Seth Rogen tells the awful truth about Israel, then gets battered into saying he was only joking

[Mark Crispin Miller]

https://consortiumnews.com/2020/08/13/seth-rogen-turns-the-truth-into-a-joke/

Seth Rogen Turns the Truth into a Joke

August 13, 2020

As this episode shows, the old guard will not tolerate young Jews who reject Zionism, writes Lawrence Davidson. 

Graffiti on Israel’s border wall on the road to Bethlehem, 2007. (Marc Venezia, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)

By Lawrence Davidson 
TothePointAnalysis.com

Just how much erosion has support for Israel suffered among Western Jews under the age of 40? The polls are not much help, because they tell contradictory stories. However, in anecdotal terms, there is a strong sense that the gap is growing between an increasingly rightwing and racist Israeli society and younger, liberal/progressive Western Jews.

The well-publicized recent interview with Seth Rogen, a comedian and filmmaker with an “ability to capture the Jewish cultural conversation,” and a fan base among Jewish millennials (i.e., those born between 1981 and 1996), may be a case in point.

On July 27, Rogen was interviewed on fellow Jewish comedian Marc Maron’s “insanely popular podcast” WTF. While on Maron’s program, Rogen questioned why those with “a secular Jewish identity” should feel “any cultural identification with the state of Israel.”

Indeed, he admitted that the notion of a Jewish state made little sense to him. He said “Jewish statehood was the result of an “antiquated thought process” and was in truth, counterproductive. “Encouraging all Jews to live in one Jewish state is a nonsensical strategy for the preservation of Jewish peoplehood.” 

Seth Rogen in 2019. (Stephen McCarthy, Wikimedia Commons)

How did Rogen come to these conclusions? He credited his outlook to overcoming an incomplete and deceitful Jewish educational process. He explained that he had been “fed a huge amount of lies about Israel my entire life. You know, they never tell you, that oh by the way, there were people there.”

In other words, the history of Israel he was taught never mentioned the Nakba, Occupied Territories, and collective imprisonment of the residents of the Gaza Strip and the like. It was just the story of “only democracy in the Middle East” and the “most moral army in the world.” As Marc Maron would say, “WTF”! 

Asked why a famous guy like himself had not previously spoken publicly about Israel, he noted that “I’m afraid of Jews. I’m 100 percent afraid of Jews.” Presumably not all Jews, just those allied to the State of Israel. Who can blame him? Most of the U.S. Congress feels the same way. 

A few days after Rogen’s interview appeared, a quick retort appeared in the Jewish publication the Forward. Weirdly entitled “Dear American Jewish boys, Please, please, take your Oedipal rage and find another outlet for it.”

It was written by Dr. Shany Mor, a researcher at, among other places, the Israel Democracy Institute. Mor’s objections to Rogen’s positions are reflections of standard Zionist tropes. 

Standard Trope One

As Mor’s title implies, his initial reaction to Rogen’s statements is that they must reflect some form of self-hatred. The “self-hating Jew” is an established, if rather despicable, Zionist trope. Mor now uses it against Rogen, accusing him of being motivated by “Oedipal rage” that is hatred of his parents because they did not tell him about Israel’s bellicose origins. This is a ridiculous ad hominem attack.

It should be noted that it is probably the case that a majority of Jewish children in the West, post 1948, were either lied to or left in ignorance about the Palestinians and their fate. That some of them should now express resentment is not evidence of some personality flaw on their part. It is rather an expression their dismay of Zionists’ inability to admit to their own criminal behavior. 

Standard Trope Two

Israeli soldiers searching a Palestinian in Tel Rumaida, Gilbert checkpoint. (Friends123, CC0, Wikimedia Commons)

Mor dismisses any lasting moral responsibility for the Zionist state’s bellicose origin — for Israel’s metamorphosing the near-genocidal fate of the Europe’s Jews into the Zionists’ own near-genocidal treatment of the Palestinians. He does this by implying that Rogen is singling out Israel and using double standards to judge its policies.

