Writing in the Nation, Max Blumenthal attempts to establish an anti-Muslim, pro-Israel nexus through the person of donor Nina Rosenwald.
There is an overlap on the right — Daniel Pipes, whom he mentions, could correctly be identified as both pro-Israel and arguing that over recent decades, much of Islam has been radicalized. (He also says that islam, like Christianity, can be reformed. Listen to his interview here with Mike Huckabee.)
But there’s a lot Blumenthal misses — mostly by not mentioning pro-Israel groups pushing back against anti-Muslim trends, for reasons of self interest (should any anti-sharia law actually stand up, it would threaten the Beit Din systems), and also because of policies that reject bigotry of any stripe.
More saliently, Blumenthal says Rosenwald is on the AIPAC board. "Sits on the board," present tense, is how he puts it.
Here’s letterhead from 2010 and from last month. She’s nowhere to be seen.
Rosenwald, I hear, has served on the board in the past. But considering the recent vintage of the anti-Muslim jeremiad Blumenthal attempts to depict, sticking AIPAC in is not fair and does not make sense. And saying Rosenwald "sits" on the board is a mistake the Nation ought to correct.
One more thing: Blumenthal plays guilt by association, linking MEMRI and Pipes to Anders Breivik, the Norwegian mass killer, because he cited them in his writings.
Making citations by bad people a standard for reputation would doom us all. One of the most heartbreaking moments of my career was a story I did for the AP about two brothers who had identified each other to Yad Vashem as perished in the Holocaust; the museum engineered their reunion.
This was in the late 1990s, the beginnings of Google, and one of the first hits for the story popped up on a neo-Nazi website: "Six million minus two."
UPDATE: Via Twitter, Max Blumenthal asks that I demand the same correction from Think Progress, for this 2011 post, naming Rosenwald as an AIPAC board member, and from the Hudson Institute, which lists her as a current AIPAC board member. He’s right, and done.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
