for voting against the debt ceiling bill negotiated between Biden and former House Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). Lee is a member of the so-called “Squad” of progressive House Democrats that has stood apart from Democratic Party leaders on numerous policy issues, including most recently on U.S. support for Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza.

The super PAC has spent at least $586,000 on running the ads since the middle of March, according to Federal Election Commission records.

The only donation that The Moderate PAC has ever reported receiving is $1 million from Yass that was given to the group in July 2022.

Yass is a billionaire investor who former President Trump recently said was “fantastic” after the pair connected at a donor retreat in Florida.

Yass has donated more than $62 million to conservative super PAC Club for Growth Action, and $18 million to School Freedom Fund, a Club for Growth PAC that supports candidates who believe parents should receive taxpayer dollars to spend with private education companies of their choosing. Yass lives in Pennsylvania and has a net worth of about $27 billion, according to Forbes.

Yass has also donated heavily to congressional Republicans. Last year he gave $10 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC affiliated with House GOP leadership, and in 2018 he gave $200,000 to its upper chamber equivalent the Senate Leadership Fund.

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AIPAC, a rightwing conservative, quasi-religious, foreign organization, is interfering with U.S. elections and shaping who is and who isn’t a member of Congress.

AIPAC is currently targeting progressives like Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Summer Lee, Jamaal Bowman, Greg Casar, Delia Ramirez, Maxwell Frost, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and others who do not feel beholden to Israel and are sympathetic to Palestinians.

If AIPAC was a super PAC funded by North Korea, or China, or Russia, or Iran—and interfering in elections by financing the campaigns of specific candidates—almost every member of Congress would be freaking out. And rightly so. This is no different.

THIS WEEK, WASHINGTON’S top Israel lobby is rallying its supporters to go to Capitol Hill and falsely claim to lawmakers that people aren’t starving in Gaza and Israel isn’t blocking aid shipments, according to talking points obtained by the American Prospect.

Israel has led a brutal siege on Gaza since Oct. 7, when Hamas killed 1,139 Israelis and kidnapped more than 200. More than 31,000 Palestinians have been killed, 2 million have been internally displaced, and hundreds of thousands are at imminent risk of famine, according to the United Nations.

The powerful lobbying group American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, is working to maintain support for Israel’s war, amid increased protests and public outcry. This week, AIPAC convened in Maryland for its annual policy conference, which it uses to marshal its donors and supporters to serve as a grassroots lobbying army in the halls of Congress.

The Prospect obtained a copy of AIPAC’s talking points for supporters heading to the Hill — and they are extreme, to say the least. The documents instruct supporters to claim that “reports that people are starving in Gaza are false,” and say that “Israel is not blocking the delivery of aid to Gaza.”

The AIPAC talking points additionally claim that Hamas wants people to believe Gazans are starving in order to “exert pressure” on Israel, and argues the “United States must not fall into Hamas’ trap.”

These claims from AIPAC are false. Gazans are starving on a massive, unprecedented scale. According to the United Nations, 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza — almost the entire population of the region — are facing “crisis or worse levels of food insecurity.” Half a million of those included in that figure face “catastrophic” levels of food insecurity.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) — a leading food security analysis and advocacy group — classifies the Gaza Strip as being in Phase 4 “Emergency” status food insecurity, with a high risk of imminent famine conditions.

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AIPAC is a tool used by a foreign government to assert control over the U.S. Government.

AIPAC has a long history of supporting extreme rightwing Republicans, including election deniers who still insist that Trump won the 2020 election.

And you know that there are many journalists who are very concerned about the pressure that's being applied about the sensitivities of this conflict.

And let's just be very clear here. We have the Israeli government, has a lot of supporters in Congress, has a lot of supporters in the media, has a lot of supporters in activist groups on K Street. There is a, quote unquote, pro-Israel lobby which does apply pressure on media organizations.

If you've worked like I have, both in American media and British media, you've seen the emails from honestreporting .com, and Kamera. And some of these groups your listeners may never have heard of. But I'll tell you what, every newsroom has heard of these groups; “Why is your headline this,” and “Why is your reporter showing bias?”And, “Why do they tweet this?” In this recent case, it's Louisa Lovelock, who is a British journalist at the Washington Post. It's a fantastic Middle East correspondence. Covered Syria, covered Iraq, covered Gaza, covered a bunch of things.

