Ralph Nader’s latest run for president has been much more negatively received than his 2000 attempt. A prominent criticism in the anti-Bush fever-swamps is that the damage Nader could cause this time by draining Democratic votes would not only be epic, but inversely proportional to the value of his political career. Certainly his critics are on to something with this last bit – Nader, once an impressive and prolific activist, seems to have been transformed into an oblivious gadfly bent on undermining the movement he ostensibly cares about.
Few people realize, though, just how precipitous Nader’s fall has been. Driven into a corner by both his lousy political gamesmanship and the tectonic redefinition by 9/11 of the ideological playing field, Nader has begun to flirt with something that has been embraced by so many on the Left: anti-Semitism.
On June 22, the Jerusalem Post reported that Nader had given an interview to the United Arab Emirates’ Al-Khaleej newspaper in which he ‘called on the Bush administration to stop backing Israel’s policies regarding the Palestinians.’ Nader also ‘said that Israeli officials ‘control’ the White House, and coerce American leaders to supply them with billions of dollars in arms and support.’
One week later, Nader appeared at a conference called ‘The Muslim Vote in Election 2004.’ Organized by the Council for the National Interest, a staunchly anti-Israel think tank, the gathering discussed rallying the Islamic-American vote against Bush. In his speech to the audience of head-scarved women and fourth-rate journalists, Nader said:
“What has been happening over the years is a predictable routine of foreign visitation from the head of the Israeli government. The Israeli puppeteer travels to Washington. The Israeli puppeteer meets with the puppet in the White House, and then moves down Pennsylvania Avenue, and meets with the puppets in Congress. And then takes back billions of taxpayer dollars.”
The Council for the National Interest is staffed by former diplomats and ambassadors to Arab countries. Two of its founding members, Andrew Killgore and Richard Curtiss, are also founding publishers of the Washington Report for Middle East Affairs, an anti-Israel pseudo-journal that, among many anti-Israel memes, sustains and promotes the USS Liberty conspiracy industry.
In what is characteristic of its activities, Council President Eugene Bird, who co-hosted and spoke at ‘The Muslim Vote,’ suggested in May at a press conference about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal that Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service, had actually tortured the Iraqis.
Nader’s fellow speakers included Nihad Awad, Executive Director of the radical Islamic Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and Hassan Ibrahim, a director with the similarly extremist Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC). Steven Emerson, a journalist and veteran terrorism investigator, alleged in 1998 Senate testimony that Awad has ties to Hamas.
In his book American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us, Emerson wrote:
“On December 22, 2000, MPAC’s Mahdi Bray organized a rally in Lafayette Park outside the White House to celebrate a ‘Worldwide Day for Jerusalem.’ In Arabic, the crowd responsively chanted with the emcee, “Khaybar, Khaybar oh Jews, the Army of Muhammad is coming for you!” Posters calling for “Death to Israel” and equating the Star of David with the Nazi swastika were openly displayed and anti-Semitic literature calling for the destruction of the Jews and Israel was distributed. Members of the crowd burned the Israeli flag while marching from the White House to the State Department.”
Nader’s interview with al-Khaleej and appearance before the Council closely followed something that once would have been unthinkable to political watchers: his consorting with Patrick Buchanan. Just before the Reform Party endorsed him in the 2004 election, Nader gave an interview to Buchanan in his American Conservative magazine. After identifying American support for ‘the Israeli military regime’ as a chief agitator of Muslims, Nader elaborated:
