On Saturday night, CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked someone on thescene in Tucsonif anti-Semitism played any role in Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' shooting. His responsewas "no." It is well known that Giffords is Jewish, but anti-Semitism per sedid not seem to be a contributing factor in the shooting of Giffords and 17 othervictims in front of a Tucsonshopping center.
That seems right, although all weekend I received emailsfrom Jews indicating a special fear that, on some level, anti-Semitism played apart in Saturday's events. This is probably nothing more than the naturalresponse of any minority group to an attack on a very prominent member of thecommunity.
JFK was clearly not killed because he was Roman Catholic,but most Catholics I knew back then believed that there was somethingparticularly unsettling about the murder of the first Catholic president.
Muslims also were particularly unsettled by the Tucson shooting. They areaware that when incidents of this kind occur, they are invariably the firstpeople to come under suspicion. (Remember when terrorism "investigator" SteveEmerson blamed Muslimsfor the Oklahoma bombing within hours of the explosion, before learning it wasperpetrated by a right-wing extremist?)
Muslims are also upset that the word "terrorism" is notbeing used about the Tucsonmassacre when it certainly would be applied if the "lone" shooter was namedAhmed and not Jared.
Also, Jews and Muslims are both very nervous about the increasingprevalence of religious, racial and ethnic prejudice in this country. For instance, Think Progress reportedin December about efforts by far-right elements in the Texas RepublicanParty to prevent a Jewish Republican, Joe Straus, from continuing on as speakerof the Texas House of Representatives.
...the Texas Observer'sAbby Rapoport reported that shehad obtained an email exchange between two members of the Texas StateRepublican Executive Committee (SREC) — Rebecca Williamson and John Cook. "Weelected a house with Christian, conservative values. We now want a trueChristian, conservative running it," Cook said in one of the emails.
In the end Joe Straus got the job,but Jewish Texans were shaken up by the effort to make his faith an issue,which seems like a throwback to the days when the KKK was such a potent forcein Texaspolitics.
The anti-Semitism of a few GOP officials in Texas is, ofcourse, small potatoes compared to the creepy anti-Jewish spewingof Fox News' Glenn Beck, whose audience numbers in the many millions ontelevision and radio.
I have written about my concern that the Jewish communitywas not payingenough attention to Beck because he cleverly covers his tracks by professinghis "love" for Israel.(Virtually all anti-Semites these days understand that expressing "love" forthe Jewish state gives them a relatively free pass to bash Jews and even to useNazi themes against them.)
But Beck's pass is about to be shredded.
On January 7, Deborah Lipstadt, the Dorot Professor ofModern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory, wrotea piece in London's Jewish Chroniclecalling for British officials to consider the attitudes of Beck and Fox NewsPresident Roger Ailes toward Jews before they permit Rupert Murdoch, the presidentof Fox, to expand his media holdings in the United Kingdom.
Excuse me for printing this long excerpt from Lipstadt but she isuniquely credible on this issue.
Lipstadt is best known because of her 2005 legal victory against Holocaustdenier and Hitler apologist David Irving. Irving, a prominent British historian, suedLipstadt under the libel laws for calling him a Holocaust denier in her book, HolocaustDenial.
Against the advice of lawyers who told her that it was near impossibleto defend against a libel suit in the UK, Lipstadt fought back hard. She moved to London, prepared for a trial where she wouldhave to back up every one of her assertions against a prominent historian, stareddown neo-fascists who followed her everywhere, and won.
The presiding judge produced a 334-page judgment declaring that nothingLipstadt said was libelous and, in fact, Irving was a Holocaust denier and adistorter of history. His career went down in flames and, ever since, theHolocaust-denial industry has struggled under the burden laid on by Lipstadtand the trial that vindicated her. (Lipstadt's memoirof the trial is here.)
Today, the fearless Lipstadt is a leading expert on what constitutesanti-Semitism and what doesn't. She is also, for the record, staunchlypro-Israel.
Here is Lipstadt on Beckand Fox:
Beck regularly professes his deep love for Israel and has a history of usingHolocaust analogies to attack those with whom he disagrees — anyone to the leftof him. He accuses his opponents of laying the groundwork for a fascist state.Last summer, Jewish Funds for Justice, a progressive group, criticised Beck'sopposition to the campaign for social justice. The head of the organisation,Simon Greer, argued that "to put God first is to put humankind first, andto put humankind first is to put the common good first." Beck respondedthat this world-view "leads to death camps. A Jew, of all people, shouldknow that. This is exactly the kind of talk that led to the death camps in Germany.Put humankind and the common good first."
But this was surpassed by Beck a few months later when he ran athree-part series on George Soros, entitled The Puppet Master. Complete withimages of demonic-looking Jewish stars, Beck attacked Soros for supposedlytrying to take over the world. Soros, Beck claimed, "makes predictions,and his loyal followers make sure they come true." Soros's goal, Beckcharged, was a "one-world government, the end of America's status as the prevailingworld power." He excoriated Soros's efforts to change the governmentalsystems in Hungary, Georgia, Czechoslovakiaand Ukraine,failing to point out that, in each country, Soros was trying to help democraticgovernment gain a foothold.
Many people found Beck's reference to Soros's experiences during theHolocaust particularly egregious. Soros's parents had hidden him with a non-Jewwho worked for the Hungarian ministry of agriculture.
On one occasion, the man took Soros with him when he made an inventoryof the contents of a home of wealthy Jews who had been deported. Apparently,Soros spent the time riding a horse on the property. This is how Beck describedit: "And George Soros used to go around with this anti-Semite and deliverpapers to the Jews and confiscate their property and then ship them off. Hewould help confiscate the stuff. It was frightening...
"Here's a Jewish boy," Beck concluded, "helping send theJews to the death camps." This charge echoes a classic anti-Semitic motif:Jews will oppress their own if it is to their advantage to do so. J. J.Goldberg of Forward described it asthe closest thing he had heard to fascism on mainstream television.
Lipstadt ends her piece by noting that RupertMurdoch recently made a "stirring pro-Israel speech to the Anti-DefamationLeague" (and also is generous to "pro-Israel" causes). But, Lipstadt argues, onething has nothing to do with the other. Before the Brits approve any moreMurdoch attempts to buy up media outlets, she wants them to keep Beck's andAiles' attitudes toward Jews in mind.
The same should apply to anyone who considersadvertising on Fox or even watching it. So long as it employs Ailes and Beck, it is not kosher. Period.