This too is a standard Zionist trope. Supporters of Israel insist that it is somehow illegitimate to point a finger at Israel’s sins when other countries like the United States have similar racist histories—histories that they too are reluctant to share with their citizenry. Thus, in response to Rogen’s critique of his Jewish education, Mor asks: “Was the version of American history you got at age 12 particularly critical? Did you learn a lot about the Trail of Tears, the Indian Removal Act or the Chinese Exclusion Act, or even the three-fifths rule?”

Speaking of the history Rogen received about his own nation, it is an indication of just how much thought Mor put into his response that he asks these questions of a man born and raised in Canada. Though he presently has dual citizenship, Rogen says, “I definitely associate with being Canadian much more than being American because I grew up in Canada.”

Oddly, this sort of argument, “that others do bad things too and so why are you picking on Israel,” is just a poorly constructed dodge — if for no other reason than it is a backhanded admission of guilt. Zionists can’t excuse Israel’s guilt by pointing to the guilt of others. The wonder is that they try this ploy. Most of us stop using the “but the other guy is doing it too” excuse by the time we outgrow the sandbox.  

Other Zionist Reactions

While Mor chastised Rogen for complaining about receiving no information about Palestinians, other Zionists accuse the actor of being ignorant of the events that gave rise to Israel. They say that his concern for Palestinians indicates that he is “utterly clueless as to why Theodor Herzl and his followers sought self-determination in Israel in the first place.” This really can’t be true, due to the sort of Zionist youth background (Hebrew school, Jewish summer campus, family trips to Israel) Rogen had.

WTF teaser for interview with Seth Rogen. (WTF website)

Indeed, these experiences constitute an endless repetition of the telling of the Eurocentric events that brought us Herzl and the Zionists.

Rogen’s presumed ignorance of what brought us Israel (as against information about how Israel has behaved) allegedly “show the need for more education about Israel as the ancestral home of the Jewish people.” In other words, the Zionist response to Rogen’s complaint of being left in ignorance of Israel’s sins is to double-down on the old one-sided storyline and intensify its dispersal.

Still, there are a lot of hardcore Zionist ideologues who moved beyond such palliative tactics. As we will see, they have a much more aggressive, ideologically abrasive attitude toward a growing number of Jews of the “millennial” category who might agree with Seth Rogen’s negative reaction to “the expectation that all Jews should be Zionists.”

Rogen Backtracks: I Was Just Joking

Bar Mitzvah party ad by U.K. event planner. (Markstarman, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)

As noted, Rogen has been described as a personality with a unique ability to “capture the Jewish cultural conversation” — at least for his generation. The reaction he got from the Zionist establishment certainly made him aware of a counter conversation that has the potential to challenge his status as a Jewish cultural icon. 

He confessed to being “sensitive” to the backlash — “I’m sensitive to Jewish people thinking I’m not a proud Jewish person, which I am” — and now claims that much of what he expressed about Israel was said in jest. “I should not have spoken jokingly” on this issue and “I do not want Jews to believe I think the Jewish state should not exist.” This hedging came after a Zoom conversation with Isaac Herzog, chairman of the Jewish Agency.

WTF’s Marc Maron in 2012. (Timothy Krause, Flickr)

The one part of his interview with WTF that he stuck by was the assertion that his Jewish education was both incomplete and misleading. Yet here lies a trap of his own making. In his conversation on WTF the principal missing part of that education was the fate of the Palestinians. His complaint in this regard now becomes hollow in the face of his prioritizing, under pressure, the fact that “I do not want Jews to believe that I think the Jewish state should not exist.”

The Nakba and the apartheid society that resulted from Zionist Israel’s existence are what Rogen is being made to begrudgingly swallow to avoid charges of being a “self-hater” and a relentless campaign that can undermine his career. 

An opinion piece on July 29 in the Forward written by Joel Swanson and entitled “Wake up, Jewish establishment: Seth Rogen speaks for a lot of us young Jews,” asserts that

“the Jewish establishment … can’t keep pretending that young Jews who reject Zionism and the state of Israel are relegated to a tiny, insignificant fringe of the community.”

The “Jewish establishment” may or may not be “pretending,” but Rogen’s experience demonstrates that “the establishment” has no intention of negotiating, much less compromising with “young Jews who reject Zionism.” 

