Why the N.Y. Times was wrong to link Jewishness, Iran deal opposition

[oberliner]

In a chart of lawmakers who are against the Iran deal, The New York Times singled out Jewishness as an implicit cause of opposition to the nuclear agreement.

The chart, posted Thursday, originally included a column with the heading “Jewish?” “Yeses” were highlighted in yellow (yellow!), while “noes” were not.

Another column showed the estimated Jewish populations in the lawmakers’ districts. Districts with a ratio above the United States average of 2.2 percent Jewish also got the yellow treatment.

In the introduction to the chart, titled “Lawmakers against the Iran deal,” the Times quickly dispensed with the germane fact that more Jewish lawmakers than not back the deal.

http://www.jta.org/2015/09/10/news-opinion/politics/ny-times-highlights-jewishness-of-iran-deal-opponents#.VfIHrQNoWHg.twitter

[underpants]

1. Cover for AIPAC

Fred Sanders has a great article about AIPAC going all in on this deal in GD.

[villager]

2. Fred Sanders would, of course. But believe it or not, many of us Jews do *not* support AIPAC

(or Likud, or the GOP)

That said, Happy New Year!

[underpants]

5. See post#4. That is the point of the article.

[villager]

6. Right. But many have conflated "AIPAC" with "The Jews" here, so their going "all in..."

..does not mean that all Jewish Americans went "all in" for the war party, on this...

[Electric Monk]

4. Here's that link, for those who missed it

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=7164071

http://www.thenation.com/article/aipac-spent-millions-of-dollars-to-defeat-the-iran-deal-instead-it-may-have-destroyed-itself/

(snip)

The extent of its efforts to defeat the deal was unprecedented even for a lobby known for its no-holds-barred wars against past White House initiatives it considered unfriendly to Israel, going all the way back to the Ford administration. AIPAC, and its cutout Citizens For A Nuclear Free Iran, reportedly budgeted upwards of $20 million for a campaign that included flooding the airwaves with television spots; buying full-page newspaper ads, arranging fly-ins of AIPAC members to Washington, organizing demonstrations at offices of AIPAC-friendly members of Congress who were believed to be wavering, and ensuring that problematic legislators were officially warned by precisely the right donor. Rank-and-file AIPAC members were largely irrelevant to the process. Money did the talking, and also the yelling and the cursing when necessary. As one congressional staffer put it to me, “Taking money from AIPAC is like getting a loan from the mob. You better not forget to pay it back. They walk into this office like they own it.”

[pnwmom]

3. Thank you. That had been my impression -- that there were plenty of Jewish supporters

of the Iran agreement. Glad to see the research backing this up.