Trump, Breitbart, Israel -- and some irresponsible speculation

Two Brietbart editors, Michelle Fields and Ben Shapiro, have resigned, primarily because the site has become "less of a news site and more of a propaganda organization dedicated to the Trump campaign." (Those were the words of another resigned editor, Joran Stepmon.) Shapiro wrote:

“Indeed, Breitbart News, under the chairmanship of Steve Bannon, has put a stake through the heart of Andrew’s legacy. In my opinion, Steve Bannon is a bully, and has sold out Andrew’s mission in order to back another bully, Donald Trump; he has shaped the company into Trump’s personal Pravda, to the extent that he abandoned and undercut his own reporter, Breitbart News’ Michelle Fields, in order to protect Trump’s bully campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who allegedly assaulted Michelle.”

Personally, I can only laugh at the claim that Briebart ever was a news organization. But there's an aspect of this imbroglio that most people refuse to address: The Israel factor.

Some Trump supporters believe that their hero will face down the neocons and champion the cause of the Palestinians. A naive presumption, that. Think about it: If there were even the slightest chance that Trump would take any action that might inconvenience Israel, why does he receive daily cyber-fellation from the Breitbarters?

One of Andy Breitbart's first sites was "Big Israel." From the start, I suspected that pro-Israel propaganda was the main purpose of Breitbart instant internet empire: Everything else (especially the Hollywood piffle) was just a way to hook the audience. Here's what I wrote about Andrew Breitbart when he first started to make a splash:

Anyone can maintain a blog -- hell, even I can do it. But making money at this game is a very different matter. It takes a large amount of capital to set up a high-profile website with paid staff and "name" writers and an advertising budget and all the rest. So where is Breitbart getting his dough?

That's the Big Question.

And the Big Answer may be lurking within this paragraph:

He plans, in the not-too-distant future, to unveil new sites as part of his “Big” network, including Big Education, Big Tolerance, Big Jerusalem, and Big Peace, among others. Each site will be a mix of aggregation and group blogging. There will be overlap among the sites’ contributors: For example, if an Israeli politician wants to offer his perspective on a Hollywood film, he will be able to post something on a number of relevant sites.

Well, I'm terribly grateful to hear about this. Jews have had an awfully difficult time getting their voices heard in Hollywood, what with that glass ceiling and all.

Is Breitbart really trying to convince us that Hollywood and the media continually foster hatred of Israel? If that's his game, he'll have an easier time convincing people that the Earth is cubical.

I never did learn how Breitbart got his start-up capital. Some of you irresponsible speculators out there may now be willing to hazard a guess. If so, that's your business; leave me out of it.

(If you really wanted to indulge in irresponsible speculation, you could posit that Unit 8200 discovered the sexual cyber-secrets of a certain congressman who had committed the sin of inter-marriage. The spooks passed the info along to Andy Breitbart, who was tasked to make use of the intelligence without disclosing the ultimate source. Of course, Andy was a notoriously temperamental Big Mouth. Unreliable. Dangerous. And so it became necessary for a sayan in Brentwood to spike his drink...)

(Am I saying that this is what really happened? Of course not. Any such speculation would be irresponsible. Forget you even saw this.)

My larger point is this: Nobody has ever accused the Breitbarters of being anti-Israel. Yet the Breitbart machine is completely in Trump's corner. And the Israelis themselves seem to love, love, love Donald J. Trump: See here and here.