The true-believer Zionists have accepted the breach in the Jewish community, and guess what, loyalty to Zionist Israel is more important than Jewish unity. Those who fail the loyalty test, whatever their number, are not only expendable, but must be purged or silenced. Seth Rogen got a taste of that determination following his “jokey” assertion of historical truths. Those who dare to speak out publicly will face a similarly strong reaction.

There is no question that this is the preferred Zionist tactic. The only question lies in how much courage and strength those who reject the apartheid state of Israel will muster in the face such pressure. Hopefully, a bit more than Seth Rogen did. To the extent that such courage and strength is growing, the Jews are making progress. 

Lawrence Davidson is professor of history emeritus at West Chester University in Pennsylvania. He has been publishing his analyses of topics in U.S. domestic and foreign policy, international and humanitarian law and Israel/Zionist practices and policies since 2010.

This article is from his site, TothePointAnalysis.com.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

Please Contribute to Consortium News
on its 25th Anniversary

Democrats call on watchdog to investigate USPS changes 02:36

(CNN)Postmaster General Louis DeJoy continues to hold a multimillion-dollar stake in his former company XPO Logistics, a United States Postal Service contractor, likely creating a major conflict of interest, according to newly obtained financial disclosures and ethics experts.

Outside experts who spoke to CNN were shocked that ethics officials at the postal service approved this arrangement, which allows DeJoy to keep at least $30 million in XPO holdings.

DeJoy and USPS have said he fully complied with the regulations.

Raising further alarms, on the same day in June that DeJoy divested large amounts of Amazon shares, he purchased stock options giving him the right to buy new shares of Amazon at a price much lower than their current market price, according to the disclosures.

This could lead to a separate conflict, given President Donald Trump's disdain for Amazon, and his reported effort in 2018 to pressure DeJoy's predecessor to raise prices on Amazon and other firms, while complaining about its founder Jeff Bezos. The Treasury Department also recently struck a loan deal with USPS that gives the Trump administration more leverage to push for higher shipping prices -- one of his pet projects.

DeJoy already faces bipartisan criticism for implementing disruptive changes after taking over the USPS on June 15, including eliminating overtime for many workers. Democrats also claim he is intentionally slowing down mail delivery to sabotage absentee voting in the November election -- a charge he denies.

Trump administration taking unusual steps to put its stamp on Postal Service ahead of November elections

Before joining the administration, DeJoy, a Trump ally and fundraiser, was on the board of directors at XPO Logistics, a large transportation and logistics company that does business with the USPS and has contracts with other US government agencies, such as the Department of Defense. In 2014, XPO acquired DeJoy's company, New Breed Logistics, for $615 million.

These questions about DeJoy come at a time of incredible strain at USPS. The agency is already strapped for cash and facing funding shortages. And two members of the board of governors quit earlier this year, at least in part to protest efforts by Trump aides to control USPS finances and operations. DeJoy's supporters say he's the right person for the job because he can streamline the struggling agency with his business expertise.

'Doesn't pass the smell test'

U.S. Postmaster General Louis Dejoy arrives at a meeting at the office of Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) at the U.S. Capitol August 5, 2020 in Washington, DC.

When announcing DeJoy's appointment, the USPS board of governors noted that New Breed "was a contractor to the U.S. Postal Service for more than 25 years," and received awards for high quality in the 1990s. The announcement didn't mention XPO's ongoing ties to the USPS.

According to federal records, when he became postmaster general, DeJoy still owned a large equity stake in XPO, totaling between $30 million and $75 million. Federal ethics officials recently approved his decision to keep these assets, but outside experts with decades of experience in government are raising red flags.

"The idea that you can be a postmaster general and hold tens of millions in stocks in a postal service contractor is pretty shocking," said Walter Shaub, the former director of the Office of Government Ethics, who resigned in 2017. "It could be that he's planning on selling it, but I don't understand the delay. He has managed to divest a lot of other things. And if he wasn't prepared to sell that off, he shouldn't have taken the job."

Schaub, who is now a senior adviser at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, suggested that if DeJoy doesn't divest his holdings soon, it could be construed as an illegal conflict of interest. Schaub also questioned why the ethics officials approved this arrangement.

