Jewbags’ and the Democrats’ Anti-Israel Liaison

FrontPage Magazine ^ | April 4, 2012 | Daniel Greenfield

[SJackson]

There’s a thin line between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. That’s true of Muslims and the left, but it’s also true specifically of the Jewish left, whose hatred for Israel manifests itself in a general contempt for Jewish religion, culture and tradition.

Take the “Jewbags” case of Danielle Gilbert, a staffer for Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz who had been appointed the DNC’s Jewish outreach liaison. In a social media mishap, Gilbert posed along with her friends in a photo that she captioned “JEWBAGS” and that a friend of hers captioned as “Jew cash money team.” This is the sort of incident that the hip crowd that thinks “Heeb” is a great name for a magazine and “Jewcan Sam” is hilarious will laugh off. But it’s hardly the most offensive thing about Gilbert from a Jewish perspective. It’s just a symptom of the problem.

Debbie Wasserman-Schultz has long been associated with J-Street, the anti-Israel group which has repeatedly worked to undermine Israel’s fight against terrorism. When a delegation from J-Street arrived at Schultz’s office last year, they were received by Danielle Gilbert who posed with them for a photo. That wasn’t the limit of Gilbert’s involvement with J-Street.

Danielle Gilbert’s twitter feed suggests that she attended the J-Street conference and she retweeted a call from the anti-Israel group to freeze “settlements.” Gilbert’s own anti-Israel background isn’t casual. She attended the London School of Economics and Political Science and while there was part of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism.

Gilbert had volunteered at Givat Haviva, a leftist group dedicated to pro-terrorist activism. Givat Haviva had a presence at the J-Street conference and has its roots in Kibbutz Artzi, which was far enough to the left that it identified closely with the Soviet Union and its leader eulogized Soviet mass murdering dictator, Joseph Stalin. The roots of Givat Haviva lie with Artzi’s Arab Department whose goal was a one-state solution.

Ilan Pappe founded and ran the Academic Institute for Peace in Givat Haviva. Pappe is a former member of Hadash, the Arab-Israeli Communist party, who supports the destruction of Israel via a One State Solution. An article on the Givat Haviva website features a photo of Danielle Gilbert with one of her friends, who writes about his own support for the One State Solution.

Through Givat Haviva, Gilbert conducted interviews with the residents of the Muslim Bartaa village which straddles the Green Line and has become a cause celebre for the anti-Israel left. Since then she has been a Jeremiah Fellow at Jews United for Justice, another left-wing group, which also participated in the J-Street conference, and whose board members intersect with a number of anti-Israel groups.

In 2008, Gilbert wrote, “We cannot see Mumbai’s events as anything less than the gruesome epitome of systematic terror. However, such a tragedy rightly makes us question our unequal treatment of minority cultures within larger communities,” shifting easily to calling the brutal murder of the Holtzberg family and countless Indians by Muslims a “tragedy” that serves to call attention to Muslim suffering.

For Jews there is far more to be offended by in that than in Gilbert’s use of a Jewish slur. There is also far more to be offended by in the fact that the DNC chose to elevate a woman aligned with J-Street and that she then elevated someone like Danielle Gilbert to conduct outreach to the people they no doubt fondly think of as the “Jewbags.”

If you want to understand why Obama thought he could treat Jews with such contempt, you have to remember that he thought Debbie Wasserman-Schultz was a normative figure and Schultz thought that Gilbert was a normative figure. In that echo chamber, a radical group like J-Street seems mainstream and Gilbert’s behavior seems equally mainstream.

Gilbert’s politics and contempt for the Jewish people make her completely unsuitable to act as any kind of liaison to the Jewish community. And yet Danielle Gilbert is not extraordinary. There are plenty of Jewish boys and girls in D.C. with the same privileged background, the same formal trips to Israel giving way uglier detours, foreign policy fellowships and eventually a place in a left-wing think tank or as congressional staffers. These are the people who show up to listen to J Street panels, break bread with members of the Muslim Brotherhood and denounce Israel. They are as banal as they are despicable.

In the last four years the Democratic Party has hardly bothered hiding its contempt for ordinary Americans. The same is true for the Jewish left which is hardly masking its contempt for the Jewish people anymore. This is not a new phenomenon, it dates back to the late 19th century, and the venom with which the Jewish left assailed the Jewish people eventually ended in the Gulags. Those who survived earned the privilege of participating in the Soviet Union’s campaign to smear Israel.

The post-Jewish left mirrors the Post-American left in its radical and destructive identity. Its promotion of a counter-Jewish identity based on ridiculing Jewishness and hostility to Israel is once again splitting the Jewish community into two camps. By elevating Schultz, Gilbert and J-Street, the left is asserting its power to define a destructive form of Jewish identity. The backlash to them is a reminder that the left does not have the power that it thinks it does.

Jewish Anti-Semitism is a very real phenomenon, but it’s not self-hatred, no more so than Bill Ayers’ desire to destroy America is self-hatred. The essence of the left is the rejection of the past in a perpetual war for a better future. The very nature of Jewish identity is built on a continuity of tradition and the nature of the left is to fly its progressive colors by showing contempt for tradition. There can be no balance between the two because to choose the one is to reject the other.

The more the Democratic Party moves in tune with the left, the more it mirrors the bigotry of European leftist parties toward Jews and Israel. This is an inescapable process and the further left the party goes, the more anti-Semitic it will become.

To join the left is to fragment your existing identity, whether it is Jewish or Christian, American or Australian, and adopt a new form of identity. The further the extreme, the greater the fragmentation becomes. Push harder and you go from Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to Peter Beinart to Gilad Atzmon. It’s a slippery slope greased with lies and self-deceptions that ends at the bottom of a charnel pit, a gulag, a death camp or a terrorist training camp.

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Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com

URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/04/04/jewbags-and-the-democrats-anti-israel-liaison/

[SJackson]

Middle East and terrorism, occasional political and Jewish issues Ping List. High Volume

If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.

..................

I don't know the site, but the screen capture appears legit. Quality people these democrats employ.

Democrats’ ‘Jew Cash Money Team’ Update: The pictures can no longer be accessed through Facebook. Screen captures can be found below.

The Democratic Party’s newly appointed Jewish outreach liaison is pictured on Facebook in a series of provocative photos with her friends holding dollar bills and referring to themselves as “Jewbags” and the “Jew cash money team.”

Dani Gilbert, who has been a staffer in the office of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D., Fla.), was recently appointed as the Democratic National Committee’s Jewish outreach liaison, according to her Twitter feed.

Photos publicly available on her Facebook page depict her engaged in the kind of youthful displays that social media like Facebook and Twitter have made increasingly common and problematic for young Washington staffers.

In one photo, Gilbert is seen kissing paper currency of undetermined denomination. The caption at the bottom of the photo reads “JEWBAGS.” A comment left on the posting refers to Gilbert and a coterie of female companions as the “Jew cash money team.” Other photos depict Gilbert as a bit of a party girl, including one featuring an assortment of condoms.

Recent juvenile antics on Twitter have led to the firing of several Capitol Hill staffers, who referred to their “idiot boss,” Rep. Rick Larsen (D., Wash), on the popular microblog site.

The Democratic National Committee did not return requests for comment.

Update (9:31 p.m.): A senior GOP aide with close ties to the Jewish community emailed the Washington Free Beacon in response to this report.

“A lot of folks on both sides of the aisle know Dani and these photos do not reflect her professionalism,” the aide wrote.

[VTenigma]

ping

[cricket]

May the people who most need to 'figure this out' - figure it out.

Have to say; it is beyond me. . .and want to leave it that way.

[CaptainAmiigaf]

Take 2 Tylenol (!) and read this. When done, do NOT destroy your monitor, you’ll still want it later.

[no dems]

The Liberal, young, American Jews will still vote for Obama 78%. But, if we can reach the OLDER American Jews and get them to give their money, and votes, to the GOP instead of to the Dems, that would be worth about a million votes.

[Jewbacca]

Shame she’s a liberal; almost any Jewish girl that drinks Guiness is all right by me.

[no dems]

The Liberal media is giving her a pass for a “youthful indiscretion”. Can you imagine if Bristol Palin had done this? Perish the thought..........

[Darren McCarty]

Anyone that drinks Guinness can’t be ALL bad.

[MattinNJ]

I am a lawyer in NJ and a lot of my colleagues are Jewish. I can’t for the life of me fathom why most of them are such leftists. I know quite a few that are as smart and brutal as the Great One, Mark Levin. But the vast majority are as far left as they can get. It’s not even their votes that are the problem. They donate a ton of cash and are fierce advocates for every left wing cause you can imagine. A buddy of mine who is Jewish and conservatarian like me is married to a commie. When Ii expressed my utter inability to comprehend their love for Obama despite his open hatred of Israel explained it to me like this. “They are self loathing Jews and Americans.” That is the only possible explanation. Well, the destruction of Israel is near so maybe that will make them happy.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

More and more, I think of leftist Jews as being like the ancient Hebrews who called themselves Hebrew, yet could not restrain themselves from sacrificing their children to the pagan god Moloch (Ba’al).

And for similar reasons.

YHVH is neither easy to understand, to conceptualize, or is particularly generous with *stuff*. He imparts order and a righteous way of living, but frowns on well defined bad and self destructive behavior.

Moloch (Ba’al) is just the opposite. You worship its idol, and sacrifice your children, and it is supposed to give you rain, and good crops, and fertility. And throw in a nice, perverted orgy. You give a little, you get a little. Easy to understand with a minimum of thought.

So time and time again, when the Hebrews would start to get organized after following YHVH for a while, some of them would start lusting after some Moloch worship. And no matter how dire the threat of punishment, they just couldn’t help themselves.

And modern Jews still have the same problem. When they are prosperous, the great majority are happy, and grateful, and want to be good and charitable people. But there is always that persistent minority, who want what Moloch and now Marx offer to them.

Leftism is just so easy to understand. If you make some big sacrifices, you get *stuff* that you want, with little or no work. You get a guilt free orgy, then you sit back and let the good stuff happen. Little or no work, lots of praise for minimal effort. Good *luck*. Because that is what Moloch (Ba’al) promises.

[Zionist Conspirator]

[T]he nature of the left is to fly its progressive colors by showing contempt for tradition.

Except for the traditions of "minority cultures" and "indigenous pipples," which are deified. These cultures could say the world is flat and the "science"-worshiping redneck-bashers would kiss their tachtot.

[Impy]

What a fine group of upstanding young ladies.

[SJackson]

All cultures and pipples, by extension religions, are equal, some are just equaler than others. Rednecks at the bottom of the pile, of course, who likes Scot Irish Protestants. Bunch of crackers. We owe a big chunk of todays urban language to Scotch Irish immigrants.

[SJackson]

If your colleagues are also lawyers, there’s a financial reason to donate to dems. It’s not a self hating issue, if you note this survey, which I question but comes up with some of the same conclusions others do, Israel isn’t the major issue Jews vote on. In this one it doesn’t make the top five. “Social justice”, different terminology in other polls, always ranks at or near the top. In practice really meaning charity, a clear imperative. In my view it’s a fundamental error expecting government to fulfill the role of individual charity, but lots of people disagree. Anecdotally, I’ve found many instance of your anecdote of a conservative husband and liberal wife. Bet the wife votes, always. A lot of this is simply urban voting patterns.

[SJackson]

Agree completely about the Guinness. But a straw? At least it’s not from a can.

[Zionist Conspirator]

All cultures and pipples, by extension religions, are equal, some are just equaler than others. Rednecks at the bottom of the pile, of course, who likes Scot Irish Protestants. Bunch of crackers. We owe a big chunk of todays urban language to Scotch Irish immigrants.

American Blacks owe their language, their dialects, and their beloved obscenities, to Anglo-Saxon Southerners. Ditto "soul food."

[GOPsterinMA]

My Jewish friends are all STRONGLY anti-Obama and genuinely fear another Obama term.

The blatant anti-Semitism that’s being spewn about from everywhere is very troubling.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Impy.

• Wasserman Schultz aide, Jewish Dem outreach leader joked about money-obsessed "Jewbags"