“Somebody is saying America First, not Israel, in terms of spending money, in terms of priorities, in terms of policy.”

DETROIT — “America first,” reads a billboard on Eight Mile Road in Detroit. “Not Israel.”

“Is it meant to be anti-Semitic or something else entirely?” asked WXYZ reporters in a segment on Thursday, Oct. 22. 

Palestinian activists say the billboard’s message is simple — leaders in Washington should prioritize American financial and political interests over those of Israel.

Israel receives close to $4 billion in annual aid from the United States, and this year Republican lawmakers sided with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over President Obama in their disagreement about the Iran nuclear deal. 

The billboard does not mention Jewish Americans or Judaism, but the local TV reporters described their inquiry about the alleged anti-Semitism of the message as “a million-dollar question.”

WXYZ reporter Camille Amiri’s sole interviewee in the piece is the Anti-Defamation League’s Heidi Budaj.  

The ADL is a pro-Israeli group, whose stated mission is “to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all.” 

Budaj answered WXYZ’s $1 million question affirmatively. 

She said the billboard “raises an old anti-Semitic canard of dual loyalty, implying that Jews are not loyal to the country in which they live.”

Palestinian activist Hassan Nawash said the billboard has nothing to do with the Jewish American community. 

“WXYZ packaged the segment in the same terms as the pro-Israeli and pro-zionist camp,” he said. “‘It is a million-dollar question’, ‘anti-semitic’, blah blah blah. For what?”

He added that the Channel 7 reporters were promoting the Anti-Defamation League’s propaganda with their clueless journalism. 

“Somebody is saying America First, not Israel, in terms of spending money, in terms of priorities, in terms of policy,” he said. “Where did they get anti-Semitism from?”

In 2012, Israeli general Gabi Ashkenazi told the Jerusalem Post that American taxpayers contribute more to the Israeli military than Israelis.

“What about our schools? What about our crumbling infrastructure? What about our deteriorating services? Wouldn’t this money be better spent on the American people?” Nawash asked. 

Nawash said accusing Palestinian solidarity groups of anti-Semitism is nothing new.

He added that such allegations are meant to divert the attention away from the real debate about Palestinians’ rights.

“It is a deliberate attack on the righteousness of our claims,” he said.  

Nawash said even Jewish Americans who criticize Israel, such as Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein, have been slapped with the anti-Semitic label. 

Palestinian American comedian Amer Zahr wrote an op-ed criticizing WXYZ for its “lazy journalism.”

“Of course, while the billboard is a simple exercise of free speech, albeit on a hot topic, the real story was WXYZ’s terrible, irresponsible, and amateur reporting on the whole episode,” he wrote.

A disclaimer in fine print at the bottom of the billboard says that it is paid for by “Deir Yassin Remembered.”

The organization collects donations to put up the same billboard in different places across the country. 

The name of the group references a massacre Zionist militias carried out against Palestinian civilians in the village of Deir Yassin, near Jerusalem, in 1948.  

More than 100 people died in the attack. 

Henry Herskovitz, a prominent Jewish American activist in Ann Arbor, is Deir Yasin Remembered’s coordinator in Michigan.