[Click here for earlier post on this topic.]
This morning another Jew blasts ADL director Abe Foxman accusing Rush Limbaugh of anti-Semitism. Rabbi Aryeh Spero, whom I’ve met, argues that Foxman’s for his irresponsible and baseless charge is based in that liberal Jews (of which Foxman is one) are hard-wired simply to despise anything that’s conservative.
ADL Attacks Limbaugh Because Rush Is A Conservative
by Rabbi Aryeh Spero
Posted 01/27/2010… Those who have listened to Limbaugh know that for over 20 years he has spoken of his highest admiration for the achievements of the Jewish people and has supported Israel and her policies even as many liberal Jews were running away from Israel when her policies did not conform to political correctness. Indeed, Limbaugh has done more to advance support for Israel and make friends for Jewish Americans within the broader American community than has Foxman himself. But Foxman doesn’t care, for, in his mind, what makes someone a friend of the Jewish people is not how well they treat Jews nor their friendship to the Jewish community, rather, and only, if they espouse political liberalism.
For Foxman, as with so many in the Jewish community, what counts is not what you do and how you act but how liberal you are. For them, liberalism equals Jewishness, and if you are against liberalism ipso facto you must be a closet anti-Semite. The pre-dispositional belief that conservatives must be anti-Jewish results in concocting anti-Semitism in the weather report if anchored by a political conservative. Limbaugh is simply the latest in a long line of conservatives friendly to the Jewish people that Foxman has attacked.
Bingo. I’m reminded of the outrage that ensued when in 2007 Ann Coulter was blasted as an anti-Semite for telling host Donny Deutsch that Jews weren’t “perfected” until they converted to Christianity. Jewish conservative Dennis Prager defended her whole-heartedly. [go here for audio and here for an article]
Foxman fears that philo-Jewish, pro-Israel conservatives may end up influencing Jews into re-thinking their position on some of the social issues, and as Mr. Foxman has often warned: “We should not let Christians who support Israel think that in exchange for their support we will support them in their domestic social and cultural agenda.” Thus the need to demonize, as if to say: “How could you possibly share the political and social views of someone who is “borderline anti-Semitic”? In otherwords, those are the views of the “bad” people, not the “good” people.
Compounding the ADL’s hypocrisy is how they proclaim and pride themselves on their political liberalism and, then, go after Limbaugh for agreeing with a caller who said that Jews seem to vote liberal, 78% for Obama. Limbaugh wondered why so many Jews voted for Obama when so many of Obama’s mentors and friends spew anti-Jewishness. Instead of the ADL being concerned about that very question, the organization that is supposed to defend Jews indicts “the extremists who are criticizing the Obama policies.”
Less than two months ago, Foxman and the ADL even attacked the Tea Party movement. One fears that the ADL has detoured from its original mission of protecting Jews into a new calling to advance liberal policies and politicians who are liberal.
The ADL does not speak for all Jews, certainly not the near 30% of the community that harbors conservative beliefs. Indeed, some of our country’s leading conservative thinkers, writers, activists, and policy makers are Jewish, far more than the public realizes. But, they do their conservatism outside of the establishment Jewish organizations. The “Jewish” view the public hears is that which comes out of the Jewish organizations, and, by and large, the establishment Jewish organizations, including the ADL, are liberal and staffed by liberals: conservatives need not apply. Such is, also, the case for the Temples and Synagogues, and the clergy, except for the Orthodox. …
Many Jews in America are secular. To them, the old religion is passé and has been replaced by a new religion: left liberalism. Ironically, the political liberalism that has become their Jewishness is more important than Judaism itself, and Jewish need and survival is pushed aside when it collides with whatever liberalism considers more important. Thus, left wing Jews have become the harshest and quickest critics of Israel , just as left wing Americans blame all of the world’s ills on America first. Liberalism is an ideological illness whose grip and spell negate country, religion, family, and common sense. It is the fiercest of all “faiths”—it carries within it the seeds of national suicide. Feminists, for example, remain silent about the horrific treatment of women in the Moslem world because their liberalism dictates that they do nothing that would concede the notion of an exceptional Judeo-Christian American ethos.
There was nothing shameful about liberalism eighty years ago when Jews in America first identified with political liberalism. Louis Brandeis, Hubert Humphrey, Scoop Jackson were liberals. But liberalism morphed into leftism and Obamaism, and like so many liberals, Jews clung to their Democrat identity and failed to jump off the train leading to their own crash and burn. The Democrat Party is their team, their panache, their side!
Many Jews still feel that their safety lies with being members of a coalition of minorities, even though most of the minority groups that constitute the Democrat coalition are hostile to Jewish interests, and success. Having never been the majority, many look at it as something hostile to them and remain uncomfortable with the sentiments of nationalism and patriotism—conservatism—that worked against them in Europe . Most remain liberal because they don’t yet understand the miracle and sweetness of American nationalism and patriotism and the unique good-will of its people. …
If you have time, read the rest, and by all means submit a comment if you have any thoughts on this issue.
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