Is Rupert Murdoch an anti-Semite? Is Peter Beinart?

SPOILER ALERT:  I am a Jewish person as are many of those mentioned in this blog post.  It's up to the reader to decide whether that is relevant.

Rupert Murdoch, doyen of Newscorp, tweeted himself into radioactive territory by writing, “Why is Jewish-owned press so consistently anti-Israel in every crisis?” Saturday night, 11/17/12.  One can criticize the paper of record and the Washington Post as propaganda, an irony for the owner of “fair and balanced” Fox News, but using the phrase “Jewish-owned press” references 1930s Germany.

In his post on Open Zion in The Daily Beast, Peter Beinart poses his own question, “Why is the conservative press defending Murdoch?”:

After noting that perhaps Murdoch did over-generalize a bit, Commentary's Jonathan Tobin argued that, “it wasn’t unreasonable for the non-Jewish Murdoch to wonder why these [Jewish-owned] papers as well as much of the liberal media are often so reflexively hostile to Israel’s cause.” The New York Sun declared that Murdoch’s “apology was unnecessary.” Michael Goldfarb, chairman of the hawkish Center for American Freedom, tweeted “New York Times proves @RupertMurdoch correct."

Peter Beinart, senior political writer for The Daily Beast, associate professor of journalism and political science at the City University of New York and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, wrote The Crisis of Zionism, which came out in April 2012.  He was roundly pilloried and accused of promoting anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic sentiments with his book.

The second irony are the pithy statements condensing the arguments against The Crisis of Zionism in a strongly worded book review in the The New York Times.  Jonathan Rosen, the reviewer, pointed out what he saw as the flaws in Beinart’s argument: not understanding or empathizing with Israel as a small country adrift in a sea of hostile neighbors who would like nothing better than its destruction.  Rosen wrote of Beinart’s work:

Like a majority of Israelis, Beinart believes that it is depleting, degrading and dangerous for Israel to oversee the lives of millions of stateless Palestinians, and also like a majority of Israelis, he thinks the solution is the creation of a Palestinian state.

But because he minimizes the cataclysmic impact of the second Intifada; describes Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza not as a gut-wrenching act of desperation but as a cynical ploy to continue the occupation by other means; belittles those who harp on a Hamas charter that calls for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews the world over; and plays down the magnitude of the Palestinian demand for a right of return — not to a future Palestine but to Israel itself, which would destroy the Jewish state — he liberates his book from the practicalities of politics.

If this is a display of anti-Israeli feeling in the "Jewish-owned press", rhen the year is 1984. 

That turns Murdoch’s tweet on its head.  Just as Romney revealed his true feelings when he spoke about the 47% eschewing personal responsibility or that Obama gave gifts to get people to vote for him, Murdoch is revealing more than he might think.  And his eager acolytes, the same that condemn Beinart for anti-Semitism, fall all over themselves to excuse his behavior.

Wal-Mart Loves the NLRB: Who'da Thunk It?

In a hilarious switcheroo, according to an article in today’s NYT, Wal-Mart has filed a complaint with the NLRB (National Labor Relations Board) to prevent its employees from participating in demonstrations on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving generally known as the biggest shopping day of the year.  The Chamber of Commerce loathes the NLRB almost as much as the ACLU.  Certainly if Romney/Ryan had been elected, one order of business would have been to eliminate it.

It’s interesting how reporter Steve Greenhouse differed in his presentation of Wal-Mart and its battle with OUR Walmart (Organization United for Respect at Walmart) when he wrote about their relationship back in June 2011.  That article focused on OUR Walmart and gave the employees a voice; today’s article is told mainly from the point-of-view of Wal-Mart’s management and law professors.  Today’s article assumes throughout that OUR Walmart is a union, providing a foundation for Wal-Mart’s claim that:

Continuing protests were illegal because under the National Labor Relations Act, a union seeking recognition can picket for a maximum of 30 days.  After that, it must either stop picketing or take a formal unionization vote.

In the June 2011 article, Greenhouse made it clear in the first paragraph that OUR Walmart was not a union:

After numerous failed attempts to unionize Wal-Mart stores, the nation’s main union for retail workers has decided to try a different approach: it has helped create a new, nonunion group of Wal-Mart employees that intends to press for better pay, benefits and most of all, more respect at work.

Ironically, the fact that OUR Walmart is not a union is supposed to protect them under federal law:

Unlike a union, the group will not negotiate contracts on behalf of workers.  But its members could benefit from federal labor laws that protect workers from retaliation for engaging in collective discussion and action.

Now Wal-Mart is seeking protection under federal law.  Poor baby!  Wonder who it supported for president with mucho dead presidents.

Why don’t the workers unionize at Walmart?  Because Wal-Mart will use deadly tactics.  (Although not as deadly as when Frank Little, union organizer for Industrial Workers of the World [IWW] was forcibly taken from his home and lynched from a train trestle while he was helping organize a strike against the Anaconda Copper Company.  Yet.)  It's ferocious:

Wal-Mart has aggressively battled organizing drives at its stores—it even closed a Canadian store after its workers voted to unionize.

Greenhouse quotes a worker in the first article, which he doesn’t do in the second:

“Someone has to stand up to say something,” said Deondra Thomas, a shoe department employee at a Dallas Wal-Mart, who earns $8.90 an hour after three years there.  “So many people have been quiet for so long.  A lot of us think Wal-Mart is an awesome company, but as far as the employees, they treat us like dirt.”

A family of 4 making $23,050 qualifies as poverty-level according to the 2012 guidelines.  If Deondra works full-time, 40 hours a week), she would gross $17,800.

In today’s article, the only reference to the workers is indirect:

Many of [Walmart’s] workers assert that Wal-Mart pays poverty-level wages, assigns too few hours a week and retaliates against protesting employees.

Note the use of the word “assert” which qualifies it, making it open to interpretation, as opposed to the quote from Ms. Thomas in the first article.  (I wonder what ever happened to her.  Is she still working for Wal-Mart?  Greenhouse could have followed up his own story to check if Wal-Mart retaliated against her.  He also could have checked pay stubs to verify poverty-level claims.)

The not-so-funny thing about Wal-Mart’s poverty level wages is that it depends on government benefits to fill in the food and health care gaps.

What would the service economy do without the government?