It's illegal under federal law for federal government employees or their spouses to have a "financial interest" in companies that intersect with their official duties. The ethics experts who spoke to CNN said DeJoy could have mitigated these conflicts by divesting, agreeing upfront to recuse himself from some matters, receiving legal waivers, or even establishing a blind trust.

"If you have a $30 million interest in a company, of course it's going to impact you," said Stuart Gilman, who spent 12 years at the Office of Government Ethics, where he was the assistant director. "I would assume that there is a problem here. It certainly doesn't pass the smell test."

Democrats call for inquiry

A USPS spokesman previously told CNN that DeJoy followed all ethics requirements. Federal ethics officials approved DeJoy's required financial filings in June, July and earlier this month.

"No issues relating to XPO's Postal Service contracts have been presented to Postmaster General DeJoy, nor would any such issues be expected to rise to that level," USPS senior ethics counsel Jessica Brewster-Johnson told CNN. "Decisions regarding XPO contracts are made at much lower levels in the organization. If, however, an issue relating to XPO came before Postmaster General DeJoy, he would be obligated to recuse himself or, if recusal were not practicable, the Ethics Office would require divestiture. To date, no such issue has arisen."

The experts who spoke to CNN said this explanation was "sloppy" and "absurd," particularly because the rules require top officials to avoid even the appearance of a potential conflict.

Federal records also show that DeJoy owned between $265,000 and $550,000 in UPS stock, but divested them after becoming postmaster general in June. Experts praised this move, because it eliminated a conflict of interest, as UPS is a direct competitor of the postal service.

A group of Senate Democrats, led by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, asked the USPS inspector general to investigate the policy changes DeJoy imposed this summer and to examine whether DeJoy "met all ethics requirements" regarding his personal finances and XPO stake. A spokesperson for the USPS watchdog declined to say if they were launching an investigation.

DeJoy made dozens of stock sales and purchases around the time he started at USPS. He divested at least $100,000 in XPO options, but apparently held onto his larger equity stakes. He also owns options to buy an additional 270,000 shares in XPO, at varying prices in the future. Those options all expire in November.

Around the time he took over the USPS, DeJoy bought and sold stocks or stock options across a wide array of industries, including health companies like Johnson & Johnson and Abbott Laboratories, which are involved in the pandemic response. He also sold shares in Coca-Cola and Uber, and purchased shares of ExxonMobil. These financial transactions continued after DeJoy joined USPS, according to federal records.

Amazon trades

DeJoy's trades in Amazon shares are also facing scrutiny. According to his financial disclosures, DeJoy owned between $100,000 and $250,000 in Amazon stock when he joined the administration.

On June 24, DeJoy divested those shares, but the same day he bought a new financial interest in the company, purchasing between $50,000 and $100,000 in stock options for Amazon. The stock options, which expire on October 16, give DeJoy the right to buy shares of Amazon at a price of $1,960 per share. Shares in Amazon are currently trading at more than $3,100.

"It's another conflict. He's got the option to buy. That means he's gambling that Amazon's value is going to go up," said Marcus Owens, a former top IRS official with decades of experience dealing with federal ethics rules. "Why is he investing in a competitor to the enterprise that he's supposed to be managing? This is a classic case for investigation by an inspector general."

Given the President's repeated criticism of Amazon and its contracts with the Postal Service, those stock trades stuck out to ethics experts. Trump has publicly attacked Amazon and the Washington Post, which is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. And Trump has privately complained about Washington Post coverage while attacking Amazon, the newspaper reported.

"This is pretty outrageous, to come into government and then buy conflicting (interests)," Shaub said. "He partially eliminated a conflict of interest and then bought a new one on the same day."

As recently as last week, Trump invoked Amazon by name while criticizing USPS' price points.

The USPS maintains that DeJoy's ownership of the XPO stake, and of these other assets, are not problematic on their own. USPS officials also say their new leader isn't trying to sabotage the 2020 election with postal delays, and that he is following all appropriate ethics rules.

"I take my ethical obligations seriously, and I have done what is necessary to ensure that I am and will remain in compliance with those obligations," DeJoy said in a statement given to CNN.