Avigdor Lieberman Should Be Judged On His Actions, Not His Words: Commentary

The global Left wing media has widely and predictably reviled the elevation of Avigdor Lieberman to foreign minister. Robert Fisk, writing in The Independent, compares Lieberman to Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic and mentions Lieberman's "racist comments." Al Jazeera, not unexpectedly, refers to him as "a racist settler living on usurped Palestinian land." The Nation implies that Lieberman is "fascist." The Left wing blogosphere, awash in anti-Israel rhetoric generally, is far more severe. Lieberman is referred to as a "thug," "racist," and "demagogue," while Justin Raimondo of antiwar.com asks of Lieberman, "A Jewish Hitler?" Many of the mainstream press' profiles of Lieberman discuss the labeling of him as racist, which perpetuates the association of Lieberman with racism. In this piece I have two major points. The first is that Lieberman's alleged racism is irrelevant. The second, related point is that we should judge him, as we should judge all politicians, by what he does, not by what he says.

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