[Editor’s Note: A rabid left-wing Jew for whom politics is paramount, the editor of the Jewish Journal launched still another diatribe last week against a prominent conservative. Here is a response from a displeased Journal reader who branded the editor’s freshest rant “absurd.”.]
In last week’s Jewish Journal (http://www.jewishjournal.com/rob_eshman/article/the_gibson_scale_20110309/), you have proposed a (Mel) Gibson Scale for rating anti-Semitism.
I assume Gibson gets a rating of “one Gibson,” the lowest rating in your article, for his clearly anti-Semitic remarks while under the influence of alcohol. Some argue that alcohol caused him to make those remarks and therefore he is less culpable. But many others, myself included, believe alcohol merely allowed his true beliefs to be expressed by clouding his judgment of what should or shouldn’t be said to a police officer when you are a public figure.
The highest rating (7 Gibsons) was given to Glenn Beck. You cite two related examples of Beck’s anti-Semitism that earned him such a high rating on the Gibson Scale.
One was Beck’s “diatribes” against George Soros in recent months. The other was when Beck “compared Reform Judaism to Radicalized Islam.”
I disagree with Beck on both of these remarks but to call them anti-Semitic, let alone earning him the highest rating on the Gibson Scale, is absurd.
Glenn Beck brought up Soros’s own account of his activities during World War II in Hungary when he avoided Nazi persecution by passing himself off as a Christian, accompanied a government official on his rounds to confiscate Jewish property, and, in a recent interview, denied feeling guilty about those actions.
Beck clearly meant to denigrate Soros’s integrity by bringing this up. I disagree with his doing that because none of us knows how we would behave under similar circumstances.
But how is that anti-Semitic?
He compared Reform Judaism to Radicalized Islam while he was commenting on the full page ad in the Wall Street Journal, taken out by a large number of Reform Rabbis, denouncing his comments about Soros. His actual comments when responding to that ad were something like “Reform Judaism is more about politics than religious faith, and the same is true of Radicalized Islam.”
Even ignoring the issue of terrorism, I do not believe that is a fair comparison. While the majority of Reform Jews are politically liberal, Reform Judaism does not espouse a uniform political goal whereas Radicalized Islam does – namely the institution of a Muslim monotheistic government.
Beck used an inaccurate analogy, and an obnoxious one, because of the tactics used by Radicalized Islam, for which he later apologized. Beck may have a low opinion of Reform Judaism’s strength of faith, as do many Orthodox Jews, but this is not anti-Semitism.
It is obvious to me that in awarding Beck the highest rating on the Gibson anti-Semitism scale of anyone else mentioned in your article, you were motivated more by Beck’s political beliefs rather than any hint of anti-Semitism.
I beg you not to descend into the same foul intellectual territory into which many liberals have descended when they accuse anyone who criticizes the politics of President Obama of being a racist.
Dr. Novom may be contacted at stevenovom@yahoo.com
