I have become addicted to The Jewish Press because I find it almost alone in telling it like it is among Jewish publications and Jewish organizations. Anyone reading the April 11 2003 edition will be convinced that the Jewish establishment is asleep or afraid and is unable to act in the face of a worldwide explosion of anti-Semitism and the emergence of an environment fraught with danger for Israel and for Jews everywhere.
Senior Editor Jason Maoz’s Media Monitor column Cardozo’s Man of Honor called South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu by his right names – a charlatan and an anti Semite. . As for Cardozo the law school affiliated with Yeshiva University giving Tutu its International Advocate for Peace Award Maoz wrote Truly we are a people with no spine and no shame. Behold the man [Tutu] so disgracefully honored by an affiliate school of the bastion of Modern Orthodoxy. Only Morton Klein among Jewish leaders consistently speaks with that kind of brutal but essential honesty.
What’s more Maoz quoted Klein’s devastating ironclad factually rich indictment of Tutu a document that should be front and center in every Jewish publication where this pious anti-Semite extraordinaire Desmond Tutu is scheduled to be honored.
This struck home to me here in Philadelphia where Tutu is about to be honored by the University of Pennsylvania. He is scheduled to be its 2003 graduation speaker. Yet the Jewish establishment seems willing to turn the other cheek and not register the kind of protest that should be strong and virtually automatic.
It is clear in view of the history cited below and so ably covered by The Jewish Press that the Jewish establishment has learned nothing from a century of anti-Semitism and genocide during which the establishment registered mainly silence. Consider a few cases:
1. The establishment was afraid to lead a timely boycott of Henry Ford in the 1920’s when Fords’ anti-Semitic publications were inspiring Hitler and the Nazis. Later they inspired Arab anti-Semitism. Ford provided some of the raw material for the deadliest epidemic of genocide attempted genocide and anti-Semitism in the history of the world. (See Yosef Cohen Time to Leave the 1920s Behind Us Jewish Press April 11 page 8).
2. When Ze’ev Jabotinsky urged a worldwide Jewish boycott of Germany during the Hitler era in the early 1930’s the Jewish and Zionist leaders declined to cooperate. (Arnold Fine The Lone Wolf: Ze’ev Jabotinsky (1880-1940) Jewish Press April 11 page M14).
3. During the Holocaust the Jewish establishment was afraid to speak up for fear of an anti-Semitic backlash – and instead got a genocidal Armageddon.
4. The Jewish establishment continues its wimpy wishy-washy approach by failing to support boycotts of such virulently anti-Israel and anti-Semitic media outlets as the New York Times the Los Angeles Times the Philadelphia Inquirer ABC NPR and CNN.
The Jewish establishment is guilty not only of inaction but also of providing a cover and a fig leaf for the anti-Semites. When Yeshiva’s Law School honors an anti-Semite (Tutu) that makes his anti-Semitism respectable. When the Jewish establishment fails to boycott anti-Semitic newspapers and fails to forthrightly fight anti-Semitism it sends a message that all is well and in effect sanctions and nourishes more of the same.
Jewish survival is threatened by many forces today but if we don’t learn from our history and act accordingly we don’t stand a chance.
Klein and Maoz are right. The Jewish establishment is without spine and shame and we need to wake it up and at the same time start building an alternative group of organizations centered on the few groups with the spirit of the Zionist Organization of America and with the leadership of the likes of Morton Klein.
We must not only speak Never again but also act Never again. Instead the Jewish establishment keeps fiddling while a conflagration of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic bias spreads unopposed by those being most directly threatened.
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