The first problem is an example of the general second problem. The Jewish left, in suppressing the Israel Lobby critique, and its cognates, by setting the outer limits on criticism of US support for Israel, is the first, if not the last responsible party, for the power of the Israel Lobby, including its influence on journalism.
The Israel Lobby has dragged the US into wars, incited terrorist attacks against the US, is the chief source of Islamophobia and anti-terrorism mentality. Zionism has radicalized US foreign policy, and domestic culture, since the creation of Israel by the Israel Lobby in the 1940s.
Instead of this argument, the Jewish left, led by Chomsky, blames the arms and oil industries, Christian Zionists and other tertiary parties. Marxist political economy, with which Jewish radicals once incited revolution, is now used chiefly to hide the role of Zionism. This obfuscation is accompanied by militant anti-anti-Semitism, constant accusations and the occasional pogrom.
The real defense against anti-Semitism is the classical liberal traditions that rejected Zionism categorically, which the Jewish left has also abandoned. Chomsky defends Zionism, in the form of “the Jewish people”, the “secular Jew”, absurdly cites a figure like Ahad Ha’am, and defends the kibbutz as “anarchism” despite the critical modern scholarship that has totally demolished the notion of “progressive Zionism.” Judith Butler and others reify “Jewish identity”, substituting “Jewishness” for secularism.
The critiques of “identity” and “peoplehood”, of Shlomo Sand, Boas Evron, Israel Shahak and others, have had exactly zero impact in the US, thanks to the “left”. This dismissal of liberalism, and its condemnation of Zionism, shows how secure Jews are, how unthreatened by anti-Semitism.
The task of the Jewish intellectuals was to de-brainwash the left Jewish public, to deflate “Jewish identity” from public, collective, social imperialism, to a private matter, an incident of one’s background, of no political import. And in its stead to recover liberal politics.
This would be derived from modern ideals like Reform Judaism, whose champion Elmer Berger, born in 1908, fought Zionism until his passing in 1996, upholding the view of Jews as a religious minority or secular citizens; the Marxist internationalism among whom Jews were so prominent, upheld in recent memory by Isaac Deutscher, Maxime Rodinson and the Israeli Matzpen; and plain secularism, disaffiliation from organized Jewish life and from Jewish identification, which the late Israel Shahak dated from Spinoza.
The Jewish left had the power and obligation to mount an exacting critique of the Israel Lobby, and to uphold liberalism against the cult of “the Jewish people” that drives Zionism, and thus set the tone for discussion of Israel and its Lobby, in the US and the world.
This failure is the greatest disaster on the left since the failure of the SPD and the Communists to unite against Nazism in Weimar Germany.
Yes, the Jewish left is the first, if not the last, party responsible for the travail of journalistic and other critics of Israel.