With disturbing regularity, Jews hate on Jews.
The most recent example is the jaw-dropping case of Professor David Myers.
Last June, the UCLA professor of history—and Jewish Journal columnist– was appointed CEO of the Center of Jewish History, a collection of five New York museums that is the foremost repository and educational center for American Jewish history in the nation.
The (legitimate) news was greeted with unanimous praise. The preeminent historian of American Jewish history, Brandeis University’s Jonathan D. Sarna, said Myers is “the very embodiment of what the center should be.”
But last week, an unsigned “expose” on Myers popped up on numerous Jewish web sites. It accused him of being a radical leftist who is anti-Israel and not fit to hold such an important position. Myers, the piece concluded, is “unsuitable to head a Jewish institution with the long-term [sic] and widespread influence of The Center for Jewish History.”
Such nastiness is not unique to this moment in Jewish history. The comforting myth of “all Jews are friends” is belied by the many times in history when Jews fought viciously against fellow Jews: Maccabees murdering “Hellenized” Jews, zealots stabbing “collaborationist” priests before the fall of the Second Temple, the deadly fight between the nascent IDF and the right-wing Irgun, the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. All this actual violence is the last stop on a long road of verbal assaults.
What’s different now is slandering has never been so fast and easy. The Internet has made it so that we can spread our slurs in seconds, under the guise of “breaking news.” We are mud wrestling in the same pigpen as the larger culture, where someone with a working email account can slop around gossip, half-truths and lies — which astonishingly, otherwise sophisticated people will accept as fact.
Few people in the world know how to do this better than Ronn Torossian.
The Brooklyn-born founder of a multi-million dollar New York PR agency freelances as a one-man, self-appointed defender of Israel against whatever and whomever he determines is “anti-Israel.”
Torossian decided that some four months after Myers’ appointment was announced, it was time to get dirty. Together with associates Hank Sheinkopf and George Birnbaum, he wrote an attack piece that accused Myers of supporting the boycott of Israel and undermining the Israel Defense Forces.
Torossian also accused Myers of being a supporter of the New Israel Fund, a decades-old organization that supports groups in Israel devoted to civil rights and a two-state solution. The current Israeli government – and Torossian—has a Javert-like obsession with the NIF, which is Zionist through and through – but does believe in negotiations over a two-state solution with Palestinians, as do 63 percent of Israelis.
The Myers attack is hardly Torossian’ first sideways swipe at NIF. Last June, Torossian went after NIF in an op-ed in The Jerusalem Post. The Post, in fairness, published an op-ed by NIF defending itself. According to emails obtained by the Jewish Journal, Torossian demanded the newspaper take NIF’s op-ed off its site and issue an apology to Torossian – which it did.
“Will you help me when they sue us?” then-Post Editor-in-Chief Steve Linde wrote in an email to the NIF, speaking of Torossian. “Which they’re going to do, because they’re nuts.”
For Torossian and the current Israeli leadership he flacks for, any opposition to Israel’s occupation of Judea and Sumeria and the settlement movement is hyped as a national threat. Myers—and NIF—categorically oppose the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement. But both leave open the possibility that boycotting goods originating from the West Bank is a legitimate form of non-violent protest.
I happen to disagree with that particular stand—that’s another column. But refusing to buy Judean wine is not, as Torossian’s hit piece implies, a “boycott of Israel.” The bigger problem is that over the past decade this particular Israeli government and its American cheerleaders have moved the goalposts of what is “pro-Israel.” Now, anything short of a warm embrace of a settlement movement and Israel’s now-50 year occupation of Judea and Sumeria is considered not just anti-Zionist, but anti-Israel.
Give Torossian this: as ideological operatives go, he is as sincere as he is ruthless.
A week ago, Torossian inserted the Myers hit piece into the ecosystem of right-wing Jewish news sites and, voila, clickbait for well-meaning pro-Israel readers. Arutz Sheva and Algemeiner ran the piece as a news article or op-ed.
In The Jewish Press, writer Daniel Greenfield repackaged Torossian’s press release (uncredited and uncited) as an original op-ed, drawing on the same examples and making the same point.
From there, like minded pro-Israel activists, representing themselves or any of a number of miniscule right-leaning pro-Israel organizations whose combined active constituency might make a minyan, reposted the piece or sent it through blast emails.
Some 500 American Jewish historians immediately signed a letter supporting Myers. Israeli historians and academics came to his defense as well. Most importantly, the CJH quickly issued a statement backing their CEO.
“Various allegations have been made about David Myers,” the Center said. “Professor Myers is an eminent historian. The Board of the Center for Jewish History has full confidence in his ability to lead the Center in the fulfillment of its mission to preserve the treasured sources of the Jewish past and advance public knowledge of the Jewish historical experience.”
Myers defenders, including Sarna, Brandeis professor David Ellenson and many Los Angeles-based supporters, quickly dismissed some of Torossian’s allegations as falsehoods. In cases where they disagreed with Myers politically, they said there shouldn’t be a litmus test of political correctness for Jewish organizational leaders.
“We find Myers to be the very model of an engaged and responsible scholar, respectful of others, careful in his use of words, and open to myriad viewpoints,” Sarna and Ellenson wrote in the Forward. “Would that all scholars and leaders followed his wise example and polite and open manner!”
The letter signed by Los Angeles Jewish leaders, including former Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky and Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, focused on what the signatories saw as the true aim of the “dump Myers” campaign.
“The real question is how a few self-anointed guardians of Jewish ideological purity have the chutzpah to try to impose their political viewpoint as a litmus test for a national Jewish community institution,” read the letter. “They seek to animate the fringe by falsely asserting that Myers ‘is a fierce critic of Israel,’ and to intimidate the rest of us with threats and bullying tactics.”
But 36 hours after a handful of “news” websites ran Torossian’s hit piece without vetting, fact-checking or opposing viewpoints, the echo had entered the chamber.
Sadly, several supporters of the American Sephardi Federation, one of the five institutions that make up the CJH, got sucked into one-sided “news.” They wrote emails to the CJH leadership siding with Torossian.
“Allowing one of us to destroy us from within, that is not being tolerant, that is being FOOLISH!!, AND FOOLISH, SEPHARDIM ARE NOT!!” wrote Rabbi Elie Abadie.
Activists are planning an anti-Myers rally outside the CJH. A couple far-right Israeli Knesset members asked for Myers’ head. Because, you know, Israel has no more of its own problems to solve.
Myers himself has yet to speak out. In an email to me, he did say he refused Torossian’s offer to “answer questions” before the piece went out, unwilling to place his words in the hands of a non-journalist who by reputation he simply didn’t trust.
The lessons? Just as in the larger media world, there is responsible and irresponsible in Jewish media. The good ones don’t print opinion as articles and don’t allow op-ed writers to create their own facts. The more you believe a story, the more you must seek out the other side to it.
Remember: at the end of a long road of verbal assault, actual violence awaits. Any great Jewish historian can tell you that. Just ask David Myers.
ROB ESHMAN is publisher and editor-in-chief of TRIBE Media Corp./Jewish Journal. Email
him at robe@jewishjournal.com. You can follow him on Instagram and Twitter @foodaism
and @RobEshman.
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