Does Guardian columnist Michael Cohen regularly follow the hate site, Mondoweiss?

The embedded hyperlinks in reports and commentaries at the Guardian and ‘Comment is Free’ are often quite revealing, as the sources cited ostensibly serve to back up a claim or buttress an argument. (Though, as we’ve demonstrated, in the case of some Guardianistas the links do not in fact back up their claims at all.)  

Additionally, the specific “sources” used by ‘CiF’ and Guardian contributors often serve as a good window into their ideological sympathies. To boot, Guardian columnist Michael Cohen’s commentary excoriating the Israelis for having the audacity to object to the proposed Iranian nuclear deal (Frenemies: the US-Israel relationship gets rocky over Iran and peace talks, ‘CiF’, Nov. 13) leads us to quite radical ideological territory.

First, there’s this passage:

The Israeli position of no uranium enrichment, even for peaceful purposes, the removal of all enriched uranium from Iran and the shutting down of all enrichment facilities is a negotiation non-starter – and stands in sharp contrast to the US position.

Firstly, Cohen’s claim is at best extremely misleading, as the Israeli position is that any enriched uranium would eventually be used to produce weapons-grade nuclear fuel. Israel doesn’t oppose a ‘peaceful Iranian nuclear program’; they share the belief of most experts that their goal is to use such fuel to produce nuclear weapons. More interestingly, the link embedded in the words ‘Israeli position’ above takes you to an article at the site of the Hamas-friendly Middle East Monitor (MEMO).

In 2011, CiF Watch reported the following about MEMO’s Hamas connections:

Daoud Abdullah, who is the director of MEMO as well as deputy secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) and a senior researcher for the Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood affiliated Palestinian Return Centre, has two major claims to fame. The first is his lead of the MCB’s boycott of Holocaust Memorial Day in the UK. The second is his signing of the Istanbul Declaration which potentially endorsed terrorism against British service personnel.

Senior editor of MEMO is Ibrahim Hewitt, who also heads ‘Interpal’ – the charity which has been the subject of three investigations by the Charity Commission and named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial in the United States, as well as having been banned in Israel because of its Hamas connections.

And, that’s not all.  The following paragraph in Cohen’s ‘CiF’ piece has an even more interesting link:

First, Secretary of State John Kerry suggested that the failure to negotiate a final status agreement with the Palestinians could lead to a “third intifada” and further international “isolation” for Israel. Days later, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not only blasted US diplomatic efforts to reach a deal with Iran over its nuclear program but openly encouraged American Jews to speak out against the potential agreement.

Whilst it’s unclear why Cohen finds it strange that the prime minister of Israel sought out the support of American Jews on an issue vital to his nation’s security, when you open the link in “encouraged American Jews” it takes you here:

To those not already familiar with the ideological extremism which the Guardian columnist evidently fancies, here are excerpts from an essay I cross posted at Elder of Ziyon in 2010:

Nazi, Soviet, and, more recently, Arab anti-Semitic caricatures often portray Jews as spiders, cockroaches, and Octopuses – dehumanizing Jews by turning them into animals that are destructive, inhuman and evil. The cartoon below, by the notorious anti-Zionist cartoonist, Carlos Latuff, was posted on the “progressive” Jewish anti-Zionist blog, Mondoweiss recently – by a frequent Mondoweiss blogger named Seham – in reference to the Gaza flotilla incident.

…

That such a cartoon would appear on the pages of Mondoweiss, funded by The Nation Institute is, sadly, not particularly surprising to anyone familiar with the blog. Mondoweiss is an openly anti-Zionist Jewish blog and consistently advances, among other classical antisemitic tropes, the argument that Jews exercise too much power over U.S. policy and that Jewish “progressive” voices on the Middle East are censored by the organized Jewish community. The viciousness and hatred towards Israel, and the state’s Jewish supporters, can’t be overstated. The main blogger, Philip Weiss, states that “Zionism privileges Jews and justifies oppression, and this appalls me.” Weiss has complained that the “suffering of Palestinians that has been perpetrated politically in large part by empowered American Jews who are all over the media and political establishment.”

Weiss has even called for ‘a quota’ on Jews who work in the media. 

Weiss, like fellow liberal, Glenn Greenwald, demonstrating a bizarre left-right anti-Zionist alliance, also has contributed to Pat Buchanan’s paleo-conservative magazine, The American Conservative. Weiss’s alliance with Pat Buchanan seems quite consistent with the blogger’s frequent tropes suggesting the existence of an organized Jewish community so powerful as to render the U.S. President impotent to confront its mendacity. In one post, Weiss complains that the U.S. President’s desire to oppose Israel “colonization” has been “nullified politically because of the Jewish presence in the power structure.”

He went on to warn darkly that, “[One fifth] of [the U.S. Senate] are Jews, even though Jews are just 2 percent of the population. Over half of the money given to the Democratic Party comes from Jews. Obama’s top two political advisers are Jewish, Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod. The news lately has been dominated by Obama’s aides Kenneth Feinberg and Larry Summers. And what does it mean that the Treasury Secretary gets off the phone with Obama to confer immediately with Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman and Jamie Dimon of Morgan (Dimon’s Jewish; Blankfein would seem to be)? As I have frequently said, the biggest money game in town on the Republican side is Sheldon Adelson, a Zionist Jew.” Such a passage would suggest that the hideously anti-Semitic cartoon posted by Mondoweiss blogger, Seham, isn’t an anomaly. Weiss genuinely seems to see Jewish tentacles wrapped around the Obama Administration.

Weiss has even taken positions which seem to flirt with the political dynamic known as the Red-Green Alliance, as exemplified by British politician George Galloway. In one post Weiss openly expressed support for the terrorist group, Hezbollah. In addition to the group’s open and repeated call for the destruction of Israel, Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has a long and well-documented record of engaging in extreme expressions of anti-Semitism. He has stated, “If Jews all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.” He also said, “If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew.” A few days before the Lebanese elections in 2009, Weiss said, “I hope Hezbollah wins….Nobody else seems to care for the poor people in Southern Lebanon.”

Mondoweiss also hosts the musings of Max Blumenthal, author of the ‘Israel haters guide to the universe’ praised by such notable ‘activists’ as Gilad Atzmon and David Duke.

The politics of Michael Cohen have been revealed in previous ‘CiF’ essays – where he once suggested that terrorist attacks on Israelis may actually ‘help’ the peace process – but his legitimization of Mondoweiss suggests an especially troubling dynamic whereby antisemitic commentary typically associated with the extreme right garners increasing respectability by those who consider themselves ‘progressive’ voices on the Middle East.

Related articles

• Praise for Max Blumenthal’s ‘I hate Israel handbook’ from David Duke and the usual suspects (cifwatch.com)
• Guess who endorsed Max Blumenthal’s ‘I hate Israel handbook’? (cifwatch.com)
• Jewish Daily Forward Top 50 list includes “journalist” who promotes antisemitism (cifwatch.com)