Media Matters' Eric Boehlert Downplayed Genocidal Anti-Semitism

Two weeks ago, Media Matters for America (MMFA) quasi-parted ways with anti-Semitic Senior Foreign Policy Fellow MJ Rosenberg, who was fond of labeling pro-Israel Jews “Israel firsters.” This PR maneuver was designed to stifle mounting criticism of MMFA’s anti-Jewish propagandizing, and its close association with the Obama administration.

Unfortunately, the problem doesn’t end with MJ Rosenberg.

Senior Fellow Eric Boehlert, one of the faces of the organization, has a dicey record when it comes to Israel and the Jews. On September 11, 2001, he wrote a piece for Salon.com defending American Muslims from the supposed anti-Muslim hysteria brewing. In that piece, he recounted a Muslim rally in Paterson, New Jersey:

“We won’t rest until all the Jews are dead,” said a burly young man. “Shame on America,” said another bitter-faced youth. “For helping Israel to kill Palestinians,” said a third.

In the wake of the WTC attacks, however, those brash sentiments were muted.

“We won’t rest until all the Jews are dead” is not a “brash sentiment.” It is openly genocidal anti-Semitism. But not to Eric Boehlert, apparently.

Boehlert’s bias in favor of anti-Jewish terrorists didn’t stop there. In 2002, he wrote a piece for Salon.com in which he lamented the fate of Professor Sami Al-Arian, former North American head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. This is the same Al-Arian who proclaimed, “God cursed those who are sons of Israel … Those people, God made monkeys and pigs … Let us damn America, let us damn Israel, let us damn them and their allies until death.” When Al-Arian was suspended from his teaching post at Florida Atlantic University, Boehlert defended Al-Arian as an “innocent professor.”

As for mainstream media coverage of Israel – which is almost universally skewed against Israel – Boehlert thinks that the media coverage isn’t anti-Israel enough. “I don’t think it’s a surprise to suggest the Middle East conflict is essentially told through the eyes of Israel,” Boehlert said in 2006. About the Israel-Lebanon conflict in 2006, he added, “I think sometimes in the last couple of weeks, it’s sort of gone beyond that and I think what also is not acknowledged is that there’s extraordinary political pressure in the United States to tell this story from a certain narrative and journalists who don’t, get attacked and it’s unpleasant and I think it affects the coverage.” In other words, the Jews are pressuring the journalists.

The position that the press is biased toward Israel is a longstanding Boehlert favorite. In 2002, he penned a piece for Salon.com decrying the pro-Jewish slant of the New York Sun, scolding, “the paper’s primary passions are clearly Israel and Jewish causes.” This was Boehlert’s drumbeat at Salon.com: the press was too favorable to the Jewish State.

No doubt that’s what prompted Media Matters to hire Boehlert in the first place. As we will be exposing, Media Matters is choc-a-bloc with MJ Rosenberg ideological clones. And that’s no coincidence.