It's so absurd, the dossier they've produced against her. One of the things they go after is she took part in student protests at university in England against tuition fees. And..? A) that's a bad thing? B) that means she can't cover Israel's bombing of Gaza? It's so absurd. The stuff that they pull with me. Of course, I've had stuff going back 20 or 30 years that they've thrown at me. And it's a real problem where people get intimidated into not saying, not speaking what they want to speak about.

And we live in a world where the right is obsessed about cancel culture and free speech when, let's be very clear, the greatest victims of, quote unquote, cancel culture in this country have always been Palestinian activists, both on campus, in the media, and in politics.

I mean, let's just be clear, we have a Congress filled with white supremacists. We have a guy, I think, Andy Ogles from Tennessee, this week who was caught on tape saying, “Kill them all.” Alright? None of these guys get any attention. No votes of censure. Who is the only member of Congress who's been censured since October the 7th? The one Palestinian woman.

So let's just be very clear who the victims of, quote unquote, cancel culture and suppression and intimidation are. It tends to be people who speak out on behalf of Palestinians. And that's the case with reporters who aren't even taking positions. They're just reporting what they're seeing, and what they're seeing of course, is not favorable to the Israeli narrative, because what they're seeing is mass starvation. What they're seeing are mass killings. What they're seeing are kids being pulled out from the rubble. And, of course, that doesn't help the Israeli narratives.

—Mehdi Hasan, on ‘cancel culture’ and how journalists and reporters are attacked for simply reporting the truth about Gaza 🇵🇸

This year’s Super Bowl was a weapon of mass distraction. If there’s any justice, future generations will remember the game not for Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, or Taylor Swift but for the US-funded attacks on Palestinian civilians that occurred while so many Americans were glued to their TVs. During the game, watched by well over 100 million people in the United States, Israel launched a bombing raid of Rafah in the Gaza Strip, the most densely populated area on earth. More than 1 million people had fled now-leveled Gaza City to the refugee camps in Rafah and surrounding areas. Palestinians who have survived previous Israeli strikes are now staving off disease, destitution, and fear.

Meanwhile, CBS granted the Israeli government space for an ad about the 130 hostages left in Gaza. This ad, meant to build public support and justify the slaughter of nearly 30,000 civilians in Gaza, spurred 10,000 people to register complaints with the FCC, because the commercial did not disclose that a foreign government had paid for it. Coupled with the Rafah raid, this looks more like military synergy than happenstance. 

New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft also spent $7 million on an ad from his organization Foundation to Combat Anti-Semitism. It features Clarence Jones, a 93-year-old former speech writer for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Kraft and other pro-war billionaires use the memory of King so much, they should be paying his family indulgences for slandering his name. The ad failed to mention that Kraft has given $1 million to pro-war AIPAC and donated $1 million in 2016 to Donald Trump’s inauguration. Given that Kraft says that the Nazi march in Charlottesville was his motivation to start his foundation (Charlottesville was the one with “good people on both sides,” according to Trump), his hypocrisy is insidious.

Kraft and Israel want the same thing: a blank check to uproot Palestinians from Gaza and build settlements. One can also only imagine if a peace organization tried to buy an ad asking Israel and the United States the question: “How many dead children will be enough?” I suspect it would be denied faster than a public-service announcement about concussions.

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Former U.S. President, Nobel Peace Prize winner and author of “Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid,” Jimmy Carter, speaking on AIPAC’s outsized influence on American politics, in 2007. (source)

-It seemed like the media accused this politician of being antisemitic, and now he's trying to prove that he's not antisemitic by saying how great Israel is. Does that surprise you?

“It doesn't surprise me because like I said, this is the general perception that's given, very successfully done by the Zionists as a ploy gaining support and to stifle any opposition to the state of Israel, is by equating and convoluted the two concepts of Judaism and Zionism, even though it's really both contradictory and it's just so blatantly wrong.

Judaism is to serve God, to be peaceful, to be loving, to do kindness.

Zionism is a truly selfish political movement of occupying another people. So wrong, so vicious, so anti what Judaism is all about.

And it's totally humiliating to us as practicing Jews to see and hear what is being done in our name.

APAC, for instance, and the other Zionist organization, makes it a point of attempting to have every single faction in the United States or around the world, any political group, whether it's Democrats or Republicans or Independents, it really doesn't matter, they want to actually equate and convolute the issue of Judaism in the Jewish people and the state of Israel and try to create a mirage, a concept that if you're opposing the state of Israel, you're antisemitic.

And in truth, conflating Israel and Zionism, what they are doing is the greatest exacerbator of antisemitism around the world.”